Following yet another debate of the presidential season, there has been a lot of questions about who won the debate, but the real question is, who lost? The real loser is an enormous underclass catalyzed by America’s prison system. Once again, the criminal justice system was not mentioned in a debate setting. More ...
The story of Alan Kurdi is short: Alan was a three-year old Kurdish boy whose family attempted to flee the horrors of the Syrian Civil War. Like thousands of Syrian refugees, they took on the boat journey across the Mediterranean Sea. Alan’s family was not fortunate enough: their boat capsized, drowning Alan, his mother and his brother, Galip. Their story could have been easily forgotten like that of thousands of other victims, but Alan’s body washed ashore at a Turkish sea resort. The photographs of Alan’s lifeless body soon made global headlines, symbolizing our collective failure to address this issue. More ...
Like many Hamilton students, I like to exercise to relieve stress. My time in the gym is exactly that: my time. For an hour and a half, I tune out the world around me and focus solely on myself and on whatever workout I set out for myself that day. Foolishly, I was under the impression that everyone did the same during their gym time. Turns out I was wrong. More ...
Letter to the Editor re: Correcting Adirondack Program misconceptions More ...
Upon reading last week’s Spectator and the email they sent out earlier this week, I was overwhelmed with excitement about the donations to Hamilton’s Health and Counseling Centers from both alumni and the senior class. To me, health treatment of any kind, whether mental or physical, is a no-brainer; a school, or for that matter any community, needs adequate facilities, employees and resources to accommodate their people’s needs. More ...
Political correctness is an issue on the mind of Americans everywhere. Maligned by Fox News and mocked by South Park, it has become a topic of popular discussion. The ever-polarizing Donald Trump drew monumental applause at the Cleveland Republican debate when he stated, “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.” More ...
The Hamilton Israel Public Affairs Committee (HIPAC) is a nascent political group on campus born out of the necessity to combat a horrifying domestic and international trend: the new brand of anti-Israel sentiment spawned from a series of falsehoods and mischaracterizations of the still-young democracy. The fact of the matter is that much of what people know about Israel comes from a biased media. They see the U.N. Human Rights Council’s condemning Israel more than all other countries combined and they think that Israel is a bastion of hate and racism. In fact, this is more a result of gross corruption in the U.N. More ...
In recent years, colleges and universities across the country, including Hamilton, have become increasingly more active in the movement to divest from fossil fuel companies that is, they are taking steps to liquidate endowment funds initially invested in fossil fuel companies and reinvest them in more socially responsible ways. More ...
On the surface, it appears as though Hamilton offers a satisfactory range of Bon Appétit meal plans. There is the standard 21-meal plan (otherwise known as the unlimited plan because it includes re-swipes during the same meal period), the 14-meal plan, the 7-meal plan and some housing-specific plans like those found in Rogers and the Co-op. During the housing lottery, students have the opportunity to pick their meal plan alongside their room assignment. However, due to a few reasons, the only truly viable option available is the unlimited plan. I consider this a serious flaw in a school that seemingly encourages connection to food through numerous food-centered classes (consider Food For Thought and Food And Philosophy) and food-centered clubs (consider Slow Food, Culinary Society, Club Ento and the Community Farm). More ...
I won’t dance around it: the past few student assembly meetings have been rough. Nobody likes going through budget proposals with a fine-toothed comb or looking a peer in the eye to break the news that their project will go unfunded. SA’s funding practices may not be ideal, but they are effective. I think that the funding process (and the unrest that surrounded it) is symptomatic of a more generalized identity crisis facing Hamilton’s SA. Furthermore, a lot of the criticisms SA has received in response to funding are reflective of a harsh reality of the real world (the world we will one day all have to face after graduation): life isn’t fair. More ...