The Place of Fraternities

Along with roughly a tenth of the student body, I was in attendance at Sunday’s meeting with President Martin on the topic of sexual misconduct on campus. I admit, I entered the meeting somewhat cynically, but became hopeful by the time it was over. There were multiple deans present, and Biddy committed to several action steps on the spot, which indicates a new era of administrative action and student involvement in the issue, a great step forward. On the other hand, I didn’t necessarily agree

Affirmative Action is Institutional Discrimination

I’ve always been a fan of using facts in opinion articles. When I was an editor for The Student freshman year, I noticed that, many times, people wouldn’t cite anything to support their argument. Sometimes it may have been because the facts would have repudiated their article, but, most of the time, the inclusion of supporting facts would have greatly strengthened what they were trying to say. There are some areas, however, where the inclusion of facts actually obscures the issues at play. Affi

Calling for a Change in Political Discourse

Todd Akin is an idiot. I just want to be clear about this fact at the outset of my article. Todd Akin is an idiot. It bears repeating, like a little mantra of “what not to say when running for Senate.” His comments about “legitimate rape” were both erroneous and reprehensible. They alienated those women who were victims of rape and feared becoming pregnant with the rapist’s child. I’m glad that he issued a public apology, but it came about two days too late. Unfortunately, leftists and Democra

On the Issues: Economics, Politics and Happiness

After picking the three topics I wanted to talk about in this article series — abortion, international humanitarian crises and the economy — I noticed that I had mirrored those three values articulated in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In keeping with that theme, I’m going to take a look at the American economy in a way that’s a bit more skewed toward the human aspect of it rather than just doing number crunching. To be honest, I didn’t even want to

On the Issues: Free to Protect Liberty

It’s sad that I have to write this article. It’s sad that anyone has to write about this, fight against this or live this out as their life; but the alternative is that the world remains blissfully ignorant or carelessly apathetic. I’m writing about the crimes against humanity waged by some of the absolute regimes across the world. This is an article that shouldn’t need to be written. Say what you like about relative morality, but deep down, there are things that you just know are wrong, things

On the Issues: Three Things More Important Than Electability

I admit it: over the break, I re-registered as a Republican. I swear, though, it was for a good cause. I did it in part because I had broken with some of the ideas of libertarianism and instead gravitated toward a Hamiltonian style of republicanism. The other reason I did it was so that I could participate in my first Iowa caucus. I was really excited about it, at least until I got there and had to sit through the county party’s series of speeches, advertisements and endorsements. After that, i

The BCS May Not Have Morals, But We Should

Before I begin this article, I feel the need to digress from my main point for a bit. Over the weekend, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) paired up undefeated LSU and unworthy Alabama to play in their “national championship” game, while excluding one-loss No. 7 Boise State from a BCS bowl in favor of No. 11 Virginia Tech and No. 13 Michigan, both two-loss teams. Had I not written about the evils of the BCS in an article last year, this article would address the subject. Since I don’t like repea