IT IS ANOTHER depressing indication of the ubiquity of partisan politics that recent studies have found that liberals are heavily overrepresented in academia.
WHILE New Orleans lies under a column of water and much of costal Mississippi has been blown to rubble, students of the University have a chance to make a significant contribution to helping people put their lives together after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina.Although most of the attention in the aftermath of Katrina has been deservedly focused on the events occurring in New Orleans and Mississippi, at the same time hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents, including 100,000 students from colleges in the affected regions have been stranded as their homes and livelihoods have been washed away in the deluge of water. In response to this crisis, the University has agreed to allow as many as hundreds of students from affected colleges to continue their education here while their schools rebuild.
FORMER New York Times editor Howell Raines is often linked to a phrase used to describe the newsroom's approach to a big story: "flood the zone." What that means, in terms of coverage, is that certain stories deemed important enough are assigned to several of the best reporters to not only find out everything there is to know about the current situation, but also to deepen the reader's understanding of the issue -- to understand the why and the history. If it has really been "one hell of a week" at the University, as Editor-in-Chief Pat Harvey wrote to me in an e-mail, I wouldn't have known it from reading the news section.
JOHN ROBERTS' Senate hearings begin tomorrow. The hearings of a nominee to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist will be soon to follow.
FIRST YEARS had a bleak introduction to race relations at the University this past week, with a slew of racially charged incidents filling the front pages of this and other news publications.
LAST WEEK'S decision by the Food and Drug Administration to once again delay expanded access to the morning-after pill shows the extent to which the Bush administration is willing to deny science for cheap political gain. Back in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee voted 23 to four to approve over-the-counter sales of the drug.
ALCOHOL Laws present a unique paradox within the United States and the University community: While there is a legal drinking age of 21, generally there seems to be an understanding allowing many people ages 18 to 21 to slip by the law should they want to, especially when in a college setting.
THANK God for the lieutenant governor's race. As we wind down another long summer of Virginia politicking, the most thrilling controversies in the gubernatorial smackdown have involved the third-party candidate and the logistics of setting up debates.
THE FAMOUS actor Will Rogers, mocking Prohibition in the 1920s, wondered, "Why don't they pass an amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything?
AS MEMBERS of the black student community at the University, we are frustrated and completely outraged by the plethora of vicious acts of hate and intolerance targeting our student community.
FLASH floods. Walls of water. Tornados. These words may evoke the images of the damage wrought to parts of the southeastern United States by Hurricane Katrina during the course of the week.
"CHRISTIAN students need not apply" -- an apt title for the University of California school system application form.
AFTER 218 years, 27 amendments and a war that almost tore the country apart, the U.S. Constitution has endured as the world's oldest written blueprint for government.
LATE IN May I was on a train through Holland on my way to Germany when I happened upon two other American students from a nearby Virginia college.
AH YES, it's the start of another year at the University of Virginia, complete with ISIS trouble, new furniture, popped collars, first years on Rugby Road and the requisite slew of racially motivated acts of violence and discrimination (not to mention the acts of violence and discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, which certainly also occur). In the past week, five acts of racially-based hate were reported.
THE BATTLE over the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court is heating up, as interest groups and politicians step up their rhetoric with hearings set to begin Sept.
TWO YEARS and counting after the start of the war in Iraq, it seems that partisans on both sides are more concerned with tarring their political opponents than proposing constructive solutions.
THE REST of the nation is complaining about gas prices these days, but paying close to three dollars a gallon at the pump is nothing compared to what most of us have been shelling out at the bookstore in the past week.
IT WAS during the winter of 2004 that I had the chance to leave a deputy secretary of state speechless.
AS THE old saying goes, the only things certain in life are death and taxes. Pretty much everything is taxed these days, starting from before you are even born with prenatal care, and believe it or not, the government has even found a way to get you after you die.
