Even though the protests against Peabody Energy ended last week without achieving any of the protesters’ initially expressed goals, I think the sit-in was one of the best things to have happened to the school during my four years here at Washington University.

I’ve got a confession to make. I’ve never been to the Arch. In my four years as a student here at Washington University, I have never actually seen the symbol of this wonderful city in person. I also don’t feel too bad about it. Why is the Arch so important? Seriously, it’s just an arch.

This week, El Universal reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration may have been collaborating with the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the largest cartels in Mexico, for more than a decade, giving it a free pass to import tens of millions of dollars worth of drugs into the United States in exchange for information concerning rival drug cartels.

This week, it came to light that Earl Sampson, a convenience store worker, had been stopped and questioned by police officers in Miami Gardens, Fla., more than 250 times over the past four years and was arrested following more than a fifth of those stops. Even more egregious, he was also arrested for trespassing while inside his place of work more than 10 times.

On August 21, U.S. intelligence officials released a heavily redacted 2011 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion from its then-Chief Judge John Bates.

With less than a week until the election, most people have already made up their minds about who they are going to vote for. However, if you’re thinking about voting for a third-party candidate like Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, I’m going to ask you take a moment to reconsider your choice. Voting is a right that every single adult in American is entitled to.

Last Tuesday, wute.vc (Washington University Tech Entrepreneurs – Venture Capital) brought Alexis Ohanian, an outspoken advocate of net neutrality and a founder of the massive social news aggregation website Reddit.com, to campus to talk about entrepreneurship and his experience in both raising and trying to raise venture capital.

As the Republican National Convention (RNC) wraps up on August 30 and as Democrats prepare for their own national convention, there has been a great deal of discussion about the actual significance and importance of presidential nomination conventions in this country.

While the major news media outlets cover every imaginable aspect of this year’s presidential election, there are hundreds of races around this country that have received little to no attention: state and local elections.

In this country, there is a widely accepted notion that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and has a right to share it. The first right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is that of free speech. As such, discussions in this country, political or otherwise, allow for everyone to contribute his or her thoughts and insights.