Beginning today, and continuing through the first week in December, the Opinion section will embark on a new and challenging endeavor with our three-week series titled "Exploring the Issues: Race, Religion and Sexuality."

In each of these series, our columnists will tackle a different issue and avenue under a broader umbrella of race, religion or sexuality. The topics addressed will be both challenging and controversial, and, because of the inherent complexity of these issues, we will unavoidably leave much to be discussed and debated.

Our hopes for these columns are certainly not to achieve any sort of comprehensive commentary on these invariably convoluted topics. Rather, we hope these articles will move our readers and our writers beyond the usual tendency to opine solely on current events, and to digress into a broader analysis of these important issues from the minds of "ordinary students."

During our exploration, our columnists will focus on topics that they have a notable interest in — in some cases, stemming from personal experiences — and will address the issues from a more philosophical and theoretical approach. Additionally, as is our unvarying custom, we will seek a diversity of opinions on the issues — by offering point-counterpoint arguments, by summoning prominent campus voices and by publishing your valued responses.

Finally, in regard to why the three topics of race, religion and sexuality were chosen: As opinion writers, our duty in writing every week is to research and analyze until we come to a conclusion, and then to display our viewpoint to you, the reader. Yet, as students, we are not so naive as to think we are often, if ever, truly qualified to opine on a given subject. And so — with the utmost regard to the hard sciences, issues of wealth and capital, among others — we have chosen wide-reaching social concerns that affect most human beings every day, issues of which we are all qualified to consider.

And so, we dive headfirst into the topic of race and various subtopics of the complex issue. Our topics for this week and their authors are as follows:

Today:
Andy Granias – The color of sports
Gerald Cox – Calling for a national "black-in"

Tuesday:
Mike Hahn & Kyle Szarzynski – The merits and pitfalls of holistic admissions

Wednesday:
Jason Smathers – The diversity goal in UW Housing
Rob Phansalkar – Analyzing the UW “Think" campaign

Thursday:
Bassey Etim – Democrats and the black vote
MultiCultural Student Coalition – Race relations on campus

Friday:
Andrew Wagner – Race and the immigration debate
Ryan Masse – Diversity in society

We will address issues relating to religion the week of Nov. 26-30 and issues of sexuality and gender the week of Dec. 3-7.

During these weeks, keep in mind that the opinion page is not simply a platform from which our writers project their views. This is a printed public forum for the entire campus. Feel free to offer your comments online and send letters to the editor; you are an essential part of the ongoing dialogue that we have initiated.

Enjoy.