It seems that once or twice a week (even during the slow summer months), the dedication "Mike Sloothaak, Purdue Staff" proceeds a letter to the editor in the Exponent. With the considerable number of letters that people send in to the paper each day (believe you me, I worked there for almost 2 years) that's not a particularly easy achievement. But who is this Mike Sloothaak character and why does he involve himself in so many arguments through newsprint?

Revealed through a Google search: Sloothaak (shown above) is a graduate student and employee in the Physics department who works in some lab room. One topic which he is most passionate about is diversity, particularly queer acceptance, and he certainly spends lots of his time writing about it. In November 2004, Sloothaak was suspended without pay for opposing Purdue's United Way campaign because the charity supports anti-gay organizations such as the Boy Scouts. In 2005, he posted on the Purdue ACLU message boards supporting the Indiana Civil Liberties Union against Planned Parenthood.

All of this is backed up by his Facebook account in which his declared political beliefs is Libertarian. Then again, the 40-year-old's religion of choice is "Satanism" so who knows. Sloothaak has a solid 4 friends listed in his friends box, two of whom he friended on Nov. 8 and Nov. 9, respectively. To be fair, he didn't join Facebook until August 21.