Collegiate Press Roundup

We present our weekly review of selected student columnists and opinion writers. In this edition, they ruminate about the death penalty, religion and politics, silly political demonstrations and the ominous implications of low history scores.

1. Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians are good idea, but a Palestinian state isn’t, in the view of the Auburn Plainsman’s editors.
2. A satirist for the UC Berkeley Daily Californian offers some advice to the Campus Republicans on how their recent Increase Diversity Bake Sale could have been done differently.
3. A couple of writers for the Kenyon Collegian also examine the idea of diversity and, although they acknowledge its complexity, argue that it’s got to be about more than just skin color.
4. Students at all levels of education – K-12 through college – are abysmally ignorant of American history, and that’s a big problem for the U.S. future, say the editors of SIU’s Daily Egyptian. 
5. If GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney wins his party’s nomination, a political analyst for the Oklahoma Daily wonders if the candidate’s Mormon faith might become an issue.
6. Apparently Mormonism is already an issue for a Utah Statesman staffer, who wonders if it is a religion or a cult.
7. A writer for the Oregon Daily Emerald offers some dark reflections on the American criminal justice system. It doesn’t stand up well alongside what you find in many other countries, he thinks.
8. Similarly, a colleague at the University of South Dakota’s Volante believes that the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia should raise major questions about any further use of the death penalty in the United States.
9. While protests and demonstrations have a long and honorable place in American history, a columnist for the USC Gamecock thinks that the recent escapades on Wall Street don’t measure up to standard at all.
10. This year’s graduating seniors are remarkably optimistic, even if uncertain about the future. A commentator for the UT Knoxville Daily Beacon thinks that they’d be well advised to cool it.
11. A Democrat columnist for the Middlebury Campus hotly disputes a colleague’s claims that the GOP is the “party of freedom.”
12. As a 2008 presidential candidate, Barack Obama campaigned vigorously against the Bush administration’s policies and promised change; as president, he looks more and more like the man he replaced, says a political columnist for the UW Madison Daily Cardinal.