A little over two months ago, I turned twenty. Candles with beaming numbers had flared at me as their glossy pools of wax spilled over from the seismic shake of cake-bearing arms. I watched my mother's eyes flicker closed as her voice took on the familiar cadence of a birthday tune.

Twenty is a decidedly consequential number by convention. It marks two decades of time on earth, which means that by now, I must have collected a lot of important things that offer me instructions on how to live, and that these things must make me more differentiated, more intelligent and more sensible. Unsurprisingly, a change in age lends me incentive to reflect on my lifetime's material, where one thing comes to mind most clearly and easily.

I started piano in kindergarten after tagging along with my close friend to her weekly lessons, where we excitedly left with scratch-n'-sniff stickers pressed on the backs of our palms. My only prior experience had been experimenting with the plastic digital keyboard my family had purchased a few years ago and placed in a particular corner of the bedroom, where it rested on a cerulean blue IKEA table. I hadn't learned how to sight read music yet and found entertainment in recreating the sequences of sound I absorbed from daily life, ranging from select pop songs of the late 2010s that cycled through local radios, to a nameless melody my father liked to hum lowly in the evenings using solfège: do, do re mi, mi re do, do la so.

I remember playing the rest of that motif with my taut index finger over and over, until the notes spun like a wheel, whirring in my head as I drifted to sleep.

After formally picking up lessons from the same studio my friend frequented, my parents relinquished our Yamaha keyboard, with its beloved DJ setting and extensive demo library, to upgrade to an upright. I quickly found myself dedicating large portions of my afternoons towards practice, scouring the Suzuki book volumes for something impressive to learn, until I had finished all the intermediate material my teacher could provide and wanted a new challenge. This launched me into a vivid but short-lived period of piano competition participation where I performed the same Chopin waltzes I had studied for months on end.

"What do you think Valse de l'adieu means?" My teacher asked when I had blindly pointed to Opus 69 in A major on the repertoire list. She must have wanted me to be certain in my decision.

I learned that it translated to "Farewell Waltz", and that Chopin had dedicated the final years of his life composing it in memory of his first but ultimately estranged lover. My teacher brushed a finger lightly over his monotone, cross-hatched portrait in her methods book, where I could faintly make out the whites of his eyes.

"I want you to think of that when you make your sound."

And I had nodded, a little too young to grasp the heavier sentiment of a permanent goodbye, so I squeezed my eyes shut as I played, thinking, farewell, farewell, farewell.

I played piano for nearly the entirety of my childhood, and despite not being unique in this effort, its steady presence throughout many sensitive years of adolescence has made it the most forgiving figure in my life. I never pursued it to the highest level or entered a conservatory to intensify the rigor of my practice. Instead, I returned to it when I became curious, again, of what the mechanical motion of my wrists and finger pads could produce: the surge of rhythm and glissando, the low pull of melancholy or dashing lift of spirited Mazurkas. Or the resonance of a final note held captive under a fermata until I have sat in it long enough, releasing the damper pedal with a soft clunk.

There are no definitive ways to say farewell and have that mean the last.

Turning twenty isn't necessarily too different from turning nineteen, but it terrifies me that I am always surprised by my limited foothold over time. That even though the composition of my parents' faces hasn't changed at all - their eyes, lips, nose, ears - if I look closely, I can see the ways their features have yielded from weather, from the abrasions of expressing their energy and animation. And that even with all my musical muscle memory, I haven't touched my piano for at least a season, my upright sitting at home, anchoring its corner like a lone monument.

When I feel worried that I am beginning to lose my touch with the things I have long loved, I think of a short excerpt from Mary Oliver's collection of essays in Upstream. Wandering a river and having strayed from her family, she finds that being lost can coincide with arrival: "So maybe it was the right way after all…The beech leaves were just slipping their copper coats; pale green and quivering they arrived into the year. My heart opened, and opened again. The water pushed against my effort, then its glassy permission to step ahead touched my ankles. The sense of going toward the source."

I wonder about that source. Where does it originate, and point for me to go? It must be in a place I cannot easily find, but I trust that it is there, with all loved things settled deep beneath the bedrock.

Crystal Wang is a sophomore from Baltimore, Md., studying Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Jewett is a professor of Medicine, Science and the Humanities at the School of Arts & Sciences and the author of Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War and Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America.

Jewett is also the coauthor (along with lecturer Jonathan Strassfeld) of the upcoming book Johns Hopkins: The First 150 Years, which is set to be published on Sept. 15, 2026, in honor of the 150th anniversary of the University's founding. The history details the development of Hopkins into a top research university, as well as considering its relationship with the city of Baltimore over time.

Jewett's talk was based on his new book but focuses particularly on the five presidents who lived at Homewood House: Isaiah Bowman (1935-48), Detlev Bronk (1949-53), Lowell J. Reed (1953-56), Milton S. Eisenhower (1956-67) and Lincoln Gordon (1967-71).

In an email to The News-Letter, Jeannette Marxen, the programs and interpretation manager at the Johns Hopkins University Museums, spoke about the inspiration behind hosting this event.

"Our current exhibition on display at Homewood, If Homewood's Walls Could Talk, is an exhibition that combines the national 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States and the more local 150th founding of Johns Hopkins University. My goal for the public programs in 2026 was to link back to the exhibition and the anniversaries. Homewood House itself played an instrumental role in the formation of Johns Hopkins and I wanted to have a program that highlighted that role," Marxen wrote.

During his talk, Jewett began by speaking about the presidency of Isaiah Bowman (1935-48), who he described as highly controlling, often clashing with faculty over decisions about Hopkins. He also noted that Bowman held extreme prejudices, as he fiercely opposed admitting Black students to Hopkins and wanted to limit the hiring of Jewish faculty members.

Despite his controversies, Jewett emphasized Bowman's role in shaping the university's government research projects, particularly by maintaining the Applied Physics Laboratory, which had been developing the proximity fuse, after World War II. This helped Hopkins become one of the top recipients of government research funding in the United States.

"One of his really important decisions, however you think about it, is keeping the Applied Physics Laboratory after the war's end," Jewett said. "There's a question at Hopkins: is the APL going to continue to operate at all? There is some opposition, including in the physics department. But the University believes in the value of this kind of work as a form of national service and a sort of patriotic duty."

Bowman was succeeded by Detlev Bronk (1949-53), who continued the military-industrial-academic complex of Hopkins, even as more civilian research funding became available in the 1950s.

In particular, Jewett pointed out that even though other universities in the country were expanding, Bronk wanted to keep Johns Hopkins small and exclusive. In 1952, he introduced the "Bronk Plan," which would reduce undergraduate programs and shift the university's focus toward graduate or doctoral education, but it received little support and was soon abandoned.

The next president, Lowell J. Reed, mainly carried on Bronk's policies. Although his tenure (1953-56) was brief, Reed continued the focus on education for a small and elite population, and he limited the growth of the faculty or student body.

Under Milton S. Eisenhower (1956-67), however, Hopkins experienced increased, steady growth, although Jewett stated that it was at a slower rate compared to other universities.

"It feels like a golden age to people in Hopkins, but those who come in from elsewhere are like, What in the world is happening here? This place is so ridiculously tiny. How can you have a physics department with six people in it? How can you really…even teach students what they need to know with these minuscule little departments?" Jewett said.

As a result, Jewett described how William McElroy, a Hopkins professor, started a faculty-led report to call for the dramatic expansion of Hopkins in order to keep it competitive with similar top institutions. Thus, around 1964, there began a more accelerated growth.

Jewett then transitioned into discussing the racial integration of Hopkins. He first mentioned that the first-ever Black student at Hopkins was Kelly Miller, who studied mathematics and physics from 1887 to 1889. Unfortunately, little is known about him and Jewett emphasized that more research should be done.

Jewett explained that by the 1960s, racial integration had become an extremely important issue and that Hopkins was under increased pressure to admit more Black students. Jewett mentioned some of the early Black students, such as Reginald James, the first Black student admitted to the School of Public Health in 1942, and Frederick Scott, the first undergraduate engineering student at Hopkins in 1945. Furthermore, Jewett described the important role that student activists played in the integration of Hopkins, as they were instrumental in calling attention to pressing racial issues.

