Earth Day 2021: Addressing Climate Change Nationally And Locally

Use Earth Day 2021 to consider how climate change is being addressed and how we can do more, from the Biden administration’s climate action plan to local education and outreach efforts. President Biden’s recently proposed 2 trillion dollar infrastructure plan that outlines how the administration hopes to use federal spending and large-scale investment in infrastructure […]

Board of Election Battle: And so it continues…

Triumph prevailed, or so it seemed, last semester when the Bard College Multipurpose Room (MPR) was granted an on-campus polling location. The then-newly and temporarily appointed polling site was announced days before the 2020 United States presidential election on November 3, 2020. Decades worth of research, persistence, and advocacy on behalf of student and disabled […]

Housing Justice: After a Year of Covid, Where Are We Now?

A recent statistic shows that New York State renters owe more than $1 billion in unpaid rent. It’s no secret that 2020 was a difficult year for monthly rent payments, with rising unemployment and medical costs associated with it. It’s also no secret that housing continues to be a dire issue in the United States […]

Next steps? Kingston, NY’s journey to police reform.

It can be easy to think of New York as a Utopia, with agricultural, industrial, and artistic opportunities liveing side by side. But it’s not. Issues of racially motivated police brutality have deeply impacted New York. However, like most politicians, Governor Andrew Cuomo seemed to only realize this last year when he issued Executive Order […]

Kingston’s Fourth Annual Black History Month

February marked the beginning of this year’s Black History Month, a more important one for this country than ever before. The month’s short time span, and the Hudson Valley’s close calls with increasing COVID-19 cases, have not stopped Kingston, New York. And so, the third annual Black History Month Kingston (BHMK) festivities safely kicked off […]

How To Expect The Unexpected: Jacob Testa’s First Year On The Red Hook Town Board

“Coming into office and then 2 months later we hit a recession and a pandemic, it’s like, the perfect time, right?” Like everyone else in the world, Jacob Testa’s 2020 did not go as planned. After being elected to the Red Hook Town Board in November 2019, Testa began to prepare for his first experience […]

Biden’s Cabinet Nominees: Uniting or Dividing?

President Elect Joe Biden has stated that one of his major goals as president is to reunite our divided nation. However, our citizens are waking up to the fact that the root of our country’s problems run deeper than who is president. Our country is facing a division that reveals the core differences between our […]

Housing Inequality in the Time of Covid

The impact of Covid on the United States has been incredibly devastating. Its effects have not only brought new problems to the surface, but they also have increased existing issues in exponential proportions. One of these existing issues is that of Housing Inequality, which has disproportionately impacted many Americans since the early 1900s. Some of […]

Campus Silence is Violence: BIPOC Student Activism in Times of Unrest

We’ve just witnessed the election of America’s first female, Black and Asian American Vice President. Yet, this country finds itself arguably the most divided it has been in decades. Following the national summer of racial uprisings that sprung up in reaction to George Floyd’s unlawful murder, we as a nation (and as a campus community) […]

The Court is in Session: What the Future of the Supreme Court Looks Like With Amy Coney Barrett

With the recent election, Americans’ attention has been focused on the electoral college (and its legitimacy) and swing states (and the votes that make them up). And while this election is incredibly important, it is equally important not to fall into the cycle of forgetting about the news of yesterday in order to focus on […]

How Dutchess County Enables Student Voter Suppression and Ableism

The Church of St. John the Evangelist lies in Red Hook, New York, only a four minute car ride from the Bard College Annandale campus. It sits atop a small hill at the end of a dark, winding and unlit path named River Road. This was the College’s assigned polling station. Comprising 700 square feet, […]

Why is everyone talking about SCOTUS?

SCOTUS has become the biggest buzzword of the past two weeks, but prior to September 23rd, very few of us had ever read let alone discussed the abbreviation. Established in 1790, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) was created to act as the legal arm of the federal government, and has come to […]

Op Ed: Why Food is a Radical Force

We’re living in a time with precious little joy. Millions have lost their jobs, forcing them to rely on unattainable and unsustainable government benefits; students have been sent home from school, turning parents into teachers or students into workers as a result; everyone has been cut off from friends and family, creating an epidemic of […]

Police Reform within Dutchess County

The current condition of the United States has been nothing short of divided since the State of Emergency was announced in March of 2020. With the politicization of mask-wearing and quarantine, and the ever increasing national coronavirus cases, the presidential election has only succeeded in further dividing the country. Rampant chaos of the pandemic and […]