Columns

Tobias '12: It's not too late

Kalyanpur '13: Work harder, play harder

The accomplishments of modern medicine are undeniable, including cutting-edge vaccines and easy access to Tylenol, but we often fail to value its wonders. Instead we reserve our revel for mostly illicit or prescription substances. Ignoring cannabis, the Brown student's most common drug of choice has ...

Spencer-Salmon '14: Swimming in the flood

Brown's celebrated open curriculum affords us great power in directing our own education, but as we have all been told in some way or another many times, with great power comes great responsibility. Luckily, the University recognizes that higher education is serious business and therefore assigns each ...

Lebovitz '14: Retread society

Last week, I caught the triumphant return of "Beavis and Butt-Head" to television after a 14-year hiatus. Along with an excellent Out of Bounds sketch comedy show, it helped bookend a transcendent week of comedy. While "Beavis and Butt-Head" was an immature barrel of laughs, the question that struck ...

Moffat '13: Gadflies, occupations and the marketplace of ideas

With the most sincerity I can summon, I admire and applaud the beautiful people of Occupy Providence, a community composed of the kindest hearts and most resilient spirits. When I see the leadership that has emerged from within Burnside Park, I laugh and I cry because I wonder how Congress can be filled ...

Rosenbloom '13: Our extraordinary level of freedom

For college students in 2011, it is easy to become discouraged about our future prospects. We will be entering a bleak job market, there is no guarantee that our material well-being will be better than that of our parents and very few people trust our institutions and leaders to solve our most pressing ...

Sovern '14: Why there are so few women in Brown comedy

On Thursday, I attended the Ivy Film Festival's screening of "Miss Representation," a documentary that investigates depictions of women in American media. The documentary questions the way female politicians, journalists, actors and professionals are viewed by a society that prioritizes women's bodies ...

Hefer '12: Morality and occupation

The world is a big, chaotic place. It is populated by people with conflicting interests, and this often leads to turmoil. In certain cases, we can use morality to resolve those conflicts.

McNab '12 and Carroll '12: The WPC program needs a unified vision

As current and former Women Peer Counselors, we were disheartened by the recent Herald article on the program ("WPCs criticize program," Oct. 6). While the article accurately conveyed that problematic differences of opinion exist within the WPC community, it did not effectively describe the problem. ...

Henriques '12: 99 percent is not enough

There was an especially surreal moment at the Occupy Providence teach-in earlier this month when local activist Camilo Viveiros led the crowd in a rousing chant, urging them to "beat back the corporate elite." Consider a room full of students railing against the elites while tapping furiously on their ...

Cao '13: Across the strait: Chinese, Taiwanese or both?

Last Thursday night, students almost overflowed Salomon 001 to hear a speech by Justin Lin, the current chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank. The title of his talk was "Demystifying the Chinese Economy." It was a very insightful and inspiring speech, but I find Lin's personal ...

Eppler '13: Reform Brown's email privacy policy

The University's "Emergency Access to Accounts and Information" policy grants University administrators and law enforcement officers unfettered access to seemingly private information stored in student, faculty and staff email, calendar and document accounts, and does so with an alarming lack of transparency. ...

Jaeger '14 and Samuels '13: A Frank conversation about Israel on Capitol Hill

In the summer of 2009, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., wrote in a letter to President Obama: "I believe it is very important for the Israeli public to know that there is strong disagreement within the United States ­— not just within our government ­— over exactly how to deal with the ...

Moraff '14: Injustice and soup kitchens

Garret Johnson '14 makes a case for why the Occupy movement is misguided and stupid ("Give back, vote, but don't Occupy," Oct. 24). I think his reasons are mostly bad ones. Here's why.

Trupin '13: A case for community investment

Judging by the looks in people's eyes, I was far from the only one impressed by both the level of public interest and the coordination evident at the Oct. 12 Occupy Teach-In. I was particularly happy to see the number of non-student residents among the hundreds who packed Salomon 101.

Wemple '14 and MacDougal '15: Keystone XL and activism at Brown

Here at Brown, students are immersed in an activist culture. Every day — even multiple times a day — we are hounded with requests like "Come fight for the rights of Palestinians!" or "Take one minute to call your Senator!" It can be a bit overwhelming to have the burden of all these great ...

Johnson '14: Give back, vote, but don't Occupy

Watching the Occupy College Hill movement, one cannot help but sympathize with the protesters' cause. Who doesn't want to support a group aimed at fighting for social justice, as the Occupy parent organization describes itself as doing on its website? Who doesn't wish that the lower 99 percent of America ...

Enzerink '12: 'Miss Representation?'

Why is President Ruth Simmons consistently referred to as the University's first female president by non-campus media, or its first African-American president, when up until her ascent, it had sufficed to simply write "President" without the addition of "white" or "male"? The answer is, of course, that ...

Park '12: Why we need an Occupation on this campus

Brown, as sorely as Wall Street a month ago, needs to be occupied. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next week, but soon.

Norris-LeBlanc '13: Objectification is not gender-blind

David Hefer's '12 column ("Objectification for fun and profit," Sept. 30) serves as a comprehensive example of all the things that can go horribly wrong when men try to confront issues of physical objectification from a specifically male perspective.