This columnist has an admission to make. Two years ago, he almost left this school after applying for transfers to Ivy Leagues, mostly due to arrogance. The attitude he expressed is often seen at UCSD: “I am better than this school.” Few and far between is the student who has since childhood pined to mill about the eucalyptus-laden paths of our school. Instead, we get the progeny of Berkeley graduates who feel they were unjustly rejected from their parents’ alma mater, aspiring journalists who could not get into NYU or Chicago, and Southern California teenagers who have admired the glamour of UCLA half their lives without getting there. How many of us hung UCSD pennants in our bedrooms before we knew we were coming here? Who among us cheered for UCSD teams, or wore UCSD paraphernalia in the halls of our high schools before May 1 of senior year?

And so I stood two years ago on the precipice of the Pacific, secure in my knowledge that the system had erred. I would hope that since then, I have accepted that the system worked in the first place, and there is no way I could have ever exhausted the intellectual opportunities available at UCSD. That intellectual arrogance, that persistence of conviction, pervades this campus beyond this writer. It can be seen not only in the freshmen who are certain they should be at Berkeley and plan to apply for transfer at their first opportunity, but also in the chair-throwing hysterics of student government candidates denied their rightful offices by a judicial committee who dares exercise moral judgment over an election. It can be seen in the intellectual arrogance of graduate students using class or section time to rant about the illegitimacy of the federal government. It can be seen in the polemics of right and evil in either the California Review or the New Indicator — the papers are symmetric under interchange in verbs and adjectives, and differ only in nouns. It can be seen in the smug satisfaction or condescending sorrow for your lost soul from evangelizing Christians inviting random passersby to their congregations.

Maybe that’s how the real world actually is. Maybe nearly every individual believes that they are morally right, justified and completely correct in denouncing the views of our politicians, our institutions, our admissions offices, our school administration or other students. Then again, should not a university promote open thought? Is it too much to ask that critical thinking come with an uncertainty of conviction? Would it really be that much of a blow to who we are to freely admit that our views on religion, politics, equality, social order or college admissions might very well be incorrect? This writer cannot imagine it would be a sign of weakness to admit that one’s cherished viewpoints could be erroneous.

And so, this is the last Horse’s Mouth, after three years of spewing forth myriad viewpoints that may well have infuriated most of the population of this campus at one time or another, all in a tone of moral certitude and the arrogance of vaguely intellectual condemnation. Some notable gems:

… Ironically enough, Mr. Aguilar’s attempt to shield his uncovered rear has changed little, since the original argument remains legally valid. If the university has identified a violation of federal law — namely, the hyperlink — and refuses to shut it down, it is an accomplice in crime. Mr. Aguilar has but added one more misdeed to the administration’s list: censorship.

… Now, while Course and Professor Evaluations works hard over the school year and summer to bring us paragraphs … they are by and large useless to anyone actually trying to get a handle on how the course and professors rate.

… In essence, pushing back the effective date of the fee increase is an irresponsible ploy to garner additional votes. But nobody said the damn thing would ever be run efficiently anyway. All one needs to do is look at the exorbitantly expensive signs telling us to vote next week.

… For all their talk of public service, striking in order to make public service in the future worse while appealing to [the teaching assistants’] position as public servants does little to garner sympathy from this corner.

… If we are led to believe through our admissions systems that underrepresented minorities are prepared for higher education despite their atrocious treatment at the hands of the state, then we as a society can believe we have achieved social justice, and only the few of us who dare look beyond the racial breakdown of admissions statistics will be aware of the full magnitude of our failure. This is a lie that cannot be abided.

… While the best way to deal with this kind of attention-seeking idiocy (both the shredder and the Koala) is probably just to ignore it, this vitriol can perhaps be justified because at least the Koala has acknowledged its own attention-seeking demagoguery, while the Thurgood Marshall College shredder operators have yet to show that much wisdom. In all honesty, this writer believes that while there are people who are fighting to make the campus a better place for just motives, anyone who would resort to these sorts of shock tactics is posing amoral ambition as self-righteous indignation.

This writer hopes, in any case, that he contributed to the debate on this campus over the past three years, but urges anyone who bothers to read his columns to take his viewpoints and their own with a grain of salt. For all that I opine, for all that I condemn, I remember in the past two years I have learned that the undergraduates of this school and the readers of this column, whether they agree with me or not, have a depth and intelligence that, in my arrogance, I could not see while applying for transfer two years ago. This writer most emphatically does not regret staying, and thanks his readers for their kind attention and constant input.