"This new factor is that students begin pushing for a vote in at least some of the university policies…in particular, questions around race. In the early 1960s, a group of undergraduates and graduates create The Committee for Basic Freedoms, and they describe various forms of discrimination in and around the Homewood campus," Jewett said. "A lot of the dispute centers on housing. Hopkins publishes an official list of rooms available for rent to students, but…80% of them or more are segregated. So a lot of the emphasis of this report is on housing."

Jewett also emphasized that Eisenhower was a supporter of integration, although he wanted to do it quietly without upsetting the university's conservative trustees. For instance, Jewett mentioned how Eisenhower hired Victor H. Dates to help with administrative initiatives related to integration.

Finally, under Lincoln Gordon (1967-71), the University continued its efforts in both racial and gender inclusion. In 1970, Gordon announced full undergraduate coeducation, which was significant as previously, women mainly participated in part-time or summer programs. Also, in 1968, the Black Student Union (BSU) was formed, which played an important role in recruiting Black students.

"The BSU becomes a kind of recruiting arm. The students say, 'Look, you're all going out into these schools, and these kids aren't going to really respond to you. We need to be the ones going out and doing recruiting work in the schools," Jewett explained. "And so they go talk to the students in the local schools, they write letters to those who are admitted, and so forth."

However, Jewett also mentioned that Gordon was an ineffective president due to his lack of administrative or public speaking experience. His presidency was marked by tensions with the faculty over governance, budgeting and expansion issues, which ultimately led to him being ousted in 1971. The event concluded with a question-and-answer session.

When asked about what she hopes audiences will take away from this event, Marxen emphasized the nuanced nature of the history of Hopkins.

"I hope they find the more current history that Homewood witnessed, as an administrative building, as evidence that historic houses don't just tell one single story," Marxen wrote. "Themes of power and resistance are a continuous thread throughout the building's history."

Let me take you back to November 28th, 2025. It is 23:15 and to a group of friends, I text:

What does love feel like for you guys personally?

Fast forward to February 11th (2026!). It is three days before Valentine's and six days before Lunar New Year and love, for me, has never been on the brain as much as it has that weekend. So, I asked and you: the students, faculty and staff of Hopkins, responded.

In the span of three days and 56 responses, you asserted love is meant to feel comfortable, authentic. You emphasized feelings of commitment and intention. You agreed that love is not confined to romance. You argued that love is not so much an emotion as it is a choice. You professed your love for your dogs, your friends, your family, yourself. Most importantly, you believed that there is no singular definition to love.

Take a look at this laundry list of notes on love. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

I. SIDECHAT

OP

curious. what does love mean to u individually (53 karma)

#3

it means being willing to inconvenience yourself or sacrificing something for someone else (39)

#1

Safe place to be myself (37)

#2 > #1

i fear u ate that up (14)

II. INSTAGRAM NOTES

pls answer!!! what does love mean to u personally? (via @naowom_.3)

> It's the most genuine feeling of wishing only the best and actions that support to getting it

> Hoping that my professor is kind

> Love is both the intention and action of caring to me. It's not enough to want to care about and not hurt a person (intent), but you also need to be able to show it through your actions

> Love is putting in the effort to communicate, care for and understand one another. It's learning that not everyone shows love in the same way and that's ok!! Part of loving someone is loving them in the way they prefer and are comfortable with. I am so so blessed to be loved by so many ppl and to love so many others…

III. TEXTS

< What does love mean to you?

> Feeling (perhaps unreasonably) that it's natural to be my genuine self around someone or something :)

> Romantic love for me is when I want to wake up next to someone and sleepily glare at them for waking me up while pulling them in for a snuggle. For me I think it's wanting to be someone's safe place and wanting that person to be my safe place

> I feel like love is "I see you" plus being unjudgmental, even if you cannot fully understand or agree with the others' perspectives. Yet you're still by their side, sharing some precious moments (like stargazing or a nice trip) together and watching out for each other.

> Mmmmm, I would say unconditional. You dont [sic] have to be someone special to be loved and cherished.

IV. INTERVIEWS

To me, love means...

"Connection with others, building strong relationships [with] people. Love is my best friend, Joella."

"My girlfriend."

"Family and friends, your partner. [For me,] it's my parents. And my partner if I were in a relationship."

"…having a village of people who will always lift you up in your best and your lowest times."

"Wanting to be surrounded by these people, people who make you laugh, spending time with people you really want to be around."

"… a deep level of care. When you care about something or someone so much it's always in your head - [it] doesn't always have to be in your head - but when you care about it enough where you're like 'Oh my god, I love that thing, I love that someone, like what else could it be?' I think that's love."

"To me, put simply, love is wanting the best for someone, just willing the good for them."

"... Doing so not with disregard for yourself but with selfless… intention"

"Love is just trusting someone and being able to be yourself around them"

"… Cooperation and trust. You lay your heart down and you're vulnerable with someone and you trust that they're going to take care of you."

"It's having someone to rely on who will support you in your lowest and highest moments."

"Love is being there for each other through the highs and lows."

"Always being there for someone and being able to be with someone and feel like, 'Oh, I'm at home right now.'"

"Love is when you just truly know someone and know all their flaws and everything good about them and you accept them for who they are and you just want to be around them, like, all the time."

"Love means being true to myself and to others."

"Being authentic and true to yourself…that means loving things about other people just the way they are, love for yourself and being confident in yourself and being true to yourself. So, this is me being true to myself and me loving myself as well."

"[Love] feels like friendship, but at a much more deeper level. If you are able to be the bestest of friends with that person, that's what love is. So, you can celebrate Valentine's with anyone you are good friends with and if that's someone really special, then that friendship is also really special."

"Family."

"My friends."

"Family and friends, mainly people who accept you for who you are."

"Love means, to me, friendships and really close community."

"Having that care for people and really supporting them. I think I have a lot of love and care for the people in my life."

"Love is a feeling of safety and security. When you're in love - whether that's romantic or with your friends - you should always feel safe and secure with that person."

"Love is sharing."

"Love is kind."

"Love is comfort and safety, where you can be yourself around them."

"…Also authenticity; you can be who you want to be in the relationship."

"To me, love is sacrifice - especially self-sacrifice, when you choose to spend time and effort with someone you care for you are effectively sacrificing parts or other aspects; it's just a choice you have to make."

"For me, love is not an emotion, but love is a choice. Because with someone that you love, there will be days where you two have conflicts and hate each other's guts, but in that moment, for me, that's why love is a choice. Even in that moment I abhor them, I still love them because I have chosen to love them - despite whatever feelings I think I have against them. And I think the choice and the commitment of love is much more important than the feeling, which I call moreso infatuation…. It's good and nice to have and a good basis for any relationship, but for love to flourish, you have to really commit to each other."

"It's, like, a feeling and space where you understand the person and also make sacrifices to obviously foster the relationship. But also, a place to learn and grow."

"Selfless actions you do that really come from the heart for other people."

"Love is a connection. I don't know what to say beyond that [laughs]…perhaps a connection between you and someone else. To show that you emotionally and physically are there for them."

"I think… love is comfort; how comfortable can I be with somebody? How comfortable does something make me?"

"Caring for someone, I think, being supportive and listening to what the other person has to say. Feeling comfortable enough to be yourself around them."

"Showed most through actions and more often than not, love can be something that's unconditional. It's something you continually chose to do throughout your life and towards other people. I remember when I was younger, I always wondered, 'What does it mean to be in love, and how do I know if I love so and so?' And I think when I choose to acknowledge that I love the people around me, I think that's what love is."

V. VOICE MEMOS

"I think [love is] when [the] words [you use] to describe your affection, whatever word you come up with, is not enough for how you feel."

"To me, it's like I care about someone, and the guy will also love me back; [our feelings] are equal to each other."

"Love is the act of being greater than yourself, and the way you treat others with it, whether it's their emotional, mental, or social being."

"Love is compromise."

"I think this applies both romantically and platonically, but I think love can really be about commitment, because, like, you always choose to love someone, romantically, platonically, and you do things to, like, sort of, you know, express that love. And I think, ultimately, it's about commitment, because you can break it off whenever you want, right?"

