Student Speak

Growing up gay in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio, I got used to figuring things out on my own. Though I watched my peers follow all the same well-traveled paths as their friends and mentors, it

My freshman year in high school, I was playing an improv game in my theatre class. Everyone stood in a circle; one person began acting out what object or noun they were and then someone

My mom and I have always used public transportation to get around town. Living in Oakland since 1990, by now my mom knew AC Transit, BART and the Bay Area like the back of her

The pain comes in waves. I hear “Come On Eileen” and remember all the times we drunkenly sang along, and how we will never do it again. Or I see a photo of Sterling on

“I have a black friend” is an unfortunate statement that some white people still feel the need to say. College students need to normalize interracial friendships, and that can start with leaving the “I have

“Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?” The question is a favorite among job interviews and icebreakers for elementary school teachers and college professors alike. “What are your hobbies? What’s your major?

I hold my new kaleidoscope up to the light.  I am five years old, and it’s snowing outside on Christmas morning, like it never does anymore.  Well-kempt lawns throughout my neighborhood lie blanketed in white. 

I opened Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Monday afternoon on January 20th looking to retreat from the old, white male readings that had become normal to me in and out of the

Prestigious universities like Cornell are, in theory, institutions where talented young people receive the education, ideas and skills needed to tackle the world’s most pressing issues.  A closer look into elite culture reveals that these