CU Independent
University of Colorado

“Help, help, I’m being oppressed!”

Personally, I squealed with delight when I heard that I would have to show my BuffOne Card to get into campus. Gladly, officer. I was also pleased with their choice to spray fish-based fertilizer on Norlin quad. It was a remarkable touch — a big middle finger to everyone who wants to toke up on the field.

I’m surprised it took the administration this long. The administration should have nipped the nascent movement in the bud back when it took place on Farrand Field. But they chose not to — maybe in an attempt to seem liberal and hip. And as the saying goes, if you give a pothead a cookie, he’s going to want to invite all of his friends and through a strange stoner alchemy, turn that cookie into 10,000 bong rips and declare it a display of civil disobedience.

People seem to be forgetting that they are breaking the law. Sure, marijuana is legal in Colorado for myriad medical conditions like glaucoma, back pain, low appetite, night sweats, unusually moist mouth and low levels of “urge to fight the man,” but for us common folk, it’s still against the law.

As a representative from the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Mark Silverstein said in the recent Daily Camera article that by closing campus, “The university does a disservice to the values that underlie the First Amendment and the constitutionally protected right to dissent.”

I call shenanigans.

The thing I’m struggling to understand is why everyone else thinks shutting down campus is a hostile move. If anyone remembers from freshman orientation, CU is a substance-free campus, and every other day of the year is staunchly against illegal activity on school grounds — obviously. Heck, a handful of kids just got in trouble for spray painting stencils on the sidewalk, but every year they let slide a few thousand people turning campus into a bong.

— Ryan Sterner, April 17 issue

Daily Emerald
University of Oregon

“New bill would introduce Big Brother to the Internet”

In the wake of the supposed death of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a brutal policy that would have threatened the concept of Internet privacy and freedom that Americans have come to enjoy, a new piece of legislation has slipped below the media radar to attack these rights once again: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

CISPA was introduced in November by Representative Michael Rogers (R-MI). Its main goal is to protect the government against cyber attacks, but it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the bill still manages to overreach its goal and threaten simple online civil liberties. The problem is the level of surveillance this bill will allow the federal government over literally everything everybody does online.

I’m all for protecting against cyber attacks; indeed, it would be irresponsible of the U.S. government to not take these attacks seriously. However, these attacks can be dealt with without allowing the private Internet activity of the everyday American to be presented on a smorgasbord of privileged information to government officials under the guise of preventing cyber terrorism.

And, honestly, I don’t have any dirty secrets online that I feel threatened about having found out by the government — it’s not the information being seen that I’m concerned about. It’s the information being used.

We’re college students, and we spend way too much of our time online. We throw way too much of our information into the digital void and we trust our privacy settings and password protection more than we should. But we probably aren’t talking about a murder we committed last week or a felony we’re planning. We’re talking about dumb, arbitrary crap: homework, sex, work, friends. In a word — life. It’s not information that needs to be private, but it’s information that should be private.

— Sam Bouchat, April 21 issue

Daily Trojan
USC

“Achievement not an individual endeavor”

Commencement is almost here. It’s a time to see family, take pictures and get nostalgic with your classmates.

Of course, it’s also a time to be self-centered. Commencement ultimately exists to celebrate individual achievement. And, hey, if you’re managing to actually graduate — whether it’s in three years or six — you deserve to pat yourself on the back. You deserve to imagine a flashy future for yourself, possibly a future in which a campus building is in your name.

Though this attitude is excusable at commencement, it’s best not to carry it beyond May 11. Individual achievement is important, but we could all use a healthy dose of collectivism.

The United States is one of the most staunchly individualistic countries in the world. Here, we’re taught to stand out and get ahead — preferably on our own, you freeloader. We learn that if we don’t speak up and advocate for our interests, our go-getting peers will leave us in the dust.

But we have to remember that people rarely make it alone. You don’t exist in a vacuum; like it or not, you’re defined by the groups to which you belong. In fact, a collectivist would say that without the group, the self is practically nothing.

As members of an individualistic society, we love heroes. We eat up stories that focus on one man’s struggle or one woman’s brilliant idea. But when everyone tries to lead, there’s no one left to work behind the scenes.

It’s tempting to chase the spotlight, but I firmly believe that the most valuable goal isn’t to be seen as great — it’s to do great things, no matter who gets recognized in the end. Should the time be right, the spotlight will find you on its own.

— Maya Itah, April 18 issue