Today marks the 100th day of President Barack Obama’s current term in office. News media hype aside, the President’s 100th day is an important milestone for the American public’s perception of the Executive Branch and has served as a definite marker for policymaking decisions since the times of FDR. The actions taken by the president within his first five months are indicative both of his priorities and of his leadership style. Most importantly, however, the 100th day unofficially cements the tone the president wishes to set throughout the remaining three-plus year in office.

It seems that one of our most controversial alumni –– Ann Coulter ’84 –– struck a nerve in the Cornell community this past week.

As many have already read on her blog, in The Sun or even in New York Magazine, Coulter took a heavy swing at fellow alumnus and political pundit Keith Olbermann ’79 last Wednesday in an attempt to belittle his “non-Ivy degree.” Coulter, a graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences, denounced the legitimacy of the Communication Major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in order to demean the level of intelligence of students within the school. Her claims were pretty tongue in cheek, and her petty rhetoric sadly did very little to bolster her own intelligence, especially in referring to CALS as the “Old MacDonald Cornell.”

Market decline. Volatile gas prices. Deteriorating war. Historic unemployment. Widespread social frustrations.

Such misfortunes refer to the political climate of the mid-1970s, but these hazardous descriptions eerily trigger thoughts of the world today.

It seems that the turbulent decade of the 1970s — the time in which many of our parents graduated college — mirrors the world we are facing. Enduring a comparable set of burdens both to readjust student loans and scramble for jobs, while rationalizing the repercussions of a long war, our parents began their adult lives in perhaps the closest societal backdrop to that of 2009. As much as we might hate to admit it, our parents have shared an experience quite similar to ours.

Abdallah Hajji and Lofti Lagha knew the worst was not behind them when they boarded a plane from Guantánamo Bay detention facility back home to Tunisia in 2007. After being held in Guantánamo under suspicions of terrorist involvement, the two Tunisian nationals were independently cleared as non-enemy combatants and released back into the hands of the Tunisian government, according to a report published by Human Rights Watch. Despite pleas by the detainees to forgo the repatriation and known reports of torture in Tunisia, the U.S. government went ahead with the transfer. To no one’s great surprise, Hajji and Lagha were both viciously tortured in Tunisian prisons — all of which could have been prevented.

Americans love to feel good about themselves. The exhaustive yearning to connect with our leadership, our ideals, and our capabilities has been a primary driver of American electoral and cultural politics, and is perhaps one of our country’s greatest narratives. In the face of domestic or foreign adversity, Americans thirst to rid themselves of national self-doubt and to unify around national pride, the eternal stimulant of the American people. Such a mentality seems quite apposite since last Tuesday’s election as our generation — Generation Y — now finds itself at the helm of a resurgence of the ultimate restorative device: patriotism.

As incoming provost Kent Fuchs begins his transition to his new post I call upon him to consider a new graduation requirement for seniors: a workshop in personal finance. The changing of the guard at the University’s highest academic office offers a unique opportunity for Cornell to become a leader among its peer institutions by educating its students in not only the writings of philosophers, the theories of physicists, or the greatest works of artists and architects, but also in pertinent subjects such as credit card debt, mortgages, and saving for retirement.

We are less than three weeks away from Elec­tion Day. In the longest presidential campaign in Amer­ican history, 15 primary candidates became two presidential hopefuls: Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. At this point in time, a typical campaign analyst would presume both platforms would have been well articulated, challenged, and disseminated in the presidential debates. But this is not a typical campaign, and that does not seem to be the case. In the midst of bemused moderators and citizens it is important to ask, what have we learned from Obama and McCain in the debates?

While healthy young adults may appear to be the least at risk for health problems, make no mistake — many young adults are uninsured. The current system of health insurance in the United States has placed college students in an incredible bind. Over 13.7 million young adults in the U.S. today do not have health insurance specifically, those between the ages of 19 and 29, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a healthcare think tank. With young adults comprise one of the largest segments of America’s uninsured, we can be certain this is a serious domestic issue.

The past few weeks of Wall Street meltdown have profoundly reshaped the economy. Let’s start from the top. Last week the Treasury Department bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the country’s integral mortgage finance companies that dated back to World War II. Now fast-forward to Sunday night. Lehman Brothers, a prestigious investment bank whose founding predates the Civil War, filed the largest bankruptcy in American history. Wall Street powerhouse Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. Moving forward, we have A.I.G. and Washington Mutual fighting for their survival. Taken together, the financial services industry has found itself in somewhat of a quagmire.

One week into my freshman year of high school two planes crashed into the World Trade Center Twin Towers. Four days into my freshman year of college a Category 5 hurricane pounded the U.S. Gulf Coast. The outcomes and legacies of both these tragic events re-shaped not only contemporary American History but also the political perspective of the class of 2009.