In late August, I rode the train — the light rail — through Minneapolis. Collapsed buildings, piles of rubble and boarded-up stores blurred past my window. Minneapolis, which I had known for a decade, was a city that I had never seen before: It was ravaged. Growing up eight miles from Minneapolis, ...
In early February, at a CNN Town Hall, Episcopalian pastor Anthony Thompson, whose wife was killed in the Charleston Church shooting, asked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden about his faith and about how he would use it in the Oval Office. In typical Biden fashion, as soon as Townsend stood ...
How do you solve a problem that’s 340 million pages thick? Stephen Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, is currently trying to figure that out. Over the past few years, the Social Security Administration has accumulated an astronomical number of unclaimed tax forms, sent by ...
My last day of high school was a Friday in March. That’s about all I remember. Initially, some teachers thought we would be back in time for graduation, while others thought that we would be kept out of school indefinitely, possibly until the fall. Being mildly optimistic, I, like many others, ...
In the past several months, the University has made many consequential changes with significant student impacts through its various governance committees. Some of them are related to the COVID-19 pandemic, while others are not. Some were largely understandable and uncontroversial, such as the decision ...
As our world is cast into turmoil by a global pandemic, almost everything about our daily lives has changed. It comes as no surprise that the college admission process has also changed during this time. Brown University specifically has made a few amendments to its admission procedures. Like many institutions, ...
TikTok is a social media app like no other, and its “For You” page’s algorithm is why. While the page’s exact mechanism is unclear, its goal is anything but: It monitors each TikTok user’s preferences based on their likes, views, comments and follows, curating an endless feed of videos that ...
For the past several years, the righteous fight for equity and fairness in college admission has been mired in a state of moral confusion. Everyone wants fairness, but how? Empowerment, but for whom? To knock down barriers, but which ones? To some, the answers are clear, and even more obvious to them ...
This week marked three years since Hurricane María made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. It is a moment during which painful memories of collective trauma flood the minds of many Puerto Ricans, demanding that communities meaningfully reflect on where they are now and how they got there. Over ...
**spoiler alert** This piece will discuss events that occur up to the fourth season of “The Good Place.” When I was a kid, I believed in answers. This wasn’t a coincidence – everything in a normal kid’s life is geared toward finding the right answers. Like many, I went to school and drilled ...
On March 4, 2020, President Christina Paxson P’19 informed the Brown community that the University’s Investment Office was stepping away from fossil fuels once and for all. The announcement – which followed years of student protests emphasizing that the University’s dirty energy investments ...
The next 50 days may prove to be among the most consequential in American history, the last chance to reverse the erosion of democracy and loss of international partnership and standing over which President Trump has presided. To be sure, the presidential and senate elections will be key to ushering ...
COVID-19 has taken a toll on the healthcare system, the job market and the simple ability to conduct activities that once took place in person. This disruption also extends to summer internships and other professional development opportunities for students that went remote or were canceled altogether, ...
Last week, on Sept. 10, 2020, President Christina Paxson P’19 sent an email to the Brown community announcing that the University would be moving forward with Phase 2 of its reopening plans. Under this direction, undergraduate sophomores, juniors and seniors who elect to return to campus will move ...
Shopping period is in full swing, and while the start of the semester is normally a time filled with options and new opportunities, students face obstacles to accessing their education. While professors and students alike struggle to adapt to online learning, many courses include problematic policies ...
In the same year that Congress defined marriage as between a man and a woman, Justice Antonin Scalia opined that some groups among LGBTQ+ people were actually quite privileged. In his dissent to Romer v. Evans in 1996, Scalia wrote that “those who engage in homosexual conduct tend to reside in disproportionate ...
“Why Brown?” Thousands of prospective students have answered this question as they vied for a coveted spot in the next class of Brunonians. Once the lucky ones were chosen, we all said “yes” for different reasons: the unmatched academic freedom of the Open Curriculum, the ability to connect ...
Since the University administration announced its plans for the fall 2020 semester on July 7, 2020, students have been focused on making their decisions about whether or not to return to campus. I have admittedly been contemplating the same dilemma and during my research I noticed an oversight in the ...
The first time I went swing dancing, I simply followed the music. It was a snowy February night, and I was walking home from a late shift at The Herald when the soft notes of Ella Fitzgerald found me on the sidewalk behind Sayles. I wandered up the steps for a peek in the window, and found myself dancing ...
Last fall, I attended a workshop hosted by legendary public-speaking professor Barbara Tannenbaum. In the warm comfort of her home that evening, a small group of 30 students sat around her cozy living room. Besides the home-cooked pizza that she had prepared for us, each of us came in search of the ...
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