Friday, February 26th, 2021

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Friday, February 26, 2021

VOLUME CLV, ISSUE 37

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Alpha Phi Alpha celebrates 100 years of excellence Established off-campus in 1921, Alpha Phi Alpha is Brown’s oldest Black fraternity

BY CAELYN PENDER UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR On a Saturday night in February 1923, the brothers of the Alpha Gamma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha held an initiation ceremony to welcome three new members to their ranks. With the addition of two active members and an honorary member — a renowned Black physician in Providence — the fledgling fraternity began to grow.

The men celebrated with a “jolly evening spent in giving to the pledgees a glimpse of the good fellowship and spirit of Alpha Phi Alpha,” according to brother Joseph Chester Allen, class of 1923, in the April 1923 issue of the national fraternity’s magazine The Sphinx. Celebrations were held two weeks later at Old Fellows Hall in downtown Providence — given that the fraternity had not yet gained official recognition at the University — where the affair had “a delightfully charming

atmosphere” and “made the evening a very enjoyable one.”

Founded officially only two years before in 1921, Brown’s first Black fraternity informally began as a debate club. Eight Black students who attended the University in the late 1910s would travel back and forth between Providence and New Haven to compete against Yale.

This year, Alpha Phi Alpha celebrates 100 years of providing a unique space of support and community for Black students at Brown.

‘No home with Brown’: Alpha Phi Alpha is born out of exclusion “There were a reasonable number of Black students on campus” at the time, Alpha Phi Alpha alum Rodney Robinson ’90 told The Herald. But relatively few Black students attended the University until after World War II, so finding community and support on campus in the face of rampant racism was often difficult.

Not only were there sparse numbers of Black students on campus, they were often excluded from the social life of the rest of the student body. With nine-

SEE FRATERNITY PAGE 3

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Yamiche Alcindor on MLK’s legacy, power Yamiche Alcindor speaks about the past, future fight for racial justice in America

BY COREY GELB-BICKNELL SENIOR STAFF WRITER In high school, American journalist Yamiche Alcindor learned about Emmett Till, a Black boy who was brutally murdered by a group of white men after a white woman falsely accused him of flirting with her. Alcindor also learned that Till’s mother saw her son’s disfigured body and decided to leave his casket open at the funeral.

“She literally changed the world,” said Alcindor, this year’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture speaker, during Thursday’s event. “And I should tell you, she changed my life.”

Alcindor said this moment inspired her to become a journalist. “I wanted to be a professional witness who was bringing those hard truths of America,” she said. “I wanted to be the person who was taking the photo of the disfigured Americans that are victim to the racism and the prejudice that exists in our society.”

In her lecture, Alcindor addressed a range of topics surrounding the racial

METRO

University opposes overlay expansion Majority of community members present at hearing expressed support for ordinance

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Alcindor pointed to King’s speeches at the University in 1960 and 1967 as reminders that she is not alone in the fight for racial justice. justice movements of King’s time and of career as an “enterprising journalist,” today. As a journalist, she said, she never she said, but as a “confused 17-year-old” expected she would have to cover the writing for Westside Gazette, an Afrimurders of so many African Americans can American newspaper near Miami, that resulted from discrimination.

Florida. After attending Georgetown Alcindor said she is “heartened by the University, she began writing for USA fact” that she is not alone in the fight for Today before moving to the New York racial justice, pointing to the long history Times and eventually working at PBS of the Civil Rights Movement and King’s NewsHour, where she covers the inter1960 speech at Brown, during which he section of race and politics. Alcindor also implored students to combat hatred and contributes to NBCNews and MSNBC. prejudice. King spoke at the University Alcindor’s goal as a journalist is to again in 1967. be “the voice for the voiceless,” she said.

Alcindor didn’t begin her writing SEE MLK PAGE 4

SPORTS

Paths, careers of Bruno’s Black former athletes White ’57, Salwasser ’01 discuss journeys at Brown, beyond playing field

BY KATY PICKENS CONTRIBUTING WRITER The University again came out against a proposed expansion to the College Hill historic district overlay at a public hearing held remotely Wednesday, while the majority of East Side residents present on the call supported the ordinance.

The proposed ordinance would add 90 properties to the College Hill historic district overlay, three of which, including Orwig Music Building, are owned by the University, The Herald previously reported.

At least 53 percent of residents living in the proposed expanded historic district support the ordinance, according to the Providence Preservation Society, and the City Council received several letters in support of the measure from community members.

If the ordinance passes, property owners would need to receive approval from the city planning department to make any changes to the exterior of their buildings. The historic district is meant to preserve the historic character of the neighborhood.

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BY PETER SWOPE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

If the expansion passes, property owners within the new overlay would need to receive approval to make any exterior changes.

