Op-Eds
eating
Is organic food really that great?
The organic food industry is on the rise and claims to have both environmental and animal benefits. However, new data and statistics disagree. What does organic exactly mean? An “organic” label means that 95 percent of the ingredients are organic, while the label “made with organic ingredients” applies to products with at least 70 percent […]
Shutdown
The shutdown mystery
Last night, when I was looking at the graph of Trump’s approval rating on FiveThirtyEight, my friend Charles said it reminded him of a brainwave activity graph. There’s no clear logic to any of the movements up and down, and past a certain point, the numbers don’t really stray beyond what’s expected from the random […]
New Year
New Year’s resolutions are inherently Sisyphean
I tend to approach the New Year and new beginnings with optimism, but that is completely baseless considering the lack of past successes I have had. Yet I annually hope and try to be better. I always hold the naive notion that this year will be different, despite all my previous failures. Whether my resolution […]
accents
Living with a foreign accent
Accepting that people sound different and embracing them for that reason is important. We are a generation of different languages, dialects, and accents with code-switching as our way of life. Read More
gender
Frat parties aren’t free
Ah, I love the smell of female objectification in the morning! Or the afternoon, or the nighttime, (because it happens all the time, after all). Read More
bush
Dealing with a political death
Why was it now, when Bush had just died, that we all decided to voice our opinions about the man’s politics? Read More
irony
Irony fails
It’s much easier to hide behind a shell of reflexive irony than to actually confront the often insurmountable problems we encounter growing up. Read More
smartphones
Generation smartphone
Imagine yourself in a small class, fewer than 10 students. You arrive several minutes early, and the professor, along with a few students, is already there. Read More
city
Get off campus!
Like a lot of people reading this, I came to UR with the impression that I was somehow going to a “good school” in a “bad location.” Read More
Debate
Facilitating difficult conversations through debate
When I first joined debate, it didn't seem anything more than a senseless word crossfire for people who love to win arguments so much that they created a sport out of it. Read More
