Editorial: Trapped in a cycle of mass shootings: When will enough be enough?
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD | October 5, 2017“Monday morning, our campus awoke to the news of a tragedy unfolding.”
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.
“Monday morning, our campus awoke to the news of a tragedy unfolding.”
We applaud Ms. Sarsour’s stated commitment to mutual engagement and respect, a commitment that she has restated in many different ways, and numerous times on her Twitter feed. But all too often, politicians and communal leaders fail to live up to the bold promise of their words. We believe Ms. Sarsour to be no exception.
In response to “Students criticize termination of Russian major,” published on September 14:
This past week was Hazing Prevention Week, an annual week hosted by the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Hopkins Athletics and the Office of Student Leadership and Involvement. This week of activities included events such as a midnight breakfast at The LaB, the men’s soccer game, a movie screening as well as a keynote speaker.
As leaders of the Jewish Students Association of Johns Hopkins, we are troubled by the opening event of the Milton S. Eisenhower (MSE) Symposium series this fall, a panel discussion featuring the organizers of the Women’s March. Bob Bland, Linda Sarsour, Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory’s struggle for equal rights for all is an admirable campaign and one that we support.
Like any city, Baltimore has a reputation outside of itself. Unlike the idealized perceptions of New York City and Los Angeles, Baltimore must contend with a number of misconceived assumptions. When Hopkins students subscribe to these assumptions, native Baltimoreans are “otherized” — maintaining instead of challenging the social gap between “them” and “us.”
On Sunday, Sept. 24, the 2017 German federal elections took place. The significance of this process is obvious. Germany, as Europe’s largest economy and one of the EU’s lynchpins, is massively influential in European as well as global politics. How it handles inflows of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa, climate change, and bellicose nations such as Russia — among many other issues — over the next four years will set the standard the world over.
The University has enacted a moratorium on students forming new arts and community service groups.
The Public Interest Investment Advisory Committee (PIIAC) released an official recommendation last Friday that the University should fully divest its endowment from fossil fuel companies. The Committee — comprised of undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and staff — not only recommended divestment but also outlined how the University can begin the process.
In response to “I witnessed a drive by shooting in Baltimore,” published on September 14:
On September 15, the Public Interest Investment Advisory Committee (PIIAC) released their recommendations for fossil fuel divestment. Overall, the recommendation was a complete success for student activists (specifically the group Refuel Our Future), with PIIAC recommending full divestment of the University’s endowment from fossil fuel companies.
Last week marked the 16th anniversary of the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. These attacks caused a ripple effect of kindness around the world: The New York firefighters sprung to the scene immediately, neighbors were doing anything they could to lift each other up and people in countries all around the world were deeming themselves as “American” as a sign of solidarity.
The Class of 2021 is the first class since 1971 that is without the privilege of covered grades at Hopkins. In June 2016, the Homewood Academic Council announced that the University would discontinue its renowned policy under which first-semester freshmen receive only an S for satisfactory (a letter grade of C- or above) or a U for unsatisfactory instead of conventional letter grades.
When our parents went to college, orientation rarely lasted more than a day. It was just a time to register for classes and buy books. Parents attended simply to provide their wallets. There were no social mixers. There was no set interaction between students. There were no community building events. There were no formal talks explaining how to transition into college life. Unless you were going to parties, you sat alone in your room for days.
This Monday, the U.S. News & World Report released their 2018 Best Colleges rankings. Hopkins had been No. 10 in the nation, but we’ve dropped to an 11th-place tie with Dartmouth and Northwestern. This is the biggest news in the Facebook meme group since... Well, the page didn’t exist when we first made it into the top 10.
U.S. President Donald Trump moved Tuesday to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. This program, enacted by former U.S. President Barack Obama, protects the children of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Baltimore City Mayor Catherine Pugh hired a contractor to remove the city’s four Confederate monuments on August 16. Two of these monuments are located by the Homewood campus, one in Wyman Park Dell and the other, on the corner of N. Charles St. and W. University Pkwy.
It is difficult to truly grasp the pathologically violent nature of our country when it is so overwhelming and present. There is violence all around us. We are an exceptional country, but not for the reasons we were taught in grade school.
Just as you do not get to choose your parents, you do not get to choose your residential advisor at Hopkins. Residential system pairings here can seem even more random than “random” roommates because of so many variables in the equation, such as floor layouts and RA assignments: Which residents live on which floors, and who of all the possible RAs is tasked with supporting the floor community? As a recent RA, I want to express concerns about the uncertainties in this process.