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Professor Murray Weidenbaum, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor of economics said the nation’s precarious economic climate continues to be a major concern, even as the nation’s finances gradually begin to recover.

Weidenbaum, who served as assistant secretary of the treasury from 1969 to 1971 under the Nixon administration, and as chairman of the council of economic advisers from 1981 to 1982 during the Reagan administration, is often considered the architect of Reaganomics.

“This must be the slowest economic recovery in modern times. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a recovery this slow,” he said. “At an annual rate of 2 percent to 3 percent a year…that’s not a strong recovery after a recession.”

While Weidenbaum said most economists agree that the U.S. has successfully averted a double-dip recession and opened the possibility for recovery, he noted there are still major problems to be worked on.

He said that both short- and long-term solutions are necessary to combat the nation’s ever-increasing deficit.

“In the long run, it is clear that we have an unsustainable economy,” Weidenbaum said. “In the short term, there is need for additional stimulus.”

He said the partisanship in American politics is majorly hindering this needed long-term recovery.

“The problem is, there is no common ground between the conservatives and the liberals in this election,” Weidenbaum said. “There seems to be little political pressure to adopt [practical] responses toward the economy.”

Although he served as an economics advisor for two Republican presidents, Weidenbaum does not express his preference over one party or the other.

“As an economist, I can’t say who’s right. It’s a problem of personal values. But any increase in taxes will not stimulate the economy,” he said. “There is no increase in taxes that is going to speed up the economy.”

And he says longterm tax cuts have caused a rift between Democrats and Republicans.

“The so-called Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Both parties believe that most tax cuts should be extended, but there is disagreement over whether people at the top bracket [should keep their tax cuts],“ Weidenbaum said.

According to Wiedenbaum, the economic system needs to undergo an overhaul and special privileges need to be cut out of the tax system.

He has mixed feelings about the Obama administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy.

“It’s an uneven record. I think the large stimulus bill did help, but it’s disillusioning when you read the details of the bill,” he said. “A lot of the spending went to special interests, which diluted the economic recovery.”

But he believes the burst of rapid regulation created in haste will create unexpected problems in the future.

“There are many uncertainties as to what the regulations are going to do,” he said. “I am not sure if we are increasing the amount of uncertainty or not.”

He thinks the regulations will serve as deterrents for American business investments.

“There are hundreds of regulations that have to be addressed under the Dodd-Frank Act, the healthcare reform the environmental regulations and the tax laws,” he said. “There is great caution from the business community on how they should invest.”

Relative to the above quotation, graduating college seems to be the new 30, at least according to several news articles I’ve read. Younger voters, the backbone of the Obama campaign, are increasingly questioning their support for the president. It’s not as though young liberals are suddenly buying tri-corner hats and joining the Tea Party. Still, even the most ardent bleeding-heart liberal students have to graduate from college and begin looking for jobs. Somewhere between the ages of 20 and 30, times of freshman year and graduation, political priorities seem to change. In this tough economy, our generation has been hit particularly hard. Unsurprisingly, this has meant a shift in political attitude: If the incumbent government has not been working to improve my chances, is there any reason I should be rewarding it with my vote? And what about all of my money being blown on government health care or pork? Perhaps we are smarter and savvier, less taken in by pie-in-the-sky ideals. In my opinion, it’s just as likely that we are simply dissatisfied with an economic situation that cannot be fully attributed to either side of the political spectrum. It is easiest to blame the party in power for not “fixing” the economy, no matter which side is more appealing in an economic upturn.

Personally, I would have voted for Obama in 2008 had I been able. No presidency is perfect, and the economy hasn’t helped his public opinion numbers. Still, I think Barack Obama is an articulate, competent leader with plenty to offer. On the other hand, the Republicans have the appeal of a belief in the markets at a time when the economic situation is at its most nerve-wracking. Anecdotally, I have friends who have changed their political leanings since then, many citing the efficiencies of private sector versus the public sector as a key point. A little economics knowledge goes a long way; certainly, this would be evidence for my uncle’s brain-maturation theory. At the same time, a lot of these political revelations coincided with the economic downturn during a Democratic administration. Most of them are liberal on questions like gay rights and abortion, but fiscal matters seem to have taken top billing.

