Bloglander

Things God hates  As you might expect, the big news this week is Westboro Baptist Church promising to picket “fag-infested, pervert-run” area schools. At a Whitworth student forum meeting about the issue, new president Beck Taylor announced a steering committee would help cultivate the precise university response to the picketers. Similarly, at Gonzaga, Thayne McCullough convened the university’s “Quick Response” team — a group of representatives from various departments poised to react quickly to precisely this sort of situation. But for the students and the community, the large scale organization comes from Taylor Malone, an Eastern Washington University student who describes himself as “very liberal and very atheist.” On Facebook, he’s organized counter-protests to all five Westboro Baptist Church stops, with massive numbers promising to attend at each location.

Hazing practices get spanked Gonzaga has changed its hazing policy to ban things like “requiring the wearing of conspicuous apparel in public” and carrying “burdens” in public.  Wait, doesn’t Gonzaga have an ROTC program? (Bulletin)

Fancier accommodations Eastern Washington University is looking to build a new “suite-style” residence hall to house undergrads. Details are pending a presentation today to the board of trustees. Currently, the university houses 1,100 students, despite a capacity to house 2000 students. But some of the current dorms are old. This new one would be brought into the “suite-style” model of student housing. (Easterner)

Please, sir, I want some less In an opinion column you wouldn’t expect to find in a college newspaper, a Whitworth student grumbles about the government giving too much financial aid.  (Whitworthian)

Nuclear lungs Plutonium inhalation is probably bad for you. You probably could have guessed that. But a new WSU study has begun to investigate precisely how bad.