The ACLU’s lawsuit revolves around the key issue with these assassinations: the CIA killed American citizens without due process of law. Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed last September in Yemen by an unmanned drone strike without any sort of trial or protection of the constitutional rights guaranteed to American citizens under the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, the CIA has even denied the existence of the program that orchestrated the drone strike. Now obviously these men were terrorists; their actions were wrong and should not be condoned. But they were also American citizens, and if we truly believe in American civil liberties, we have to believe that regardless of your crimes, you have the right to a trial by jury, and the right to not be assassinated by your government.

The fact that Obama Administration and the CIA have refused to officially acknowledge this assassination or their legal justification for the killing of American citizens while simultaneously touting it as a major victory in the war on terror is pure hypocrisy and terrifying from the perspective of anyone even vaguely concerned with protection of American civil liberties.

Details of the assassinations have been both leaked to press and revealed during on-the-record interviews with White House officials, including the president. Essentially, the CIA selected al-Awlaki as a potential target for a top-secret killing program. Then, in April of last year, President Barack Obama approved his placement on this list of eligible targets for this program. Al-Awlaki was the first American citizen to be placed on such a list.

One key detail that remained entirely absent from these triumphant reports and interviews was the legal justification the Obama administration had used for allowing the CIA to kill an American citizen. Citizens are supposed to be protected against government abuse, not murdered.

Immediately following the triumphant announcement of the killing by Obama himself during a White House press conference, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice asking for basic information regarding the killings of al-Awlaki and Khan as well as the administration’s legal justification for this action. They have received no response.

Even more disturbing, the CIA has denied even the existence of its targeted killing program, claiming that it “could neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records” relating the ACLU’s request. Even scarier, Khan was not even on the list of terrorists eligible for targeted killing. He was simply another American citizen, who happened to be a terrorist and also happened to be sitting next to al-Awlaki when he was assassinated. If this doesn’t scare you, it should.

The CIA is denying knowledge of a program that has successfully assassinated American citizens without due process of law or constitutional protections afforded to Americans. The implications of this are frightening.

We are now living in a world where the president of the United States of America can allow a covert government agency to kill American citizens, people born and raised in this country, entirely outside of the judicial system or any due process of law, and then pretend it never officially happened.

Sure, this time they were terrorists, but the precedent is now there. A legal precedent exists which gives the United States government the ability to kill its own citizens without any legal recourse, without a trial by jury, and without any requirement to defend their actions in court.

Godiva Reisenbichler | Student Life

Although I agree with the Komen foundation’s decision to retract its original position, it remains apparent that the issue is—contrary to the PR statement—highly political. Out of about 2,000 organizations that Komen supports financially, Planned Parenthood was the only one affected by the new rule. This makes it nearly impossible not to assume that the changes were made with Planned Parenthood in mind.

It’s no secret that Planned Parenthood, a highly visible organization that provides health care, education and advocacy for women, garners national attention from anti-abortion activists who latch onto its abortion services and ignore its other programs. These critics often completely disregard the fact that abortions comprise a mere three percent of Planned Parenthood’s expenditures and the fact that federal funding can’t be used for abortions anyway. Susan G. Komen for the Cure folded under this ongoing political controversy associated with Planned Parenthood, seemingly disregarding the enormous value of its services for low-income families.

Komen’s decision to repeal the defunding lies in the deluge of public backlash, most notably on forums such as Facebook and Twitter. In the three days following the initial Komen announcement, Planned Parenthood raised nearly three million dollars and gained 10,000 new Facebook supporters. In contrast, Komen’s Facebook page was bombarded with heated comments, many of which suggested alternative cancer foundations to which one could donate. On my own newsfeed, friends posted and re-posted articles bashing the decision. This issue definitely struck a chord in liberal-minded college students across the country, many of whom rely on Planned Parenthood’s service.

Much of the criticism against Komen’s actions point to Karen Handel, who was appointed as its senior vice president in April 2011. Handel, Georgia’s former secretary of state, has publically stated that her staunch anti-abortion beliefs make her unable to support the mission of Planned Parenthood. She has since resigned, but I see the attacks on Handel as an oversimplification of the issue. No one person—even with the title of VP and with a strong personal vendetta—could have single-handedly spearheaded this de-funding process. Rather, the actions represent a miscalculated effort by Komen to mollify groups and individuals who hated the group’s ties to Planned Parenthood and posed significant threats to Komen’s fundraising.

