Aanum Khan ’30

Staff Writer

Stepping off the bus to Brimfield, Massachusetts on a Sunday was not easy for me. With about 15 of my peers, I ventured into rural New England on an Interdisciplinary Science Program (ISP) field trip, a bit annoyed and sleep-deprived. Why were we one of the only classes to meet on a Sunday? Why must we go to a farm, of all places? How was that even related to our Gateway program on science and society? What even was this filler activity nonsense? 

Somewhere between the bus ride spent gazing at the picturesque landscape and the small moments watching a classmate play with chickens, my frustration gave way to joy. A Sunday previously regarded as “wasted” became a Sunday of storytelling and scientific inspiration. All this from a short weekend trip spent walking, eating baked potatoes and laughing with my friends. 

At Trinity, it is easy to become a creature of habit—and that’s a good thing. It’s good for your academic world to be manageable. It’s good to have a predictable, enjoyable schedule. As a first-year, I strived to create a routine, one that fostered good grades and quality time with friends. 

Thus far it has looked something like this: class, food, clubs, hangout, sleep (sleep has become a frequently compromised part of this routine, though, that’s another opinion article). Such a routine was infinitely reproducible and infinitely easy. Stick to the routine, and one will thrive. It becomes second nature. Robotic, even. 

But what happens when you break a routine? What happens when a Sunday of unorthodox learning reignites motivation, forms deeper connections with your classmates and serves as an opportunity to appreciate the wonderful world waiting for us after Trinity? Is such an exploration—even if it doesn’t seem perfectly related—a waste of time? 

I say it absolutely is not. Trinity College is a liberal arts institution, which means that we thrive when asking the unorthodox questions and nurturing curiosity in any way possible. That curiosity does not only exist in a classroom. That world of learning is not confined only to PowerPoints. Field trips disrupt the monotony of college life and force us out of our comfort zones. They force us to connect with our peers—one of the main perks of going to a small liberal arts institution—and learn from each other’s diverse experiences. Some of us had never seen the leaves change in autumn, and some of us would have never learnt such facts about our peers. Leaving campus and entering a hands-on world fosters student interpersonal growth along with intellectual curiosity. 

From Professor Alison Draper, my Gateway professor, I learned that Trinity Days used to be Trinity Week, where students went on immersive field trips for their classes, allowing for students to connect with material beyond the textbook. These moments served as an opportunity not to leave Trinity’s community but to better connect with it. In its current iteration, Trinity Days serve as an escape from campus. Our peers venture off to big cities and beach towns, napping well past the AM hours. While Trinity Days do serve as an opportunity to recharge, they also splinter our community in those times. Dorms are emptier. Dining hall booths are finally available. The work of re-motivation occurs off-campus, away from peers, with respite predicated on being away from your on-campus support systems. 

To fuse the fun of no sit-down lecture-style classes with the intellectual curiosity of a liberal arts education, we must go all-in on co-curricular activities. Bringing back Trinity Week would serve as an opportunity to reconnect with our peers, recommit ourselves to intellectualism and create new memories. Trinity Week would not be another vacation but an opportunity to break habits that stifle our passions. Broadening the scope of learning to be beyond the classroom during Trinity Week does not sacrifice academics or restfulness. It means making room for the unexpected. After all, the best memories are the ones you would have never seen coming.

Leon Hu ‘29

Executive Opinion Editor

On Sept. 21, 2026, the Cornell Daily Sun released an editorial demanding that Cornell take accountability following horribly inadequate punishments for seven students accused of sexual violence on an unnamed Jane Doe. The ensuing media coverage capitulated Cornell into the spotlight, triggering extensive media coverage and a reinvestigation of the case from New York’s State Attorney General, Letitia James, bringing to light a crime that occurred almost two years ago.

Had the Daily Sun not written their editorial, the case would likely have remained untouched. Clearly, Cornell was not willing to properly engage with the matter — not until the Daily Sun’s editorial forced the issue out into the open, that is. The work of student journalists brought the case back into the open and, hopefully, closer towards the justice that it truly deserves. 

None of this would have happened if the editorial board chose to remain silent. Nothing would have happened if they didn’t use their voice. And the Daily Sun are not the only people with platforms to raise awareness about the issues that matter. At Trinity, we, too, have a voice. You, too, have a voice. 

It should come as no surprise that Trinity, like the rest of American higher education, has its own slew of issues. In November of 2025, our administration had such an absurdly adverse reaction to pro-Palestinian messages chalked in classrooms that it drew national attention to Trinity’s policy on political demonstrations, resulting in Trinity falling tremendously in national free-speech rankings. In October of 2025, dining hall employees went on strike after Chartwells announced that it would be cutting their hours. More recently, our official policy on AI has come under fire by our faculty body for its failure to recognize the pitfalls and dangers of unregulated AI usage on critical thought. 