So will I be voting for Obama in 2012? Almost definitely. The president has had to make some tough but largely defendable decisions. He has plenty to offer, leadership-wise. I find it hard to identify with the Tea Party movement. The mainstream Republican candidates don’t appeal to me, mainly because of their stance on social issues (or in the case of Michelle Bachman, the crazy crap that comes out of her mouth). The allure of lower taxes and smaller government has not been enough to compromise my “ideals.” But then again, I’m not graduating for another two years. Forecasting dismal job prospects for a liberal arts major, I am planning on law school. When I have to support myself and pay taxes, maybe I will veer right. We’ll have to see if my brain grows in.

Romer’s address highlighted the importance of reducing unemployment in the U.S. She argued that the government needs to do more to boost economic recovery at a faster rate. The speech was followed by a panel discussion with four Washington University professors.

Romer spent much of 2009 and 2010 working on economic policy in Washington, advising President Obama and leading efforts in health care reform and financial recovery.

Her most recently published works concern the effects of tax structures on long-run economic growth, and she holds a research and teaching appointment at the University of California, Berkeley.

Student Life sat down with Romer to talk about tax structures, government spending and the economic policy issues that will face our generation.

Q&A With former Obama economic adviser Christina Romer

In light of this past weekend’s threat of government shutdown, can Congress pass a budget that will allow the U.S. to move forward and strengthen the economy?

The fact that last year’s budget was so hard to settle makes me nervous, because the questions that are looming are much bigger—they’re about the long-run deficit, about what we’re going to do about revenues and about what’s going to happen to entitlement spending on things like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. What makes me optimistic is that we are finally talking about the long-run budget problem.

It seems like bargaining between political parties isn’t the most efficient way of arriving at a good outcome. Having worked in Washington, what is your level of faith in our political process? Should we leave policy decisions up to Congress?

Democracy is messy—isn’t that what we often say? It’s not always pretty and the debates are not always at the highest level. I do still think it’s the best way we have to make decisions.

My generation’s coming of age has been characterized culturally and politically by a rapid growth in income inequality since the 1980s. What needs to be done or should be done to reverse that process, and what is plausible for us to see in our lifetimes in terms of that inequality being repaired?

The most fundamental [change] is to make people more equal in terms of their opportunities and their starting point when they enter the labor force. Dealing with educational disparities across communities and making sure that every child has the option of a good education and going to college.

And then I think something we haven’t talked about enough as a country is the role of progressive taxation—that part of the way that you deal with inequality is to tax people more at the top of the income distribution. That was reversed during the Bush administration. That’s something that I certainly don’t agree with, and I know the President thinks that letting taxes go up at the top of the distribution makes sense not only from a macroeconomic standpoint, but also I’m sure from an equality standpoint.

What would you say needs to be in place culturally for that kind of progressive taxation to be supported by a majority of Americans?

What I think is interesting is if you looked at the studies, the majority of Americans were supportive of letting taxes for high-income earners go up. So I think most Americans do see that as sensible policy, especially as our budget deficits become more severe over time. But I think policymakers definitely have a role to play. You referred to culture—we need people out there saying that this is sensible policy. Part of making the case is saying that we’re not talking about going up to very high numbers or what you might see in European countries. We’re talking about going back to what we had during the Reagan years or the Clinton years—times when the economy was doing very well.

What is the most important economic issue for students to be aware of and how should they deal with it after graduating?

Let me start with a short-run issue, which is how important it is to get the unemployment rate down. That’s not just important for students finding jobs—it’s important for everything from our social cohesion to our level of growth to our budget deficit.

But the broader picture that everyone needs to be thinking about is how do we as a country, at least on the economic level, continue to grow and get stronger so that our best days are in front of us and not behind us. The main thing that you’ll hear economists say there is that it’s all about investments—from firms’ investments to investments in education to the government’s investments in basic scientific research. It’s all of those things that matter for our long run health as an economy. I’d love it if a whole new generation of voters took that long-run approach—instead of cutting everything, to preserve the government spending that will make us richer and stronger in the future.

The figures indicate a total population of 319,294 people, a near 30,000 person decrease from the 2000 census and a reduction by more than half since the 1950s.

While this decline may cause some turbulence in the already struggling local economy, the demographic change is unlikely to significantly affect most Washington University graduates, most of whom seek jobs outside of the St. Louis region.

“The job market for Washington University graduates is usually national,” economics professor Steven Fazzari said. “It’s pretty unusual to find a student who actually gets a job here in St. Louis. Even if you were looking at jobs locally, the declines in the city are being somewhat offset by growth in the county.”

In fact, despite the decline in the population of St. Louis City, the total population of Missouri has risen by 7 percent from the last census, up 27 percent in places like St. Charles County. St. Louis County, which does not include St. Louis City, lost about 2 percent of its population.

