Jumping blindly into a big canyon in Switzerland can evoke that life-flashing-before-your-eyes feeling that I hope you won’t feel too often. But there I was, attached to an eerily long but durable cord that would keep me from smashing into the canyon floor, canyon wall, jagged rocks, etc. Read more...

By Scott Lee “What are you going to do after you graduate?” my mom asked. “I plan on taking some time off to clear my head and figure out the rest of my life. Read more...

By Jerome Hoffman Why do 42 percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks? Could it have something to do with government lies? Read more...

Sexual awareness insert misleading On Wednesday, May 21, the Daily Bruin featured an anti-abortion “advertisement supplement” promoting abstinence and condemning the use of birth control, condoms and abortion. Read more...

Back straight, chin up, eyes focused, lips pouted. Gerren Taylor knows how to work what she’s got on the haute couture runways. Juggling a budding modeling career and pre-algebra, 12-year-old Gerren leads a childhood unlike other seventh-graders.  Gerren’s modeling job may seem harmless and glamorous to some, but the price of child labor is in fact much greater than what Gerren is getting paid. Gerren Taylor is a 5-foot-10-inch example of youth exploitation by the modeling and clothing industries.  Although Gerren’s mother tells the L.A. Read more...

Officials at UC Berkeley recently lifted the ban on students from SARS infected areas, but is that necessarily safe? “SARS took us by surprise,” writes Melissa Hinebauch of Newsweek in a May 12 column regarding her experiences as an American expatriate in Singapore, “I even had to cancel my daughter’s birthday party because none of her friends’ parents would let them attend. Read more...

Sitting in a sea of caps and gowns and listening to the speakers congratulate his class, the soon-to-be UCLA graduate took a moment to reflect on his future.  Big mistake.  Having lived through the experience of being a freshman in both high school and college, he was about to become a freshman in life. He had thought about grad school and jobs, but all of that seemed far away and vaguely menacing. He tried to find comfort in the skills and knowledge he had acquired in school, but sensed that most of the information he’d inhaled during pre-final all-nighters had immediately flown from his head after each test. As he squirmed in his seat, his stomach began to twist itself into a knot, and a voice in his head screamed, “Don’t make me leave!” Looking back on that day fifteen years later, I can see how right I was ““ and how wrong. Yes, I had forgotten a lot of what I learned in classes. Read more...