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Culture > News

HC Wake-Up Call: USC Denies Admission To Students Connected To Cheating Scandal, U.S. Grounds Boeing 737 Max Planes, & Two Social Media Platforms Faces Temporary Outage

Carissa Dunlap

Good morning Her Campus! With a break-neck news cycle, there is no possible way for you to stay on top of every story that comes across your feeds — we’re all only human, after all. 

But, life comes at you fast. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in for this quick and dirty guide to stories you might’ve been sleeping on (like, literally. It’s early.) 

Universities such as USC and UCLA Could Remove Students Connected To The Nationwide Cheating Scandal 

University of Southern California students involved or connected in the college admissions scandal will be denied entry said university representative Gary Polakovic, CNN reports.

The news comes after USC and UCLA announced on Wednesday that the colleges would review the admission of students whose parents paid thousands upon thousands of dollars to get their children into colleges and scored high on entrance exams, ABC News reports. This means that current students, including Lori Loughlin’s daughter Olivia Jade, could be expelled. 

“We are going to conduct a case-by-case review for current students and graduates that may be connected to the scheme alleged by the government,” USC said in a statement, per CNN. “We will make informed, appropriate decisions once those reviews have been completed. Someone these individuals may have been minors at the time of their application process.” 

The statement continued, “Applicants in the current admissions cycle who are connected to the scheme alleged by the government will be denied admission to USC.”

UCLA will also conduct a similar review.

“If UCLA discovers that any prospective, admitted or enrolled student has misrepresented any aspect of his/her application, or that information about the applicant has been withheld, UCLA may take a number of disciplinary actions, up to and including cancellation of admission,” the statement said, per ABC News. 

U.S. Finally Joined The Rest Of The World & Grounded Boeing 737 Max Planes

After an Ethiopian Airline crashed and killed 157 people, President Trump grounded all Boeing 737 MAX planes until further notice, The New York Times reported.

“Boeing is an incredible company,” Trump said, per The Washington Post. “They are working very, very hard right now and hopefully they’ll very quickly come up with the answer, but until they do, the planes are grounded.” He added that any remaining planes en route to the U.S. “will be grounded upon landing at the destination.”

Prior to Wednesday, countries around the world such as China, India, Australia, and all of Europe banned the aircraft. Canada and the U.S. held off on grounding the planes. 

“We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution,” said president, CEO, and Chairman of Boeing Dennis Muilenburg, in a statement, per Bustle. “Safety is a core value at Boeing for as long as we have been building airplanes; and it always will be. There is no greater priority for our company and our industry. We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.” 

Instagram & Facebook Faced An All Day Outage, So Everyone Moved To Twitter 

It was a sad day for social media. 

On Wednesday, at around 12:00 p.m. Facebook and Instagram crashed. While many users could open the apps, multiple users reported issues of logging in, refreshing the page, and posting on their feed.

The outage not only affected people in the U.S., but also Central and South America, Europe, and Australia, according to Down Detector. 

Angry users flooded Twitter to voice their frustration with the apps shutdown.

As of right now, Facebook and Instagram has not announced the actual cause of the temporary shut down.

“We’re aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” Facebook later tweeted. 

The social media platform did confirm that the outage wasn’t caused by a distributed-denial-of-service attack. According to New York magazine, this means an outside source tried to disrupt the normal traffic of site by overloading the target with a mass amount of Internet traffic. 

“We’re focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm the issue is not related to a DDoS attack,” Facebook tweeted. 

What To Look Out For….

Apparently, Selena Gomez plans to release a new album very soon, and she is reportedly “nervous” about it. Gomez hasn’t released an album in over four years. 

Carissa Dunlap is a Her Campus News X Social Intern for Summer 2018. She is a current Publishing major and Journalism minor at Emerson College (Class of 2020). When she isn't perusing the YA bookshelf at the bookstore, she can be found watching dog videos on Facebook, at her favorite coffee shops, or relaxing on the beach. Follow her on Instagram @dunlapcarissa or Twitter @Caridunlap.