Opinion

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunlight flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you And the storms their energy While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” John Muir Mountains  have always held a special place in the hearts and imaginations […]

It is fact that one in six females will get raped at some point during their lifetime. And every 107 seconds, another rape occurs in America. So I don’t know about you, but reading those statistics motivates me to pretty much do whatever I can to be one of the OTHER 5 people who won’t […]

To conclude this series of columns relating to oppressive ideologies and behaviors connected to the LGBTQIA+ community and because it’s Pride Month, I want to talk about something more directly related to sexuality than gender – monosexism and bi/pan/poly-phobia (a term I recently learned). Not to be confused with sexism, monosexism is a discriminatory idea/practice […]

Diet talk is everywhere. You hear or read about it in a variety of settings. Even a simple commute to the grocery store might result in unsolicited dietary advice. For instance, at the market, you may encounter advertisements or overhear a person’s weight loss experience. On the road, you might see diet programs plastered on […]

One thing I’ve always loved about hiking in the great outdoors is how friendly all the people you meet on the trail tend to be. It doesn’t matter how old they are or how big their group is; when you pass another human being on the trail, they’re more than likely going to smile and […]

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about intersections. Specifically, the places where people, objects and ideas converge to produce some sort of result. The interesting thing about intersections is that some are visible while others aren’t. For instance, how we express ourselves physically might differ from the way we communicate emotionally, and […]

It’s almost electric, that shiver down my spine when I’m out walking on a dark night. Traversing a starlit marsh or wood, the eerie stillness is breached only faintly by the occasional owl or whip-poor-will. Although some, like my dad, are astronomers and lovers of the quiet night, the dark was always my biggest fear […]

What is it about medical categories that makes them so powerful? Why are people, particularly from the U.S., so confident in their accuracies? Why is it that simply getting the name right makes all the difference in the experience of illness? And why does it give people the right to hierarchize the way things are […]

Continuing on with the theme of oppressive ideologies that are related to LGBTQIA+ identities, in this column I’m going to be talking about transphobia, an oppressive and marginalising form of hatred and misunderstanding that is often aimed at those whose gender presentation does not match our expectations – specifically trans, genderqueer and gender non-conforming folk. […]

I have always had a profound love for children. Throughout high school and college, I worked with highly resilient and extraordinary children in multiple capacities – as a program coordinator in an orphanage, as a volunteer in an HIV-positive mercy center and as a research assistant for a national study on foster youth support. At […]

In the introduction to a Technocultural Studies class I took last fall, my professor conducted a quick survey by asking us two  questions: “How many cellphones have you owned? How many laptops?” Our collective response yielded a jarring result. Most of us had owned at least three to four phones and two to three PCs […]

This past weekend, our campus hosted the 26th Annual Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities Conference where many of your fellows Aggies were participants. The conference attracted 550 students, more than 1,000 attendees and showcased the great interdisciplinary work that our faculty and students are doing. Undergraduate research is one of the core principles of […]