Friday, November 13th, 2026

Opinion

Student activism is meant to be practiced — not just celebrated

November 11, 2026

Youstina Aziz, Contributing Writer If you walk past Cabell Library on an ordinary school day, you will see students rushing to class, studying for exams, grabbing coffee and worrying about deadlines. College life moves quickly. There is always another assignment, test or obligation demanding our attention.  In the middle of the hustle, it is easy to forget that a university is not just a place that you attend before joining the workforce. It is also a place to discover your power to challenge the present. Student activism is not some distant tradition that belongs to a faraway generation. It is part of the history and culture that shaped universities into what they are today. At VCU, student activism led to the creation of African American studies, the recognition of LGBTQ+ student organizations and the challenging of perceived injustice in university decisions.  These events did not happen because administrators suddenly decided to do the right thing: they happened because students went out and demanded change. They organized, challenged authority and refused to accept the idea that an institution’s decisions are above reproach. If student demonstrations are so integral to a university’s history and culture, why does it sometimes feel as though

Medical misinformation is platformed on campus – it is time VCU does something about it

November 11, 2026

Urjita Mainali, Contributing Writer Recently, there has been a growing number of demonstrations against abortion held by non-student organizations on VCU’s campus. These protestors often bring signs and flyers that provide inaccurate and insensitive information regarding pregnancy and gestation, as well as the medical procedure of abortion.  These groups implement shame tactics based on largely religious or otherwise moral guilt, and inform their assertions with inaccurate claims that generate fear. Most recently, they held a demonstration in front of an academic building in a manner that made it difficult, if not impossible, for some students to avoid without missing out on their paid education.  VCU, as both an academic and medical institution, has a responsibility to protect its young student population from shame and medical misinformation, which has recently been identified as a major public health concern, according to Springer Nature Link.  In allowing these protests to continue, VCU has platformed this misinformation and stigma, endangering the physical and emotional health of students, without assurance that they are well-informed on issues of reproductive health.  Without these considerations, VCU has inadvertently platformed demonstrations that could risk student mental health and lead them to question major personal health decisions in ways that

Your application essay should be about you, not your life’s grievances

November 11, 2026

Lily Holmes, Contributing Writer  Application essays, especially those written for scholarships, academic programs and internships at any education stage tend to follow a similar formula. Even when it seems as if a new trend in essay writing may break the mold, it melds right in.  Online guides may say that an essay is meant to reflect “who you are” and provide an outline describing exactly which words to use, which not to use and the precise narrative an admissions officer wants to see. Look hard enough at a list of essay topics to avoid, and almost every topic is supposedly off limits. There is no getting around it: Writing application essays can be annoying, stressful and restrictive.  The online advice is often initially accurate. Certain essay topics, including the “trauma dump” and “resume repeater,” tend to grate readers or even send the message that the applicant in question finds their traumatic lore to be the most interesting facet of themselves. The “resume repeater,” an essay about the hypothesis of your important high school research project or your internship at a major tech company, is both redundant and difficult to write without sounding like a humble brag. The cliché “out-of-state competition”

Thanks for nothing, Pollard and Bagby

November 11, 2026

Kylie Grunsfeld, Opinions and Humor Editor One morning I awoke to my roommate banging violently on my bedroom door. After a few moments, I made out the words “a huge roach just crawled into your room.” This came after weeks of sending work orders into our property managers, Pollard and Bagby.  By the time they finally sent a third-party company in to get rid of the bugs, we had seen close to a dozen baby cockroaches and multiple adults. They crawled in through exposed drains, attracted by a leaky sink in the bathroom, which we also sent in requests to fix. Additionally, an attic door was left open right above the entrance to our unit, a perfect place for cockroaches to breed — none of which was our fault. It was the fault of a company who failed (or did not care) to keep their building in good condition. I do not write any of this because I think it is an unusual experience to have when living in the Fan. I write because it is all too common, and there does not seem to be any plans to change this.  Living in the Fan is an immense privilege. The

