Lack of respect for women sports

The sports world has always been the main focus for television outlets that would like to raise their ratings for big sporting events. Although different sports may bring in different numbers of viewers, for the most part there is always a consistent number, except for women sports.

Growing up with sisters and friends who played women sports, I've gained a huge amount of respect for the hard-work and effort that the girls put in to prove that they can do just as much as the guys. To see the lack of coverage that women are receiving when it comes to sports is a direct disrespect to the ladies who go out and practice and perform, just like men.

Studies from Michael A. Messner and Michela Musto of Univerity of Southern California, and Cheryl Cooky of Purdue University, suggest that women sports coverage on television has been on the decline since 1989. Facts show that in 1989, women sports had more coverage on television than they do now, even though women sports have elevated way more in the number of women playing different sports.

As of this year, studies show that 3.2 percent of network television coverage was given to women's sports. Sportscenter has offered women sports with 2 percent, which makes no sense being that Sportscenter is the 'leader' in sports.

The media portrays women that plays sports in a very sexist way instead of treating them like the athletes whom they are. Analyst, when referring to women sports, idealize them for their ability to be able to juggle being an athlete with being a mother, wife or girlfriend. Why can't they just be athlete's who are doing what they can to provide for their family, just like the men?

Since Title IX, millions of women have begun their journey in the sports world, but we as an audience and fans wouldn't know because it's never talked about. ESPN would rather show stories on how a family has had the same season tickets for the Dodgers over the last 50 years, instead of showing a women's basketball game on television.

"The US media loves to get behind 'our' athletes-both men and women- when they are competing on a world stage, but ignores the myriad sports taking place every day within our national borders," said Messner.

It is time for the sports world to show the respect that these women deserve and allow coverage for them on television in the right way; not by portraying them as models and sex idols. Women work at their craft just as hard as the men do, and respect is deserving unto them.

Before things get out a hand, a change is needed.

A car is a mans bestfriend

For most of the world, when it comes to a man's best friend, most would say a dog perhaps. Not in my case.

In October of 2014, my parents got me a new car. A royal blue, freshly waxed, 2001 BMW 325ci..

This car became my life.

I mean we did everything together. After a long week I made sure I treated her by taking her downtown for a wash and detail. We went on late summer night drives with the top down, just me and her, my Blue Ivy.

Blue Ivy came first in my life. I constantly checked up on her to make sure everything she needed was provided to her in a timely manner. Blue Ivy was well loved, well until that love was abruptly taken from me.

Before school started back in the Fall of 2015, Blue was feeling a tad bit under the weather. So as any other great owner, it was my job to take her in for a check up. Blue needed some few changes internally, so I made sure that happened.

As I went off to school, I was without my best friend for the first couple weeks. Let it be known this was the worst couple of weeks of my life. It's difficult spending so much time together and it just be taken away.

On Labor Day, my parents let me know that Blue was feeling much better and will return to my possession in the next couple of days, well so I thought.

Later that evening, I get a call from my older sister. "Jarray, I need you to listen and don't say anything." First, you can't start off a conversation like this to anyone, it never ends well. "Your little sister wrecked your car." At this point, my heart was literally hanging out of body as I tried to catch it before it hit the ground.

My first love, my best friend, my car was taking away from me this day and the apology I get from my sister is a message on Snapchat.

As of now, you probably understand my disgust. Although I am thankful that my sister wasn't injured in any way, she will never touch a vehicle of mine every again.

They say best friends come and go, it's the way of life.

My new friend is a Volvo XC90 V8, her name is Scarlet. Lets try to keep this relationship for longer than 7 months.

#FreeKesha

As we all know, Kesha has been in the media big time in the last week. Not because she is releasing any new music, but because she "can't" release any music.

Claims were put out by the pop star, saying that her producer, Dr. Luke, sexual abused her. Kesha wanted out of her record contract so she can stray away from her accused abuser and make music elsewhere, but the company will wouldn't let her leave.

After the court date on last Friday, the jury came to the decision that there was not enough evidence to charge Dr. Luke with anything. After this the internet world blew up in support of Kesha. The support even outstretched to the entertainment world, as stars like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift showed their support in different ways.

But as updates show, there may be more to the story. There is a side to the story that people aren't looking at.

I am no way saying that Kesha is bringing false information to the table about her accused abuser, but the label has said that there have been a number of arguments with Kesha and the record label about different things and she was obviously upset.

Being that there wasn't enough evidence to show that Dr. Luke did anything in the wrong, could the story have been something that was made to get her out of her current situation? Im looking at both sides now.

What if nothing happened at all and the producer is getting nationally looked at as someone who sexual abused a pop star and won't let her leave her contract? After staying quiet for a while, Dr. Luke took to twitter with some remarks of his own.

"It's sad that she would turn a contract negotiation into something so horrendous and untrue. But I feel confident when this is over the lies will be exposed and the truth will prevail.. I want to thank all my friends and family who have supported me throughout this," said Luke.

Also, the rumor about Kesha not being able to make music with other people isn't true according to Dr. Luke's lawyer in a statement that he put out. "The court found that Kesha is already 'free' to record and release music without working with Dr. Luke as a producer if she doesn't want to. Any claim that she isn't 'free' is a myth."

Again, I am not claiming that either side isn't being completely truthful about the situation, but we must take a look at both sides of the problem.

Deadpool Opening Weekend

Going into last weekend, everyone had the feeling that the new Marvel movie "Deadpool" would make some really goof numbers being that the hype was so big for it. Not only did the movie do really good, it broke almost every record it could.

Overall, the film made a whopping $152M over the four-day weekend, breaking the biggest R-rated movie opening, biggest February opening, biggest President's Day four-day weekend, biggest X-Men movie, and the best Ryan Reynolds opening.

