Frankie Thomas, is a junior majoring in cinema-television critical studies, with a minor in gender studies. Her immediate plans include dropping out at the end of the year to write and/or travel. She is a film maker and a blogger, with interests ranging from the social history of the Victorian era to birdwatching to the  Read More →

Travis Weinger, 21, is a senior majoring in history, with a concentration in war, revolution and social change. His minor is political science. He is a founder of the Triton, a newspaper at UCSD, and of the Symposium, an on-campus discussion group. Rick Perlstein’s article, boiled down, is simply an extended version of the bitching that  Read More →

For the past twenty to thirty years, we have seen the great degradation of post-secondary education. Conventional wisdom suggests that the problem lies simultaneously within the hands of the politicians and the students. This narrative does not account for the history of college. Throughout the modern age, the role college played in the national debate  Read More →

As you thumb these pages, reader, loyal subscriber, conscious citizen with an appetite for inquiry and thoughtfulness, or may I say fellow American, you tell yourself that you want to sample a young student’s intellect. Certainly I do believe that my own college experience has been important, even critical, to my life and to my  Read More →

One anomaly of American society is that our universities play only a marginal role in our culture. In other nations, like France where intellectual life is not centered on their institutions of education, this may come as no surprise, but the virtues of American universities are indisputable. Academics wonder why they are allowed to be  Read More →