Even in these instances, the growth rate has slowed from the 2000 census, which showed a state population increase of 13 percent from 1990. This trend reflects the current economic downturn, which has been felt across the nation.

According to Fazzari, the dip in population will likely have some consequences for the local economy in the longer term, which could eventually affect the University.

“There’s maybe longer term issues about quality of life,” he said. “If you have a declining core of a major metropolitan area, that might make the area less attractive over the long term, so that might make it more difficult to attract business here, and ultimately might not be such a good thing for the University.”

Overall, he said, population decline is not necessarily a negative thing for all areas, especially in younger parts of town such as the new urban lofts in the Washington Avenue area.

Jim Beirne, Director of External Relations at the Career Center, agreed that he does not consider the census statistics to be meaningfully correlated to student job placement rates in recent years.

“The statistics talk about the city of St. Louis, which is a portion of the St. Louis region, and we still see strong recruiters based in the city itself,” Beirne said. “They are still coming and recruiting, in some cases more than they ever have. What I do see is ongoing growth around the city of St. Louis. Corporations, organizations and nonprofits are trying to hire more and more of our students.”

Beirne attributes this lack of correlation, in part, to the fact that most Washington University graduates seek employment outside of the St. Louis area.

Many students do, however, choose to stay in St. Louis for summer internships.

Still, Beirne does not detect any hurdles in securing employment, especially, he said, as Washington University’s name recognition and the positive reputation of its students grow.

“More companies are saying they didn’t realize [the University] was so good, and as companies, organizations and nonprofits get to know us better, we’re seeing more opportunities developing for our students,” he said.

Although Washington University students are unlikely to feel the economic effects of population decline, the state will see political effects.

As a consequence of slow growth in Missouri, the state has lost one congressional seat, which means that the congressional districts will be redrawn before the 2012 elections.

The President’s 2012 budget calls for $3.73 trillion in spending while projecting a $1.6 trillion deficit. For every dollar spent, 44 cents will have to be borrowed, continuing the upward trend of our national debt and allowing it to eclipse our gross domestic product. Essentially, we will owe more than we produce. The even worse news is this budget assumes increasing tax revenues and increasing tax rates. Along with the expiring Bush tax cuts renewed in the 111th Congress, the budget assumes the raising of the capital gains rate, the estate tax, taxes on banks, insurance companies, energy companies, and even fees on airline passengers. Add to that the expectation of a fully recovered economy and the Obama budget is simply an unrealistic approach to combating our addiction to debt.

Congressional Republicans have followed through on their campaign pledge to reduce spending by eliminating $60 billion from domestic programs, foreign aid, and military projects. This sum is peanuts compared to the larger picture though. Unfortunately, Republicans seem content with their progress, unmotivated to fight for any substantial cuts. Despite their obvious differences, both parties are highlighting their reluctance to address our greatest threat.

The price of doing nothing is too high. Slowly, interest payments will consume much of what is taken in by the government in taxes. The President’s budget projects that interest payments will amount to nearly 80 percent of the new debt added in the next decade. Increasing spending across the board will lead to skyrocketing interest payments and an unsustainable future.

Congress and the President need to focus their bipartisanship on finding major cuts, rather than agreeing to neglect them. A simple look at the massive amount of federal expenditures could produce a shopping list of immediate cuts that wouldn’t affect the average American. End farm subsidies, since most of them go to corporate farmers anyway. Quit giving money to brutal dictators; keep the funds here at home. Consolidate federal bureaucracies that have proven inefficient and bloated, such as the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy and Homeland Security. Military spending must be drastically reduced to sensible levels, and our nation could be made safer as a result. Deploying our troops in over half of the world’s countries comes with a steep price tag, one that we can no longer afford as a nation.

The fears of massive unemployment resulting from government layoffs are overstated. Private sector growth trumps public sector growth and allocates resources more efficiently to a larger amount of people. Reducing the governmental burden on the economy and easing the fears of a debt crisis are major steps that can bring back confidence toward American investment.

In the long run, massive reforms will need to be undertaken in entitlement spending, which will affect millions of Americans currently dependent on these programs. This can’t be ignored as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security threaten to exponentially grow in the coming years and consume an ever larger portion of the federal budget. However, it is possible to minimize the pain. Before reducing benefits to needy Americans, our politicians need to cut the most wasteful spending first. It will be far better to transition away from these programs on our terms than to wait until we are forced to make changes. Cutting federal bureaucracy, militarism and corporate welfare are a good start.