As students, we are not mere spectators to the social, political and educational unfoldings of campus. We are — or should be — active agents in the process that recognize the potential harm or benefit of these events and speak our opinions on events as they happen. I, as just one of over 2,000 undergraduates at this college, have written about every topic that I mentioned above: Trinity’s protest culture, the role of Chartwells in dining and our administration’s concerning stance on AI. 

I do not want to be the only one who voices their concerns about the happenings of Trinity; thankfully, I am not alone. In this year alone, four non-staff writers and three other members of the editorial board have contributed to our Opinion section, which I am immensely grateful for. But we can do better. There are more than seven other people on campus who have feelings about what is happening to us at Trinity and out in the larger world. 

Students — recognize that change is possible. As stubborn as Trinity may be, it is still willing to change. Although flawed, Trinity did change its protest policy after the backlash following its response to chalking protests. The Student Government Association is more than willing to listen to what other students have to say. Despite our differences, our administration — including President Lugo — reads the Tripod. They may not always like what we have to say, but they read it. 

In fact, students, faculty and staff alike frequent our paper. Some of my most cherished memories of being part of the Tripod have been when professors, fellow students and dining hall staff have stopped me and expressed support for a piece that I wrote the previous week. It is immensely rewarding to know that you, a single student, have a voice that other people are willing to give time to and hear. 

If you are reading this, recognize that you are the audience that you could reach through writing. Next issue, it could be your opinion that other people could read, argue with, ponder, reconsider, dismiss or act upon. I want to hear what you have to say. The Tripod wants to hear what you have to say. Trinity wants to hear what you have to say. 

Everybody has an opinion on what happens around us. If you disagree with that prior statement, that, too, is an opinion. We have too little time on campus, too many issues in our divided world and too many buried Jane Does for our voices to go unheard. Silence is not a luxury that we can forever afford. So, please — speak. Write. Make yourself and your feelings heard as loud as possible. I promise you that there are people who care, and action can be sparked from your voice.

If you want to get involved with the Tripod, check out the “Write for the Tripod” section of our website. As always, my email (leon.hu@trincoll.edu) is open to any opinions you may have.

Ricardo Castanon ’30

Contributing Writer

Trinity’s stance on AI was paraded throughout the “AI Essentials for Success” orientation as neutral, but really, it was AI-appeasing. I arrived on campus just weeks ago and was greeted on-stage by an older stranger who fought chuckles to say that my generation’s grandparents would fall victim to scam calls with an AI-generated copy of our voices crying about a horrible accident. 

It was impossible to take this warning seriously as the presenter used AI voiceover software to put his words in the mouth of a ram. In the same presentation, there were attempts to research simple inquiries with an AI model described as advanced. They were embarrassing failures, though, as the AI took minutes to give inaccurate and unhelpful answers that required rounds of refining. Imagine that – minutes of awkward silence and chuckles staring at an “advanced” AI perform the equivalent of a Google search. 

The AI Essentials orientation, which took place on Sept. 6, made me realize the appalling lack of significance and seriousness given to this topic. The future of the world may be on the younger generation’s shoulders, but it is the responsibility of institutions and influential people to mold that world. I expected to arrive at a school that would at least handle that weight with seriousness. My worst-case scenario was an embrace of AI, but even then, I would prefer a serious discussion without the burned-in sight of a tortured AI ram. The consequences of the integration of AI into all aspects of daily life were not properly reflected in the orientation’s tone.

An alternative, less ridiculous orientation would exclude image generation akin to brainrot. There’d be no live demonstration of the same voice cloners that scammers use, and preferably, no laughing. I won’t pretend to be an expert on AI or an experienced presenter, but as a part of the audience, I know that the presentation I viewed was minimizing and ineffective. I wasn’t alone in this either. Everyone simultaneously looked around at each other, acknowledging and quietly laughing at the shameful display in front of them. (I was not quiet when the AI ram appeared on-screen.) Rows of students left at a noticeably higher rate than the other orientation presentations, which made complete sense to me.

Simply covering a serious topic is not enough to say it was handled with care. A safety presentation’s graveness, especially in relation to the audience, must be reflected within the context of the entire discussion. I question why this was not the presenter’s first instinct. To give an AI ram a sweater made of its own fur, then discuss a significant risk to our vulnerable family, was a silly train-wreck that I couldn’t keep my eyes off of, and a blatant attempt to relate to us by associating the presentation with AI-generated memes and stickers. After the second-hand embarrassment, I felt patronized, like Trinity assumed that we could only understand the significance of AI, be it positive or negative, through a direct conflation with social media. Regardless of what Trinity perceives to be the common stance on AI, it needs to understand that, although we often use irony to deal with hard circumstances and change, it is not justifiable for an institution or representative to use that irony. The satire is lost because institutions and their decisions are the reason for our concern. We and our families are affected, and when I worry for my grandparents who barely understand the technology before AI and are lost anew, there shouldn’t be an AI ram intimidating me.

