Apparently, spending $50,000 a year on a Boston University education is not what it used to be. The notion that graduating students have given up looking for jobs is shocking, but so is the sorry state of the national job market.

I walk by the Dexter Park apartment complex for the first time ever. As a proud inhabitant of Allston, I normally don't ever head far enough south on Pleasant Street to gaze upon the wonder that is Dexter.

I didn't weep when Barack Obama was elected. I didn't go to Urban Outfitters and pay $30 for that famous 'Obamicon' shirt. However, am I enraged that Obama is the 44th President?

The Boston University Student Union may not have had an action-packed fall semester, but Monday's General Assembly meeting reminded students that their Union is loaded with something almost as valuable: cash. BU and many of its students are feeling the financial pinch during this time of economic crisis, but it is apparent that the Union has no such problems.

Many organizations describe themselves as 'Equal Opportunity Employers,' and job applicants take comfort in knowing they are judged on their qualifications alone, without fear of discrimination. Some employers, however, have decided that keeping smokers out of the workplace is now an acceptable form of discrimination. This act of determining what employees can and can't do in their personal lives is unfair, and should be halted.

'K, update: I got a wink from ClownsRreal and an email from someone named Possums4. This is clearly not going the way I'd hoped.'

Last Tuesday marked the end of an error, I mean an era, and the beginning of a new one. Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States, capping what had been a long and often contentious journey that began nearly two years ago.

After a fall semester with varying degrees of success on its major initiatives, the Boston University Student Union has chosen to begin this semester with a new approach to the biweekly General Assembly meetings.

There are few things more difficult than having to tell your partner that you may have given them a sexually transmitted disease. Some decide that it is just too difficult, and do not tell their past partners at all, putting them in serious medical danger.

Here's some disturbing news: a recent poll showed that only 82 percent of American toddlers could properly differentiate between Pegasus (the winged horse who served Hercules) and a unicorn (a horse with a horn atop its head which many speculate is, in fact, magical).

President Obama has not yet been in office for a full week, but already he has signaled, through a series of executive orders and memorandums, that his presidency will completely reverse the course of the previous administration.

So change happened last week, right? Massive paradigm shift: empire stricken back, beginning of a new hope. If you look online, you'll find Barack Obama action figures that come with '-'- get this '-'- a light saber.