Opinions
Park '12: Liberal Learning is under attack
By Julian Park | April 26Much like a cancer, the University's growths, initiated in the name of profit and prestige, threaten its health.
Columns
Opinions
Tobias '12: 'Next year at home'
By Ethan Tobias | April 25Swarms of prospective students descended on campus this past week. Walking between classes, I found myself doubling back to get around groups of 50 or more high schoolers, parents in tow, listening attentively to a hoarse Brown student yelling ineffectively at the top of his lungs.
Opinions
Johnson '11: Thanks for all the fish
By Mike Johnson | April 25My four years at Brown have been a welcome experience of maturation, and like fine wine and deliciously stinky cheese, the school only improves with age. From the moment wide-eyed first-years walk up the impossibly steep College Street and through the gaping Van Wickle Gates, there is something about ...
Opinions
Collins '11.5, Consiglio '11 and Yu '11: Save our sports
By Hudson Collins | April 24On April 21, the University released its Athletics Review Committee's report, which outlined a variety of proposals for the Department of Athletics. The committee recommended that the wrestling, women's skiing, and men's and women's fencing teams be eliminated. The 17-page report outlines the committee's ...
Opinions
Sheffield '11: Mediocrity of the middle
By David Sheffield | April 24Enough with fake reasonableness. The idea that the position in the center is always the right one and the one we should always take is as pervasive as it is wrong. The mediocrity of the middle pervades in news, politics and everyday life. It is bad enough when we are discussing value judgments — ...
Opinions
Fast '12: In the drug war, keep your eyes on the real killer
By Hunter Fast | April 21Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa '11 recently opined in The Herald that the breakdown of the rule of law in Mexico at the hands of vicious drug cartels can be blamed unequivocally on common cannabis users like the ones who appeared Wednesday on the Main Green ("4/20 and the drug war," April 18). While a subsequent ...
Opinions
Wicken GS: Knowing and kneeing
By Stephen Wicken | April 21Human knowledge, dear reader, is a funny thing, and our pursuit of it is even funnier, especially when we are wearing flip-flops. We spend a large proportion of our waking hours trying to come to know things. And yet we never seem to know that we know something until we realize that, without knowing ...
Opinions
Norris-LeBlanc '13: AG dishonestly uses semantics to obscure truth
By Chris Norris-LeBlanc | April 20In his recent guest column ("Secure Communities will protect all communities," April 19), Attorney General Peter Kilmartin informed us that "it is not and has never been our mission to crack down on illegal immigration." He justifies this statement by stating, "That role is limited to federal officials, ...
Opinions
Uhrick '11: The gender wage gap
By Michelle Uhrick | April 20I remember sitting in one day on one of those ad-hoc social experiments that professors often conduct to prove a point. The professor asked the women in the lecture hall who wanted to have children to raise their hands. A handful went up. The professor then asked for the same show of hands from the ...
Opinions
Moffat '13: Reefer madness
By Jared Moffat | April 19On the evening of Sept. 7, 2010, a crowd of at least 50 Brown students huddled in Wayland Arch, all raising their hands in unison. After an hour-long debate, they were answering the question posed by the Janus Forum, "Should marijuana be legalized?" The affirmative response was nearly unanimous.
Opinions
Najera GS: Untangling your mind
By Hector Najera | April 19I want to explicate what many Brown students already know — that the classroom does not have to be composed of four walls. The stories students and faculty bring to Brown are one example. From traveling in South America to working in the community, it is clear that growth emerges everywhere. This ...
Opinions
Kilmartin: Secure Communities will protect all communities
By Peter Kilmartin | April 17As your attorney general, protecting Rhode Island communities from harm is my highest priority. We have taken a strong step toward enhancing the safety of our communities by signing on to the federal Secure Communities program.
Opinions
Ortiz-Hinojoso '11: 4/20 and the drug war
By Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa | April 17Brown students are generally very socially conscious, as far as college-age students go. We protest sweatshop labor, the lack of government transparency, funding for unethical projects and the lack of funding for ethical projects. We encourage the purchasing and consuming of locally grown, organic and ...
Opinions
Nicholson '12.5: An apology for higher education
By Lorraine Nicholson | April 17Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and famed foreseer of the first tech bubble, has made another prediction. No, he has not anticipated another Internet bubble implosion or an over-evaluation of emerging markets. According to Thiel, the newest bubble ready to burst is the "higher education ...
Opinions
Trupin '13: The African student's burden
By Ian Trupin | April 17As we anticipate the arrival this fall of the most geographically diverse group of admitted students ever to enter Brown, a moment presents itself to reflect on the aims of internationalism at Brown and on the experiences that face students from abroad. Specifically, I want to talk about what awaits ...
Opinions
Lattanzi-Silveus '14: Changing the debate on ROTC - a socialist's perspective
By Luke Lattanzi-Silveus | April 13In the debate over whether the Reserve Officers' Training Corps should return to campus, the repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is usually given as an answer to the question "why now?" This is not the real reason, as ROTC's history shows.
Opinions
Park '12: Students can change the military - by keeping ROTC out
By Julian Park | April 12The only way the United States and its military are going to cease conducting themselves as they have is through symbolic and physical pressure consistently applied in opposition to their conduct. The Brown community has a unique opportunity to apply such opposition by refusing to reinstate the Reserve ...
Opinions
Wicken GS: Trousers and traumas
By Stephen Wicken | April 12This week, dear reader, I want to talk to you about something uncharacteristically serious. And not in the fun way, where I pretend I'm going to talk about something weighty, feint in a semi-grown-up direction and then make a joke about trousers.
Opinions
Johnson '11: Drive home safely, Glenn
By Mike Johnson | April 11Society scored a huge victory Wednesday when Fox News Network announced it is taking the hatchet to Glenn Beck's television show. In recent weeks, as the economy continued to create jobs, the esteemed Beck became increasingly erratic, spouting more and more ridiculous anti-Semitic drivel in an effort ...
Opinions
Tobias '12: Government is good
By Ethan Tobias | April 11The center of substantive policy debate has shifted to the far right. The question is not whether to cut government services, but by how much. Not whether to increase or decrease taxes, but who can decrease them more. Republican rhetoric that spending must be slashed because we are broke has carried ...
