A Great Political Campus

Introduction
I applied to a lot of other schools and got into a few other Ivies and took the tours and just found that Brown was the place that jived with me politically. As far as the discipline I was interested in- I was always interested in international relations so it just happened to be the right choice for me, and I promised myself I wasn’t going to go to school close to home and I ended up here anyways. I went to South Africa a year ago to study abroad. Fantastic experience. University of Capetown. It was a non-Brown program and Brown was very helpful in making sure I got over there alright and making sure I came back and all my credits transferred. And there was a lot of time to travel in between my studies there.

Campus Life and Social Life
There’s a range, and like at all schools there’s the intro classes that are pretty large and the Senior seminars that are really intimate, and you really have chance to engage your professors a lot. The professors at Brown tend to be wonderful. And I’ve had the chance to work with some of them independently on group independent projects. And again, over the summers, there are studies that we can do that pay us to work directly with the professors over the course of the summer. GISP is a Group Independent Study and it’s organized by students and students usually come together one or two usually at the beginning of the semester and organize a reading list around a topic that Brown doesn’t offer in class-form. And you pick a professor and they sit down with us over the course of the semester and go over the materials that we do and it’s mostly group-oriented work. It’s been a fantastic experience. I did one on Comedy Writing and one on Global Terrorist Financing. It’s for all those extra-alternative students at Brown who kind of want to follow their own passion that Brown doesn’t necessarily have to offer. So you can take your hodgepodge of classes and give them some kind of form that’s directed at whatever sort of personal interests you have, and it’s capped off in some sort of thesis writing that explains your new philosophy of the world that everyone should be learning about. Advertisement
Academics
Brown’s a pretty liberal school, though it’s starting to move a little bit more right. Ruth Simmons, our new president, who came in my Freshman year, is emphasizing academic freedom and trying to bring in more conservative speakers so that we have a balance at this school. Activism on campus is present but not omni-present. It’s here and if you wanna get involved with it, there are certainly passionate people. But it’s not required at all and ideas are not imposed on you and above all, intellectual diversity is encouraged.
I’m involved with the Ivy Film Festival, which is the premiere undergraduate film festival in the United States of America. We have major speakers come in every year: Adrien Brody, two years ago, this year cinematographer Ellen Kuras and John Hamburg who wrote Meet The Fockers and Zoolander. Oliver Stone, before that. There is also the Brown Film Society, which shows films on campus every year and I do production over there. It tries to provide funding for students who aren’t taking production classes here at Brown in the Modern Culture and Media department. There is the Brown Journal of World Affairs, which is a professionally run journal of international studies, which students can do everything on, from copy edit to look for advertisements to proofreading all the articles that come in. And finally, the Brown leadership Training program, which is a group that takes Sophomores out every year into the woods in Maine and New Hampshire and sends them out for a week before classes start to “bond” as kind of a sophomore year orientation. And it’s all led by student leaders who are upper classmen.

Student Body
My favorite thing about Brown, I think, is the history that you have when you come into this school and that there’s kind of a tradition that weighs on your back when you step through the Van Winkle Gates. And just the tradition of open Academic learning that we have and the tradition of liberal understanding and opening ourselves to new ideas. It’s just a very historically intellectual place and very exciting. My least favorite thing would have to be the food. It’s been magnificent to get off the meal plan this year, now that I’m a senior, so it leaves something to be desired in the dining halls. They say we’re ranked one of the top dining places in the University so I feel really bad for all the other schools, but it’s still not anything to brag about. We have an event every year called the Naked Donut Run, in which right before finals begin, one of our local Fraternities comes upstairs entirely naked and passes out donuts. And we have certain seals that we can’t step on and senior class activities that range from a pub crawl, down to a Mr. Brown competition. All very exciting. Nakedness is very important to the college experience.