A Blog on McConnell Center Life

Easton Depp ('19) Yale Law School attaches an additional requirement on top of the standard documents to apply for Law School. They ask you to write 250 words on any topic. It can be an argument or a reflection, a musing or a debate. I decided to write mine on the importance of community and how I find community in a large city like Louisville. While my hobby may not be for everyone, I would encourage everyone to find a community to embrace friendship and companionship. C.S Lewis writes of friendship,             " Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…it has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."                                               ...

Isaac Feinn ('19) With the recent confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, evangelicals hope that the new conservative majority will forward their ideal interpretation of law. As a member of these groups, I understand what most of the issues and desired outcomes are, and would like to contribute to the discussion about LGBTQ+ policy. Put candidly, I think Christian support for anti-LGBTQ+ policy hurts both the church’s mission to evangelize to non-believers and places an impossible task on those in the LGBTQ+ community.   Before I discuss why, I would like to acknowledge the sensitivity of the subject. If you are a Christian reading this, understand that my goal is to help strengthen the church and expand its outreach. If you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, regardless of your faith, know that Christians properly living out their faith love you just as Christ loves them. Theological arguments exist both for and against homosexuality being conside...

Claire Gothard ('19) I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Student Conference on US Affairs at West Point. At the conference, I participated in a roundtable on the Middle East and North Africa. The following policy recommendations were the product of those conversations and summarized in our policy paper. Background On the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen has recently been established as a critical case study to understand the Middle Eastern political dynamics and effects of US regional policy decisions. Civil war began in 2015 when the Houthis, a group of Shi’a revolutionaries, took the capital city of Sana’a and displaced the Hadi regime. Since that March, the country has been plagued by the largest cholera outbreak in the world, resource shortages, and continued violence leaving over 14 million people at risk of starvation and 2 million displaced. In response to the civil war, Saudi Arabia has formed a coalition of Arab states to combat Houthi influence. T...

To all the things that didn’t work out the way I wanted them to… Erica Gaither ('19) I am not exaggerating when I say that the world has tested me this year. I mean at times it was as if I had been thrown down just to be stomped all over. For the first time in my life, I was hit with real rejection. The kind of rejection that has you look in the mirror and question everything that you know about yourself. In friendships, in relationships, in everyday little things- you name it, I was failing. It wasn’t until rejection coursed through the one area of my life I always thought would be safe- my education- that I had my look up at the sky and beg “why” moment. There are no words to describe the hurt of spending months filling out applications for opportunities that you’ve been told for years you’d be perfect for just to get a "thanks, but no thanks email." There are no words to describe pouring your all into people just to have ...

--> Nicole Fielder ('19) This semester has shown me emergent themes like none before. One major theme has been Evolution. Yes, in the biological sense – I am taking Biological Anthropology to knock out that final Gen-Ed – but also in a more radical sense. I read a book called The Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley and, in the book, he posits that everything is emergent or “unfolding.” History isn’t made by the design of man but through the coalescence of everything that came before it and often in spite of man. Simultaneous invention, the fact that numerous scientific or technological breakthroughs are made by several people independently around the same time, is a case in point. Darwin’s theory of evolution is an almost ironic example of this because he wasn’t the only one developing the concept of natural selection at the time; he just got published first.   The “Evolution of Everything” as an idea has been corroborated by several other authors and lect...