Wise Monkey News is here to provide young people an opportunity to discuss the issues that affect their lives. We hope that, through your participation, this website serves as a forum for the development, exchange, and expression of ideas that will prepare us to assume our positions as the leaders of tomorrow's world. Have something to say?

Illegal immigrants gain priority admissions to California universities

by: Jaime Denning - printed on 03-06-2002

You live in New York. Your dad, his dad and his grandfather all attended the University of California at Berkeley. Family tradition and desire push you to apply to the university. You harass the mailman daily, waiting for your acceptance letter. Finally it comes and you run triumphantly with it into the kitchen where your step-mom is making cookies. You tear open the creamy cardstock envelope and find "Dear Joe, We regretfully inform you.

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Research, diversity and prospects for herpetological survival in Costa Rica and the rest of the world

by: Eron Osterhaus - printed on 04-24-2002

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the number of species of amphibians and reptiles in Costa Rica that have been identified has increased significantly. Although new species are occasionally added to the list of Costa Rican herpetofauna, the rate of discovery has slowed considerably. One might, therefore, expect that contemporary research efforts would be directed towards studying the biology and natural history of the already-identified species, particularly since current understanding is far from complete and, in many cases, has been derived solely from the examination of preserved museum specimens.

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Finding the Columbia River

by: Dr. Frank Fromherz - printed on 01-23-2002

"I've known rivers, ancient, dusky rivers, my soul has grown deep like the rivers." The great Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes wrote these lines while aboard a train. He was on his way to Mexico to visit his dad. The poet, who had just finished high school, "grew deep like the rivers" as he crossed the Mississippi, and thought about a people whose memories stretched across the Nile, the Congo, and the Euphrates.

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Our business world

by: Meghan Molenda - printed on 10-24-2001

Many of us know no other way to exist other than by relying on millions of other people everyday. We may not personally have contact with them, but we encounter different objects into which they have put their labor. The great majority of us cannot make our own clothes; much less sew on a button. A box of macaroni-and-cheese is the extent of our cooking experience. These are just two of the simple everyday challenges that we do not have to worry about, because we do not have to know how to make clothes or cook a meal.

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At home in Santiago de Chile

by: Claude Pomerleau, C.S.C. - printed on 10-18-2000

My first visit to Chile was in early 1971 to research a dissertation for the University of Denver on the changing relationship between the Catholic Churches of Latin America and the Catholic Church of France.

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Be conscience of your future, the environment

by: Meghan Molenda - printed on 09-26-2001

Have you ever written a paper about a penny? Back in the days of Junior High school, my teacher gave us that assignment. One day in eighth grade Mr. Hoepner handed out old pennies to each person in the class and asked us to write about where that penny had been in its little penny life. All of this was to be done in three pages written in cursive and due in a week (how quickly those days go by!).

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