Last week I visited Germany for the first time. I was taking a tour with my fellow students from Copenhagen, Denmark, where we have been studying for the past three weeks. I arrived in the northern German city of Lubeck on a Friday night, and went in to the city to explore and have some drinks. As we walked from the youth hostel where our group was staying towards the city center, young Germans who were hanging out in the streets stared at us like we had the word "American" tattooed on our foreheads. It was as if we were taking the walk of shame. I felt like I was bearing the responsibility of my entire society on my shoulders. Just because I looked like an American, I felt forced to represent all that Germans dislike about American culture and politics. [Read article]

While economist Milton Freidman believes that "there's no such thing as a free lunch," there are ways to ensure a virtually free college education. Yet most students don't utilize the full potential of the intricate, chaotic world of the Office of Student Financial Aid. Whether dubbed lazy, ignorant or apathetic, students need to start overcoming their personal financial-aid roadblocks in order to close the gap between the amount of money available and the amount actually dispensed. [Read article]

Stone's "Third Road" the result of politics, not the approach

In the Wednesday, June 8 edition of the Summer Wildcat, Matt Stone demonstrates exactly why Americans posses such an "aversion to intellectualism." It is precisely the brand of intellectual snobbery displayed by Stone that so many Americans loathe, and the same which accounts for the current tailspin of the Democrat Party.

Extremists have long employed the same tactic as Stone. So it goes that when a given radical or pretentious intellectual disapproves of a policy, politician or election results, the electorate as a whole – necessarily – is maligned as too stupid to realize the huge mistake they have just made. If, as Stone suggests, the "electorate lacks the desire to synthesize multiple factors" (i.e. "the average voter is a colossal fool"), it really doesn't matter anyway because of the "ineptitude of almost every Democrat and Republican" the author witnessed while he viewed C-Span. [Read article]