Unopposed tickets: why vote? Out of the entire student population, at least 10 percent needs to vote in order to elect a candidate, whether there is opposition for the ticket or not. By voting, you are expressing your voice about who will best advocate for our campus community.

More than just trees   When someone asks me about the work I do for Friends of Trees they are usually pretty shocked when I tell them that it is first and foremost a community engagement organization. So where do the trees fit in? If you have ever participated in a service project, you know the impact you're making goes much deeper than the physical aspect of the work.

Write for the Writers Magazine

If you've never had the opportunity to hold your own creativity, watching it spill over your hands, glistening in glossy ink on the pages of a book or magazine … this is an opportunity you won't want to miss: The University of Portland is publishing its annual student-run Writers Magazine and wants sketches, poems, one act plays, pictures, stories and one-panel comics from you! Ever since my freshman year I've had the pleasure of being published in the Writers Magazine.

When elementary school teacher Cheryl Perich returned from medical leave for narcolepsy, her employer, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School, asked her to resign. Perich threatened to sue the school and was, in turn, fired, "for violating religious doctrine by pursuing litigation rather than trying to resolve her dispute within the church," the New York Times reported.

Many Catholic institutions are disagreeing with the Obama administration's decision to require faith-based employers to include birth control in their health care plans by Aug. 1, 2013. Catholic institutions are deriding the new rule with disdain because it blatantly goes against the First Amendment's freedom of religion.