It marks the end of an era when American politics were plagued with apathetic citizens, who found nothing in the candidates inspiring enough to take a passionate interest in.

It marks the end of an era when race was an invisible barrier over politics, the end of affirmative action being a weapon against the status quo, and the end of divisions in America over race. Barack Obama has attained the highest office of the American political system, and to some people, the free world. There is no reason anymore why any good citizen of America should not be able to succeed in their goals and dreams through diligence and perseverance, because it has been proven that the highest goal can be accomplished by normal people.

Finally, it marks the end of an era when the media was an impartial observer in the American Political system, and when committed voters were educated properly about their candidates. During the 2008 election, there was an enthusiasm towards our democracy that has not been seen in years. There was also, however, a vast prevalence of ignorance on both sides, and it was spurred by a media that displayed ruthless bias not seen in years. Mainstream news magazine Newsweek published six issues with covers devoted exclusively to Barack Obama, five of them issues in this year alone. 2008 was a year in which public opinion was ruled by media portrayal of political affairs.

The wedding is overshadowing the marriage. The Inauguration has magnified into something bordering on a spectacle, with commemorative trinkets being hawked in every possible commercial medium, and huge celebrations being planned across the country. Happiness and joy at an inauguration are not bad things. Blind euphoria and an unwillingness to accept shortcomings in the president-elect are.

As a conservative and a Republican, I don’t have high expectations for the next four, and possibly the next eight, years. Seeing Obama’s face doesn’t fill me with pride and hope, but a nervous concern for our country’s well-being with an untested president. I could be wrong. With Hillary Clinton as his very intelligent, very acquainted with international diplomacy Secretary of State, we could finally help the world see us as more than a distant and isolated giant. Hillary’s participation in his cabinet gives me hope that America will at least remain stable in international affairs, if not find diplomatic success.

I don’t believe Obama is a terrorist foreigner, but I don’t have much faith in the presiding ability of a man whose career rises from the infamous political machines of Chicago, Illinois. He remains untested, having been nearly completely cushioned from criticism by a media that remains vastly doting upon him. Without having faced adversity against his policies from a large portion of America, I believe he lacks the realistic gravity taken on by politicians who must fiercely defend their policies from a critical media.

I’m happy that a majority of American citizens are bonding together in what must be a very happy time. I’m glad that patriotism is at a recent-years high, as well as pride in our country. But at the same time, I wonder in the back of my mind if such limitless support will blind Americans to the shortcomings of their chosen leader, and draw them heedlessly into the cult of personality maintained by the media and faithful supporters. I take the optimism and euphoria of the inauguration with a grain of salt, because such unified support and utter faith in national leaders has taken a very grim turn in several times in history. If we are going to serve a president with whom we are not well acquainted, we must be willing to call him on the mistakes he makes, and not cushion his errors to maintain high approval.

I applaud America for a historic decision in the elections, but I caution America against turning a blind eye towards the new President’s novice mistakes.

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This was a week for decisions. Major decisions. And boy, did we make them. We elected Barack Obama as the 44^th (and first African-American) President of the United States. And though we didn’t directly choose Michelle Obama (or any of the First Ladies), we did decide who’s hot and who’s not.  We chose between working out at the gym and at home, between babes and nerds, between trendy skirts and patterned leggings. On the relationship side of things, we decided to make the jump from friends to lovers, and subsequently from lovers back to friends. We learned that guys get off on porn (really?), and girls become more fertile by watching Sex and the City. We decided that you shouldn’t spend too much money on dating, and on the proper prep work for losing your v-card.

And now that it’s Friday, take a break from all the deliberations and enjoy the weekend!

But the sad fact is, many students don’t take advantage of getting to know the diverse kinds of people occupying the same lecture hall or dorm as themselves. Instead, they choose to stick with people who resemble them because it’s what they’re comfortable with; which goes to show that colleges (and the United States as a whole) are not melting pots, but merely salads where different groups of people simply coexist without choosing to mingle with others.

It drives me insane!

As a kid I had friends who were every color under the rainbow, so I assumed that college would be no different. I imagined a vast body of people from places all over the country who intermingled with one another on a daily basis. When I arrived on campus however, it was like stepping into some type of reverse culture shock.

I should have known things wouldn’t be perfect at an institution where only 9% of undergrads identified themselves as Black or African American, but I still remained optimistic about living the “American Dream”. Just about everyone at my college was a resident of the state and usually hung out with people from their high school or hometown, making it challenging for a random black girl from Virginia to try and make friends.

