I have this mental image of myself walking out of The Sun Star office in slow motion after the last issue hits newsstands and pumping my first in the air, set to a soundtrack that makes everyone sigh in relief.  OK, so, my life is not “The Breakfast Club,” but once all is said and done, everything is packed up and the keys are turned in, I will definitely be letting out a sigh of relief.

Someone once told me Editor-in-Chief is one of the hardest jobs on campus.  I guess I’m coming at it with a little bit of bias, but I’d believe it.  The late nights of trying and failing to catch all the errors, dealing with all the haters out there who want to see The Sun Star fail, working with a woefully inadequate budget and getting the small staff of reporters and photographers to get their work done wore me out this year.

I’m going into finals week exhausted and a little bit broken down.  But that doesn’t make me special at all.  Like everyone else, I’m just here to learn and that can be a bit painful at times.

We say The Sun Star is here to inform the students.  It is, we are.  But here’s a secret: we’re also here for ourselves.  The thing I love the most about The Sun Star is that it’s this place where anyone who wants to learn how to write articles or take pictures can show up and get some good practice and help.  I tell people you’ll learn more at the paper than you will in any journalism class, but I think that depends on what kind of a student you are.  But you can definitely learn as much here as you can in some of your courses.  And we pay you for it.

I love helping reporters figure out how to put their story together when they’re having trouble, or working with photographers who are struggling to figure out how to take good news photos.  I love seeing how excited new freelancers get about seeing their story or photo on the cover, knowing that they put in the hard work to get to that point.

So, I guess all the toner and tears were worth it in the end.

Next week, we’re packing up and moving out of the office.  The Wood Center office suite is going to turn into a coffee shop, and in turn all the organizations that operate out of these offices are getting shuffled around to other parts of the university.  Student Activities and Outdoor Adventures are going up to one of the houses on Copper Lane.  The Wood Center staff is being moved into some basement offices in the Wood Center.  The Sun Star is moving into the ASUAF Senate Chambers for the time being, with plans for permanent office space still up in the air.

This is the last issue, and also an end of an era for The Sun Star.

A month ago, when the Supreme Court was weighing in on the Defense of Marriage Act, my Facebook feed was awash in red and pink equal signs.  Depending on the political opinions of your online friends, yours probably was to.  Surveying my newsfeed last Saturday night, I saw one errant red equal sign left.

This is the age of empirical kids, said columnist David Brooks in a recent opinion piece for the New York Times.  Online activism, a feel-good but disengaged response, is just one of many results of the world we’ve grown up in.

We’re almost sure our immediate post-grad life is going to suck, if pop culture is any indication.  Brooks says it will “probably bear a depressing resemblance to Hannah Horvath’s world on ‘Girls.’”  And Macklemore’s hit ‘Thrift Shop’?  It’s “less a fashion statement, more a looming financial reality” Brooks said.

The last decade and a half of economic instability, war and tragedy have given us front row seats to failing efforts to fix things.  We’re not as idealistic.  We don’t like the system, but we’re wary of the alternatives.  Brooks calls us empirical kids, the only thing left post-hippie, yuppie and hipster.  We have a “tendency to dismiss other more ethical and idealistic vocabularies that seem fuzzy and, therefore, unreliable,” Brooks said.

I disagree.

So do Haley Cohen and Howard Dean who wrote a response to Brooks’ piece in the Huffington Post.  Instead of calling us empirical kids, they call us first globals, as in the first generation of kids to grow up in a global world.

Yes, we don’t have as much faith in governments and other institutions to effect change.  But this disillusionment hasn’t stopped today’s youth from trying to fix it, it’s just changed the way we go about it, the Huffington Post said.

Cohen and Dean say we’re the first generation to grow up thinking about shared fate.  Those of us that spent most of our lives completely immersed in today’s interconnected world are more focused than ever on what’s happening beyond our horizons.  The New York Times piece said we’re skeptical of the change institutions can effect.  I think that’s true, but it’s not holding us back from trying to fix things ourselves.

Take, for instance, Teach for America, the non-profit organization that recruits high-achieving college graduates to teach in low income schools around the U.S.  Between 2003 and 2011, the applicant base grew from 15,000 to 48,000.  Teach for America alumni are now bringing their own solutions and skills to inner city schools.

Even online activism, misguided though I feel it is, represents the urge to change something in a positive way.

Last weekend, the SpringFest service crew had one of the higher turnouts they’ve had in years, even though the temperatures on Friday morning were hovering around 20 degrees and a good portion of the trash volunteers were trying to pick up was actually frozen to the ground.

Does this sound like a generation deadened by “data analysis” and “opportunity costs”?  Not to me.

Journalists are in the business of telling important stories–often sad ones.  This was a week full of sad stories.

Starting on Monday with the horrific Boston Marathon bombings, the week quickly dissolved into rumors, chaos and hurt that made all of it worse. We’re a nation who’s history has been irreparably damaged by all the tragedy we’ve seen in recent years, but one who can still feel pain.