Kashmala Khan ’29

Managing Editor

I can watch a building collapse in Gaza before my morning class. I can encounter footage of Russian drones over Ukraine while waiting for coffee. Somewhere between a friend’s Instagram story and a TikTok trend, I can witness a war, form an opinion about it and move on. There is something profoundly unsettling about that last part.

We have become a generation of witnesses without necessarily becoming a generation of informed observers. War has never been more visually accessible, yet I wonder whether this unprecedented proximity has produced a corresponding depth of political understanding. We possess an almost instantaneous awareness of destruction, but it is crucial to understand that awareness is not knowledge. And witnessing, I would argue, is not an ethically neutral act either.

The Tripod sat with Political Science Professor Sidra Hamidi to dissect this particular topic. In conversation, I was struck by how historically peculiar our relationship with war has become.

Hamidi recalled the Vietnam War, when televised images helped reshape American public opinion and the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, when footage of American soldiers’ bodies being dragged through Somali streets intensified domestic opposition to military involvement.

The phenomenon of mediated warfare, then, is hardly new. What is new is its architecture.

Television operated largely through centralized editorial authority. However, social media fragments that authority among journalists, governments, civilians, political organizations, influencers and algorithms. The distinction is not merely technological; it is epistemological. It changes how knowledge about war is produced, circulated, authenticated and contested.

Hamidi described social media as more of a conversation than the relatively one-directional transmission of televised news. But I wonder whether we have confused the proliferation of voices with the democratization of knowledge. After all, who gets heard in this conversation? Consider Gaza. Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and Israel’s subsequent military campaign, social media became a battleground not only over competing political claims but over the historical starting point of the conflict itself. As Hamidi observed, much of the debate concerned where one should “start the clock.”

That question is deceptively political. Begin on Oct. 7 and one historical narrative emerges. Begin with the 1967 occupation, the 1948 Nakba, or earlier colonial arrangements and the interpretive framework changes. None of these starting points makes subsequent events irrelevant. Rather, the selection of a beginning establishes what audiences are invited to regard as cause, consequence or justification.

This is framing theory operating in real time. The struggle is not simply over what happened, but over which historical sequence makes what happened intelligible. And a 30-second video rarely accommodates the burden of historical explanation. Yet, misinformation presents an even more disturbing epistemic problem.

During the June 2025 Israel-Iran conflict, BBC Verify documented fabricated military footage, including three false videos collectively viewed more than 100 million times. The implications extend beyond the immediate circulation of falsehoods.

Hamidi identified a danger that I find considerably more frightening than deception itself: people may eventually “not believe anything at all.”

This is the paradox of contemporary information warfare. When authentic evidence and synthetic media circulate through identical interfaces, skepticism can metastasize into generalized distrust. Scholars call one manifestation of this the liar’s dividend: the possibility of fabrication becomes grounds for dismissing genuine evidence.

What concerns me is how easily intellectual skepticism becomes political abdication. We congratulate ourselves for questioning everything, when sometimes we are simply refusing the responsibility of arriving at a judgment.

But there is another, equally consequential form of distortion: selective visibility.

Sudan’s civil war has generated mass displacement, hunger and widespread civilian suffering. Yet its presence in Western digital discourse has often appeared disproportionately limited relative to the scale of its humanitarian catastrophe.

Hamidi suggested that diaspora mobilization, organizational infrastructure and sustained political advocacy help explain why some conflicts retain public attention while others recede. She also cautioned against assuming that visibility is exclusively engineered by powerful institutions.

I agree with that distinction. Algorithms do not operate in a political vacuum, nor do audiences exercise entirely autonomous choices. What emerges is an attention economy in which geopolitical interests, collective identities, platform incentives and institutional influence interact. In other words, the visibility of suffering is itself a political outcome.

Hamidi offered a revealing historical example: Kony 2012. The viral campaign transformed Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony into a globally recognizable name. Yet when she recently mentioned him in class, her students did not recognize him.

I find this more revealing than the campaign’s original virality. What does it mean for an atrocity to become momentarily ubiquitous and subsequently disappear from collective memory? We mistake the intensity of attention for its durability.

And perhaps this is where Trinity students, myself included, should feel particularly implicated. Our classrooms encourage historical contextualization, methodological skepticism and critical engagement with power. Our phones, meanwhile, deliver compressed fragments of geopolitical reality within an infrastructure optimized for attention. We are expected to reconcile these incompatible modes of knowing almost instinctively.

I am not arguing that digital witnessing is meaningless. Civilian footage can challenge state narratives, document abuses and mobilize international solidarity. Nor do I believe political engagement must begin with expertise.

But I reject the assumption that exposure automatically constitutes understanding, or that reposting necessarily fulfills the responsibilities created by witnessing.

