In the past year, student political life across the University of California has been roiled by deep divisions and rather uncivil conduct between communities, especially regarding divestment. From the last academic year’s 11-hour student government meeting about divestment from companies that profit off the Israeli occupation of Gaza, bookended by physical threats to councilmembers before […]
Category Archives: Opinion Columns
Aram Ghoogasian: Judicial Watch lawsuit lacks legal, moral basis
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” – unless they don’t have the proper paperwork and want to go to college. Undocumented students don’t need extra help to make their lives more difficult, but a conservative watchdog group is trying to make that happen. Judicial Watch recently filed a […]
Travis Fife: Minerva Project reinvents classroom model, universities should take note
What’s really shocking about universities isn’t how much they’ve changed. It’s how much they’ve stayed the same. Think about the typical classroom: There’s a professor lecturing, a group of students taking notes and maybe a graduate student or two there helping the professor. Thomas Aquinas used this model in 13th century Paris, and every teacher […]
Ryan Nelson: Public transit improvements can only come with shift in attitude
For more than two years, in an attempt that would’ve made the Simpsons proud, the city of Beverly Hills has argued that L.A. Metro should scrap the Purple Line extension, a Westside-to-downtown subway extension that will run underneath Wilshire Boulevard in favor of a comprehensive, above-ground monorail system, citing faulty scientific research and a lack […]
Ryan Nelson: “Power Five” autonomy unfavorable for lower-ranked schools
In a move that benefitted few and surprised no one, the NCAA voted last Thursday to allow its five richest conferences – the Pac-12, the Southeast Conference (SEC), the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten, and Big 12 – a certain degree of autonomy when governing their players. The vote allowed the schools in those […]
Julia McCarthy: UC support for sexual assault survivors needs to be solidified
This post was updated on Aug. 11 at 10:17 a.m. This past spring, “#WhyIDidntReport” became a trending hashtag on twitter. Survivors of sexual assault flooded the social media website with accounts of why they didn’t report their assaults. “#WhyIDidntReport Because I was 15 and had been drinking and wearing revealing clothes and I knew no […]
Travis Fife: Family history helps us appreciate present experiences
A deaf and drunken priest who couldn’t speak English and was a little too handsy with my mom and aunt wasn’t the preferred tour guide when trying to understand the history of a 13th century church. But in a town with a population of somewhere between that of your average Starbucks and a public school […]