When most people grab the Hustler, (or any paper, for that matter), they glance at the front page and then skip to the back to find the comics, crossword and Sudoku. I am guilty of it too, but I justified this act by watching CNN every day at lunch over by Stonehenge, something I grew to anticipate and discuss with the people around me. I was delighted to see that they had replaced the old TVs with new flat screens, but was disappointed to find that they were no longer on CNN. I understand one being on a sports channel, as pre-season football and baseball are popular. The other was on VUTV, which consisted of Looney Toones. Today, both TVs are off.

In the slums of Hyderabad, India, nestled among grim Third World realities, are establishments that usually call to mind American suburbs and rich kids: private schools. These private schools, often unnoticed or ignored by governments and non-profit groups, educate many poor children in developing countries.

Some people never learn. Every peace initiative in the Middle East aimed at ending the Arab-Israeli conflict has failed for one reason or another. Soon, the Arab League will attempt to build support in the United Nations Security Council for an international Middle East peace conference based on the 2002 Saudi peace initiative. While the goal is noble, holding a peace conference is not the timeliest of agendas at the moment.

Vanderbilt's Peabody College is in the top five graduate schools of education in the nation. Yet, only the first floor of the Peabody library is easily wheelchair accessible. For a school that prides itself on its number one ranked special education program, this seems a little out of place.

We’re all Facebook stalkers in our own ways. Honestly, who hasn’t, on occasion, sized up the girl’s profile whose posts are flooding your boyfriend’s wall, or kept tabs on an ex’s endeavors by looking at the pictures under his name? Even something as innocuous as an “it’s complicated” under your crush’s relationship status may have kept you from pursuing things further—because, really, who wants to enter into something with “baggage” written all over it?

Ad hominem attacks are all too common in political discourse. One of my favorites – often thrown at me in response to my articles - is the logically absurd assertion, “You’re stupid because I disagree with you.” Nothing like a personal attack to spice up your argument. This is how to win an argument without logic or effort. As group polarization has pushed our views to one extreme or the other, we yell and scream at each other, but we never work together to convince one another of the logical nature of our side.

I am writing in response to the recent thread of anti-Greek opinion articles that have peppered the pages of the Hustler over the last week. I take the largest issue with Kyle Larson’s piece entitled “Pride in Greek party scene misplaced.”

I would first like to illustrate one very clear fact- people are going to party and drink, with or without Greek life on this campus. If Greek life were to disappear, underage drinking would not also immediately vanish. I have many friends that attend schools where Greek organizations do not exist, and their schools have just as much, if not more, underage drinking issues and heavy partying than Vanderbilt.

Vanderbilt Student Communications has taken a step toward the segregation of our campus periodicals. The Talented Tenth, the newest probationary member of VSC, dedicated to coverage of the black community, may actually hamper rather than promote the spread of diversity in the Vanderbilt community.

I was extremely shocked and disheartened that, in the aftermath of two reported rapes on campus within the first week of school, the fraternity Sigma Chi chose “Principals and Schoolgirls” as the theme of its party this Saturday.

Democracy requires simple, clear elections and an active citizenry: we need to do better on both counts.

Six years ago, the very structure of our country was put to a test that we passed, truth be told, simply because on a large scale, the American people are so politically disconnected that we have a hard time agreeing as a reasonable majority on anything. The beauty of our system is that, in spite of any problems, there is a nine-person body that can decide things like the highly contested 2000 election. I believe, in order to better maintain democracy, we should reexamine how we conduct our largest and most important elections so that the voice of the people is truly known and heard.