To witness war should mean more than possessing visual evidence that suffering occurred. It should require an effort to understand the structures producing that suffering, the interests shaping its representation and the political consequences of our own interpretations.

We have unprecedented access to the world’s violence, but access is not accountability. And the ability to look away does not absolve us of what we have seen. The question is no longer whether war can reach us. It is what we owe the world once it does.

In a post-Trinity days haze of midterms and copyediting, I find myself reflecting on a weekly chore that often goes overlooked: the letter from the editor (LFE) program contained on Page 2 of the Tripod. Each week, I (or another member of our editorial board) pens a letter to the student body for Page 2 of our publication. 

This letter usually comments on current events, campus happenings and the contents of the relevant issue. More often than not, I begin writing this letter when I arrive in the newsroom office at 3 p.m. on Mondays. I (would like to) think this belatedness is not an act of procrastination, nor an abuse of editorial power, but rather an exercise in immediacy — a commitment to the present tense and a chance to write from the particular moment in which the Tripod comes together. There is, after all, something valuable about a letter written at the tail end of a week’s worth of reporting, editing, debating and (not so) occasionally despairing over commas (sorry, Clayton). 

I understand that these letters do not serve an apparent purpose to those who tune in to just the crossword or the occasional browser of the features section. LFEs are not news — they are not immediately pressing to the daily lives of our student body. It is a quasi-opinion that isn’t on the opinion page, a direct address with no fixed call for action. Most people who read this page are professors or angry alums out for syntactic blood. 

However, even for those averse to reading longer blocks of text by a student editor, Page 2 is perhaps the most important page of our publication, and the most notoriously skipped. Page 2 does have more than LFEs. It also houses letters to the editor, our masthead and our editorial and print policy, for those keen on teensy print. 

Letters to the editor (LTEs) serve a different but equally necessary purpose to a letter from the editor: they give readers a voice to speak back to the student body. The Tripod is not and should not be a one-way distribution of information. To bastardize the words of Abraham Lincoln, it is of the students, by the students and for the students of Trinity College. The newspaper is an opportunity for an exchange of dialogue among the campus community and I highly encourage it to be utilized as such. 

This function is particularly important at Trinity, where students bring different experiences, political beliefs, academic interests and understandings of campus life. Disagreement is inevitable, but it can also be productive. This is the very act of critical thinking and free speech that higher education was founded upon. To shirk this opportunity is not only a personal loss, but a loss for all of Trinity — it is a missed chance to challenge our own assumptions and engage with our campus on an expressive and analytical level. 

The masthead is perhaps the best expression of this sentiment. A growing masthead is an indication of students taking advantage of this exact opportunity of expression and dialogue from within our publication system. This week, I am proud to announce four new staff writers (and two on the way): Aanum Khan ’30, Carlos Fonseca ’30, Julianna Williams ’30 and Cam Guendner ’30. Check them out to my left! 

I am especially proud of the class of 2030, who have been contributing massively to the Tripod this semester. By this time my freshman year I had only published one article, a half-baked opinion on “BoJack Horseman” riddled with logical errors and heavily dramatized prose. The new writers continue to impress me and the rest of the editorial board with their curiosity, tenacity and willingness to learn. If these students are any indication of the future of expression on this campus, I can say confidently that Trinity — and the Tripod — are in good hands. 

The masthead also matters greatly when we talk about accountability. I hold a public and hard stance on anonymity in the publication, and I view the masthead as a place for our editors and staff to take responsibility for what is in these pages. As each of these new names is added to the masthead, these writers shift from purely independent entities to individuals that support a collective enterprise that shapes the identity, credibility and values of the Tripod. 

This responsibility extends to the editorial and print policy, which I wrote about in January of 2026 as essential to forming an educated opinion on the publication. If you look in the bottom left of this page, you will see our policy for letters, retractions and acknowledging mistakes. It is a constant, permanent feature of the publication, a resource for anyone who wishes to submit a letter, challenge a published claim or understand how we respond when we get something wrong. More fundamentally, its presence makes a statement about the relationship we wish to maintain with our readers: the Tripod does not ask to be trusted blindly, but offers readers the means to understand and scrutinize its practices. 

Student newspapers operate in a unique environment: our staff members are both journalists and members of the community they cover. They attend the same classes, participate in campus life and experience many of the same institutional decisions as their readers. This proximity can provide valuable insight, but it also requires careful reflection about fairness, independence and responsibility. Letters from the editor offer an opportunity to make that reflection visible, to provide a concrete assertion of the values guiding the publication.

This slightly meta title (‘On Page Two’ … on Page 2) is, in essence, an expression of Page 2’s unique and particular role in the Tripod: a space within the newspaper devoted to reflecting on the newspaper itself. 

