Collegiate Press Roundup 6-30-2010

We present our regular sampling of student journalists and editors, who are staying on the job through the summer.  This week’s survey includes some local analysis of the Texas governor’s contest, the high cost of Dartmouth’s Sophomore Summer program, the awkward aspects of returning to your parents’ abode during summer break, and the need for students to do some straightforward book reading without the assistance of technology.

1. An op-ed writer in the Daily Texan argues that state GOP leaders have resorted to “classic political trickery,” since they’re afraid of losing the upcoming gubernatorial election.
2. Returning home to live with parents over the summer months has some unexpectedly awkward aspects, according to a columnist in UC Berkeley’s Daily Californian.
3. A guest writer in The Lantern at Ohio State asks that you don’t bother him about his religious views, since they’re none of your business.
4. The editors of the University of Oregon’s Daily Emerald offer a general assessment of the concluding academic year on campus.
5. Dartmouth College’s Sophomore Summer term is a colossal rip-off, according to a guest editorialist in The Dartmouth.
6. While it’s very nice that some schools want to improve their students’ job prospects, grade inflation is not the way to do it, says a columnist in USC’s Daily Trojan.
7. At Connecticut College, a graduating senior tells his classmates in The College Voice what his commencement address would have contained, if he’d been asked to speak.
8. The University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign should not increase out-of-state undergraduate admissions simply to offset revenue shortfalls, say the editors of the Daily Illini.
9. One writer in IU Bloomington’s Daily Student laments the intellectual sloth that easy-access technology has produced in his undergraduate cohort.  He proposes a drastic solution: read a book without consulting Cliff notes or online sources.
10. It's too bad that Congress is apparently listening to deficit hawks, instead of enacting a much-needed second economic stimulus bill, says a staffer for the Daily Iowan.
11. At the invitation of the editors of The Harvard Crimson, Professor Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr. offers his views of the Bush administration and the rule of law.
12. A cartoonist at the Oklahoma Daily provides a pictorial response to the politics of the Gulf Coast BP oil spill.