Born to a small Chinese village two thousand miles away from Beijing, my father traveled to the nation's capital in the spring of 1978 and toured the city for the very first time.
Late last month, Gov. Donald Carcieri '65 gave his final State of the State address. For me — and I venture to suppose for the majority of The Herald's readers as well — the governor's imminent departure from Smith Hill is a rare ray of sunlight in what will undoubtedly otherwise be a cloudy ...
CollegeConfidential.com is a pretty frightening place.
My 30-minute commute to work, with the potent three cups of coffee en route and the beauty of the sun shining between sporadic trees, offers a nice snapshot of my past two years. Teaching fifth-grade science to 140 wide-eyed students at PFC David Ybarra Middle School in Edcouch-Elsa, Tex., has been ...
There are days in Providence when it feels like the only thing more common than rain is the police, when, with the Brown, RISD and Providence departments, you can't turn a corner, right here on the East Side, without running into yet another cop car. But even though we live next door to a precinct office, ...
I love hosting prospective freshmen. Last semester, I showed a delightful young woman from New York City around campus. I took her through the Main Green, to Jo's for a late night snack and, the next morning, to the Ratty for breakfast. (I figured it would be honest to expose her to ...
Between the two sure things in life — death and taxes — Amazon.com seems determined to eschew at least the latter in many places in this country. Collecting sales tax on Amazon.com was a largely ignored issue because, in most states, the online store has no legal obligation to collect taxes ...
During a reception for international students at the Faculty Club last month, Vice President for International Affairs, Matthew Gutmann, was questioned by concerned students about why the Watson Institute has not yet taken to starting programs on contemporary China and Southeast Asia.
As I read the heart-wrenching accounts of people being pulled from the rubble in Port-au-Prince, I couldn't help but wonder what we hope to do for Haiti in the long term. Eventually the streets will be cleared of rubble and the wounds will start to heal. But what comes next?
I feel like someone out there in the intricate corporate web that is Brown is sticking it to me every time I buy food at the Gate, Jo's or the Ivy Room. The other day I missed dinner in the V-Dub, so I decided to go to the Gate for a meal. A meal at the Gate is six bucks, and it bought me a cup of soup, ...
The second wave of novel H1N1 influenza — the swine flu — is over, and the number of new cases continues to decrease. However, this does not mean that the virus is finished. The 1918 flu swept the world in three waves: first in the spring and summer of 1918, then in the fall, and finally ...
As spring kicks into high gear far too early for any of us to handle, all of our hard-earned summer cash is doomed to spiral (counter-clockwise, since we're in the northern hemisphere) straight down the drain. The city of Providence is looking forward to the Brown community returning to its stores and ...
The semesters are always extremely busy, with tons of classes, exams and papers. On top of all the coursework, students have many extracurricular responsibilities. Most students can barely cram in a social life, let alone an occasional full night's sleep. Overwhelmed by the breadth of work and ...
Yesterday, Psychological Services announced its plans to hire a new psychotherapist in order to expand resources available to students. This move will increase the number of free visits students are allowed each year from five to seven, and it should also reduce the waiting time before students are ...
If you're like me, you look forward to the crime updates that the Department of Public Safety sends us. Perhaps it's a healthy dose of schadenfreude, but the Campus Safety reports are much more interesting to read than Morning Mail messages, as they practically embody an e-mail version of "Cops," minus ...
If there has been a poster child for shameless corporate excess in the throes of the Great Recession, Goldman Sachs — payer of $17 billion worth of bonuses so far this year — must be it. Fortunately, the firm's outlandish compensation, heedless disregard for its civic debts and cynical attempts ...
Much was made of the GOP's mid-summer conversion to the party of seniors, despite years of diatribes against Medicare and Social Security. Equally astonishing is Republicans' assertion that by stonewalling the Democratic agenda they are acting as the noble guardians of young people.
Time for a warm and fuzzy moment: after nearly four years at Brown, I've come to consider this University, as well as Providence, another home. While I still look forward immensely to returning home to Asheville, North Carolina each and every break, I equally relish returning to Brown and the surrounding ...
Publish or perish. This is the mantra of the aspiring professor in the American university system. If the only purpose of universities was research, this wouldn't be a problem. "Publish or perish" is merely a narrower version of the more comprehensive mantra of the American economy: do your job, or ...
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