When I first came to Queen’s, I was intrigued by the tradition and romance of it all—hearing bag pipes at random times around campus, the Band in their kilts, and especially the use of Gaelic.
Living in a residence called Ban Righ seemed something like living in a Scottish castle—until I went inside, that is. During Frosh Week and at Homecoming games, I enthusiastically donned my coveralls and sang the Oil Thigh.

When Frosh Week kicked off on Wednesday, the thundering of demolition work was barely audible over the cheers of first-years, led by their equally spirited frosh leaders, parading through campus. Although the noise and energy is typical of every year, close attention would soon have any upper-year at a loss for words—literally.

When I was 19, I spent the summer as an unpaid intern in Toronto, and my boyfriend moved in with me. It was more a matter of convenience than any romantic notion of eternal bliss. Unfortunately, we grossly underestimated the cost of living… and grossly overestimated his employability.

J.K. Rowling released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the much-beloved Harry Potter series, at midnight July 20. In 24 hours, world sales of the book topped 10 million copies as aficionados of all ages flocked to bookstores with an almost religious fervor.

Sites like Facebook should enact a policy that prevents the outside transfer of your personal information. But unless the YouTube generation votes against Internet privacy violations with their dollars and cents, Big Brother is here to stay.

In February, the University announced it was conducting an in-depth review of its athletics department. According to a Feb. 5 press release, the project was intended to “define what the Queen’s community expects of Athletics & Recreation at Queen’s.” Former Dean of Student Affairs and computing professor Bob Crawford, who led the review along with Dean of the School Graduate Studies and Research Janice Deakin, said the review would help the University define its “philosophy of sport.” The review’s original deadline was March 30.

The year I turned 16, my parents decided that something had to be done about the unsettling notion of their daughter behind the wheel. They figured that if I ever got into an accident, everything would be okay if I had a cell phone. Apparently they hadn’t noticed the growing number of drivers swerving across the roadways in their attempts to steer while juggling their bite-sized cell phones.

On May 19, Vancouver police officers contacted Anti-Poverty Coalition member David Cunningham, claiming to be journalists for the commuter paper 24 Hours and requesting an interview. Cunningham met them, whereupon they arrested him for threats he made to members of Vancouver’s Olympic Games organizing committee. This impersonation of journalists by police officers is a frightening and appalling abuse of power. A journalist’s role is predicated in large part on trust: it’s the journalist’s job to be open in establishing a relationship with a subject and a reader.

As graduate and professional enrolment (law in particular) increases, pushing this campus towards a mixture of nearly one-third graduate students, the need for student representation is obvious to all involved. Unfortunately, the current representational structure—made up of the ill-equipped and poorly run Society for Graduate and Professional Studies (SGPS)—has failed to meet the needs of current graduate students, much less those to come.

When I was in high school, I imagined university the way I had seen it in movies and on TV: playing Frisbee on the lawn in front of the library; walking across a green, grassy commons talking about Foucault with my articulate, bookish friends.

The AMS should think twice before passing silly motions aimed to protect students who throw illegal parties and are deluded into believing they have privacy rights on Facebook.

In a few short weeks, my five-year Queen’s career will finally limp to a close. I’ll have a three-year degree, the possible beginnings of an incredibly low-paying but satisfying career completely unrelated to said degree, financial independence and something a lot of students don’t have when they graduate: their virginity.

Commerce students are required to take a certain number of elective credits in arts and science. An arts and science student can expect to pay $517.63 in course fees for a half-credit arts and science course; however, the same course requires commerce students to shell out $1,019.93. Evidently, extra funds are required of business students to cover the costs of certain amenities afforded to them as members of the commerce faculty; however, these costs should be part of their student fees rather than added to the price of arts and science courses.