(Editor’s note: Though I just started cross-posting my writing elsewhere here, the following piece not only relies heavily on the research and ethos of this site, but also serves as a simple argument for why the discussions housed here are important. It’s directed at high school students, but if you care about being an aware member of any campus community, it’s relevant to you, too. A longer version was originally published by Prefessional U as part of their Student Journalism ...

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During his State of the Union Address, President Obama strongly urged every state not to allow students to drop out of high school before the age of 18. The president alleges that because Americans with higher levels of education have a lower unemployment rate, requiring students to stay in school will offer a cure to high levels of unemployment.

This is a neat thesis by the President’s administration, but the equation is not nearly so concise. Even if students are required by law to stay in s...

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As they have publicized nowhere, the ASUA Senate will vote today on a resolution condemning bills in the Arizona legislature that will disallow private citizens from exercising their right to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. This is a long and storied sage with ASUA — read this site’s reports on the matter from 2009, 2010, and 2011, just as a selection.

The resolution (here as a pdf with today’s meeting agenda) is hardly different than resolutions other ASUA Senates...

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As was announced yesterday afternoon, the Arizona Board of Regents has presented what they’re calling a presidential “candidate” for the position vacated by Robert Shelton last July. In a very different process than how the past few presidents have been selected, the Board announced Ann Weaver Hart, current president of Temple University, as their first choice for UA President. According to the press release, “Hart will visit the UA campus on Feb. 13 to meet with students...

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For the fourth time here in the Lamp‘s long memory, it’s ASUA Election season. The (controversial) Elections Commission sent out the names of the candidates[pdf] to the press last night.  The candidates are:

President:

Katy Murray

Chad Travis

Leo Yamaguchi

Executive Vice-President:

Kevin Elliot

Krystina Nguyen

JW Phillips

 Administrative Vice-President

Dani Dobrusin

Paige Sager

Ryan Weaver

 Senate:

Taylor Ashton

Jake Barman

Logan Bilby

Alex Chang

Genesis Chapa

Justin Evans

Bryc...

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An item you could pay for with your Kavanagh fee

For all the ado that’s been status-ed, tweeted, and publicly palavered over the proposed “Kavanaugh fee” in the last few days, an important detail is overlooked: HB 2675 does not once propose to increase tuition by one single penny, as even the Wildcat concedes in passing:

So what would actually happen? Ignore for now the “5-percenters” with full academi...

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A lunch free of charge means a lunch free of cost, right?

Here are a couple breaking news items for your Monday: The state of Arizona is broke. College is expensive. If you keep making an investment that doesn’t yield a solid return on that investment, you should probably reconsider whether it’s a good investment.

Alarming everyone with a Facebook this weekend was an article from the East Valley Tribune bearing the headline, “HB 2675 may up college costs by $2K for many in Ariz...

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Under a new proposal, this is how much psychology majors would pay for tuition

The idea of graduating college with no student loans probably sounds great for students who sacrifice sleep, nutrition, and drinking beer better than Keystone to make loan payments each month for much of their young lives. These crushing loans seem especially unfair to students whose investment in college don’t yield as comfortable salary returns as they may have hoped.

Students at The University of California-R...

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The unexpected derailing—if not total defeat—of the Senate’s horrendous anti-piracy bill and its counterpart in the House is a genuinely encouraging moment, made possible only by a tremendous public outcry against the bill of the sort we have not seen in years. Rarely is the citizenry so united on a single issue, and rarely is the gulf between the interests of the majority of citizens and the interests of the party oligarchs made so brilliantly clear.

That gulf was clearest in the app...

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Everyone who lives on campus signs a pile of papers that restrict everything from candles to pets to “fire-like conditions” (does that include opening the window in August?). But how much of these restrictions serve to foster the community, as ResLife claims, and how many of them are manipulated to violate the basic rights of students, such as rights to property and rights to due process?

In solid reporting by the Wildcat, we get yet another glimpse into the sinister process by which...

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