Inmates have a unique perspective on the criminal justice system. Those I know have been in prison for a long time — some have been in since they were sixteen and one I met entered the prison system in 1985 and will not get out until 2030. All have learned to cope with oppressive architecture, consistent isolation and arbitrary rules. Most have also committed heinous crimes and serious prison infractions. Many speak of political and legal power in near-conspiratorial tones, convinced anonymous moneyed interests — “them” — hold onto power regardless of superficial changes in the power structure. Nearly all seem to feel that the system has failed them.

The ego of the average Cornell student rivals that of Robert Mugabe or Napoleon. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Whether it is the obnoxious cell phone conversations on the Arts Quad, the half-sarcastic comments in a North Campus dining hall or just the sheer number of Cornell logos that can be seen on students on any given day, it is clear that the average Cornellian thinks that he is all that and a bag of chips.

This past summer, on a hot Saturday afternoon back home in Oklahoma, I decided to take my car to the dealership for an oil change. Not surprisingly, this dealership is located in between a bunch of other dealerships. But the interesting thing is that located right across the street from these dealerships is a cemetery. This is the cemetery where my aunt’s grave is located.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider passing The Free Flow of Information Act, which would protect the right of journalists — including student journalists and bloggers — to conceal confidential sources from the government. We endorse the bill and hope that the Senate will recognize its value in securing a journalist’s right to responsibly disseminate information.

Some things are never quite left behind from high school: the acne, the immaturity, the insecurities, the need for social acceptance, but most importantly, the unexplainable urge to create drama. We all claim to hate it and that we’re too good for it. But, come on. Who are we kidding? We’re not in high school, but our mentality is perpetually stuck in it. We thrive on drama because it’s probably the most exciting thing that happens in Ithaca other than a frat party and maybe acing a prelim. It always starts with something small. Then through a series of he-said-she-said miscommunications, one thing leads to another until it finally explodes and turns into an episode of Gossip Girl. And I’m not going to deny it: girls do start most, if not all, of the drama and insist on adding fuel to the fire. Sometimes, for absolutely no reason. Just because, y’know, you have to tell someone if Amanda is being, like, such a bitch — gawd!

I attended exactly three films put on by Cornell Cinema last year. In descending order of theater packedness: The Dark Knight; Waltz With Bashir; L’Enfant Sauvage. The first of these films was, well, awesome — as in the biblical sense of the word (not the contemporary, frater-natural lexicon). Waltz With Bashir was gripping — as in this graphic-novel looking thing gripped my throat and coerced me into caring about a massacre I had never heard of. L’Enfant Sauvage was boring — as in I was bored. The 18th Century frog doctor and his feral friend left me squirming in my seat before the Twizzlers and popcorn were all eaten.

When I made my debut in the Opinion section, I advocated a different type of diversity: diversity of thoughts and ideas. Since then, I have avoided that topic, as I consider it too much of a cliché, but a few years later, the time is now ripe to revive this concept with a new twist.

No matter who they side with, those who fail to consider the diverse array of perspectives in composing their arguments are destined to produce poor sketches of their own arguments.

Students comprise 98 percent of Ithaca’s fourth ward, the district which encompasses Collegetown. Due in part to student apathy and to the disproportionate political influence of the neighborhood’s small minority of permanent residents, students living in Collegetown frequently find their voices marginalized in city politic — an unfortunate reality for a population that contributes so much to the local economy. This is reason alone to fully endorse Eddie Rooker ’09 to represent Ithaca’s fourth ward on the Common Council.

I did not reflect upon behaviorism until I was asked to read Karen Pryor’s book Don’t Shoot the Dog for my internship working with dolphins this summer. It did get me back on track with a theory that I had not looked at for a while, considering behaviorism is not all that popular in the human psychology department at Cornell (which is fine, I guess). But lately, I’ve been coming back to the typical thing you hear everywhere when you start studying this school of thought: Our society, as a whole, is a wonderful web of stimuli and rewards.

7:00 a.m. is too early. Course Enroll, what pre-enrollment is commonly referred to at Cornell University, should not be so early in the morning. A better time would be more like 9:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. is early but it isn’t too early. You can wake up at 9:00 a.m. and enroll in courses and continue with your day, seamlessly. For example, if you have a class at 10:10 for which you typically wake up at 9:25, it’s not too much of an inconvenience to wake up a half-hour earlier, at 8:55, to enroll is classes. 8:55, by the way, to allow for five minutes of preparation. This involves turning on your laptop, connecting to the internet and dealing with that general early-morning fogginess.