Opinion

Ai Weiwei. If you asked people in China who this person is, few could answer. But the man and his recent disappearance are highly instructive in understanding something very important about China and its future.

A school shooting is one of the most terrifying events that can occur. Innocent people, many who don’t even know the shooter, are caught in the crossfire, and thousands of lives are changed forever. Preparation for such a sudden and shocking event is nearly impossible; rarely do shooters show outward signs of violent behavior or give any warning or indication of what they are about to do. In fact, it seems like the only way to stop a school shooting is for fate to intervene, and the student to be pulled over or stopped by a teacher for an unrelated reason, revealing their intentions. Lately, however, in the wake of the Arizona school shooting, a movement is gaining traction and beginning to turn some heads on the idea of gun control: by allowing guns on college campuses.

When we are young, we are all eventually exposed to the bitter truth about Santa Claus. We imagined the big-bellied Mr. Claus along with his little elves, happily working in the swirly cotton-like snow slopes of the North Pole. Yet, this vivid image we carried as children crumbled with every harsh word of truth.

For the last 10 years, the music industry has been in a state of tension and upheaval. Napster, Rhapsody and iTunes came along and changed the game completely. With the transition from CD to MP3 as the dominant format for selling music, record stores have fallen into an awkward abyss between becoming completely extinct and being totally revived by the retro and vintage-loving hipster generation. With major chain stores like Tower Records closing down in 2006, few places were left for people to buy music in any physical format, whether it be vinyl records or CDs.

Three months and 4.9 million barrels of oil later, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill had finally been resolved after devastating the Gulf of Mexico and causing what White House energy adviser Carol Browner called “the worst environmental disaster the U.S. has faced.” Yet early last week, Transocean Ltd., owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, submitted a clumsily worded filing to the SEC calling 2010 its “best year in safety performance” as justification for awarding executive bonuses and raising base salaries as much as 22.2 percent.

UC Irvine is facing a projected $50 million budget cut that will reverberate throughout the campus, which currently serves 25,000 undergraduate students. A year after the protested 32 percent increase in student fees, followed by another fee increase of up to 7 percent, it is not so much a surprise that UCI administration is preparing itself for another significant budget cut and focusing on efforts to minimize the effects throughout campus. A significant concern for many students, staff and administrators is how such an increase will affect student services such as Dean of Students, Transfer Student Center, Career Center and the Cross-Cultural Center resources and programs. As budgets continue to shrink, there is also a general concern that these cuts will continue to shrink the limited student resources currently available.

Compiled by Charles Hicks, Staff Writer.

We’ve heard a lot about Wisconsin in the news over the past months, as Republican Governor Scott Walker took away the collective bargaining rights of public worker unions. What most of us have not heard is perhaps more frightening to those in higher education: transparency laws are being abused to violate the academic privacy of public university professors.

It’s not easy being a rock god from Mars. When you’ve got Tiger Blood coursing through your veins and Adonis’ DNA, how can you be expected to deal with the bloodsucking trolls? Well, ladies and gentlemen, Charlie Sheen has found a way.

Talk about pulling a 180. At the start of the month, South African jurist Richard Goldstone admitted that, in his Goldstone Report on the Gaza War of 2009 between Israel and Hamas, he had erroneously accused Israel of intentionally targeting civilians.

Compiled by Charles Hicks, Staff Writer.

A few weeks ago, a University of Chicago student launched a website called UChicagoHookups.com where students from the U of C could find partners in their area for what has been delicately labeled, “the casual encounter.” Due to the high volume of interest and media coverage, the website recently became eduHookups.com, tailoring its audience to now include all college students. Anyone with a .edu email address can join, and notable universities have, including Yale, Brown, Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois and DePaul University in Chicago, to name a few.