Collegiate Press Roundup

We present our weekly review of selected student editors and news analysts. In this edition, they complain about the distractions caused by lap-top users in classrooms, rise to the defense of Greek life on campus, urge a planned protest to step back and evaluate the president’s state of the union address. 

1. Although President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring, an op ed writer for the UC/BerkeleyDaily Californian still thinks that it offers reason for hope.
2. It’s a very good thing that Congress last week killed two anti-piracy bills – SOPA and PIPA – which threatened free speech and internet access in the United States. But we can’t rest easy, says a staffer for the Denver University Clarion. An even bigger threat to those rights comes from the largely unnoticed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), an international treaty currently in the works between the US and many other countries. If it slips in under the radar screen, watch out.
3. Lap-tops and lectures are not a good mix, in the opinion of a columnist for the GW Hatchet. Students who use them usually don’t pay attention, and distract others in the classroom who do.
4. In the wake of the GOP presidential primary, the editors of the Independent Florida Alligatorare simply exasperated: the national media seem pre-occupied with lurid trivialities rather than substance. If you’d like to know where the candidates stand on the national debt or foreign policy, you won’t find out by watching the debates so far.
5. You may claim to be a candidate for public office, but that doesn’t convince a regular for theDaily Illini that you’re entitled to run any Super Bowl ad that you want.
6. A features writer for the Indiana Daily Student tries to make sense out of a hooting audience’s reaction to a film that she really liked.
7. Greek organizations are not only a lot of fun, they do a lot of positive good on the UK campus. An op ed writer for the Kentucky Kernal really wishes the university administration would stop busting on them.
8. Student activism certainly has a positive role to play on college campuses, but the editors of the Williams Record don’t think that it extends to disrupting guest speakers, such as former president of Harvard Larry Summers.
9. A contributing columnist for the Howard University Hilltop argues that the recently enactedDefense Authorization Act poses some major threats to a number of America’s basic civil liberties.
10. Supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement are calling for a massive protest of the G8 conference planned for next May in Chicago. A columnist for the Emory Wheel urges them to stop dreaming that they can recreate the events of 1968 in the same city.
11. The precepts of faith and the demands of reason are by no means antagonistic, as the editors of Brigham Young University’s Daily Universe elaborate.
12. Although it may be true that zealous religious believers are frequently intolerant and anti-intellectual, a writer for the Tennessee Beacon thinks that their opponents are wrong to dismiss them with simple sneering or ridicule.