The Lansing Board of Education decided in a 5-4 vote on Sept. 21 to keep a 1.67 cumulative grade point average as the standard all student athletes must maintain to participate in school sports, but requiring a 1.67 grade average as the standard isn't going to prepare students for the future. Most universities and colleges will not accept a GPA of 1.67.
Young Americans for Freedom — it's scary how eerily similar this club's name sounds to some of President Bush's catchy make-it-sound-good-and-no-one-will-ask-questions schemes, such as the "Clear Skies Act" of 2005 and the "No Child Left Behind" debacle. In a time when nothing is as it sounds, the state of American politics is becoming increasingly Orwellian. Who wouldn't want to support clear skies?
Although it is against the law in the United States, online gambling has reached a peak that even rivals the popularity of Las Vegas.
"Some relationships just need to end." The professors of my COM 225 class said this during the first week of classes, but it took almost a month for me to let the words sink in and really think about what this means.
It is wonderful to live in a world where we are completely tolerant and free to speak our minds, despite offensiveness.
There was a time when university life was cultured. People from all over the world would come to the monolith of education that was a university and discuss politics and love over a cup of coffee. It was a place to expand and mature, to become better acquainted with the inner workings of the world from both the outside and within.
Dear God, You probably don't know me. I'm kinda what you might call an atheist — you know agnostic, a disbeliever, a skeptic.
Who can adopt, who can't and who's to say? These questions have turned many conversations into controversy, and now the Michigan Legislature has taken a position. Recently, the House passed a bill that would ensure an adoption agency doesn't have to participate in an adoption that violates its religious beliefs.
U.S. politics, by and large, operate on an ideological pendulum. In the 1930s, the pendulum swung to the left with FDR and the New Deal.
The other day, an interview by Charles Gibson of President Bush was published online. Between the questions Gibson asked and the off-course answers Bush gave, the interview seemed to be about the connection between the war on terror and the country of Iraq. In that interview Bush said, "You know, we're a democracy." But are we? Democracy, as defined by Webster's New World College Dictionary, is "government in which people hold the ruling power either directly or through elective representatives." For the people, by the people, right? So how can someone listening to conversations, reading personal e-mails and warrantlessly eavesdropping on private matters be "for the people?" What kind of democracy gives its leader such power, and what happened to the system of checks and balances? Does the U.S.
On Aug. 29, Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld addressed the American Legion at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. Throughout the speech, Rumsfeld compared the time leading up to the war on terror to the time between World War I and World War II, saying, "It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies.
These people have names. These people have mothers and fathers. Some of these people have children — children who now lack a parent.
For some people it's location. For others it's friends and family. Others yet choose based on athletics, programs or academics.
It's a question that has been asked repeatedly for the last five years. A question that invokes an eerie sense of loss and confusion.
Not too long ago in our painfully stupid political history with President Bush, he made a speech that was so clueless it bordered on ignorant eloquence.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Since elementary school, students have had this adage pounded into their heads.
Condoms don't discriminate. Available almost everywhere from Olin Health Center to Walgreens, condoms are sold to anyone willing to dish out a couple bucks in exchange for pretty good protection against unwanted pregnancies and most sexually transmitted infections. But think of all the sperm collected in that thin, latex contraption that could have otherwise fertilized an egg and developed into a real-life walking, talking human being. Still, condoms live on.
A year after Katrina ravaged the southern coast, light-headed politicians and most Americans are still not effectively addressing the social inequities brought to light by the disaster. My heart ached as I watched Oprah's Hurricane Katrina special after the storm claimed hundreds of lives across the southern United States — it seemed so surreal. Young women, men, the elderly and children were found on the side of roads and in houses, sucked lifeless by Katrina's wrath.
When I graduated high school in 1998, I honestly thought that was as far as I would ever make it in life.
I suppose it's natural to look up to and support your older siblings — but what if your older brother is George Dubya? I shudder at the thought.