The topic of censorship on the internet is a hot topic issue for everyone. Especially as the usage of the internet becomes more prevalent for Americans. Censorship online is not new to 2019. Everyday users have started talking about it and their fears of being censored online.

On May 2, 2019, Facebook and Instagram, a Facebook company, banned Alex Jones, and subsequently InfoWars, along with other accounts for spreading what Facebook considers violence or hate. Alex Jones had been banned on Facebook before in August of 2018.

“I am continuing to monitor the censorship of American citizens on social media platforms. This is the United States of America — and we have what’s known as freedom of speech!” Donald Trump posted on Twitter on May 3, 2019.

“Everyone has a right to say what they want, as long as it’s not causing harm to anyone. I do not feel that it is a violation of free speech,” said Teresita Rutherford an art history major at Chabot.

“If the material is inappropriate, then Facebook should ban those accounts, but not if it was just because of their political positions. It is a violation of free speech unless the accounts broke the terms of any contracts they had with Facebook,” stated Alejandra Espinoza-Mejia, a Business Major.

Facebook has not violated anyone’s freedom of speech, Facebook is not a government entity. Facebook is a private business that can refuse service to anyone when Facebook feels a user is breaking Facebook’s terms of service.

The last major time the topic of online censorship was brought up in the news was when the Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality in June 2018. Net neutrality is the belief that internet service providers (ISP), such as Comcast, should treat all websites equally, without favoring some sites and blocking others.

“I’m worried that net neutrality is gone, it could be like other countries where popular websites have a subscription by the internet providers on top of paying for the internet,” Rutherford stated.

Internet users were worried that ISPs would slow down or block websites for any reason. The blocking of websites entirely is a form of censorship on the internet.

Earth Week at Chabot College brings many people, from many organizations, to come to talk to students about the environment. In the event center at Chabot on Tuesday, April 23, 2019, Kiely Smith, the Bay Area Director of Factory Farming Awareness Coalition (FFAC), gave a presentation of the effects of factory farming.

FFAC is a nonprofit organization with the goal of reducing the effect that factory farming has on the planet. The approach that FFAC has chosen to reach their goal is education through presentation.

Factory farming is the system of keeping livestock indoors and under controlled conditions. Factory farming is done to produce as much product as possible for the most profit.

One of the impacts of factory farming on the environment that Smith went over is the amount of resources needed to raise animals. The amount of water required to produce one gallon of milk from cows is intensive. The presentation from FFAC states about 27 gallons of water.

According to FFAC’s presentation, over half the farmland in the US is planted with corn and soy for feeding livestock. FFAC states that if the people ate half as much meat, the farmland used for crops in the US could feed everyone on the planet with an excess of food.

All living beings produce waste, and livestock is no exception. Smith played a segment from the documentary “Spy Drones Expose Smithfield Foods Factory Farms,” which the founder of FFAC, Katie Cantrell, assisted on. The documentary showed an open-air cesspool from a pig farm that was four football fields big.

When the pit gets too full, the way, the farm empties it is to use essentially a giant garden hose and spray the liquid waste into the air. When the waste is sprayed, it is carried down wind into neighboring communities.

“You think it’s raining when they spray animal waste. We don’t open the doors or the windows, but the odor still comes in,” said Elsie Herring, a North Carolina resident living near a Hog Farm, in the documentary.

One of the Earth Week events held at Chabot was a green car exhibition. Green cars are considered better for the environment. The car show featured nine green vehicles next to the library on Tuesday, April 23, 2019.

Tesla displayed its fully electric car, the Model 3 and a fully electric SUV, the Model X. Tesla’s display stole the show from the other cars. Tesla set up a table away from the other cars and invited people to sit in their cars to entice people into thinking about buying a Tesla.

Tesla’s all-wheel drive, dual motor performance, Model 3 has a range of 310 miles on one charge. It has a top speed of 162 mph and a zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds.