While the University generally supports expanding the historic district, a representative of the University asked at the hearing that its three properties not be included. University spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald that the current level of oversight from I-2 zoning for educational institutions is sufficient to maintain the neighborhood’s character, as any changes the University makes to its property must be approved by the City Plan Commission.

At a Jan. 27 Ordinance Committee meeting, the University attempted to delay the scheduling of Wednesday’s

hearing by citing a procedural concern, The Herald previously reported. During his remarks Wednesday, Andrew Teitz, a lawyer representing the University, requested a longer period for public discussion of the ordinance, which would potentially delay a vote on expanding the historic district. Expansion of the College Hill Historic District has been in the works since 2016.

The Committee on Ordinances decided to continue public discussion on the matter in its meeting following the public hearing, leaving the proposed zoning change unresolved and

This article is the second in the series, “Pioneers On The Playing Field.”

Last week, The Herald spotlighted Black coaches and athletes who played foundational roles in building today’s Brown athletics program. This week, two modern-day Black athletes who had success on the field at Brown and have gone on to have impressive careers outside of sports will be featured. The Herald spoke with former football player Augustus White ’57 and former soccer player Rebekah Splaine Salwasser ’01 about their experiences at Brown, their careers on and off the field and the ways they have made a difference in the world.

Dr. Augustus White, Class of 1957, Football “Football was a big part of my life.

I was not a great football player, but I loved the game and I wanted to com-

pete and I had the opportunity to do that at Brown,” Augustus White ’57 told The Herald.

Despite his modest self-assessment, White had an impressive career while on the Brown football team. Primarily starting at defensive end, White was a member of winning teams all four of his seasons at Brown.

He received a number of honors, including the Ivy League Football Award, given to an Ivy League football player who makes significant contributions outside the field of play, and the Class of 1910 Award, given to the senior on the Brown football team with the highest scholastic average.

White was awarded the game ball from the 1956 Brown-Harvard game, which Brown won 21-12. White still keeps the game ball and the Ivy Football Award as mementos of his time on the Brown football team.

White’s Brown experience extended far beyond the football team. He graduated as an honors student in Psychology on the pre-medical track.

This combination of rigorous academics and varsity football made White’s undergraduate life a busy one, but he saw it as a beneficial experience.

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News

News

Commentary

Louis Redding, class of 1923, was a trailblazing lawyer and champion against school segregation. Back

A24’s new ‘Minari’ is a nuanced portrait of the American dream, homage to family. Page 3

Faud ‘23: Requiring SAT/ ACT scores of applicants acts as yet another barrier to underserved students. Page 7

TODAY

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BRUNO FROM PAGE 1 “It made for a tight schedule, but that’s good,” he said. “I got conditioned to meet those requirements (of the medical profession) and to be successful in large part because of Brown.”

White was the first African-American student to join any national fraternity when he joined Delta Upsilon.

He went on to hold multiple positions in the fraternity, becoming president of Brown’s chapter his senior year.

After Brown, White went on to have a pioneering career, becoming the first African-American to graduate from Stanford Medical School. He served as a combat surgeon for a year during the Vietnam War, which he described succinctly: “War is hell. Most people have nowhere near the realistic concept of war,” White said.

White later worked as a professor and surgeon at Harvard Medical School.

Though he has retired from surgery, White still lectures about issues of discrimination and inequity in healthcare.

He has written two books, both based on his experience in the medical field. His first book, “Seeing Patients: A Surgeon’s Story of Race and Medical Bias, With a New Preface” (2019), looks at issues of racism and injustice in medicine as seen through his perspective as a longtime surgeon.

White emphasized that there are 13 groups of people who, based on their gender identity, race, ethnicity or other characteristics, experience healthcare discrimination. Combatting this discrimination has been his recent focus: “I’ve been reading, writing and lecturing to try to do what we can to try to eliminate those disparities, which is a huge job, but certainly we must try,” he said.

White also noted how the COVID-19 pandemic has made disparities in

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS healthcare “clear and screamingly obvious,” underscoring the need for change. His new book, “Overcoming: Lessons in Triumphing Over Adversity and the Power of Our Common Humanity” (2021) discusses a number of people who have been able to overcome adversity.

According to White, the book “discusses what some of the common elements are of our humanity. We all have certain basic characteristics of our brains and of our human nature that can serve as resources to help us when we are faced with adversity.”

He said that he is proud of the student movements for social justice at Brown and expressed faith in the ability of humanity to do good — a belief informed by his research.

“We found in some of our reading that there’s an altruistic part of the brain that’s designed to do the right thing,” he said. Our “spheres of influence” as individuals, he said, can “all add up to tremendous impact.”

Rebekah Splaine Salwasser, Class of 2001, Soccer “She gave Brown a lot more than she took,” former women’s soccer coach Phil Pincince said of Rebekah Splaine Salwasswer ’01. “We were very lucky that she said ‘yes’ to matriculate to Brown.”