"Dogs and animals, especially puppies. Especially my sister's dog named Potato."

"Love to me, is the unconditional acceptance of somebody, and the striving to see that person succeed."

"Whether it's a person or whether it's something that you would like to do, if you're willing to give time for it. If you're willing to sacrifice something that means something to you for it, I think that's what love means."

"You know the saying, like, love is inconvenient? 
Because in order to, like, show that you love them, you have to go out of your way to do things, even if they don't tell you. Or even if they don't mention it, you take the time and effort to know this and put in the time and effort to do extra things besides the bare amount."

"Love is love."

Naomi Mao is a sophomore from Toronto, Canada majoring in Neuroscience and Public Health.

There's a sort of ineffable magic in my hometown.

Not that it's remarkably different from any other New England suburb, or unique in any way that truly matters. Watching familiar cityscapes rise in the distance before vanishing behind me, I sat quietly on the five-hour train ride which illuminated millions of complex, interconnected lives. Arriving home for winter break, I expected my surroundings to have changed as much as I had. While its superficial appearances remained the same, there was something different about how I saw my town.

Landmarks that had previously appeared commonplace were alive with meaning. Walking with previous iterations of myself, I strode along the path, looking out towards the water, past the wooden bench where I first told a girl I loved her and through the town square that would soon become lined with local businesses competing in the quaint but cliché yearly soup-er bowl every February. I glanced at the one-person barber shop I stopped visiting when I was twelve, and continued towards the library where I spent hours hunched over a desk, studying for the SAT in the middle of the summer. Finishing the loop, I passed the real-estate office with its flashing house signs, and saw at the ghost of myself a few weeks earlier, sitting in a car and laughing about the bizarre listing of a New Zealand mansion in a small Connecticut storefront window. To anyone else, the subsequent walk along the ocean might be a pleasant sunset view. For me, the path from my house to the beach was where I first felt at peace putting my phone down, breathing and looking up.

Madison, Conn., will forever be imbued with that kind of magic you can only really know as a kid. I have walked these same paths before, and I will again. But it won't quite be the same. Every visit, I come back different. I try to recreate the thoughts of the kid who felt lost, or in love, or hopeless, each time I come back. Yet he isn't me, and I am no longer him. The only thing that ties us together is the town we grew up in.

From early December to mid-March, a single Christmas tree remains lit each night. On a small, uninhabited island, across the Long Island Sound, its glow illuminates the water, the reflection visible from my window. I don't think I will ever know how it got there, or how it stays lit, but it never ceases to remind me of the beauty of my home. When I get back from working, running or the busywork activities that fill my days during break, I try to take it all in: the tree, the starry night reflected in the water and the beauty in the mundane. That's magic.

In his book Boy's Life, Robert McCammon writes, "Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know it's happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is."

In my hometown, the magic is still alive, at least for now. The capacity to love and experience beauty is only limited by observation. The more time taken to notice the wonder within each peripheral detail, the greater our ability will be to keep the magic we were born with. Maybe that's how we can keep our sense of childlike joy from being taken. Through all of the stress of education and the burden of responsibility, it remains incumbent upon us to maintain some semblance of the awe we are born with. Magic only disappears without belief. It leaves us only when we fail to recognize the beauty of our homes, our loved ones or a singular tree shining a beacon of light across the water.

Bryce Leiberman is a freshman from Madison, Conn. studying Political Science and Philosophy. His column records a search for authenticity exploring the past, present and restless work of becoming oneself.

Over the weekend, participants delivered speeches, drafted resolutions and negotiated with other delegates, proposing solutions to complex global challenges such as climate change and international security. Furthermore, the conference provided an opportunity for both experienced and first-time delegates to build leadership and diplomacy skills in a collaborative environment that opens real-life connections across the United States.

In an interview with The News-Letter, Chris Zhang, a Hopkins freshman, described his experience staffing the conference as exciting and challenging, explaining how competing allows students to test their ideas while also learning from the staffers and delegates around them. Zhang served as a staff member for HOP MUNC while also competing in other conferences throughout the academic year.

"There [are] a lot of things that people come [to HOP MUNC] for - mostly it's just fun getting to interact with a lot of different people from a lot of other places, getting to [talk] and putting [down] your ideas," Zhang said. "I just think there's a lot of learning to do - you learn how to interact with people, how to write well, how to communicate [and how to] public [speak]."

MUN consists of various committees that simulate real UN bodies and specialized crises to debate global policies. For example, Zhang is a part of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) committee, which simulates major constitutional court cases and allows delegates to dispute legal arguments.

Various other boards also include crisis committees. These groups are decision-making bodies that have more "power" than traditional committees; they are fast-paced, emulate small organizations and have continuous updates shaped by the actions taken by the delegates. Crisis committees consist of a "Frontroom" and a "Backroom" - Frontrooms are the committee rooms themselves, while the Backrooms are the physical locations where the crisis director and assistant chairs (who are a part of the conference's staff) respond to notes and craft the world outside the committee.

One student, Jennifer Ma, a Hopkins sophomore majoring in Public Health, served as the crisis director for one of HOP MUNC's crisis committees. Ma described how she worked behind the scenes to craft the committee's narrative and guide delegates through unfolding scenarios in an interview with The News-Letter.

"When I was a freshman, [that] was the first time I did a crisis committee when I was competing and I absolutely loved it," Ma explained. "What I like the most about [the] Backroom is [that] you get to come up with creative crisis updates [...] and it was a lot of fun. So, after last year's HOP MUNC, I decided that I [wanted] to be a crisis director this year."

The Hopkins MUN student organization consists of two competing units: the home team and the travel team. As many institutions host conferences for delegates to compete in, the travel team is specially designated to travel to various locations to represent the university.

In an interview with The News-Letter, junior Sareen Muthyala discussed his role as the President of the Hopkins MUN travel team and the Secretary General of the General Assembly and Specialized Committees.

"I oversee the three committees at HOP MUNC and make sure that they're running smoothly, getting feedback from the delegates and making sure it's implemented throughout the conference," he explained. "It's great seeing [the chairs, co-chairs and crisis directors] grow because a lot of these people I know through the travel team, and it's great seeing them not only develop as a delegate, but also taking [on] a leadership position and helping delegates from other schools who [may be competing for the first time]."

Through these roles, student leaders are able to mentor newer members and help shape the conference experience for visiting delegates. Simultaneously, they work to maintain an environment that balances healthy competition with social fun.

The conference was sponsored by various organizations and advocacy groups focused on international cooperation, which often partner with student conferences to support education initiatives. For instance, Citizens for Global Solutions sent representatives to the conference to engage with students and discuss opportunities for youth involvement in international policy. Keshet Benschikovski attended the conference as a representative for Citizens for Global Solutions and spoke with delegates about opportunities in global governance. She described the organization's mission to support students interested in global affairs and encourage participants to pursue their passions in foreign careers in an interview with The News-Letter.

"We have many youth programs dedicated towards UN reform and taking students to [...] conferences to learn about how these multilateral institutions are run," Benschikovski said. "These [students] are bright young minds who are already interested in global affairs - and we want to support them in their path forward towards their professional career."

Over 150 delegates from across the country gathered to participate and compete in HOP MUNC. Among these, many represented universities with Model UN traditions and brought experienced delegations to the conference. A political science major and senior at St. Louis University, Madelyn Keibl, outlined how the conference environment encouraged collaboration and friendly competition in an interview with The News-Letter.

Keibl first joined Model UN during her freshman year of college and has continued participating in conferences across the country ever since. From beginning as a starry-eyed rookie to becoming president of her chapter, Keibl explained that MUN has helped her build unwavering confidence and leadership skills.

"It's honestly been my favorite conference that we go to. [...] The people are probably my favorite part. [...] it's just super exciting to come here and have such good debate - and it be, y'know, not too intense but also creative and still super fun," she explained. "Last year, I met Slonae - she was my chair. [...] My first time doing this, I didn't really know what [was] going on. It was so fast-paced, and she made me feel like I was doing a good job [while] still giving me things to improve on."

