Inviting the conversation: Evaluating the Opinion section at The News-Letter
Today I examine the Opinion section of The News-Letter through a written interview with its editor, Ayden Min.
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Today I examine the Opinion section of The News-Letter through a written interview with its editor, Ayden Min.
One Tuesday morning, while standing next to my club’s harm reduction card, I watched as an elderly woman in a wheelchair pushed herself forward, nearly passing me on her way to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She looked up to greet me, then caught one glimpse of our banner which dons clip art images of a syringe, a small pipe with smoke coming out of it and Band-Aids.
Everyone who really knows me knows that I am ethically non-monogamous when it comes to careers. Even majors. At the end of all the one-night stands with strangers that I don’t have, I hear wedding bells and buy joint burial plots before the sun rises. The way that you imagine moving to a city after spending two days visiting, I flirt with the idea of dedicating my life to a career after one tenuously relevant experience. When I stitched closed the neck of a decapitated stuffed doll the other day, I imagined my name towing the credentials MD.
From Nov. 7 to Nov. 8, The News-Letter’s News & Features team provided live coverage of the fire that occurred in a commercial building in Remington, West 23rd St., North Baltimore, which continued to 2230 Hampden Ave.
It is 5:08 a.m., and I am absorbed in a Freida McFadden book, having just discovered the joy of being invested in a psychological thriller. I am surrounded by LED cherry blossom lights and fairy lights to make my tiny dorm space cozy. No, I didn’t decide to wake up at 5 a.m. to start my day with something therapeutic, I stayed up until 5 a.m. to do something therapeutic.
My phone buzzed with a reminder from my mom: “Aaj Diwali hai, haath jodh lena.” I looked around my sparse dorm — the string lights I’d never hung, two Bhagwaanji in the corner — and slipped out before the silence could settle.
For as long as I can remember, I would call my dadi twice a day.
“Austin! Marilyn! Come downstairs!”
It’s an exciting time in the world of Hopkins sports. The fall season is climbing to an exciting culmination and the winter season is slowly heating up. Now is an amazing time for everyone to go and catch a game, either outside if you can brave the chill or inside at the gym or pool. As the winter athletes show off how hard they have been training for the season and the fall athletes demonstrate the elevated levels of play they developed over the past few months, go support and cheer on the Jays.
When my girlfriend visited a couple weeks ago, I suddenly became self-conscious of how bland and messy my room looked. Despite it being week six, moving boxes still sat unopened and the decorations I brought lay on the floor untouched. For the record, I think of myself as a clean person. But with my new apartment, I had excused myself because this space felt temporary.
A commanding start
The subject of Henrietta Lacks remains an enduring mark of criticism on Hopkins as a reminder that scientific advancement has often come at the cost of ethical accountability. This legacy continues to be honored and examined today through events such as the annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture at Hopkins, an event that occurred recently on Oct. 4. This recent conversation sparked my renewed interest in one of my favorite books, Next by Michael Crichton.
After three back-to-back films fixating on the nature of human desire and love, Luca Guadagnino’s newest release, After the Hunt, forgoes his past thematic patterns in favor of a story meant to examine the ethical struggles of various power dynamics in higher education. Specifically, After the Hunt follows an up-for-tenure college professor, Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts), whose protégé, Maggie Resnick (Ayo Edeberi), accuses her colleague and professor, Hank Gibson (Andrew Garfield), of sexual assault.
I am sitting on a fuzzy pink pillow in the apartment of my trainer, Dua, and I am about to share my whole life story from beginning to end with a group of five strangers.
We had already seen Khalid in the summer at World Pride 2025, so the excitement that Hopkins finally had a somewhat mainstream artist for Hoptoberfest 2025 dwindled between us. Nevertheless, I donned my favorite pair of jeans and halter-top combo, and I giddily ran to the end of the line on Oct. 24.
On Wednesday, Oct. 22 the Hopkins Lecture Series hosted an event titled, “An Evening in Conversation with Bradley Steven Perry.” This event marked the second event in the Hopkins Lecture Series’ Voices of Tomorrow Fall Speaker Series.
On June 2, President Ronald J. Daniels announced a series of budget cuts facilitated by the Faculty Budget Advisory Committee and the Johns Hopkins University Council to offset recent federal funding reductions. For academic departments, these initiatives included pausing annual pay increases for most employees, freezing hiring for new and existing staff positions, slowing capital projects involving research and reducing discretionary spending on travel and professional services.
Colors swirled in the Glass Pavilion on Sunday, Oct. 26 as the South Asian Students at Hopkins (SASH) organization hosted its annual Garba celebration from 6 to 10 p.m. Garba, a collective dance with roots in Gujarat, India, is part of the larger Hindu festival Navratri which celebrates the supreme goddess Durga. Attendees gathered for a night of food, drinks and fun as samosas, pakora and mango lassi were served for guests during the celebration.
On Saturday, Oct. 18 the Office of Homewood Public Safety notified the University community about an attempted sexual assault on Decker Quad. According to Public Safety, an unknown man, about 30 years old, approached a female student for directions on Saturday evening and assaulted her, attempting to remove her clothes. Following the report, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) began investigating the case as an attempted rape with cooperation from the Johns Hopkins Police Department (JHPD) and Public Safety.
The University’s recent construction project, the forthcoming Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Institute (DSAI), promises to bring together experts and students “develop data science and AI” and “accelerate breakthroughs.” However, the project has faced significant pushback from community members and students who worry it will heighten the University’s community influence, raise housing costs and harm the environment. While the construction of DSAI has potential benefits for the University and the city at large, Hopkins should not disregard the needs of the surrounding Baltimore community to realize these.