Ball of Confusion: New developments in North Korea and the Syrian conflict
“Ball of Confusion” is a psychedelic soul single released by The Temptations in 1971, whose chorus says, “Ball of Confusion, that’s what the world is today.” This chorus may be truer today that it was in 1971, with recent events in the Korean Peninsula and Syria proving quite confusing indeed. At a historic summit in the waning days of April, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met in the South, this being the first time that a North Korean leader has entered South Korea in around 65 years and discussed a treaty to finally end the Korean Armistice Agreement in favor of a formal peace treaty that will officially end the war. Also discussed was the (hopeful) eventual denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, with a statement that Kim Jong-un signed reading: “South and...
Read MoreData Mining is “OK”
Facebook is easily the biggest social media platform that exists right now. With over a billion active users, Facebook blows its competition out of the water. Despite the fact that so many individuals use the app, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, has recently had to answer some questions for Congress at a Senate Judiciary Committee and Commerce Committee joint hearing concerning the privacy issues that Facebook users are subject to. While it is not necessarily new information that Facebook gathers data from its users, the extent of the data mining is actually very alarming. Not only is Facebook able to track what users do on the app, it is able to see what you do when you leave the website and go throughout your daily business on the internet. Although Facebook has been collecting user data since its inception in...
Read MoreFarewell to Jack Piepenbring
Our campus will soon bid farewell to Jack Piepenbring, Director of Safety and Security, here at MC. After 14 years of service to our beloved institution, Piepenbring is retiring to spend more time with his family. Piepenbring first came to be the director of Maryville College’s Safety and Security office after retiring from his prior career of 17 years with the National Parks Services as the District Park Ranger of Cades Cove. Piepenbring’s plans for retirement would make any person feel a slight tinge of jealousy. First, he plans to spend a lot of time with his wife Barbara, and their two grandsons. Apart from that, he plans to travel out west, ride his BMW dual sport motorcycle and continue riding his bicycle. “The past 14 years have had a pretty even keel,” Piepenbring said. He attributed this to...
Read MoreMissing women of Ciudad Juarez
South of El Paso, Texas, on the Rio Grande, is Ciudad Juarez. It is the second most populated binational city on the border of Texas and Mexico with 2.7 million people. Ciudad Juarez is known as the most dangerous city in the world. It has been fictionalized in movies, television and books dealing with cartel-related crimes. Despite its infamy, people live, work and raise families in Juarez. Since 1993, over 1500 young women have gone missing. These women, typically factory workers between the ages of 12 and 30, are taken while heading to or leaving from public transportation buses. While Juarez also has a high male homicide rate, the way these women are murdered sets them apart as gender based crimes. The bodies of over 800 of the missing women have been found in the city’s nearby deserts over...
Read MoreMeet the Editors: Rachel Britt
With constant charm and candidness, even at 9 a.m., the Echo’s graphics editor, Rachel Britt, is a shining example of what Maryville College has to offer. Born and raised in Maryville, Tenn., Britt chose to attend Maryville College as a Graphic Design major. Along with being an editor for the Echo, Britt is a dance captain for the Maryville College Dance Ensemble and a first soprano in the choir. Britt’s job requires her to design the layout of the newspaper before it is printed, and it is not easy. “The job is not strenuous long term, but for two days it is very very stressful,” she said. “You are having to design an eight-page paper in one day. I like to work on things a little at a time, and in one day that’s just not possible.” Despite the...
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Switzerland in perspective
It feels like it has been a year since I last sat in this cafeteria clanking away at my keyboard. How could I have possibly processed enough to describe all the things I’ve learned and seen in the past 10 days? When I close my eyes, and think about the trip, I see the Swiss Alps. I hear the traffic of Geneva at night coming from an open hotel window. I taste the cheese, breads and chocolates. I smell the street food, sizzling its way into my heart. And I still feel the strong impact of the presentations and the discussions in which we participated regarding international child welfare. This spring break, a group of 14 students and two professors from Maryville College toured Switzerland studying international child welfare. The trip lasted for only 10 days, but will have...
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