Columns

Bouche '14: The real cost of college

Moffat '13: A disturbing trend

The search for Brown's next president has sparked a heated discussion about the future of our University. Some view President Ruth Simmons' legacy favorably and want her successor to maintain a steady course. Others, however, take issue with the fact that under Simmons' leadership Brown moved away from ...

Thomas '15: Cheers to Brown's policies from a newcomer

This December my fellow first semester freshmen and I returned home to a flurry of college experience comparisons among old high school friends. Of all the comments and the bragging, one phrase consistently resurfaced: "I forgot that drinking was illegal!"

McDonald '14: Silent racial discourse

In 2010, Newsweek rated Brown the second most diverse university in America, losing only to University of Pennsylvania. According to the magazine, "Forty-five percent of Brown's student body is white, while the rest are African American, Latino or Asian." The magazine further noted, "The most diverse ...

Kalyanpur '13: The holiday hangover

A new year is in full swing, and as we feel the blistery bite of Providence weather, the next four months on College Hill occupy our thoughts. With the start of a new semester, we are often filled with a blend of excitement and anxiety that is best exemplified by shopping period. It is a time to experiment ...

Lebovitz '14: The parachute strategy

Shopping period is an unnecessarily frantic period. Everyone gets caught up in minutiae that rarely have a large impact on their final classes. Oh no, my schedule has room for an introductory archeology class, but I'd rather not take it because it's too far from the Verney-Woolley Dining Hall, and I'll ...

Tobias '12: The university-college in the Internet age

David Hefer '12: The aim of activism

Society is a wonderful thing. As Hobbes pointed out, without it life would be nasty, brutish and short. However, despite — and sometimes because of — our cultural and political institutions, some lives are not much better than the state of nature. This is the starting point for the social ...

Cara Dorris '15: Resolutions reach the wrong audience

New Year's resolutions are always a list of recycled intents: to get more sleep, to do better in school and to party less (or more). But the most important one is always the same: to lose weight.

Resolutions reach the wrong audience

New Year's resolutions are always a list of recycled intents: to get more sleep, to do better in school and to party less (or more). But the most important one is always the same: to lose weight.

Garret Johnson '14: Defending President Simmons

As Brown students were recuperating over break, we received a rather dramatic email from President Ruth Simmons detailing the University's recent squabbles with Providence Mayor Angel Taveras over Brown's contributions to the city's coffers.

Rebecca McGoldrick '12: The student-dog relationship

Several lab tests and a week later, my diagnosis was in: Stress was the cause of my restless nights, my lack of appetite and my racing heartbeat. But my medicine is not a barbiturate or an exercise; it is 87 pounds, has a wet nose, and a heavy dose leaves me covered in golden fur. My medicine is a 5-year-old ...

Conyers '13: Brown and its chase for visibility

Much decrying of the state of our school has recently appeared in The Herald. This includes complaints about decreasing student involvement in the shaping of Brown's future, the inhumanities and pre-professionalism of "Brown, Inc." and the philosophic deterioration of the New Curriculum. The status ...

Seda '12: Success revisited

Early last July, I decided to take a temporary break from my literature-laden summer reading list and instead picked up Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers." With its catchy subtitle — "The Story of Success" — Gladwell's latest original work of nonfiction relates the stories of several individuals ...

Jaeger '14: SATs do, in fact, measure wealth

In response to a column by Ethan Tobias '12 ("Changing a cheating culture," Nov. 28), Aaron Larocque GS wrote in a letter, "The SAT can in no way be a means to judge a student's socioeconomic status … I doubt there is any correlation between wealth and SAT scores" ("SATs do not measure wealth," ...

Lu '12.5: The problems with chick flicks

With the long-dreaded finals period looming ahead, many students are starting to share their strategies for coping with the general gloom that characterizes the end of each semester. Some will turn to comfort food, others will rely on daily whiny phone calls to parents and still others will depend on ...

Schwartz '13: Questioning the implementation of the New Curriculum

The most sacred dogma at Brown may be that the New, or open, Curriculum benefits all students, yet it can hardly be expected to fulfill that charge if most students, faculty and administrators have not really considered what it is actually about. Few have read the original "Draft of a Working Paper ...

Zacks '15: An open letter to Brown Students for Israel

"With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Moraff '14: Scientists, do not help murder anyone

Giving $50,000 minus some-odd dollars per year makes us all more or less responsible for things at Brown — what the University does for society, how it helps it and how it hurts it. So we should all be a little worried about the sciences because some scientists make terrible things happen.

Moffat '13: Divided we stand

Spurred by the radical discourse within the Tea Party and Occupy movements, more and more political debates I witness express themes of desperation and animosity. They are desperate in the sense that each participant perceives an urgent crisis. According to recent polls, three out of four registered ...