Student activism is meant to be practiced — not just celebrated

November 11, 2026

Youstina Aziz, Contributing Writer If you walk past Cabell Library on an ordinary school day, you will see students rushing to class, studying for exams, grabbing coffee and worrying about deadlines. College life moves quickly. There is always another assignment, test or obligation demanding our attention.  In the middle of the hustle, it is easy to forget that a university is not just a place that you attend before joining the workforce. It is also a place to discover your power to challenge the present. Student activism is not some distant tradition that belongs to a faraway generation. It is part of the history and culture that shaped universities into what they are today. At VCU, student activism led to the creation of African American studies, the recognition of LGBTQ+ student organizations and the challenging of perceived injustice in university decisions.  These events did not happen because administrators suddenly decided to do the right thing: they happened because students went out and demanded change. They organized, challenged authority and refused to accept the idea that an institution’s decisions are above reproach. If student demonstrations are so integral to a university’s history and culture, why does it sometimes feel as though students demanding change are a problem to be managed rather than voices to hear? What does it mean when a university celebrates the legacy of student activism while its current students navigate restrictions and consequences associated with using their own voices? Perhaps the problem is not that students have stopped caring, but that we have become more comfortable celebrating activism as history than accepting it as a responsibility of the present.  Historically, universities were not created as the inclusive institutions we recognize today. Many were established to serve religious, political and economic elites with access restricted by race, gender and class. Higher education has a long history of exclusion, and Black students in particular have had to fight for access, recognition and representation. This struggle continues today.  However, universities were also the places where those very systems were challenged. During the Civil Rights Movement, Black college students organized sit-ins, challenged segregation and helped build movements that transformed American society, according to the National Archives. They did not wait until they graduated, had prestigious careers or someone permitted them to matter. They acted because the world around them demanded it.  This is evident throughout VCU’s own history. In 1967, students organized

Medical misinformation is platformed on campus – it is time VCU does something about it

November 11, 2026

Urjita Mainali, Contributing Writer Recently, there has been a growing number of demonstrations against abortion held by non-student organizations on VCU’s campus. These protestors often bring signs and flyers that provide inaccurate and insensitive information regarding pregnancy and gestation, as well as the medical procedure of abortion.  These groups implement shame tactics based on largely religious or otherwise moral guilt, and inform their assertions with inaccurate claims that generate fear. Most recently, they held a demonstration in front of an academic building in a manner that made it difficult, if not impossible, for some students to avoid without missing out on their paid education.  VCU, as both an academic and medical institution, has a responsibility to protect its young student population from shame and medical misinformation, which has recently been identified as a major public health concern, according to Springer Nature Link.  In allowing these protests to continue, VCU has platformed this misinformation and stigma, endangering the physical and emotional health of students, without assurance that they are well-informed on issues of reproductive health.  Without these considerations, VCU has inadvertently platformed demonstrations that could risk student mental health and lead them to question major personal health decisions in ways that

Your application essay should be about you, not your life’s grievances

November 11, 2026

Lily Holmes, Contributing Writer  Application essays, especially those written for scholarships, academic programs and internships at any education stage tend to follow a similar formula. Even when it seems as if a new trend in essay writing may break the mold, it melds right in.  Online guides may say that an essay is meant to reflect “who you are” and provide an outline describing exactly which words to use, which not to use and the precise narrative an admissions officer wants to see. Look hard enough at a list of essay topics to avoid, and almost every topic is supposedly off limits. There is no getting around it: Writing application essays can be annoying, stressful and restrictive.  The online advice is often initially accurate. Certain essay topics, including the “trauma dump” and “resume repeater,” tend to grate readers or even send the message that the applicant in question finds their traumatic lore to be the most interesting facet of themselves. The “resume repeater,” an essay about the hypothesis of your important high school research project or your internship at a major tech company, is both redundant and difficult to write without sounding like a humble brag. The cliché “out-of-state competition”

Thanks for nothing, Pollard and Bagby

November 11, 2026

Kylie Grunsfeld, Opinions and Humor Editor One morning I awoke to my roommate banging violently on my bedroom door. After a few moments, I made out the words “a huge roach just crawled into your room.” This came after weeks of sending work orders into our property managers, Pollard and Bagby.  By the time they finally sent a third-party company in to get rid of the bugs, we had seen close to a dozen baby cockroaches and multiple adults. They crawled in through exposed drains, attracted by a leaky sink in the bathroom, which we also sent in requests to fix. Additionally, an attic door was left open right above the entrance to our unit, a perfect place for cockroaches to breed — none of which was our fault. It was the fault of a company who failed (or did not care) to keep their building in good condition. I do not write any of this because I think it is an unusual experience to have when living in the Fan. I write because it is all too common, and there does not seem to be any plans to change this.  Living in the Fan is an immense privilege. The

Section 504 saved my life

November 4, 2026

Theo Mastio, Contributing Writer At age 13, I was diagnosed with several learning disorders and mental health issues, which came as a surprise. I had always been ahead of my class in school: how could I be disabled?  It turns out being disabled and working harder than your peers is nothing new. So, they sat me down in a room with a woman that I had never met, my teachers, the vice principal and my mom. It was time to create my 504 plan. According to The Department of Education, 504 refers to the section of federal law that legally requires accommodations for anyone with a disability in a federally funded program. I received accommodations for those disabilities as a middle schooler. My therapist put it this way: paying attention, reading and learning was like running an entire football field while everyone else just ran one yard. The accommodations were supposed to level the playing field or shorten my sprint. It still required work on my part: extra classes, training, listening to these weird CDs for audio processing and learning how to manage my emotions.  The 504 meant hearing feedback from teachers on their concerns and observations. It meant finding

Everyone should host more parties!

