Opinions - The Brown Daily Herald

Opinions

Kinnard ’14, Van Houten ’14, Moffat ’13, Barkan ’17, Nieves-McGoldrick ’12: Drug checking services must be reinstated on Brown’s campus to protect students

By Elizabeth N. Kinnard, Natalie Van Houten, Jared Moffat, Muki Barkan and Rebecca McGoldrick | October 30

Roughly a decade ago, members of Brown’s Students for Sensible Drug Policy chapter began offering a free harm reduction service to fellow students in the form of drug checking kits. The program involved lending a set of chemical reagents to students who wanted to check whether the substance they planned ...

Opinions

Lehrer-Small '20: Funding for club sports is an equity issue

By Asher Lehrer-Small | October 29

Every September, dozens of students flood the Brown athletic fields for ultimate frisbee try-outs wearing sports clothes and nervous smiles. Some are juniors or seniors, many are first-years looking for a community. On the sideline, new players rifle through a trash bag filled with spare cleats. Over ...

Opinions

Letter: University should continue athletic recruitment

By Kevin A. Seaman | October 28

Rebecca Aman’s (‘20) column argued that Brown and the other Ivy League schools should end athletic recruitment in their admissions processes. This proposal is unrealistic and would only serve to make Brown less dimensional than it should be. Brown already has regimens in place to assure that students ...

Opinions

Meszaros GS: The historical case for astrology

By E.L. Meszaros | October 27

Questioning the validity of astrology and its place in modern conversations may seem straightforward — after all, as Jamie Flynn ’20.5 stated in his recent opinion, “astrology is pure pseudoscience.” But as Allie Arnold ’20 pointed out in her response to his column, the matter is complicated ...

Opinions

Van Horn '21, Mendez-Flores '20, Caver '21, Sanchez-Strauss '21, Donahue '20, Hahn '20: Brown University must cut its contract with Palantir

By Sara Van Horn, Angel Mendez-Flores, Brendan Caver, Caiya Sanchez-Strauss, Kielan Donahue and Peter Hahn | October 25

Palantir Technologies, a software company based out of Silicon Valley, recently renewed a three-year contract to provide crucial products to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The tech company makes data analysis software that ICE has employed in conducting workplace raids and in committing state ...

Opinions

Editorial: Students should do more to engage with UCS

By Editorial Page Board | October 25

Every semester, The Herald polls the undergraduate student body to gauge student opinion on various community topics. One question that has remained consistent across each semester’s poll is, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Undergraduate Council of Students is handling its job?” This ...

Opinions

Shanmugam '23: Regulate tech giants, because they can’t police themselves

By Arjun Shanmugam | October 24

In 2018, it was revealed to the public that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had illicitly harvested the personal data of millions of Facebook users. These data were used to create misleading targeted advertisements in the 2016 presidential election; authorities followed a paper trail leading ...

Opinions

Reed '21: Preventing a new era of hyper-surveillance

By Andrew Reed | October 24

“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day.” In the fictional province of Oceania, there is a telescreen on every street, in every building, on every wall. These two-way viewing devices allow the “Thought Police” to surveil citizens and ensure ...

Opinions

Letter: Perception of Brown in Tapiero letter is misguided

By Joey DiZoglio | October 24

To the Editor: It should be noted that Dan Tapiero’s BA '90, MA '91, and 1989 Associate Managing Editor of the Herald, Oct. 22 letter in The Herald was sprinkled with rose-colored views of a mythical Brown University. When he wrote, “I recall that at one time Brown was considered a breeding ground ...

Opinions

Letter: Maintaining the spirit of open debate

By Edward Steinfeld | October 22

To the Editor: I appreciated The Herald’s coverage of my “Family Weekend” lecture on the protest movement in Hong Kong. As the article correctly pointed out, I described a series of economic, social and political factors that I believe are motivating those protests, including the Mainland Chinese ...

Opinions

Haimbodi ’22 and Hutton ’22: University needs to change its hiring practices for people who have been incarcerated

By Kunovenu Haimbodi and Anika Hutton | October 22

No judge in the United States has ever sentenced anyone to a lifetime of unemployment. However, the collateral consequences of the American carceral system ensure that, although not codified into law, this is often the case. While the immediate effects of incarceration are profound enough — from severe ...

Opinions

Ren ’23: The persistent problem of college rankings

By Johnny Ren | October 22

With college application season in full bloom across the country, many university applicants will come into contact with college rankings. US News, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal publish some of the more well-known lists, though many more exist. Each operates in a similar fashion: quantifying the ...

Opinions

Simshauser '20: The NBA’s hollow commitment to justice

By Derek Simshauser | October 22

During Adam Silver’s tenure as commissioner, the National Basketball Association has enjoyed the distinction of being the most socially aware major sports league. The NBA was dubbed “the wokest professional sports league” by the New York Times in 2018. Silver, for his part, is aware of the benefits ...

Opinions

Editorial: Five-year suspension of Sigma Chi is misguided

By Editorial Page Board | October 22

In September, the University suspended the Sigma Chi fraternity for violating hazing and alcohol procedures that endangered students. The five-year suspension came within weeks of a revision to the Code of Student Conduct that targets derecognized group activity. Specifically, the revised code now punishes ...

Opinions

Kramer '20: Brown students are over-committed

By Anna Kramer | October 22

Brown students try to do it all, and maybe they should be doing less. Upon entering Brown, it is easy to get pulled into the hegemonic standard of student involvement on campus. One has to merely step foot in the club fair during the first weeks of the semester to get a sense of how involved Brown students ...

Opinions

Letter: Herald coverage of Kanders must improve

By Dan Tapiero | October 22

To the Editor: As an ex-managing editor of the Brown Daily Herald, it is with great sadness and embarrassment that I read the Sept. 12 op-ed “Warren Kanders still must go” and the validating Editorial Page Board follow-up comment Sept. 23, “University should further clarify its ethical gifts policies,” ...

Opinions

Klein '20: Who will win the NBA Finals?

By George Klein | October 21

The NBA season returns Tuesday night to much anticipation, since, for the first time in a while, the league truly feels wide open for a variety of contenders. There is no one single dominant Big Three, but rather several strong two-star duos. While a host of teams have viable championship aspirations, ...

Opinions

Letter: Why we should protest Amazon

By Rafael Pizarro | October 21

In his Oct. 11 column, Andrew Reed ’21 writes, “But there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of companies whose products serve a critical role in the mission of ICE.” In 1960, why did civil rights activists protest Woolworth, the department store chain with racial segregation policies? Weren’t ...

Opinions

Arnold ’20: Who we talk about when we talk about astrology

By Allie Arnold | October 21

In a quote from an article titled “Why Straight Men Hate Astrology So Much,” astrologer Randon Rosenbohm puts out a provocative claim. When asked about who she thinks the main followers of astrology are, she says, without hesitation, “it’s for girls and gays.” And while Rosenbohm’s assertion ...

Opinions

Aman '20: End athletic recruitment and legacy admission

By Rebecca Aman | October 18

On Oct. 1, a federal court upheld Harvard’s race conscious admission practice. During the case, Harvard was forced to publish admission data from 2009 to 2014, offering an unprecedented inside look at the college admission process at an elite American university. In September, three economics professors ...