The Mourning After
This morning, I woke up hopeless. I cannot go 20 minutes without crying, and I have not been able to stop since I woke up in tears this morning. My power was out all night and, thanks to my nonstop switching between 270toWin, AP, CNN,...
Why I’m Voting
Until a couple of weeks ago, I was not going to vote in the 2024 election. How could anyone with a moral conscience cast a vote that would further genocide? Kamala Harris has explicitly stated her unwavering commitment to the security of Israel, according to...
Power to the Students: We Will Not Be Ignored
For 30 days, the UC Santa Cruz Gaza Solidarity Encampment cooked and served about 500 plates of food a day free of charge. For 30 days, students stood on safety patrol for one another, established a free library and a “people’s closet” with donated items....
How Do You Get Into Nonfiction?
Nonfiction is hard to read. I get it — whether it be the emotional connection you form with the characters or the escape from reality afforded by a rich plot, fiction just hits different. Usually, people’s mental image of nonfiction looks like dense academic articles,...
The Last Word: We Move Together
Note to reader: This letter is a Call-In to our community, compiled with reflection and advice that graduated student leaders and past City on a Hill Press editors want to share with you. We graduated this year. Just like that — goodbye college, goodbye Santa...
The Transfer Blues: Reflecting on My First Weeks at UC Santa Cruz
“It’s high tide, you’ll learn to get by.” I moved into my apartment last September with all the grace of a bull in a porcelain shop. Sweaty, disheveled, butterfingered. Nighttime settled in before I could ferry my precious cargo from my dad’s minivan to the...
Artists Exist Somewhere: A Thank You Letter to the Staff of City On a Hill Press
Spring 2022. Fifteen of us sat around connected tables in a first-floor Kresge classroom. Some of us reporters, illustrators, some fact-checkers and copy-editors, all of us staff members of City On a Hill Press, as our media advisor Susan Watrous began our first class of...
I Won’t Be Using My Flat Iron To Press My Graduation Gown
Soft curls loop in on themselves and lay haphazardly across the top of her head and onto her forehead. Her eyes are big, round, and bright, and seem to take up most of her face. The eye doctor tells her she needs to pin her...
Was My White Boyfriend a Better Asian Than Me?
There I am in the kitchen, staunchly positioned in front of a flour-dusted cutting board and a small rolling pin. It’s as if I just stepped up to a podium and I’m soaking in the crowd — but in response, I only get awkward feedback...
Existential Crisis in the Dining Hall
“I’m just saying! ‘New Tea, New Me. Numi.’ It’s got rhymes, alliteration, and word play. I’d buy it just for that slogan.” This ingenious conversation is just one snippet of the many memories I have from my freshman year of college, seated with my friends...