If you’re interested in social action and community involvement, a GOOD opportunity has just emerged on the Brown campus. GOOD, initially founded as a publication highlighting individuals engaged in projects that in someway better the world around them, is an online forum for people to post ideas, find causes to pursue, promote ventures and connect with others. The content of the website is both diverse and varied in its content. It covers issues including food, politics, the environment, culture, lifestyle, urban planning, and technology. The website currently receives about two million unique views per month and is actively updated to reflect trends and pressing issues. GOOD currently has offices in both New York and Los Angeles.

Haley Scott ’15, a recent transfer from UNC, became involved with the organization in its early stages and is now the Brown Campus Ambassador for GOOD. Scott has contributed a number of posts for the website and is incredibly excited about the prospect of the organization gaining significant traction at Brown. Scott currently has around 50 followers and has written posts that truly cover the entirety of the spectrum — from Philanthropic Action to Eco-Friendly Engineering to eating vegan. As one of 30 campus ambassadors, Scott believes that the college campus presents the perfect market for an organization of this nature and will allow the facilitation of the sharing of ideas. Scott is currently working with the Swearer Center to coordinate and organize efforts amongst service groups on campus and promote GOOD as a means by which to share and communicate. [Read more →]

NEW WEIRD AMERICA is a dance-theater play currently being performed at 95 Empire in downtown Providence. Directed by Ari Rodriguez ’13, New Weird America is a devised theater piece that mixes dance, language, and music to tell the story of four couples. The play centers around the rituals and traditions of pan-American courtship.  With a completely Brown student cast and crew, this show is bringing interesting new theater to the greater Providence community.

New Weird America – it’s everything you would expect and nothing at the same time. Confusing? Well, you’ll just have to go see it for yourself. Bridging the gap between experimental theater and dance, the show has the ability to communicate something different to each audience member. It’s new. It’s weird. And for me created a new idea of what “America” can mean.   [Read more →]

This is why we love Brown.

Say hello to Renaissance man William Twyman ’16, a freshman linebacker, BEO concentrator, and musician.  Although he is a jack of many trades, Twyman has always had a strong interest in music. During his teenage years, Twyman discovered that he had a knack for freestyling and started recording music by his junior year of high school under the name “Chuck Da Ruckus.” Chuck Da Ruckus quickly gained recognition in the freestyle community and on Brown’s campus for his music videos for “Friday Night Fade” and “Most Consistent.” Read more after the jump. [Read more →]

Brown is currently competing in Up to Us, a competition that highlights extraordinary demonstrations of campus advocacy, specifically geared towards our nation’s massive debt. If we win, President Bill Clinton will recognize us for our efforts as a university. We are currently in second place. Take a second to think about how cool this is. Here we are, competing against massive schools like the University of Virginia and the University of Texas, and we’re within reach of winning. All you have to do is engage with Brown Up to Us’s Causes page. Every time you click on a link or answer a question, Brown gets one point closer to recognition from President Clinton.

Who do we have to thank for getting us in this competition for the first place? Meet Common Sense Action, a student group that strives to bring the youth voice to the policy-making table. Founded by Samuel Gilman ’15, Andrew Kaplan ’15, and Heath Mayo ’13 in the midst of our national debt crisis, Common Sense Action stresses the importance of future generations when making national decisions. Common Sense Action provides a grassroots outlet for young Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to vocalize their demands for strong bi-partisan leadership by creating a cooperative political landscape, eliminating uncompromising extremism on both sides of the political spectrum, and paving a sturdy and promising future. All too often, as policy-makers create legislation to please voter blocs and various interest groups, the importance of the future is placed on the back burner. Common Sense Action believes we can change that.
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Try to think back to your middle school years. Among the several airbrushed sweatshirts, Black Eyed Peas hits, and rounds on rounds of Icy Tower, there was was the all-knowing and infallible Love Calculator that would help you determine the likelihood that you and your crush (<3) would end up ~together 4ever.~ You’d type in your name and that of your “dream partner” and the website would hurl a random percentage right back at your face; yet you were unsatisfied that despite your 3 8 17 entries that day, your crush would never be informed of your feelings for him/her.

