AMP
The Official Student Opinion and Satire Magazine of UTD
Opinion
Web Exclusives
Media in the Time of COVID-19
When channel surfing on major networks nowadays, you’ll see that current seasons of prime time television have acknowledged the overgrown elephant in every room: we are all living in the midst of a global pandemic. The networks flood our eyes with The Conners, Superstore, essentially any show written by Shonda Rhimes… yet, instead of providing […]
Opinion
Web Exclusives
Reproductive Coercion
It’s happened to all of us. We’ve all driven down a rural, Texas highway and passed a billboard that reads: “Pregnant? Need help? Give us a call.” Advertisements like that belong to crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), non-profit organizations that focus on persuading pregnant people to not have abortions. Such centers have mastered the art of […]
Opinion
Web Exclusives
The Silent Majority
Occasionally we hear the term “Silent Majority” being discussed by politicians and journalists, but who exactly makes up the Silent Majority? The term Silent Majority is credited to President Nixon defending the Vietnam War and has since been liberally used and misunderstood by the media and politicians on all sides. The Silent Majority acts much […]
Opinion
Web Exclusives
Whooshing Red: America After the Rain
So much relies on a pint of Austin Eastciders and a pack of American Spirit menthols on an election night. The people the next table over analyzed at each other, talking about how long a certain area on a certain map would stay a certain color. I knew I shouldn’t have been there, but our […]
Opinion
Print
Satire
Ken Paxton: A Man of the People
On October 3rd, the Austin-American Statesman and KVUE-TV got ahold of a letter written by seven of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s top aides alleging that Paxton was “violating federal and/or state law” by supposedly abusing his office and accepting bribes. This isn’t the first political hit job Paxton has been the victim of. For […]
Opinion
Print
Dungeons & Diversity: How Racism Permeates the Fantasy Genre
In a turn of events that I cannot imagine Gary Gygax ever saw coming, Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D, has managed to take the world by storm once more in a sort of nerdy renaissance. First introduced in 1974, D&D has recently grown in popularity through the help of web series like Critical Role and […]
Opinion
Print
Whooshing Red: Beyond the Ballot Box
Voting is a ritual. You walk into the polling place, take your seemingly-incomprehensible sheet of bubbles and numbers, slide it into the machine that makes sense of the chaos, and that’s the climax of two to four years of repressed political frustration. Voting is a ritual, and American society is intent on ritualizing it more. […]
Opinion
Print
Why So Serious? A Look at 20 Years of Batman Movies
The Batman (2021), starring Robert Pattinson, is supposed to show us a version of Bruce Wayne onscreen that we haven’t seen in a long time. Set in his second year of crime fighting, between his dramatic origin story and being a fully-established vigilante, the film is set to be more of a detective story than […]
Opinion
For the Love of Code
Have you ever looked at a programming job’s requirement list, eager and ready to apply? As your eyes scroll through the bullet-pointed list, you think: ‘Yes, I have this skill,’ and ‘Oh for sure, I know how to do that,’ but then the dagger in the heart comes as you read the last few lines. […]
Opinion
Gender Identity Before White Europeans Colonized the World
When people think of commentary about the binary idea of gender expression, people tend to look towards Twitter threads that discuss how strongly it is enforced in today’s society or how its existence has been eternal. While more and more discussion arises, be it in Twitter threads or in a more scholarly context, it is […]
Opinion
Idealism
“Of old the world on dreaming fed; Grey Truth is now her painted toy.” —Yeats As a consequence of the pseudo-realist rhetoric that dominates contemporary politics, the adjective “idealistic” is now a derogatory term that’s used to shut down legitimate political discourse. Not only does this suggest intellectual decay and the mockery of creative criticism, […]
Featured
Opinion
Honorlock
Honorlock, UT Dallas’ online exam proctor of choice, distinguishes itself as an extremely unwelcome change since classes have gone mostly online. The negative backlash against it has been huge, with students pointing out Honorlock’s overly invasive procedures and burdensome technical requirements. According to Honorlock’s privacy policy, Honorlock records and stores personal information that “may include […]