The best in last week's editorials from college campuses around the nation

Weaker dollar not so bad

Recently, there has been some talk in the New York Times about the fall of the dollar and how it might affect countries in Europe and Asia, who depend on selling their goods to the United States.

The countries in Europe and Asia don't seem to realize that the level of trade between the United States and the world has to balance out at some point. The United States has been financing a trade deficit that was at $489.4 billion in 2003 and continues to get larger.

So, it doesn't help matters when China, the country with which the United States has its largest trade deficit, $124 billion, is unwilling to follow an economic model that would bring more balance to the economy.

The United States has been in a dispute with China over the Chinese pinning their currency on the value of the dollar, even though their economy is currently stronger than the United States'.

So, how does the United States get China to stop pinning its currency to the dollar?

They do so by allowing the value of the dollar to fall enough so that United States businesses are more competitive on the open market. So, the Chinese yuan, while pinned to the dollar, would then decrease in value enough to make China want to float its currency on the open market.

Many of you might be saying that a decline in the dollar, while beneficial to American businesses, might cause a decline in the standard of living among U.S. citizens, but it is hard for me to believe that the standard of living would fall, considering the large number of jobs that would be created by the increase in exports that would come about as a result of the declining dollar.

A decline in the dollar would be a tremendous shot in the arm for domestic businesses that depend on selling their goods abroad and would be a way to decrease the unemployment rate.

This is why the people in other countries are worried. They've been able to take advantage of the strong dollar to sell their merchandise in the United States for far too long and are afraid to see this giant cash cow for their country go.

While they have a vested interest in perpetuating the current economic cycle, they need to understand that the United States needs to be able to, at some point, pull money in from the global market.

from the University of Mississippi's Daily Mississippian

Registrar lines teach values

I had a revelation the other day. A moment of clarity, if you will, on the current situation in higher academia. I realized that I really don't need to go to college.

Everything I ever really needed to know, I learned standing in line at the registrar's office.

Self-Occupation

This is a term I've come up with to communicate what I had to do in order to keep from killing people ahead of me in line. I occupied myself by looking through the crowd and judging how many of them I could take in a fistfight. I had most of the girls pretty much on lock down, except for one surly-looking lady in the corner. She might have given me some problems. The dudes, on the other hand, proved to be a bit of a challenge. I was fairly sure I could at least get a few good punches on most of them, but I would have been the loser in the end.

Self-Restraint

After the three years passed I finally got up to the window, my first initial reaction was to start screaming random obscenities to the woman behind the glass. However, if I wanted to get into my already-full Marshall Plan class, I'd have to play it cool. So instead of swearing until I passed out from lack of oxygen, I took a deep breath and kindly asked the registrar to register me for the class. Granted, it was through clenched teeth and I said two swears under my breath, but I managed to get enrolled with an overload. I learned self-restraint that day.

Patience

I don't think you can actually learn to have patience. You either have it or you don't. But I will say that standing in that line was the closest I'd ever come to learning it. You just have to stand there, knowing that one day, one glorious day, you will make it up to that window, say to the woman, "I need this class please," and she will look at you and smile, take your slip, put you in that class, and you will raise your hand in victory and you will give her a most righteous high-five and walk out of there beaming. But while you're standing in that line, all you're thinking about is killing the kid in front of you, based on the simple fact that they will reach the window first.

from Marshall University's The Parthenon

Compiled from U-Wire