Toy guns can stay home; school not the place

This is in response to "Man with toy gun surrounded by police at Old Main," a story that ran yesterday.

I love (sarcastically) how Servant Bishop Chicago automatically assumed that he was racially profiled when the incident occurred - despite the fact that he had a gun in a holster and was walking around campus. When any normal person sees a gun in a holster, he or she naturally assumes that the gun is real. Just because the gun was a fake doesn't change the scenario - a person on campus had a gun in a holster. [Read article]

"Democracy" and "freedom" are two of the most ambiguous and misused words in the English language.

"We (Iraqi war) hawks were wrong about many things. But in opening up the possibility for a slow trudge toward democracy, we were still right," David Brooks concluded in a recent column for The New York Times.

Like the quagmire that has become Iraq, this statement confounded me with its cloudiness. To try to understand what Mr. Brooks so vaguely asserted, I cracked open a copy of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Here's what I discovered: [Read article]

The College Republicans' bake sale last week stirred up a lot of debate over affirmative action.

Unfortunately, people who become too deeply involved in this debate are misdirecting their efforts. In the end, both sides of the debate have the same point.

One might say it's unfair to give others an unequal opportunity.

Another could counter that affirmative action fights inequality and makes up for social injustices of the past and the present. The solution? Stop wasting time and effort in arguing about the equality of the situation and make everything equal from the start. [Read article]

This week's winners ... and losers

The bomb - Ralph Nader campaigning at the UA. The 350 students who showed up proved college students do actually care about national politics. Not only that, but it was great to see a candidate actually care about college students, even if the guy has no shot of winning anything.

A bomb - Tyler Mott, the political science senior who wants to put flags in UA classrooms. Putting flags in classrooms because it represents democracy: good. Going against those same democratic principals Old Glory represents by demanding flags be hung in classrooms without a vote: bad. [Read article]