Tesla also displayed its performance Model X, which has a range of 305 miles on one charge. Despite being an SUV that can seat seven, the performance Model X sports all-wheel drive and a zero to 60 in as little as 2.7 seconds.

“If I could get an electric car, I would get a Tesla. I really like the designs and what the cars can do,” stated Nathan Angelo Balingit, an engineering major at Chabot.

The rise of the Me Too movement has brought many injustices up for conversation that weren’t talked about before. One such injustice that has been a buzz word this year is Thin Privilege.

On July 22, 2018, Cora Harrington, author of the book Intimate Detail, made a series of posts on twitter describing thin privilege. The original twitter thread has been retweeted more than 4,000 times and liked more than 21,000 times bringing the conversation of thin privilege to the mainstream.

“You don’t have to ‘feel thin’ to have thin privilege,” Harrington states in her twitter post. “thin privilege means societal discrimination and prejudice does not target you for being thin. It means your weight/body type is seen as ‘normal’.”

The discriminations listed by Harrington include being told to lose weight, being sneered at when eating treats, being able to go shopping and find clothes and public transit riders being displeased to see you on the public transit.

On February 5, 2019, BBC Sesh, a social media channel owned by BBC Wales, uploaded a video to Facebook titled thin privilege, where the host relisting the same discriminations. The video also calls for thin people to acknowledge their privilege and accept that they have it.

One of the biggest examples that Harrington uses as discrimination against overweight people is the lack of ability to buy clothes. Finding a store that sells the size of clothes big enough is harder to find and more expensive.

“It’s unfair,” stated Jessica Ponce, a nursing student at chabot college. “Why should someone have to pay more for clothes. Clothes should be clothes, it should be the same price for everyone.”

“It’s not really hard to find clothes that fit,” stated Jacob Emmerich, a business administration. “I mostly buy online, if not I can’t go to a walmart or a target, but go to a big and tall store and their clothes are of nicer quality anyway. It’s kinda a pain, but I’m not worried about it.”

Nathan Sojourn states after being asked if he could find clothes that fit, “Yes actually, I’m skinny and I can’t find pants. Pants are always too short or too wide, They don’t fit!”

If Thin Privilege is being able to walk into any store and finding clothes that fit doesn’t seem to be completely a privilege that Thin people hold. A person of plus size goes to a designer who makes clothes for plus size people.

A person in need of smaller sizes often needs to deal with clothes that don’t quite fit, or go to the junior’s section for clothes. Would it be a plus size privilege to be able to get clothes that fit compared to people of a very thin or short body type?

“I found public transit to be somewhat of a pleasant experience depending on the day.” Michael Leonor, a mass communications major at Chabot. “I wasn’t annoyed by overweight people boarding the bus, I was more concerned with muggers possibility being on the bus, and the guy in the back who played music loudly without headphones.”

Group photo of the Chabot Forensics team

The Chabot Forensics Team looks promising this season with both returning contenders and students new to forensics. After going to Nationals last season, the students are eager to go to Nationals again this season.

Forensics is an umbrella term that covers speech and debate, which can be broken down even further. Colleges all over the country compete with each other in teams and individually in the different forensics events.

One debate event the Chabot College Forensics Team participates in is Lincoln-Douglas debate. Lincoln-Douglas debates are one-on-one person debates that have a topic for a whole season. This season’s topic is the actions of Cyber Command in the realm of cyber community.

Another debate event is the parliamentary debate which is a team debate with teams of two. Unlike Lincoln-Douglas debates, the topic for parliamentary debates changes every round. Each team has 20 minutes to prepare for the topic, usually about current events.

“I’m completely confident in my ability,” Stated Joel Brown, Captain of the Forensics Team. “I love both, [Lincoln-Douglas and parliamentary debates] that’s why I do both,” Joel answered when asked about which debate event he prefers more.