After finally finding friends, I started to realize that others weren’t very happy about my abilities to see past color. Certain black girls that I befriended at the beginning of the year started to separate themselves from me after constantly spotting me on campus with a group of girls that did not share my skin color. One time, when I tried to introduce one of my black friends to a white roommate of mine, and she looked at my roommate as if she was harboring the plague! Needless to say our friendship didn’t last long.

I’m not implying that the world should be perfect and everyone should love and befriend one another, but would it kill people to step out of their comfort zones and embrace the diversity that this country is known for?!!

As I’m writing this, Ali Gilmore has been missing for 799 days, 15 hours, and 43 minutes according to the website dedicated to finding the missing pregnant woman.

Her disappearance was one of the bigger news stories in Tallahassee, FL for a couple of months, with fairly consistent news reports about the continuing search for her whereabouts and billboards all around town with phone numbers to call with any pertinent information about her disappearance. The case even got some national exposure, appearing on Dateline, MSNBC, the Montel Williams Show, and Nancy Grace among others. The reward was and still is $30,000, but absolutely nothing has been found in the two years that she has been missing.

With all of the coverage surrounding the so-called “Marine Murders” and even the story of Laci Peterson’s murder a couple of years ago, reports of missing or murdered pregnant women have been surfacing more and more and the news exposure has been increasing exponentially. But, as a recent story by CBS news reports, the stories getting the widest exposure aren’t indicative of the real statistics of maternal homicide victims.

They quote a statistic from the CDC that black women like Ali Gilmore have, “a maternal homicide risk about seven times that of white women. Black women ages 25-29 are about 11 times more likely as white women in that age group to be murdered while pregnant or in the year after childbirth.”

The CBS article brings up two very important issues: 1. Why is there racially disproportionate reporting on the subject of maternal homicide and 2. Why does there seem to be such an alarming number of maternal homicide incidents in the first place?

Websites and blogs like blackandmissing.blogspot.com have been trying to take up the slack, as it were, in media exposure for missing and murdered African Americans but its sad that there was such a dearth in reporting that a website like Blackandmissing had to be created in the first place. If the news reported on every black missing pregnant woman they’d have no time to discuss the minutiae of Paris Hilton’s life.

CBS quotes a very disheartening statistic from the National Domestic Violence Hotline, that “ 324,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during their pregnancy” and the CDC estimates that 4-8 percent of pregnant women in the U.S. are abused by their significant other. Women are more vulnerable when they are pregnant, less likely or able to defend themselves if they are in an abusive relationship and so they are more susceptible to violence.

Media coverage about the disappearance of Ali Gilmore has all but stopped in Tallahassee and in the nation at large and it will continue to stay that way until any more information surfaces. It is fairly understandable; when a case reaches a wall as this one seems to have done, it becomes a sort of waiting game. But it makes one wonder; if this case had been given the widespread and continued coverage of a Laci Peterson, would we still be looking for Ali Gilmore 799 days, 15 hours, and 43 minutes after her disappearance?

I get looks a lot. That shouldn’t really strike me as surprising; everyone gets looks. Amused looks, horrified looks, heartbroken looks, enamored looks…I’ve gotten them all. Still, nothing was quite the punch in the gut as the look my mother gave me when I told her I was going out with a girl.

I’d been dating Megan for something like six months around the time I finally talked to my mom. For six months, I was horrified at the concept of telling my middle-aged, old-fashioned African-American mother that her daughter, the girl she had been a father and mother to for twenty years, was very much in love with your typical Irish girl (sans fiery-red Weasley hair).

I had told my mother that I was bi before, but it was some six years ago and I’m pretty sure that she just passed it off as me being dazed after being hit over the head with puberty. I was almost certain that she’d forgotten (she hadn’t, the old elephant), and when I told her, a look of terror and disgust would follow suit.

It didn’t, and I still can’t decide if I’m grateful for that or not.

It was a little after Christmas when I finally decided I was going to fess up. Megan had just had surgery on her knee, and I wanted to be there for her (read: be her slave for a week). I had told my mother a half-baked excuse as to why I was hoping on a Greyhound and going from Long Island to Virginia to see one of my “friends” from school. After a lot of thought, I decided to just lay it all out.

At first, her expression was the sort of quiet, understanding, thoughtful expression that moms usually have when you’re pouring your heart out to them. I explained in slow, carefully chosen words that I had been in a relationship with Megan for a few months, and that I felt like it was time to tell her such. There was a five second silence that stood between my voice and hers.

