Maybe you’ve seen them on TikTok or maybe you’ve seen them on Instagram, but the Kamala Harris aesthetic edits need to stop. Let’s not forget that Democrats settled for the Biden-Harris administration for a reason: because anything was better than Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has had an extensive record of being inconsistent and just because she’s the first woman Vice President-elect does not mean that Americans should be turning a blind eye to her questionable past.

I come to you today first and foremost as a concerned student, and second as the Academic Affairs Advocacy Director for the Undergraduate Student Government. From the end of September to the present, my committee has pushed for more lenient Pass/Fail requirements for students. That journey involved two different phases.

We write here because we, like so many others, have been ignored at best and dismissed at worst. We assume that UConn’s priority has never been to full transparency of the public health data it was collecting. Rather, their COVID-19 dashboard has been a performance of transparency, one aimed at preserving image and reducing skepticism regarding the safety of reopening. We urge UConn to seriously engage with the concerns in our community and to allow the dashboard to serve as an accurate, informative place for communication about campus health and safety.

Most op-eds from members of the Student Government or other major groups on campus begin with the words “I am not writing on behalf of my organization.” Today, that is not true. Instead, I write to you as the President of the Student Body of the University of Connecticut.

I understand I do not simply speak for myself when I say that we as a people have experienced the awakening of all awakenings. As a collective we have grown numb. Translation: lack of sensation or feeling. A condition brought by trauma, automatically manifested in defense as the body’s coping mechanism. This time was different.