When I came to Brown, I was told time and again about the relaxed nature of the open curriculum. I heard stories of the guy who took every class here S/NC, the girl who decided to switch her concentration at the beginning of her senior year and of every other student, it seemed, for whom the sophomore ...
Last month, one of my classmates from middle school passed away. He committed suicide with a kitchen knife after fatally stabbing his mother and brother in their Plano, Texas apartment. His family attributes his “snap” to a prolonged mental illness induced by multiple concussions he sustained while ...
Somehow, it’s already time for pre-registration for fall 2016. As students explore the new Courses@Brown website in a mad dash to shape the perfect schedule, I urge the administration to consider a change that would ensure that every student graduates with a broadened perspective of the world. This ...
To the Editor: Library management wants to reduce staff and services at the Sciences Library based on a decline in circulation statistics. They contend that the numbers tell the whole story — which worries me because library services cannot be measured by metrics alone. I work in technical services, ...
I recently had the good fortune of seeing a copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio. The book is part of a travelling exhibit honoring the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, and it arrived at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts earlier this month. As a writer and admirer of Shakespeare, ...
Freshman fall, I took a class called RELS 0055: “Modern Problems of Belief” that questioned why many believe one cannot be both modern and religious. While the class only focused on white male philosophers and never touched on Islam at all, it did enlighten my world with one special reading: “Fear ...
I’m not a big believer in the concept of “hell” — or, more accurately, I wasn’t, until exactly two weeks ago, when I had the tremendous misfortune of visiting the most pathetic government department in what is, almost indisputably, the most pathetic state: the Department of Motor Vehicles ...
As college students, we often rely on our parents for guidance and money, live with roommates we didn’t choose, depend on grades for validation from our professors and base our eating patterns off of cafeteria menu rotations. We sound like a bunch of kids. Yet, the minute we turned 18, we could vote ...
When I started scrolling through BrownConnect and other online portals for summer internships in the United States, the first thing I looked for wasn’t the pay or hours per week. I was just on the hunt for a single phrase: “International applicants are welcome to apply.” The line came up quite ...
In the drunken debauchery that pervaded College Hill on Spring Weekend, as many students staggered down Thayer and waded through the broken glass and discarded Natural Light cans on Angell, it was easy to miss the supreme musical talent that graced the Main Green on Saturday night. There, Mac DeMarco ...
Despite all the warnings from and panic among my peers, I was purely optimistic entering the housing lottery for the first time. My late slot on the second day did not diminish my hopes for Hope College, and I was certain a little of Littlefield Hall would remain open. I spent the preceding Sunday standing ...
Two years ago, I announced to friends and family that I was going to come to Brown. I received the reaction probably given to every Californian planning on attending college on the East Coast: ominous muttering about “real winters” and advice that I prepare myself for a level of academic competition ...
Over the course of the current academic year, perhaps no topic has been more in the consciousness of the Brown community than diversity. Diversity is a common buzzword on college campuses, and we all have at least some sense of what it represents. Whether you have joined in a protest this semester or ...
Spring Weekend hype hits Brown like a tidal wave after spring break. Invitations for punny pre-games and large after parties circulate social media, CustomInk boxes filled with tank tops inundate the mail room, and Brown finally turns into that wild state school you so admire. Students obsessively check ...
It’s that time of year again. College decisions have just been released, and decision day is right around the corner for next year’s incoming undergraduates. Many colleges are revving up with tours and accepted student visits — Brown’s program, A Day on College Hill, is quickly approaching — ...
In high school, I never took the time to think through the issue of abortion properly, letting mantras like “my body, my choice” and “keep the government out of my business” take the place of honest searching for the truth. Yet for all the power my friends and I placed in these words, I never ...
As students gear up to vote in elections for the Undergraduate Council of Students this week, The Herald endorses Viet Nguyen ’17 for UCS president. Nguyen, like the other two candidates — Kevin Garcia ’18 and Zachary Nelkin ’17 — plans to prioritize amplifying marginalized voices on campus ...
On Friday and Saturday, Brown students will bask in the sun (fingers crossed), sing along to “Trap Queen,” wear ubiquitous tank-tops and get high. Many will abstain, of course. But for some students, drugs are as natural a part of Spring Weekend as the music itself. I’m not interested in demonizing ...
In my last column (“Don’t dismiss the South,” March 17), I pushed back against “the traditional narrative of an enlightened, prosperous North and a backwards, poverty-stricken South,” going so far as to characterize the latter as “a multicultural region that, though often mired in the weight ...
From border walls to military intervention to free college tuition, many ambitious policy plans come from the current presidential nominees. This comes with much ideological debate about whether or not these things are “right.” But I do not particularly care about whether or not these ideas are ...
Solutions by The State News