I started this editorial by googling “good news in the world.”  Not much turned up.  There was a website with an overwhelmingly neon design saying they were dedicated to positive, compelling stories and a top 10 list of good things that happened in the past week from a Time Magazine blog.  There was also a Buzzfeed article listing the 36 absolute best things in the world, including dipping your hand into a bag of uncooked rice and wearing shorts for the first time after winter ends.

There’s this saying for broadcast journalists: if it bleeds it leads.  Somehow this became the mantra of the mass media, and it’s not like there’s a dearth of tragic news to cover. According to Psychology Today, bad news outweighs good news by as many as 17 negative reports to every positive piece.

A professor at University of California Irvine studied the effects of graphic images after 9/11 and the Iraq War.  According to the Atlantic, the study found that people who watched more than four hours of TV coverage a day in the weeks following both tragedies reported PTSD symptoms.  There’s no benefits whatsoever to repeatedly looking at horrific images, according to the UC Irvine professor.

We’re fascinated by tragedy, but in reality we crave positivity.  There was a popular graphic being shared this week quoting Mr. Rogers saying, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”

Mixed in the incorrect accusations and the constant updates on the police chase and Boston lock down, there were stories of people helping each other.  Good ol’ Mr. Rogers is still looking out for our well-being.

A British marathoner who had been training for the Boston Marathon for two years had just crossed the finish line when she heard the explosions.  She then ran another mile–after the previous 26.2 miles–to carry her daughter to safety, the BBC said.

When the race was diverted away from the finish line, people along the route brought out water and food for the tired, cold, scared runners.  Boston residents offered the racers blankets, jackets, money and food, said boston.com.

According to Boston Magazine, the day after the bombings Boston residents organized treks along the marathon route to honor and support the victims.  The Boston Marathon is the oldest annual marathon in the world at 117 years old, and Bostonians aren’t letting this tragedy stop it.

This weekend, the Sun Star staff traveled to Anchorage for the annual Alaska Press Club conference.  It’s been a newspaper tradition for a while here, and as usual it was a great experience learning from both old and young journalists in the field.  One of the presenters was Ann Friedman, a journalist I really admire.  Friedman used to be the executive editor of GOOD and she said this weekend that working there made her realize people really have an appetite for positive stories.

Just because journalists are in the business of telling stories doesn’t mean they all have to be sad ones.  A while back, I told a friend that I wanted to grow up to be the NPR World Hope Correspondent.  It was a joke, but I think the world needs more coverage of, as Mr. Rogers put it, the helpers.

About a month ago, I managed to secure some funding to attend the regional Society of Professional Journalists conference. And last weekend, I got to go to Spokane, Wash. and bring home some first place awards for The Sun Star.

The year is quickly ending. The Sun Star Publication Board just selected next year’s Editor-in-Chief. Congratulations are in order for Lakeidra Chavis, the current copy editor. I feel confident leaving the paper in her more than capable hands.

This job can feel like constantly treading water. Getting to compare notes with other student journalists in Spokane this weekend on tips and tricks from a multitude of different campus papers reminded me that all the water you end up choking on is totally worth it.

It’s bittersweet to start wrapping up my year as editor (especially because there’s not enough time to implement the plan I came up with this weekend to introduce regular video coverage to the Sun Star’s website).

Every editor complains about the long hours, apathetic student body and well-meaning-but-sometimes-troublesome staff. Across the board of other student newspaper reporters and editors I talked to, it was the same story: Long weekend hours, a budget right on the line and a testy student government. I could have sworn they were talking about UAF.

But across the board, everyone in this position does it because they think it’s worth it.

If SPJ’s Northwest conference did anything, it got me jazzed up about student journalism. The conference itself has some fascinating panels and discussions, but connecting with students in the same position as myself really helped to put what we do at the Sun Star in perspective.

And by far the most rewarding part of my job is watching reporters and photographers get better at what they do.

If you’re a regular Sun Star reader you know what I’m talking about. The freshman reporters that show up in the office every week and turn something in? Yeah, give them a semester’s worth of publishing work and all of sudden they’re starting to get really good.

I’m a journalism student, but most of the staff of the Sun Star is not. Interestingly enough, that’s the way it usually works out.

We’ve all been students for a while. The way this whole education thing works is that you get to study your field from the safety of a classroom without ever having to cover your hands with newspaper toner. We discuss idealistic newsrooms in my classes sometimes, taking an hour to decide why we would not use this specific example of bad writing in our paper.

What I like about working at the Sun Star is that it’s gritty and imperfect and real. It gives me a place to make mistakes. So yeah, sometimes I run the bad writing.

In my opinion, the whole reason student organizations exist is to give interested students an outlet. Passionate about social action? Nice, join a LIVE office program. Think music is cool? Sweet, volunteer at KSUA. Aspiring writer or photographer? Well, that’s where I can help you. This is where you can learn.