“I don’t want you to make decisions based on a few negative experiences,” she finally replied. I hastily explained that, no, it wasn’t because of the horrible ex-boyfriend fiasco (we were never actually going out). She nodded, and I could tell that it was forced. She wasn’t upset or horrified, but I could tell, I could see that she was disappointed, and that hurt me more than if she had thrown me out the house. Here was my mother, a black woman that grew up in Brooklyn during the Civil Rights movement, who was barely a generation removed from Barbados and had been instilled with good, honest West Indian values, and she was disappointed.

“I figured it out already,” she added after a few seconds with a forced smile. I had a feeling she did, and I coughed out a chuckle as a reply. Megan had come to visit me that summer, before she had even asked me out. My mother can be and often is intimidating, so Megan spent most of her time upstairs in my room. (“Megan can sleep in the guest room, if she wants,” my mother helpfully suggested on Megan’s second night with us. “I know,” I sheepishly replied. I think that was when she figured it out.) We were silly and flirty the entire time, but it wasn’t really until she got on the Amtrak back to Virginia that I realized that I was lovesick.

After a few more awkward exchanges (“Does she only like girls, or is she…?” “No, no, she’s…she’s like me, too.” “Just be open to…” “I will.”), I scurried back to the security of my room. The next day, it seemed like nothing had really changed. She didn’t treat me any differently, and it seemed like she had forgotten the conversation entirely. Maybe she had.

My mother occasionally asks how Megan is when I talk to her on the phone, but not often. I’ve come to realize that there will always be a part of her that is disappointed in me, and that realization sleeps in my gut, coming out of hibernation every now and then to pace around and growl at me. In time, I hope that she’ll accept the fact that, yes, I do love this girl. But for now, knowing that my mom still loves me is good enough.

Half the internet has made this an issue of white vs. black, about double standards and race discrimination. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some places in the South that still think the Civil War was an impass, but this poor kid was convicted because we have a judicial system that goes by absolutes. “If/Then” statements rule half of the laws out there. Genarlow was considered an adult, while his partner was a minor – that is the legal justification of the “crime”. PLUS, they have demanded that he register as a sex offender.

In this case, there are many other factors: he was also accused of raping a 17 year old girl (ACQUITTED), he and all members at the party were drunk and stoned (NO CHARGES FILED) and some idiot video taped the whole thing for his personal whack-off library. Everyone is bringing up all of these other charges, when they discuss this case, but there is no reason – he was found NOT GUILTY – which is only the basis of our entire judicial system.

How does this case involve us?

A judge ordered him released and prosecutors in Georgia appealed so that he would stay in jail. The local government wants to lock this kid up and throw away the key.

This could happen to any of us. I am 18 and this case horrifies me. Every now and then someone brings up their friend from highschool (usually Seniors) and they are fair game. They go to a party, we all party and then hook-up afterwards. Oral sex is almost like a given – now I can goto jail for that?

I am trying to be straight-up here, and you can all hate on me for the honesty, but it is true. This is the time when we figure out what sex is all about. This is like charging athletes as criminals for delivering late hits (sorry for the sport’s parallel). In Georgia no less…which is point #2. I know I said it was not the major issue of the case, but really? WTF was with all of the social reformers when this kid got canned? Leave Imus alone and help this f*&%ing kid! Can you imagine spending over 2 years in jail for getting head from a girl/guy within a 2 years age difference?

We may think we are above race in this country but we are wrong. The worst part is that growing up we were taught to see without prejudice, and yet it is our parents and the older generation that is so damned socially imept it is nausiating. Who is the jackass who thought this was a 10 year prison sentence crime? His name is Goober and he is a pissed-off racially intolerant red-neck who is bitter that his sister turned him down for a BJ. But it is not just the rednecks, there is a whole generation of prejudice that is under wraps. The Georgia legislature passed a law closing the loop-hole that sent Genarlow Wilson to jail. Oh, but they didn’t make it retroactive – i.e. Genarlow Wilson stays in jail, but thanks for the heads up that the law is wrong.

F^%& Paris, where is the outrage for this kid? FOX and CNN aren’t all over Genarlow?! Why not? You have to ask that – the only visible answer makes me sick.

Genarlow, I am sorry dude. As an 18 year old white kid from NY, you got shafted. You really did. Not sure what I can do to help, but I will think of SOMETHING. Maybe a petition, letter to a congressman – petition to let a celebrity drunk driver free, but a 17 your old in prison for a BJ…uhhhhhhh ok, missed that memo.

We are with you.