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Shrill’ is a quiet celebration of plus-size women

TTLG: A Call for Care

Most students would agree that they chose Dartmouth for its tight-knit community and its family feel. I’m not just assuming a general consensus here; I went back and looked up the most common responses to why people selected Dartmouth over schools like Duke or Johns Hopkins on our Class of 2019 Facebook group page. Among campus legend DJ Chris Hogan ’19’s excited posts to assemble a “Mixcloud playlist” for our class (thank you, Chris, for being an example of unparalleled friendliness and enthusiasm), I found a myriad of posts endorsing Dartmouth’s “inviting community where you can feel at home,” as a place where people “care about each other.” 

Opinion Asks: The Mueller Report

On March 22, special counsel Robert Mueller released to the U.S. Attorney General the results of his investigation into collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign. While the report found no evidence of collusion, it neither recommended charges nor exonerated the president on charges of obstruction of justice. We asked opinion writers for their responses to the release.

Review: ‘Us’ is a new masterpiece that blends horror and comedy

It’s been a while since I’ve been as excited to see a movie as I was to see “Us,” the new film directed, written and produced by Jordan Peele. Like millions of people, I was blown away by how unexpectedly good Peele’s 2017 film “Get Out” was, so I came in to “Us” with high expectations, looking for something just as thought-provoking and well-constructed. While I don’t think that “Us” has “Get Out” beat, I still think it’s a fantastic, smart film that should be watched by everyone looking to walk out of a movie theater all giddy — like you used to before everything became a reboot or a third sequel in a franchise. I enjoyed it so much that I gladly paid to see it twice this past weekend.

Pucks in Deep: Kyle and Mike

Pucks in Deep: Kyle and Mike 

What Do You Mean? Idioms and Their Origins

This week’s issue of the Mirror is themed “silver linings.” The phrase literally has nothing to do with silver, or linings, but somehow I didn’t think twice about what it meant. Idioms like this one are so ingrained in American English that as a native speaker, I never think about how neither “silver” nor “linings” individually have any meaningful similarity to what they signify together. It’s strange to me that words can lose their meanings entirely to serve the meaning of a phrase. That got me thinking — what does “silver linings” actually mean? Where did it come from? I extended those questions to 10 popular idioms to uncover their (often ambiguous) history. 

Light at the End of the Tunnel: When Illness Strikes

Turning Over a New Leaf

There is an ancient Sufi poem that goes,“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”

From Scandal to Opportunity: Virginia's Political Turmoil

February has been a hellish month for my home state of Virginia. The state has been hit with a storm of scandals that have rocked the political hierarchy. First, there was the revelation that Governor Ralph Northam had worn blackface in the past when a photo surfaced from his medical yearbook. He offered an apology but then came a reversal, as Northam ignored calls for his resignation. Another admittance of blackface followed suit by a different top state leader ­— Attorney General Mark Herring. And on top of all this, Lieutenant Governor Justin E. Fairfax, Northam’s designated successor, faced two allegations of past sexual assault during the same week. (The Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General rank in the top five most powerful leaders in the Virginia state government — all three positions are currently held by Democrats clouded in scandal). While the sexual assault allegations add to the ongoing conversation during this #MeToo era, the blackface confessions have reignited conversations about racism we thought we no longer needed. All of this happened during African-American history month. Virginia is not doing well. 

C.O.A.T.: Coldest of All Time

Ah, winter. My favorite season. It’s freezing cold and wet and dark. We get a faithful weekly cycle of snow that turns from powder to slush to mud and then frozen into black ice again. I live in constant fear of slipping and falling and have accepted my fate that multiple pairs of pants will, indeed, rip on the way down. Gravel and salt make incursions into our heavy winter boots and cozy dorm rooms. The hot water situation has never been worse and leaving a building with wet hair is the beginning of pneumonia or, at the very least, hair icicles. Unlucky car owners spend an unreasonable amount of time digging out their vehicles from snowdrifts. I wear so many layers of clothing that leaving a classroom becomes an ordeal similar to how I imagine astronauts suit up to enter the vacuum of space. Not infrequently, I’ve compared my MWF trek between the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center and the Black Visual Arts Center to climbing Mount Everest. 

Review: ‘This Land’ doesn’t provide a cohesive musical identity

Gary Clark Jr. seems to be in the midst of an identity crisis. After bursting out of the Austin music scene as an heir to greats like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, he settled into a comfortable role as a jam-and-solo blues guitarist.Yet somewhere along the line grew tired of the redundancy. Starting with his 2015 album “The Story of Sonny Boy Slim,” Clark began experimenting with sounds that veered into R&B and funk, and his latest release, “This Land,” is even more of a departure from the traditional blues image he once presented. I would even go so far as to say that “This Land” is not a blues album at all. Rather, it is a sampler of Clark’s genre-bending experimentations, which hover somewhere between rock, R&B and hip hop. Unfortunately, the result is a messy record that has intriguing moments but lacks a coherent identity, sounding like the product of an artist who is still unsure of his own place in the world of modern music. 