If I had a request for our student body, faculty, staff and alumni, it would be to read Page 2 in its entirety (or more realistically, a cursory skim). To us at the Tripod, maintaining a meaningful Page 2 is an investment in the campus community. Students should be able to identify who is producing their news, contribute their own perspectives and understand the editorial principles shaping the publication. Ultimately, a college newspaper is strongest when its readers see themselves not merely as consumers of information but as participants in an ongoing conversation. Please, contribute to this conversation. 

In peace, 

TBC

Leon Hu ’29

Exec. Opinion Editor

In a statement published Sept. 22, Stanford admitted that it used AI to alter the race and appearance of students in a promotional image on campus. A Hispanic student was swapped out for a Black student, and the other two students in the original image — an Asian and a white student — were altered to be more ‘conventionally attractive’ (meaning skinnier). Despite being an ethical nightmare that validates the replacement of real people with artificial hallucinations, this self-induced crisis remains isolated to a single incident at a school 3000 miles away.

Yet every day since the beginning of the semester, Mather has proudly displayed “Welcome Back Bantams” images featuring an AI-generated image featuring a fake scene with fake students on a fake campus. The resulting image looks utterly foreign our campus, and, if anything, the backdrop looks closer to being taken at Princeton than in Hartford. Meanwhile, Trinity’s admissions staff recently ran a series of social media posts featuring AI-generated images of themselves and campus, flaunting overloaded, generic graphics and artificial renditions of the Chapel. And everywhere across campus, AI-formatted or generated posters can be found advertising clubs and college events.

Why are we so unwilling to promote Trinity with Trinity itself?

Trinity, like many institutions of higher education, has found itself in an identity crisis. Over the past few years, we have gradually shifted away from the liberal arts towards a stronger focus on business and professional development. Yet we still tote “well-rounded academics” (a quote pulled from the front page of Trinity’s website) as one of our biggest strengths while the Elting Center will be finished, roughly a decade after our college’s last new academic addition to campus. Our stance on AI is, in the eyes of many, tenuous, and we seem uncertain about how much to lean into technologies that threaten the traditional view of college as a mere imparter of information. 

Additionally, we — like many other schools — overemphasize the importance of national rankings, boasting about our newest U.S. News and World Report ranking. When the Linkedin college rankings came out, we were also quick to promote it. But we are not at the top of any rankings list, and Trinity seems to be aware of it. Thus, when touting the success of recently-graduated classes or student research milestones on campus, it is always contextualized with schools that are at the top: Yale, Columbia, Hopkins, Brown — the list goes on. It is also no secret that while many of our NESCAC peers consistently rank at the top for liberal arts colleges in the country, we have never even gotten close. Consequently, when our administration consistently relies on our rankings for marketing, it always contains the implicit recognition that we are simply ‘not as good’ as our peers. 

However, in many regards, we are as good — or better — than our higher-ranked peers. Multiple alumni, including one in this year, have won Pulitzers. Our STEM faculty have been cited thousands of times in peer-reviewed articles and regularly present at international conferences. We host elite music competitions, film festivals, and a historic international hip-hop festival. We have so much that makes us truly unique and defines the quality of our institution, yet instead, our administration chooses to rely on generic rankings, flashy but questionable buildings and AI-generated images of a campus that does not exist.

So, like much of academia, we remain stuck in an identity crisis. American colleges are threatened by a demographic cliff, and AI makes it impossible for universities to survive if the only thing they do is provide knowledge instead of developing crucial skills. Consequently, as parents increasingly question the investment of a college education, schools rely on generic marketing to make the choice to enroll more appealing. Having a high U.S. News and World Report ranking makes a price tag over $90,000 more justifiable. And using AI for promotional material makes it clear that our college is for, not against, the use of AI — the thing that pragmatists insist is necessary for higher education’s survival.

None of this solves the crisis. In the coming decades, elite schools will continue to become more selective, and more and more small institutions will be phased out. Many teens will choose to use AI instead of attending college, and, unfortunately, Trinity is currently poised to remain largely the same. But by committing further to the mission that made us who we are — a commitment to the liberal arts and sciences on a vibrant, human campus with boundless creativity — we can survive and even thrive. There is so much that makes Trinity unique. None of that, however, is found in a fake image generated of a generic college campus. Nor is it found in the prestige of other elite schools. What makes Trinity great will always be the real people and places that sit on this campus atop a hill.

Vasudha Kaushik ’30

Contributing Writer

With 13 organizations, more than 300 members and roughly a fifth of the student body involved, Greek life is not a peripheral feature of Trinity—it’s one of the institutions through which campus social life organises itself. 

Still, there’s a clear difference between a community and a culture of recognizability. 

Foucault argued that power doesn’t mainly work through orders or obvious punishment. It works via normalisation. Institutions teach people which behaviors, bodies and ways of moving through the world appear ordinarily. Eventually, people learn to monitor themselves and each other, without anyone needing to state the rules out loud. Greek life is extraordinarily fluent in this language. 