This controversy reflects the politicization of our society as a whole. Komen’s national headquarters made a mistake, but they are rapidly attempting to fix this. Will the organization as a whole ever admit that significant political rifts between anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights advocates fueled their initial reasoning? Probably not. Regardless, the foundation responded to the public’s outcry swiftly and, I think, appropriately. Judging by the huge influx in donations to Planned Parenthood, and the decreased funding and support for Komen in this same short period, Susan G. Komen for the Cure will need quite a bit of time to repair the damage and rebuild its reputation. Hopefully the foundation will focus in the future on curing cancer and not succumb to partisan issues like abortion.

Hanna Xu | Student Life

The most important issue to address is that Student Union privileges cultural groups over other student groups. This is patently false, as a quick examination of Student Union Treasury allocations reveals. LNYF was only given $2,950 for the fall semester, the African Students Association, $1,672, the Korean International Student Society, $1,350, Jewish Student Union was awarded $7,550 , the Muslim Students Association, $6,057, and the Korean Students Association, $5,054. Although as one critic pointed out, many of these numbers are far higher than other groups will see for years, other groups receive far more.

Desire to promote diversity on campus may be a factor here (although if it is, is that so offensive?), but the greater reason is that Student Union provides larger sums for groups that, through events, invite the participation of the greater student body. EnCouncil, for example, was allocated $13,825 for the fall semester, the vast majority of which went not to insular, engineer-specific events but rather to Vertigo: a massive, University-defining party. Lunar New Year Festival filled Edison Theatre. And if groups do spend a lot of their money on themselves, we must keep in mind that they serve a significant section of the Wash. U. community; there are roughly as many Asians as there are engineers. By contrast, how many people participate in or are affected by the Outing Club ($876) or the Belegarth Medieval Combat Society ($416)?

To criticize Lunar New Year Festival’s spending suggests something more than a disagreement with how the money was spent. If such were the case, nearly every group on campus could be lambasted. Some groups receive funding from multiple sources, others spend thousands of dollars on food. Others are allocated thousands of dollars to make money which does not go to covering expenses. I do not take issue with groups that do this, but to focus specifically on Lunar New Year Festival, particularly when attacks are given phrases like “It’s a show by Asians for Asians,” one wonders about the objectivity of its detractors.

Ultimately, though, $5,500 is a paltry amount. Student Union’s total revenues for this year came to $2,484,907.43, and even that is a pittance compared to Wash. U.’s endowment. To take issue with the allocation of .22 percent of SU’s budget is ridiculous. It is more fair to use the financing of Lunar New Year Festival to point out a greater misuse of Treasury funds, but even that alleged misuse—that Student Union favors cultural groups—is imagined. Student Union gives money to student groups based on how many students will be affected by them. EnCouncil and Architecture School Council received $13,825—mainly for Vertigo—and $29,295— mainly for Bauhaus—respectively. Lunar New Year Festival received significantly less for an event that was, proportionately smaller. To attack LNYF or Student Union is unreasonable, and perhaps indicates deeper issues with the presence of cultural groups, rather than any preferences by Student Union.

I don’t need to point out that this is a gross violation of First Amendment rights, the filming of a congressional hearing for a documentary clearly being subject to the freedom of the press. In addition, access to the hearing itself was certainly not restricted, as it was freely watchable over the Internet. So why, exactly, was this filmmaker arrested?

Most disturbingly, this could represent the partisan fiat of the committee chair. Mr. Fox is widely known to be an environmental activist who opposes Rep. Harris and most of the Republican Party’s views regarding fracking, energy exploration and environmental issues. His expulsion could be a dire warning of the shift of political action in this country, in which officials abuse their position to silence their opponents and those with whom they disagree. According to an aide, removing a person from the committee chambers is at the discretion of the committee chair, a dubious excuse given that the committee hearing was essentially already public information, and that the committee chair could have simply asked for the camera to be removed or turned off rather than having Mr. Fox arrested.

