After a brisk, cold night of standing barefoot on the lawn of Dickson Plaza, screaming my lungs hoarse in agreement with politicians and registering people to vote outside of Powell Library, I was in a very political mood.

Most of the time, I am a very happy person.

I won’t lie. One of the reasons I came to UCLA was the fact that every spring, the entire campus is transformed into one massive outdoor library: the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

The current news surrounding the gay rights movement seems to be almost exclusively about same-sex marriage: part of the Defense of Marriage Act was found unconstitutional, a ruling in the Proposition 8 case is on the horizon and Argentina just legalized same-sex marriage.

The only thing that might seem more overwhelming than choosing which university you’re going to is choosing what you’re going to study.

News has always traveled fast. In the age of Twitter, Facebook, texting and Internet access on your phone, it’s almost impossible to avoid real-time updates of current events.

Much of the feminist movement revolves around choice: It should be a woman’s choice to terminate a pregnancy.

How many of your friends have ever told you that they’ve been raped by a midterm or a final? Maybe they were raped by their 15-page research paper that they started the night before it was due.

The problem of the California budget could be solved by 14 simple words: “All legislative actions on revenue and budget must be determined by a majority vote.”

Back in November, the word on everybody’s lips was “˜regent’. “The regents are raising our fees!” “The regents don’t care for students!” “The regents changed the date to avoid students and protests!” There was a lot of talk about what they were doing, but barely any talk about who the members of the UC Board of Regents are. Who are they? How did they become regents? And who told them they could run the University of California, and all of its 220,000 students?