As finals close in and I begin to spend all hours of the night a completely healthy amount of time in the SciLi like the well-adjusted third-year student I am, all this time in the concrete building that’s made of concrete has given me ample time to think about how to improve our favorite dismal(-looking) building.

Imagine: You’re preparing yourself for a FriSC(y) night in the SciLi basement. After stocking up on some study aids from Starbucks, you pass through the cloud of smoke from hipsters congregating outside the SciLi door. To finish your pre-routine for a stint in the rectangular prism that feeds on the souls of pre-meds, you look up for some additional affirmation…

…and look upon a giant painting of an existential donkey.

“No one understands me.”

But for Brown students in 2004, this seemingly odd situation was their reality, and they were devastated when the “SciLi donkey sail(ed) away.”  Check it out after the jump. [Read more →]

You thought Keeney toilet paper was bad.

We have all had that tragic dorm bathroom toilet paper experience: the painstaking extraction of no more than three sheets of tissue at a time before the merciless jaws of the dispenser sever them from the rest of the roll. You then repeat the process several times, mash the product into a barely useable wad of butt paper, and promise yourself that next time, you’ll just go to the bathroom in Faunce.

Now imagine a time when you did not even have the option of even three sheets of toilet paper, but only one. Imagine using a device not much different from Jo’s napkin dispenser as your only University-sanctioned option to engage in proper bathroom hygiene.

If you’ve envisioned yourself in this scenario, congratulations! This post just became way too uncomfortable. You are adequately feeling empathy for every Brown student who attended this fine institution until the fall of 1987. We can imagine how overjoyed students were to find this front page Herald headline on the first issue (Sept. 9) of the fall 1987 semester. Check it out after the jump.

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Phil Ochs

It was April 1974. Nixon was the disgraced leader of the United States. Donald Hornig was the president of Brown, and no one liked him either.

Lineup:
Friday: McCoy Tyner, a jazz pianist, performed in Alumnae Hall. At midnight, he was followed by an up-and-coming “Dylanesque” rocker: Bruce Springsteen.
- The BDH didn’t even know how to spell The Boss’ name: it was printed as Bruce “Springstein”
- The paper’s advice for the night: There will not be seating provided, so bring a pillow. (BlogDH’s advice for your Friday night: Don’t bring a pillow.)

Saturday: Laurence Talbot Orchestra, Good Neighbors, Repairs, New Rhythm and Blues Quartet

Sunday: Phil Ochs, famous for protest songs like “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” gave a free concert on the Main Green

Highlight Quote: Phil Ochs sings, “Here’s to the country you tore the heart out of… Richard Nixon, find yourself another country to be part of.”

Fun Fact: Student Caucus (the equivalent of UCS at the time) allocated $400 to serve free beer to students at the Saturday afternoon concert on Pembroke Field.

In the immortal words of Corinne Bailey Rae (?), the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same…

Image courtesy of the University Archives

Just over 50 years ago, two historical legends — Malcolm X and the future American diplomat Richard Holbrooke ’62  — stood in front of a crowd of 800 in Sayles Hall. Thanks to Malcolm Burnley ’12, the entire world can hear exactly what they said.

Burnley recently discovered a recording of the May 11, 1961 speech given by Malcolm X, who was defending his views in response to a student-written Herald opinion piece that ran a few months earlier. Holbrooke, editor-in-chief of The Herald at the time, had welcomed the activist to campus to speak to Brown students and respond to the author of the critical opinion column.

Burnley found his way to the recording after coming across another Herald article about the event in the May 12, 1961 paper, as part of an assignment for a class. So, if we’ve learned anything from this story, it is to…

1) Read The Herald.
2) Write for The Herald / BlogDailyHerald.
3) Do your homework?
4) For best results, combine all three.

Check out the full story, including clips from the recording and interviews with Burnley, on the NPR website.

Writer/editor/journA-list Andrew Ross Sorkin lectured in Salomon 101 tonight at 7 pm as part of the Brown Lecture Board series. As has become the norm for Lecture Board events, bags, backpacks, food and drink were prohibited at the event. (Though I snuck in a cookie. Shh.) But why?

These people. On April 22, 2008, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman began an Earth Day speech in Salomon 101 on the role of globalization in the environmental movement. Seconds into his speech, two audience members and self-proclaimed environmental activists stormed the stage and threw green whipped cream pies at Friedman. The incident prompted national headlines and University embarrassment. (Is that why the University press releases for 2007-2008 aren’t archived on the Brown website? #justsaying). Check out the video above.

Impressively enough, even covered in green whipped cream, Friedman still delivered his planned lecture — and received two standing ovations, according to The Herald. It seemed Sorkin was aware of the pie incident — at one point during the lecture he joked that he’d brought his own pie.

Herald editorial, from 20 years ago (Tues, Nov. 26, 1991):

“It used to be that children could go out safely on Halloween, dressed up as whatever they wanted, and collect a lot of candy from many people,” but the tradition of trick-or-treating may be a thing of the past … at least according to The Herald 20 years ago.

The Brown Daily Herald, Nov. 1, 1991

In many neighborhoods, the kids will not just wander through each street, as now they are only permitted to go to houses of people they know. All of the candy they receive has to be checked by their parents, most of which may be considered unsafe.

In some communities, including suburbs of New York and Boston, hospitals offer free x-raying of all candy in order to detect razor blades and other metal that might have been put into the candy. Rhode Island Hospital offered this service a few years ago, but it was discontinued because of lack of response and the hospital’s feeling that they were providing a false safety net for the community.

Twenty years later, we seem to be doing pretty well.

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President Simmons released a letter to the community today recommending against restoring the ROTC program on Brown’s campus. This position comes after the release of a June 30, 2011 report by the Committee on ROTC which recommended reconsidering the complete ban of ROTC. The report specifically suggested that the University reach out to the Department of Defense to expand currently available off-campus ROTC opportunities for students. Find the full text of Ruth’s letter here, and check out the Herald website for full in-depth coverage.

Image via.

Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated as a candidate on a major party’s presidential ticket, passed away yesterday at the age of 75.  Two years after her unsuccessful vice-presidential bid, Ferraro visited Brown to speak about women in politics, and sat down with the Herald for a brief interview.  Click on the images to view full size:

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