Vine, a social media app launched by Twitter last January, is causing quite the stir on campus. The premise is simple. Your homepage is a feed of your friends’ looping six-second videos. To make your own, you just touch your finger to the screen in the video interface to record.

Some users take its often-used descriptor to heart and treat the app as an “Instagram for videos.” Brown students don’t fall into this category. From documenting pranks at the Blue Room to crafting elaborate scenes amongst friends, they have taken the craft of Vining to awe-inspiring and laugh-inducing levels. Every day the creative community of Brown Viners grows larger and stronger–so we thought we’d hop abroad the Vine train.

We recently dispatched two of our most available capable “journalists”  to get the scoop on the growing trend–and document their results on Vine. Their educational Vines are posted below, among which are student takes on the app and depictions of Brown’s most-common Vine prototypes. Click the sound logo on the top right when you’re ready to watch one. And if you haven’t already, make sure to join Vine and follow BlogDailyHerald for more informative updates down the road.

It seems like a lot of students are “Vining” these days…

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We Brunonians are already well-versed in the stale slang of our generation. (How many more times can you bear hearing the word swag?) However, just because we go to Brown and use such words, that does not make these words Brown slang. Luckily for you, we’ve taken some Brown-specific words and adapted them for novel uses. Here are a handful of words from the Brown lexicon that we have refashioned to suit your needs:

brown EZ (adj): Indiscriminately sexually active; usually DTF.

“I barely told her my name before I realized her tongue was in my mouth. I’d say she’s brown EZ.”

brown secure (adj): Selectively sexually active; not (immediately) DTF.

“We were DFMOing and he seemed like he was into it, but, after a long night of sleep—just sleep—I realized he was brown secure… or blackout.”

wicky (adj): Of or relating to the hipster / artsy / foodie culture on and surrounding Wickenden Street

“You are an arrogant asshole for refusing this coffee. I’m sorry it’s not the wicky shit your dad’s Hedge fund pays for.” [Read more →]

Oh Brown, you beautiful kaleidoscope of weirdness, you. From the people to the classes to the streets (but seriously go home city planners, you’re drunk) we are a clusterfu*k of peculiarities, and a damn beautiful one for that matter. Sometimes, however, we dismiss the little things that make Brown memorable. You know, the rather unassuming instances that really spice up college life. Please note that the following might not be the most pleasant of things that can happen to you here, but you’d be lying if you said they don’t make for good stories to later tell your grandchildren. Alright, alright, or your cats.

The Thayer Predicament

Proceed with caution.

So you’re walking down Thayer, ready for a day of [window] shopping and overpriced burritos, when you catch your reflection on a restaurant window. Your hair is a bit messy. Better fix that pronto. You keep walking and hey you catch your reflection again! Hair is totes fab, but your shirt is tucked in all wrong. Yup, gotta fix that, too. You begin to feel your self-consciousness heighten, and these mirror-like windows have unleashed the narcissistic monster from within. What’s going on? You now can’t seem to stop looking at your reflection in every passing store window! It’s utter madness. Wait, did that Jersey Shore guy inside of Antonio’s think you were checking him out and smirk at you? Ok, maybe it’s time to stop. [Read more →]

It’s here, Brunonia: That day that makes you feel, depending on your relationship status, either more self-conscious or more hot-and-bothered than when your calculus TA checked you out at SexPowerGod.

For you lucky ones who have found that significant other at Brown, V-Day is a lot of pressure. What could you possibly do to show your loved one that there’s no one you’d rather be spending the big day with besides your Neopet Chomby? Chocolates are classic, but it will be obvious you got them with flex points at Little Jo’s. And if you’re broke and blew all your points on Spindrifts in the first week, that Valentine’s Day dinner will be less romantic on meal credits at the Ratty. But don’t worry, I have the perfect solution for you struggling souls. I’ve put together a love poem that describes just how deep your love goes, Brown style, with a lot of a little help from RhymeZone.com. I guarantee that if you read your loved one this poem, while standing on top of the bear statue on the Main Green accompanied by an a capella group, you will end up getting married (well, there’s a 60% chance if you both live in Perkins). Interpretive dance moves encouraged—maybe get some tips from the Poler Bears. Go out there and spread the Brunonian love.

You’re spicier than a Jo’s Spicy With
And classier than a Darwin’s fifth
You’re sweeter than V-Dub soft serve
And ENGN9′s grading curve
You’re sexier than SexPowerGod
And streaking across Wriston Quad
You’re more entertaining than the Blue Room on Sundays
Watching hungover chicks drink double shot lattés
You’re more distinct than an S with distinction
And watching a Bruno sports team win
You’re better than free Kabob & Curry
And getting first pick in the housing lottery
You’re wilder than the SciLi challenge
And the end-of-semester flex point binge
You’re chiller than the BroPo on 4/20
And Spring Weekend day-drinking when it’s finally sunny
You’re classier than that Thayer street walk of shame
The morning after Whisko can’t remember his name
You’re crazier than all this shit that goes down
You’re better than the best of Brown.