“Fracking” is, a highly contentious issue, seen as a possibly lucrative new stream of revenue by oil companies and horribly polluting by environmental organizations. In such controversies, dissemination of information is critical, since it allows the public to know and understand the risks—in this case, to safe drinking water—posed by such a procedure. The very fact that an environmental critic was removed from the hearing smacks of corporate favoritism on the part of the committee chair. As Rep. Jerry Nadler told the Huffington Post, “I have served in the House of Representatives since 1992, and I had the privilege of chairing the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. In all that time, I cannot recall a chair of any committee or subcommittee having ever ordered the removal of a person who was filming a committee proceeding and not being disruptive.” According to other representatives quoted in the same article, registrations barring cameras do exist, but do not call for the arrest of the journalist, only the confiscation and depowering of the camera. Indeed, the purpose of such rules is not political censorship, but to allow such hearings to take place without disruption.

The arrest of Mr. Fox sets a dangerous precedent of political censorship, in which a reasonably powerful politician can attempt to prevent the dissemination of information at a public hearing to those with whom they disagree. No matter where you stand on this issue, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, this is a clear violation of numerous Supreme Court rulings regarding political censorship, and therefore of the First Amendment itself. One can only hope that this does not represent a worrying trend for the future.

While believing it must wipe our butts and tuck us into bed every night, Congress expects a tremendous amount of trust from the American people. The same institution that dictates what we can put into our bodies, whom we can marry, how we can conduct business, and how schools are run expects citizens to believe they won’t abuse power. The irony would be humorous if Congress didn’t try to run our daily lives. In an ideal situation, Congress would affect the day-to-day aspects of Americans about as much as the winner of a football game.

Rather than cutting aid to the poor or raising taxes, Congress should continue stockpiling regulations over their public offices; spending cuts would be an added bonus. Legislators don’t need pensions, should receive smaller salaries, can cut back on their staff, and should be term-limited. Members of the Tea Party and Occupy movements would both rejoice.

These are not ideas that would dramatically reduce the debt or solve major problems such as healthcare, foreign policy or the economy; they would merely signal that Congress is getting out of the way and allowing Americans to choose their own paths in life. In an election year, controversial legislation will be minimal as both sides attempt to gain momentum heading into November. Finding common ground in reducing the power of an overreaching federal government would be the bipartisanship Americans crave.

Unpaid internships are a tricky business. While college students are not the most vulnerable people on the planet, there is room for abuse. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, unpaid internships are lawful so long as they are “educational” and “the internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.” Perhaps most relevant to Ms. Wang’s case, an intern cannot “displace regular employees.” She worked 40 to 55 hours a week. According to her, she and the other interns were treated as a “vital labor force” and often did work on par with that of regular, paid employees. I have little doubt that she was, in fact, exploited as unpaid labor. In any such experience, there’s a certain amount of tedious work and crap one has to put up with. Ms. Wang’s experience goes far beyond that.

So are unpaid internships worth it? I have some friends who scoff at the idea, and to a certain extent I understand their point. Why would anyone give up a salary to gain (or not gain) an intangible benefit like educational experience and a company name on your resume? Unpaid internships are a lifestyle choice as much as a way to gain career experience. They’re listed along with Starbucks coffee and studying abroad under “Stuff White People Like” for a reason: They indicate a certain amount of privilege. While you may be gaining valuable career experience, you’re working for free when you could get an actual job.

If you’re like me, you’re fortunate enough to have parents who have the means to pay your rent for the summer while recouping exactly none of your personal expenses. There is money out there for people to pay for their expenses during summer internships, but I can see how only wealthier students can afford to do something over the summer. There’s a hint of elitism, looking down on people working minimum wage summer jobs without obvious connection to career advancement.

That said, I had an unpaid internship last summer with NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri. My experience could not have been more different than Ms. Wang’s. My fellow interns and I were given substantive work and treated well. The experience was valuable and certainly educational. Several of my fellow interns had paying jobs as well, possibly because most of us only interned 15 to 20 hours a week. Part of the value, at least for me, came from my own wide-eyed enthusiasm for NARAL’s mission. I’m interested in politics, and I eventually want to become the type of lawyer that does the type of work NARAL does. My internship suited my purposes exactly. Would I have preferred to have been paid? Of course. But corny idealist that I am, the experience I gained was a fair exchange for my time.

Ms. Wang’s experiences and lawsuit shouldn’t dissuade anyone from taking an unpaid internship this summer. But Ms. Wang’s case does draw attention to the possible misuse of unpaid student labor and the culture of unpaid internships in general. If you’re considering an unpaid internship, figure out exactly what you want to get out of it, then talk with your boss to make sure that happens. We may be relatively inexperienced, but gaining experience is the whole point of an unpaid internship.

