We present our weekly review of selected student columnists and opinion writers. For this week’s roundup, the evaluate undergraduate liberal arts requirements, blast partisan obstructionism in Congress, consider what it takes to be a real man and admire the wisdom of a president who left office half a century ago.
- As election day for state and local offices approaches, the editors of the Wellesley News record their acute dismay at the lack of interest on the Wellesley College campus. Most appalling is the number of students who aren’t even registered to vote.
- An op ed writer for the Michigan Daily finds this year’s trendy Halloween costumes both risqué and racist. Several responses take issue.
- Although President Obama has been proactive in seeking to create new jobs, a political analyst for the Emory Wheel complains that his efforts are continually hampered by congressional Republicans, who put partisanship above the public good.
- A staffer at the Yale Daily News takes the measure of the various protest movements roiling the international landscape, and finds it’s not easy to reconcile their tactics with their stated goals.
- Stanford undergraduates gripe continually about the need to fulfill General Education Requirements (GER’s), but the editors of The Daily think there’s real value in taking courses outside of a student’s major field.
- A columnist for the U of I/Urbana-Champagne would like to know exactly what’s going in with the interrogation of prisoners in Afghanistan, since it seems that torture is part of the process. That’s certainly immoral, she says, but also thinks that it just doesn’t work, either.
- Want to be a Real Man? If you do, a writer at the University Daily Kansan says you should put away your razor for the month of November.
- An opinion columnist for the New Mexico Daily Lobo finds President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about the growth of the “military-industrial complex” more than prescient in anticipating our current run-away defense budget.
- Was it appropriate for Hamilton College’s LGBTQ supporters to publish an “out and ally” list? Writers for The Spectator reach opposite conclusions about it.
- Although they agree that Columbia University has plenty of racial and ethnic diversity, the editors of the Daily Spectator think that there’s not nearly enough socio-economic variety in the student body.
- When it comes to foreign policy, the Obama administration has handled itself notably better than its predecessor, says a political editorialist for the OSU Lantern.
- College simply isn’t for everyone, and a writer for the UW/Madison Daily Cardinal is glad to acknowledge one state legislator who realizes it as well.
