On March 22, 2024, hip-hop’s boogeyman returned from a 10-month silence to do what he does best: shake the industry awake. With a single feature verse on Future and Metro Boomin’s collaboration project “We Don’t Trust You,” Kendrick Lamar put...

Collegiate athletics is full of great traditions passed down from class to class, but few represent their university like the “boneyard” tradition that represents NIU. Since 1983, NIU football has marked its wins over Power Four – formerly Power...

Wake up, get clean, eat our first bites of the day, then be faced with a choice: what will I wear today?   Going to the gym? Reach for quick, dry materials. Going to the pumpkin patch? Reach for a warm sweater and boots.  We may have seen...

What do “that’s the brakes,” “you’re the right kind of girl” and “I love you” have in common? Absolutely nothing.  Unless you’re me – in which case they have everything in common.  My great-grandmother – affectionately...

The war in Ukraine is not only a demonstration of how uncivilized humanity is, but also a sign of how geopolitics are handled today. To this day, the only thing that separates the world from a nuclear war is, ironically, the war in Ukraine. Peace is maintained...

Autumn has always seemed bitterly beautiful to me, lovely in its colors but harrowing in the life it escorts away.  In Alaska, autumn smells spectacular but gets swiftly cold, often taking its inhabitants by surprise when it arrives. Tiny birch...

My myopic self and I have problems. We’re not exactly on speaking terms.  Anxiety has followed me for as long as I can remember, but it was the worst at the beginning of high school when I was at my most vulnerable. During those years, I was a passenger...

Rage echoes in the streets outside of the United Center in Chicago where the 2024 Democratic National Convention is being held. Passionate chants gather force as a crowd of thousands forms. Protesters demanding an end to U.S. aid to Israeli forces in...

I remember pushing through the heavy iron doors, taking a breath of air that smelled 50 years old and tasted like a sour spider's web. I greeted the man at the front desk and told him my grandpa said hi on my way to the classroom.  I was probably...

Colleges and universities across the United States are staring down significant debt. While NIU’s roughly $32 million deficit is not an anomaly, it is something to watch. NIU ended the fiscal year 2024 with around $77 million in total holdings and...

Only a few weeks from its end, summer shows no signs of easing up. As DeKalb boils in the midst of a heatwave, many students are trying to keep the sweat off their backs by any means necessary.  Bottled water, portable fans and the almighty air-conditioning...

As humans, we often have no control over the events that happen around or to us. In the face of adversity, therefore, what we can or cannot do is not what matters most, but how we react to each obstacle. Through “The Travelers,” Bruno Catalano...