Santorum also accused President Obama of “snobbery” when Obama suggested that college education should be universal, and believes that such institutions serve to brainwash students against his favored brand of Christianity.

Aside from the fact that this is not an inherently Christian nation, and not affiliated with any religion in general, institutions of higher education do not serve to instill certain beliefs in students, only to teach objectivity and facts about the current world. Furthermore, there is a direct correlation between success in a career and a college education.

Okay, let’s say Santorum gets his way and college education is restricted. The U.S. would therefore become far less competitive economically. Is that what you want, Santorum? Sorry, we current and future college graduates are the reason the U.S. is still economically competitive.

Unless you wish to return to the day when the vast majority of the American economy relied on cheap uneducated labor, a la China, the silly liberal college students are going to need to stick around and help out a bit. Besides, Santorum himself is a college graduate, and is supposedly fairly well educated, having received not only a B.A., but an M.B.A. and a J.D. as well. Having spent so much time in school, it is hard to believe how he can fail to see its importance, especially with the vast technological advances that require even more in-depth and specialized training to be competitive.

Santorum’s gaffes do not end with jabs at the well-educated. Santorum has been quoted in the past as stating that the political base of the Democratic Party is single mothers. He also claims that in the midst of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, which is causing the highest unemployment in 30 years and disproportionately affects minorities, that he doesn’t “want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I [Santorum] want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families,” showing a surprisingly racist, complete disconnect from reality.

Such quotes would be hilarious were this person not a serious contender for public office. The fact that he can make such statements openly without massive rebuttal demonstrates the depths to which the political rhetoric in this country has fallen. Education shouldn’t be something that political candidates can attack to score political points, and I shouldn’t be considered “indoctrinated” because I am trying to make my life a little better.

Erin Humphries | Student Life

We’ve had a lot of construction on our campus recently and many of the changes and additions have been incredible. New Bear’s Den and College Hall leave pretty much any other campus’ food and dining in the dust; the new engineering buildings kick our academic facilities up a couple of notches; even the DUC, which was new my freshman year, has become a necessary and useful hub for students on campus.

These construction projects have brought a lot of great things to our campus and to our students. But let’s consider the South 40. Over the last five years, the amount of change to the 40 has been astounding. Can you imagine being an alumnus and returning to a place you called home for four years, only to find that nothing is the same? When I return for my five- or 10-year reunion, it’s something I would almost expect.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Certainly, our facilities and housing have improved, but I’ve spent three years living in a traditional dorm, and I feel like my own living requirements have been far exceeded. Then again, I’m not the one who calls the shots.

The Chancellor and the administration, I feel, are warranted in their constant desire to improve campus. Reputation is built on more than on academic factors, and a commitment to students through excellent housing, incredible food and other great resources says something that a lot of comparable institutions don’t. But it also ignores the fact that it promotes a lack of physical tradition.

I’ll admit that this idea probably works less as it relates to the 40, simply because housing standards change over time. But there are a few parts of main campus that I have to touch on before I finish. Yes, Eliot Hall sticks out like a sore thumb; no, this column will have no effect on its future demolishment. But darn if I don’t love that building. Maybe it’s just the fact that it sticks out so strangely, but I find its ugliness endearing; a blemish that gives the Danforth Campus a little bit of character. I’m honestly not too excited to see it replaced by another rose-colored building.

The same goes for KWUR, which will soon be moving—no longer will students wander the graffiti-ed, pock-marked rooms to search for records, instead frequenting a clean, sterile space on the third floor of the DUC. We’ve loaded history and memories into these places, only to have the physical aspects of such memories stripped from view.

I love it here and am so glad I have had the opportunity to spend my college career at such a great school. Wash. U. has absolutely been my home for four years and I hope that, when I return as an alumnus, it’s still a home that I recognize.

We know that Wash. U. is ratings obsessed. That isn’t really new information for us. Our university does its best to get to the top of the rankings. But who can really blame them? The problem is that the rankings system allows schools to fudge the numbers a little bit, and try to work the formula.

US News and World Report ranks schools based on seven factors: undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent), graduation and retention rates (20 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent), graduation rate performances (7.5 percent), and alumni giving rate (5 percent).

The problem is that these are not good measurements of a school. Reputation is determined by an academic survey, which is entirely opinion-based. Retention generally has more to do with the happiness of the students rather than the competitiveness of the school, the alumni giving rate has nothing to do with how well the school performs, and graduation rate isn’t a good barometer of anything once you get to a certain graduation level for all students.

