Opinion

ACTION: UCSA challenges Yudof’s line of action and calls for new tactics in the march on Sacramento.

HOAX: Charles Hicks discusses the tweetastic story that had the entire nation hoodwinked.

If you are anything like the average college student, you probably have not been scared of Halloween for a while. Sometimes you miss the holiday of your childhood. There was free candy and scary movies that left you genuinely afraid to go to bed for weeks. You ran away screaming from your neighbor’s porch on October 31st because they had one of those motion-sensor moving vampires/zombies/witches/(insert Halloween cliché here)s.

SEX. Got your attention? Good. Now don’t do it and think about something else – I suggest God.

The most effective health practices are sometimes the most simple. Even in an age of technological advances, simple practices like washing yours hands are still the most effective way to prevent the spread of disease. It’s about going back to basics.

Presidents usually age a lot in office. This is no wonder considering the difficult decisions they need to make. One particularly difficult choice awaits President Obama in Afghanistan. With the rise in coalition deaths, what was once considered a forgotten war has leaped back onto the front pages. Icasualties.org, a site that tracks causalities for Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom/Afghanistan, shows that the casualty rates for January, February, March, May, July, August, September and October this year are the highest ever. It is widely accepted that these increased casualty rates suggest that changes to strategy might need to be made. Hence, President Obama must decide how to proceed.

As a frequent gym-goer, I appreciate UCI’s enormous complex of exercise equipment for my muscle-building needs. With that being said, I’d like to bring some matters to attention. First of all, the handprint scanners have to go. Yes we get it, it’s futuristic and cool, but this isn’t 1982 and I think we humans ought to be secure enough with our current level of technology and just accept the simple process of entering a pin number. The handprint scanner never quite works right and always makes you place your hand a second time and then annoyingly wait for it to let you in.

For the past 16 years, “don’t ask, don’t tell,” has been the standard military policy on homosexuality. It prevents openly gay or lesbian servicemen from serving in the military. This is a highly controversial issue, one that resonates particularly strongly with Californians, who despite narrowly passing Proposition 8 have long been on the forefront of gay rights in this country.

A recent New University commentary accused Chancellor Drake of being “reclusive and unresponsive to students, workers and faculty.” In my experience as a student and ASUCI President, this has not been my experience to date.

California Representative Anna Eshoo has a plan. It’s not a plan to stimulate the economy, it’s not a plan to bring home the troops, and it’s not yet another health care plan. Hers is a plan about TV commercials.

Rain, rain go away. Come again some other day. Or never. Seriously, we can’t handle it. All across UC Irvine’s campus last Wednesday, exasperated and confused students could be heard cursing the rain and asking how it could possibly be so cold. Perhaps the fact that it’s now mid-October and Winter is around the corner has something to do with the answer.

In the coming months, I want to assemble an army of a million UC advocates who will fight with us for our fair share of the pie. There are more than 1.5 million of us who are connected to each other through the University of California – students, faculty, staff and alumni. What a mighty force we will be if we can only stick together. Anybody game for a march on Sacramento?