Congratulations to the many First-Generation College Student Graduates from UMBC! 

Commencement is December 19th, and when you amazing First-Gen graduates pick up your regalia, be sure to come get your First-Gen cord!

First-Gen cords are available for pick up at the 

Career Center 
(Math/Psychology Building, outside room 201) 
Wednesday, December 11th -  Friday, December 13th 
10am-4:30pm.

If you are not able to pick up your cord at that time, you can also come by the 

Academic Success Center (Sherman 345)

from 9am-5pm on Monday, December 16 or Tuesday, December 17.

The tag on your Green and Blue cord reads:

It's Official #FirstGenGrad

Being a first-generation college graduate is a big deal!  You are the start of a whole new legacy and have claimed your future.  UMBC is proud of to have been part of your journey and encourages you to extend beyond!

You are #First in so many ways.  This graduation cord recognizes your outstanding achievements and its colors are intentional:

Blue represents the wisdom that you have acquired throughout your college career. 

Green represents the enormous growth and progress that you have exhibited in both your character and your academics.  

Congratulations #UMBC2019 #UMBCFirstGen

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

“Bear in mind continually how all such things as are happening now have happened before; bear in mind too that they will happen again…[remember] the whole court of Hadrian, of Antoninus, of Phillip, of Alexander, of Croesus. For these were all of the same kind as now, only with different actors.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10:27

It seems that the Trump administration has led to a marked increase in political activism. I recall going to the first Women’s March as a mere curious spectator and found myself in a crowd of people who seemed to be protesting a number of things: a loathsome and vulgar president who admitted to sexual assault (perhaps typifying a loathsome and vulgar culture), the refusal to hear Merrick Garland as a Supreme Court Justice, over eight years of government anemia and so on.

The signs were funny and I appreciated the puns and sexual innuendos, but lost in the crowd of pink hats, hemmed in by police barricades (an aura of uneasy peace that felt really festive actually) and the looming brick and marble of the DC’s buildings (it’s strange that power emanates from lifeless bricks only when such buildings are occupied), I only felt emptiness and noticed how surreal it all was. I suppose that’s what I was then, as I am now — a ghost, a reanimated corpse, at most a poltergeist.

I recall reading about an early sect of Christianity called the gnostics (they were persecuted and stamped out of existence in good Christian fashion). Central to gnostic theology is the belief that this world was created by an evil deity called the demiurge who had imprisoned human souls in the material plane, and thus spiritual salvation, true, unabridged freedom, comes from the rejection of the material world.

That is to say, the human being that lives like a ghost — indifferent to the coming and going of the world, characterized by a ceaseless changing, an instability, a poverty of purpose — is best able to steel himself against the certainty of death, which reduces men and nations alike to internment beneath the earth. “It matters not if you lived like a sage or a fool,” the thinker Ajita Kesakambali said 600 years before Jesus, as both the sage and the fool, “on the dissolution of the body, are cut off, annihilated, and after death, they are not.”

Perhaps when you find yourself in a public place with time to spare, consider how utterly contingent all things are: “Why did she sit there, instead of here? Why was the tree planted in that spot instead of a few yards over? Why did he order light roast instead of dark?” Interrogate yourself further. Only the dregs of society believe all things to be scientifically knowable. “Why are the cosmic constants this, instead of that? Why did matter survive its encounter with antimatter instead of the other way around?”

Your belief in God isn’t very helpful either: “Why did He create human beings like this instead of that? Why create in the first place if He’s supposedly self-sufficient?” Unable to comprehend the motivations that animate an omniscient mind, you are left, like all others, with the utter inexplicability of being a conscious body, an internally displaced refugee, an exile in his own homeland (separated not by kind but degree). We roam as restless ghosts, haunting the world.

Consider this next point: I recall reading a book called Our Damaged Democracy written by Joseph A. Califano Jr., the former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare during the Johnson administration, and in the first few chapters Califano outlines how President Trump has abused his executive powers using the same exact precedents and reasoning employed by the previous Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations in order to justify their war crimes and corruption (Imagine my anger when former President Obama addressed the crowd of politicians at Representative Cummings’ funeral as men and women of integrity!). Thus the great Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the closest the world has gotten to Plato’s philosopher-king, reminds us in sadness, from two millennia before our times, that the human being, for all its technological advances and evolutionary success, has always been, and always will be, a failure.