The weekend’s conference reminded me of all of this. Well, that, plus, I learned a lot about the importance of video content.

Both UAA and UAF announced plans to build engineering buildings on their respective campuses earlier this year.  The groundbreaking for the new building at UAF occurred on Mar. 30, the section of road behind Duckering and Bunnell was shut down and the East Bunnell parking lot was closed last week.  Construction is set to begin soon, except–and here’s the thing–UAF doesn’t have the money for the building.

UAF’s engineering building will cost $108.5 million to complete.  While the university has secured some of the funds, they were relying on funding from the legislature to pay for the rest of the project.  The Senate Finance Committee released their budget last Thursday, which did not include money for the engineering buildings at UAF or UAA.  Sen. Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage, said there wasn’t room in the $2 billion budget for the partially funded engineering building, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

UAF intends for the new building to accommodate their rapidly expanding engineering college.  The building will cover 120,000 square feet and add 40 new laboratories among other facilities, according to the UAF College of Engineering and Mines website.

You know, if it happens.

“It’s not over ’till it’s over,” said Chancellor Brian Rogers, according to the News-Miner.  And generally, that seems to be the approach the university is adopting.

The current plan is to continue construction on the building until the money runs out, which will probably be by the end of the year, according to an University of Alaska email update on Apr. 3.  Administration at UAF hopes the continuing construction will put pressure on the legislature to fund the project, according to project manager Cameron Wohlford.  The building is tentatively scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.

As an average, tuition-paying student at UAF, I have to say that this sounds like a crazy plan.  Granted I don’t play in politics, I’m not an engineering student vying for lab time and I’m skeptical of pretty much all construction ideas put forth by the administration at this school, but this just seems like a bad reason to close down that stretch of road for what will probably turn into an indefinite amount of time.

This legislature has been reluctant to do almost anything useful, particularly fund education, and we’re going to attempt to force their bluff with a half-way constructed building?  Umm, OK.  I mean, millions of dollars could come through in an amended capital budget at the very last minute.  The university has until April 15 until things are set in stone, so I guess we’ll see.

And if UAF doesn’t get any funding from this legislative session, we can always ask again next year.  Delaying funding will just increase the cost of the project, according to Chancellor Rogers.

It would be nice to see UAF spend money on, say, improving academic advising at the university–something that would probably help the graduation rate.  Or renovating some of the dorms.  For example, Wickersham Hall, which experienced some spontaneous combustion during the recent power outage, or Moore Hall, which is literally falling down to the point that the building is leaning so much that some of the windows have shattered from the pressure.

In the meantime, I guess UAF will start a project that will inevitably turn into one more halfway constructed thing around campus next year.  Speaking as a Cutler resident who didn’t have access to a parking lot until well into the fall semester due to construction, these stalled projects actually affect our lives.

I wish I didn’t have to write this editorial, but after watching the coverage of the Steubenville Rape case we all need to ask ourselves: What the hell is wrong with our culture?

Last Sunday, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond were found guilty of raping a drunk, unconscious 16-year-old girl, while it was being filmed and tweeted about.  This case has been troubling from the beginning when the victim was passed out and passed around in front of a group of peers who did nothing to put a stop to it to the news coverage after the trial when the mainstream media expressed how sad it is to see the rapists’ futures ruined.

Earlier this year, The Sun Star ran a humor column written under a pseudonym called “My Life in College: The pitfalls of a karaoke bar.”  The piece followed the writer’s Saturday night adventure at a bar in Fairbanks. The column received numerous letters to the editor and comments sticking up for or questioning the columnist’s choices.  The debate was started by Kayla Harrison, an engineering student, who raised several valuable points in a letter  published on Oct. 9.  However, it quickly devolved into comments such as Jon Hochendoner saying ”women love attention from douchebags” and insinuating that the author of the column could benefit from a man in her life in a subsequent letter on Oct. 16.

This is all a part of rape culture.

And Moral Mildred was just talking about a regrettable hangover and some cringe-worthy details of too much drinking at a sleazy bar.  For that column, she got weeks worth of sexist letters and comments.  In Steubenville, victim blaming has been expressed from nobodies on Twitter to reporters on national television.

In December, the news of a 23-year-old woman who was brutally gang raped in India dominated the media.  American news outlets rightfully criticized India’s government and the rape culture that pervades their society.  Why haven’t we been able to do that here?  Instead, this story has been mangled from the beginning with the blame discussed as if it was negotiable.  It’s not.  It was the rapists’ fault.

It’s also the fault of rape culture.  We throw around “no means no” a lot, but it should really be: anything that’s not yes means no.

Our culture rationalizes sexism, from telling women to just brush off sexual advances in the work place to telling girls at a party to feel complimented when a guy rates your body on a scale from one to 10.  This stuff is so institutionalized that any woman who didn’t find that “We Saw Your Boobs” song performed at the Oscars particularly funny is considered uptight for example.  I didn’t and I was.  These widely-held ideas are the building blocks of a culture that unintentionally condones rape.