Drastic steps are needed, but our country finds itself in drastic times. A debt that exceeds our country’s GDP is unacceptable and dangerous. Bipartisanship is alive and well in our nation’s capital as both parties fail to provide serious solutions to a growing threat. Rather than worrying about a temporary government shutdown, our attention should be focused on avoiding a future government default.

Matt Mitgang

Students gather in the common room on the first floor of Gregg Hall to watch the State of the Union address delivered by President Barack Obama on Tuesday. The College Democrats hosted the viewing party.

Citing current and future education challenges facing the country, Obama told a joint session of Congress to invest in schools and make college more affordable. His education proposals were part of a broader vision he outlined to ensure the United States could “win the future.”

“If we take these steps—if we raise expectations for every child and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they’re born until the last job they take—we will reach the goal I set two years ago: By the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” Obama said in his nationally televised second State of the Union address.

Obama called for some policies that would appeal to college students, such as an extension of his college-tuition tax-credit program and investments in academic research. But he urged bipartisanship and veered toward the center on economic, fiscal and environmental issues that younger voters more often take progressive stances on.

Some Democratic students here who ardently supported the president in 2008 were hardly surprised at the president’s move to the center. Given that the president now faces a Republican-controlled House and a weakened Democratic majority in the Senate, they said the president did as well as he could have.

“I think that there’s a new reality in Congress, and I think his speech addressed that reality, but at the same time he talked about immigration, education…a lot of these are progressive ideas that in a speech he may have stayed away from talking about,” said sophomore Anna Applebaum, vice president of the College Democrats.

Obama declared that America was “home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any other place on Earth.” But, adding that a higher proportion of future jobs will require a college degree, he said the country desperately needed to make college more affordable.

The president noted that one of his administration’s proposals overhauled the lending system and stopped subsidies to banks for extending loans to students. He asked Congress to go further by permanently renewing his tax-credit program that gives college students $2,500 a year toward tuition.

The president said he was especially concerned that many of America’s brightest students are non-citizens and international students: “But as soon as they obtain advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no sense.” Obama cited that concern to call for immigration reform, an issue that made little legislative progress in the last Congress.

With the Baby Boomer generation nearing retirement, Obama said the country would need to train 100,000 new teachers in math, science, engineering and other areas. He issued a call to young viewers: “If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation, if you want to make a difference in the life of a child, become a teacher. Your country needs you.”

Sophomore Sherveen Mashayekhi, president of the College Democrats, applauded the president for emphasizing education.

“His platforms of [Race] to the Top and tuition tax credit really speak to his understanding that a nation is only as strong as its up-and-comers,” he said in a statement, adding that he was satisfied with Obama’s “thoughtful bipartisanship.”

But Obama’s proposals come as the country grapples with continuing budget deficits, and as newly emboldened Republicans in Congress press for deep spending cuts that could affect education funding.

Obama acknowledged that the country would need to cut spending and that he would need to work with both parties. But he warned that cutting investment in education and innovation to close the deficit is “like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine.”

And he targeted the Bush tax cuts in seeking to preserve federal funding for education. “Before we take money away from our schools, or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break,” he said.

Sophomore Matt Callahan, a self-identified centrist independent who mostly approved of Obama’s speech, said he especially liked the president’s willingness to compromise and his emphasis on cutting the deficit and expanding education.

He sounded a note of skepticism, though.

“I’m going to have to research how he’s planning on building all these programs but also cutting back so much. He’s kind of saying these two things that do seem contradictory,” he said.

Obama’s State of the Union comes after a lame-duck session in which Congress repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military’s ban on gays serving openly. Obama called on colleges and universities where military recruiters are banned to allow them to return.

Washington University has had a somewhat tense relationship with military recruiters. The University has allowed military recruiters on campus because of a 1995 law that cuts federal funding from colleges that ban military recruiters from their campuses. Student activists in recent weeks have hailed the Obama administration for the repeal.

Students agreed on one thing they didn’t like in the speech: They said he didn’t talk enough about foreign affairs and national security, especially the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He talked a little bit about very specific things, but I wanted to hear if there was a wider plan,” Applebaum said.