Every generation must learn, by painful experience, those ancient lessons again and again. And thus there is no such thing as progress in any meaningful sense.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author.

When I first moved to the UK, I knew Brexit was going to be on my mind. It’s a very complicated issue, and what makes it even more complicated (so much so that “simple Brexit explanations” comes up as one of the first online search suggestions), is the fact that in order to understand really what’s going on, you have to understand the British and EU parliamentary systems.

In high school, I found myself questioning why the World History curriculum being taught only grazed the surface of historical events. My classes focused on when colonization began and ran until about World War II. There was a massive Western-centric focus, and even then, the gaps in the coverage of history and government were huge.

Since studying abroad, I realized that the UK parliamentary system is incredibly complex. The democratic process looks very different here. There are two houses, The House of Commons (elected officials, usually party-affiliated) and The House of Lords (appointed officials, not usually party-affiliated). Within these dramatic, gothic buildings are the Members of Parliament (MPs), who argue and discuss the Brexit comings and goings. These are broadcast and make for good watching — there are shouting matches and cheers — it is very lively. In fact, the Commons has a central carpet with lines down it. The distance between the lines is two swords’ length, and MPs are still not allowed not to step over “the line.”

While you can read a million “Guides to Brexit,” there’s a very American belief of “Why should I?” and the answer is because these kinds of huge political shifts affect us all. The United Kingdom joined the “European Economic Area” in 1973. This later developed into the European Union (EU) in 1992, and in 1993, Britain was allowed to join. The consequences of a no-deal Brexit could be dire for Britain’s economy, which is also tied closely to the American economy.

Leaving the EU would clearly cause enormous challenges for the UK. Trade, immigration, even food production and availability will all be affected by this change. The UK needs to figure out how to negotiate a way or a “deal” that would make the change as smooth as possible. The other option, of course, is the “no-deal” Brexit. That means the UK would leave the EU with no agreement, and everything would change overnight. Most lawmakers consider this the “worst-case scenario.”

Beyond the economic distress, the consequences of the Brexit decision will also affect human rights. The EU allows people and things to move around freely, like people in the US. EU citizens who previously could travel, work and study in the UK along with UK citizens in the other EU countries would all be affected. Some citizens of EU countries have made preemptive moves to leave the UK, due to the current uncertainty in Brexit.

The immigration challenges are something familiar to us all in the United States, and also specifically at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. As a campus that values diversity as a welcome and rich addition to our community, we should, and do understand the contributions that immigrants make. The impending refugee crisis will surely be front and center if and when the UK leaves the EU. Brexit is not just about money and trade deals.

It’s also about people.

For students, keeping up with the onslaught of news and overwhelmingness of global events can be really scary and can inundate you until you never want to read another article again. But making a concerted effort to keep up with global politics is crucial to our growing and changing world in which we all live. World History in high school didn’t cut it for me, and I’m sure it didn’t cut it for you either. And not everyone can study abroad elsewhere either. I will be leaving soon after the election, but hope that the UK finds a smooth resolution.

There are digestible bits of news that are aimed at objectivity and accessibility about issues like Brexit and Hong Kong’s protests and climate change. You just have to seek it out.

Sharing a few summer research and post-graduation opportunities that may be of interest to Biology majors:

Botany and Conservation Biology Research at the Missouri Botanical Garden (Summer REU) 

Missouri Botanical Garden is pleased to announce the opening of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program that will provide research opportunities for 10 students, for 10 weeks during the summer of 2020. Students will work on independent mentored projects in plant systematics, conservation biology, and ethnobotany. Participants will have access to the Garden’s herbarium of more than 7 million specimens, an excellent botanical library, rich garden collections, a laboratory facilities for plant anatomy, microscopy, digital imaging, SEM, and DNA analysis, and the Shaw Nature Reserve – a 2,400 acre ecological preserve featuring prairie, forest, glades, wetlands, and 14 miles of hiking trails.