We present our regular review of selected student journalists and editors. Here, they ponder the lack of student interest in the State of the Union address, why congressmen shouldn’t carry guns and how the GOP will handle the Tea Party.
1) The editors of West Virginia University’s Athenaeum urge the state’s legislature to enact a proposed anti-bullying law, which they believe is long overdue.
2) A political analyst for the UW/Madison’s Badger-Herald speculates about how the mainline GOP establishment will respond to growing influence of the Tea Party.
3) A regular for the UCLA Daily Bruin notes that most of his undergraduate peers didn’t listen to the president’s State of the Union address earlier this week. The likely reason? It’s way, way too long.
4) A colleague at the Daily Northwestern did watch the president, and came away mildly encouraged, after finding his performance thus far disappointing.
5) A news item from Lehigh University’s Brown and White describes the controversy generated by a guest speaker’s Martin Luther King Day presentation.
6) It’s fine to emphasize beefing up math and science education, says a guest columnist for the Brown Daily Herald, but she thinks we need to pay much closer attention to the dismally poor writing skills of so many college graduates as well.
7) As he observes the student-led revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, an op ed staffer for the Daily Iowan exhorts his silent, passive American peers to recover their activist role as the nation’s conscience.
8) Mediocrity has become the guiding norm of student expectations, says a columnist for the Dakota Student, beginning as early as Kindergarten.
9) Although the recent shootings in Tucson were certainly tragic, two collegians writing in The Amherst Student think that a proposed law authorizing congressmen to “pack heat” isn’t such a great idea.
10) A Muslim student describes the challenges of observing her faith on an American college campus for readers of the Williams Record.
11) The editors of The New Hampshire are adamantly opposed to a bill before the statehouse which would prohibit students from voting in the elections of their college towns.
12) At Notre Dame, the editorial board of The Observer applauds the selection of Defense Secretary Robert Gates as this year’s commencement speaker.
