Returning students arrived on campus this fall to three major new developments at American University. First, a big ol’ new building to house the School of International Service. Second, “American Wonks“–a high-powered marketing campaign designed to highlight the passionate intellectualism of AU students. And third, a campus community saturated with various objections to the “Wonk” [...]

Dr. John DeGioia, president of Georgetown University. (Flickr/Center for American Progress)
This article on pay raises for DC area college presidents, posted last week by the Washington Examiner, made me uneasy for two reasons. For one, presidents of DC area universities are seeing their pay bumped up a cool 42 percent. Georgetown president John DeGioia is [...]

Across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center’s twin towers, on the Stevens Institute of Technology campus where he studied engineering, he watched plumes of smoke billow from gaping openings where the planes had just hit. All at once, he was overcome by the realization of life’s fragility. “What if tomorrow’s not promised for [...]

Critically recognized as one of the most abstruse and exasperating books ever written, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is arguably the most challenging text in modern philosophy — even for AU’s ace philosophy majors. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, when a course on the book appeared on AU’s Spring 2009 course catalog, its waitlist [...]

It was an unusual winter in Washington, D.C. While the city was buried beneath the area’s largest snowstorm in recorded history, AU students relished a week without classes and witnessed the collapse of the Mary Graydon Center canopy as it succumbed to the weight of over two feet of snow, falling to the ground with [...]

Last week, Alex Knepper’s column generated a buzz on campus and around the country. While many read the piece as an irresponsible condonation of sexual assault, others argued that it was merely identifying an age-old truth: some women routinely get drunk, have sex, and then “cry rape” the [...]

Like many college campuses, AU hosts a predominately female student body. Though the gender breakdown is curiously absent from the university’s Web site, the Princeton Review reports AU to be 61.5 percent female, and according to a recent Times piece, the figure is in line with the national average: as of 2000, 57 pecent of [...]

The typical AU student lives an economically-secure life on a tidy campus of material comforts. But for the 106 campus custodial employees who do the tidying, the prospect of a secure and comfortable future remains indefinite. They are caught between a powerful yet sluggish union and a multinational corporate subcontracting behemoth, and left struggling to [...]

Most political movements, especially of the radically-oriented variety, attract zealous followers. Yet too often, a movement’s zeal can morph into rigid rules that alienate more than welcome. The recent controversy over The Eagle’s sex column, “Sex-perimentation defines Welcome Week, Don’t let hook-ups be break ups” highlights the shortcoming in AU’s progressive response. In this case, [...]

Anthony Gualtieri, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology, looked exasperated. Trying in vain to conduct order in a classroom chirping with boisterous children who insouciantly waltzed in and out of the corridor, civility seemed unattainable. Oreos, squeeze bottles of yogurt, and half-eaten hot dogs scatter the room’s table. Upon repeated pleas, the noise gives [...]