I didn’t plan on going to St. Petersburg during J-Term; I just happened to see a poster for it in Hatfield and realized it was a chance of a lifetime. I read “Petersburg” by Andrei Bely awhile ago, and it made me want to see St. Petersburg in person. I thought about making the trip myself, but I didn’t know how to plan it, and the visa is expensive.
The Sophian
We are living in a time when our civic duty is becoming more important. As American citizens, we each have the right to participate in our democracy. However, there are 5.78 million eligible voters who have Limited English Proficiency (LEP), showing that there is a need for increased access to voting materials in languages other than English. Under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, districts with 10,000 people (or 5% of the voting age population) who speak a single minority language are required to provide voting information in that language. This often leaves many people who live in less dense populations without accommodations. People who speak English as a second language live all over the U.S. and should have the means to read important information in their native language if they need, or choose, to. According to The Nation, more than 270,000 LEP voters live in 20 of the country’s most hotly contested congressional districts and have no voting accommodations. Expanding access to voting materials to non-native English speakers could swing 20 competitive congressional elections. The diversity of the American population should be reflected in our voting practices and policies if our nation wants to claim to be a true democracy.
Did you know? Comic by Flynn
As the spring semester starts and the temperature continues to drop, it’s tempting to never leave your dorm room. Take a break from studying and venture out to Smith’s Museum of Art, where several of this month’s exhibits will take your mind off of the freezing weather outside.
Until the fifth episode of its second season, “Grown-ish” didn’t seem to understand its target audience. A cursory glance at the show could suggest otherwise. After all, it seems to have all the fixings of a show that would appeal to a Gen Z audience. The cast is hot and diverse. The show’s Twitter savvily abstains from starting its tweets in upper case. Its Instagram features clips of its characters clapping back in a way that is just almost funny. And the premise of the show does seem like it could yield some relatable situations: it follows Zoey Johnson (Yara Shahidi) and her group of friends at the fictional university Cal-U. Each of the friends has one or two identities—Republican, Jewish, drug dealer, stoner—in which the writers have rooted their personalities, which are drawn just distinctly enough that they could be real people.
For the past month, I have been living and working in Madrid, Spain as an au pair. I live with a family of four in a small city about 30 minutes outside of downtown Madrid and serve as an English tutor and friend for the two 11- and 12-year-old girls.
In 1934, Julia Child graduated from Smith with a bachelor’s degree in history. Child went on to study at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and is today recognized for bringing French cuisine to American culture through her cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” in addition to her television series “The French Chef,” which debuted in 1963.
On Friday, Jan. 25, I went to Professor Carrie Baker’s office and introduced myself. There, I met Kathy Spillar, the executive editor of Ms., one of the country’s most prominent feminist magazines.
“Four Smith students have been named University Innovation Fellows by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design,” reads the e-digest.
The first article I ever wrote for The Sophian was titled: “Five things I learned in my first week at Smith.” While I admit it’s a bit ironic to publish an article giving advice about college life after only a week of experiencing it, in that moment in time, I felt as though I had grown up so much so quickly.