There’s a new Sweetgreen on York and Broadway, and Trump just suggested that maybe America would “like a dictator.” All the “Trump” headlines from The New York Times in my email inbox have been blurring together, piling up and then needing to be cleaned out again and again, like the trash in my dorm bathroom. The “dictator” comment only grabbed my attention in an Instagram post making fun of him. However, I’ve been dutifully following the Sweetgreen coverage on Fizz, so my peers and I have plenty to talk about at dining hall roundtable discussions. We convene these panels over the orientation leaders who misplaced their first-years, the wasp nest on Cross Campus, the sight of a gratuitous and interminable goodnight kiss in our residential college quad, the complicated politics of frats negotiating their leases.
But sometimes I glance beyond campus and remember—really stop and think and remember—that The New York Times emails are pretty important too. Tonight before I go to sleep, I’ll ask my roommate who is smart and engaged and caring and will probably save his home state of Mississippi from something one day, what he thinks about the new person in charge of the CDC. I promise that we will focus on this news. I really hope that we keep that promise. That we’ll wonder about the Trump administration’s decisions and the direction of the country and our university and our careers and let our stomachs churn. We could sit in this reality and be scared but also empowered. Or maybe we’ll discuss whether we’d be comfortable at a naked party.
— Harry Lowitz
