Fall is such a beautiful season. The mountain is changed over night to a bright picture of orange, red, brown and yellow splashed across a canvas of green. Most of us have walked up the long hill on the south side of campus, but how many of us have taken the time to look around at the beauty that God has placed right in our path?

But what makes the fall even better is the rain. The leaves are beautiful, but after the rain they are full of life. The air is moist, the colors are vibrant and when you look out over apartment town by the Benson Building, you see the trees come to life with color.

I never did understand why people here at BYU complain about the rain. It’s not like it floods or causes too much damage to us; it’s just raining!

I really think that many religion professors are seriously missing the point. Before coming to BYU, I really looked forward to taking religion classes, since many of my Institute teachers said marvelous things about them. However, after taking most of my required religion classes, I feel many professors are showing off their knowledge rather than teaching doctrine.

To me, it is ridiculous that we need to take quizzes about facts, names and other details, instead of looking at the whole picture of the gospel. I think many professors are confused with the phrase in BYU’s aims that a class needs to be “academically challenging,” since they think that three impossible quizzes each week, lots of reading and tests of 125 questions are fulfilling that purpose.

I must say I was amazed and excited to see the article on the Black 14 that was printed in the Oct. 19 Daily Universe. My father, Mel Hamilton, was one of the 14, so I grew up with the story. This was the first time I have experienced the story from “the other side.” 

Interestingly enough, this story has experienced a bit of a revival, what with the 25th anniversary of the priesthood proclamation in ’03 and now the 40th anniversary of the protest this year.

As I get older and continue to think back on this event in my father’s life, one thing disappoints me about the coverage of this story over the years — that this was a simple desire by black men in the 1960s to further voice their concerns regarding a policy they viewed as a social injustice.

When I was younger there were only a few TV shows that I tuned into regularly, some cool and some I think back and wonder why. Included in that list are “The X-Files,” “Seinfeld” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”—just to name a few.

Since returning from my mission, weekly TV show rituals haven’t played a dominant part of my college career … until now.

At the beginning of the fall, FOX introduced a new show that changed my opinion of weekly TV parties. One word: “Glee.”

Seeing the previews on TV weeks before it was to air, I didn’t think twice about the show, but upon hearing friends’ opinions of it, I decided to give it a try.

After the first episode, I was hooked.

The show follows a high school glee club that is trying be taken seriously by other clubs on campus and at the same time make it to the national championship.

Imagine a father who gives everything to one non-deserving son that does nothing and ignores the other well-behaved son; this parallels the BYU football and rugby teams.

The BYU football program is provided with everything and doesn’t accomplish much while the Rugby team is given little and wins everything. If the rugby team had more support they could be the model of perfection in sports BYU intends to be.

Let’s draw the whole picture to realize how badly the football team is doing. First, it has not won a national title since 1984 or even a single bowl since 2006. Even so, many football players receive full scholarships and also are provided tutors. They get a full semi-professional staff to support the players on and off the field, not to mention all the advertisements on campus about the team. Despite everything they receive, though, they are not perfect.

“The world is our campus” is one of BYU’s mottos. But how can we go out and serve and help the world if we don’t even know what’s going on in our school, our state and our country—let alone the world? If we are to go out and serve, we need to know what needs are out there. There is no way we can provide solutions to a world full of problems we don’t know about or understand.

Most people aren’t interested in the purpose of the war in Iraq, the reasons behind our current economic crisis or starvation in Africa. We are interested in BYU’s football team’s ranking, the winner of American Idol and the last pictures friends posted on Facebook.

By Ben Rogers

I grew up with TV shows and movies like “The Jetsons,” “Reboot,” “The Absent Minded Professor,” “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” “Pinocchio 3000” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” which showed compact flying cars, hoverboards and other hover stuff. We’re in the 21st century living like 20th century grounded wheel citizens relying heavily on smelly gasoline, driving wheel cars that roll on four tire wheels and you have to buy expensive gasoline at gas stations just to power wheel cars.