This week, we feature student perspectives on issues that intimately affect us: on access to mental health resources, on tuition increases and on voter engagement.

Jeramy Howell, a government senior from East Texas, relates his personal experiences with sexual assault and the resulting mental health consequences. He highlights the life-long effects of these events, and calls on our university and our society to do more to ensure that survivors can access the mental healthcare they need.

Next, we asked students to share their reactions to the recent announcement of a possible tuition increase by UT’s Tuition Policy Advisory Committee. The Editorial Board weighed in on this issue yesterday, and today we share some of the most common student  responses. A full “We Asked” video is online.

Finally, Cade Stone, a research assistant at the Annete Strauss Institute for Civic Life, makes the case for our state to change its policies regarding voter registration. He outlines the causes of our current woes with low voter turnout, and he argues that we should learn from better-engaged states and countries by instituting a system of automatic voter registration.

If you have an opinion on these issues or any others, please reach out to us at [email protected].

Nemawarkar is a Plan II and government junior from Austin. Shirvaikar is a math and economics junior from Frisco.