Opinion

Hashtags are brilliant because they can be both funny and informative — like Jon Stewart, but less handsome. What else can be used as a snide afterthought on the one hand, and a sweeping declaration of revolution on the other? No other markup in social media parlance is as versatile or as widely adopted. In […]

Speaker of the Assembly John Pérez recently introduced a bill that would create a scholarship to help middle class students pay for higher education. This plan would guarantee a two-thirds reduction in fees to those families who made $80,000 to $150,000 a year, and could potentially help 42,000 UC students and 150,000 CSU students. This […]

By the time we die, we will have spent an estimated one-and-a-half years just watching TV commercials. Ah, shit. Another thoroughly unwelcomed and perspective-inducing statistic. But according to Max Sutherland and Alice K. Sylvester, authors of Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer, it’s true. Having said that, it’s also true that roughly one-seventh of […]

Take a moment to reflect on individuals you have regular contact with on a daily basis. Are the majority or all of these individuals of the same race? Did they attend similar high schools, or lived in similar neighborhoods with similar demographics? Throughout high school the closest relationship I had with a white person were […]

Deeply repressed Edwardian gentry and their servants suffer through romance and intrigue in a British costume drama on a channel where the median viewing age is 62. It doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, but Masterpiece Theater’s “Downton Abbey” has become a runaway hit for PBS. Celebrities obsessively tweet about the show while memes […]

Last week, Rajiv Narayan wrote to encourage civic education and involvement. Amen! Certainly doing something about the outrageous cost of public education is a top priority. But before there was Occupy and before anyone on campus knew what it felt like to be pepper sprayed, a crisis had brewed up within Intercollegiate Athletics (ICA). After illegitimately dropping four […]

I thought this country was effectively over being assholes to Native Americans after we finally recognized American Indians as actual humans, not just rugged peoples that liked cloth underwear, with the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act. Neglect, however, continues throughout the 21st century just as chronically as increasing rates of crime on American Indian reservations. […]

In the Jan. 26 issue of The Aggie, my fellow columnist Jordan Carroll commented on the method of occupation at U.S. Bank, explaining that the point of direct action “is not a form of outreach or a publicity stunt.” That’s important, because it makes clear the primary intention of the occupation is not to serve […]

You are at a party, beer in hand, with a multitude of possibilities for fun. While alcohol and sex are often on everyone’s mind in this setting, the question is: does that drink affect your libido? When the beer goes in, strange things come out. Good things, too, from courage to stress relief. Some also […]

The column from Feb. 7 entitled “The debt debate” on the U.S. debt and our seamlessly never-faltering credit score is wildly off base and out of touch with financial reality. Mr. Brawer points out, “The U.S. debt doesn’t really matter.” The Greek government probably thought along the same lines. We see how that is working […]

I attended a town hall meeting on Feb. 10 lead by a team of lawyers, charged by the Office of the President to propose a comprehensive police policy for all UC campuses. After this meeting, a reporter from The Aggie came up to me and asked, “What side are you on?” and “Why are you […]

Living in the peacefully-mundane Central Valley of California, it’s hard to comprehend that in other parts of the world people are harassed, tortured and even killed for their beliefs every day. But they are. It’s been over a year since the beginning of what was hopefully termed the “Arab Spring,” an explosion of political and […]