A few weeks ago, I got two traffic tickets in one night. Though embarrassing at first (no amount of sleep deprivation gives you an excuse for backing into police cars, which I did), my evening of two successive encounters with the Clayton Police Department has become a good story, and it comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen me operate a car—the fact of the matter is, I am a terrible, terrible driver.
In America today, it is easy to forget that there are some things that lawsuits cannot settle, things that legislation cannot change.
It makes sense to sue those who embezzle money for financial damages; similarly, it makes sense to put dangerous criminals behind bars. The former ensures that wealth is redistributed appropriately; the latter makes certain that the accused do not commit similar acts of violence again. In these cases, the punishment is appropriate and contributes to a just, secure society.
In Creve Coeur, Mo.—the suburb of St. Louis where I grew up—it is not uncommon to hear people admonish the legal provision of funding for stem cell research, nor is it out of the ordinary when a Catholic bishop sends you mail to tell you how to vote.
In his column on Wednesday, staff writer Gabe Cralley painted a picture that we all, perhaps, know a little too well: a drunk girl stumbling into a freshman dorm, saying, “How do I get out of here? I can’t find my way out of here.”
The sight has become familiar: In late August and early January, we become accustomed to students walking across campus, laden with white-beige campus store bags. The act has become ritual: Every semester, we find ourselves in the lower level of the campus store, carrying red baskets and meandering through aisles until we’re 50 pounds heavier [...]
The two recent appointments to the University board of trustees of powerful men in the coal industry reflects the viewpoint on energy that the University seeks to project as we move forward.
Poetry often relies on observations that occur beneath the surfaces of our lives—metaphors we would otherwise not consider, perspectives different from the ones that we, ourselves, possess. This is perhaps the magic of hearing poetry read aloud: For once, these alternative perspectives and strangely wrought metaphors emerge from the subconscious—the writer’s or our own—and take [...]
New experiences were plentiful during my own freshman year. I’ll be honest: I took on classes that were probably too hard and cried when I didn’t earn the straight A’s I’d expected.
It seems that I’ve fielded a lot of complaints, as of late, about the lack of engagement among students at Wash. U.
My parents really, really like to talk about the economy. In fact, it’s probably the current issue that they’re most long-winded about: the downturn, the bailout, the loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector, the stimulus. They’re representative of a larger trend: It seems that everyone really, really likes to talk about the economy lately, [...]
Student Life is the independent student newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis. Keep in touch with Washington University by subscribing to an RSS feed of our stories or an RSS feed of our comments. Privacy Policy | Comments Policy | Web Policy