I laughed when I saw Joe Biden’s speech on CNN, when he addressed the recent rise of anti-Asian hate crimes within the United States in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although I appreciated the condemnation, I found his comments regarding the “un-American” nature of hate crimes hilariously out of touch. There’s nothing “un-American” about anti-Asian racism. […]
“So what are you going to do, man?” It was July. I was standing in a neighbor’s garden, talking on the phone to my friend Ryan through my headphones. We had both recently graduated from Friends’ Central, a Quaker private school outside Philadelphia. Two weeks prior, I had received my graduation cap and gown in […]
CW: Mention of transphobic arguments and transphobic video. When you hear the term “manufactured outrage,” it calls forth an image of a media outlet or a talking head vomiting out some overblown garbage, mother-birding it to the masses for consumption. The consumption of the outrage is a turning inward, into the viewer, the watcher, the […]
This Scholarly Personal Narrative operates under the idea that individual liberation, guided by the growth of a critical consciousness, can lead to a larger scale, collective liberation from the social structures and societal norms human beings impose on ourselves. In modernity, we have seen the prioritization of rational thought, a tendency that invalidates spirituality in much of […]
You know those mornings when you wake up early and know that the day is going to be productive? That’s exactly how I felt before getting the call from Dr. Tom McLarney that I had tested positive for COVID-19. That feeling quickly turned into shock and then confusion as I prepared myself to move into […]
Before I met my boyfriend last year, I had close to no knowledge of Reddit. The social news aggregator (a mixture of a discussion platform and link distributor) was something that I was aware of but had never quite understood. I was part of the minority—there are more than 430 million monthly active Reddit users […]
For many Wesleyan students, Washington D.C. is just a place that they visit on their 8th-grade trip, or the backdrop of beloved alumni Bradley Whitford’s ’81 TV show, “The West Wing.” But to me and 700,000 people, some of whom also attend Wesleyan, D.C. is more than just a tourist destination or TV show setting: […]
Quarantine is finally over. You’re finally allowed to expand your daily adventures to more than just Usdan and the testing tent. But a new semester brings new challenges, namely how to figure out what’s cool and what’s not. Inspired by The Washington Post’s annual list, the trendiest people on campus (The Argus Editorial Board) have put […]
TW: Discussion of eating disorders and disordered eating. Mukbangs, the eating shows on YouTube that have gained massive popularity in the last few years, draw the ire of much of the mainstream media attention they receive. The videos are often written off as grotesque, sickening, weird, or sexual. This is as fair of an assessment […]
I haven’t seen my Dad since last March. Much like the rest of the world, Wesleyan University had just begun to shut down, leaving me in a race to make it past border controls and travel bans. When I finally arrived back in the UK, I was greeted by my Dad. As always, his beard […]