While Joel participates in both Lincoln-Douglas debates, he also participates in Parliamentary debates with his debate partner DaCobi Anderson. “With Joel and me, I think we have beautiful chemistry together. It’s like mixing sugar and spice, and we’re making everything nice.” DaCobi stated.

Within the speech category of forensics is the persuasive speech. Where the speaker tries to convince the audience to do something such as change their viewpoint or change a law.

“I feel pretty confident. My speech is about at-risk youth, and why they are at-risk youth. I came from that background, and I am trying to do something better.” Danny Muñoz stated when asked about this season.

Another speech event is prose interpretation. This is a speech event where the speaker speaks for 10 minutes, and the contents of their speech are from a book to tell a story.

“The simplest stories can be, so heart-wrenching, so heartbreaking, and if you perform it correctly, it’s beautiful. This year I’m doing a prose interpretation on a teacher who was in a school shooting, and his wife dies during the school shooting.” Kivraj Singh recalls when asked what his favorite speech event was.

The Chabot Forensics Team is strong this year, beating teams from both community colleges as well as four-year universities. The team is eager to keep winning and head to nationals again.

The season for forensics starts in the fall and ends in the spring. Students that take the forensics class this semester continue the season in spring as well under the class Comm 48.

“The forensics community is tremendous in its ability to produce high level, in-depth education and knowledge production about a variety of different topics. For those here at Chabot who are interested, who are passionate, about social justice or public policymaking: Forensics is a great way to engage in that passion,” stated Joel for those interested in Forensics.

Burger King is no stranger to special Halloween sandwiches meant to draw in more customers, such as the Halloween A1 Whopper. This year Burger King is seeking to truly make the burger of your nightmares with the Nightmare King.

The Nightmare King sandwich is based on the Bacon King sandwich. The sandwich consists of a whopper patty, breaded chicken breast, cheese, bacon, topped with onions and mayonnaise, hurled between a green bun.

The “nightmare” in the Nightmare King is not referring to the green dough that the Sandwich calls a bun. It comes from Burger King’s desire to give the patron nightmares in the spirit of Halloween.

The Nightmare King tastes less like nightmares and more like teenage anxiety. The sandwich contains a flavor that can be bought any day, not just on a special holiday, leaving me craving a taste of Halloween spirit. The Nightmare King tastes like most of the chicken sandwiches that Burger King sells all year round.

The patty itself adds nothing to the sandwich except maybe some extra foodstuffs to fill your stomach. As far as chicken sandwiches go, since that is what it tastes like, I feel it was pretty bland and overly salted. There are definitely better chicken sandwiches with a more interesting flavor than the Nightmare King, cheaper too.

The green bun, which feels like it’s just a scare tactic to be off-putting, is really just a dough that was dyed green with an extract made from watermelon rinds. This doesn’t help the final presentation because green dough that is baked can still brown in the oven making the outside look more like the bun is caramel apple flavored.

Despite the main selling point of the sandwich, the promise of a night filled with terror, my dreams were as sweet and sugary as riding a unicorn through a magical meadow. Although I couldn’t actually finish the sandwich, but not because of the size.

“The burger was all right. It looked appetizing, but tasted about like I thought it would, which was just a chicken sandwich.” conveyed Ariel Buckingham, a student at Chabot College.

“The burger was not very appetizing. The cheese was incredibly overpowering on top of everything else, the onions gave it no flavor, the bacon was just there, The chicken was really big and it didn’t leave enough room for any other flavors in the burger.” Christian Hernandez, a Chabot College student, said after eating the Nightmare King.

“While I still don’t regret it, it did finally hit my system the next day and wreaked havoc on my stomach. Other than that, I felt the chicken and beef complemented each other flavor-wise. Everything worked taste-wise.” stated Greg Durocher a patron of Burger King

As with all fast food, the location, time of day, and staff all impact whether the burger will be better or worse than my experience. If you feel that you want to take a Halloween risk and battle the “King of Nightmares,” I can’t really say I recommend it. Even for those who love Halloween more than any other time of the year.