As many students are already aware, Washington University has recently announced a tuition hike of $1,600 for the 2014-15 school year. Tuition has increased annually at the school for decades, and while this year’s increase is the lowest percentage-wise since the 1950s, it is still unacceptably high.

Last August saw a rather strange political union. Prominent conservatives, among them Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Ted Cruz, found themselves supporting a speech that Ashton Kutcher gave at an award ceremony.

Last month, our Congress passed a bill with significant ramifications for the future of our country, and almost no one has heard of it. In order to understand what it does, we need to go back a few years to the big bank bailout. A key reason banks were failing was that they were making increasingly risky maneuvers with their customers’ money.

The worst part of the government shutdown was something that very few people even knew was happening. While Congress bickered and CNN displayed a flashy countdown, thousands of people were sent home from their government jobs. A number of these people belonged to NASA, and while they sat at home, twiddling their thumbs, the Curiosity rover sat on the surface of Mars.