September 2, 2020

AF Community

Weekly Writers Round-Up: College and Adulthood, Refuge for Hong Kong, and Saving the Postal Service

By: AF Editors

Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Learn more about how the Writing Fellows Program can help boost your writing career!

So, colleges actually want students to ‘be adults’ by Christian Sagers (Summer 2020) in Deseret News
Universities have a new welcome-back message for undergraduates returning amid the pandemic: Act your age.

The irony is rich. The institutions calling on students to “be adults” have progressively been treating them as anything but.

Several schools have now opened their doors to arriving students, albeit with stringent safety protocols about gathering. By last Thursday, North Carolina State University announced it would move all classes online after witnessing off-campus behavior the school described as “inconsistent with our community standards.” That is to say, a bunch of underclassmen were partying…

The U.S. (and Utah) should give Hongkongers a new home by Josh T. Smith (Summer 2015) in the Salt Lake Tribune
Hong Kong police released pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai on bail 48 hours after being arrested under China’s new security law. As he told Fox Business, Lai is accused of “colluding with foreign powers.” The Hong Kong media tycoon’s arrest should concern even those of us here in the U.S.

The new security law is an opportunity for the U.S. to assert its place as a bastion of exactly these freedoms that China is limiting. The U.S. should offer refuge and asylum for those who share democratic values and face arrest and imprisonment under the new security law…

No amount of money can save the Postal Service by Skip Estes (Spring 2019) in the Washington Examiner
As if the 2020 election wasn’t affecting daily life enough already, politics is seeping into the post office. President Trump has been steadfastly opposed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s insistence that $25 billion be devoted to the U.S. Postal Service. Meanwhile, the mere suggestion that the Postal Service might not need such an injection of taxpayer dollars has prompted a flurry of protests and keyboard-warrior activism imploring public officials to “save the post office.” Some suggest that if the Postal Service does not receive this money, then the 2020 election will be compromised and the very core of our democracy threatened.

The Postal Service itself has denied such thinking. In reality, its problems exist outside of congressional funding and have for many years…