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Mili Mitra: Memory ghosts

The summer before my first year at Brown, whilst deep in the throes of high school nostalgia, I stumbled across a Huffington Post blog titled, “Letting Go of Your Memory Ghost.” It began: “Do you know what a memory ghost is? It’s not an actual ghost of course. It’s the pizzeria that takes ...

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Opinions

Michelle Zabat: Dad jokes

I’ll never forget my father’s last words to me before I started college: “Michelle, every single person at this school is going to be smarter than you.” I still remember that moment so clearly, standing on the sidewalk outside of Keeney Quad in the relentless August heat. I was in a beloved ...

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Opinions

Margaret Hu: Embracing discomfort

Like many first-year students, I arrived at Brown with bright eyes, elated to begin college at what I considered the perfect school. This was my chance to live the dream: the American dream my parents had worked so hard to realize, immigrating to the United States so their children could have a better ...

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Baylor Knobloch: Making a house a home

My apartment building’s superintendent is the most reliable man in my life right now. Paul is an employee of Mitrelis Enterprises, a business housed in the basement of our building. Our landlord, Andy Mitrelis, is an 88-year-old Greek man who owns eight properties in Rhode Island, a mix of residential ...

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Agnes Chan: Insecurities

I distinctly remember the dread that filled me when I sat down to write my “Why Brown?” essay five years ago. Scattered across my desk were brochures collected from dozens of college fairs, and my browser was clogged with 20 or so tabs of college websites and student forums that I had been scouring ...

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Opinions

Gillian Lee: Seeking value

As an applied math-economics concentrator, I’ve spent my undergraduate career learning about different ways to quantify the difference between an expected value and a true value. I’ve spent hours poring over notes and problem sets on concepts from mean squared error, which measures how close an ...

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Opinions

Marisa Chib: Writing as writing, as rioting, as righting

My first day at Brown, I remember excitement and nerves. The smell of a fresh coat of paint as I walked into my dorm, the flash of a camera bulb as I took my ID picture. But most of all, I remember stepping into my first modern culture and media class. Opening the heavy oak door of Wilson Hall, pushing ...

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Opinions

Soraya Ferdman: On discord

When I left Puerto Rico to go to college, I had no intention of returning. I never felt quite at home there, in part because I did not look, speak or think like those around me. My mother is Iranian, my father is a Jew from Argentina, and I grew up speaking primarily English. This made it hard to relate ...

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Samilow '19: The case against anonymous commentary

President Trump has many betes noires — his enemies, some of his friends, germs and sharks, to name a few — but none is more despised than the “FAKE NEWS media.” And nothing the FAKE NEWS media does winds him up more than when it quotes “phony unnamed sources” on dysfunction in his White ...


Opinions

Foster '19: A second Brown Promise

In 2017, the University undertook a massive fundraising campaign to remove financial barriers to accessing a Brown education. The Brown Promise initiative raised enough money to eliminate loans from undergraduate financial aid packages starting in the 2018-2019 school year. This is a fantastic step ...


Opinions

Vilsan '19: Relationships 101

Let’s talk about relationships. The word has romantic connotations, but in reality, relationships are central to every part of our lives, from the personal to the professional. So isn’t it surprising that there are no courses offered at Brown intended to help students develop critical soft skills ...


Opinions

Aman '20: Why is Brown’s room and board so expensive?

On Apr. 17, The Herald published spring poll results that found many students report stealing regularly from Brown eateries. When asked to explain their behavior, students expressed the belief that stealing helped them derive more  of the value of their meal plans. For example, one student explained, ...


Opinions

Steinman '19: Here comes the sun

It once seemed an impossible dream, but spring has finally come to Providence. As predictable as daffodils, students all over campus are populating every green space available to soak up the long-overdue rays of sunshine, ensuring that this week’s prospective student visitors for A Day on College ...


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Schapiro ’19: New England, enjoy it while it lasts

As I sit down to write, the Boston Red Sox have just been no-hit by Sean Manaea of the Oakland Athletics. But the setback is minimal. The Red Sox are still 17-4: They have the best record in baseball and lead their division by four games. For Boston, just about everything is clicking. Twenty games into ...


Opinions

Mulligan '19: Don’t talk down to millennials

A 2018 report from Temple University and the Wisconsin Harvesting Opportunities for Postsecondary Education Lab suggests that food insecurity is a much larger issue on college campuses than previously thought, affecting 42 percent of community college students and 36 percent of four-year college students. ...


Opinions

Savello '18: Rethinking the writing requirement

At Brown, the writing requirement is the only academic requirement for students outside of their concentrations. Created with the goal of helping students develop and maintain their writing skills, this requirement mandates that all students take two writing-designated courses during their time at Brown ...


Opinions

Simshauser '20: Making sport of politics

Turn on any cable news channel, and you are likely to be inundated with punditry. This has always been a staple of news coverage but has especially increased since the 2016 election. The structure of election cycles is conducive to punditry — there is no true referendum for an incorrect position until ...


Opinions

Flynn '20: Herald, employ the Oxford comma

Anyone who has written for the Brown Daily Herald has had to put up with the stain of barbarism that persists in its style guide. I am referring to the rule that prohibits the use of the Oxford comma, or the serial comma, which is the comma placed before the coordinating conjunction in a series of three ...


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