The prevalence of restrictive speech codes on college campuses is an underreported travesty of our time. The modern university ought to be a bastion of intellectual freedom where every idea is protected, and the college experience should empower individuals to learn how to deal with adult freedom responsibly. ...
Mid-September last year, members of Brown's activist student body took to the Main Green in what was the first act in their three-month-long campaign to rally support for the DREAM Act. The proposed federal DREAM Act would have provided undocumented immigrants with U.S. residency in exchange for their ...
"So, Emmy, what do you do at Brown?"
For the last four years, I have had the privilege of telling friends and family back home that I went to school with the happiest students in America. Of the many things that have been great about Brown, that has been by far the best, and I think it's something we take for granted. We're beyond lucky ...
To the rain gods: Why? When the Class of 2011 had gotten used to warm, blue-skied Providence springtimes, why bid us farewell with a chilly, rain-soaked April and an even more depressing May? — More depressing, that is, because we were even more painfully aware of what we were missing.
Economics uses a term called utility to refer to an individual's satisfaction or happiness at a given point in time. An individual's utility is expressed by a model or function that demonstrates how and from where a person derives their happiness. An individual actively "maximizes" the variables of ...
Brown's motto, "In Deo Speramus," is a vestige of the time of the University's founding, when our collected scientific knowledge often failed to protect us from nature's vicissitudes, whether they came in the form of plagues, floods, earthquakes or whatever else. In that era, it made sense for us to ...
In a recent opinions column ("In the drug war, keep your eyes on the real killer," April 22), Hunter Fast '12 was incensed by the suggestion that Brown students should be mindful of their participation in the illegal drug market. According to Fast, we should be proud to exercise our right to smoke marijuana, ...
In her recent column, Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa '11 castigated Brown marijuana users, arguing that their consumption funds gang violence in Mexico ("4/20 and the drug war," April 18). Her column incited a strong backlash from readers because no one wants to hear that the Brown community has a hand in gang ...
Much like a cancer, the University's growths, initiated in the name of profit and prestige, threaten its health.
Swarms of prospective students descended on campus this past week. Walking between classes, I found myself doubling back to get around groups of 50 or more high schoolers, parents in tow, listening attentively to a hoarse Brown student yelling ineffectively at the top of his lungs.
My four years at Brown have been a welcome experience of maturation, and like fine wine and deliciously stinky cheese, the school only improves with age. From the moment wide-eyed first-years walk up the impossibly steep College Street and through the gaping Van Wickle Gates, there is something about ...
On April 21, the University released its Athletics Review Committee's report, which outlined a variety of proposals for the Department of Athletics. The committee recommended that the wrestling, women's skiing, and men's and women's fencing teams be eliminated. The 17-page report outlines the committee's ...
Enough with fake reasonableness. The idea that the position in the center is always the right one and the one we should always take is as pervasive as it is wrong. The mediocrity of the middle pervades in news, politics and everyday life. It is bad enough when we are discussing value judgments — ...
Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa '11 recently opined in The Herald that the breakdown of the rule of law in Mexico at the hands of vicious drug cartels can be blamed unequivocally on common cannabis users like the ones who appeared Wednesday on the Main Green ("4/20 and the drug war," April 18). While a subsequent ...
Human knowledge, dear reader, is a funny thing, and our pursuit of it is even funnier, especially when we are wearing flip-flops. We spend a large proportion of our waking hours trying to come to know things. And yet we never seem to know that we know something until we realize that, without knowing ...
In his recent guest column ("Secure Communities will protect all communities," April 19), Attorney General Peter Kilmartin informed us that "it is not and has never been our mission to crack down on illegal immigration." He justifies this statement by stating, "That role is limited to federal officials, ...
I remember sitting in one day on one of those ad-hoc social experiments that professors often conduct to prove a point. The professor asked the women in the lecture hall who wanted to have children to raise their hands. A handful went up. The professor then asked for the same show of hands from the ...
On the evening of Sept. 7, 2010, a crowd of at least 50 Brown students huddled in Wayland Arch, all raising their hands in unison. After an hour-long debate, they were answering the question posed by the Janus Forum, "Should marijuana be legalized?" The affirmative response was nearly unanimous.
I want to explicate what many Brown students already know — that the classroom does not have to be composed of four walls. The stories students and faculty bring to Brown are one example. From traveling in South America to working in the community, it is clear that growth emerges everywhere. This ...
Solutions by The State News
