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When Branded Feminism Yells the Loudest
On this International Women’s Day, I’m tired. Of course, I could never be as tired as women who routinely face workplace discrimination, lack of financial autonomy, sexual harassment and abuse, or racial discrimination on top of being a woman. I do recognize that the tiredness I feel is different, and by almost all stretches, not an obstacle to how I…
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What my English Major Means to Me
“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.” -Salman Rushdie I study words: how to read them, how to understand them, how to use them. As a…
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I Believe Her
Much has happened this week and it’s difficult to find the words to articulate the sinking feeling I get when thinking about the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. “Entitled men have a remarkable ability to be oblivious to the damage they inflict,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote in his column this week. I recently re-read 1984, which contains many parallels…
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A State of the Nation
“The only times the city can breathe freely is when a wind blows in from a far-off place . . . . this city is a world of its own, a country within a country,” writes Amanda Craig in the novel Hearts and Minds. London may as well not be part of England, for much of its Englishness has been…
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Praise for the Silence Breakers
As you’ve probably seen, TIME’s Person of the Year was released last week. I am immensely proud of these “Silence Breakers.” The #MeToo movement has erupted at a pivotal time in my life. I am a female college student living in an environment highly susceptible to sexual assault. Unfortunately, once I graduate, the risk does not and probably will not…
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Not Quite a Millennial
I hate the word millennial. “Millennial” is really not a word we 18-34 year olds use to describe ourselves, anyway. It’s usually used as a cop-out for people over 35 to blanket the self-entitlement and liberal narcissism of young people. We young people say the same things about Baby Boomers, of course, and I won’t pretend that we don’t. But…
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This Week in the Trump Administration: University Sexual Assault Policy
“We will not accept this blatant favoritism for the rights of rapists under the guise of fairness,” says Annie E. Clark, executive director of End Rape on Campus. Clark is referring to the proposal from Department of Education secretary Betsy DeVos to end the Obama-era Dear Colleague letter against campus sexual assault. As a college student, I’ve been working to…
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Becoming an Ethical Consumer with Fair Trade
For my final project at the Freedom Center a couple weeks ago, I chose to do a gallery talk for visitors to the “Invisible” (Modern Day Slavery) exhibit. One of the requests I saw frequently on visitor feedback sheets was the desire for the exhibit to be more interactive; this is a heavy topic and many people have questions. I…
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A Love Letter to Potter
I didn’t get a chance to post anything on Monday, the 20th Anniversary of Harry Potter, but a belated post is better than no post! Hard to believe that the Harry Potter series is almost as old as me. What a time to be alive! Now, for a little history lesson for those who’ve been living under a rock: On…
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Charity and Health: This Week in the Trump Administration
After spending a semester in my nonprofits class learning all about charitable organizations’ tax codes, it was so great to read that Trump undid all of it this weekend with an executive order that now allows 501(c)(3)s to endorse political candidates. The Johnson Amendment was signed by President Johnson as a measure to further separate church and state by not…
