Tomorrow is the first home game of the season for the Vanderbilt Commodores, and Vanderbilt students will be dressed up in their black and gold or cocktail attire to attend the game. In the past, pre-game traditions have been blamed for preventing students from arriving before halftime or, worse, even making it to the game. This year, however, there will be no excuses. The new student tailgating area behind the field makes it easy for students to go from their tailgating festivities to the game for kickoff.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in this country’s history. Unfortunately, the past week has been marked by politicians using the memory of this tragedy to further their own agendas. Ironically, this makes it difficult to remember Sept. 11 in terms separate from its relationship to the war we are currently fighting in Iraq.

Recently, there has been much discussion about the Greek system in the opinion pages of The Hustler. Two guest columns and one letter to the editor have said that the Greek community promotes underage drinking and contributes to a culture conducive to rape. We believe that fraternities and sororities make significant contributions to campus that often go unacknowledged; however, we realize that it is not a perfect system.

There is one national ranking in which Vanderbilt manages to beat Duke. It is The Princeton Review’s not so prestigious ranking of schools with “Little Race/Class Interaction,” on which we pull in to a dishearteningly high fifth place. Only recently did Vanderbilt manage to finally fall off of its “Alternative Lifestyles Not an Alternative” list, which ranked schools according to the amount of discrimination against homosexuals. Though it is tempting to disregard these rankings, they are not baseless concoctions of The Princeton Review’s imagination. Diversity issues are among the most important matters facing this campus.

Vanderbilt Dining’s new program, Eat the World, Save the Earth, is a big step in the right direction for the university. It represents a commitment to several principles with which we want our university to be associated.

Every edition of The Vanderbilt Hustler boasts the words “The Voice of Vanderbilt since 1888.” This is not just a catchy alliteration; it is a role we take very seriously.

As “The Voice of Vanderbilt,” we are continuing a nearly 120-year tradition of representing the activities and perspectives of the Vanderbilt community. No other publication reaches Vanderbilt students as often as The Hustler, and we realize the responsibility that this position holds.

The school year has barely begun, but already the Vanderbilt community has received two security alerts from Director of Crime Prevention Andrew Atwood. Both of these alerts report rape on campus. This causes us to wonder, as one contributor to our new feature, The Rant, put it, “When did Vandy become a crime-ridden hellhole?”

The online proliferation of the infamous Kappa Alpha Theta picture featuring last year’s senior class flashing the camera is not just a Greek issue. It should be a cause of concern for the entire Vanderbilt community.

Vanderbilt University can be proud of its class of 2010. It is the most impressive one to grace the campus, just like the class of 2009 was last year, and the class of 2008 the year before that. Given this trend, Vanderbilt should really be proud of its admissions department.