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In response to “Our 2023–2024 SGA Exec. Board endorsements: Time to rebuild” published March 13, 2023:
With another spring semester, the next Student Government Association (SGA) Executive Board election is upon us. This year, most positions are not uncontested, which is a welcome improvement from years prior. We hope that the increased number of candidates marks the start of SGA building itself back up.
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts are an essential component of university campuses, championed as a way to increase diversity, foster community and engender inclusivity. However, DEI has recently become a subject of attack by politicians.
It has been three years since I saw most of my high school teachers in-person. The 500-plus seniors in my class left campus in March 2020 and — aside from dropping off textbooks, attending a drive-through graduation parade or picking up our diplomas — most of us never returned.
In the last days of 2022, I traveled back home after a difficult finals season to a schedule full of absolutely nothing on my calendar for a few weeks. For perhaps the first time since starting college, I was completely free from academic and work obligations.
Last week was the 39th annual Eating Disorders Awareness Week, a period devoted to sharing and reflecting upon lived experiences and eating disorder education. The week of awareness is one of many impactful initiatives spearheaded by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), representing a time to advocate for those affected by eating and body image disorders. It is also a time to invite additional people into the conversation.
America is gearing up for another intensely debated presidential election and candidates have started throwing their hats in the ring.
As soon as the holiday season came to a close, the grim reality of gun violence in America once again reared its head. We didn’t even have time to take down our Christmas trees before headlines were filled with tragedy after tragedy — this past January was the worst January on record for mass shootings, both in terms of frequency and the number of casualties.
As an Asian American student, I regularly hear my peers talk about the academic and career pressures they face at home and some of the resentment they feel toward how their parents raised them. I’ve come to think that the Asian parenting style has left us with more burdens than benefits, even though we did our best to fulfill our parents’ definition of success.
While the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, a new threat looms on the horizon: the avian influenza (more commonly known as bird flu) outbreak that is sweeping across the globe. In particular, the H5N1 strain of this virus is raising fears among scientists monitoring its spread. We must be proactive about the bird flu before this outbreak grows into a pandemic.
Chances are you’ve been faced with the college question — “Will you or won’t you go to university?” — posed by (hopefully) well-intentioned guardians, mentors or friends. Otherwise, you might be like me, someone from a community where college was never seen as an option but as an imperative.
The most devastating earthquake in over a decade struck southeast Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6. Following the initial 7.8-magnitude quake, the area was rocked by a series of aftershocks. Since then, the death toll has risen to over 36,000, and more than a million people have been left homeless in Turkey alone.
Teachers and Researchers United (TRU) — affiliated with United Electrical Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) — has achieved a historic milestone. Last week, after more than four years of organizing, Hopkins graduate students voted to unionize with a resounding 97% majority.
As Editors-in-Chief of The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, one of our roles is to serve as the public face of the paper, which means we can often be found around campus delivering print papers, at tabling events or simply repping our News-Letter tote bags or crewnecks. It never fails to astound us when students ask, “We have a school newspaper?”
True crime, a genre of media that tells the stories of real-life crimes committed by and against real people, has boomed in popularity in recent years. There are hundreds of true crime YouTube channels, podcasts and numerous Reddit threads, including r/truecrime and r/truecrimediscussion, for people to hear and discuss true crime stories.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing higher education, but as we integrate ChatGPT, a language model created by OpenAI, into our classrooms, we must also consider the ethical implications. Privacy, accountability, and the student-teacher dynamic are all at stake. It's crucial that we take responsibility for ensuring the responsible use of this powerful technology, before it's too late.
After years of struggling with the University and barely improving working conditions, almost 3,200 doctoral students at Hopkins are finally voting to form a graduate student worker union. This is the culmination of years of organizing for a living wage, protections for international students, fair grievance procedures and so much more that graduate workers need to lead a dignified life.
At a school like Hopkins, it can seem like half of the student body is pre-med. You can’t walk through Brody Atrium without hearing someone mention shadowing, clinical research or biochemistry. From the moment their undergraduate experience begins, pre-med students are stressing about getting into medical school.
This week kicked off the start of the spring semester. Though we have new classes and new professors, it’s difficult to feel excited with Baltimore’s cold and gray winter weather hanging over campus. Our surroundings may be bleak, but it doesn’t mean our days should be, too.
We have come to the end of another semester at Hopkins. Fall 2022 was challenging, rewarding and in many ways the first “normal” semester since the University suspended in-person instruction in March 2020.
