I spent winter break at a retirement community in Florida. It was equal parts boring and fascinating. One day, an old man approached me in the gym and struck up a conversation. After briefly exchanging pleasantries, he asked me point-blank, “So, are you a Democrat or a Republican?” I was completely ...
Here at liberal Brown in liberal Rhode Island, we often feel immune from the nationwide struggle with social politics. Personally, I watch the news and feel relieved to live in a place that is — relatively — socially progressive. Like last week, when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) vetoed SB 1062, a ...
Last week, a New York Times column by Suzanne Mettler brought attention to the evolution of college from a mediator of equality to one of inequality, categorizing the current system of higher education as a caste system. Mettler contends that the astronomically large cost of college has become too much ...
Recently, President Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative aimed at helping young men of color attend college. The White House has been active in its efforts to make higher education more accessible since the beginning of Obama’s presidency. We are heartened by the president’s newest ...
The stereotypical Brown student enjoys talking about hegemony almost as much as explaining that gender is a spectrum, not a binary. And when this stereotypical student talks about hegemony, it is not in positive terms. This student is wary of anyone, or anything, exerting hegemony. He or she knows that ...
Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, once said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” While Andrew Powers ’15 claimed in a recent Herald opinions column that policy evaluation should be based in ethics (“Powers ...
To the Editor: I very much agree with the article in Thursday’s Herald on e-book difficulties. As books are moved from the library into high-density storage outside of Providence (stored just by size!), the traditional activity of browsing is eliminated. Browsing means that one looks perhaps ...
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed suit against ITT Educational Services, a for-profit chain of colleges accused of enticing vulnerable students to take out significant debt for degrees of suspect value. Thirty-two state attorneys general are investigating ITT and similar companies ...
Most of us consider social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook our greatest sources of procrastination. In general, our professors request that we avoid perusing these websites in class so that we remain engaged with the material. At the same time, a new trend is emerging: Educators are asking their ...
Two weeks ago, two forums offered undergraduate and graduate students each the opportunity to participate in the University’s search for the person who will replace Provost Mark Schlissel P’15. I use the term “participate” cautiously, however. A closer examination indicates that the process ...
At 12:01 a.m. PST on Valentine’s Day, Netflix released the 13-episode second season of “House of Cards” in its entirety, part of its effort to accommodate viewers who prefer to “binge watch” rather than wait a week between episodes. The recent phenomenon of watching entire seasons in a weekend ...
Last week, the University of Mississippi was rocked when unidentified individuals — allegedly three white first-years from Georgia, according to the latest reports — placed a noose around the neck of a statue of James Meredith, the university’s first black student after the Supreme Court mandated ...
To the Editor: I am a former child garment worker and executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, one of Bangladesh’s leading labor rights organizations. Last week, I concluded a tour of U.S. college campuses with Reba Sikder, a survivor of last April’s deadly Rana ...
As of February 20, there have been 45 drug overdose deaths in the state of Rhode Island since the start of 2014. This amounts to nearly one death a day — approximately double the number seen at this time in 2012. Though its 2010 rate was the highest in the Northeast, Rhode Island is not alone in these ...
Our admission packets to Brown bore several instructions: return the “I will attend” card, mail the deposit, set up our Banner accounts and finally, read a specific book that you will discuss with your fellow first-years upon matriculation. I don’t know about you, but I personally dreaded that ...
This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. The National Eating Disorders Association sponsors this week and endeavors to rally support from all citizens. This group aims to prevent eating disorders and body image issues by ridding them of their negative associations while improving access ...
This week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof penned a column that has already created a great deal of controversy. Kristof called out modern academics for being too insular, incomprehensible and inaccessible to the general public, contending that the culture of academia has evolved to become ...
The student-university relationship is inherently unequal. As students, to maximize our chances of success in an increasingly competitive global economy, we are dependent upon universities to educate us. However, with an unprecedented number of American students flocking to higher education, universities ...
The University is making a measured attempt to recruit students from rural areas, beyond the major cities from which many Brown students hail. “There are wildly talented students all over the country, and it’s our responsibility to make Brown accessible,” Dean of Admission ’73 recently told ...
What if I told you there were only one thing you needed to do to own American politics for the next 50 years? The Pew Research Center estimates that at current rates of immigration, 19 percent of our residents will be foreign-born by 2050. Hispanics, many of whom constitute one of our dominant immigration ...
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