This piece was originally submitted as a speech for the Class of 2021’s Commencement. I did not first move into Brown during a pandemic, but I might as well have. As most of us have found ourselves during the past 14 months, in that moment in September 2017, taking my very first steps on College ...
Standing on the threshold of graduation, the path ahead seems rife with uncertainty. In our years at Brown, we’ve spent our time building ourselves into a community that supports, challenges and encourages us. That’s a hard thing to let go of as we leave College Hill behind. Four years ago, I ...
When I got into Brown, I was sitting criss-cross on my high school’s hallway floor, next to my best friend. I’d stepped away from the classroom with her to check my admission status. When I opened the page and saw I’d gotten in, my shellshocked scream was almost as much about my excitement to ...
This piece was originally submitted as a speech for the Class of 2021's Commencement. Welcome, fellow graduates, parents, faculty, friends and alumni, and the person here because they thought this was a free vaccine line. I see you. As a member of the Band — yeah, those sickos who wake you up ...
In high school, I once joked that I didn’t find out I was Black until my first day of sixth grade. That is, of course, an exaggeration; my parents and my parents’ parents are Black, and I have never dissociated myself from my identity. The kernel of truth at the core of my joke was that my Blackness, ...
The age-old adage states that college is where you find yourself and your people. At 18, I wished fervently to “find myself” falling in love with math, championing the resolution of some low-level environmental issue, graduating with straight A’s in my STEM and humanities courses alike, striking ...
When I first arrived on Brown’s campus the day of first-year move-in, I wasn’t all that different from any of my peers chaotically flooding the University gates. Like many of those around me, there was a large pit in the bottom of my stomach, which lodged itself there to remind me of my fear that ...
Over the past two years, identity politics have trickled into the curricula of university settings worldwide. At face value, such movements appear well-intentioned. Expanding avenues of learning beyond the Western canon is an extremely important and necessary means to better appreciate and engage ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has been defined by one ultimate feeling: loneliness. Whether through isolation, quarantining or social distancing, public health over the last year has depended on minimizing contact with others as much as possible to slow the spread of the virus. These circumstances have had ...
On March 16, 2021, after a year in which the United States saw anti-Asian hate crimes rise nearly 150 percent, a white gunman murdered six Asian women in three Asian-owned spas after allegedly saying that he would “kill all Asians.” Just two days later, the United States and China entered dangerous ...
As a senior graduating from Brown this May, I have been receiving emails since September of last year about the Senior Class Gift and Senior Class Gift Committee. It struck me as odd that although I had not yet walked out the Van Wickle Gates, I was already being asked for money. But the more I looked ...
Recently, Rutgers University announced that, religious and medical exemptions aside, it will require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to campus in the fall. Even with the end of the pandemic in sight, Rutgers has not taken for granted that its health situation on campus will ...
“Welcome to Settle for Biden, the page where we recognize that Biden is bad but Trump is way worse. Now is not the time to be petty; now is the time to defeat Donald Trump and his dangerous agenda,” reads the caption under the first Instagram post of the account formerly known as @settleforbiden ...
In the past several years, it has been fashionable to gawk in horror at China’s “social credit system,” an all-encompassing integration of surveillance, finance and state. Writing for The Triple Helix, Brown’s student publication focused on science and society, Priya Bhanot '23 called China’s ...
In just about every facet of American life, the pandemic has worsened existing inequities — and youth sports are no exception. Even before the pandemic, the professionalization of sports had been making youth athletics less equal. But COVID-19 has driven yet another wedge between rich and poor youth ...
After rioters finished desecrating the Capitol on Jan. 6, millions watched as a cohort of Republicans continued their attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. With no evidence, they repeatedly rose to object to the count in closely decided states, stretching proceedings late into the night ...
There is some hope on the horizon more than a year after the World Health Organization formally declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Multiple vaccines are available that are proven to be extremely effective at preventing major illness and death due to the virus, a game changer in a public health crisis that ...
It has now been over a year of living in the COVID-19 pandemic and learning largely in a virtual environment. Yet, academic functions at Brown must continue. One of the unsung heroes involved in some shape or form in all our academic journeys is the Brown University Library. We owe a great deal of gratitude ...
Since January, Brown has sought to exclude five University buildings — the Orwig Music Hall (c. 1850), Grant-Fulton Recital Hall (c. 1845), King House (c. 1895), 137 Waterman St. (c. 1910) and 190 Hope St. (c. 1865) — from a historic district proposed by the Providence Preservation Society. If accepted, ...
Last fall I was speaking with a high school classmate of mine about politics when he, after some prodding, admitted he voted for Trump. It isn’t surprising for a high school peer of mine to vote for Trump — I’m from a very “Trumpy” part of Florida — but I was still a little surprised. This ...
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