May 16 | 12:00 am
The New York Times recently published an impressive piece about student loan debt. The amount of debt with which current college students are graduating is not only staggering, but it is burdensome to the point of nihilism. My heart goes out to them.
More»May 16 | 12:00 am
As the U.S. presidential and congressional elections approach, a number of key political races are shaping up across the country. One of the most intriguing competitions pits Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., against Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren. This campaign for Ted Kennedy’s old seat has already turned out to be the most expensive Senate race in the nation. But a recent distraction has refocused the attention from the rivals’ political views to Warren’s ancestry.
More»May 15 | 12:00 am
I have a fear of missing out. This fear isn’t about missing out on a Friday night or a weekend with friends. Rather, it’s about something larger and more concerning. I have a fear of committing to any decision that could cut down my options for the future, even if making a firm choice would provide me with new, unforeseen benefits. I stagnate when faced with decisions that force me to shut doors to majors, to summer jobs, to off-terms and to Foreign Study Programs. I waver on the precipice of indecision, literally flipping coins in an effort to take myself out of the equation, to remove the choice and put the decisions in the hand of some random arbiter.
May 15 | 12:00 am
Last Wednesday, former U.S. ambassador to China Winston Lord came to campus to discuss the “sweet and sour” relationship between the United States and China (“Winston Lord talks China relations,” May 10). In his talk, he recommended that the United States work with China to build a Pacific community that would encourage mutual cooperation and foster progress on economic, humanitarian and political issues within an amicable framework. His call for an increased atmosphere of cooperation between the United States and China is of utmost importance for the maintenance of a peaceful relationship between the two great powers.
May 14 | 12:00 am
FoCo desserts are the bane of my existence. Every dinner, I pine for the soft, warm chocolate chip cookies. I ache for the butterscotch Butterfinger blondies. I savor the thought of dipping the freshly baked churros in a cup of hot chocolate. But these delicacies, and the joy with which I would devour them, often pale in comparison to the immense guilt I feel in eating, craving or even looking at them. In all honesty, I am desperately afraid of indulging myself — of having desserts, of skipping my workouts at the gym and of departing from my pitiful routine salad.
May 14 | 12:00 am
*Last Friday, The Dartmouth Editorial Board praised Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson for making a greater effort in the last few weeks to engage with the student body. Moving forward, what do you hope Dean Johnson will do to address student concerns?*
May 11 | 12:00 am
A month ago, The Dartmouth Editorial Board criticized Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson for her seeming disengagement from the student body (“Verbum Ultimum: Open the Door and Listen,” April 13), and we were not the only group on campus to express frustration with the apparent disconnect between students and administrators. Former Student Body President Max Yoeli ’12 called for more direct communication from administrators, and various student organizations expressed concern that their voices were not being heard (“Administrators remain disconnected, some say,” April 12).
May 11 | 12:00 am
On Wednesday afternoon during an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, President Barack Obama once again made history by becoming the first sitting president to publicly endorse gay marriage. According to The New York Times and numerous online commentators, Obama and his advisors had planned to make the announcement in the lead-up to the September convention since earlier this year but accelerated that timeline in the past week because of Vice President Joe Biden and other cabinet members’ recent public support for the issue. The question now left to many supporters of gay rights is how to interpret the president’s move — asking whether it was a calculated political maneuver that will have little to no effect or a heroic statement sacrificing political gain for, simply put, doing the right thing.
May 10 | 12:00 am
As I crossed paths with many of my fellow ’15s and their families this past weekend, I fondly recalled that moment when I first showed my parents my acceptance letter to Dartmouth last year. It was the first college I had heard back from, and I was hard-pressed to hold back my excitement as I handed over the green and white envelope to my mother.
May 10 | 12:00 am
In the West, it’s popular to depict Africa as a perpetually demanding charity case. Recently, however, the continent has begun to demonstrate economic progress of the sort Western cynics can’t easily dismiss. As today marks the middle of the International Student Association-sponsored Africa Week on campus, it’s important for us to keep in mind that there’s much more to Africa than the common perception of rampant violence and instability.
May 9 | 12:00 am
On the whole, if we know what a person thinks about any one given political issue, we can usually guess where he or she stands on most other issues. The range of possible political positions in our culture is, by itself, already narrow. But this range is narrowed even further by the fact that only certain contingent combinations of these positions seem to be culturally permissible. Thus, we meet very few pro-life socialists in America — both because there are very few socialists in America, period, and because the socialists that do exist are very unlikely to be pro-life.
May 9 | 12:00 am
In his recent column comparing President Barack Obama’s slogans “Change” and “Forward” to Mitt Romney’s “pathetic” catchphrase “Believe in America,” Benjamin Schwartz uses overtly biased language and damaging assumptions to incorrectly characterize Romney’s campaign and personal character (“What’s in a Slogan?” May 7). Schwartz relates Romney’s motto to the “birther movement,” arguing that it taps into some of his supporters’ racist and xenophobic sentiments as part of a larger intentional strategy calling on voters to “fear Obama’s foreignness.” By doing so, Schwartz contributes to the exact extremism he refutes, perpetuating the partisan rhetoric that runs rampant in our increasingly superficial political culture.