WEEK IN REVIEW

On the unremarkable Monday morning of March 22 in Providence, Brown campus favorites Dean Rashid Zia and Vice President Eric Estes sent an email out to the entire student body making a donation from Brown of $10,000 to the Community Food Bank contingent on 75 percent participation in an online survey. It went over extremely well.

To be precise, the donation proposed a tiered plan: $2,500 would be donated regardless of involvement, $5,000 if participation reached 50 percent and a full $10,000 would go to the Community Food Bank if participation represented 75 percent of students (the total donation clocks in at 0.0002 percent of Brown Universities Endowment).

The letter described a dire situation in our state. One in four Rhode Islanders have experienced food insecurity in Providence during the pandemic, making Brown’s community-bonding participation antics a little more than a buzz-kill. This survey came at a crisis point when many students at Brown and elsewhere took to social media to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the mental health resources during this semester of Zoom university. Yet here Brown was, punishing the surrounding community because of burnt out students’ disconnection from campus life.

Here are some things about Brown that are not contingent upon participation: the amount of classes offered in the French department, the level of funding available for Model UN, whether there will be mussels at the dining halls on an otherwise random weekday, the surprising abundance of elementary school toys put in care packages at the COVID testing centers, the existence of the College Hill Independent.

After approximately four hours, sympathetic goofballs Dean Zia and Vice President Estes sent their sincere apologies to the community for the email. They pledged to donate the full $10,000 amount to the Community Food Bank, the money now magically not dependent on the percentage of Brown students who answer their emails. Conveniently, they reminded campus that the survey provided a place for feedback, so any concerns about their ethics could filter right through the survey in a closed loop system. But this was not a satisfying end.

We at the College Hill Independent would like to offer some alternatives for enticement to take Brown’s survey: Dean Zia could put a bunch of puppies in a box and start swinging unless 25 percent of campus responds. If 50 percent of campus answers this survey, Eric Estes will not take a shit for 15 days. If responses get as high at 75 percent, the building currently being built to serve as a performance arts space will instead be converted to be an outpost of the infamous seafood restaurant Long John Silvers, with a daily bottomless brunch buffet. If by some New England miracle participation reaches a full 100 percent, the Brown Daily Herald will be converted into an experimental softcore porn publication. If by divine intervention more than 100 percent of people respond, Eric Estes will be required to both eat and shit only during bottomless brunch at the performance-art-space-turned-Long-John-Silvers.

Providing life-saving resources to the Providence Community is a completely inappropriate prize in exchange for student involvement in a survey, and it has become urgently and abundantly clear that Brown is failing both communities. The Indy wants to remind this audience that nothing about that is funny.

- RB

On the morning of March 23, the crew of Ever Given, a 400-meter long cargo ship sailing from Malaysia to the Netherlands, drove the bow of their vessel 2.6 fathoms deep (16 feet) into the east bank of the Suez Canal. Satellite images show the ship diagonally blocking the passageway, with the stern (that’s the back of the ship you landlubbers) wedged in the west bank. Hundreds of cargo ships were prevented from passing, delaying 10 percent of global trade for almost a week. At the end of March, after days of dredging, the arrival of two giant sea tugs, and a chance new moon that led to higher-than-usual tides, the ship and globalism alike were freed. Authorities blamed high winds and low visibility from a khamsin, an Egyptian sand storm, for the accident, but an investigation by the Indy suggests that the grounding may have had more complex root causes.

An analysis of real-time tracking data from vesselfinder.com shows that Ever Given made some unexpected turns in the Red Sea while waiting to insert itself into the Suez Canal. Typically, vessels throw anchor—in a state of foreplay—while waiting patiently for their climactic passage through the Suez, but the crew of Ever Given decided to trace some sensuous curves instead. Steaming due north towards the canal’s entrance, Ever Given turned 90 degrees starboard, followed by 270 degrees port, after which the ship headed due north at full throttle, turned around, and steamed due south at a slow pace. The result? A phallic-shaped ocean wake, miles long, directed right at the canal entrance. “The captain must be a wanchor,” said a marine expert who viewed the tracking-data for the Indy.

In addition, the Indy has learned that one of the cargo ships blocked from entering the canal by Ever Given’s escapades was carrying 40 containers full of sex toys. This has caused widespread frustration for sexually-isolated customers in Europe, as vibrators, dildos, and anal beads sit unused. Ever Given’s unfortunate canal straddling contributed to continental cock-blocking.

Common sense, and watching one too many spy thrillers, would suggest that the Russians may have also played a hand in Ever Given’s accident. Due to climate change, the Northern Sea Passage, through the Arctic Circle on Russia’s coast, is becoming more and more accessible to shipping cargo. The route is 15 days shorter than a typical trip from Shanghai to large European ports and would increase Russian power over global trade. Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company advocating for the Arctic Passage, pushed the Northern route on Twitter in the wake of the Ever Given blockage. In a thread titled, “reasons to consider Northern Sea Route as a viable alternative to the Suez Canal Route,” Rosatom opened its case: “Way more space to draw peculiar pictures using your giant ships.” That’s true. As more and more Arctic Sea ice melts, future cargo captains on the Northern Sea Passage will have space for as much phallic imagery as they please. A score for phallus lovers, even if it’s an L for the polar bears.

Like most everything in life, there’s a silver lining to Ever Given’s fate. De-growth advocates worldwide have a crystal clear case study to show what happens when globalism goes too far. Big ships get stuck in narrow passages, phalli are drawn in the Red Sea, people can’t get their sex toys, and, somehow, the Russians use the incident to justify more shipping amidst melting icebergs and warming waters. If that’s not world weariness for late-stage capitalism—the Germans say weltschmerz—what is?