My heart hurts thinking of my sixteen-year-old self who placed her entire worth into a two-digit ACT score. I recall the silence in my household that followed my first test score, which was below my parents’ expectations, and the world of opportunities I was told to believe would only open up when I tested higher. […]
Do you call him daddy? Do I call her daddy? Call. Her. Daddy. I can still remember the illicit feelings of shame that consumed the thirteen-year-old version of myself who secretly listened to “Call Her Daddy.” Holding my phone up to my ear so that no one could hear, I listened as Alex Cooper bellowed […]
In the hallowed halls of academia, there exists an impossible dichotomy. On the one hand, universities are being told not to speak out against pressing political issues, and if they do, their comments are heavily critiqued. On the other hand, if they do nothing, then their ability to retain a diverse student body and maintain […]
Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls)” bellowed throughout Trocadéro Square in Paris, France on Monday, March 4th, as hundreds of Parisians celebrated France becoming the first country to explicitly inscribe access to abortion in its Constitution. France’s historic enshrinement stands as a rebuke to the U.S.’s rollback of reproductive rights and a beacon of hope for […]
My mother’s dream was to be a writer. Yet, in an immigrant household, her acceptance to NYU for English was eclipsed by the glaring pressure to pursue the medical field. She went to the University of Akron for a seven-year medical program instead. I imagine that my mother always wondered what her life could have […]
This past Friday, a congressional committee investigating campus antisemitism took the unprecedented action of issuing multiple subpoenas to Harvard University six weeks after hearings into antisemitism on campus triggered the resignation of former President Claudine Gay. The subpoenas set a deadline of 5 P.M. on March 4th for Harvard officials to produce the series of […]
Little girls around the world are bestowed a fragment of destructive wisdom—if you play dumb, he’ll probably like you more. And there it is, the beginning of our problem. Women everywhere are encouraged, no, programmed, to believe that if we shield our intelligence in the face of a man, then he will like us more. […]
There’s a rainbow Starbucks tumbler that sits on the corner of my bookshelf in my dorm. In high school, I brought this cup to school every day, disguising the can of Celsisus inside. The notion of parading the exposed can used to induce a peculiar embarrassment within me. But within the hallowed halls of Harvard, […]
Can we watch “Glee” on the projector tonight? You guys, you’ll neverrrr guess who I saw today. Rania, can I borrow that sweater again? Who’s playing the “Funny Girl” soundtrack, and can you queue “Don’t Rain on My Parade?” Come home quick, we’re debriefing. Olga Khazan, a staff writer at The Atlantic, writes, “if the […]
Since the announcement of her presidency, Claudine Gay’s character, qualifications, and intelligence had been consistently put into question. Amidst the mayhem, one refrain wielded throughout her tenure has stuck with me the most—her characterization as a witch. From countless news articles describing the pressure for her to resign as a “witch-hunt,” to comments left by […]