November 4, 2026

Kylie Grunsfeld, Opinions & Humor Editor A flyer slapped together on Canva, a couple family-sized bags of chips on the counter and a playlist of early 2000s hits. You do not need much more than that to host the party of the year.  When I was a first-year student living in GRC, my dorm was the dorm of choice for my friends and I to gather in. I did not have much to offer besides a couple square feet of space, but it was important to me that there was a place for us to gather — play cards, do homework or just talk. What we were doing did not matter so long as we were in each other’s company. In my second year, despite living in a dorm I hated with leaks in the ceiling and cockroaches in the kitchen (shoutout Cary and Belvidere,) my roommates and I still invited people over whenever we could. Having friends in our place transformed it.  I once had an idea to host a poetry and music night, so I called on some friends and asked if I could use their apartment. What transpired was a few hours of community closeness that only

Our culture of fear perpetuates sexual violence

November 4, 2026

Nick Echard, Contributing Writer One month ago, my former high school was under investigation for sexual misconduct.  According to a CBS6 article, a number of male students had a group chat in which they circulated inappropriate pictures of female students. These photos were non-consensual and allegedly featured pictures of girls ranging from eighth to 12th grade. Trinity Episcopal School is no stranger to sexual assault committed by its students on and off campus. One night in 2021 when I went to pick up a group of mutual friends from a party that my classmates were hosting, one girl was in tears after she was taken to the woods behind the house party and assaulted.  Two more of my classmates would be assaulted in the coming semesters. The administration at my school sat idle until all three of these classmates left the school, whilst only one of their assaulters was expelled. Since “Jane Doe,” the victim of the Cornell Seven incident, spoke out about her assault, Cornell University alumni going all the way back to the ’70s have come forward about their own experiences with assault on campus.  The “No-Confidence” resolution group is a community at Cornell that is speaking out

Stop measuring queerness by visibility

November 4, 2026

Maritza Baptiste, Staff Writer I overheard a conversation recently in which a bisexual, fem-presenting woman spoke openly about wanting to do a queer costume with her straight boyfriend. She claimed it was the only way for her to be visibly queer on Halloween. The conversation pushed me to think about the ways that our desire to make our queerness visible can sometimes be inauthentic or a form of costuming. However, the woman I overheard is only a victim of the standards of visibility that we place on ourselves and the entirety of the queer community.  For many queer people, Halloween is not a time where we can put on a costume of our identity — it is a time when we can embrace our identities wholeheartedly, because every day of the year we are visibly queer. Some less visibly queer people treat the holiday as an opportunity to express a part of themselves that is not always visible. Neither experience is inherently more authentic, but when visibility is a badge of legitimacy, we are creating barriers to belonging in a community where no one should have to prove their identity through appearance.  In wanting to preserve and protect queer spaces,

This is America: Speak another language

October 28, 2026

Shiny Chandravel, Assistant Opinions & Humor Editor In Tamil, there is no word for goodbye. Instead, we say, “poitu varen,” which directly translates to “I’m going and I’m coming back.” Growing up, it was the phrase I heard every time my dad would leave for work. It was what my relatives would say before I entered the airport after a long-awaited trip to visit them in India. It was the last thing I heard my grandfather say before he passed away.  “Poitu varen” is a constant reminder that goodbyes can be tender, farewells do not need to be permanent and that you ought to promise your loved ones to always come back.  It is a challenge to be born and raised in the United States and still feel deeply connected to your family’s culture. However, understanding, speaking, hearing and even reading my mother tongue has remained a uniquely powerful way for me to connect with my heritage, transcending political borders. My bilingualism shapes the way I experience the world around me. According to Ethnologue, the U.S. remains one of the top five countries with the largest number of spoken languages as of 2024. We are home to a wide variety

Can ‘swirling’ be pro-Black?

October 14, 2026

Maritza Baptiste, Staff Writer I did not know about motivational speaker Dr. Umar Johnson until a couple of years ago when he made plans to