It necessitates no announcement that some students look more natural in fraternity/sorority houses than others. Nobody has to write down the correct combination of clothes, party etiquette, mannerisms, financial ease, pre-existing connections and social confidence absorbed. The student who already understands them appears effortlessly comfortable; the student who doesn’t is left doing the far more exhausting work of translating themself in real time. Power is most efficient when dressed up as common sense. 

That is why, while technically true, “anyone can rush” utterly misses the point. A voluntary system isn’t automatically going to be a neutral one and to assume so reeks of naïvety. For some students, Greek life reads as an immediate possibility: a house furnished with the kind of social life they recognize. For others, it can resemble a party held in a dialect they understand perfectly well, but aren’t required to speak. 

When a student of color chooses not to rush, their absence is framed as personal preference. Perhaps Greek life just isn’t for them. But preferences are formed inside social worlds. Foucault’s point makes us ask how a system teaches people what is normal before they ever make that choice. If students repeatedly find an institution culturally narrow, socially opaque or historically uncomfortable, opting out is not proof that it is neutral. It may be proof that the institution has made belonging legible to some people more readily than others. 

The recent case at Cornell makes clear why this analysis cannot remain limited to recruitment or social awkwardness. A former Cornell student filed a lawsuit alleging that she was drugged and gang-raped by seven students at Chi Phi fraternity house in 2024. The allegations are now subject of a renewed investigation by prosecutors; Cornell is facing increased scrutiny of their poor handling of the matter, while Chi Phi’s chapter remains barred from campus. While the claims currently remain allegations, it has brought attention to similar allegations within Trinity. Via this year’s Clergy report, Trinity had 13 reported cases of rape in 2025. Sexual violence is not a social commodity. To describe it that way would be grotesque. But the culture around sexual access can be treated as one. In certain social economies, women’s desirability, availability and proximity become a form of peer currency. The ability to recount an encounter, to be believed by one’s own friends, to turn another person into an anecdote of masculine prestige– this becomes status. 

This is the part of Greek life culture that resists comforting stories of isolated bad actors. A fraternity house can be full of likable people that still function inside a system that rewards particular performances of masculinity: conquest, loyalty to the group, discretion when it protects said group and a casualness about women that would sound uglier if stated directly. Foucault would recognize the mechanism. No one person has to issue an instruction. The norm does the work. People enforce it through jokes, silences, stories and the quiet decision to protect the social world they value over the people whom it harms. 

That does not mean every member is guilty of violence, nor does it make friendship itself suspicious. It means institutions deserve analysis beyond their own publicity. A chapter can raise money for charity and still preserve exclusionary social codes. It can offer authentic care to members, remaining indifferent to the students who feel no reason to enter. It can host a meaningful philanthropy event yet fail to interrogate the gendered status economy that makes women vulnerable in the first place. Greek life’s power lies partly in its ability to make this incidental. The house becomes just a house, and the party…just a party. The absence of certain students, a preference. The aftermath of harm becomes tragedy detached from the culture surrounding it. 

And yet — the house is never just a house. It is more of an archive of access, history, loyalty and, most of all, silence. Trinity’s question cannot be whether Greek life contains “good” people; of course it does. The increasingly difficult question is whether individual goodness is enough when the institution still decides, almost invisibly, who gets to feel ordinary once they walk through the door.

Kashmala Khan ’29

Managing Editor

I am tired of watching colleges congratulate themselves for teaching students how to prevent sexual violence while rarely asking the harder question: what happens when prevention fails?

Trinity’s latest Annual Security and Fire Safety Report records 3 reported rapes on campus in 2023, 2 in 2024 and 12 in 2025. 

It is relevant to note that number does not, by itself, prove sexual assault suddenly became six times more common. Clery statistics measure reported crimes and changes in reporting can change the numbers. But twelve reports in a single year should make a college stop congratulating itself and ask what in the world is going on.

And I know that we have resources. Yes. We do. We have Title IX. We have Green Dot. We have bystander intervention. We have consent education, prevention campaigns, reporting procedures, support services and policies designed to tell students exactly what to do when something goes wrong. I am not arguing against any of that. I am asking why we so often mistake having something for doing something. A resource is not automatically accessible because it exists. A policy is not automatically meaningful because it is written. A training is not automatically effective because everyone sat through it. Prevention cannot end with teaching students the three D’s (direct, distract and delegate).

You cannot PowerPoint your way out of a culture problem.

At some point, awareness has to become accountability. That means asking what happens after someone crosses the line. Does the person who commits sexual violence actually have something to lose? Are organizations held responsible when their culture enables harm? Are sanctions consistent? Are students willing to report when the accused is their friend, their teammate, their fraternity brother or someone with social power? These are questions administrators must actively ask themselves. 

And there is another kind of power I am willing to talk about: money.

