Everybody has different experiences during their first year at Caltech, some positive and some less so. For President Chameau, this year has been intense but, according to him, quite exciting.

Beginning first or second term, students will be able to take a journalism course that has been over a year in the making.

In most established communities, there are certain topics, or institutions, that do not lend themselves to serious discussion without inflaming people on all sides of the debate, where reform is rendered intractable due to deep-seated prejudices of those with vested interests.

The proposed change to Rotation for next year is a troubling departure from the principles of equality that form the basis of student life at Caltech. Previously, incoming freshman were allowed to reject a house by declining to rate it. This was the only form of hard control that the freshman had -- the only piece of input which could not potentially be ignored or overridden. Now this control is being removed.

Rotation tries to match up prefrosh and Houses in a way that complements both parties interests in each other. Seen as better than random selection, which was tried in '60 and '61, Rotation was seen by the classes in the early 2000's as a necessary evil and has problems, but the best were likely to get by commentators to the TURLI report of 2001.