“When people struggle to spot hateful tropes, especially in seemingly good-faith contexts or popular media sources, they also fail to connect these narratives to broader implications such as the risk of genocide or state-sponsored violence,” writes Aria Wang PO ’27. “This inability or unwillingness to recognize far-right dogwhistles leaves people primed to accept repackaged rhetoric as fact.”
Opinions
OPINION: In Iran, bombs are democracy’s death sentence
“Because the state has enlisted itself to regulate morality and behavior, any deviation from the imposed social order is an inherent form of dissent,” writes Leili Kamali PO ’29. “As the war goes on, the biggest setback of all goes unrecognized – by bombing Iran, Trump is destroying and devaluing a decades-long movement of defiance that Iranians have been building all by themselves.”
OPINION: We must fight
“The Iranian regime’s success relies on Americans becoming too guilty to defend others, too comfortable to sacrifice and too confused to tell the difference between oppressor and oppressed,” writes Ryan Kossarian PO’27. “We must recover our will to confront the burdens ahead of us.”
OPINION: Gun rights are women’s rights
“Ultimately, guns provide women with a practical and immediate means of self-defense against physically stronger male attackers,” Grace Rutherford PO ’28 writes. “The defensive use of firearms can deter crime, interrupt attacks and reduce the likelihood of victimization.”
OPINION: With no end in sight, intervention is devastating
How can we claim to have succeeded in our military interventions across the globe when no metric for this success has been outlined by our government? Without a plan and definitely no end in sight, intervention will surely lead to devastation on the ground and the continuation of forever-conflicts.
OPINION: Feminism does not start and end in the West
“In our classes, women from the Global South get read and sympathized with; then, when the conversation begins, left behind,” Catarina Shi SC ’29 writes. “Without genuinely engaging with the lived experiences of women different from us, campus feminist discourse risks becoming something that celebrates empowerment in the abstract.”
OPINION: The war on trans rights is more than a “culture war”
“Trans people are facing abuse right now as a litmus test to what our society will accept,” Alex Benach PO ’28 writes. “The American right seeks to rid our society of pluralism, with trans people acting as one of the first victims of this horrific, white, Christian, cis-hetero, ethnonationalist crusade.”
OPINION: Pomona College has a racism problem
“For a school that has been around for over a century, Pomona’s reactionary protocol to overt racism on campus is laughable. What does accountability mean when the administrative response to racial slurs is simply an invitation for dialogue?” Kaitlyn Ulalisa PO ’27 and Mujeebat Gbolahan PO ‘27 wrote. “Why are Black students responsible for healing themselves of the audacious nature of another’s words?”
OPINION: Ozempic (and the death of body positivity) is screwing amputees
“GLP-1s are killing body positivity — but not in the way you think,” Grace Rutherford PO ’28 writes. “While these medications can offer real health benefits, they are flooding and redirecting every conversation away from body acceptance to body improvement. People are now putting mental health aside in exchange for fitting into an ideal.”
OPINION: Students for clean air: The fight against gas boilers
“We are calling on you to help us pass resolutions at the 5Cs which put pressure on our local government agencies to pass zero-emissions policies,” writes Leah Glasser PZ ’26. “Resolutions in favor of the proposed rules would show the SCAQMD board that the bodies which they govern are in support of zero-emissions regulations which could create the necessary pressure for these rules to pass.”