You can learn a lot about a person over a meal. My best friends at Brown share my love of food and, in many cases, a similar eating schedule. Every fall, I cherish the inaugural dinner of the semester, before classes start and when the only people in the dining halls are athletes and students participating ...
I entered Brown with big aspirations, wide eyes and a hope for something incredible. Like many of my peers, I was the valedictorian and president of many different clubs in high school. But after my freshman year, I soon realized that almost every Brown student was accustomed to past success. Brown ...
I cannot begin to quantify the number of parties I have attended with Steff and Stefan where we have taken over the music. From tiny dorm rooms to large bars, the three of us are constantly arriving somewhere, deciding we want to hear something different and asserting our musical tastes on everyone ...
My senior year of high school I wrote a paper for my AP Language class trying to figure out what makes going to college worth the money. I could not actually answer the question, so the resulting paper was tragically bad. I argued that experiences combined with academics define college, making it a ...
You bend down to tie your laces. You think the shoes are funny-looking. They are made of cowhide, and you have never worn ones like these before. You are traveling to America! Better wear something nice! You giggle at their old-fashioned ideas. You stand up and twist the door knob. Light cascades into ...
Homesickness has plagued me for longer than I would like to admit. One of my only memories from pre-school is crying by the classroom door after my mom dropped me off for the day. Once my parents went back to Pennsylvania after visiting me during family weekend of my sophomore year of college, I got ...
I have often been asked what my favorite book is or asked friends what their favorite books are. This is always a curious question, mostly because it offers an opportunity to learn about what the other person cares about without having to make them feel uncomfortable. In this same fashion, I will give ...
In 1982, an incoming freshman from New Jersey met his roommate, an international student from Pakistan. In their initial conversation, Andy Lazris ’86 and Syed Ejaz Husain ’86 MD’90 both quickly acknowledged that neither of them drank, but they agreed to begin college anew, attending a frat party ...
In high school, I started a Tumblr account with the username, “peoplecartographer.” I titled the blog “Atlas” and wrote a short description: “A collection of maps. An exploration of the world.” My posts featured maps I found online — including a map of terms used in the United States to ...
Making your way to the top of College Hill is not always easy. In the fall of 1982, fresh off his flight from Islamabad, Pakistan and totally alone, Syed Ejaz Husain ’86 MD’90 trekked up the uneven cobblestone sidewalk with his suitcase encasing all of his belongings for college. The young international ...
Inspired by the mother of the protagonist Sam in “Transformers 2,” my dad proudly paraded through Keeney on orientation day with my baby shoes around his neck (or “baby booties,” as Sam’s mom calls them). I took my first steps in these tiny red shoes. They flew with me across the Pacific from ...
With Commencement just 31 days away, many of my fellow seniors find themselves in the throes of a full-blown existential crisis. Last September, I wrote myself “A pep talk for senior year,” in which I found cause for optimism despite “a general sense that the world into which we were born is dissolving ...
In the wake of the 2016 election, numerous articles were written placing at least part of the blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat on America’s urbanites — simply for living where they do. City-dwellers, the logic went, were essentially self-gerrymandering, diminishing their political impact by ...
Congratulations to the 2,722 students — of a record 32,724 applicants — admitted to Brown for fall 2017. It is no surprise that Brown (which accepted a record-low 8.3 percent of applicants this year) and the other Ivy League universities have become increasingly selective over the past decade, as ...
Unpopular opinion: 4/20 at Brown sucks. Seriously. The marijuana-centric celebrations of 4/20 indulgently highlight inequities and entitlement while staging an exclusive takeover of public spaces. I’m reminded of this every year, and 2017 was no different. The last thing I want to do is take a gratuitous ...
To the Editor: We write as former College Hill Independent editors and contributors. We were dismayed to learn about looming cuts to the Indy and other campus publications, which could force many outlets to end their printed editions altogether. The Undergraduate Finance Board slashed budgets “out ...
Last Wednesday, Fox News finally dismissed the host of “The O’Reilly Factor” after years of silencing sexual assault allegations with settlements. Bill O’Reilly earned Fox News $446 million in advertising revenue over a span of two years, a figure that dwarfs the $13 million the company paid ...
To the Editor: I was troubled to read in your April 18 issue that the Undergraduate Finance Board plans to cut funding for many of Brown’s student publications. Although UFB apparently did not explain its decision, I suspect it is rooted in the mistaken belief that print is no longer relevant. Running ...
This spring marks the fifth anniversary of one of the largest cheating scandals in recent Ivy history: the Harvard Government 1310 case, where nearly two percent of the entire undergraduate student body had individual cases brought against them for plagiarism on the take-home final. I wish I could say ...
Earlier this month, Ivanka Trump came under fire from an unlikely source: Librarians across the country took to Twitter to criticize her for a tweet commemorating National Library Week. The first daughter wrote that, “This #NationalLibraryWeek, we honor our libraries and librarians for opening our ...
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