Gay marriage proponents may have suffered a setback last November when Californians voted to define marriage as between a man and a woman, but the struggle for marriage equality has momentum once again. On Tuesday, the Vermont legislature voted to override Gov. Jim Douglas's veto as Vermont became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage.

Boston University students may have no trouble heading down to Student Health Services when think they are coming down with the flu, or to get that nasty bruise from broomball checked out, but when it comes to mental health, adolescents are not going to be as eager to seek help.

When I was accepted to Boston University four years ago, all I read of the letter was 'Congratulations Miss . . .' and then immediately posted the news on my MySpace and drove all of my high school textbooks into the arid Southern California desert and buried them alive.

When former Vice President Dick Cheney was in office, Americans, not just Republicans and conservatives, regularly fell to one knee as he walked by. So it should be no surprise that the nation shuddered when Cheney said that President Barack Obama had made the nation less safe.

In a news story Thursday ('Art collectors more interested in pieces' history, experts say,' page 1), it was incorrectly stated that Morag Kersel was a Department of State consulting archaeologist due to a reporting error. Kersel is a research associate with the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago.

After America spent eight years moving socially to the right under former President George W. Bush, the liberal backlash continues. The ruling from a federal judge that Plan B, the 'morning after pill,' can be sold without a prescription to 17-year-olds is a victory for women's rights. Conservative ideology should not be dictating how women determine what is right for their bodies.

On Monday, Staff Sgt. Phillip Meyers, killed on duty in Afghanistan, returned home to the United States for the last time. And for the first time since 1991, journalists and photographers were allowed to cover his casket's transfer from a military transport plane back to American soil.

ThingFight headquarters, located conveniently inside an active volcano below the Charles River, is home to activities you're better off not knowing about. Forbidden experiments to create a new animal more whimsical than a unicorn while at the same time more hilarious than a kitten dressed as a firefighter.

It seems to me that Republicans and Democrats alike are turning to the slippery slope of populism in order to reassure the public that they are, in fact, 'doing something' about the financial crisis.

Imagine if each stationary bike, treadmill and elliptical machine in the Fitness and Recreation Center used the friction created while you ran to charge your computer battery. Think of it - all those feet powering all those computers and all that energy going to a practical purpose. I wonder how much we'd save by simply unplugging our laptops from wall outlets.

Some say newspapers are a dying breed, but a sudden shutdown of The Boston Globe would shock even the most pessimistic of doomsayers. Fewer people are reading newspapers than before, but even so, it is hard to imagine that Boston, which has been home to The Globe since 1872, could call The Boston Herald its only major newspaper.

It's an issue that can have more devastating consequences than the economic downturn or even the results of the Iraqi conflict. North Korea's test launch of a long-range rocket on Saturday reminded the world that the nuclear threat has not gone away just because the Cold War is over or President Barack Obama has a good global reputation.