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 ...
Dear Class of 2020, I hope you are embracing your graduation as a moment of tremendous accomplishment and celebration. And my greatest hope for all of you is that the difficult months of this pandemic prove to be a footnote to a life full of meaning and joy. I know it may not feel like it today, ...
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 ...
Following Brown’s closure due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, 16 Brown student organizations called on the Undergraduate Finance Board to donate unused funds from these organizations’ annual budgets to mutual aid efforts to support members of both the Brown and Rhode Island communities. On May ...
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 ...
In their May 15 letter to the editor, the Executive Board of the Undergraduate Council of Students appealed to the Brown community that the Class Coordinating Board is not an official form of student government: “As defined by the student body in 1976, any group including CCB which is looking to ...
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 ...
In early March, after Brown made the call to finish the semester virtually and cancel all events on campus, the Undergraduate Finance Board was faced with making a number of important decisions. One such decision was whether to permit service groups to donate their unused funds to the greater Providence ...
To the Editor: The Undergraduate Council of Students has and will always welcome input and collaboration from all students and student groups on our campus. UCS greatly appreciates the Class Coordinating Board’s important community-building work and interest in joining student government. All student ...
Student government has the ability to play a vital role on our campus, but its constitutive organizations are severely struggling to be transparent and accountable to the students they serve. At Brown, student government is composed of three different organizations: Undergraduate Council of Students, ...
Since roughly the middle of March we have all been living in a professional and social world of distance and remoteness imposed by the coronavirus public health emergency. As the Dean of the Faculty at Brown, I can confirm that we are managing to navigate the crisis at the University. The faculty has ...
Recently, Brown University announced it will temporarily house those fighting coronavirus on the front lines, namely emergency personnel and healthcare workers. This is a testament to the power the University has to do good in a global crisis. To that end, we would like to remind the institution that ...
As COVID-19 challenges the United States with the greatest health crisis in recent history, many American news outlets have devoted a worrying amount of coverage to bickering over what to call the virus. Of course, President Donald Trump has come under fire for using — but later retracting — the ...
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