In 2010, the UAA Justice Department conducted a survey on domestic violence against women in Alaska.  In Fairbanks, 45 percent of women reported they had experienced domestic abuse.  Let’s do some simple math.  In an average intro class of 40 people, assuming half of the class is female, nine of the women sitting in the same room as you have likely been abused.

I’m a sensible person, more of a homebody than a party girl, a relatively modest dresser.  By rape culture’s definition, I’m not asking for it.  I should have nothing to worry about.  But I work late every Sunday, and I make sure I walk home quickly with my head down.

Last week, one of my classes got cancelled and I was happy to spend some time in the sunshine on campus.  Last week in Iran, a Civil Engineering student was expelled from her university because of her religious beliefs.

Paniz Fazl-Ali was asked to declare her religion on university forms and wrote she was a member of the Baha’i Faith, according to the Guardian.  The following week, Fazl-Ali went to go check her exam results and discovered she had been expelled from her university.

This is the sad situation for Baha’is, the largest religious minority group in Iran, where Islam is the official religion of the state.  Other religious groups–Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians–are tolerated, but Baha’is are denied basic human rights.

Fazl-Ali and I have a few things in common.  We both grew up in Baha’is families, an upbringing that put an emphasis basic Baha’i principles like equality of men and women, harmony of science and religion and a belief in one God.  But unlike Fazl-Ali’s family, my dad left Iran in the late ‘70s.  I’ve grown up unrestricted.  Fazl-Ali has not.

The Baha’i Faith is a world religion founded in Iran in the mid-1800′s.  Baha’is believe in progressive revelation, or the idea that all the major prophets have come from the same God bringing the same message to humanity at different times.  In Iran, the Islamic government considers these beliefs heresy because they believe Mohammad is the last prophet.  They also falsely believe that Baha’is are zionist spies because the world center of the Baha’i Faith is in Israel.

Since 2004, 600 Baha’is have been arrested for no particular reason–among them my cousin, who was arrested in 2007 for teaching a Baha’i children’s class.  Haleh Rouhi was arrested with a group of 54 Baha’is.  Most of them were released after a few days.  Haleh and two others were held in jail for a few years.

“It’s mind-boggling that the government of Iran would consider such efforts to be any type of threat,” said Diane Ala’i, the representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations in Geneva in 2008.

And yet, the government of Iran does consider these efforts and individuals to be threats.

Baha’is have been formally denied access to higher education since 1981, said the Baha’i World News Service.  Iran’s government actually instructs universities to kick all their Baha’i students out, according to a memo leaked in 2006, said the Guardian.

Baha’is in Iran seeking education turned to other measures.  In 1987, the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education was founded.  BIHE is essentially an underground university.  They offer correspondence courses and classes that can be taught in an individual’s home in a variety of subjects from Persian Literature to Applied Chemistry.  Many schools in the United States and around the world–UC Berkeley, Harvard and Stanford to name but a few–recognize diplomas from the BIHE and accept BIHE students into their graduate programs.

Given its nature, the BIHE has suffered from many raids throughout its history.  The most recent raid happened in May 2011.  BIHE teachers from several cities were imprisoned and sentenced to four or five years in jail.  They are currently among over 100 unjustly imprisoned Baha’is in Iran, according to the U.S. Baha’i News Service.

These gross injustices have been going on for over 100 years, but they only seem to be getting worse.  In a recent article, the Washington Post said freedom was languishing for the Baha’is in Iran.  Since September, three mothers and their young babies were imprisoned, according to the Baha’i International News Service.

Right now, Baha’is around the world are observing the fast, a period of 19 days spent abstaining from food and drink between sunrise and sunset.  Like other religious fasts, the purpose is to become detached from material things and focus on spiritual growth.  The fast always reminds me of how much I take for granted.  Living in the West means I don’t have to worry about being denied education or fear imprisonment because of my religion like many of my relatives left in Iran do.  The best thing to do is raise awareness so one day Fazl-Ali and others like her can go back to school and back to their lives.

This weekend is Winter Carnival, the often forgotten Nanook Tradition of UAF.  But we haven’t forgotten about it this year, and you should be getting ready for a weekend of fun events and school spirit.

Winter Carnival starts on Thursday, Feb. 28 and lasts through Saturday, March 2.  The tradition is well known for the Governor’s Cup Hockey Games between UAF and UAA, but includes other events that celebrate winter.

This year, students can look forward to outdoor activities such as Ice Dodgeball, an Ice Climbing Competition and testing out their sweet moves at the newly opened Nanook Terrain Park, along with the insane display of school pride that comes out of the woodworks at the weekend’s hockey games against UAA.

Next year, UAF will join the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, so games against UAA will be more common than once a year.  This has students worried that this year’s Gov Cup is the last and whoever wins this tournament will get to keep the cup forever.  These are all rumors, assures Jamie Foland, the Alaska Nanooks Director of Media Relations.  The tournament will continue to be a well-loved UAF tradition.

