Collegiate Press Roundup

We present our weekly review of selected student columnists and opinion writers. Some of the issues under scrutiny this week include the Wall Street occupiers, Texas governor Perry’s faltering presidential campaign, the pernicious influence of cable news and the need for senior professors to spend more time in the classroom.

1. If you’re finding campus politics too homogenous at the University of Cincinnati, a staffer for the News Record points to some groups that can provide some real contrast.
2. The US Government’s “Fast and Furious” program has a writer for the UT/Knoxville Beacon at loose ends: why are they deliberately arming Mexican criminal gangs? As if they needed it.
3. The GOP’s criticisms of President Obama’s proposed tax increase for millionaires are both laughable and infuriating to a commentator for the Middlebury Campus.
4. With everything currently going on in the world right now, a guest columnist for the Marquette Tribune is really frustrated by the lack of student activism on campus.
5. At the same time, the editors of The Hilltop at Howard University applaud the Occupy Wall Street movement, and draw parallels with recent upheavals in the Middle East.
6. But an editorial cartoonist for the University of Maryland Diamondback isn’t quite sure what the Wall Street Occupiers stand for, since they don’t seem to know either.
7. After a fast start, the presidential campaign of Texas governor Rick Perry is hitting some major rough spots, says a political analyst for the Texas A & M Battalion.
8. Cable TV news, which is where most of us get our information, is little more than fluff and light entertainment says an infuriated opinion columnist for the University of Washington’s Daily. If you’re looking for real news, pick up a print paper and READ it.
9. And if you’re looking for sleazy sensationalism, you can find plenty of it at FOX Network, according to a regular for U of I’s Daily Illini. 
10. Although he doesn’t object to professors conducting research in their fields, a writer for the Purdue Exponent thinks that they should devote far more time to teaching, especially the most distinguished and senior among them.
11. If you’re going to study abroad, a staffer for the Kentucky Kernal recommends Argentina, based on her own recent experience.
12. As he surveys civil disorders around the world, form Great Britain, to Greece, to Wall Street, a columnist for The Dartmouth suggests that they reflect the vast confusion that predominates in much of the Western world.