Similarly, even beginner delegates find the conference environment to be welcoming and encouraging. Many students attend HOP MUNC early in their Model UN careers to gain experience speaking and negotiating in committees.

Freshman Owen Fugit from the University of San Diego described his experience as both exciting and supportive, sharing how the conference has helped him grow more confident in an interview with The News-Letter. Fugit is a part of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), a committee that discusses nuclear energy and its effectiveness alongside artificial intelligence as an emerging sector. He participated in drafting policy proposals and worked with other delegates to discuss possible environmental regulations.

"This is my third Model UN conference ever. [...] So just being here, I was very nervous that everybody was going to be like, the pressure was going to be on. But going through it, everyone has been so kind," Fugit said. "The chairs are amazing, the other delegates are fantastic [and] there [are] some real leaders that have started to emerge - and so it's really good seeing other students who are able to lift other people up and really, bring good ideas to the forefront."

For many students, conferences like HOP MUNC provide a chance to apply classroom knowledge to real-world policy discussions. MUN is an academic exercise that doubles as a social activity to bring students together through their passion for international affairs.

Aardhya Diwan, senior and secretary-general, helped coordinate the overall planning and logistics of the conference, working together with other student leaders to ensure that the event ran smoothly. In an interview with The News-Letter, he reflected on the challenges of organizing a conference on such a large scale. Moreover, he emphasized the importance of collaboration between staff members and delegates in making the conference successful.

"On the front-end, you feel a lot more professional. You [have to] have nice language that you use. [You have to] be very personable on the back end, it's about managing people - you [have to] be a little more strict [...] making sure people do their work, but also [making] sure they have a good time too," he said. "We have about 150 [to] 160 people showing up from the delegation side from schools like Georgetown University [and] George Washington, but we have about 50 people from our end (Johns Hopkins) helping out. It takes a lot of effort and [contributions from] people from both ends of the conference."

The semicolon performs a very simple role: It replaces a comma and a conjunction. It allows us to connect two complete thoughts without the halting full stop of a period. Consider the following sentence:

Semicolons organize ordered lists, especially in cases where the sole use of commas muddles appositives and intensifiers, condense longer sentences, cutting down on conjunctions where unnecessary and visually separating clauses larger than comma delineation can permit, connect multiple related thoughts into one sentence where a period would be too harsh and clean up rhetorical garbage.

If that sentence gave you a headache, you know why semicolons are silent saviors.

Tragically, though, the use of semicolons has seen a steady decline since the early 19th century, dropping from being used once every 205 words in 2005 to once every 390 words in 2025. This unassuming punctuation mark has endured thorough abuse from some of the world's most lauded writers. "Do not use semicolons," Kurt Vonnegut wrote. "All they do is show you've been to college."

Ernest Hemingway, too, famously advised replacing semicolons and colons (and commas, for that matter) with the more declarative period. As an author whose minimalist style marked a literary era of emphasized masculinity, this rejection of semicolons demonstrates a rejection of subtlety and femininity. While short sentences and declarative periods are viewed as assertive, the modest semicolon, commonly used by authors like Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, grants a softer end to a clause. A semicolon does not have the purpose of sounding strong; it fades into the background.

But periods and commas do what a semicolon does in the same way that music can be sung without regard for volume or tempo. You can sing a lullaby at the top of your lungs; the lyrics are the same no matter what beat you sing them at. Yet just as the softness of a lullaby gives it its signature soothing tone, the careful selection of punctuation gives writing its style. Shakespeare's "to die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream" is a hesitation, a contemplation - it is neither the droning list of To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream nor the hiccup of a To sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream.

To a certain extent, authors' criticisms are justified; writers should strive to be simple and direct by avoiding superfluous language and convoluted sentences that alienate readers. But these "weird little marks," in the words of Cormac McCarthy, do more than just "show you've been to college." A beat shorter than a period and longer than a comma, we lose our place in the sheet music of syntax without them. We lose dimension.

Really, though, the decline of the semicolon stems not from its controversy in writing circles nor from broad disdain for the punctuation, but rather from growing indifference due to a lackadaisical implementation in school curricula. A UK-based study found that almost 70% of students report never or rarely using this punctuation mark, with almost half of students not knowing how to correctly use it.

There's another reason students don't know how to write. The rise of generative AI has sentenced a cousin of the semicolon-the ill-fated em-dash-to death. Of the options of punctuation available to writers, the em dash is one of the most versatile - it directs attention to where the author needs it. It separates appositives and relative clauses - important ones - from the rest of the text.

The em-dash, however, has developed a negative connotation; now, texts that use this poor punctuation mark are often assumed to be LLM-generated "slop" rather than the product of human creativity. With readers and AI detectors becoming increasingly sensitive to em dashes, writers are starting to abandon them - not out of indifference but of fear.

In a beautiful grammatical buzzer-beater, the same decline in usage that nearly knocked the semicolon out of our punctuation lexicon has permeated the texts that AI models are trained on - making this mark a vestige of humanity in a world of unoriginal prose.

Semicolons don't just make us original because LLMs don't use them as often; they make us original because every punctuation mark gives our writing nuance. Our style is our poetry, in every piece of text from academic papers to creative writing pieces. Sure, we can communicate information in language as ugly as Orwell's 1984 Newspeak - a clunky, pared-down version of English meant to shrink vocabulary and flatten complex ideas. We are human, though, because we can find beauty in our language. That nuance is what distinguishes our lullabies from our metal songs, our love letters from our cold emails and our lab reports from our op-eds.

The semicolon does not draw a sentence to a close. It holds its breath, waiting for the next clause to continue the message of the first. In the same way, the semicolon is not dead; it merely waits for us to love it again.

Marianthe Dresios is a freshman from Carlsbad, Calif. studying Molecular and Cellular Biology and Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Omer Korkmaz is a freshman from Franklin Lakes, N.J. studying Molecular and Cellular Biology and Medicine, Science and the Humanities.

In recent years, SGA elections have struggled with limited student participation. The News-Letter noted that very few candidates ran for Executive Board positions for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 elections - in both years, several races were uncontested. Low election turnout and minimal competition for positions have raised concerns about engagement in student government.

This year, the issue has taken on a new dimension: SGA elections faced a setback due to vacancies and "logistical complications" in CSE. Without a functioning CSE, SGA elections cannot proceed. Student government depends on student participation at every stage of the process. If students want SGA to advocate for meaningful improvements to campus life, they must also engage with the institutions that make those changes possible.

According to the minutes of the SGA meeting on Feb. 24, 2026, several committee members declined to be reconfirmed, leaving only one eligible returning applicant. Although the nature of how exactly these vacancies arose in the first place remains unknown, The News-Letter argues that the situation might be an indication of the broader trends of disinterest from the student body in SGA election proceedings. Running for office, helping administer elections or simply voting and providing feedback to SGA are small but necessary steps toward sustaining a representative student government.

SGA has the potential to implement positive changes for undergraduates, but in order for such efforts to be realized, students must participate in its initiatives. SGA has implemented a number of positive changes for the student body, including free iClicker and Achieve access for students, $4 dollars of printing credit for all students and a Chick-fil-A tabling event to bring about engagement between senators and students. These initiatives demonstrate how SGA can bring tangible improvements to student life and also reveal the importance of participation from the student body. If students are not actively sharing their perspectives about what they want changed at Hopkins, SGA cannot represent their voices and opinions when attempting to shape university policies.

Even when initiatives don't fully come to fruition, SGA has periodically shown their dedication to amplify student voices. In fall of 2024, when MSE was beginning its first months under construction and the student body had to adjust to a campus without a central library, SGA also pushed for a 5% tuition reduction, mirroring the 10% tuition reduction that was in place when classes were moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the decision to reduce tuition ultimately lies with Hopkins administration, these efforts display SGA's ability to bring student concerns into institutional conversations.

Although the vacancies have now been filled, this still doesn't change this fact: SGA's effectiveness ultimately depends on the student body's willingness to engage with it. While the organization is able to propose initiatives and advocate for real change, its strength depends on student participation. If the student body hopes to see meaningful improvements across campus, their involvement cannot be passive. Due to these reasons, The News-Letter wishes to see an SGA election season with high participation from the student body: in organizing the elections, running for available positions and voting for candidates.

