Middlebury students returned from spring break to find the hallways of Ross Commons littered with homophobic graffiti. 

From the Middlebury Campus: 

MOQA Co-President Nick Ballen '09, in an interview last Tuesday, described the graffiti as directed at specific individuals, mentioning names along with words and images.

"The campus, in general, is pretty accepting - but there are underlying things that don't come up," said Ballen, on whether the incident was related to a larger sentiment across campus. "Sometimes that is harder for an organization to deal with. These incidents are 'isolated' but 'not' because there are smaller versions [of the graffiti] everywhere. This sort of incident reminds us to pay attention to such things around campus, because when we ignore the little things, something big like this happens." 

The school has responded: with two open meetings—April 3 and tomorrow—and Middlebury’s Queer Alliance has been determined to bring up a necessary—if uncomfortable—dialogue at Middlebury.

Sage Bierster, in an opinion piece for the Middlebury Campus, calls for us all to stop unintentionally fostering discrimination by using certain, still commonly used words:

Former Middlebury President John M. McCardell, Jr. is heading up a national campaign to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18.

As reported in The Campus, McCardell has teamed up with students to form the not-for-profit organization Choose Responsibility.  The group has spent most of the last year doing research on the effect of the current alcohol age restriction on highway safety.

While not affiliated with Middlebury College, McCardell and his group are speaking to an obvious concern of the students attending Middlebury College and young people in general.

Groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) lobbied hard for the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which forced states to lower their legal drink age to 18 lest they be denied federal transportation funds. The goal? Lower highway fatalities in the United States.

Choose Responsibility, whose recent "white paper" finds the higher drinking age has only a modest impact on highway safety when compared to the safety features of airbags and seatbelts, has the following goal:

Choose Responsibility advocates that states launch alcohol education programs to teach young adults about responsible purchase, possession and consumption. Upon successful completion of a course, a participant could receive a license to consume and purchase alcohol at the age of 18. The license would be legal in the state in which the 18-year-old is a resident, and in the state in which he or she attends college, if they attend out of state. (from The Campus)

Will this be the new cause célèbre of progressive students nation-wide? And how should other activists judge this new campaign?