The Ponder Nook

          Recently there have been a couple of stories circulating in the news that have me pondering a sensitive issue in today’s world; transgender athletes in sports. Firstly, there is the controversy around University of Pennsylvania’s trans-woman swimmer, Lia Thomas who won first place in the women’s 500-yard freestyle in the NCAA championship. Second, Utah governor Spencer Cox vetoed a bill to ban trans-athletes from competing in sports in the Public Education System. These two coinciding stories brought me to question more about what it means for transgender students to participate in athletic programs, and whether it is fair for cisgender girls.  Before I get into the meat of this topic, I’d like to spend a moment going over terminology so everyone can be on the same page: What is gender? Gender seems to have two different ways of being defined. One definition says that gender is simply another word that means sex, i.e. the male/female divisi...

We live in a day and age where misinformation and the manipulation of information is running rampant across the world at large. Whether it is hurried news articles that weren’t fact checked, conspiracy theories pushed by zealous politicians and pundits, or viral social media posts concocted by internet trolls, we are confronted by an onslaught of baseless or manipulated news that has engulfed people of all walks of life.  Fortunately, there are tools we can utilize in sifting through the mire of falsehoods and half truths, and that is the combined might of an open mind and critical thinking. Maintaining an open mind allows us to consider all options when information is presented to us, while critical thinking skills gives us the ability to question the legitimacy of the news that we digest. The enemy of this logical strategy is bias. As human beings, we have the tendency to be completely open-minded concerning ideas and perspectives we already agree on or are invested in, and overt...