The play featured an intimate cast of seven characters, each being reproductions or slightly changed versions of the original cast of The Seagull. Although it adopted a modern perspective, the plot remained similar to the source material. I found it fascinating how many ideas from the late 19th century still ring true with audiences today - the search for novel forms of art, disillusionment, bottomless ambition and adoration of stories about complicated love triangles.

When I asked the director of the play in an email, Leah Woodward, a sophomore majoring in Public Health and Anthropology, what drew them to choosing Stupid F##king Bird as a production, they shared a similar feeling.

"I heard about this play from other Barnstormers when we were brainstorming potential options to submit for I-Show," Woodward wrote. "My high school did a production of The Seagull, so I was familiar with the source material, and I really liked the way the story was adapted to address modern-day issues - I feel like I share some of the sentiments about the world that the characters express, and assumed others would feel seen or heard as well."

The play, performed in the Bloomberg Student Center theater, was positioned in a blackbox style, which was instrumental in telling the story. The set was humble, featuring a stage, one wall of a house, the occasional dining table appearance and a wonderful seagull that humorously "flew away" midway through the show.

Woodward also talked about the narration of important moments of the play in her email, which were intertwined with the physical set-up of the theater. She detailed her thought process behind how the characters interacted with the set in her interview.

"The stage directions in the play call for a pretty minimalistic and versatile set, so I wanted to experiment with the stage setup to keep things interesting," Woodward answered. "I took advantage of the flexibility of the BSC theater to form a thrust stage, in order to create a more immersive worldview for the audience. I tried to think about the characters as real people when mapping their interactions with the set - having conversations around a table, or sitting and listening to another character rant. I elevated many important moments up onto the platform to improve sightlines and draw attention to the characters involved, which was also helped by lighting."

The theater's setup also played an integral part in audience interaction throughout the production. Some of the most memorable moments in the play were breaks in the fourth wall, ranging from subtle references to the fact that this story about a play was, indeed, a play to Conrad literally turning to the audience and asking for advice on what he should do to get his girlfriend, Nina, to love him again.

The audience came up with many helpful answers, my favorite being: "Like her Instagram story." The execution of this bit was fantastic, and Conrad remained in character as he reacted to every response.

When asked about their preparation for this moment, Woodward talked about whether her team had expected responses or reactions to audience participation, and about the challenges of preparing for a performance with an unknown variable from the audience.

"Preparing for this moment definitely was interesting!" they said. "We often had whoever was in the room fill in for the audience, whether that was me, our producer, our technical director or other actors. We ran out of ideas pretty fast and tried to have a new person interact with that moment each day, but I knew that an audience would have a completely different feel... The audience produced funnier and more creative and realistic answers than we had generated in rehearsal, but Jackson handled them smoothly and was able to make the scene "work" each performance."

Although moments like these had me, along with nearly all of the audience, in giggles, solemn and shocking moments allowed the play's message to shine through. Woodward says one of these more serious sequences was her favorite in the production.

"My favorite scene is Scene 22 - Late Night Quartet," Woodward said. "This is the scene at the end of Act 2 where Con, Nina, Dev and Mash express their frustrations with their love lives - I feel like it really gives the audience insight into the characters' emotional states, and I love the reaction that Sorn has at the end of the scene. It was also the scene that took the longest to block, and we had so many iterations before we came to the final staging, and I love the way it turned out with the final lighting design!"

Act 2 featured the uncomfortably tense unfolding of Nina and Trigori's relationship, but it freed me from that discomfort with a time skip in which we learned that Mash had finally acquiesced to Dev's love, and the pair got married (aww). We also learned that Nina's career as an actress had progressed slowly, and that Trigorin had gotten back with Conrad's mother, Emma, after Nina's first-born child sadly died at only a few months old.

Between Conrad's uncle Sorn, who had been a calm presence throughout the play, crashing out at his birthday party and Nina finally visiting Conrad so they could reconnect and think about panicked, delirious metaphors about seagulls, the second half of the play did not press the brakes on the emotion. When things finally seemed to slow down during Mash's recount of what happened after the events of the play, Conrad came back with a gun to his head, saying that this is where his character would shoot himself and to "stop the f***ing play." And so, the lights dimmed, and another successful production of Stupid F##king Bird by the Barnstormers concluded.

When asked what the biggest challenge they faced while directing the play was, Woodward referenced the timeline.

"We didn't have all of our actors together in one room until the start of the third week of rehearsals!" Woodward answered. "We also faced challenges with the snow - we missed a few rehearsal days and fell behind with the lights and set when the University was closed, which caused some stress because it was tech week! We had a line run over Zoom one day and did our best to make the most of the rehearsals we had left, and our tech teams were able to put the finishing touches on their respective elements on time! I am so grateful that everyone was so committed to this production and put so much effort and time, especially in the last week, into putting on the best show possible!"

Women's Lacrosse: W (12-0), W (13-11)

The women's lacrosse team first took to the pitch Tuesday on Homewood Campus to face James Madison University (JMU). The game before, the Jays had outscored their opponent by over 15 goals, so they needed to get back into the competitive mindset. But adopt this new mindset they did, and come back from a large deficit they did. After the third quarter, Hopkins was trailing by four goals. In the fourth, they rallied to score six goals and held JMU to zero goals. Freshman McKenzey Craig netted four shots to lead the team offensively. But, it was a whole team effort as they won with nine less shot attempts than JMU, and eight more turnovers.

On Sunday, the Jays played their fourth straight home game against Stony Brook. The weather was brilliant, perfect for playing a fierce match of lacrosse. It truly felt like campus was coming back to life for the spring. Senior Ava Angello led the team in goals, junior Taylor Hoss led the team in assists, and they were tied for the most points. The Jays return to action on March 15 to face Rutgers in New Jersey, and have a home game later the same week.

Women's Basketball: W (100-59), W (59-46)

The women's basketball team seems to have regained their dominance after a one game slip-up. This week marked the start of the DIII NCAA tournament. After receiving an at-large bid, Hopkins faced Hunter College in the first round. The 100 points scored makes program history for the most points by the Jays in an NCAA tournament game. Additionally, the 32 assists completed is a new program single-game record. Senior Lauren Knudson notched 22 points, complete with multiple 3-pointers. While Hunter outscored the Jays in the third quarter, this one period of dominance was overshadowed.

On Saturday, the second round of the tournament started. Hopkins competed once again in the Goldfarb Gymnasium, this time against Baldwin Wallace. When I started watching this game, I feared it would be a repeat of the Centennial Conference Championship Game, but this fear was squashed in the second quarter. Freshman Faith Williamson led the team in points, and the defense forced 30 turnovers. They return to the court next week and aim to keep March mad.

Track and Field: AARTFC Indoor Championships and Tufts Final Qualifier

Both track and field teams spent the weekend competing at the ARRTFC Indoor Championships and the Tufts Final Qualifier.

First, let's touch on the men's team. Day one, the Jays had competitors in pole vault and the heptathlon. Junior Sebastian Tangelson stood in fourth place after day one, and was highlighted by a first-place and personal best shot put finish. On day two, junior Oluwademilade Adeniran and Tangelson paved success for the Jays. Adeniran finished second in the triple jump while Tangelson finished second in the heptathlon. At the Tufts Final Qualifier, junior Alex Colleti placed first in the 200-meter dash.

The women's team attended the same two competitions, but competed in some different events. On day one of the AARTFC, Hopkins competed in the 4x400 meter relay, long jump, 60-meter sprint and pole vault. In all events, Hopkins finished top six or higher. Additionally, senior Mirra Kilmov qualified to compete in the 60-meter event on day two. The second day of competition was led by junior Diana Valentini who placed fifth in the 800 meter event. At the Tufts Final Qualifier, Sophomore Carter Brotherton was the only Blue Jay woman competing. She ran the 5,000 meters and delivered a personal best time.

The next step in this indoor track season is based on the NCAA selections. If Hopkins athletes are chosen, they will travel to the DIII Indoor Championships mid-march in Alabama.

