As the new year approached, I started thinking about what I have achieved during my academic career. I am a graduating senior at UCLA, one of the nation’s most prestigious universities. Read more...

A friend of mine told me a new joke is going around in Italy about the Bush administration’s new outer space plans: “The Americans are sending people to Mars to make sure it’s red.” George W. Read more...

Branding somebody a liar is a pretty powerful thing to do. It is even more powerful when it is done four times, as Senator Ted Kennedy demonstrated in a remark about the war against Iraq. Read more...

SAT, GPAs still important criteria UCLA is first and foremost an academic institution; and it therefore follows that its primary consideration for admitting new students should be academic merit. Read more...

What new stores would you like to see in Westwood Village to replace recently closed stores? Amy Eng Third-year, molecular, cell and developmental biology “I think there are a lot of small food stores, but I’d like to see bigger chains. Read more...

Tax cuts are not the answer If I didn’t know any better, Garin Hovannisian’s column (“Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts more efficient,” Jan. 8) might have convinced me that, prior to the arrival of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state of California had been operating as a utopian socialist republic rather than a state with many of the country’s worst public school systems, an atrocious transportation network, a welfare system under which absolutely nobody involved is faring well, millions of citizens lacking adequate healthcare coverage, millions more living below the poverty line, a grossly under-funded state park system, countless imperiled environments, and two rapidly deteriorating public university systems under which students are regularly being asked to pay substantially more for substantially less.  Contrary to Schwarzenegger’s battle cry, California does have a tax crisis. Read more...

Thirty thousand deaths, 30,000 injuries, 75,000 left homeless, 131 schools damaged or destroyed, 85 percent of buildings destroyed, and the loss of one of the world’s historical treasures. Read more...