If that doesn’t get your loved one climbing the bear statue to be with you, I don’t know what will. Feel free to add your own verses based on inside jokes and experiences, like “You’re hotter than when we did it on the Sayles organ / And sorry for that time I yelled ‘Oh, Piers Morgan!’”

I had a fairly idyllic high school experience. Having gone to a nerdy magnet school, I was able to have a modicum of popularity, and I seized it: I played the Fairy Godcalculator in the high school skit (I can make all your trignometry wishes come true!) and hosted cool balloon animal-themed parties. Every year, I return to the Washington D.C. area excited to revisit my roots and perhaps have an unedited LOTR marathon. And for the most part, it’s been great.

But college has not worked in everybody’s favor. Sometimes, you return for break and find that a university has taken your high school besties and created… monsters. And not in the way of the most anticipated blockbuster of summer 2013.

It’s only upon returning to Brown that one can come to appreciate how these monsters function. Through observations, hearsay, and a couple of incredibly awkward parties, I have compiled a list of the most monster-like high school archetypes: [Read more →]

Long gone are the days when Brown was the happiest school. The Daily Beast has ranked Brown the sixth most stressful school behind Northwestern, Harvard, Columbia, UPenn, and WashU. Perhaps a Rhode Island marijuana legalization could go a long way after all.

I’ve always thought the SciLi was comparable to Mordor.

The rankings were calculated by the total price of tuition, the percentage of students receiving financial aid, selectivity based on the average SAT or ACT score, and the percentage of applicants admitted. A small weight was given to the amount of crime in the area (all those DPS alerts do make my heart rate go up…).  Brown, with a tuition of $56,150 a year (thanks, Mom and Dad), 49% on financial aid and 9% admission rates, starts to look pretty stressful.

Of the 25 most stressful schools, Brown ranks 15th in the “most crime” category. Go figure.

Hopefully these rankings will emotionally validate some pre-med and engineering students.

Image via.

No way is this accurate. It’s too cold in New England to be outside.

Some people I know go home to sad, small Thanksgivings, with just their immediate family and pet guinea pig. Others sit alone in the Blue Room with a cold turkey sandwich.

Those people are incredibly lucky. My family is the equivalent of a swarm of locusts, descending upon my small home in Virginia to parasitically consume all our food. We always have 20+ family members populating our home on Thanksgiving, eating and talking and arguing. When your family grows so large they form their own gravitational field, there’s bound to be inter-familial strife.

And no one knows this better than me. My family comes from all walks of White America, from yuppies to military brats to country hicks and hipsters. We have Christians and Buddhists, Hindus and atheists. My family has grown so large that my grandmother has a great-great grandchild. That’s my second cousin twice removed. I’m still not sure what the difference is between “removed” and “second” cousin, so I just threw them both in there for good measure. In short, my family’s insane. 

So I’ve developed some helpful tactics for dealing with them:

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By now, your advisor has supposedly discussed with you the S/NC grading option. A number of adults and upperclassmen have probably told you that if you take more than a few of your classes S/NC during your four years at Brown, you won’t get a real job. Besides, why take a class S/NC if you were smart enough to get into Brown?  Well Mr. High School Hot Shot, there is a lot more behind this semi-caveat in the grading system than the principle that an English concentrator can take an introductory physics course for shits and giggles and vice versa.

I’m personally taking two mandatory S/NC courses as a freshman. One of them is an introductory writing course that takes place three times a week at 9 a.m., and it is my favorite class in my life thus far.  The other is a seminar open to all undergraduates on Gender, Science and Society, where last week we read an article about female primates orgasming in relation to reproduction, talked about it for two hours and called it a day.  Did I mention that my final exam for this seminar is an in-class workshop on editing a Wikipedia article?  At this point you are probably overwhelmed with jealousy, but you too can experience the wonder of S/NC.

First off, there are some things to clarify.

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It comes once twice a year. The chance for every club to strut its stuff. The chance for every new freshman to find his or her new calling among the diverse, active, hilarious, serious, lighthearted, political, food-oriented, and multicultural chaos integral to all of Brown’s student groups and clubs. Fun, right?

It sucks. It really effing sucks.

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Sometimes it stops raining and campus looks pretty. Sometimes.

There’s something about a new school year that’s always going to be exciting. If summer has to end, it might as well end with us returning to a place we love, right? Here are some reasons why you should be pumped for autumn in Brunonia:

1. The unspoken dress code. The first week of school will still feel like summer, and it will look like summer, too – expect an abundance of sundresses, bro tanks, and flip-flops. But by mid-September, it’ll seem like someone sent a campus-wide signal from the top of the SciLi alerting us to dress for fall. We’ve got one word for you: scarves.

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