Confession: I am a makeup junkie, which is stupid because I wear the stuff maybe once a month. Maybe. But each year, that doesn't stop me from buying enough to fuel the Miss America pageant several times over, or at least fill up a huge drawer in the bathroom.

I'm seduced by the beautiful packages, sleek and jet black, each containing the tiniest bit of pulverized rock. Sometimes, I look over my Sephora receipt while guiltily sliding away the "Doctors Without Borders" solicitation letter, but I don't stop buying makeup. It doesn't help that there's a Clinique counter in the bookstore, or that my neighbor has the entire Avon collection in the back seat of her Explorer. How she keeps it all from melting here in Arizona is beyond me. [Read article]

Question: What is your ideal housing situation for next year? [Read article]

Smock verbally abuses, offends students

I threw a pie in the general direction of the so-called preacher Mr. Jed Smock yesterday afternoon. I did so because I wanted to publicly humiliate this individual who has made a career out of verbally assaulting women, minorities and homosexuals. He is not preaching Christianity or exercising his rights of free speech. He is slandering, belittling, offending and verbally assaulting students on a daily basis under the guise of spreading the gospel. One might argue that Mr. Smock is entitled to verbally abuse students in the name of free speech and that a person can walk away from him if they don't want to hear it. This is not true. I have witnessed Mr. Smock call an unsuspecting passerby a whore and our student newspaper has run two front-page stories quoting his damaging sexist and racist views. The media on campus has made it impossible to walk away from his tormenting and hate-filled words. His tendency to attack anyone who catches his eye makes us all potential targets for public humiliation. Our campus community does not allow students or faculty to verbally assault individuals, so why does Mr. Smock have free rein to emotionally injure students for weeks on end? On the day that I threw the pie in his direction, I personally heard him claim that a vagina is the only thing a woman is good for. He also used explicit and graphic language to talk about students' breasts and rear-ends. If Mr. Smock would like to use our campus to exercise his right to free speech and preach the Bible then he is welcome here. However, using a campus community as a subject to humiliate, degrade and verbally abuse is something different altogether. We don't tolerate it from each other, and we should not sit back and continuously tolerate it from him. I hope that my gesture today helps others to realize that we students need not allow this unrelenting public display of hate to continue. I hope that Mr. Smock has gotten the message to leave our campus off of the itinerary of his next tour. [Read article]