Politics abound: cafeteria food, the elections on tuesday, and my classes for next semester

First and foremost, the story behind the cafeteria food. For those of you who aren't on the Florence campus, or who don't eat here, let's just say that I'm not the type to complain, and for me to be complaining about the food here is a big statement. On tuesday, after getting absolutely fed up with the food here on campus, I decided to finally write and put into action the petition that I had promised my fellow roommates and students on campus to write. I wrote the whole thing in a day, and went around knocking on doors that night getting signatures. All in all, we were able to get 83 signatures out of the roughly 100 students on campus, with only two students who were asked to sign refusing to do so. So I think it was a general concensus that something had to be done about the food on campus. We were so successful in getting attention from the university community that it hit back home, and an article was published in the Washington Square News, NYU's newspaper. (You can see the article here, which is cool because it mentions me towards the end). Alexah Farah and I met on friday to discus what could be changed (within reason) and what could be added to the food to make it more tolerable. So hopefully in the next few days we'll see some drastic improvements in the quality and variety of the food here on campus.


That said, since this is a blog about politics, I would be a fool not to comment on the election results on Tuesday. For me, it's bittersweet: my home state, California, re-elected Arnold for Governor, which was definantly a good thing; but I'm afraid I can't say the same thing about the House or the Senate. Now, America, we have a psycho liberal left-wing extremist who is third in line to run our country: Nancy Pelosi. For those of you who had Coach Klein with me last year, you know the famous talks that he gave about Ms. Pelosi, and how he pointed out specifics about here that made it almost impossible for anyone in class to see any good qualities or values in her that could prove to be beneficial to the country as a whole. But ignorant America too busy with their own lives to care about politics followed the stance of the liberal, agenda-seeking, biased media and voted Democrat. I must say that the Republicans had their fair share of screw-ups, from Rush Limbaugh's attack on Michael J. Fox (I disagree with the way he worded what he had to say, but still think it carries some clout), to the Florida scandal, to Rumsfeld's handeling of the war in Iraq (which happens to be blamed solely on Bush by the liberal media, by the way). But these are all very personal problems, and if the american people would have taken a second to step back and to see this point, I think we would have had a very different outcome in the elections. But the bottom line is that the decision has been made, there's no changing it now. I just hope the people realize that they elected the party, especially in the house, that is in a phase of radical extremism behind Pelosi, and the power they trusted them with to completely devalue and screw up our country. Can't wait until 2008!

And lastly, my registration for next semester is a little complicated. I've decided not to take Italian next semester, as I have already taken 4 years of Spanish in high school and can test out of the language requirement for NYU's CAS next year. So in its place, I've decided to take a rigorous poli sci course, "European Union Policies and Politics" taught by one of the two original professors here at the Florence campus, Roberto D'Alimonte. He is the main contact for any political news for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and his class isn't offered back at the NYC campus. So I've decided to include that information in my petition that I have to write to our dean, explaining to him that a) I can indeed place out of the language requirement and b) I have significant reasons why I want to take this particular course in place of the Italian class.

So, bottom line, my life has been filled with politics and the political processes involved with them lately, and I'm loving it.