The foul-mouthed anti-hero definitely made his mark on the world with great humor and kick-ass action with, of course, a nice romantic ending. It was honestly a great Valentine's Day date and something that you wouldn't mind watching on a Tuesday afternoon.

If you haven't been able to check out the movie yet, please do. For sure the best movie of the year so far. I definitely see some awards coming their way this year.

New Chipotle in High Point

By: Jarray Davis

High Point has welcomed in a restaurant that is sure to make people in the community happy in a number of ways. Chipotle opening earlier in February brings great food, local hangout spot and jobs to the community.

The building of Chipotle in High Point is one of three that are being built around the triad in 2016. This being said, there will be a lot of job opportunities for the civilians of the triad as the year continues. Not only with new jobs, the new Chipotle brings amazing food as the chain was ranked 14 in the 2015 Top 100: Restaurant chain countdown, according to nrn.com. The building is on Main Street which has a couple of schools, as well as High Point University, within a five-mile radius. The company is expecting big business because of their location.

Store

Chipotle has made their mark in High Point at 2313 North Main Street, Suite 101. The store opened earlier this February as an expansion of the chain around the triad area. As for the chain itself, Chipotle has 2,010 restaurants worldwide, which is a great expansion from the 704 restaurants that they had worldwide in 2007. The chain is averaging over 100 new restaurants built every year. With the uproar of new restaurants being built and a $4.1 billion net worth, of course they were landed in the top 20 in the top 100 restaurant chains in 2015.

Jobs

Overall, the Chipotle chain as a total of 59.3k employees worldwide. The location in High Point right now has 16 employees with the desire of hiring more very soon. Being that the location is so close to the HPU campus, Chipotle is looking for students to work part-time in a way to include HPU with their company. This is great for HPU students looking for work, and the company is looking forward to giving the students this opportunity. For students or anyone from the community would like to apply for a position at Chipotle you can go to the restaurant or visit http://careers.chipotle.com/.

Overcoming E. coli breakout

The E. coli breakout that happened with Chipotle in 2015 caused an 11 percent decrease in sales and almost a $1 fall per share of the company, according to the Denver Post. Being that everything with the case is now over, Chipotle managers feel that business can go back to normal and the opening in High Point will allow more jobs for the area. As more restaurants are being built, Chipotle is excited at the thought of having a new and better start to this year.  On Monday, February 10, Chipotle around the world closed for training. This training may be a way of improving their service and to overcome the setback from last year. A statement that the chain released said that they have been working really close with federal health officials to make sure everything is the way that it is supposed to be. The company conducted a deep cleaning at restaurants that were linked to the incident. They changed food preparation procedures and replaced ingredients. “We take this incident very seriously because the safety of our food and wellbeing of our customers is always our highest priority,” said Steve Ells, chairman and co-CEO of Chipotle.

All Chipotle locations in North Carolina

Beyonce halftime performance

After halftime performance from Beyonce, a lot of uproar began as some felt the lyrics to her song was basically talking about the police force and people were not happy about it. During the halftime of Super Bowl 50, Beyonce joined the stage with Coldplay and Bruno Mars, premiering her new song titled "Formation". The video of this song was released the night before. The video featured Beyonce standing on top of a New Orleans police car that sunk under water at the end of the video. As well, she had a police line up where each officer had on riot gear and little boy standing in front of them dancing which proceeded to the officers holding up their hands. Some feel that was in reference to the  #BlackLivesMatterMovement.

All in all, her performing this song rubbed some people the wrong way. New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was personally upset and criticized Beyonce for using the Super Bowl to protest how she feels about the law system. “This is football, not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive," he said.

This is something that I do not agree with. There are plenty of ways that Beyonce could use to get a word out if she wanted too, she's basically royalty in some people's eyes. This Super Bowl halftime show had a meaning of its on. Each artist that performed wanted to portray the life of equality, peace and love. That's what was behind the music and the performance. Not Beyonce using her musical powers to portray a message of saying that she hates the police, but instead she joined other artists for a bigger picture, one that we have been talking about for years. This was a great halftime show and I feel people are diving to deep into what she may have worn or the lyrics of a song. We understand that the police are here to keep us safe and they do that, but there is a bigger picture and this show was to bring unity among everyone, not tear people down.

#OscarsSoWhite update

After a few weeks of boycotting and upset thoughts from actors, actresses and fans from across the world, the Acadamy have released the list of Oscars presenters that may have made some people that had previously had doubts about the event, change their mind.

Being that every nomination giving this year in the Oscars were white, I'm sure the Acadamy wanted to find a way to make things more diverse the best way they can and as easy as they can. So why not bring in the diverse aspect into the presenting realm of the event? That's exactly what they did.

This week, the Acadamy released the presenters, which included the likes of Kerry Washington, Margot Robbie, Indian actress Priyanka Chopra and many more. This came to an excitement of many people in the entertainment business as hopes for the Oscars are not lost after all.

Oscar producers Reginald Hudlin and David Hill came out with this statement concerning the diversity in the presenters that have been released so far:
“These artists have enriched the international moviegoing experience with a range of memorable work from the comic to the profound. In the process, they have won over millions of fans, and we count ourselves among them.”

Although this may not change the minds of Spike Lee and the Smith family into coming to the event, but it does bring a better feeling and vibe going into the event then in previous weeks. I personally am happy with the release of the presenters because I was also spectacle about how the Acadamy was going to go about all the ridicule that they have been receiving from the lack of diversity the nominations this year.

All in all, many including myself, are looking forward to the Oscars. One thing that I am wondering is if any winners will talk about this controversy in their speech. I guess we will see soon.