Every semester when we pay our tuition, a huge chunk of the money we plop down goes to food services. Approximately 20 percent of what we pay per year goes to Sodexo. This doesn’t seem like much, until you take a closer look at the true nature of the fees. More than half of the charges that we incur as students are based in “service costs,” which supposedly allow us to pay wholesale cost for our meals. According to BU Dining Services, under the basic meal plan, which many residents pick, we pay just over $2,000 and are given $842…

Every new semester begins painfully. If you return the previous semester’s textbooks something never seems right — how did hundreds of dollars of paper devolve into $10 so quickly? Thankfully the government is looking out for student interests, and this upcoming July, a federal law will reflect that. While many books can be purchased online, there often isn’t enough time to get something ordered and shipped before the start of the semester. And even though some professors post the required readings in the description of the course, it doesn’t seem like that is the case for more than a quarter…

Last Friday, right before 6 o’clock in the morning, a White House phone rang. Much to Hillary’s disappointment (probably), the voice on the other end of the line alerted President Barack Obama that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. As he had only been in office nine months, I think he was about as surprised as me. According to the Nobel Prize Committee, Obama was given such a high honor “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” I’m not questioning his ability to eventually deliver on this statement. However, right now, I’m not so…

Last week I was approached on campus by a member of the Sierra Club and asked to sign a petition in order to change the nature of our energy production. Before this encounter, I hadn’t really given much thought to what provided the energy for our school, just that we were relatively good at conserving it. Immediately after signing the petition, I began to think about the likelihood of making such a huge change. Many attainable environmental goals have already been reached, if you take a look around the campus. You can see electric service vehicles humming by everywhere, and…