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Section: Opinion

For Colleges and Universities, Reopening Plans Must Meet Students’ Mental Health Needs

As more people across the nation become eligible for COVID-19 vaccines, colleges and universities are evaluating the feasibility of bringing students safely back to campus. Of course, access to vaccines and healthcare, as well as protective measures like preventative testing and contact tracing are all top priorities, but administrators must also prepare to meet the mental health needs of their campuses most vulnerable students.

April 14, 2021

Engaging Academia on My Own Terms

I associated my belonging and success in academia with persisting and succeeding in the “traditional pathway” of doctoral students. While no one specifically told me, “you need to get a tenure-track position at a research institution,” I was socialized to believe that was the only goal I should aspire to.

April 14, 2021

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NCAA Forum: A Collegiate Athletics Call to Action

Sports has often been viewed as the “great equalizer” in our society, where no one sees color or race and focuses on teamwork and collectively building success. However, at the same time, throughout history and especially currently, athletes of color are being told to “Shut up and dribble” and to avoid social justice and political involvement.

April 13, 2021

Asian American Pacific Islander

Do People Really Think Harvard Admissions Discriminates Against Asians?

Harvard’s admissions process is based on a holistic sense of the applicant, not just grades and test scores. It’s a lot like other schools’ methods where grades and test scores and race are just one factor. It’s a method that has stood up to court challenges for years.

April 12, 2021

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What Does an Anti-Racist College Admissions Process Look Like?

As our country confronts how racism affects so many other aspects of our lives, college admissions has some soul searching to do as well. The reality is that the process is rife with unintentional bias, and higher education is reckoning with its history as an institution originally designed by, and for, America’s white male elite. Many widely used practices, such as requiring standardized test scores, are being reevaluated or even scrapped altogether.

April 12, 2021

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From DEI to JEDI

Is the acronym Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) outdated? After a summer of uprisings for racial justice during a global pandemic, we felt this era required us to lead with Justice and so we renamed our office at the MGH Institute of Health Professions from JEDI, transitioning from DEI, to reflect our paradigm shift in 2020.

April 9, 2021

More Than an Athlete: Pivoting to a New Paradigm

Student-athletes all have some level of investment in their particular sport. This investment can come in the form of effort, time, emotions, money, hopes, and dreams. Perhaps the most impactful investment that they make is the investment of their identity. This is the level of which one’s view of their self is defined as being an athlete in their sport. How one defines themselves and how others define them makes up their identity.

April 7, 2021

Asian American Pacific Islander

There Is No Such Thing as Asian Privilege

My mom let me know that she recently purchased a walking stick for when she and my father walk our dog. While they are entering an older stage in their lives, they are still in good health and have no issues walking. They bought the walking stick for the sole purpose of having something to defend themselves with in the case they are attacked. Though she didn’t say it explicitly, she is afraid that she might also become a victim of anti-Asian violence.

April 6, 2021

Making Equity Everyone’s Work

From effectively educating students online, to sponsoring research to help cure and prevent COVID, to confronting racism and anti-Blackness, to countering the effects of misinformation and conspiratorial thinking, colleges and universities must lead the way in finding solutions for the most pressing problems of our day.

March 31, 2021

Are Your Institution’s Diversity and Equity Efforts Cosmetic or Courageous?

The hardest and most needed changes will require courage. It will require some degree of risk. It will require upsetting the status quo. It will require fearless advocacy on behalf of students even if it means that it may cause some level of institutional discomfort. Unprecedented change requires unprecedented action at the time when windows of opportunity are made available.

March 30, 2021

Racelighting: Three Common Strategies Racelighters Use

Racelighting sits at the nexus of racial microaggressions and racial battle fatigue.

March 30, 2021

Asian American Pacific Islander

Higher Ed’s Diversity Gave First Filipino Attorney General In California A Boost

Asian American college students were protesting in San Francisco about the rise in Asian American hate over the weekend. #StopAsianHate, #StopAsianAmericanHate, hashtag it whatever you will. But the answer to their prayers—at least in California—may have come earlier in the week when Rob Bonta was nominated to be the state’s attorney general, the top law enforcement official in the nation’s most as Asian American state.

March 29, 2021

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Community Colleges

As Pandemic Lifts, Student Mental Health Needs Shift

Have we entered a season of hope for student mental health? The outlook for student well-being may finally be improving with COVID-19 cases going down, vaccinations going up, and more schools announcing plans to return to primarily in-person instruction this fall.

March 24, 2021

Why College Basketball Players Should Boycott the NCAA Tournament

The players have more power and leverage than ever before as there can be no games without them and no tournament without games. They are in a unique position to force the hand of the NCAA to make a decision and fulfill the promise that was made back in 2019 to dictate how athletes would be able to benefit from their name, image, and likeness (NIL). The NCAA Board of Directors pledged to have this done by January 2021 and failed to do so.

March 17, 2021

The S.T.E.M. Pipeline Test: Will Underrepresented Groups Be Left at the Station as the Tech Train Takes Off?

Years of talking about and organizing around diversifying the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (S.T.E.M.) pipeline is about to be put to the test immediately in cities like Miami. The tech train is leaving the station and while it is wonderful for those who will be on the board with lucrative economic opportunities, it may further marginalize those who are left back at the station of occupational segregation and economic stratification.

March 16, 2021

Asian American Pacific Islander

What Can We Do to Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes?

Pak Ho is a 75 year-old-Asian American who died last Thursday (March 11) after he was robbed on the streets of Oakland, Calif., the latest victim in the rising number of anti-Asian hate crimes in the U.S. No one is saying, “Say his name.”

March 15, 2021

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Stepping Away from the Brink: Rethinking Higher Education Models

Traditionally, America has viewed higher education as a means to achieve upward mobility and add value to the community. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, this avenue for prosperity was foundationally shaken, and many of the pervasive equity issues present in American higher education have become ever more prevalent.

March 12, 2021

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Reflections of a Woman in STEM

It is no secret that women remain underrepresented in STEM fields. Based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics, for the last 15 years, women have consistently earned more than half of the degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions.

March 11, 2021

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