After being sidelined by an ACL tear her first soccer season, Salwasser went on to have a distinguished athletic career, including winning Ivy League Rookie of the Year for women’s soccer her sophomore year.

Pincince emphasized Salwasser’s “dynamic” leadership skills, sense of humor, her “second to none” ability to protect the ball and her skills with kids, an attribute that has distinguished Salwasser throughout her career.

Her Brown soccer career provided “great memories, (a) great time and … a really wonderful stepping stone to go on and play semi-professionally and professionally,” Salwasser told The Herald.

After her senior season, Salwasser did not expect to continue her soccer career at a professional level. “I had no idea that even playing soccer in the U.S. was an option professionally for women,” she said. “As a senior, I kind of let it all go free. I didn’t train, I put on some weight, I hadn’t touched the ball.”

In December of 2000, though, she received an invitation to a combine for the newly founded Women’s United Soccer Association. “I played like crap, of course,” she said.

While Salwasser ended up going undrafted in the WUSA, this marked an important experience for her. “Having this experience of not being the best, of not making the team, was a real learning process for me,” she said.

After going undrafted, Salwasser joined the Boston Renegades of the USL W-League, a semi-professional team.

She spent two seasons with the Renegades, captaining the team both years and leading the team to two national championships.

After her time with the Renegades, Salwasser joined the Boston Breakers, a WUSA team, and played with a number of national team players. “All these amazing, amazing women I had looked up to my whole soccer career, I was finally playing with them, so it was just this incredible experience,” she said.

Salwasser ultimately played just one season of professional soccer, as the WUSA folded in 2003.

After her professional soccer career ended, Salwasser shifted her focus to nonprofit work. She kept playing with a semi-pro soccer team until 2011 while

simultaneously working a full time job.

At the age of 24, she became the executive director of Charlestown Learning and Lacrosse Center, a small nonprofit in Boston combining academics with athletics, specifically lacrosse, for which she was an All-American in high school.

Salwasser described the job as the “scariest, most risky” job she could take.

It forced her to learn how to run a nonprofit on the fly, but was “terrifying and rewarding in all the best ways.” She subsequently took the role of director with the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation.

In 2018, Salwasser was recruited to lead the Boston Red Sox Foundation — “just about the best job I’ve ever had,” she said. “I have a deeper integration at the executive level, and so to have that vantage point and to have that autonomy and authority is really wonderful, particularly now, as we think about the need for social justice, equity, inclusion and diversity with all that’s been happening in our country,” she said.

“To have a person of color at the helm of an organization that has incredible resources is valuable and important.”

The Boston Red Sox have a history of racist incidents taking place at Fenway Park. In 2017, Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was called racial slurs and had a bag of peanuts thrown at him. “That’s not an isolated incident.

There are incidents of racial slurs more often than you know that happen at the park,” Salwasser said. She emphasized that such racist incidents are symptoms of a broader societal issue. “It happens in public and in private more than people care to admit. I think this is a bigger, larger indication of a lot of work that we need to do and a lot of learning that we need to do,” she said.

Salwasser also emphasized that di-

Friday, February 26, 2021 versity in baseball is a significant issue.

At the start of the 2020 MLB season, African American players comprised approximately eight percent of major league rosters.

The Red Sox Foundation runs a program called Reviving Baseball and Softball in the Inner Cities aimed at addressing this disparity. The program brings together hundreds of kids and teenagers from all neighborhoods of Boston to play baseball and softball.

The Red Sox Foundation ensures the presence of quality coaches, pays for equipment and uniforms and secures access to fields.

“It’s that type of access that we’ve got to do better at,” Salwasser said.

While the program was unable to run in 2020 due to COVID-19 and its status for 2021 is still unclear, she hopes the RBI program can return in full in 2022.

Salwasser plays a key role in the push for equity and inclusion within the Boston Red Sox organization, chairing the team’s social justice board. After a series of discussions with the organization’s members of color, the organization created a detailed action plan that defines its goals, including working with local minority-run businesses, creating policies for incidents of hate speech and ensuring more equitable access to Fenway Park.

Salwasser is optimistic about the direction of the team. Prominent members of the organization, like President of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom and General Manager Brian O’Halloran are “wholeheartedly, authentically committed” to the goal of social justice, Salwasser said.

“We have engagement, we have buyin and we have hope,” she said. “That’s (a) really important set of ingredients.”

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Louis Redding: trailblazing lawyer, champion against school segregation

Redding, class of 1923, emerges as central civil rights figure in era of “separate but equal”

BY LIVIA GIMENES UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

May 17, 1954 marked a landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education: From that day forward, it was unconstitutional to establish racially segregated schools. In an era of Jim Crow and violent racial tensions in the United States, the court case came to be a crucial step in ending “separate but equal” ideology and advancing civil rights.

