Like a leak in a homemade canoe, like a brand new Slinky and like the perspicacious T-Pain, spring has sprung!

And for those of us lukewarm-blooded, allergy-free, non-skiers/-ice skaters/or -snowman makers of the world, this is a beautiful thing. There really isn’t anything quite like that first warm day in April, is there? The campus comes alive in so many different ways.

On Tuesday, April 4, SGA held their weekly meeting, in which a proposed resolution by the American Civil Liberties Union of Mount Holyoke concerning military recruitment on campus dominated the night’s discussion.

This month, the month of March, is National Frozen Foods Month and National Umbrella Month- who knew? It is also Women’s History Month. And this March, after a ban on abortion was signed into law in the Mount Rushmore State, the women of South Dakota grudgingly found their way into a new chapter of the history books.

On Tuesday, Duke University suspended the season of its nationally ranked men’s lacrosse team after a woman at North Carolina Central University claimed to have been sexually assaulted. She was hired to dance at a private party attended by members of the team.

On my mind this week are manners. Good manners, bad manners, Judith Martin, all that stuff. My parents taught me a lot about having good manners, most of which I’ve completely forgotten. I am starting to wish, however, that I had not been so cavalier about my parents’ well-intentioned instruction.

Here at The Mount Holyoke News, we’ve been speculating about the Avian Flu for some time now. Well, to clarify, I have been obsessed with the imminent pandemic of monumental proportions and have continually harassed my staff about it; now they too are believers (or are simply too down-trodden by the reality of the situation to satirically comment anymore).

On Tuesday, editor-in-chief of The Daily Illini, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student newspaper, was fired following a suspension with pay in February of this year. The editor, Acton Gorton, made the controversial decision to republish the Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons on February 9.

The Facebook is taking over my life. I’m the last person on Earth who should be raising this issue, let alone dedicating an entire article to it. Call me a hypocrite (and anyone who knows me well enough will) because I spend an excessive amount of time on Facebook.

Do you have a job lined up for after graduation? What about a summer internship? Study abroad plans? How is your resume?

As students at Mount Holyoke, we hear these questions frequently. After spending years of high school working really hard to get into such a prestigious college, we get here to find out that it doesn’t matter.

“I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees.” So goes the famous quote from Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax.”

Had someone spoken for the trees of the central Philippines many years ago, before the onset of commercial logging, could the recent devastating landslide at Tacloban have been avoided? Experts say the area’s geology, heavy rainfall and, above all, deforestation due to logging may have contributed to the tragedy.