Trinity is not economically homogeneous. Roughly 40 percent of its undergraduates receive need-based institutional aid, while the College’s published cost of attendance for 2025-26 was more than $95,000. Students can sit in the same classroom, belong to the same organization and be subject to the same disciplinary code while having radically different capacities to absorb the consequences of being held accountable. That does not mean wealthy students are more likely to commit sexual violence. We should not pretend we have evidence for that. It means something more uncomfortable: consequences do not necessarily carry the same weight for everyone.

For one student, suspension could mean losing an education their family has sacrificed everything to afford. For another, it may feel survivable because there are financial resources, lawyers, connections or another institution to fall back on. That difference matters when we talk about deterrence. A consequence is only a deterrent if it actually feels consequential.

And this is where Greek life deserves more than another mandatory slideshow. The recent Cornell case makes that impossible to ignore. A civil lawsuit alleging that a student was drugged and raped by members of the Chi Phi fraternity has triggered renewed scrutiny of Cornell’s handling of the case and the broader role of Greek organizations. Cornell says it investigated, expelled some students and banned Chi Phi from campus; critics have questioned the transparency and adequacy of the response. We should be careful with what that case proves. It does not prove that every fraternity is dangerous. It does not prove that Greek organizations cause sexual assault. And it certainly does not prove that Trinity’s reported rapes were fraternity-related. But research does give us reason to examine Greek environments seriously: recent research continues to identify Greek affiliation as a risk factor for sexual assault among college women, while research on prevention in Greek organizations notes that these students may require approaches specifically tailored to their environments.

So, ask the uncomfortable questions. What happens when an allegation involves someone with social capital? What happens when the accused belongs to an organization with institutional history, alumni relationships and money behind it? What does a fraternity actually stand to lose? And does the disciplinary process carry enough weight that a student who thinks their parents will handle it is forced to reconsider? Because accountability cannot depend on how much protection someone has outside the institution.

We have become very good at the language of safety at Trinity. We know how to say consent. We know how to say bystander. We know how to say survivor. We know where the Title IX office is. Now I want to know whether we know how to hold someone accountable. I say keep the trainings. Keep the resources. Keep teaching consent. Keep giving students ways to intervene. But stop measuring progress by how many programs we can list. Measure it by what those programs actually change.

Hussain Ahmad ’30

Contributing Writer

On campus, bulletin boards are constantly covered with flyers for parties, meetings and, sometimes, protests. What people don’t see is the permission needed for them. Under the new Time, Place, and Manner Policy, students no longer need approval to protest. However, an organization still needs permission to put up a poster advertising one — the rules have only been loosened for the protest itself.

The rulebook was never the College’s biggest problem. In the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) 2027 College Free Speech Rankings, Trinity fell 42 places to 223 out of 261, with a grade of F. The drop came from what students told FIRE.

Only 24% of the student body said that the administration protects free speech. Only 15% said the administration was likely to defend speakers’ rights during controversy. On administrative support, Trinity scored lowest in the NESCAC.

Arriving this fall, I needed more context, so I had to read my way into it. Last November, messages supporting Palestine appeared on classroom chalkboards. The messages upset some students, and President Lugo responded via email, claiming that the student handbook and employment policies “clearly prohibit political activism within academic settings.”

FIRE looked and couldn’t find that rule. According to the 2025-2026 handbook, protests “cannot disrupt or obstruct the College’s regular and/or essential operations.” While what President Lugo’s message said was a content ban, the handbook gave one on disruption.

FIRE wrote to the College in December about this. “Trinity did not respond to FIRE’s letter,” Logan Dougherty, FIRE’s senior researcher, told the Tripod. They did count the incident against Trinity, but under their methodology, that one-point penalty “had fully expired by this year’s rankings,” he said.

The protest policy at the time promised to apply “regardless of viewpoint or content.” Laura Belt, FIRE’s director of policy reform, told me that the policy’s demand that all assembly be approved in advance “is not reasonable.” So which was it: a content-neutral policy, or a ban on political activism?

To its credit, Trinity’s new policy swaps approval for advance notice, removes the blanket mask ban and gives students a hearing officer’s review and an appeal. Belt called the end of mandatory notice “a huge improvement”, and the mask change “a great improvement as well.” (Yes, an op-ed about free speech can admit the administration did something right.)

Yet, two problems remain. Firstly, the FIRE survey took place between January and June 2026, before the new policy took effect. Secondly, the poster rule: the new policy says, “Expressing oneself is never an excuse for violating College policies.” Among the policies are the Poster and Banner Regulations. FIRE accounted for Trinity’s posting rules in its rating, with Belt warning that approval “could potentially burden protest publicity even when the protest itself needs no approval.” On top of that, she flagged that Trinity’s event rules never define “social event,” which could leave possibilities for gray areas and guessing about whether prior approval is needed.

Compare this to Wesleyan. When pro-Palestine students set up demonstrations in 2024, President Michael Roth disagreed, yet defended their right to protest anyway. They have the same yellow-light policy rating, no Chicago Statement and no institutional neutrality; still, they climbed to 120th in the ranking, with 48% of the student body saying the administration protects free speech.

