**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 ...
Over the past four years, my professors taught me about the history of museums, how to read like a writer and to question who has the right to tell what stories. But after I finished my readings, submitted my essays on Canvas and closed my laptop; when I grabbed a meal at the Ratty or went to the basement ...
A couple days before classes started last fall, I learned that my grandmother was dying. She was the oldest member of my family, but we did not expect such a rapid decline in her health. With one phone call, my family suddenly faced the daunting task of transplanting ourselves in under 24 hours from ...
Anticlimactic. That is the descriptor most used when discussing graduation for the class of 2020. Some of us may be fortunate enough to enjoy a double commencement, while others unable to attend will miss two ceremonies instead of one. We’ve lost the final revels of Spring Weekend, the mornings at ...
The coronavirus has radically changed the last three months of my college experience by ending in-person classes, making me leave campus and postponing my graduation. For all of us in the class of 2020, the pandemic has created new obstacles that we could not have foreseen. Many of us will struggle ...
For many adults, the end of the pandemic will be marked by apparent normalcy. Control over the novel coronavirus (whether in the form of a vaccine, herd immunity, or comprehensive contact tracing) promises the cessation of mass death, yes, but also the return of familiar routines. There is comfort in ...
My mind has never thought as an ordered set of instructions. I always have a jumble of thoughts in my head, reminders to do laundry next to overdue problem sets on top of pleas from my mom to CALL MY GRANDPARENTS. I’m lucky if I finish any task before running off to the next best thing. A computer ...
I am technically part of the class of 2019.5. But because I graduated a little early, I decided to spend spring semester on campus, remaining engaged in the communities I have come to love at Brown. I know this led to some surprises initially for those who ran into me in the Underground or at the GCB ...
I remember being wide-eyed and nervous. My stomach was in knots, yet my heart was warm and full of anticipation. My parents and I had decided to take a road trip from my home in North Carolina to Providence, Rhode Island for my college move-in. At the time, I was 17 years old, and I knew that this 785-mile ...
My stomach full of pumpkin pie and turkey, I sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom writing and rewriting an email. Yes, it was Thanksgiving. But as an Opinions Editor for The Herald, I didn’t take days off. We had received a time sensitive op-ed, and I knew I had information the writers would not ...
Solutions by The State News
