The opinions presented below are solely the views of the author and do not represent the views of The News-Letter. If you are a member of the Hopkins community looking to submit a piece or a letter to the editor, please email opinions@jhunewsletter.com.
The recent article in The News-Letter (“What obstacles do Hopkins international students face?”) highlighted the difficulties faced by international undergraduate students. We wish to bring additional attention to the burdens faced by international graduate students.
After years of protests from students, the University continues to invest in fossil fuel companies. It has an exclusivity contract with PepsiCo, a company that uses suppliers who violate child labor laws, going against ethical and sustainable business practices. Most recently, the University was slow to end contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the government agency that is responsible for separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
A firm press deadline can feel like the end-all be-all for News-Letter reporters in the run-up to Wednesday night. The news editors wrap up their section and head home sometime early Thursday morning while the Editors-in-Chief send the pages off to print. If they’re lucky, the news team will have time to breathe over the weekend until Wednesday starts to loom again.
This time last year, Michael Bloomberg announced that he would donate a historic $1.8 billion to the University, to be used exclusively for undergraduate financial aid and related services. Earlier this semester an administrator told myself and a group of other first-generation and limited-income (FLI) students that we should consider writing Bloomberg a thank you letter for his gift to the University.
My friends and I have talked about the exact moment when we found out we got into Hopkins. Everyone remembers their own story in almost perfect detail. I was sitting in my German class on Dec. 14 watching Elf, more nervous than I had ever been, waiting until the clock hit 2:00 p.m. CST.
Under Donald Trump, the U.S. has become increasingly unsafe for undocumented immigrants. Shortly after announcing his presidential campaign, Trump infamously called Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. In 2017, he announced plans to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era executive order granting work permits and protection from deportation to over 700,000 Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.
As the Public Editor, I scrutinize the ways the paper represents its readers. The News-Letter is a campus newspaper, and undergraduate students make up the primary readership. I think a lot about the different types of undergrads that the paper represents, as well as who is most likely to pick up a fresh issue on a Thursday afternoon.
I was quite surprised to hear that two news stories about college journalism were circulating this week.The Harvard Crimson, the daily newspaper at Harvard University, has recently come under fire for its coverage of an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rally. The rally, held on Sept. 12, was hosted by student group Act on a Dream. The Crimson writers reached out to ICE for comment to be included in their article on the rally, though they did not respond.
A few weeks ago, The News-Letter published the op-ed “Focusing solely on electability will not get Democrats elected.” The article presents a well-written, cogent argument against the prioritization of “electability” in the Democratic primary race. It followed an earlier piece on the necessity of a moderate Democratic nominee in 2020.
It’s always an exciting time when new construction happens around campus. Is it going to be a new restaurant? A bar? It is exciting, at least, for those not potentially displaced by it. As I walk around Charles Village, I’m struck by the level of construction happening throughout the neighborhood.
We all remember our first week of freshman year. Nervous and cautious, we moved into our dorms, met our roommates and wandered around campus and Baltimore for the first time. For many of us, the transition to college life was difficult. For first-generation, limited-income (FLI) students and international students, however, that transition can be even more complex. The University has made commendable efforts to provide additional support. We question, however, whether it has done enough.
I’ve written a lot in the last month about the importance of print journalism — the tactile pleasure of turning fine pages over beneath your fingers, the permanence (and accountability) of seeing words enshrined in ink on paper.
I remember asking the student tour guide when I visited Hopkins as an accepted student: “Is Hopkins a competitive school?” The tour guide answered: “It is a common myth that Hopkins is competitive, but that’s not true! I know that a lot of people collaborate and cooperate....” After this, I started to wonder whether the University’s competitiveness is a myth or a reality.
Refuel Our Future, the University’s student-run divestment organization, is starting Fossil Free Fridays, a weekly strike on Fridays going off of the national Fridays For Future (FFF) climate strike movement. Instead of protesting for climate justice and a Green New Deal, which is the basis of the fight for the youth FFF movement, Refuel will protest for fossil fuel divestment, a fight that the organization has been trying to win for a few years.
For many of us in Baltimore, Representative Elijah Cummings was a hero. Cummings, who’d lived in a West Baltimore row home for over three decades, was a tireless fighter for civil rights. During the Uprising, he walked among protesters and police, calling for peace. He advocated for the state to pool more resources into treating drug addicts in our city. Most recently, he spoke out against U.S. President Donald Trump after he called Baltimore a “rat and rodent infested mess.”
After three and a half years at The News-Letter, I’m pretty confident that I’d ace a quiz on the parts of the paper’s front page. Even just above the fold — what we call the top half that’s visible when you see the paper around campus — there’s already a lot going on.
A few weeks ago I opened my inbox and saw an email titled “Student Loss.”
Through one of my courses this past spring, I was lucky enough to meet Greg Butler, a Baltimore native and protagonist of Owned: A Tale of Two Americas, a documentary about U.S. housing and its prejudiced history.
We all see the construction along Saint Paul Street: It’s loud, imposing and causes us to reroute our walk across the neighborhood. The construction, part of the University’s Charles Village Streetscape Project, has made its way up the street since March and won’t conclude until December.
Four and a half years ago, the University shut down the Hopkins chapter of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon after reports of sexual assault at one of the fraternity’s parties. In an editorial headlined “SAE suspension wrong, requires reversal,” The News-Letter called the decision “draconian,” prompting understandable pushback from readers.