Fast-forward to 2013: Facebook is probably the center of your (online) universe, and your cupid-like peers have drastically changed the love game. Enter “Brown Admirers,” a Facebook page through which you can submit a light-hearted message to a crush or individual you’ve been admiring from afar in the form of a Google Doc. The page’s administrators then post your submission on its timeline and tag the person to whom the message was directed. You can submit the message anonymously or with your name, or you can even include little clues to help them determine who the sender is. In other words, your crush will definitely get the message but the extent to which you reveal yourself to him/her is completely in your hands.  [Read more →]

IGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines) is an international competition for undergraduates from the United States, South America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa, who spend approximately one year creating biological systems with a set of standardized parts.

This past weekend, the combined Brown-Stanford IGEM team completely owned the annual competition, placing in the top 16 out of the 190 teams competing. It gets better—they were the only US team out of the four competing to place in the top 16, beating out schools like MIT, Berkeley, Yale, and Harvard. We had the chance to chat with Julia Borden ’14, a member of the IGEM team, and ask her a few questions. [Read more →]

Michael Goodman has loved music for as long as he can remember. He started writing music as a young child and hasn’t stopped since. His favorite genres of music are Rock and Roll and ’60s bubblegum pop, and looks to artists and bands like The Everly Brothers, Brian Eno, John Kale, and Del Shannon for inspiration. As a Literary Arts and MCM Production double concentrator, he continues to pursue his passions for music, film, acting, and writing at Brown. He is also the creator of The Blog theme song (if you don’t know what that means, go fix that). Oh…and his new album comes out today. [Read more →]

Thanks to all who submitted photos of their costumes to our second annual costume contest. We were thrilled to get lots of great submissions, all of which were a testament to Brown students’ creativity, wit, and incredible ability to coordinate costumes and poses while being photographed. In true Twelve Angry Men fashion, the editors of BlogDH engaged in a heated debate over your submissions before reaching a final consensus.  While we all agreed on a costume idea, we were split on which group had better execution.  So, without further ado, let us present the first place winners:  

From left to right: James G. ’13, Hannah K. ’15,  Nick D. ’14, Ben M. ’14, Kelly M. ’13, Katie D. ’13, Avery N. ’13, Cory A. ’13, Josh G. ’14, Kathy N. ’13, Christina J. ’14, Tanya N. ’13, Laney C. ’14, Tori L. ’14

Top to bottom, left to right: Zak C. ’15, James G. ’15, Kris K. ’15, Ali K. ’15, Sara P. ’15, Julia V. ’15, Jessica V. ’15, and Joseph R. ’14
Description: The main characters from Toy Story.

Check out more of our favorite submissions after the jump. [Read more →]

“White iPhone. Ballsy.” These were the first sassy words to come out of Nick Vitrano’s (’13) mouth as we sat down for our interview. Not “Hey how are you?” or “Sam, I love that orange graphic T that 100% did not come from Urban.” No, he commented on the apparent ballsiness of having a white iPhone (his, of course, was black). I, for one, did not know that my white cell phone made such a statement, but this was only the beginning what would be a truly edifying evening.

For those of you who don’t know Nick (but seriously, who doesn’t know him), he’s an openly gay member of the class of 2013, who “likes to say ‘fabulous’ in a voice, like, a half octave higher than most males.” Besides being “fabulous,” he’s also the creator/writer of the wildly popular tumblr: Straight Boy Crush of the Week. If the name isn’t clear enough, here’s the deal: each week Nick picks a straight boy, spends some time with him (read: time for sexy photography) and then posts a humorous write-up on the blog. And despite its focus on hunky men, the blog’s real star is Nick, and thus we took some time to get to know him in the Blue Room, a well-known spot for staking out straight boys to crush on. Read the interview and see the photos, after the jump.

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