At the forefront of the momentous case was Louis Redding, class of 1923, who argued in Bulah v. Gebhart and Belton v. Gebhart. These cases, which were combined during trial, was part the other five cases that culminated in the Brown v. Board ruling, but it wouldn’t be the first or last time Redding came across the issue of racial segregation in court.

As the first Black lawyer admitted to the Delaware bar, the alum’s life was punctuated by challenges against segregation, inside and outside the courtroom.

Growing up in a segregated world Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Louis Lorenzo Redding grew up during the 1900s in Wilmington, Delaware, when the state was as segregated as the Deep South. His parents, both from well-educated upper-class families, moved to

Delaware from Washington, D.C., where his father taught English at Howard University.

Redding grew up surrounded by intellectual stimulation. His mother introduced him and his younger brother, Jay Saunders Redding — a literary scholar and the University’s first Black faculty member — to many classics of the literary canon, and immersed both siblings in oration.

Still, his family felt displaced in the segregated city. They were initially pushed into East 12th Street, deep in Wilmington’s East Side, before moving to a safer white neighborhood, only for that to become segregated as well, as Jay Saunders Redding describes in his autobiography, “No Day of Triumph” (1942).

Redding could only attend one school that was designated for African Americans in Delaware, Howard High School. There, he encountered firsthand the radical differences between white and Black schools at the time.

“I was acutely aware … of distinctions made in certain areas between Blacks and whites,” Redding told the Brown Alumni Magazine in 1986. “I don’t know how any kid could have had the experience of using a textbook discarded from a high school for whites without feeling he was playing second fiddle to the whites.”

Still, it was at Howard High School that Redding was able to find the inspiration that eventually led him to College Hill. In another interview with BAM in 1993, Redding said Howard had excellent teachers that were invested in its students, and that Nellie Nicholson,

class of 1911 and his teacher at Howard, inspired him to come to Brown. When he left for College Hill, he added, his teachers made sure to come to the train station to wave goodbye.

During his time at Brown, Redding was one of five other Black students at the University — “the Browns from Brown,” according to BAM. He won several oratory contests and was selected to speak during Commencement in June 1923, and Redding was the president of the Alpha Gamma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha at the University.

After graduating, Redding went on to teach English at Morehouse College in the South, before returning to New England to enroll at Harvard Law School. After graduation, he went back to Delaware to start a career as an attorney.

“I can’t say I had urged to practice law in Wilmington, but of course that’s where my parents lived,” Redding said to BAM in 1986, adding that it was because Delaware did not have any Black lawyers that his father pushed him to pursue law in his home state.

A battle in and outside of court To get his license to practice law in the segregated state, Redding had to convince another attorney and judge to vouch for him, on top of earning perfect marks on the bar exam.

When Redding became the first Black lawyer admitted to the Delaware bar, the Wilmington Sunday Star wrote, “The ice has been broken in Delaware.

Within the next year, harrying unforeseen developments, this state and particularly this city will have a full-fledged

Negro lawyer … Though the present age is supposed to be living down racial prejudices, it has remained for young Mr. Redding to break through the barriers of years and years standing now.”

Throughout his career, Redding continued to face the racism he had in his youth. Excluded by the bar and viewed as “arrogant” and snobbish by other white lawyers, according to BAM, Redding was nonetheless determined not to give in to the establishment.

Redding, who was once thrown out of court during his college years for sitting on the side designated for white people, purposely told his clients to sit where they were not supposed to during court hearings. He told BAM that he didn’t want to “accept the segregation that was being fostered in a courtroom” when it was supposed to be a place “to get equal justice.”

“I suppose there was an inherent anger, but I think more than anger, one realized that he was being limited and that kind of limitation based entirely on color or race should not be,” said Redding. “So, I suppose it simply became necessary to eliminate distinction found solely on color and race. I’m pretty sure that kind of inspiration is part of my background.”

At the beginning of his career, Redding worked mostly in divorce law, criminal defense and business mergers. His first notable case was Parker v.

The University of Delaware, for which Redding represented nine Black college students who were barred admission from the University of Delaware under the “separate but equal” doctrine.

The court ultimately ruled in favor of

the plaintiffs, making the University of Delaware the first state-supported undergraduate school to be desegregated by court order.

His most famous case, Brown v.

Board, began when Sarah Bulah, a Black mother whose child could not go to her segregated school because of the white-only bus route, came to Redding for advice. This case and six others eventually merged into the landmark Supreme Court case on segregation.

His third most noticeable case was in 1958, when a Black man, William “Dutch” Burton, was denied a cup of coffee at a coffee shop in Wilmington on account of his race. The case also ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, with Burton winning with the argument that his constitutional rights were violated.

Redding was never able to move on to a judicial role due to his age, and he retired shortly before passing away in 1998.

Still, his legacy is cemented in American history. The University of Delaware honored him by naming a dormitory after him, and a middle school in the Appoquinimink School District in Delaware is also named after him.