The first recorded Winter Carnival in Fairbanks was in 1936, according to the Wood Center website, although less organized events to break up the never-ending winter in Fairbanks have been going on longer than that.  The celebration originally started out as a tradition in town, but was quickly picked up by students at the university. Students constructed a toboggan slide and rallied for their “Polar Bear” hockey team.

Celebrating the different Nanook Traditions has always been one of my favorite parts of UAF.  Springfest is usually everyone’s favorite, with warm weather, mud volleyball and the end of school in sight.  And Starvation Gulch takes a close second because we get to watch a lot of stuff catch on fire.  But Winter Carnival has always been around to break up the monotony right as winter starts to wear people down.

UAF’s traditions are around to remind us that we’re part of the greater community and history of this campus.  Nearly 85 years ago, UAF students were building a toboggan slide and cheering on their hockey team, and today we’re opening up our recently completed terrain park and rallying for the Nanooks this weekend.

ASUAF Vice President Dillon Ball, a good friend, once remarked to me that many of the things ASUAF does right now are the same things they’ve been doing forever.  Variations on the same pieces of legislation and discussions of the same issues are apparent throughout ASUAF’s history.  And on the same page, The Sun Star has been writing the same stories for decades.  An examination of the paper from the late 70s proved that recently.

Between the Ice Dodgeball games and the Ice Climbing competition, this year’s Winter Carnival looks like it’s going to keep UAF’s tradition of mid-winter fun alive.  Enjoy the weekend and go Nooks!

It seems like UAF just keeps announcing plans for new buildings.  So what exactly is going to be built, knocked down or relocated?  And what’s happening this spring and what’s in the works for the future?  Here’s the breakdown.

First of all, the Life Sciences Building was recently named the Margaret Murie building by the UA Board of Regents.  The project has been talked about for years, and the funding for construction was received in November 2010.  Construction started early that spring, and the building will open in the fall for classes.

Additionally, UAF is planning on constructing another new academic building.  Both UAA and UAF have plans for new engineering buildings on their respective campuses.  According to the Anchorage Daily News, UAF’s engineering college has nearly doubled in size since 2006, however staff, faculty and students have been working out of the same offices and classrooms since 1964.

UAF’s new engineering building will be behind Duckering and Bunnell, where there is currently a parking lot.  The three buildings will be connected to one another, and construction started this October when some utilities were moved.  Groundbreaking is scheduled for March 1, according to the News-Miner, but could be delayed at both UAA and UAF if the legislature fails to approve funding for the project.

Renovations to the Wood Center are also being pushed to move forward as quickly as possibly.  Staff housed in the Wood Center Office Suites will be moved out the day after commencement when construction will begin.  The Wood Center will be remodeled to include more space in the upstairs dining area where there will be a full cafeteria for students will meal plans.  It is currently unclear where organizations in the Wood Center offices will go or what will happen to the Lola Tilly Commons.  Construction on the Wood Center should be finished by next December.

This is where we start getting into the more murky construction plans.

UAF recently announced plans for a new power plant.  The project manager submitted a request to the Legislature to design the plant, and expects it to be approved before April.  Once that happens, plans will be drawn up and a cost will be worked out, probably around $245 million, and UAF will approach the Legislature for money to replace the half-century old power plant.  A new plant is probably years out, but we’re moving in the right direction.

There are also plans floating around about building three new dorms on Copper Lane.  Nothing is very official about these dorms yet, they’re probably years and years out.  But UAF does need more on campus housing.  The future dorms will be connected to one another and the Wood Center, so students can walk to breakfast without walking outside.  It is currently unclear where the programs housed on Copper Lane will end up.

And finally, there are rumors floating around about eventually moving all of the student organizations into Constitution Hall.  When the cafeteria moves to the Wood Center, the Tilly will be vacant.  Hypothetically, the bookstore will move down to the Commons, and ASUAF and The Sun Star will move above the post office.  This tidbit is based purely on eavesdropping on important-sounding conversations, but the original intention was that Constitution Hall would be a building specifically for student organizations.

Regardless, all of these plans are going to take time and patience.  One thing we can confirm is that it’s going to be a frustrating summer to be on campus with all the construction going on.

This weekend, I had the opportunity to travel to Juneau to attend the Alaska chapter of the Northwest Returnee Conference on Education Abroad. NWRC is hosted in Portland, Ore. every year, and this year the study abroad directors at the UAF, UAA and UAS campuses held an Alaskan version in Juneau, inviting former exchange students from around the state to talk about their experiences abroad.

The focus of the conference was to reflect on experiences abroad and learning how to make it a valuable part of your life after coming home, rather than compartmentalizing the few months of culture, language and adventure. From the outside, it seems like that wouldn’t be a huge problem, since most study abroad experiences end up being incredibly important. But since I’ve been home from Jordan, I haven’t spent that much time reflecting on my year overseas. After about a month of being home, the stories got old and school started got busy and then suddenly I had been home for eight months.