Review: Hozier’s ‘Wasteland, Baby!’ is a pleasant musical surprise

This past Friday, Hozier’s second studio album was released, closing a five year gap between his debut album from 2014 and his latest. Given the massive success of the Irish singer’s first album, “Hozier” and five years’ worth of expectation, Hozier’s second album was released upon high anticipation. So does ‘Wasteland, Baby!’ rise to the challenge? 

2019 marks 30 years for coaches Thompson Graves and Dodge

In 1985, Cami Thompson Graves and Peter Dodge ’78 found themselves in very different positions — but both trying to make it in professional skiing. The former had just graduated from St. Lawrence University and made the jump to the U.S. Ski Team, which took her to the 1985 World Championships in Seefeld, Austria. The latter was enjoying success on the pro tour, winning the slalom at the Peugeot tour national finals that year, his fifth season since he was rookie of the year in 1980.

Jones: Trumpian Totalitarianism

In Jan. 2017, just days after the inauguration of President Donald Trump, Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” sold out on Amazon. Written when Trump was just five years old, “Origins” details the emergence of 20th century totalitarian movements in the context of the histories of antisemitism, imperialism and the complex notion of the nation-state. Deemed by some as a partisan overreaction, Arendt’s posthumous popularity signals a growing anxiety among the American public, a population that has historically believed its constitutional principles too strong for totalitarianism to ever get a foothold. These concerns are neither an overreaction nor unfounded. American politics today are in a desperate state of disarray — established norms are disappearing and the most dangerous voices are the loudest.

Peñaloza: Mr. Trump, You're Wrong (Again)

It’s been two weeks since U.S. President Trump felt the need to declare that his signature border wall’s construction qualified as a national emergency. Anger still consumes me. He lives under a veil of ignorance, which he is never forced to take off. His ignorance is a privilege that goes unchecked, and it’s one that many don’t have. I know I don’t. 

Review: 'Alita: Battle Angel' is entertaining, but its script falls short

“Alita: Battle Angel” is the latest in the line of big budget, young adult sci-fi films to not do well critically or commercially. Following in the footsteps of the “Divergent” and “Maze Runner” trilogies, I felt like “Alita” tried too hard to recreate the success of “The Hunger Games.” While it might have worked in 2012, I think that today’s audiences are bored of the generic “chosen one” teenaged protagonist who must fight to overthrow a dystopian government, all while having to deal with a ham-fisted romantic subplot that does nothing but drag the plot down. That being said, I did enjoy this movie. 

Khanna: Likely to Get Labeled

 Deviance is defined by sociologists as the violation of expected rules and behavior by a member of a group, resulting in discord between the individual displaying the deviant behavior and the social context in which they reside. Though what is considered “deviant” varies greatly based upon a group’s conventional behaviors, deviance itself generally serves as a way for communities to define and clarify the socially normative behaviors and identities expected from its members. However, an individual’s motivation for engaging in deviant behavior has been subject to a wide range of sociological theories that have attempted to explain why people choose to renounce the establishment of their communities. 

Sivarajan: In Defense of D’Souza

In their Feb. 12 Opinion Asks series, writers for The Dartmouth opinion staff unanimously condemned Dinesh D’Souza ’83 and the Dartmouth College Republicans for inviting him to deliver a lecture sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation, a seminal organization for young conservatives. Moreover, in its Feb. 22 Verbum Ultimum on minority identities, The Dartmouth editorial board proclaimed that Dartmouth is an institution “where conservatives invite individuals such as Dinesh D’Souza ’83 who spread hateful and intolerant ideas.” Notice that these writers fail to adhere to a journalistic maxim: support all claims with evidence. These two articles are part of a trend that I have observed among many students belonging to the Dartmouth left, some of whom are writers for and editors of the ostensibly conservative publication The Dartmouth Review. These individuals lambast Mr. D’Souza as a poor representative of American conservatism, to which I would quote National Review’s Jonah Goldberg and say, “If D’Souza is a ‘phony conservative,’ it’s hard to know who the real deal is.” Further, it is conceited to believe the College Republicans invite speakers solely to evoke a reaction from the Dartmouth left.

Pak: The Ugly Mess Under the Rug

 If there’s one thing that comes to mind when reflecting on the Trump presidency, it’s the astounding number of hate crimes and race-related incidents that have occurred before and after his inauguration. There are attention-grabbing shockers like vilifying Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists while on the campaign trail, retweeting white nationalists without remorse, his failure to attribute blame to Charlottesville white supremacist perpetrators and calling some of them “very fine people,” denigrating Native Americans, the Muslim ban, attacking kneeling NFL players — needless to say, the list goes on and on.

#MeToo exhibit in Berry addresses sexual violence on campus

From Feb. 22 to March 2, the exhibit “#MeToo: Intersectionality Hashtag Activism and Our Lives” will be up in Berry West in the hallway in front of King Arthur Flour Café. The exhibit is a compilation of poetry, artwork and academic information about the Me Too movement in the U.S. and abroad, created by Dartmouth students. The work included in the exhibit is a product of the 2018 fall women, gender and sexuality studies class, which shares the name of the exhibit.