I recently saw a United Way ad on the back of a bus, which actually connected with me and made me stop and think for a moment. It said, “Nothing changes, if nothing changes.”

A few days later, at the movies, I saw a hard-hitting United Way commercial before the film. It shows footage of a ghetto, with the following words, “Since hurricane Katrina: the poverty rate is 25 percent, births to teens are the seventh highest in the U.S., unemployment in the inner city is close to 50 percent. What’s most alarming is this is not New Orleans. This is Milwaukee, this is our community. Help. It’s the United Way.”

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“Animal rights” activism is probably one of the most misinformed and incomplete political ideologies that has set foot on American soil. I go day to day listening to how we should protect animals because they “feel” and “hurt” and have “emotions,” too. I have some news for those of you who read Elina Pries and Joshua McCracken’s colorful and well-played editorials.

Animals are not people. “Animal rights” activists cleverly use the term “non-human animals” to insinuate that, in some way, we are no different from that cute squirrel you pass on your way to class. While it may be true that animals may have emotions or some complex reasoning, the fact remains that, for some reason that I do not know, we are not the ones in zoos.

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To many people, the area of Riverwest is almost as foreign as a completely different city would be. Many East-Siders at UWM are fairly unfamiliar with the area, especially the younger students here. I can say this with near-certainty because I was once one of those younger, uninformed students.

Admittedly, when I was a freshman I was a bit naive about the UWM neighborhood. As a Madison-area native, I didn’t know what to expect in “big-bad” Milwaukee. So I tried my hardest to go out in groups with friends to unexplored areas, rather than venture into them by myself.

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For all students who use their University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee UPASS – and we are a very large segment of the student population – once again the Parking & Transit Office is trying to find a way to raise your fees. Last year, they attempted to raise the segregated fee students pay for the UPARK shuttle buses, to pay for interest debt payments on a campus parking ramp. That got shot down because I was sitting on the finance committee last year. Apparently now the Parking & Transit Office is putting together the outlines of a proposal through the recently created transportation committee, and in front of the Senate Finance Committee, to assess every student who uses the UPASS, such that we would have to pay a daily surcharge every day that we as a bus rider use the bus.

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Contrary to popular belief, Da Vinci did not paint the Last Supper painting so many travel halfway around the world every year to see. Michelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine Chapel, either.

Yes, there is flawed logic in this argument. The real artists are actually the people who were paid to restore these works. These individuals painted over some parts of these paintings that were falling apart so they could be better preserved for the ages.

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I work in the call centers in the Department of Enrollment Services as my other job on campus. Until last week I kept getting the question “When can I register for the spring semester?” Well, last week Thursday enrollment dates were put up on every student’s PAWS account, and I was shocked when I saw that my sophomore self was set to enroll four days before open enrollment on Dec. 15.

Now here's the hitch: I work in Admissions. I have the ability to get an earlier registration date as one of the “perks” of the job. I know that doesn't sound fair, but when you have to get into really hard classes, and you have to be one of the first to add those classes or you’re screwed, it becomes an issue.

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