Sarah O’Connor / Silhouette Staff

During a Linguistics tutorial last term, I overheard a classmate complaining about an article written in The Silhouette, eagerly wanting to write an editorial reply.

I turned to her and said, “I write for The Sil, I can help if you want.” I was then greeted with a few shocked stares from my classmates.

“You write for The Sil? What year are you in?” one person asked, confusingly. I responded, “First year.” I was in a first year class after-all.

This moment shocked me and made me question why my fellow first-years would expect me to be older for the sole reason that I wrote for the university paper. What was it about writing for The Silhouette that makes me seem older, mature, better? Did writing for the paper make others see me as more educated or clever? What was it that made me seem so different for writing 600 words every week?

After all, anyone can write for The Silhouette. A neat little advertisement calls for student’s opinions and stories every week in every issue. Even The Silhouette website asks for News Tips where students can give the paper a heads up on what’s going on around McMaster.

But with all these options, what’s stopping people from writing?

And then I started thinking about all the other areas students can get involved in McMaster, like the SRA and the MSU Presidency. There are about 20,000 students at McMaster.

Each and every student is allowed to run for these things. But how many students actually go out and try?

These positions don’t ask for a vast knowledge of politics, they just ask for students.

And out of 20,000 students, only handfuls actually feel they are worthy to try. Not necessarily win, just to try.

We live in a world made of hierarchies. They are everywhere and rule who we are and where we stand in society. Hierarchies tell us that only some people are good enough to do certain things. Only some people can do great things and be remembered while the rest of us decay, not knowing that we could do great things.

Its power people want; power to lead them, power to make them safe and power to keep the public knowing what is right and wrong. Power creates these hierarchies, telling us that only some people are good enough, only some people are special and the rest are the followers.

But no one has to be a follower. No one has to stop him or herself from attempting great things because thepy feel they aren’t good enough, that they don’t fit into the “status quo”. You can do great things and you can be a part of the big things around McMaster.

All you have to do is try. We are all capable of doing great things, but these hierarchies try to crush our spirit and convince us we can’t. We can’t write for the paper because our opinions aren’t important enough, we can’t run for the SRA because we don’t know what it’s about, we can’t run for MSU President because we don’t know anything about politics.

But we can. We have to push through these hierarchies and obstacles that tell us we can’t and show them we can.

We can write for the paper, we can run for SRA and MSU president. We can learn and grow and achieve great things as long as we put our minds to it.

Andrew Terefenko

Opinions Editor

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a stage was set for what was touted to be the most unforgettable gaming experience of the new decade. Sadly, it fell just short of accomplishing this starry-eyed feat.

From the minds of the universally-respected developer Bioware, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) was their first foray into the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) gaming market, and a notably ambitious one at that. Sporting the gaming industry’s largest-ever budget, estimated between $150 and $200 million, boasting that it took 12 full-time writers two years to write the game’s dialogue, and even recognized by the people at Guinness as the “Largest Entertainment Voice-Over Project Ever.” Was that enough to create an experience that frequently picky Star Wars fans would approve of?

To reach that conclusion, I should tackle the game’s most prominent selling point: the writing. It is not an exaggeration that the game has over 200,000 lines of voiced dialogue, and I would go so far as to say that nearly all of it is natural, interesting and rarely gave me reason to skip ahead. It was quite a feat for a game to overpower my inherent impatience and get me deeply involved in the character I was playing. That being said, I found a few moments where the voice actors were running out of different ways to stretch and manipulate their voices, breaking the illusion that each entity in this age-old galaxy was a unique and stellar person. Unfortunate, but not enough to take away from the sheer enjoyment of hearing the next perilous plea for my help.

Being a game set in the Star Wars universe, there was no way to get around the core theme of good vs. evil, and that concept was directly built into your character in his or her alignment meter. When you perform a benevolent (or malevolent) deed, your alignment shifts towards the light or dark side, and even begins to change your facial features if you become deeply invested in one direction. I can attest to the strength of this mechanic, as I proudly displayed my avatar’s grossly disfigured veins and face, a reward for my various misdeeds across the core worlds. It didn’t come easy though, as many choices legitimately force you to pause and question the ethics of your decisions, even if they are only numbers in an inconsequential program.

I cannot weigh the value of a game, of course, without also criticizing the gameplay. As great as the literate and emotional aspects of the game were, at its core mechanics it was a poor clone of its predecessors. I found myself pressing the exact same four buttons with the same animations for sixty straight hours and at times questioning why I was subjecting myself to what seemed like a chore. Mechanical tedium aside, I was so heavily invested in seeing my character’s personal story play to the end that I brushed aside the annoyance of actually advancing it. Each of eight unique classes has a personally-tailored story that tackles different galactic issues, such as human trafficking, political scandals, and even world destruction.

It would be fair to say that SWTOR was not so much an exceptional game, but moreso an exceptional interactive movie with bits of gameplay in between the expertly-crafted cinematic moments. One can quickly tell that Bioware has a lot to learn about crafting an inherently fun game, but they are light years ahead in creating an all-engrossing experience for those patient enough to sit through it all.

Josh Parsons

Music Editor

As far as I’m concerned, the greatest thing the internet has provided is the mountain of musical freebies – be they legal or otherwise. There has never been a period in history like this one, where so much music was just a few clicks away.

If you’re one of those nose-in-the-news types, I’m sure you’ve heard a thing or two about this SOPA bullshit. While many popular websites are staging blackouts as a protest to the anti-piracy legislation, I’d prefer to take a more direct route.

Here’s a guide to some of my most reliable methods for finding free music.

The first one is a no-brainer: torrents. If you’re still living in a cave, torrents are super-sneaky way of downloading files from multiple users at once. All you need is a simple torrent sharing program, such as BitTorrent, and suddenly a sea of free music is only a search away.

Becoming a superstar in the torrent community often leads to an invitation to one of the uber-exclusive websites, like Demonoid and ImmortalSeed. These sites host an even broader selection of goodies, including rare demos, bootlegs and unreleased material. Get into one of these and you’ll never need to buy an album again.

If you find yourself technologically inept, as I often do, there’s an even simpler, faster and more illegal way to have instant access to thousands of tracks. Search the domain of MediaFire.com for instant access to countless downloadable albums.

MediaFire is a massive file hosting website. Simply type in what you’re looking for and download the .zip file in which the album is contained. With average bandwidth, an album is downloaded in less than two minutes.

If downloading isn’t quite your thing, there are plenty of options for streaming music for free online. Although it is heavily policed by hordes of lawyers hired to defend the major labels, YouTube hosts an impressive amount of independent and eclectic music.

Other websites boast a massive catalogue of streaming audio, often utilizing a simple interface and playlist capabilities for maximum ease. GrooveShark is easily the most popular and makes it easy for users to create lengthy and diverse playlists.

Another popular website that embraces this platform is the HypeMachine. But unlike GrooveShark, it also serves as a blog aggregator and posts an up-to-the-minute list the latest music trending in the blogosphere.

And finally, for those looking for the most indie of indie, there are plenty of community-based sites that attract artists embracing the world of free music. SoundCloud is a European website that hosts a lush variety of independent artists willing to offer their tracks for free. Although it originally specialized in electronic music, musicians from nearly every genre now make use of SoundCloud to reach out to fans.

Of all the sources for free music on the internet, these are some of the most reliable that I have come across, and although I thrive off free music, I still support those artists who need the cash. Go to a show, buy a shirt; there are so many ways to support a band without buying the record. The reality is that it always costs a little bit of money to make recorded music possible.