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Johnson '19: Hiding homesickness

What do I miss most about home? I miss the blue of the water and the pinks of the sky. I miss the gulps of air standing on a bluff, the midnight dips under the Big Dipper and the view of city lights through a beach fire’s haze. I miss tracing my toe on the lake’s surface while paddling along the ...


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Esemplare '18: Reading in the smartphone era

My whole life, I’ve been a reader. From a young age I would get lost in books, reading for hours on end with no interruption. Without the incentive of essays or pop quizzes, I enjoyed reading for its own sake, favoring the escape of a good book over many more tangible pursuits. And while the purity ...


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Vilsan '19: News with a punch line

It is virtually impossible for today’s college students to escape political discourse and accompanying impassioned political debate on social media platforms. Peers proudly display their party loyalties on their profile pages and share articles that affirm their views, whether conservative or liberal. ...


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Liang '19: Graduate-only spaces are vital for Brown's success

I was struck by Nikhil Kumar’s ’17 recent column disagreeing with the University’s decision to transform a part of the second floor of the Rockefeller Library into a graduate student-only study center. I was struck by this because, first, I also previously used the space myself as a first-year, ...


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Malik '18: New SAT, old problems

I apologize in advance for bringing up the SAT. For quite a few students, including myself, that acronym unearths memories of thick books and No. 2 pencils that are better left buried. But just because many of us here at Brown have already taken the test doesn’t mean that we should forget about it ...


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Rowland '17: Brown voters can do better

The presidential election has been the spectacle most on my mind recently, as many of my classmates likely understand. Each new repulsive discovery shakes me, but the bombast fails to surprise me. I read the news and tremble at the turn our country has taken but understand why and how it happened. I ...


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Krishnamurthy '19: Not another anti-Trump op-ed

Writing an open letter or op-ed about why Donald Trump is fundamentally unfit to be president is like declaring that the earth is round or that Kenneth Bone is a glorious stallion among men. We get it. I promise, we really do. Trump is a con artist concerned only with self-aggrandizement. He has little ...


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Kumar '17: The restricted section of the Rock

As a typical college student, I spend a lot of time in the library. The Rockefeller Library — more commonly known as the Rock —  is my location of choice on campus. I find it more welcoming than the Brutalist Sciences Library or the stuffy, no-food-allowed John Hay Library. My use of space in the ...


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Friedman '19: 10 things I wish newspapers covered over Trump

One of my favorite pastimes at Brown is scrolling through and reading the most-viewed articles on the New York Times app on my phone while eating lunch. With my phone in one hand and fork in the other, I smugly and contentedly read articles ranging from “A Single Mom Escapes the Friend Zone, One Non-Date ...


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Steinman '19: To Brown Republicans: too little, too late

I read yesterday’s op-ed (“Rose ’19, Tarke ’18: Brown Republicans do not endorse Donald Trump,” Oct. 19) with high hopes. The fact that the campus group, which dates back to 1888, had issued no statement prior to this week had been concerning me ever since the Harvard Republican Club released ...


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Zeng '20: The net wrong with networking

Several months ago, I attended a networking mixer for a business organization I had regrettably joined. For three hours, I sat at a table in a stiff white collar and listened to a fellow student puff himself up to corporate executives. I did not care at all about what he was saying, and when it was ...


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Silvert '20: Orientation and keeping an open mind

Beset by midterms and the daily routine of the semester, I sometimes find myself reflecting on and romanticizing the time when things at Brown still felt fresh, unknown and even a bit mysterious. Everything was far too fast-paced to understand and internalize during orientation, so thinking back on ...


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Esemplare '18: The beauty of the college bubble

Objectively speaking, Brown is a bubble. I’m not venturing into the discussion about trigger warnings or safe spaces; I’m talking about the insulation of Brown students from the responsibilities affiliated with adulthood. As I repeatedly hear from most adults, life in college is largely easier than ...


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Papendorp '17: Birth control — it’s complicated

Sept. 28, 1965, Brown’s director of Health Services Roswell Johnson ignited a nationwide controversy by prescribing birth control pills to two Pembroke students. Because both women were engaged to be married, Johnson was confident that he was “not contributing to” the “unmitigated promiscuity” ...


Opinions

Savello '18: Make student fitness a priority

For many college students, maintaining good health is a top priority and can be difficult to juggle alongside academic and extracurricular commitments. Schools should minimize the barriers preventing students from leading fit and active lives. With Brown’s accessibility issues and limited fitness ...


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Vilsan '19: Economy justifies professional compromise

In an economic climate where no job or investment feels safe, more and more college graduates and wide-eyed employees-to-be are choosing seemingly safe professions in finance, putting up their true aspirations as collateral on their impending loans. At a place like Brown, we tend to shame those who ...


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Liang '19: Nobel hypocrisy?

To anyone who has been living under a rock recently or has been blessed with a class schedule that doesn’t lead into Barus and Holley, let me fill you in on what’s happened: Our own Professor of Physics J. Michael Kosterlitz recently won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics. It’s a big deal. A BIG ...


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Malik '18: A bookstore without textbooks

According to a recent article in the New York Times, bookstores at several colleges around the country are no longer selling textbooks. Instead, the bookstores are either focusing on selling college merchandise, school supplies and general books, or are shutting down their physical locations completely ...

brown-bookstore-illustration-daphne

Opinions

Johnson '19: The potential and pitfalls of Facebook politics

As I scroll through Facebook, I notice a staggeringly disproportionate number of political posts compared to apolitical ones. I realize that the large group of politically minded people on my newsfeed and an inflammatory presidential election are factors here. But it does reflect a growing national ...


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