Less than two percent of college students study abroad during their time at university. And I get it: it’s expensive, it will put you behind in school and, oh man, it’s an emotional roller coaster from the second you decide to go until months after you come back.

Before I left on exchange, I was prepped about the four stages of settling into a new culture: the honeymoon phase, where everything is new and wonderful; the culture shock phase, where everything is frustrating and tough to figure out; the acceptance phase, where you finally start to understand what’s going on where you’re living; and the assimilation phase, where you start to get it.

What no one told me is that coming back is the same. At first it was nice to be back in the states where no one yelled rude things at me in Arabic and I didn’t have to wait for the hot water heater to warm up enough to shower and there were no surprise marriage proposals at the store. But after a few weeks, it was tough to be back in Alaska. And then life got busy, and I just accepted that I was at UAF again, editing the paper, hanging out in the Wood Center and going to classes on lower campus.

This weekend during NWRC, I finally felt like I started to assimilate.

In Jordan, the assimilation happened close to the end of my semester. I had been working at a Palestinian refugee camp teaching English, and when I was walking to the bus stop one of my students ran up to me and gave me a note written in beautiful broken English that we had been working on together.

It’s easy to accept where you are, to tolerate and understand it.  But it’s tougher to feel like you belong in a place.

I talked about Jordan more this weekend than I have in the last eight months. There were about 30 of us that showed up in Juneau with a myriad of experiences, and we did nothing but reminisce. And something about talking through it all cemented something for me that’s been floating unattached since June.

One of the first sessions at NWRC was practicing your ‘elevator speech,’ the short spiel you give to someone when they ask you how your time abroad was and they want to hear more than ‘great’ but less than your life story.  We practiced with three different partners, and all three times almost everyone went over the time limit.  And maybe this was the point of NWRC and maybe it wasn’t, but hearing so many different introductions of so many different experiences made me realize the value of being a returned student: the storytelling.

This past Sunday, millions of people hung out eating nachos and watching the Super Bowl.  At the same time, thousands of women were paraded around the United States by sex-traffickers.

Super Bowl Sunday is known as the largest human trafficking incident in the United States.  Around 10,000 prostitutes were brought to Miami for the Super Bowl in 2010, according to Forbes.  Girls as young as 12 are thrust cruelly into adulthood every year during this weekend to make Super Bowl Sunday that much more of a party.

Clemmie Greenlee was expected to have sex with anywhere from 25 to 5o men a day, said Times-Picayune.  “If you don’t make that number (of sex customers), you’re going to dearly, dearly, severely pay for it,” Greenlee said.  “I mean with beatings, I mean with over and over rapings.  With just straight torture.”

Two years ago, men were arrested for looking for 14-year-old prostitutes on Craigslist, and this year isn’t looking to be any different.  By Friday, Feb. 3, eight human-trafficking related arrests had been made in New Orleans, said the Huffington Post.

It’s not really fair to pick on the Super Bowl exclusively.  It’s easy to make a case about it, since the prostitution rings surrounding the event can be grossly flagrant, but many large sporting events attract sex trafficking.  In fact, small sporting events attract sex trafficking as well.  Actually, even when there’s nothing going on, sex trafficking can be found.  The free world has an ugly underbelly that isn’t, well, quite so free.

The world still has a lot of slavery in it.  SlaveryFootprint.org is a website that lets users take a survey to determine how many slaves work for you.  “But they’re reputable brands!  If they were running sweatshops, Oprah would be all over it,” their FAQ page reads, predicting your shocked response.  It’s not necessarily the brand, said SlaveryFootprint.org, a lot of it is in the supply chain.

The survey asks users where they’re from, what cell phone they own, what food they eat and an assortment of other questions to determine roughly how many slaves work for you.  It’s fairly comprehensive and I imagine soberingly accurate.  I’ve sent the survey around to friends and family to see just how everyone I know stacks up, and the results range from the high 20′s to the low 40′s.  When I took it, SlaveryFootprint.org informed me that 38 slaves worked for me.  The culprit for my high number?  Cotton underwear.

That’s something I never would have expected.  One of the best ways to put a stop to human trafficking is to be informed about it.  The UAF club Nanook Trafficking Jam seeks to inform students about human trafficking and holds fundraisers to donate money to efforts to stop it.  The club meets in the Honors House every Sunday night and more information can be found on their facebook page.

It’s tough to get numbers on human trafficking, since it’s an under-reported crime.  But in 2011, the FBI said that New Orleans was in a prime location for transport of slaves, strategically between Texas and Mississippi.  Not much news has come out yet about the sex trafficking at this year’s Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t women being traded for their bodies during the beer commercials.

The leadership of The Sun Star changes every year and subsequently the paper tends to reflect the inevitable change of editors.  Sometimes these changes are drastic and sometimes they’re hardly noticeable.