So why did Senator Bernie Sanders blast the Fed on CNN’s “Parker Spitzer”? For one, massive loans were dolled out to foreign banks such as UBS and BNP Paribas. Yeah, it’s a bit questionable for our central bank to give essentially free money to foreign banks, but in this day and age, the entire world’s financial system is intertwined. And let’s not forget that these major European players were heavily involved in U.S. markets. Their collapse would have been potentially as dangerous as an American bank’s. The second potential qualm with the Fed’s lending is that those on Wall Street may have profited from loans. Take a step back here: Let’s truly analyze the problem with “profit.” First, we have to acknowledge that Wall Street is filled with a ton of really smart people who could find a way to profit off of the recycling of human feces if they really wanted to. Second, the profits came off of funds and investors betting on the success of federal government intervention! So sorry for hoping that the government’s plan to revive the economy succeeds.

Senator Sanders did his best to defend the little guy. His complaints about the Fed’s behavior also include the fact that “small businesses in Vermont and all over this country can’t get affordable loans in order to create jobs.” Well Mr. Senator, put yourself in a hypothetical situation here. Assume that the Fed didn’t bail out the banks and our entire financial system collapsed. Credit markets froze and bank assets became worthless, but the corner store in Montpelier got a small government loan. How in the hell does that help us? There’s no money left in the economy, no credit for Vermonters to buy their maple syrup, definitely still no loans to create jobs, because a loan infrastructure doesn’t exist anymore, due to the fact that the big banks that make up most of our financial system are now defunct. Clearly this leaves the country better off.

No one is perfect. Could the Fed have regulated where their loans were going? Perhaps, but my guess is that the c-suite at these firms had a much better idea of how the money could be used to save their floundering company than government officials did. While Wall Street has a reputation for being greedy, I doubt Jamie Dimon thought that lining the pockets of his Brioni suit with Fed dollars was a better plan than saving JPMorgan Chase. Skepticism is good, and most people have their faults, but at a certain point, irrational anger’s short little head bumps into the chest of rationality. There is no doubt that our economy is still struggling, that it was silly to let unemployment benefits expire in a time of need, and that people are struggling to find work and support their families. That much is indisputable. But what is also true is that the Fed, in a rather short period of time, came up with an innovative and effective way to save an industry that was on the verge of collapse. An industry that helps all of us afford to buy homes and cars and all the other crap we own. Yes, our government and economy still face major problems, but had the Fed not given free money to Wall Street, I have a feeling we’d be in a much, much worse situation. As the saying goes, we’d be up $#!^ creek without a paddle.

It’s that small little thing that people seem to forget: the money.

Favre signed a two-year contract worth around $25 million, with extra incentives given for games played and for passing yards accumulated. So sticking around for a few more years kind of makes sense once you grab a seat on the money train. The average age for an NFL quarterback to retire is in the early thirties. Favre is 41. Is Favre really helping his team, or is he holding them back?

Progress is what’s dragging our current economy down.

The economy is in all sorts of trouble; some experts believe it’s in a recession, some say a depression, and every now and then you’ll hear some clown say that it’s just fine. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which most economists believe represents the vitality of the economy, has bounced back. So if there’s money flowing, then why is the economy really that bad? Is it because of the job market? Is it because the housing market and the subprime lending industry crippled everything? Or is it because of the baby boomers, those born from 1946 to 1964?

USA Today ran an article last week about baby boomers who are now homeless and who have lost everything. If that’s the case, who are all those old people still working? The Government Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the largest group of working people in our society consists of adults aged 44 and older. The baby boomers are the largest group of jobholders in our society. They are the graying America.

The interesting thing is that the original 401(k) program was introduced in 1978 by Congress, so there’s been plenty of time for this aging workforce to plan its retirement. Granted, the market took a giant downward turn a few years ago, but it has now recovered. That’s how the roller coaster goes. So what if they want to keep working instead of retiring, what’s the big deal? The big deal is that this impedes the career development of young people who should be moving into the workforce.

People search for a job when they graduate from college. Once they find that job, they’ll usually purchase a car, then a home and then stuff for that home. These are the consumers in the economy, the people who spend money, the ones who help with economic progress. When baby boomers get close to retirement, they save more, which doesn’t put a lot of money back into the economy. The other interesting fact is that older workers make more. When older employees stay at a company at a high cost, it affects the profit margin of that company. If an employee making $80,000 a year retires at, let’s say, 58, then a company can replace him with two college grads at $35,000 a year, saving the company $10,000 and netting them two employees instead of one. If that employee doesn’t retire then two people are still looking for work, and the company might have to look at different ways to save that $10,000.

It’s not my place to say who should work and who shouldn’t. But maybe before we get too old ourselves, we might really think about progress. Are we setting ourselves up to retire early, or are we going be the guy who everyone says is too old to play a young man’s game?

Azariadis believes that Greece is in a terrible financial position and needs to make large changes to overcome its economic woes.

