Columns

Sarah Yu '11: Liberating environmentalism

I grew up under a hole in the ozone layer.

Kurt Walters '11: Off the Hill

College Hill is nice.

Mike Johnson '11: From one lemming to another

Welcome to the recession. In just the three short weeks since we all arrived back on campus, we've seen an explosion of money-related articles and opinions columns published in The Herald. Brown students are pinching their pennies, and whenever one slips through our collective fingers, we're going to ...

Hunter Fast '12: A field guide to Thayer Street

On Thayer Street, the last remnants of warm weather often herald a panoply of activists handing out literature for causes reputable and otherwise. Thayer has recently played host to demonstrators for eight-time Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

Simon Liebling '12: A Brown, Inc. education

Education — the one-size-fits-all defense for the transgressions of Brown, Inc. in the age of university corporatization, the easy rationalization of the contradiction of the profit-seeking non-profit institution.

Chris Norris-LeBlanc '13: Brown's conquistadors

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. After him came Vasco da Gama, Cortés, Pizarro and a whole slew of other Spanish and Portuguese explorers who set off to find the "New World." In high school we learned that these were great men — fearless explorers, pioneers of their time. They set ...

Dan Davidson '11.5: Will online colleges transform higher education?

The University of Phoenix's prominent sponsorship was among the many comical elements of LeBron James's summer prime-time special, "The Decision." It was bizarre that King James associated his brand with an institution more often the butt of jokes than the recipient of celebrity donations, and the irony ...

David Sheffield '11: God and man at Brown

In 1764, a group of Baptists founded the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Two and a half centuries later, we've changed the name and have few remaining vestiges of our former religious affiliation. The location of commencement, our motto and our seal are among ...

Terrence George '13: A lesson in responsibility

I started saving for college when I was three years old. Granted, I had no clue what college was for, nor did I know where I wanted to matriculate, but I wanted to go to college. I was a toddler on a mission, and dollar by dollar, I knew I was drawing closer to my goal.

William Tomasko '13: Ch-ch-ch-changing the campus and the college

When I started my sophomore year of high school, I felt like a freshman again. That was because my school had substantially renovated its campus, meaning that more than half of the building was brand new when school started in September.

Deniz Ilgen '13: Tradition: good or bad?

While Brown has been doing an excellent job of renovating the campus by remodeling the Blue Room and beginning construction on the Metcalf Lab, it needs to seriously consider refurbishing certain older dorms around campus. Not everyone enjoys waking up to scratched, dirty walls or viciously beaten up ...

Susannah Kroeber '11: America's better angels

Cynicism runs rampant at Brown. We are taught to question everything we hear in the classroom, and we often turn this cynicism into inaction, into a belief that the really big issues are the ones we shouldn't work on by virtue of how monumental the problems facing us are. Dr. Eboo Patel, in his talk ...

Kshitij Lauria '13: Refactoring the Refectory

If you really love the food at the Ratty, you can stop reading right now: we have fundamental disagreements that no opinions column of mine can change. I spent all of freshman year avoiding the Ratty, camping outside the V-Dub waiting for the doors to open, going through my flex points way too fast, ...

Anthony Badami '11: Arguing against Elginism

The view of Athens from atop the Acropolis, more accurately known as the Citadel of Athens, is heart-stirring and breathtaking. The matrix of bleached-white stone which comprises the city below provides an impressive foreground, while the surrounding cerulean sea is pleasant and welcoming in comparison, ...

Chris Norris-LeBlanc '13: Rx for Brown: a healthy dose of active cynicism

Sarah Rosenthal '11: How Proust did not change my life

Stephen Wicken GS: Be kind to your TAs, for once they were like you...

September is here again, and with it comes the usual russet leaf pile of beginning-of-the-year questions. Which concentration should you pick? Is your synchronized figure-biking team finally going to take Cornell down this year? What was the name of that guy you met at that thing last semester, and ...

Michelle Uhrick '11: IR is the University's cash cow

It's common knowledge that the international relations department is a flagship institution at Brown. The department peaked as the single most popular concentration among graduating Brown students in 2005, and since then has hovered around third place. However, this common knowledge is mistaken.

Sarah Yu '11: Get a room ... off campus

I am back this fall for my final year on campus, only this time, I'll be living off-campus. That's right: I'm in the process of fulfilling my final test toward becoming an independent young adult, mastering the ability to live, cook, clean and pay rent and bills all on my own.

Manas Gautam '12: In defense of Brown, Inc.

In his recent column ("Brown, Inc.", Sept. 10), Simon Liebling '12 made it very clear that he has forgotten Brown University's primary objective — education. It is not to provide healthcare to Dining Services or to take care of Rhode Island's destitute, but to provide an education and a remarkable ...