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Opinions

Opinions

Editorial: What objectivity means to The Herald

For any news organization, journalistic integrity is paramount. Historically, objectivity has been considered central to an ethical model of journalism. As the Columbia Journalism Review noted in an article on the subject in 2003, journalists “all learned about objectivity in school or at our first ...


Opinions

Silvert '20: Orientation and keeping an open mind

Beset by midterms and the daily routine of the semester, I sometimes find myself reflecting on and romanticizing the time when things at Brown still felt fresh, unknown and even a bit mysterious. Everything was far too fast-paced to understand and internalize during orientation, so thinking back on ...


Opinions

Ashley '18: Engineering should learn from computer science

It’s 8 a.m. on a cold Monday morning. My roommates and I fight the urge to stay under our warm covers and force ourselves out of bed for another long day of classes. We make it to Barus and Holley, open our notebooks, power through a 50-minute lecture and then get on with the rest of our day  — ...


Opinions

Esemplare '18: The beauty of the college bubble

Objectively speaking, Brown is a bubble. I’m not venturing into the discussion about trigger warnings or safe spaces; I’m talking about the insulation of Brown students from the responsibilities affiliated with adulthood. As I repeatedly hear from most adults, life in college is largely easier than ...


Opinions

Papendorp '17: Birth control — it’s complicated

Sept. 28, 1965, Brown’s director of Health Services Roswell Johnson ignited a nationwide controversy by prescribing birth control pills to two Pembroke students. Because both women were engaged to be married, Johnson was confident that he was “not contributing to” the “unmitigated promiscuity” ...


Opinions

Savello '18: Make student fitness a priority

For many college students, maintaining good health is a top priority and can be difficult to juggle alongside academic and extracurricular commitments. Schools should minimize the barriers preventing students from leading fit and active lives. With Brown’s accessibility issues and limited fitness ...


Opinions

Letter: In defense of Locke’s plan

To the Editor: The erstwhile writer’s perspective in yesterday’s Herald op-ed (“Weinstein ’17: Brown decides to chase its ‘peers,’” Oct. 12) is appreciated but fails to convince of the faults of a financial prescription that focuses on enhancing Brown’s relatively meager endowment, undertaking ...


Opinions

Editorial: Remove barriers to early graduation

The requirement that students must complete or pay for eight semesters of college is classist and contradicts the supposedly fundamentally Brown tenet of allowing students to be the architects of their own educations. Brown’s requirement of taking 30 courses seems reasonable enough, allowing for at ...


Opinions

Vilsan '19: Economy justifies professional compromise

In an economic climate where no job or investment feels safe, more and more college graduates and wide-eyed employees-to-be are choosing seemingly safe professions in finance, putting up their true aspirations as collateral on their impending loans. At a place like Brown, we tend to shame those who ...


Opinions

Liang '19: Nobel hypocrisy?

To anyone who has been living under a rock recently or has been blessed with a class schedule that doesn’t lead into Barus and Holley, let me fill you in on what’s happened: Our own Professor of Physics J. Michael Kosterlitz recently won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics. It’s a big deal. A BIG ...


Opinions

Weinstein '17: Brown decides to chase its ‘peers’

The Herald reported on Provost Richard Locke’s P’17 new financial plan for the University Oct. 5. In the article, ostensibly about Brown’s fiscal situation, were several comparisons to what Locke calls our peer institutions. One of the purposes of Locke’s plan, according to the article, is to ...


Opinions

Malik '18: A bookstore without textbooks

According to a recent article in the New York Times, bookstores at several colleges around the country are no longer selling textbooks. Instead, the bookstores are either focusing on selling college merchandise, school supplies and general books, or are shutting down their physical locations completely ...

brown-bookstore-illustration-daphne

Opinions

Johnson '19: The potential and pitfalls of Facebook politics

As I scroll through Facebook, I notice a staggeringly disproportionate number of political posts compared to apolitical ones. I realize that the large group of politically minded people on my newsfeed and an inflammatory presidential election are factors here. But it does reflect a growing national ...


Opinions

Krishnamurthy '19: A moment of calm in a season of rage

In an election season marred by overt hostilities, crass remarks and otherwise unsavory behavior, a brief moment of calm — an unexpected truce — came at the denouement of last Sunday’s second presidential debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In most of the hour-and-a-half ...


Opinions

Kumar '17: The Queen City loses its crown

I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina when I was two years old and lived there until coming to Brown three years ago. I thought I knew it well: the medium-sized “Queen City” leading the way for the New South with its big banks, beautiful trees and outsize airport. Over the past two decades, I’ve ...


Opinions

Steinman '19: A case for hours on syllabi

Two recent articles in The Herald have taken note of a new requirement for this year’s syllabi: the delineation of hours to be spent on work outside of class. The reaction to these new criteria has been mixed. Herald columnist Ameer Malik ’18 wrote a column Friday criticizing the new measurements ...


Opinions

Friedman '19: Self-doubt at the ‘chill’ Ivy

I found myself in the Sciences Library last Tuesday night staging an all-too-familiar last-ditch effort to complete my differential equations problem set the night before it was due. I was staring at code in Python, a program in which I still feel incompetent, feeling resigned to the possibility that ...


Opinions

Reyes '18: Leave safe spaces alone

I remember the first time I heard the phrase “safe space.” I remember how my ignorance motivated me to research its meaning. Through my explorations, I discovered that a safe space was basically just that — a place to feel safe, a place where you didn’t have to maintain a facade of tranquility ...




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