Collegiate Press Roundup

We present our regular review of selected student journalists and editors.   In this edition, they analyze the president’s Libya speech, the current Congress’s convoluted reading of the Constitution, hot coffee litigation and the place of popular culture in academia.

1. A writer for the Rocky Mountain Collegian tries to provide some perspective in the famous “hot coffee” judgment against McDonald’s.
2. Although they commend the Emory administration’s plans to implement a tobacco-free policy next fall, the editors of The Wheel foresee a lot of practical obstacles to making it stick.
3. As a couple of recent local controversies illustrate, it’s not always easy to square the exploration of sexuality and freedom of speech.  But a columnist for the Chicago Maroon hopes that the administrations of nearby Northwestern and her own university won’t be constantly looking over their shoulders, for fear of offending critics outside of academic precincts.
4. While we have made some strides toward sexual equality during the past several decades, a commentator for the Purdue Exponent argues that there is still far, far to go before we can think of gender equity as a reality.
5. In view of the enormous influence that online social media such as Facebook and YouTube are capable of wielding, the opinion editor of the LSU Reveille suggeststhat their policies should aim at moral responsibility, and not simply maximum profits.
6. California is indeed a great place to go to college, says a regular for the Stanford Daily. But sorry, it still doesn’t hold a candle to New York, which is where the real action will always be.
7. Although a proposal to remove the silent invocation with which the University of Mississippi’s student senate begins meetings was defeated, the editors of the Daily Mississipian think that the minority got it right.
8. A political analyst for the Harvard Crimson tries to make sense out the 112th Congress’s approach to constitutional interpretation.
9. The Obama administration’s Libya policy is a sound one, although the editors of the Minnesota Daily think that the president waited too long to present his case to the American public.
10. Popular culture is not incompatible with academic pursuits, and could actually help pointy-headed professors in the classroom, says a writer for the WUSL Student Life.
11. Although she acknowledges that ‘Sucker Punch’ is something less than a cinematic tour de force, the Daily Nebraskan’s film critic doesn’t think that it’s mere sexist pornography.
12. A self-designated “conservative” columnist for The Dartmouth describes the tribulations of sticking to his ideological guns, and gets some animated flack from respondents.