Linda Huang is a an opinion writer and editor at the Tufts Daily. She is a junior studying Economics, International Relations, and Philosophy and can be reached at peixuan.huang@tufts.edu.
This past Thanksgiving break, I stayed at my uncle’s suburban home just outside Nashville, Tenn., where I saw life in American suburbia firsthand. The whole time I felt like I was in an “American Beauty” fever dream. To put it simply, I absolutely hated it.
I spent the entire past summer volunteering as a funder research assistant for a U.N. agency, where I researched over 300 Chinese corporations on their Corporate Social Responsibility indexes. From analyzing the key sectors of each company, I sought to identify those with the dual strengths of mission-driven goals and substantial social funding to support targeted initiatives.
I’ve lost count of how many times I have been “STEM-splained” by an engineer with a condescending undertone of how hard their degree is — a degree they chose entirely of their own free will. Each time, I am forced to entertain calculated complaints about their workload, fully aware that it’s a thinly veiled attempt to prove they have a more challenging degree than me.
Upward mobility has long been held up as a defining factor of generational success, especially in the U.S., where the notion of rising above one’s parents in socioeconomic status is central to the “American Dream.” Traditionally, this concept meant climbing the social stratum — gaining wealth, status or both, often through education or hard work. In practice, upward mobility is sometimes reduced to a simple metric: whether the next generation earns a higher income than the previous one.
As an avid TikTok scroller and Instagram Reels watcher, I get sucked into hours of mindless entertainment everyday, with short yet meaningless videos fueling my daily dose of “brain rot.”
I have been putting this off for a while, but this semester I’ve finally decided to start my long-overdue column on socioeconomics. I decided to write this column because too many people at Tufts seem to be confused or completely unbothered by the impacts of our economy and how it’s intertwined with social issues. Socioeconomics, by definition, is a branch of economics that explores the relationship between social behavior and economic activity. My goal with this column is to break down these concepts and show how economic forces shape everything from education and inequality to social justice and identity. In this introductory piece, I hope I can convince you of why you should start caring.
With the presidential election approaching, the topic of abortion has drawn increased concern from voters, particularly from young female Americans. A New York Times/Siena College poll from August shows that abortion is the most crucial issue for women under 45 to consider when casting their vote. At the same time, a Guardian poll indicates that 67% of women under 30 plan to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris likely due to her commitment to expanding reproductive rights. As a woman living in the U.S., I share these concerns about the future of abortion access and its potential impact on women's autonomy.
I want to write this piece to express my disappointment in the regressive state of laws regarding women in the U.S. Three weeks ago, on April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated a Civil War-era near-total abortion ban that makes the procedure illegal except when the mother’s life is in danger.
In an era marked by numerous global conflicts, a rising tide of so-called civically engaged college students is sweeping through elite universities and bustling city streets, championing ideals of freedom, liberation and justice.
In an age marked by job market challenges and heightened student anxiety about internships and future career prospects, the familiar glow of LinkedIn pervades every corner of the university campus and the mind of every college student. The distracted kid in class, the kid bored from studying in Tisch Library and the one casually chilling at The Sink all have one thing in common: They all have LinkedIn open on their laptops.
