opinion
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Reflecting on My Time at The Cord
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As I wrap up my second year with WLUSP, and The Cord in particular, and look ahead to year three, I’ve come to realize just how deeply this experience has shaped my university journey. From the people I’ve worked with to the stories I’ve told and the voices I’ve had the privilege to amplify; The Cord has become a defining part of my time at Laurier. It…
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A Final Note: What This Paper Gave Me
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I don’t think there’s a clean way to write a final editorial. For something that has taken up so much space in my life, my time, my energy, and often my thoughts long after I have closed my laptop, it feels strange to try to summarize it in a single piece. Being editor-in-chief was never just a role I…
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More Than Just Bread and Circuses? The Case for Sports Relevancy
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Whenever major sporting events roll around, such as the Olympics or FIFA, the same snarky remarks emerge. While fans and sports media alike are spending their leisure hours peacefully invested in athletes and outcomes, critics will sit at home and scoff at the silliness of “sports ball”. This group constantly reminds people that sports are a distraction from serious issues and effectively work to deflect a population’s attention and critical thinking away from things with power. We have all heard this argument in one form or another. However, not everyone sees sports this…
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“Eat the Rich Before the Rich Eat Us”
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“Eat the Rich” a well renowned metaphor originating from the French Revolution, is a blunt, populist shorthand phrase to express anger at extreme wealth, inequality, and the impunity of the elites. It is about accountability. It encapsulates the idea that a tiny group hoards obscene power while the consequences of their action are paid for by everyone else. Over time, the phrase has evolved into a meme, a punchline – a way to gesture at class rage without spelling out policy. However, in the age of outrage and post-Epstein distrust, metaphors do notstay metaphors for long. In recent months, as the Epstein files have begun to flood online forums and fringe outlets, the “eat the rich” statement has grown into grotesque literalism.…
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Economic Anxiety and the Appeal of Communism on Campus
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Many students in Waterloo have noticed the bright red stickers and posters plastered around the Laurier campus, displaying graphics ranging from Luigi Mangione to anti-Capitalist rhetoric both in and outside academic buildings. While the nature of these stickers and posters may vary, they all function as recruitment tools for the Kitchener-Waterloo branch of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The RCP is a recently established political group rapidly growing in numbers, targeting student and worker populations and demanding immediate anti-capitalist action. With that established, the question remains; why are students in Waterloo supposedly turning toward communism? We know that…
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Why Daylight-Saving Drains Students Most
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In university there are often jokes about exhaustion. All-nighters are normalized; coffee is a personality trait, and students often say, “I will sleep when I am done,” and it feels like an unofficial motto. However, when the time comes around for the clocks to move forward each spring, the change always seems minor, as it is just one hour. For students, already running empty, though, that hour is not small. And suddenly the jokes stopped being funny. …
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Make Love a Habit, Not a Holiday
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Feb. 14 is a day many people love, but also quietly despise. Personally, I love this day as I think of pink and red, heart-shaped everything, themed candy and overall, just a cute holiday. However, besides the cute decorations and Pinterest boards, I have noticed a shift. In the last couple of years, Valentine’s Day has evolved from a celebration of love into an online performance. What was once about expressing care for the people in our lives has become a day to post one’s significant…
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Boredom: The Creative Habit We Forgot
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Boredom is something that everyone has experienced, yet despite being a worldwide occurrence, nobody talks about it seriously. Most people brand boredom as unpleasant, useless or something to be avoided at all costs. But in my opinion, that could not be further from the truth. We need boredom, and it is incredibly useful; but right now, as a society, we are bad at it. …
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Is the News Harder to Keep Up With?
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As the 2020s roar on, world events seem to pile up faster than people can process them, leaving people feeling perpetually behind the flurry of breaking news. While Canadians have been adjusted to the 24-hour news cycle for decades, it seems like coverage feels harder than before to keep up with. Could it be that we’re genuinely living in an era that is dramatically shifting the world order, trickling into our national news-worthy dilemmas? Possibly. But many eras of instability before this have also had…
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Family Day on Campus: More Than Just a Day Off
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For many Laurier students, Family Day arrives as a pause in the middle of an already demanding semester. It’s a long weekend marked by mixed reactions: relief, indifference, gratitude or even stress. Some students head home to familiar routines and home-cooked meals, while others stay on campus, catching up on assignments, working shifts, or simply trying to…
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The Tie That Binds WLU Since 1926
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