Since the newspaper began, there has been a variety of different takes on The Sun Star, from the paper heralding itself as the last standing bastion of good university reporting in the UA system to 12-page issues of nothing but columns.  Since I’ve been at UAF, the paper has maintained a similar look and feel, with an emphasis on solid reporting and producing a standard paper.

When I took over as editor, I wanted to keep that up.  I’d like to think that we’ve been serious about our responsibility as a student newspaper this year.  But not so serious that we skip over the fun parts of being a student paper, so there have also been reviews, humor columns and a few bizarre stories about cursed stones and yarn bombed trees for you.

Despite constant staff turnover, the one thing that The Sun Star will always be is a newspaper, though our print contract has left us looking more like a tabloid magazine the last few years.

Mid-year we can’t do much about that, but we can switch things up for a much-needed update. In an effort to make The Sun Star look like a valid newspaper, we’ve updated the look of our cover.  There’s more white space, headlines that you can actually read and the same enticing Sun Star goodness as always.

We’re also going to start running student-submitted photos in every issue.  I know that there are a bunch of hipster artsy aspiring photographers on this campus, and yet the Sun Star only employs around five regular photographers.  If you think you took a sweet shot, email it to uafstudentphoto@gmail.com with your name, major and a short caption and we’ll run it in the paper.

Other than these two updates, The Sun Star we’re bringing you this semester will be reassuringly similar to the one you’ve been getting all year with the same weird entries in the police blotter and useful ASUAF updates.

Meanwhile, life goes on and UAF keeps making news.  There are officially plans in the works for a new power plant, along with a plethora of construction projects despite the fact that the university’s budget is getting smaller, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.  Since the Student Recreation Center moved broomball back inside for another $27 season, less than 20 people signed up to play which created a schedule of merely one expensive game of broomball per week.  And despite the administration’s assertions that the terrain park would be open by the end of the holiday break, it isn’t.

The Sun Star will bring you news about all of this and more this semester.  Let us know what you think of our new cover design, send us your hipster pictures, email us story submissions and let us know how you feel about what the paper does in general.  We’re your student newspaper, so we’re here for you.  What do you want to see on these pages?

The Sun Star salary database project was started in May 2011.  It launched on The Sun Star website at the end of December 2011.  It’s a noble project, but I’m not sure it’s working.

Student organizations are interesting because the leadership changes yearly.  Sometimes there’s a lot of overlap between a Sun Star editor, an ASUAF president, a KSUA general manager and their successor and sometimes there’s none at all.

Because of this lack of consistent leadership, big projects are hard to sustain from year to year, most of the time.  The salary database may be one of those projects.

The database requires that The Sun Star have someone around that understands the way that the database works.  It requires that we get the information for the database into certain formats and understand the coding behind it.  Basically, it’s complicated and there needs to be someone around that can always understand it.  That’s a lot to ask.

The salary database was created to disperse information.  All the information in the salary database is public information, and The Sun Star’s goal was to make that information accessible to the public.  The former Editor-in-Chief Heather Bryant said “all knowledge is worth having,” and true to her convictions, she created the salary database from scratch and made it public.

When the database was launched it created some stir   There were angry letters, appreciative emails and a lot of traffic to the website.  It’s a project that got noticed, and one that I’ve seen linked to and used in a few ways since I’ve taken over the paper.

But the way I’ve most seen it used is basically a party trick.  Students dislike a professor and they want to see how much they make for the work that student doesn’t appreciate.

A journalist’s job is to interpret data.  The database itself is a data dump.  We can see how much Chancellor Brian Rogers’ salary is, but we don’t have any context to it.  For example, Rogers matches the total amount taken in from the sustainability fee each semester from his personal funds.  We don’t get that from a flat number.  We just see a six figure salary and feel disgruntled for being accused of living extravagantly by UA President Pat Gamble while we struggle to pay for textbooks.

The database provides important information.  It should be available and accessible to those who want to know.  It should be easy for curious citizens to compare salaries of male and female professors of the same rank.  Having access to information is the foundation for a well-functioning and honest community.

But is it the Sun Star’s job to provide that service?  It took me a semester to finally pull together an effort to update the database.  I solicited help from others outside the Sun Star that had the skill set to do the work, and I’m not sure a future editor will have those same connections.

The way I see it, as a newspaper we are here to interpret the database not provide it.

For now, the database is updated with the most current information available.  The bugs that prevented certain searches in the database last year are gone, and for another semester, at least, it’s there to peruse when you get out of a particularly worthless class.

Correction 12/4: I said Chancellor Rogers’ matches the Sustainability Fee with his personal funds.  He actually does it from institutional funds that he controls.  However, Rogers says that he makes regular personal contributions to the university, primarily to a scholarship program aimed at financially needy juniors and seniors.

Occasionally reporters approach me with a story about a club or an organization or an event that they really want to write an article about.  And then I find out that they’re a member of the organization or they’re putting together the event.  It’s just standard journalism ethics not to let people report on things they are involved with.  The reporter is too close to the story to have any perspective.

