For Week 1 back on campus, YAL at UCSD set up a free speech wall of our own construction on Monday and Wednesday, to promote both free speech and our first meeting Wednesday evening. The event was a hit, and both of our boards filled up after just a few hours of tabling. The reaction from students was very positive, who were generally thrilled with the idea that they could write anything they wanted.

We thought we might be in for trouble when a campus police officer came by to look at the wall, since UCSD has had troubles with free speech in the past. However, despite a very prominent "F*** THE POLICE" written on the board, he said he thought the event was great, and even inquired as to our organization and its goals, going so far as to offer his skills as a speaker if we ever needed a cop to give a presentation.

A few days after our event, I actually got an email from the Center for Student Involvement at UCSD, saying that a couple complaints had been registered about offensive comments written on our wall. To be honest, I'm surprised anyone complained at all -- any offensive comments were marginal at best, the vast majority of what students wrote was positive.

With regards to the Department of Homeland Security/Cincinnati SWAT team training on campus, there are several reasons why I, along with several other UC students, people in the community, my parents, and other students parents, are concerned with what went on this past week.

I believe as taxpayers on a student-funded campus at a public university, we should be notified ahead of time when training drills like this will be occurring. Most students that walk past a squad of DHS/SWAT dressed up in their black uniforms with body armor, full face masks, riot shields, handguns, and AR-15 style rifles probably wonder what is wrong -- not to mention that this might be an intimidating sight that makes students fearful and worried.

Having a training drill like this on campus during any regular day is one thing, but having an unannounced display of militarized police on 9/11 is taking it to another level that many find very distasteful.

In case logic gets a little lost this week during part two of the major political parties’ conventions (assuming it was ever there), it might be useful to provide a little primer for those less familiar with political rhetoric. This may help sort through the nonsense (which was always there).

First, notice the use of the word “access.” It’s one of the most used political catchphrases these days. When Party 2 says that Party 1 wants to deny Person X “access” to B, what that means in actuality is that Party 1 has no problem with Person X buying their own B, but it does not want to make a law forcing Persons Y and Z to pay for Person X’s B.

Second, if a politician says they favor “investing” in this or that government program, they really mean they want to spend more money (money the government really doesn’t have these days). When they do not favor the program, they’ll actually call it spending – but maybe add the adjective “wasteful” in front of it for the effect.

Third, watch out when Party 2 says all of our problems are the results of Party 1’s policies, or vice-versa. That is seldom ever really the case. There is plenty of blame to go around to indict both parties.

By now, many of you may have heard about the country's largest city to go bankrupt: Stockton, California. Although there are many reasons for the city's bankruptcy (e.g., from the New York Times: "falling housing prices, foreclosures, ... retiree pensions and hefty price tags for buildings"), skyrocketing pension costs are one of the primary ones. In this article, I would like to try and provide evidence as to why I believe the vast majority of pension funds will become underfunded (as if they aren't already), and where we can expect the underfunding percentage to stabilize. Since my background is in engineering and not finance, I will attempt to do this with some simple mathematical models, as opposed to the usual financial models, which are somewhat difficult for the layman to understand (due to their use of specialized vocabulary, among other things).

The City of Austin Employees' Retirement System (COAERS) will be the focus of this analysis. Please note that this analysis can be extended to other pension funds as well (with minor modifications). In my opinion, the primary difficulty encountered in designing a sustainable pension fund lies in predicting the future. If one could predict the future, one could figure out exactly how much money one would need to put into the pension fund and at what time. However, the future is inherently unpredictable. Therefore, when designing a pension fund, one should take this unpredictability into account by using conservative estimates for investment performance. Unfortunately, this has not been done in the past (for a variety of reasons, one being that overestimating investment performance enables lower payments into the pension fund). As a result, many pension funds today are underfunded.