For the longest time, the snow wouldn't melt, and we were all slipping around on ice-encrusted mounds of it. Half the sidewalks remained unshoveled for weeks, and the other half were mosaics of different colors of ice melt. There wasn't a whole lot to do since any amount of time spent outside felt treacherous and unpleasant, so I took to spending as much of my time as I could inside.

As a kid I waited in anticipation for snow days, all through October and November. When we finally got one, I'd wake up early and rush to bundle up. Waddling like penguins, the neighborhood kids would drag their old toboggans to the steepest hill in our vicinity and split the day between sledding, building snow forts, eating snow and drinking hot chocolate. Now I was armed with a list of gripes I could no longer ignore (my feet were always wet, my skin always dry, no one looks good when they're trying to avoid black ice, etc.).

I suppose that list of gripes is what makes our current propensity to Zoom so exciting for schools and workplaces. Now, from the comfort of your home, you can do all the work you were originally going to while the ice freezes outside. Instead of having to wake up early to shovel the driveway or add school days onto the end of the year to make up for lost time, you can sit muted in a blurred background while someone says something that was probably important but didn't grab your attention as much as the arrival of your roommate or the cupcake you just remembered was in your fridge.

On the first day of the snow, a Sunday, Mount Vernon Square was full of people, young and old, enjoying the snow. Some were walking in it, some taking pictures. A few were trying to sled down the street in a flattened cardboard box. On Peabody's campus, the dining hall staff were challenging passing students to snowball fights, and students were bundling up to go see the snow. In two pairs of pants, a group of us found ourselves after about an hour of wading through snow drifts, at the Inner Harbor. One friend barrel-rolled down Federal Hill. The next day, though, all that remained were footprints on footprints. We all had virtual events and asynchronous work to entertain us. The snow was just a nuisance that kept us from taking classes in a meaningful way.

All this made me think about the way kids live now. I don't have any elementary schoolers in my life, so I don't know the state of snow days at the moment. I remember in high school that we all got a single snow day each year before Zoom school won out. I hope that kids today still get to experience what I did, even with the possibility of Zoom school looming over them. I hope they spend hours patting soft snow into icy "speed bumps" on a sledding hill and making ice sculptures on the street. I hope that even though we have the technology to keep them from missing a day of school, they still know what it's like to wake up early, check the county website and fall asleep happily for a few more hours, knowing that a long day of fun awaits them. To raise this younger generation to see snow only as a source of wet socks and chapped faces would be something of a tragedy.

Amelia Taylor is a sophomore from Potomac, Md. studying Writing Seminars and Voice Performance. In her column, she draws insights from seemingly random experiences that present themselves in the course of ordinary life.

Plotnik opened with a pointed challenge, describing the way cognitive scientists have historically approached non-human animals. According to Plotnik, most experimental tasks designed to test animal cognition are built for non-human primates. These species, he explained, absorb information visually and tactilely.

However, when these same tasks are given to an elephant, or even a dog or a bird, a negative result can be easily obtained and therefore misinterpreted because elephants simply do not have strengths in these domains of cognitive ability.

"You can say this animal does not have this particular cognitive ability," Plotnik said, "and I think as scientists we reach that conclusion far too often."

Therefore, Plotnik's solution is to design experiments in consideration of a particular animal's sensory perspective. Specifically, for elephants, it means centering research on olfaction because that is how they primarily sense and view the world. With roughly 2,000 functional olfactory receptor genes, five times the number humans have and twice that of dogs, elephants possess what Plotnik called a remarkable "periscope" for the world. Thus, his lab has spent over 20 years in Northern Thailand to expand a bigger window into elephant cognition.

The pivot to olfaction though was not born from observational data Plotnik and his team procured. Plotnik recounted an early field experience that inspired his entire approach. He had initially set out to test whether elephants, like many domesticated species, could follow human pointing cues (physical gestures) to locate hidden food. However, after testing them, he found they couldn't. None of more than 20 elephants he tested consistently followed a pointed finger to a bucket. When he reported this to the mahouts, handlers who work with the elephants daily, they were unimpressed, and even a little offended.

"Why are you trying to make our elephants look stupid?" Plotnik recalled them asking.

What followed was a revelation. One mahout described a routine task: when tourists remove their sandals at the riverbank before bathing the elephants, the handler points at the pile of flip-flops on the ground and asks the elephant to pick them up and return them to their owners. The elephants do it reliably, every time. Plotnik had unexpectedly stumbled upon a revelation: elephants weren't failing to follow visual cues, they were following a different kind entirely.

With their vast olfactory system, their large ears angled toward the ground, and their trunks hovering over the sandals, the elephants were navigating by smell and sound, not sight. "It's not visual information at all that they're following," Plotnik stated. "Maybe it's acoustic, maybe it's olfaction." This experience sent his lab to explore an entirely new direction.

Plotnik's results have been remarkable and revolutionary when it comes to evolving our understanding of elephants and their capabilities. He and his team discovered that elephants leave behind scent trails that other elephants can read. For example, naive elephants consistently made a beeline for canisters previously handled by trained individuals. This suggests scent can encode meaningful information about where food is located.

The first set of experiments Plotnik conducted presented elephants with two buckets of sunflower seeds of different quantities, (i.e., 150 versus 100, or 150 versus 180), with no visual difference between them. Using smell alone, Elephants always chose the larger quantity, even when the sunflower seeds were almost identical in number.

From here, his team studied olfaction as a tool to understand higher-order reasoning capabilities in animals. In an inferential exclusion task that Plotnik's team designed, elephants were allowed to smell one bucket before two buckets were presented simultaneously. If the sniffed bucket contained no food, elephants always chose the alternative (the one with food). This suggests elephants use olfactory information to reason about the location of a hidden reward.

Plotnik then continued his talk by explaining his research findings about inhibitory control, a measure of cognitive flexibility that tests whether an animal can suppress an impulsive response in favor of a learned one. The test to measure this involves using a transparent box with food visible inside, but the box is designed to be permeable to smell, which means elephants can detect food through the surface. So, when his team observed that the elephants did not reach impulsively through the clear surface as other species typically do, they reasoned that elephants had the capacity to apply previously learned knowledge to ignore misleading olfactory information - a strong marker of inhibitory control.

The final third of the talk transitioned from a focus on the lab to the natural environment the elephants reside in. Plotnik conducts his wild elephant research in Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary in Wang Dong, Thailand. Here, his team has identified over 300 individual elephants to study human-elephant conflict. Human-elephant conflict is a dire issue, where expanding farms and villages push into elephant habitat. This instigates elephants to raid crops and property, which can trigger dangerous encounters that threaten both local livelihoods and elephant survival.

"They (a single group of elephants) can take out 25% of a crop field that a farmer has been tending for more than six months in less than one night," Plotnik said.

To combat this problem, Plotnik is building individual cognitive and personality profiles for the 300 elephants. With this information, the goal is to create a deterrence device that could be programmed to an elephant's profile, which releases combinations of light, sound and odor to redirect the elephant away from farms.

"Instead of recognizing [different] elephants that are coming into the crop field," Plotnik explained, "you are recognizing that individual elephants have individual personalities and cognitive abilities, and you work with that."

Plotnik closed with a reflection on what drew him to this work. Twenty years in, the elephant remains for him a unique test case, not just for understanding convergent cognitive evolution, but for rethinking what it means to study another mind at all.

Currently, he runs a research lab studying active biological signalling molecules alongside teaching Introductory Organic Chemistry. He was recently awarded the 2025 Maryland ACS Chemist of the Year Award, and in an interview with The News-Letter, he discussed the award, his evolving journey in research, his time teaching and working at Hopkins and his future outlook upon his work.

The 2025 Maryland ACS award, presented on Feb. 4 at the Levering Hall, centered on Toscano's work with
"fundamental organic reactive intermediates and small molecule bioactive signaling agents," which included molecules like nitric oxide, nitroxyl, hydrogen sulfide and related hydropersulfides. Yet, his research path didn't always focus on these molecules; when recounting his research career development, his PhD at Yale University originally dealt with low-temperature photochemistry of single crystals and the formation of reactive intermediates.