“I don’t know that I’m a hero at all,” Redding said to BAM. “I grew up with a generation of lawyers that exerted itself to abolish distinctions … wherever those distinctions were based solely on color. Of course, they should have been abolished long before. All we did was our duty, not only to the people who were discriminated against but to this so called democratic country.”

Friday, February 26, 2021

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ARTS AND CULTURE

“Minari” is a modest American tale universal in tenderness Lee Isaac Chung’s semiautobiography depicts his childhood in rural Arkansas

BY IRENE CHOU SENIOR STAFF WRITER “Minari” opens with the American heartland flitting past the inquisitive faces of 6-year-old David (newcomer Alan S. Kim) and his older sister, Anne (Noel Kate Cho). The young boy eventually dozes off, but the mother, Monica (Yeri Han), wears an expression of growing unease as she drives the beat-up vehicle down dirt roads. Finally, she parks on an overgrown meadow, where a shabby trailer sits atop cinder blocks.

“What is this place?” Monica asks her husband Jacob (Steven Yeun) who hops out of the rented moving truck parked in front of her.

“Our home,” Jacob answers. A gleam of hope and excitement dances in his eyes, while Monica’s searching gaze darkens with disappointment and worry.

Jacob, the headstrong patriarch, has uprooted the Korean-American Yi family from California, where the couple previously worked as chicken sexers, and moved them to rural Arkansas.

While Jacob optimistically plans to start a small-scale farm growing Korean veg-

FRATERNITY FROM PAGE 1 teen active fraternities in 1923, plus three “honorary” fraternities, Greek life was an integral part of campus. Official fraternities alone contained a collective 657 members out of 1,561 total male students at Brown.

“At that time fraternity (and) football were really huge parts of Brown’s culture,” said David Onabanjo ’22, current president of Brown’s chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha. But “Black students were just directly left out of it.”

In 1921, the eight members of the debate club began considering solidifying their club as a fraternity for Black men on campus. They filled out the necessary applications and submitted them to the necessary offices. But the University ultimately turned down the request to form a fraternity, Robinson said. An issue of The Crisis, the official publication of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wrote that “college authorities declared there was no room in Brown for a colored fraternity.”

“We did want to be part of Brown, Brown didn’t want to be part of us,” Robinson said. “They rejected our application, so therefore we had no home with Brown.”

To maneuver around the University’s decision, the eleven men decided to found a Providence chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, a fraternity for Black men first founded at Cornell in 1906.

“Our organization was founded out of resistance, out of resilience,” Onabanjo said.

Early chapter events ranged from putting on plays and hosting basketball and football games to hosting “Go-to-High School, Go-to-College” campaigns. Many brothers from this time were honored with awards for their writing and oratory skills as well, including Louis Redding, class of 1923.

As Clinton Henry, class of 1925, wrote in The Sphinx, “with our small band of ideal Alpha men, we hope to accomplish great things.”

etables, Monica, more accustomed to urban life, is dubious of the practicality of her husband’s costly enterprise.

The carefree children, on the other hand, find the trailer’s wheeled mobile structure impressive. “David, look!”

Anne cries excitedly, “It’s like a big car.”

From Plan B and A24, “Minari” is loosely based on writer and director Lee Isaac Chung’s childhood on sprawling farmland near the Ozarks in the 1980s.

In some ways, his story is a classic snapshot of the pursuit of the American Dream — a married immigrant couple leaving the ravages of the Korean War in search of change and opportunity across the Pacific. But, in other ways, the nuanced film is much more than that: a portrait of a more realistic American Dream, often elusive, lackluster and grueling.

Frustration and anger between the couple arise with Jacob hoping to prove himself by becoming a successful farmer and Monica wishing her husband could give up his idyllic “Garden of Eden” vision in consideration of their children’s predicament: social isolation and David’s heart condition. At the peak of these biding marital tensions, Monica’s mother (Yuh-Jung Youn) arrives from South Korea to lend a hand.

Grandma Soonja is a welcoming jolt of lighthearted, unreserved humor and wisdom that assuages the weariness of the struggling family. The film gradually

evolves, becoming an intergenerational family drama that sincerely depicts a budding grandma-grandson relationship and inevitable clashes between either side of a widening cultural gap.

At the height of his craft, Chung carefully avoids the trite realm of melodrama through the recollection of indelible personal moments etched in his preschool memory. He constructs sun-drenched vignettes against verdant green backdrops, capturing still shots of sweltering summer nights as bittersweet Korean ballads play in the background from a nostalgic boxy television set.

It becomes evident that as Chung looks back on his boyhood as both a director and an adult, he also begins to ruminate on the losses and gains precipitated by his parents’ choices.

In one scene, David is surprised when Grandma recalls that the Korean song performed on television was a relic of his parents’ romantic past.

“They come to America and forget everything,” Grandma Soonja says.

