Opinion

For the past three months the University of California Board of Regents has been considering a proposal that would eliminate the requirement for applicants to submit SAT II subject test scores in order to have their applications reviewed.

Drivers in California will no longer be legally allowed to send text messages while they drive starting in January 2009. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed SB 28 into law, a belated addition to the recent legislation regarding cell phones and motorists.

After months of discussion, the Davis City Council made progress toward approving a living wage for some people employed by the city through contractors. The ordinance, which would only apply to contractors who meet a certain threshold of business from the city, is being examined on a scale that would pay between $10 and $14.21 per hour. Currently, these employees may be paid as low as the state minimum wage, $8 per hour. People employed directly by the city are already on a living wage pay scale.

Under current state law, illegal immigrants qualify for in-state tuition at the University of California if they attend a California high school for at least three years and graduate with a diploma or GED. A lawsuit working its way through the court system, Martinez v. Regents, threatens to take away this tuition break.

Editor's note: Tiffany Gilmore is a graduate student at UC Davis who wrote into The Aggie to raise awareness of the plight faced by Haitian citizens after the recent hurricane.

This year, as I'm sure you're aware by now, marks the 100th birthday of UC Davis. There has been a great deal of change since the university opened its doors to students in 1908, but The California Aggie has been here for 93 of those 100 years, serving the Davis community since 1915.

Welcome to my last column of the summer! If you've been reading my column the entire summer, you might be surprised to find out that I received the most reader response (over the entire summer) for my column on random thoughts.

It should come as no surprise that Republican presidential candidate John McCain chose, at long last, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate.

Wait, no, the announcement came as a huge surprise.

As a result of a discussion with my friends this weekend about names, I've been thinking about names and what they mean lately. Consequently, this column will be a limited dissection of the names of some people you may have heard of. To keep the investigation as honest as possible, I looked only at etymology and commonly held interpretations of names. I visited the helpful ancestry.com, cross-referenced with other websites, and even delved into the labyrinthine depths of genealogical forums.

Dear Mr. Edwards,

I cannot conceive of a way in which you could have failed this country more grandly than you just did. You said in your interview on ABC recently that "nobody can beat up on me more than I have already beat up on myself." Allow me to sincerely try and prove you wrong.

Some of you may already be aware of the tree-sitting protestors at UC Berkeley that are currently preventing the construction of a new athletic facility (and if you weren't, you certainly are now). I'm here to tell you that this protest is ridiculous.

My column this week aims to salute to those people and companies that have a different, refreshing way of doing business.

Recently there were murmurs of concern over the health of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, Inc.

This column will continue my goal of talking about current events, although this week I'll be delving into the wide world of sports.

Now that Davis is down to a chilly 92 degrees, this story may not resonate with some of you as it might have last week, but I'm telling it anyway. Walking home from the ARC, I felt like getting a cool drink.