Collegiate Press Roundup 9-30-10

We present our regular review of selected student journalists and editors.  This week, they examine the appropriate decibel level of music on campus, the Ground Zero controversy and our debased political cutlture.

1. A columnist in the Kentucky Kernel has had a belly full of hell-fire preachers on campus, and longs to get back to the non-judgmental simplicity of that old-time religion.
2. Writing in the Daily Iowan, a political analyst laments the shrillness and hyper-partisanship of contemporary American political culture.
3. At Connecticut College, a regular writer for the College Voice finds her limits for carousing and conviviality, after barely escaping from a recent dance.
4. Although he doesn’t have any concrete facts or data, an editorialist for The Eagle at American University can’t suppress a nagging unease about the unknown medical effects of exposure to microwaves and wireless signals.
5. A columnist for the Stanford Daily is also concerned about his ears. He’s got nothing at all against music for parties, concerts, or political rallies, but please, please, turn it down.
6. It’s not easy to identify yourself as a conservative and a Republican at Yale, as explained by one such in the Yale Daily News.
7. At the University of Miami, the editors of the Miami Hurricane ponder the implications of proposals to expand FBI access to Facebook or Google accounts for enhanced monitoring of terrorists.
8. Writing in the University of Chicago’s Maroon, an op ed regular is disgusted by the phony debate over the Ground Zero mosque, and says it’s nothing but “pandering and prejudice.”
9. Greek life might not be for everyone, notes a writer for The Dartmouth, but it’s also a lot more than just mindless weekend boozing.
10. At Syracuse’s Daily Orange, an opinion editor laments PBS’s recent decision to axe a funny dance routine from Sesame Street in response to complaints from prudish parents.
11. A writer for the Chronicle at Duke, thinks that Arizona’s immigration law is of a piece with France’s ban on face veils and Switzerland’s restrictions on minarets: all three manifest nativist bigotry and are profoundly antidemocratic.
12. A reporter for UNC Chapel Hill’s Daily Tar Heel thinks that the university is really stretching the limits of FERPA, and withholding information that should be made public.