These factors don’t really tell me what a school is about, or how competitive it is, or whether it should really be ranked as the best in the country. What this tells me is that Wash. U. is ranked as one of the best because we have a great reputation, good retention rate and way more money than most other schools combined. We might be the best, but our ranking should be deserved because of our learning environment, because of how well our students do, and because we truly prepare people for the world, not because our endowment is larger than the GDP of a small country.

It is this system that drove that the “senior administrator” to falsify Claremont McKenna’s SAT scores? He knew that his university would gain in the rankings because the students’ performance on the SAT is one of the ways the school is judged. Obviously he should have been fired, but schools need to realize that the incentives for people to falsify their records are there, because that is how we make the rankings.

Rankings should be done without any data provided by the universities in question. They shouldn’t be able to have any say as to whether or not they are better than another school. There is plenty of independent data available that schools can’t falsify.

Secondly, the method of comparing undergraduate studies based on an entire school is a terrible way to do things. By the time undergraduates leave Wash. U., we must all have a major. We took the majority of our classes in a single department, and most likely didn’t take classes in 95 percent of the others.

Schools should be compared on the basis of departments, what they are best at and where they have the best research and performance, not some overall ranking.

I don’t believe that I benefit from Wash. U.’s amazing biology department, because I have never taken a natural science course here. Every university has subjects it is terrible at teaching, and some it is good at teaching. Those comparisons are ultimately much more important, because we are much more likely to be compared that way when we leave.

Undergraduate department rankings are out there. But they are hard to find, and rarely updated, and generally hard to understand. Graduate schools are compared by departments; there is no reason that we can’t expand that system to include undergraduate programs. I would find US News and World Report much more useful if it told me how well I would be trained as an economist or a mathematician by attending Wash. U.

I am not going to be compared to someone who is training to be a doctor at any point in my career. I am going to be compared to other students who came out of a similar department, or studied the same things that I did. We should change college rankings to reflect that. Sure, general rankings have their uses, but when I leave Wash. U., they won’t make a bit of difference.

Unlike some philosophical concepts whose definitions are endlessly tossed around in the air, felony is a completely artificial category, albeit with a solid definition. The term describes the types of high crimes bearing the minimal punishment of one year in a state jail, setting aside exceptional judicial discretions that could extenuate it. The punishment can be anything between that and a death sentence. A person with felonious history also suffers numerous post-punishment disadvantages in the areas of welfare, license acquisition, contracts of all kinds and job applications, among others. Many states don’t allow persons with felonies on their records to vote.

Granting the applicability of felony to the issue at hand for the sake of argument, I first find it bewildering that the bill advocates that it be applied to test takers who receive money for the work, not the ones who make the actual attempt at purchasing high scores through a proxy. They are the ones trying to cheat for undeserved numbers on score sheets. They are the ones looking for matriculation at a wanted institution. The bill forgets the protagonist in the scene. Whatever the punishments for cheating end up being, the harsher one should not be for the accomplice.

Can exam fraud that a teenaged student plans (or participates in) based on a moral error leave an indelible black mark on his or her social status? We were high schoolers and teenagers only a short while ago. Teenagers make all kinds of mistakes, and let’s not pretend that we don’t make mistakes at older ages as well. Cheating on an exam shouldn’t be allowed by any means, but teenagers have in front of them several times the years they have lived. Their lives should not be ruined because they cheated, and cheating can’t be worse because the exam is the SAT.

Felonies normally apply to physically destructive crimes from vandalism to assault, arson, rape and murder. Reminiscing about my own stressful days in the face of the SAT and college admissions some four to five years ago, I can’t help but feel contemptuous of any effort to avoid the normative process. However, no matter how personally offended and deceived I feel, cheating on a test cannot possibly stand on the same level as the crimes I listed. There is a clear difference between sabotaging fairness and inflicting some severe personal damages upon others.

The side effects of a caught and divulged fraud act are severe enough penalties, for its meditator or its accomplice. Simply leave the act in the permanent records of the students’ educational profiles and people will take care of the rest. They may not ever get into a college. They may not ever qualify for a coveted job. They will be barred in the course of their ordinary social conducts in more ways than can be listed here.

But what more punishment do we need for misconduct committed by adolescent students, especially in a society that presses so hard for a college degree? Honestly, I am not entirely sure, but minimum of one year in prison is not the answer.