Isn’t it nice to finally see some competition?

Here in Mexico, three parties — the center-left Partido de la Revolucion Democratica, center-right Partido Accion Nacional and the god-knows-where-they-stand-today Partido Revolucionario Institucional — are going all out for the presidency.

History is full of examples of peoples who constructed walls to deny entry to “the Other.” It is also full of the spectacular failure of such projects: The Great Wall of China couldn’t stop the Mongols and the Berlin Wall failed to deny the West’s triumph over communism.

Dear GUIDE,

I’ve spent over two months here studying in Mexico, and I have yet to dig through the numerous layers of religion and culture that this country offers. When I first left, I wondered whether Mexico was just a poorer version of the United States with better food, a nation so close to our border that it couldn’t possibly resist U.S. cultural domination.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

And I thought the D.C. beltway was jammed.

The sun is silhouetted at midday; that’s how thick Mexico City’s pollution is. Looking into the distance, I see nothing else, not even the downtown skyscrapers only a few kilometers from my university. But more than seeing it, I feel it.

I hear the same statistic over and over: one in four women will be a victim of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault in her lifetime. This statistic seems way too high, yet I know that sadly, it is in fact too low; rape is an underreported crime.

October and November have been dangerous months to be a student at Georgetown, and we must ask ourselves who is to blame and what we can do to stop it.

Ten months ago, the Georgetown Solidarity Committee escalated its Living Wage Campaign, which culminated in an eight-day hunger strike and a “just employment policy” promising increased wages and benefits for all campus workers by July 1, 2007.

I’m not writing this viewpoint to make you, the average Georgetown student, comfortable. I’m writing this to challenge you.

It was the dead of winter, and I wanted to do something useful. Get away from the university, where I was immersed in my studies and stressed to the limit and go out and help someone. That’s how it started.

Why don’t students protest more? Because they think it’s useless, outdated and a plain old waste of time.