We present our regular sampling of student journalists and editors, who are staying on the job through the summer. Those continuing to make summer postings take the measure this week of America’s dependence on oil, the fact that many colleges are becoming expensive vacation spas, the social impact of divorce, the use of NASA as a good will agency and what to do about students who fall asleep in class.
1) Writing from the beach over the Fourth of July holiday, a columnist for the University of Alabama’s Crimson White reflects on the BP oil spill and concludes that it’s time to declare our independence from petroleum use.
2) In a summer posting for the Stanford Daily, a staffer ponders the political ramifications of international athletic tournaments, such as the World Cup soccer championship.
3) An op-ed writer in Berkeley’s Daily Californian applauds the manslaughter conviction of an Oakland police officer in a racially charged shooting, but notes that much more needs to be done to prevent recurrent misconduct by law enforcement personnel.
4) Speaking for the editorial board at the Daily Texan, a staffer writes that college administrators should stop trying to turn their schools into five star hotels and needlessly pushing up tuition costs.
5) In The Daily of the University of Washington at Seattle, a columnist shakes his head at the economic illiteracy of the Tea Party which, he argues, also mirrors the larger public.
6) Divorce is a very significant social issue, says a writer in The Daily Utah Chronicle, as she notes the impending dissolution of her own university president’s marriage.
7) A guest columnist in this week’s edition of The Dartmouth thinks that the Obama administration is woefully off base in its recent proposal to use NASA to improve relations with the Muslim world.
8) In a similar vein, an op-ed writer for OSU’s The Lantern finds the mayor of Columbus, Ohio hopelessly mired in political correctness with his ill-conceived executive order banning city employees from traveling to Arizona.
9) As summer courses begin at UCLA, a columnist in the Daily Bruin asks that professors go easy on students who fall asleep in class.
10) A writer in the University of Connecticut’s Daily Campus offers some suggestions to her classmates for summer reading.
11) The Republicans, says a political analyst in the Colorado Daily at UC/Boulder, are gleefully closing in for the kill in November’s Congressional elections. But he advises them not to get too cocky since, at the moment, they don’t really have a clear sense of what they stand for.
12) A news writer for The Hatchet at George Washington University tries to unravel the story of a GW student who was apparently the son of Russian spies.
