This summer, a few friends and I decided to drive into Providence, Rhode Island to grab dinner. Our destination was a small, unassuming Mediterranean grill, somewhat out of place among the dozen-plus Italian restaurants on Federal Hill. The food was good, but we weren’t there for that. The place was ...
The S/NC grading option is a cornerstone of Brown’s academic experience. It provides students with the freedom to try courses without worrying about letter grades or GPAs. However, the value of the S/NC option often comes under debate. Most recently, a column printed in The Herald, written by Nicholas ...
On June 15, Jay-Z became the first rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In the induction ceremony, former President Barack Obama recorded a video tribute as an introduction to Jay-Z’s acceptance speech. During the tribute, Obama said, “So, I’m pretty sure I’m still the only president ...
Over the years, people have attributed the economic inequality in higher education to a variety of conditions: the advantage given to legacy students, the lack of extensive and well-communicated financial aid opportunities and the altogether inscrutable college admissions process. Now, a new factor ...
When I think back on my summer, some of my favorite moments were spent alone. Oddly enough, I really enjoyed my daily one-hour commute in Los Angeles traffic from the San Fernando Valley to Pasadena. My falsetto dramatically improved with all of the R&B music that I sang along to in the car, and ...
When applying to colleges, the thing I liked most about Brown was its promise of academic freedom. As I toiled through my final year of high school, I had grown weary of rigid course requirements. At a Brown information session that year, I was enthralled by the promise of an open curriculum. After ...
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a proud Virginian. I am a proud native to a small rural county just southeast of Charlottesville. On Aug. 12 I attended the counterprotest to the “Unite the Right” rally that brought hundreds of white nationalists to my home state. I witnessed firsthand the hate, ...
An immutable fact of life is that people talk. But when Brown students are frustrated, not all of us can feel better just by talking. Some of us yell, some argue and some even protest. One of the first things I noticed when I got to college was the overwhelming lack of silence. While I appreciate the ...
In my first semester at Brown, I signed up for a Spanish class on a whim. Seated in HISP0600: “Advanced Spanish II” alongside a group of near-fluent students and upperclassmen, I was absolutely terrified when the professor called on me to read a paragraph aloud to the class. I had taken AP Spanish ...
The queue in front of me in the pharmacy was moving impressively fast, customers walking off with a handful of change less than a minute after placing their orders. As I glided forward, I couldn’t help but appreciate the efficiency. I speedily arrived to the front of the line, only to discover that ...
I’m not a particularly devout person. I don’t subscribe to any cults or fringe subcultures. (In the interest of transparency, I do follow Kylie Jenner on Instagram.) And I’ve never really wondered what happens to us after we kick the proverbial bucket. But if there ever is an apocalypse that reduces ...
The iconic Rabbi A.Y. Kook once said, “I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.” This statement encapsulates the visceral obligation I feel to the Jewish community to react: to scream when swastiskas stain high school walls, to ...
This summer, students received word that Brown is switching the management of its student health insurance plan to Gallagher Student Health, an insurance company that provides plans for a multitude of universities nationwide. While this might seem like a technicality, the change creates another difficult ...
On the one hand, we have Harriet Tubman, a humanitarian and abolitionist who dedicated her life to fighting for the freedom of enslaved people. She risked her life as a spy for the Union Army, spent years guiding others to liberty and eventually became the most famous “conductor” on the Underground ...
You can learn a lot about a person over a meal. My best friends at Brown share my love of food and, in many cases, a similar eating schedule. Every fall, I cherish the inaugural dinner of the semester, before classes start and when the only people in the dining halls are athletes and students participating ...
I entered Brown with big aspirations, wide eyes and a hope for something incredible. Like many of my peers, I was the valedictorian and president of many different clubs in high school. But after my freshman year, I soon realized that almost every Brown student was accustomed to past success. Brown ...
I cannot begin to quantify the number of parties I have attended with Steff and Stefan where we have taken over the music. From tiny dorm rooms to large bars, the three of us are constantly arriving somewhere, deciding we want to hear something different and asserting our musical tastes on everyone ...
My senior year of high school I wrote a paper for my AP Language class trying to figure out what makes going to college worth the money. I could not actually answer the question, so the resulting paper was tragically bad. I argued that experiences combined with academics define college, making it a ...
You bend down to tie your laces. You think the shoes are funny-looking. They are made of cowhide, and you have never worn ones like these before. You are traveling to America! Better wear something nice! You giggle at their old-fashioned ideas. You stand up and twist the door knob. Light cascades into ...
Homesickness has plagued me for longer than I would like to admit. One of my only memories from pre-school is crying by the classroom door after my mom dropped me off for the day. Once my parents went back to Pennsylvania after visiting me during family weekend of my sophomore year of college, I got ...
Solutions by The State News
