From a young age, Victoria Okwudi, Nurs ’25, was drawn to the art of braiding and styling Black hair. She grew up in admiration of her aunt, who owned her very own salon, and revered all the “grown folks” getting their hair done while chatting about their grown-up lives.

Sir John A. Macdonald’s legacy is woven into Canada’s history, with Kingston as the loom where a lawyer’s ambitious beginnings shaped the nation’s fabric.

While AI tools like ChatGPT can churn out essays and solve equations in seconds, another, more secretive system of academic support thrives under the surface.

The vast majority of students enter their first year of university bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, straight out of high school. However, a growing number of students are choosing to delay their post-secondary education.

Every decade or so, a new set of beauty standards emerges, instructing women to alter their bodies to get as close to the new ideal as possible. Today, the ideal body bears a close resemblance to that of the 1990s and early 2000s—a body type that has been affectionately nicknamed “heroin chic.”

For students who don’t gravitate toward nightlife, university life can feel shaped by a culture that doesn’t quite fit—but there’s more than one way to belong.

To weed out the stress of everyday life, some students turn to cannabis to take the edge off. However, they often face harsh criticism and are sometimes held to a double standard compared to those who choose to indulge in alcohol.

From Mother Teresa to Prophet Muhammad to Siddhartha Gautama, major religious figures are revered for their generosity and compassion towards the less fortunate. Religious-affiliated groups at Queen’s strive to embody these same virtues through charity and advocacy initiatives in Kingston and abroad.

Playboy and Pornhub aren’t just warping dating expectations—they’re fueling a culture of sexual violence.

In her first year at Queen’s, Vienna Wiens, ArtSci ’26, enrolled in RELS 137 Religion and Film simply because it was one of the few electives with space to join. Little did she know this casual choice would lead her down a spiritual and cinematic rabbit hole.

Like many queer teenagers from a small Ontario town, Vince, the founder of Kingston Raves Community, always dreamt of leaving Kingston to experience the rave scenes in Toronto and Montreal.

Ella Majer, ArtSci ’26, often finds herself sitting in Stauffer Library, surrounded by towering stacks of textbooks and the scent of fresh coffee wafting through the air to keep her awake, but her stomach twists with unease as she keeps the daunting statistics about acceptance rates for law school at the forefront of her mind.

Keara’s pulse quickened as the incessant click-click-click of pens in the lecture hall felt like nails on a chalkboard. Each tap-tap-tap of typing in the library sliced through her focus, and even the faintest crack of knuckles or rustle of food seemed to pierce her nerves. Every noise, from the clinking of silverware to the crunch of snacks, turned her quiet study time into a relentless slap to her senses.

Of all the courses offered at Queen’s, PSYC 100 is infamous for being among the most daunting and stressful for first-year students. Elleni Kypriotakis, ArtSci ’27, is one of many students who took PSYC 100 to fulfill a degree requirement. When she started the course last fall, the then first-year student knew it would be no easy feat to pass the course, let alone ace it.

Orientation week ushers in a new school year for first-year students eager to begin their post-secondary journeys. As these fresh beginnings unfold, a more intricate narrative emerges—one where upper-year orientation leaders play a vital role in guiding newcomers through their first steps on campus.

As a first-generation Indian immigrant to Canada, Divya* has observed a recent shift in attitudes towards South Asian immigrants.

Mya Haines, ArtSci ’26, senses a stigma around the use of emergency services on-campus. She believes this reluctance stems from a fear among students, painting them as vulnerable and deterring them from seeking the help they may urgently need.

Kingston has a long legacy of queer spaces, but much of this history is hidden, not unlike the queer community itself. With Kingston’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community experiencing a shortage of queer nightlife spaces today, history serves as a reminder that queer people have always found ways to exist, whether out in the open or in the shadows.

As students and faculty members alike agree, if Queen’s continues to support and empower female engineers, it sets a promising precedent for the future of diversity and inclusion in the field.

Sabina Shah, Meds ’25, always had medicine in the back of her mind whenever she considered potential career options.