I just got back from the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in Graham Chapel and was deeply moved by professor Bob Hansman’s remarks about the true meaning of King’s life. For those who missed it, Professor Hansman reminded us that King was not a mere dreamer and proponent of conciliation, but a fierce and often critical advocate of true justice.

I, like many Wash. U. students, was initially horrified when I first heard that Bon Appétit had decided to stop selling tomatoes for several months.

It’s almost Thanksgiving break, and that means going home for the holiday and answering a deluge of questions from relatives about your future career plans and the actual value of your glassblowing degree.

A bunch of students reenacted communism on Monday on the lawn outside the Women’s Building.
There was also a blackout on the South 40 last week, and the cause is still unknown. I’m pretty sure, however, that a drum circle took place at the Clocktower while the lights were out.

When I was 3 years old, my mom dressed me up for Halloween as my treasured clock radio. Yes, for reasons I no longer understand, I spent an entire holiday dressed as a pre-iHome electronic wake-up call. I trick-or-treated that year encased in a giant cutout piece of white foam board, festooned with permanent marker buttons.

We throw around a lot of meaningless, quasi-inspirational slogans about creating change. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” we say, channeling Margaret Mead.

Ah, the irony. Last week, I wrote a column calling for more debate on campus about the war in Afghanistan. The response: silence. No debate, no online comments, no e-mails, no op-ed submissions and no other apparent response on campus.

As we mark the eighth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, our country is embarking on a high-stakes debate about whether and how to continue waging this war.

To my knowledge, never before in American history has such an important and long-lasting war received so little public attention. It is true that we have had many substantial distractions—the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, our energy problems, the economic crisis, the health care debate—that all deserve our attention; yet, we should not have let this war fall so deeply out of our public consciousness.

There are some moments that make me think Wash. U. and the rest of the country are two entirely separate universes.

New York Times columnist and former Nixon speechwriter William Safire passed away this week. I did not begin reading The New York Times until after Safire retired his regular op-ed column, but he continued to contribute frequently to The Times through his “On Language” column and occasionally on the newspaper’s opinion blogs, and so I [...]