Though the couple does not respond, suppressed emotions flicker across Monica’s face.

In their somber dinner silence, questions are left hovering in the heavy air: Would they have been happier if they didn’t sacrifice their Korean past for an American future? Are they living a better life in America, as they had

promised each other they would?

Still, regardless of residual doubt and hardship, the consequential choice to immigrate was made. Born and raised in America, David and Anne are just as American as the Mountain Dew they guzzle. When Monica asks David to share a bedroom with Grandma, the boy refuses, complaining in English that Grandma has a “Korean smell.”

When Grandma affectionately calls her grandson a “pretty boy” with her exceedingly limited English diction, David snaps back, “I’m not pretty. I’m good-looking!”

Across the generational gulf, there remains a thin bridge of communication that the two bilingual children are reluctant to cross, willfully criticizing in fluent English their grandmother who remains just a few feet behind them. But the wisecracking Soonja doesn’t mind. Instead, she finds hobbies and chores to keep herself occupied, one being planting minari, or Korean watercress (a vegetable side dish popular in Southeast Asia). Patiently, Soonja strengthens the bond with her grandchildren.

Throughout “Minari,” the entire cast captivates with meticulous, profound performances. Yeun, who previously starred in the acclaimed noir thriller “Burning,” dazzles as Jacob, the stoic father figure whose hard toil for the family is silently carried out

from daybreak to supper. Han shines too, subtly betraying the emotional conflict that slowly chipped away the confidence she once possessed for her husband.

But, Youn’s performance is undoubtedly the most poignant in the film. The seasoned South Korean actress, who starred in the revered “The Bacchus Lady,” sparkles with caustic wit and warmth. Her lively dynamic with rising star, Kim, is one that is both hilarious and rich with universal tenderness.

By the end of the film, the resilience of minari, the distinctly Korean vegetable, resonates with a deeper metaphoric meaning. Minari comes to represent the tenacious immigrant spirit. As it thrives along a forest brook near the family trailer, David and his father return to the vibrant outgrowth Grandma Soonja has planted. The minari will continue to grow, interweaving Korean roots with the American land the family now calls home.

“They have an excellent spirit, harmonizing and brotherhood among all the members,” said Alpha Phi Alpha national Vice President R.P. Alexander of the chapter in a 1922 issue of Sphinx Magazine.

Of the men in the founding chapter, many went on to lead highly successful lives.

Allen went on to attend law school at Boston University, and later opened a law firm in South Bend, Indiana. He was the first Black man on both the South Bend School Board and City Council, and he served as a state representative in Indiana for two terms.

Joseph Carter, class of 1924, was a star football and track athlete while at Brown who “slows down once in a while to go to the theatre,” according to the 1924 Liber Brunensis. Chester Chinn, class of 1920, spent “most of his time in the Physics Lab doping out Kepler’s Laws or down at Arnold cutting up cats and fishes,” according to 1920 Liber Brunesis.

These two men, alongside Samuel Milton, class of 1924, and Heber Wharton, class of 1924, went on to become doctors.

Henry served as Senior Housing Manager of the New York Housing Authority, while Russell Lane, class of 1921, became an educator and eventually superintendent in Indianapolis.

Jay Williams, class of 1921, was a skilled football player while at Brown, referred to in Liber Brunensis as a “dusky warrior who is as fast on the cinders as he is on the gridiron.” He went on to play professional football for the NFL, work as a football coach at Morehouse College and found Ebony Records in Chicago — where he discovered successful blues singers such as Ma Rainey.

“These gentlemen did this in (the) 1920s, with no Third World Center, no Black deans, no support, no recognition,” Robinson said. ‘They just knew they had to excel and be the best at what they did, and that’s what they did.”

Alpha Phi Alpha was no longer active on campus by World War II, though there was always at least one active member living in Providence and maintaining the active status of the fraternity’s charter. The fraternity established its presence on Brown’s campus in 1974, Robinson said, but this time it was formally recognized by the University.

Robinson, who was an active member of Alpha Phi Alpha in the ‘80s, joined after being influenced by Black student leaders on campus such as Kenneth Elmore ’85, who helped lead the Third World Coalition’s occupation of the John Brown library in 1985, protesting the University’s alleged failure to uphold commitments made after the 1975 University Hall occupation.

He was also inspired by George Bass, professor of Afro-American Studies and Theatre Arts, who founded the Rites and Reason Theatre.

“It wasn’t about Alpha,” Robinson said. “It was about how Brown can be a more inclusive environment and how we can make our mark (on campus) and be excellent.”

Robinson reflected on Alpha Phi Alpha’s step dance, which they would perform at events on campus, as one memorable tradition of the fraternity.

They hosted one step dance performance in Sayles Hall that was so packed that there were “people hanging off the rafters,” Robinson said.

