We present our weekly review of selected student editors and news analysts. For this week, they assess President Obama’s new Middle East strategy, part company with cultural relativism, analyze the culture of the south and explain why Amazon.com is really a very good thing.
1) A faculty guest columnist explains to readers of the Utah Statesman why tenure is indispensable to academic freedom and unfettered research in the modern university.
2) Although he’s willing to tolerate other cultures up to a point, a regular for the Stanford Daily rejects a relativistic approach in reaction to some of the things he finds in them.
3) These are undoubtedly lean economic times, but a policy analyst for The Dartmouth thinks that President Obama’s austerity plans for the US military are ill-advised. A colleague at the UA/Birmingham Crimson White agrees, and fault’s the president’s neglect of the Syrian government's human rights violations in particular.
4) Despite Oklahoma’s reputation as provincial and culturally narrow, it’s more varied and exciting than you think, explains a columnist for the Oklahoma Daily.
5) Bisexuality is widely misunderstood, and a columnist for the UWM Post attempts to clear up the misconceptions.
6) Sexual assault on campus is very serious business, and the editors of the WVU Daily Athenaeum urge the both students and administrators to be proactive in confronting it.
7) As Penn State introduces its new head football coach and continues to cope with a still-stormy scandal, a columnist for the Daily Collegian suggests that it's time to realize that PSU is first and foremost an academic institution.
8) Across the country, GOP-sponsored voter ID laws are nothing but blatant, un-American attempts at voter suppression, says a writer for the UM Diamondback. Comments from readers indicate that the issue is pretty hot locally as well.
9) The editor of SIU’s Daily Egyptian details the challenges of investigative reporting, which can get really interesting when your school’s administration is the object of inquiry.
10) It’s too bad that so many local bookstores are closing, but a features columnist for the Indiana Daily Student wishes that people would stop blaming it on something useful like Amazon.com.
11) As the editors of MSU’s State News see it, e-books are the future of higher education. A commenter says thanks, but the traditional version works better.
12) The subculture of The South is definitely distinct within America, but is it also regressive? A writer for SMU’s Student Printz, herself the child of a mother from New York and a father from Mississippi, parses “the south” from that family perspective.
