With the Republican primaries looming in the near future, Washington University students from all over the political spectrum are weighing in on who will earn the GOP nomination and what the future of the Republican Party will be in the 2012 presidential election.

As the 2012 election season gets underway, Washington University students are already leading the charge in promoting their favorite candidates. Although both College Democrats and College Republicans have yet to start their campaigns, individual members from both groups have been working with national campaign organizations.

Let’s start this off with a little disclaimer: I am on the College Democrats executive board. I am completely partial. Now that that we’ve got that out of the way… Treasury absolutely did the right thing on Tuesday night by approving money for the purpose of bringing Al Gore to campus.

Student Union Treasury voted Tuesday night to allocate $92,350 for the College Democrats to bring vice-President Al Gore to campus. Student reactions to the decision are mixed. The vote in favor of funding Gore for that amount was 12-1 with two abstaining due to conflicts of interest.

In spite of President Obama’s calls for bipartisan health care reform, only one Republican congressman—Rep. Anh Cao of Louisiana—voted for the House’s sweeping health care overhaul bill on Saturday.

Kat Berger, president of the College Democrats, talked with Senior News Editor Kat Zhao Tuesday night while chalking up sidewalks around Wash. U. with health-care. She spoke with Student Life about the group’s motivations for stepping into the national health-care debate.

Welcome to Wash. U., where politics is like water: never bottled up. From national, to local, to university politics, people rarely keep their opinions to themselves and need very little encouragement to shout them from the rooftops, or at least from the Student Life editorial pages.

Renowned Middle East scholar Michael Oren will deliver a speech on the threats to Israel’s existence to University students and the St. Louis community at the 560 Building on Thursday evening at 7:30. Oren’s lecture will address many of the problems facing Israel today, including terrorism, threats from Iran, the nation’s military arsenal and changing demographics, among others.

The College Democrats are writing in response to last week’s Staff Editorial, “College Democrats: time to shake things up” (Student Life, Nov. 12). While we appreciate Student Life’s interest in the activities of our group and its encouragement to remain engaged, we feel that it is necessary to respond to the misinterpretation of our involvement in creating a more politically-active campus for our members and all students.

Two weeks after the election circus, with the balloons deflated and the champagne bubbles settled, students may expect to find a dearth of political activity from student groups on campus.