By Gabby Santana
New York City, NY
In the 1980’s my grandmother emigrated from the Dominican Republic to the South Bronx, carrying her belongings, her wedding photographs, and jewelry passed down through several generations, all packed into three suitcases. She took any job she could, working as a waitress, a home attendant, and a babysitter. It wasn’t much, but she built a comfortable household. The South Bronx was a place where you could build a life for yourself.
By Jadyn Vizcaino-Bishock
Jersey City, NJ
To the academic world, Wikipedia is synonymous with unreliable information. But that’s not really the case.
The major problem people have with Wikipedia is that anyone can edit any page on the website. This leads to misconceptions that the site is full of lies and exaggerations. However, these faults are the natural result of democratizing information.
By Kimberly Gray
Martinsburg, WV
Waking up, I got dressed for school in a new outfit I had bought the day before, a black-and-white striped shirt with black distressed jean shorts. I felt cute.
At school, my friends complimented me on my outfit. It wasn’t everyday that I tried to dress nicely.
By Analaura Amezquita
Whittier, CA
A 17-year-old girl is browsing through social media when she sees a picture on a boy’s feed with a caption that reads “What a savage.” The image? A girl laying on her stomach facing away from the camera and a friend who says, “Rape her.”
By Williams Mejia
New Brunswick, NJ
The National Football League is an American obsession. In 2016, more than 111 million people watched Super Bowl 50. Television networks pay the league billions of dollars to broadcast games. Americans are nearly united in their love of football. But it comes at a cost.
By Alana Burke
Detroit, MI
Initially, the idea sounds absurd. Of course black people can’t appropriate African culture, because that’s their heritage. Appropriation is defined as the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture. Now the question becomes whether black Americans have the right to wear traditional African garb and immerse themselves in African cultural practices.
By the SJP Class of 2016
It’s like the beginning of any race: Before the starting gun goes off, you feel nervous, uncertain and a little bit overwhelmed about what lies ahead. That’s how many of us felt when we first arrived at Princeton University’s Summer Journalism Program, flying in from Massachusetts, Missouri, California and everywhere in between.
But over the course of 10 short days and 10 long nights, we hit our stride, all becoming part of a vibrant community of curious students and intellectuals who’ve overcome their circumstances to chase their dreams. Continue reading
By Mirna Rodriguez
Mission, TX
The football stadium is deafening. It is a mixture of passionate screaming and songs melting together. In the midst of all this, keeping the pep alive, are the cheerleaders. Clothed in sparkling costumes and tossing impeccable show hair, they are a single unit, acting as one: dancing, smiling, enduring. They are on top of the world, inspiring countless little girls. With all the lights and glamour, it’s hard to imagine that the beautiful costumes, the iconic pompoms and all the hard work often add up to a paycheck lower than the wages of someone working at McDonald’s. Continue reading
By Amy Kim
Valencia, CA
We’ve been studying the world through a lens of deceit.
To what extent should George Washington’s and Thomas Jefferson’s attitudes toward slavery diminish their accomplishments? Why didn’t the U.S. intervene adequately in the Rwandan genocide of 1994? Why is the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, in which women and children were brutally slaughtered by American soldiers, described in a single paragraph in many textbooks? Continue reading
By Luis Ortiz
Chicago, IL
When I moved to the United States from Mexico, one of the things that surprised me the most was the locker rooms. In 2011, I came to Chicago from my home in Mexico City for a vacation with my family. After a week, my father went home, and I was told by my mother that we would not be returning with him. I had to learn to adapt to the United States as an immigrant and learn a new reality that would not include my father and his family.
To add to my personal confusion, I discovered something important in the locker room: I was attracted to guys. My dad raised me Catholic, which led me to believe that I was destined to go to hell. When I told my family, they were not pleased: my mother, a fundamentalist non-denominational Christian, took it very badly. We became distant, and we had several arguments that made my life very bitter. During the summer before freshman year of high school, I contemplated the idea of suicide or running away, but I never attempted to do anything about it. Continue reading
The Princeton Summer Journal 