"We took single crystals of solid rocket fuel, cooled it down to liquid helium temperature and zapped it with light. We made intermediates," Toscano said. "It turned out, we made a lot of nitrogen oxide, so… we ended up studying NO, HNO and other things, and it was really, really complicated… One of the things I got out of that, from my PhD advisor, was making sense of complicated things."

After that, Toscano completed his postdoc at the Ohio State University, where he pivoted away from cooling crystals to implementing fast-detection techniques, another method to study reactive intermediates. He credited the vastly collaborative nature of his lab and his postdoc advisor Matthew Platz for his growth and development, especially when developing time-resolved infrared spectroscopy, a technique he would end up using heavily as a professor.

"A UV visible spectrum… doesn't tell you about the structure of the molecule, but an infrared spectrum can tell you about a structure," Toscano said. "I asked my postdoc advisors: 'Why doesn't anyone do time resolved infrared spectroscopy instead of time resolved UV-vis, which was a very common technique?'... I ended up spending a month in Japan to learn [infrared spectroscopy]."

After Toscano arrived at Hopkins in 1995, he applied the time-resolved infrared spectroscopy technique to investigate photochemistry-generated precursors to nitric oxide, a vasodilator and highly important signalling biomolecule.

"We set up an instrument to do infrared spectroscopy… on a really fast time scale so that we could look at these intermediates that are only around… for nanosecond or microsecond lifetimes."

At the School of Medicine, a pair of cardiologists researching the impact of nitric oxides on heart function, David Kass and Nazareno Paolocci, would start a long and ongoing collaboration with Toscano's research group.

"These [molecules] had very interesting biological, physiological properties… Naz investigated some of the precursors… to these reactive species, and then looked at their potential for treatment of heart failure," Toscano said. "That led to other things from reactive nitrogen species to reactive sulfur species… we're trying to study those intentionally, make precursors to them, and then… look at potential in physiological applications."

In fact, this work with Kass and Paolocci has resulted in Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company that specifically developed new therapeutic drugs for cardiovascular disease. Cardioxyl was sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb for $300 million in 2015.

In his past 31 years at Hopkins, Toscano's publications have included over 25 undergraduates, and he regularly mentors and takes on undergraduate students. He specifically appreciated the collaborative and widely knowledgeable aspect of the University's broader community.

"A lot of the problems in chemistry, biology and science in general are more and more complicated these days," Toscano began. "Being in an environment like this with not only great colleagues, but great students, both graduate, undergrad and everything, makes it possible to do the things that you know you want to do."

Outside of his research, Toscano has contributed in a myriad of ways to the Department of Chemistry and the broader campus. He teaches Introductory Organic Chemistry I alongside Christopher Falzone and has worked as Department Chair and Vice and Interim Dean of Natural Sciences.

"As an individual faculty member, you're very focused on your research, your lab, your teaching and what you're doing. As a department chair, you learn more about not only your department, but other departments," Toscano commented. "You learn not only more about your school, but also the University as a whole in interactions between the Krieger School, the Whiting School and School of Public Health… I just have a much greater appreciation of the University as a whole."

Finally, when asked about any specific research goals and questions remaining in his field, Toscano focused on the unknown molecular mechanisms that govern physiology.

"We're trying to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms behind observed physiology. The observed physiology is fairly well understood, but the molecular mechanisms underlying them are not well understood at all. If we can understand that, then we might be able to design drugs or therapeutics. We're trying to build up a chemical toolbox to help us ultimately understand physiology."

Last weekend, I was convinced (read: dragged) to go out by a high school friend who was in town. So I left the comfort of my stuffed-animal-filled bed and put aside my sacred 9 p.m. bedtime to go out on the town and relive my undergraduate days for one night only.

After a quick round of introductions and about twenty names I immediately forgot, our group ended up at a bar in Fells Point. When my friend went to use the restroom, I found myself waiting for a drink at the bar with one of those new strangers. It turns out, they were the type to skip past all the small talk and get right to the details. Before even asking for my name, they turned to me and asked for my deepest darkest secret. And when they refused my attempts at a neutral, shallow answer, I was forced to divulge a real piece of myself. For a socially-anxious introvert like myself, this sounds like my worst nightmare. Yet, the experience was strangely freeing.

Fully convinced that I would never see this stranger again, I found my usual walls falling away as I shared an honest, unfiltered part of myself. In the end, I spent a lovely evening talking openly with a stranger, without fear, and for once, letting myself be seen.

The fact is, it is easy to be brave with someone you will never see again. If the conversation turned awkward, I always had the option to walk away. The lack of their concrete connections to my life mollified the terror that accompanied true vulnerability.

Looking back, many of my friendships do in fact start out like this; a chance encounter that evolves into something intentional. Yet, the second they become a friend, something shifts. Too often, I find myself hiding behind shallow small talk, behind carefully curated masks I display to others. As my brain sees it, I now have something to lose. There are now long-term social consequences to my actions. Ramifications for the truths I tell. With new stakes, I desperately try to maintain the status quo and stick with what works. I try to freeze the friendship in its current familiarity, but in the process I draw the shutters on the real person who drew them in in the first place.

In reality, true friendships aren't constant. They can't be. And yes, this does mean that they fade sometimes, but it also means that they change and grow. They are dynamic like the rough, imperfect people that make them up. Plateaus feel stable, but in reality stagnation suffocates friendships.

Moreover, as my friends become familiar, I feel as if the permission to ask deep, probing questions disappears. I assume I know the person they are

Yet the friends I appreciate the most are the friends who ask me questions that I don't know the answers to right away. The kinds that make me think, and elicit an answer from me that I didn't know I had. We stop being "curious" about the people we've spent enough time with, or with whom we believe we are close enough to. Even when, usually, that's far from the truth - there is so much left unknown and unshared. Sometimes because they don't mention it, other times simply because we haven't bothered to ask.

Instead, we should treat our friends like strangers. We should stay curious. We should get to know them with the excitement of someone new. We should share ourselves without fear.

In the meantime, maybe brief connections with strangers is okay for now. Perhaps opening up to strangers is just the first step. So I will continue to work and patiently wait for the day when I can finally muster the courage to let myself be seen in my full capacity. Until then, I will keep finding beauty in getting to know strangers at bars, in corners at parties and in line at coffee shops.

Jason Chang is a graduate student from Woodbury, Minn. studying Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. His column is a celebration of the quiet moments that linger amid the jumble of our busy lives: moments of stillness, reflection and a space to just exist.

In the midst of the crowded Rec Center, there is one place that contrasts the noise of running treadmills, shoes squeaking on the court and weights clanging together: the pool. To find it, you must head downstairs, past the weight rooms, where you will find a narrow hallway that will lead you to it. As you enter, the scent of chlorine will greet you instantly, as if you've walked through a portal to another world. You'll hear the sound of water dancing, an ambience so different from the rest of the rec.

Just the simple smell of chlorine brings back so many memories of when I was competitively swimming. When I first learned how to swim, I instantly fell in love with being in the water. There is just something so freeing about it. Simply floating for a few seconds can somehow make all the difference, relaxing your body, releasing all tension and making the whole world go silent. I also distinctly remember "playing mermaids" with my friends - we would wear fins and kick through the water with our legs together to mimic swimming with tails.

Seeing how happy being in the water made me, my parents decided to let me try competitive swimming, and so that is what I did from childhood to the end of high school. However, I soon realized that I wouldn't always feel like a mermaid in the water.

As a competitive swimmer, I would have 4 a.m. morning practice, and then proceed to eat breakfast in the car while my mother drove me straight to school. Or I'd head straight to practice after a long, draining day of classes. Some days, I would even have to do both.

I definitely got used to the rhythm of things, but even then, jumping into a freezing cold pool, somehow forcing myself to pull and kick faster, never got any easier when I was already mentally and physically exhausted. My association of the pool as this relaxing atmosphere that allowed my imagination and creativity to flow was soon struck down by a wave of stress and frustration.

The competitive component of competitive swimming became more transparent as I grew and got faster, and I was constantly pushing myself to the limit to beat the clock. Every millisecond counts as a swimmer, and I would be grateful if I even had five seconds of rest to breathe at the wall during a sprint set. Nonetheless, despite how impossibly difficult it could seem to kick and pull when all the lactic acid made my whole body burn and resist movement, I always ended up in a better state of mind after swimming.

