RJ Blog

by Noah Westreich On the morning of September 11, 2001, I remember pausing on the playground to listen to an announcement over the loudspeaker: “Attention students: if one or both of your parents works in New York City, please come to the main office. A fire has caused major traffic jams in and out of the city so your parents might be home later than usual.” I had my dad’s work schedule memorized: Mondays and Wednesdays were his New York days, so on September 11, like all Tuesdays, he worked from his office close to our home in New Jersey. [...]

by Pammi Shapiro There isn’t anything quite like summertime in DC. Young adults flock to the nation’s capital for a once in a lifetime living and working experience. But for me, I’m fortunate enough to have a second ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity. Last summer as a rising sophomore, I was one of the youngest interns in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence, an incredible experience on its own. As a newbie around town, I drank it all in and made my ten weeks here as eventful as possible. After doing all the typical touristy stuff, I would now [...]

by Michael Sarna Coming off of a semester that I was less then satisfied with this past spring, I knew that I wanted to try to apply myself over my summer break as opposed to merely do some run-of-the-mill activity. Having burned out of the Camp Counselor game, I knew that I wanted to take on a new type of challenge; one that would not only be interesting to me, but would also help to define my career aspirations and really push me in the right direction for what I want to do with the remainder of my college experience. [...]

by Haley Orlofsky It had been a normal day at the Clean Water Network — interns were glued to policy research on their computers, running errands in the Senate office buildings and listening in on conference calls, all while working on the Network’s Twitter campaign to #kickcoalash from the Transportation Bill. Everything was going as planned until something went terribly wrong: The Internet crashed! The other interns and I remained calm at first; however, after countless minutes of trying to repair the situation, we ended up in a tangled mess of wires, forced to come to terms with the alarming [...]

Anthony Graves has seen lucid men go insane. Anthony Graves has seen, lived, and survived hell. But a part of him remains forever stuck there. Found innocent and released from death row in Texas two years ago, Graves still hasn’t slept more than 2 ½ hours a night. After having spent 18 ½ years in prison and 10 of those years in solitary confinement in an 8’x12’ cage, after having slept on a steel bed with a thin plastic mattress and pillow, and after having humiliatingly relieved himself with his steel toilet in front of male and female guards, Graves [...]

Tuesday night, I had what I like to call a “West Wing moment.” My parents got me hooked on Aaron Sorkin’s iconic TV series (cast pictured below) at the beginning of last summer, and ever since I’ve helplessly seen Washington politics as little more than a real-life iteration of that drama series. West Wing moments, transcend the political sphere. They capture the hopes and desires, the heart and soul, and always the idiosyncrasies of a very real person trying his or her darndest to make a difference in the lives of others. On Tuesday, I found my West Wing character [...]

I took a course last semester about violence in St. Louis, looking for a thought-provoking discussion about my school-year city. I started following the local crime section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; thefts, assaults, shootings and drug crimes seemed to dominate criminal activity in the STL. So a January 2012 article identifying St. Louis as a hub for human trafficking came as a surprise.