We don’t have to guess what fixing the policies would do. FIRE calculates that a green-light policy rating would move Trinity from 223rd to 59th. But getting there means fixing the rules that were the reason for a yellow light: posters that need approval, definitions in the bias-reporting system and harassment policies that don’t meet the legal standard.

The new policy also shows who holds the pen. Vice President for Students, Community, and Institutional Culture Anita Davis told the Tripod that she and Provost and Dean of the Faculty Sonia Cardenas were the “primary authors of the policy,” adding that it “reflects significant input from students at all phases of the process.” But the president has the final say. And the April comment period? “We received 24 written comments,” Davis said. 24, from a campus of about 2,200 undergraduates. 

To the College: let students post in dedicated spaces without prior approval, and define what a “social event” is.

To my fellow Bantams: the College is hosting small-group discussions on the policy during Common Hour on Oct. 5 and Oct. 22, with lunch provided. We can do better than 24. No matter your views, don’t remain quiet. The quiet can’t complain when they choose not to speak.

FIRE’s next survey will grade the rules not by their words but by our perception. Until then, when you look at that flyer in The Cave, remember: the protest needed no permission, but the poster did.

On Sept. 18, 2026, The Cornell Daily Sun reported on a lawsuit concerning a sexual assault that took place in the university’s Chi Phi fraternity house on the night of Oct. 19, 2024. The following coverage was swift and animated; the reporting was picked up by The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, CNN, ABC, even making it across the Atlantic to BBC. A former writer for the television show “South Park” created a website dedicated to targeting the seven men involved, as well as “those employed at Cornell who gave [the seven men involved] a break.” Greek organizations across the country have rallied in solidarity with Jane Doe and called for legal repercussions.

Despite the severity of the assault at Cornell, the event had been kept quiet for almost two years. Without the student newspaper, the story of what happened at Chi Phi would almost certainly have been a casualty of institutional silence. 

Student journalism is not a purely superficial undertaking, nor is it an extra line to add to one’s CV.  Student journalism serves a real purpose in the digital age of misinformation and oppressive power systems descending upon higher education. For this reason, I do not like calling the articles in the paper “stories” because I find that it attaches an almost fictional quality to its content. The things we write about at the Tripod are very real and some have an extremely tangible effect on students’ lives.

This week, the Tripod tried its hand at investigative journalism. The investigation into Trinity’s Resident Advisor (RA) program has been ongoing for several weeks now. The Tripod attempted to reach out to as many RAs as possible, and spoke with Union representatives from other NESCAC schools to better contextualize the RA program at Trinity. The overworking and undercompensation of RAs is a problem that has been prevalent on Trinity’s campus for years, and the Tripod has never had the time or the resources to act on it until now. We are incredibly excited to bring this longer-form journalism to the pages of the newspaper. 

In this same vein, free speech is also explicitly covered in this issue, with Trinity falling 42 places in the FIRE (Foundation for Individual rights and Expression) rankings. Yet I feel more confidently now than ever before in my time at Trinity that the Tripod is stepping into its intended role as a free speech platform on campus, and that students are taking advantage of this unlike ever before. 

For the first time in recent Tripod history, we have two opinions on Greek life in the same issue. Greek life, along with topics like sexual assault and racism, has proved to be difficult for the Tripod to cover in past years due to the culture of silence and the chilling effect that they have on our small campus. We have a new band of contributors, especially to the opinion page, and a new investigative news team (pending a rebrand to the “Trinvestigative” news team). 

Student journalism is often a thankless and tiresome job. I find it to be needlessly oppositional,  wherein members of our own community often position themselves against our staff. Despite constant reminders from students that we are not a large newspaper, and therefore not an important newspaper, I have found the opposite to be true. The Tripod may be small, but its reach is not necessarily confined to the Trinity campus — people read it, and they care quite a bit. Organizations care about how they are portrayed, students care about what gets covered, and people with considerably more institutional influence than a college newspaper might suggest still pay attention to what appears in these pages.

Yet, the Tripod is also not the administration’s newspaper, nor is it the student government’s newspaper, nor is it the Greek system’s newspaper, nor is it the newspaper of any particular political ideology. It belongs, in some admittedly complicated sense, to the students. That means students should be able to criticize it, contribute to it, disagree with it and, most importantly, utilize it. 

News is important, students are important, and student journalism has an inherent place on this campus. Oh, and email tripod@trincoll.edu to get started at the Tripod. Enjoy the bits, as well as the pieces. 

In peace, 

TBC

The beginning of the fall semester to Thanksgiving break is known as the “Red Zone” for sexual assault on college campuses. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault or sexual violence, the Trinity Title IX Office can be reached at (860)297-2688. The national sexual assault hotline number is 1-800-656-4673.