After completing a tough practice, there was no comparable feeling to taking your cap and goggles off and doing a dunk in the water, letting all your hair flow in unity. The first breath you take, the moment you reach the surface, is by far the most calming and rejuvenating. It seems that the water washed away all my problems, or at least made them seem smaller than before.

I remember learning about Maslow's hierarchy of needs in psychology, which basically explains how we don't think about our deepest desires until our basic needs are met. Amid a hard swimming set, when I can feel the fatigue and the need to grasp for air, all I can think about is taking that next breath and taking that next stroke. I am not thinking about the plethora of organic chemistry mechanisms I need to remember or the fact that I still am not entirely sure what career I want to pursue in life. All these problems and stressors that I came to the pool with either fade or lessen when I leave.

Now that I am no longer competitively swimming, I am not obligated to go to practice, but I do somehow miss that obligation. It kept me accountable, and now I must rely on my own discipline. Sometimes, I'll go for a swim at 12 p.m., in between a morning and late afternoon lecture, or I'll go in the evening after all my classes and activities are finished. Ultimately, no matter how tired and unwilling to get in the water I may be, I know the aftermath of it is too good to miss out on.

Catherine Chan is a freshman studying Molecular and Cellular Biology Potomac, Md. She is a Social Media Manager for The News-Letter. Her column consists of reflections on various moments in her life, from the distant past to the current present, in pursuit of discovering the underlying impact they have on her life's story.

When I was twelve, I wrote a children's book called What's In My Lunchbox? for my sixth-grade English class, which detailed the origins of a B.L.T. sandwich, an apple juice box and a bag of potato chips. As I put together drawings of a little ant crawling his way through the genesis of my lunch, I learned that Mott's apple juice is bottled in my home state of New York, that the potato chip factories often throw away entire truckloads of potatoes if too many are found to be blemished and that the crispy bacon in my sandwich was produced in a massive industrialized farming facility run almost entirely by an underpaid migrant workforce. My book was celebrated with many prestigious literary awards (check pluses, gold stars...). I became a vegetarian shortly afterwards.

Yesterday, I was scrolling on TikTok and came across the type of content that is normally an instant skip for me: a "street interview"-style video, this particular one set in a college library. When asked about her "hot take" by the interviewer, one woman declared that "men's views on tofu directly reflect their views on women." The interviewer - a man, of course - immediately shut her down, but she proceeded to explain her take, which I want to use my lunchbox children's book experience to expand upon. She explains that tofu is at the forefront of many environmental campaigns for veganism, and that meat and the fossil-fuel capitalism that drives its production are often linked to traditional ideas of masculinity, hence why so many men ridicule me when I tell them for the eighth time that I do not eat steak (sorry to my cousins, I still love you guys). The woman closes by letting the interviewer know that most foods are political, and I could not agree more. I think that everything is political, including and maybe most of all food.

In my sophomore year Theory and Methods course for the Medicine, Science, and the Humanities major, my brilliant professor was always reiterating the idea that "everything is situated somewhere." By that she means, a sandwich is never just a sandwich. It is bread, mayonnaise, bacon, lettuce and tomato. It is farms and factories and farms-turned-factories. It is poor working conditions and immigration policies and food waste. You cannot eat a sandwich without thinking about where it comes from - everything is situated somewhere. By these principles, we cannot think about tofu inside of a vacuum where it exists as tofu alone. Tofu is also the growing popularity of non-meat protein alternatives, the backlash to such campaigns for environmentally-conscious eating, the association of veganism with femininity and also sometimes with weakness.

To clarify, you do not have to like tofu or stop eating bacon to be considered someone who cares about their community and the environment, or to be considered a feminist. I bring up my sixth-grade picture book not to argue and divide, but as a reminder that foods (and most other things) have a history worth learning about, and that if we are made uncomfortable by someone else's dietary choices, or by the politics of ours, we should turn inwards rather than deflect negativity onto others. I do not think that men who don't like tofu hate women, but I do think that men who are theatrically disgusted by tofu and the women who eat it have some learning to do!

My lunchbox has gotten heavier since sixth grade. Alongside the sandwich, the chips and the juice box I now carry the heavy knowledge that every choice I make has roots and ripple effects: a history and an origin of production, a contribution to climate change and gender politics and fair labor practices and the ICE raids. I want to eat like a feminist, like an environmentalist, like a compassionate and thoughtful and well-educated human being. I want tofu to be for everyone, not as a literal soy-based protein, but as a call to remove gendered labels from food and practices of care, and to accept the politics of everything not as a source of anxiety, but as a call to education and action. If it's true that you are what you eat, maybe we should all take a look at the stories tucked behind mom's lunchbox note.

Hailey Finkelstein is a junior from Ardsley, N.Y. majoring in Medicine, Science and the Humanities. Her column shares miscellaneous prose on current issues, the collective Hopkins experience and growing up with a pen in hand.

For two hours, participants were able to visit the infamous Pickle Oracle (junior Kris Pham reading tarot, donning a pickle costume), four other tarot reading stations, view a hand-drawn 18th-century tarot deck beside a cyber deck and embellish their love letters with calligraphy and hot wax seals. To top it all off, a cherry Squishmallow was the main prize of a ticket raffle.

Katrin Flores, a freshman, enjoyed the card station the most. In an interview with The News-Letter, Flores expressed her appreciation for the event.

"This event has been really fun so far," said Flores. "Because the line [looked] so long, I went over to the craft room. They had a lot of supplies and these little calligraphy pens that I can't quite get the hold of, but look how cute the seal is! I made [a card] just for my family."

Further, when asked what Flores was most looking forward to that night, she immediately answered with the tarot readings.

"I've never gotten a tarot reading before, so it'll be interesting," Flores smiled.

Finnigan Keane, a Special Collections sophomore staff member and an Archeology and Environmental Studies double major, greeted participants at the door and shared some of the history behind tarot in an interview with The News-Letter.

"There are a lot of decks and tarot used to be a very patriarchal system centered around the Catholic Church. Over time, it became radicalized and is now this emblem for feminist and queer identities," said Keane, who is doing research on tarot's cultural transformations and its significance in 21st century society.

According to the Victoria & Albert Museum, the 78 tarot cards are broken down into two categories: triumph, or "Major Arcana" (22 cards) and pip, or "Minor Arcana" (56 cards). Prior to fortune-telling and tarot divination in the 18th century, the cards were originally played out of fun. The origins of the cards trace back to China, Korea, Egypt and India in the early 12th century, and it wasn't until the 1770s that tarot cards were read for divination.

Heidi Herr is the librarian at Special Collections and coordinator behind Love in the Time of Tarot. According to Herr, the hope behind events like these would be for students to have some fun and show them the reading room space.

"Students are really interested in tarot, and it's an opportunity to showcase our historic tarot decks. And we like to also combine these readings with kind of fun, craft events, too, so you can create, you can get your reading and then make a DIY Valentine. So, we just love having fun with students and bringing them into this incredible reading room space," said Herr.

Highlights of the night included a tarot reading relating to pizza and a terrible set of cards that came with a silver lining.

"I was saying that I could do a [past, present, future] kind of reading. [Someone] was like, 'Could you do, like, a past, present, future about my relationship with pizza?' and I was like, why not?" said Celine Stodder, a Writing Seminars sophomore.

Participants could request their readings to be interpreted with respect to any area in life, notwithstanding the event being centered around love. Herr loved how career-oriented most of her tarot reading requests were.

"What I absolutely loved is how you cannot take the Hopkins out of Hopkins students. So the event was called 'Love in the Time of Tarot,' and most of the readings I gave, were to do with academics or career growth. And I just love that," Herr laughed.

By 9 p.m., the raffle winner was announced, students shuffled out with ornate envelopes and the event rounded to a close. The Special Collections team shared highlights while packing up the tarot decks.

"Truly, the two hours flew by like nothing. So that's how I know I had a good time," said Pham.

The next Special Collections event is their annual Edible Book Festival, "Read It and Eat It," on March 30 at the Glass Pavilion. Students can follow @jhuspecialcollections on Instagram for more information.