…REAL-LIFE POLITICS By jumping into next year's Rhode Island Democratic primary and running against US Representative Jim Langevin, Brown University political science professor Jennifer Lawless is giving her students a vivid lesson on real-life politics. But along the way she offered an unintended ethics lesson after the student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, reported that two of her students had contributed to her campaign. And they aren't anonymous faces in the back of a large lecture class Lawless is involved in grading both their senior theses, her campaign confirmed. One student gave $500, while the other, the daughter of former Illinois Senate candidate and wealthy businessman Blair Hull, gave $1,000. Blair Hull himself, who lost last year's Illinois Democratic primary to Barack Obama, gave $2,100. Lawless had told the student paper that she was confident “my students and I will keep academics separate from politics,” but she ended up returning the money to the students though not to their family members. “Though I do not believe that giving or accepting these contributions was at all improper, the mere perception of impropriety is enough to make me reconsider,” Lawless said in a statement…