Bears, Guns and Gays

What are the hot-button issues on campus? We asked editors in chief of a few college newspapers.

At USC, “It’s the burning of the bruin,” says the Daily Trojan’s Jennifer Hamm. Specifically, the program board’s decision to cancel the traditional hanging and burning-at-the-stake of a stuffed bear at a pep rally leading up to the USC-UCLA game Nov. 22. Some students, Hamm explains, felt the hanging was “too much like lynching, too reminiscent of racial hate crimes.”

Adam Pava of Quaker Campus at Whittier College reports, “The hot issue is being rated No. 1 in U.S. News & World Report”--as the national liberal arts college whose students graduate with the highest average debt, about $22,000. With tuition about $18,000, he says, some also wonder why “our library is a bit run-down and some buildings don’t have air-conditioning.”

A decision to equip campus police with semi-automatic guns has sparked spirited student debate at Cal State L.A. “There is really no reason to have such big guns on this campus,” says Irma Lemus of the University Times, which took some heat from administrators for taking a stand in opposition.

At Cal State Northridge, “The biggest problem we’ve been reporting is definitely racism,” says the Daily Sundial’s Lesley Goldberg. In early September, a racist flier was left in a classroom used primarily for Pan-African studies, setting off name-calling and accusations. “People are trying to pin it on different organizations on campus.”

“A convocation dealing with ‘healing homosexuality’ is probably the hottest issue” at Pepperdine, says the Graphic’s Bryan Boettger. The recent convocation was one in the university’s Moral Compass series but, Boettger said, some students were outraged by the remarks of the lecturer, clinical psychologist Joseph Nicolosi, who described homosexuality as a curable psychological disorder.