“I regard stepping as a cultural activity, an ethnic tradition,” said Elmore in a 1985 issue of the Brown Alumni Magazine. “Originally, a step show wasn’t intended for public display; it was a means for brothers to show spirit among themselves.” Elmore added that these step dances date back to African tribes, and that brothers would often wear eyeliner or eyeshadow “because it represents tribal face painting.”

The chapter also hosted educational forums, anti-smoking campaigns and events with speakers such as actor Danny Glover and comedian Chris Rock.

“We had fewer members in Alpha when I was at Brown than we did in 1921,” Robinson said. “We didn’t feel that members would limit us whatsoever … We would do major things with the small numbers we have, and we’d do it in a very impactful way.”

Members and alumni have since founded Harambee House, Inman Page Alumni Council and other spaces for Black students to gather and grow on campus, Onabanjo said.

Alpha Phi Alpha members “have constantly been thinking about Black student life and making sure that there were places where Black students could get together and just be themselves and thrive in a college environment,” Onabanjo added.

“The chapter has been one of the first signs … that Black students at this school have had to say, ‘there’s an organization here that is thinking about you directly,’” Onabanjo said. “There aren’t many places on this campus that are doing that.”

In its 100 years of existence, Alpha Phi Alpha has developed many traditions and events with the goal of supporting and enriching the Black student community on campus.

They host an annual History of Black at Brown, in which alumni share their experiences as Black students on campus.

At this event, students can develop their “own ideas of what it means to be Black at this school by talking with someone else who’s done it at a different time,” Onabanjo said.

Each year, Alpha Phi Alpha hosts a walk in remembrance in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha at Boston University. They also host a week-long series of events each December to celebrate Founders’ Week, with themes such as community service and Black student life, as well as 11 events during Black History Month to commemorate each of the 11 founding Alpha Gamma members.

The chapter also hosts voter registration drives, breast cancer awareness fundraisers and Black student business showcases, Onabanjo said. “Our main focus is asking what we think the Black community needs right now and finding a way to do that.”

Alpha Phi Alpha had planned a large, in-person celebration for Feb. 2 to celebrate their centennial, but it had to be postponed until at least September because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Onabanjo said. They are also hosting a monthly speaker series with chapter alumni who have become experts in their fields.

“This is something that survived for 100 years, and thrived for 100 years,” Onabanjo said. “This is a reminder to think of how we were founded and how that influences what we’re doing today.”

Alpha Phi Alpha continues to flourish, resist in the 1980s

Celebrating 100 years: Alpha Phi Alpha’s persisting impact on campus This year, the Alpha Gamma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha celebrates its 100th anniversary.

“It is really powerful to think about the development of Black student life at Brown in the past 100 years because we were the first Black organization on Brown’s campus and even in Rhode Island,” Onabanjo said.

Since growing in membership since 2018, Alpha Phi Alpha has reestablished itself as a presence on campus, and has focused on building community for Black students.

“The chapter, from its foundation 100 years ago, was answering the question: How do we make space for Black student life on this campus in a way that feels more full?” Onabanjo said.

“The chapter is still led by that same question.”

There are spaces on campus that provide Black students with resources so they are “happy enough to not complain about diversity,” but campus as a whole still does not see Black students as “full people who just want to be themselves at this school,” Onabanjo explained. Alpha Phi Alpha strives to combat that trend.

4

EAST SIDE FROM PAGE 1 unpassed.

Ward 1 City Councilman John Goncalves ’13 MA’15, a cosponsor of the ordinance, said during the hearing that the University’s past expansion into the College Hill neighborhood has “created a complicated dynamic between the institution (and) the community, as Brown has displaced families over the years” and demolished homes on the East Side.

Goncalves said this ordinance could be an opportunity for Brown to “be a good neighbor” by respecting that the majority of residents support the ordinance and allowing it to pass without further resistance.

Teitz presented on behalf of the University. “There are quite a lot of restrictions on the use Brown University can make of the property. There are 17 separate steps and requirements” the

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

Friday, February 26, 2021

University must comply with to modify their properties, Teitz said during the hearing.

University Architect and Professor of the Practice in Architecture Craig Barton was also present and voiced opposition to the historic district overlay boundaries. Barton emphasized Teitz’s point that the institutional zoning already “provides sufficient oversight by the City Plan Commission for the regulation of institutional development.”

“Given the historic character of Providence, the need to preserve the history and beauty of the neighborhoods home to Brown facilities is an essential part of any decision-making related to our physical campus,” Clark wrote to The Herald. “We engage routinely with leaders from the city and from organizations like the Providence Preservation Society on our projects and look forward to continuing to do so in the future.”

Most residents of the East Side who spoke during the public hearing supported the ordinance to expand the historic district. Many emphasized that stricter rules about changes to properties would maintain the neighborhood’s aesthetic and historical value. Others said that expanding the historic district overlay could also increase property values on the East Side, which residents favored.

