Columns

Sarah Rosenthal '11: Has Brown got the write stuff?

Sheffield '11: Be bold

BROWN.

Doren '14: The myth of Brunonian progressivism

Brown is universally known as the rebel Ivy — standing apart from the entrenched educational elite by embracing progress and challenging the prevailing norms of our time. This reputation has served us well — if not always in the U.S. News and World Report rankings, then certainly in the ...

Tobias '12: Piracy abroad

Imagine that you had never been accepted to Brown — would it make sense to pay not to go there? Of course not, but this seemingly ridiculous policy officially governs Brown's relationship to study abroad.

Rosenbloom '13: Bagel Gourmet Ole: a salute to cultural fusion

Here at Brown, "patriot" is a four-letter word. For this reason, many people question my abiding faith in American greatness. I try to make my case by explaining the transcendent beauty of our founding documents, our genuine commitment to human rights and our monumental foreign policy successes. Unsurprisingly, ...

Stephen Wicken GS: Give thanks!

I have no doubt, dear reader, that you are a fabulously multicultural melange of intellectual vivacity and animal charm. We live, I heard somewhere, in an increasingly interconnected world, where groovy beings like you nibble Spanish pastries while sipping Argentine yerba mate tea, tapping your Chinese ...

Hunter Fast '12: On property rights and the marketplace of ideas

In a recent column, Elizabeth Perez '13 decried Amazon's endorsement of the free exchange of ideas while bending to consumer pressure to remove highly controversial books from its offerings ("Corporate power trip," Nov. 29). While this may make Amazon's corporate leadership disingenuous and two-faced, ...

Alexa Caldwell '11: Why the athletics department is good for Brown

I would like to offer an alternative perspective to Susannah Kroeber's '11 column ("Why the athletics department is bad for Brown," Dec. 1). It is understandable why she would have such a negative view of sports, as her feeble attempt to list the benefits of athletics is dismal. Her reasons for playing ...

Ian Trupin '13: Grade inflation - not just for students anymore

This October, many in the Brown community may have been delighted to hear that Brown University tied for first place in the 2011 Green Report Card, a report by the Sustainable Endowments Institute that profiles the environmental and social initiatives of over 300 American colleges and universities.

Susannah Kroeber '11: Why the athletics department is bad for Brown

I used to be a believer in the project of "sports." Sports bring people together, allowing people to see others as equals on the field, regardless of all the other markers that differentiate us in everyday life. In high school, sports were how I felt I could earn the respect of my classmates, how I ...

David Sheffield '11: URIN 0100: Introduction to waste disposal

Etiquette, especially that at universities, has slowly declined over the years. Academic regalia has been confined to commencement rather than required attire year round and people will give you funny looks for showing up for dinner in a dinner jacket rather than for arriving without one. It is generally ...

Chelsea Waite '11: Relationship status: it's complicated with professors

Of the myriad results of The Herald's recent student poll, I was most pleased to find that students at Brown frequently interact with professors outside the classroom ("Herald poll: interactions with profs vary beyond the classroom," Nov. 22). Indeed, such a high level of interaction between the vast ...

Simon Liebling '12: Why we bother

There's a certain soul-searching proclivity among students who take an active interest in university politics, an inevitable tendency toward crises of justification for spending time — despite everything else we could be doing — on something that might seem so provincial.

Elizabeth Perez '13: Corporate power trip

The next time you find yourself purchasing a product using the convenient services of Amazon, consider whether it is discomforting for you, as the consumer, to know that they were recently the sellers of "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure." Some may consider Amazon's initial decision to protect ...

Dan Davidson '11.5: Chafee-Taveras partnership integral to R.I.'s future

Many political commentators, anticipating the newly divided U.S. Congress, are predicting record levels of discord and gridlock in 2011. In Rhode Island, however, we may find ourselves hearing a word rarely uttered in conjunction with stories about national politics: cooperation.

Sissi Sun '12: Liberal education, trending

As students finish pre-registration for Spring 2011, once again some popular liberal arts classes, such as VISA 0100: "Studio Foundation," are quickly filling up.  As the popularity of these courses shows Brown students' general enthusiasm for a liberal education, it might be exciting for the entire ...

Nicholson '12.5: Capitalism - a fairly ugly story

We've all seen "You've Got Mail"… No? The masterful romantic comedy about Internet-love circa 1998? Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks' reunion hit after "Sleepless in Seattle"?

Hunter Fast '12: Brown's safety net

Nov. 9 marked the end of pre-registration for spring courses, in which many students scrambled for places in limited-enrollment classes. However, a number of students were unable to sign up because of Brown's reinstatement of a policy barring those with significant unpaid balances from pre-registering. ...

Chris Norris-LeBlanc '13: On sharing resources

As Brown University is an internationally acclaimed institution, we the students graduate with a number of opportunities and privileges not afforded to the majority of the world's population. The diploma, possibly the most ponderous of these privileges, is not easy to conceptualize sharing with a large ...

Mike Johnson '11: This TV has words on it!

I will admit this immediately: This column is self-serving, commercialized and part of the liberal communo-fascist capitalistic tendencies of Brown, Inc. As a writer, I feel compelled to ignore any sense of political correctness, preferring instead to send my meager sentences out into the free marketplace ...