While others have done research and suggested ways to turn Greece’s situation around, Azariadis and his colleagues have given specific prescriptions for the Greek Parliament.

Newspapers around the world published articles on the economists’ work, ranging from Athens-based papers to Business Week.

This summer, Azariadis, along with Tufts Professor Yannis Ionnides and London School of Economics’ (LSE) Christopher Pissarides, wrote a paper called “Development is the Only Solution-Seventeen Proposals for a New Development Strategy” to generate discussion and help the Greek government improve its situation. Azariadis believes that with Greece’s large debt, the only way to make the country’s income grow enough to repay the debt is through development.

“The idea is very simple: Suppose you are in debt. Find a much better job and make your income grow,” Azariadis said.

The group’s development strategy presents seventeen ways that the government can specifically improve the status quo, including doing away with corruption and improving the country’s education and infrastructure.

According to Azariadis, Greece’s problems can be pinpointed to corruption and a lack of infrastructure. Bribes and embezzlement are not out of the ordinary in the Greek government. There are issues with highways and railroads, and the education system poses many problems.

Greek officials can also improve the situation by lowering taxes on capital gains, which should consequentially increase foreign direct investment, according to Azariadis.

Greece’s problems now reach beyond the scope of bailouts from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. According to Azariadas, immediate development improvements are necessary.

And, Azariadas maintains, the fact that Greece’s standard of living has remained so high despite the country’s increasing debt has only exacerbated Greece’s problems.

“Fixing the problems has been postponed time and time again. We’re at the point of now or never,” Azariadis said.

Azariadas predicts that the proposal he co-authored will better the situation within five years if implemented thoroughly. Otherwise, Azariadas and his colleagues believe that the incomes of Greek citizens will decrease to 72 percent of average European Union income.

Azariadis is thankful for the media coverage his work has received this far. The professor hopes that this publicity will spark conversation, and that the discussion will consequently encourage the Greek government to make the big changes that he and his colleagues suggest.

Even though both Azariadis and his wife are Greek and Azariadis attended National Technical University in Athens, he has never published work on Greece before. Because of Greece’s unprecedentedly poor economic state, Azariadis felt compelled to research potential solutions out of loyalty to his home country.

“The problem is severe enough that people who care about Greece have to contribute to public discussion about what has to be done,” Azariadis said.

As students, we also have shared concerns that differ somewhat from those of the general population. While the range of political opinions on campus prevents us from speaking for the entire student body, we do believe there are key issues that are at the forefront of our campus dialogue. We therefore wish to highlight these issues in the hope that the candidates running to represent us will speak out on these topics.

First is an issue that is dominant on many college campuses and has been subject to a great deal of interest, discussion and activism here: alternative energy. Student groups such as Green Action have a large following on campus and work both to improve sustainability at the University and to enact policies nationwide that would counter global warming and protect our environmental future. Given the University’s research on coal and other forms of energy, as well as its fairly recent commitment to sustainable design, alternative energy has become a topic of constant debate on campus.

Next is gay rights. Although views here are of course not unanimous, this is the topic that perhaps generates the most agreement on campus. Because campus organizations for LGBT students are active, because many students here have lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender friends and because the norms of our generation favor equality, many students here have passionate views on issues like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, employment discrimination and marriage equality.

Naturally, higher education, and particularly student loans and financial aid, may be the issues that hits closest to home for the most students at Wash. U. Not only do students here worry about their own tuition bills, but socioeconomic diversity has also become a key issue on campus, as evidenced by the emergence of groups like United for Undergraduate Socio-Economic Diversity (U/FUSED). Students here are concerned about ensuring access to higher education for all.

K-12 education is also a major passion of many students. Teach For America, tutoring programs and education majors are all popular here.

Fourth, just like the larger voting population, we are worried about the state of the economy. For seniors who are about to enter an unfriendly job market, this subject is one of utmost personal relevance. The other members of the student body are hoping that the economy improves before their own graduations. Students also care about their tax liability, both for their families now and for themselves in the future, as well as for the long-term economic viability of their chosen professional field.

Aside from these four major issues, there are others that occupy important niches on campus. All students here have Wash. U. health insurance, but graduating seniors will soon be affected by new health care regulations. While, for many students, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a fairly distant reality, there is a sizable ROTC program on campus. There is also a large group of students who are passionate about U.S. foreign policy with regard to Israel.

As the voter registration period ends and Election Day grows closer, we encourage candidates to share their views on these topics with us. We will be listening.