It’s the same with UAF.  Sometimes I think we’re all too close to this university–slogging through endless assignments and frigid days–to have any perspective.

Last week, a few friends from UAA came up to campus for the UA Scholars Reception.  On Thursday, I met up with them in the afternoon to catch up and show them parts of our campus.

We spent an hour walking around the Wood Center, and it was the first time I’d seen the Wood Center with new eyes since I was 15.

The Wood Center sometimes smells strongly of cheap sushi and the Taco Bell always runs out of cheese, but it’s the center of campus life and community at UAF.  It’s always filled with students in the multi-level lounge, upstairs, in the crow’s nest or just walking through to warm up.  Our student union is full of life.

All things considered, UAF has a great welcoming community and enough campus life to keep a majority of students occupied throughout the winter.  I think that’s the point of the new marketing campaign.  We’re all naturally inspired.  Or something.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the Wood Center this semester.  The Sun Star office is tucked away between Outdoor Adventures and New Student Orientation in the Wood Center offices.  And I’ve spent way too much time running the paper and drinking Wood Center coffee to have any kind of broader perspective on either The Sun Star or the Wood Center.

Before I took over as editor this summer, I got a plethora of advice from multiple people.  Some of it was useful and a lot of it wasn’t.  But one thing that stuck with me is that the year as editor goes by really quickly.  This is a blessing and a curse.  The consecutive weekends putting the paper together are enough to wear anyone out.  But the endless weekends of work blur together too quickly and all of a sudden the end of the semester is closing in and there are still so many things to accomplish.  After this issue, we’ll have one more left this semester.

As the editor, it’s my job to spend the most amount of time in the office, to catch everything that falls through the cracks and to care the most about The Sun Star.  I’ve spent more than a few Friday nights this semester putting off hanging out with friends to generate story ideas to assign at the Saturday morning staff meetings.  With all the time I spend pouring my energy into the paper, I lose some perspective.

So here’s to spending Thanksgiving break slowing down and getting some perspective.

Measures for pot legalization have been on ballots since 1972, when the question was first put up to the popular vote. Voters never went for it, until last Tuesday in Colorado and the state of Washington.

Amendment 64 in Colorado allows individuals over 21 to buy up to an ounce of marijuana at regulated retail stores.  Initiative 502 in Washington allows individuals over 21 to buy up to an ounce of dried marijuana or small amounts of marijuana-infused products.  Both initiatives passed on Nov. 6.  So now what?

First of all, federal law superceeds state law and under federal law marijuana is still illegal.  As the Drug Enforcement Administration reminded everyone on Wednesday, Nov. 7, the 1970 Controlled Substance Act hasn’t changed, even if state law has.  However, there’s a large gray area where federal officials don’t have the time or the man-power to go after every kid sharing a joint in the basement.

Navigating state and federal law will take a lot of time.  According to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, it might be too soon to “break out the Cheetos.”  It all comes down to what the current administration’s justice department will do.

No one is sure what that is yet.  According to CNN, University of Denver law professor Sam Kamin says something has got to give.  ”It simply can’t go on the way it is,” Kamin said. “It can’t be a big industry and a Federal crime at the same time.”

Currently, medical marijuana is legal in 17 states and it is still legal under federal law.  The Justice Department has shut down at least 600 marijuana shops in California since last October.  If anything, “history isn’t encouraging for pot smokers,” according to Slate columnist Emily Bazelon.

The Justice Department has yet to release a statement on the matter, but whatever they end up doing, they can’t force Washington or Colorado to make pot illegal again under the U.S. Constitution.

Meanwhile, in Alaska pot has been legal-ish since 1975 in the same unclear way that Colorado and Washington seem to be headed.

In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court case Ravin v. Alaska extended personal privacy protections so far as to include possession and use of marijuana in an individual’s home.  In 2006, the state passed a law making possession of any amount of marijuana illegal.  And then the courts found that that the law violated the citizen privacy rights upheld by Ravin v. Alaska.

Honestly, I don’t understand it either.  But Alaska has a seemingly well-deserved reputation as being lenient on stoners.

Are Colorado and Washington headed in the same direction as Alaska?  With conflicting laws and ideas about pot legalization?

Probably.  But hopefully last Tuesday’s election will open up a larger debate to reconcile some of these ideas.

It’s estimated that illegal marijuana is a $36 billion a year industry and legal marijuana could be a $100 billion a year industry, according to the Huffington Post.  In the end, if America becomes Amsterdam–which doesn’t seem likely–the real winners will be the drug companies.  It’s taken decades to stigmatize smoking as something unproductive and unhealthy, and now drug companies can start fresh with a new drug to advertise to potential users.  At least in Colorado and Washington.

Until the federal government decides how it feels about marijuana, there’s not much anyone can do.  But finally pot legalization has proved itself to be an issue that should be seriously discussed.  Washington and Colorado have voted themselves into experimental ground, and it will be interesting to see where they go.