The Daily
University of Washington

“I’m not poor: I’m just no longer living in luxury”

College students from supportive backgrounds inhabit a weird limbo between being resourceless and utterly surrounded by resources. At moments, it may seem like we have nothing, but in actuality many of us have the luxury of safety nets holding us up. The feeling of being impoverished derives more from realizing personal responsibility for perhaps the first time, and understandably struggling with it, than from any form of actual poverty.
Luckily for many of us at the UW, our backgrounds and positions as students allow us a lot of leeway as we work toward self-sufficiency. Though sometimes it feels like we’re floundering, most of us have a support system to help keep us afloat. The very act of being a student at the UW is a mark of privilege we often forget.

– By Kali Swenson, March 13 issue

The Daily Californian
*University of California, Berkeley *

“bMail: Berkeley’s B-minus idea”

We have to be smarter about the perverse incentives vendors may have. Google has strong incentives that run counter to the enlightenment values embedded in the university’s mission because each quarter, it is advertisers, not users, that write Google a check. Google makes design decisions to maximize tracking and sharing of data with advertisers, even where effective, privacy-friendly alternatives exist.
As the expiration date of the systemwide Google contract approaches in June 2015, we should rethink how we have entrusted our email and documents to a data-mining company. As an email provider, Google appears to be free, but we may find that we end up paying for it in other ways.

– By Chris Jay Hoofnagle, March 19 issue

The Daily Trojan
University of Southern California

“Soda ban intrudes on personal freedom”

A man interviewed by CNN on the streets of New York could not have summed it up any better: “I don’t care how much soda people drink — there are bigger issues in this city than people drinking sugar … I mean, look around us. Isn’t there more that our mayor can concentrate on than sugar?”
That the average citizen can recognize the flaws of such efforts by [New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg provides hope that the court will uphold its reversal of the ban. At the end of the day, the ban would bring nothing other than a dangerous expansion of government power while de-emphasizing the need for people to make smart decisions for themselves.

– By Sarah Cueva, March 12 issue