Opinions
ArtSci students should be allowed to look outside the box
College should be a time of exploration and learning. Whether a student comes to Washington University with a set game plan for his or her future, or with absolutely no idea where even to begin, the academic atmosphere should be open to fostering knowledge in all fields.
Affirmative action is beneficial, fair
Affirmative action (AA) policies are not merely desirable or beneficial. They are just. People sometimes defend AA because they value diversity. This puts AA on shaky grounds, because this defense only holds if you indeed value diversity. A Klansman, then, has a strong rebuttal to AA.
Institutionalized homophobia must end now!
This past winter, Trent Lott notoriously commented that “when Strom Thurmond ran for president we [Miss-issippi] voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.
The technological fascists are ready for summer
In a recent column Shawn Redden asks, “[W]hy not [punish] anyone with a CD burner?…Of course this isn’t plausible; it’s so ridiculous on its face as to barely warrant ridicule.” Would that it were so. The technology to do just that will begin appearing on a wide scale this summer: the U.
Enforce the alcohol policy
My first full year here as an undergraduate has been marred by the ubiquity of alcohol; it is difficult to find one thing that epitomizes the campus “alcohol culture.” I’ve recently realized that the big picture concerning alcohol use on campus only appears when one compares many seemingly disparate occurrences.
Protect copyrights, end file sharing
In a world full of reasonable and sensible arguments for file-sharing services like KaZaa, Shawn Redden has managed to avoid all of them. His points run the range from oversimplified rhetorical polemic to attacks on the recording industry itself, but they all somehow evade the basic point of Mary Bruce’s article: file-sharing of the type discussed in her piece involves taking something that you normally need to pay for, and not paying for it.
Rationale for banning kegs doesn’t add up
The front page of last Friday’s Student Life revealed a development that some students may have anticipated: beginning next fall there will be no kegs allowed at W.I.L.D. This announcement has been in the making for four years, as Team 31 and the administration have tried to phase out the quantity of kegs at the biannual Walk In Lay Down.
No classes during Assembly Series
Do the names Judith Miller, Dot Richardson, Luis Rodriguez, Bobby Seale, and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo mean anything to you? If you attended any Assembly Series lectures this year they might, but if you are like many students who have classes scheduled during this time, chances are you probably were unable to attend the lectures or did not even know these individuals were speaking on campus.
Recognize the revered “champion of the clitoris”
As Washington University students sometimes disheartened by the less than radically progressive accomplishments of the Midwest, we sometimes fall into a nothing-cool-ever-happened-at-our-school syndrome. But as the 150th birthday of WU approaches, we must take time to recognize the outstanding contributions our school has made to our society.
Fear-mongering and the road to Damascus
Well, it only took a little more than three years, but I finally think that George W. Bush and I have found some common ground. Both of us think that this recent war went just a little too well for the United States, and both of us are wondering what comes next.