I found the recent The Lawrentian cover featuring a student portraying a “Mammy” in a satire play called The Negro-Striatal Function very disturbing–not because of the content of the play, but rather because the photo had been chosen to represent all of the events of POC Empowerment Week. Louric Rankine ’21, Vice President of the…
Lawrence’s sexual assault policy
Sexual assault is an epidemic facing all corners of our society. Before the “Me Too” movement, much of the national conversation about the crisis centered on rape culture on college campuses. This centrality of discourse led to Lawrence and its institutional peers to make a number of reforms when it came to how they adjudicate…
Romance in media
Over this past reading period, I was in Providence, RI with KidsGive presenting at a student organization at Brown University. My mother drove down from Massachusetts and we go to spend much of Sunday together. She loves André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name, so we decided to see the new movie adaption. I thought…
ISIL Radicalization in the Modern Age
Over the course of my time at Lawrence, I have had the privilege to be able to travel for field experiences and study abroad programs. While in Morocco and India, I was able to speak with people working on the front lines to fight radicalization by reaching out to the hearts and minds of the…
Forgotten Afghani translators
While in India on my study abroad trip, I fell into a friend group made up of international Afghani students who had come to India on student visas to get Master’s degrees. The men got degrees in Government, Engineering and Economics. Some of the men confided that it was safer to study in India so…
Not (just) another Trump narrative
I’ve been thinking a lot about the jokes people make these days now that we are living in this modern age of discord. It seems as if the Late Night bits have become like Law and Order parodies. The news is even more disturbing and repetitive. I think most of us with sane heads know…
Not (just) another Trump narrative
I’ve been thinking a lot about the jokes people make these days now that we are living in this modern age of discord. It seems as if the Late Night bits have become like Law and Order parodies. The news is even more disturbing and repetitive. I think most of us with sane heads know…
Solving Campus Problems
In this modern national landscape of political, social and moral division, it is easy to put responsibility on the “other” instead of examining our own beliefs, actions and words, especially as young people. It was, as I’m sure many of you know, older white folks who delivered 45 his narrow victory in the electoral college.…
Secularism in Academia
The secularism of American higher education often leads students to New Atheism or a rejection of all religious worldviews. The reality is, every human society ever has had a religious component. Even modern secular societies define their culture in terms of their relationship to religion. In Europe, secular elements might advocate for freedom from religion.…
I watched the “free speech” movie: It was bad
After hearing about the controversy about Students for Free Thought’s screening of “Can We Take a Joke,” I decided to log onto my dad’s Amazon Prime account so I could watch the movie myself. When the film first began, I was excited that Gilbert Gottfried was the first interviewee. He is a celebrated comedian who,…