Two representatives from the PPS, Executive Director Brent Runyon and Director of Preservation Rachel Robinson, presented in favor of the ordinance.

They explained that current national protections don’t enable the city planning department to prevent demolition.

“Local design review is necessary,” Runyon said during the forum.

Robinson explained that 21 University properties were originally included in the overlay. She also explained that PPS has been sending letters and liter-

ature about the historic district overlay expansion to residents, after the CPC voted in favor of looking into expanding in 2016, in order to garner more support.

One attendee, Noel Joseph, raised a question about whether the expansion of the historical district would increase renting and ownership prices in the neighborhood, thus excluding people of color and low-income people. “I think we should be working on making the area more inclusive, not only to those that have the blessing of wealth or white privilege,” Joseph said.

Joseph referenced an anti-racism resolution introduced to the council July 16, which requests that the city commit to “transforming into an anti-racist institution.”

“Does the anti-racism resolution not have meaning?” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out if it was just words.”

In an email to The Herald after the

meeting, Goncalves rejected Joseph’s claim about the ordinance’s potential to harm communities of color. He argued that historically, the University, not preservation efforts, has caused displacement.

“This is important and personal to me because Brown has sadly displaced members of my own family and communities of color including Fox Point Cape Verdeans, the Portuguese, Irish immigrant families, etc. for decades as a result of its expansion,” he wrote.

“It’s important that we preserve the history and homes that we have left,” Goncalves added. “This (ordinance) is a critical piece of that. Otherwise, history will simply repeat itself and those currently living in the District will be vulnerable to unjust displacement, historic demolition and unbounded University expansion.”

COVID-19 within the Black population as one reason why it is “crystal clear” that Americans must finally “grappl(e) with racism.”

She emphasized the value of honoring those alongside King, including his wife Coretta Scott King, who established The King Center just three months after her husband’s death.

Alcindor also spoke about King’s last speech, “I’ve Been to The Mountaintop,” in which he declared that if God asked him which age he would live in, King would still choose the second half of the 20th century because there was work to

be done. “Only when it’s dark enough, can you see the stars,” he said.

“I feel in some ways blessed to be doing the work that we’re doing in this time period, because so much of what we’ve been grappling with now has to be faced,” Alcindor said. She added that white supremacy was “pulling away our democractic ideals,” mentioning the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

Alcindor ended by noting that she met her husband at none other than the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. “Meeting my husband at (the monument) reminds me every day

that at the core of Martin Luther King’s legacy is the idea of love,” she said. “It is the idea that if we can all love each other … we can fight injustice in all corners of this world.”

After the lecture ended, Vice President for Institutional Equity and Diversity Shontay Delalue said that Alcindor’s talk “was a beautiful narrative of … how our stories are interconnected, regardless of what we do for work … and that we should allow our life experiences to shine through our work.”

President Christina Paxson P’19 said that the annual lecture, which has been

in place since 1996, is particularly vital this year following the national reckoning on racial inequity.

“It’s more important than ever,” she said, “that we reaffirm our values as a community that advances knowledge and celebrates diversity and works to promote equity and effect change.”

MLK FROM PAGE 1 She has received numerous awards in journalism, including the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence.

Having covered racial justice protests motivated by the police killings of African Americans, including Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, Alcindor said that the issues King addressed so many years ago remain with us today.

“There (is) a new generation of African Americans who (are once) again demanding to be set free,” she said.

Alcindor pointed to the disproportionate mortality and infection rates of

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post-

FEB 26 — VOL 27 — ISSUE 4

FEATURE

See Full Issue: POST.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

NARRATIVE

Next Episode

reanimating my love for anime

By Danielle Emerson

Fragments of My First Year

on the concealed culture of disordered eating at brown

by Lily Chahine illustrated by Riley Cruzcosa CONTENT WARNING: eating disorders My last few weeks before college were defined by choking on excess saliva from CVS brand whitening strips, praying the irritation bump on my nose piercing would disappear, and shamefully going to the salon after a disastrous box bleach job earlier that summer. Nothing truly of note, just a few superficial preparations that felt of paramount importance in the days leading up to the voyage to Providence. (The bump did go away!!!)

Only one more thing remained for me to step into my final form as a cottagecore college student who everyone would either want to be friends with or fuck—be skinny! My beyond-ironically named “health journey” began simple enough: eating less dessert and more flavorless meals.

But then I got to Brown and started learning. I learned so much and so fast! About environmental justice! And decolonization! And anti-capitalism!

And that I should adjust for the fact that alcohol has a lot of calories, and that if you start eating after you smoke you won’t be able to stop, and that nicotine dulls your appetite, and that “pulling trig” is normal!

Wait, what the fuck? Pulling trig is normal?

Regardless, I forged on in my journey to finally reach acceptance and joy and being desired by everyone who got the simple honor of glancing at my conventionally attractive body. And I guess I got it?

At least the body part.

But then I was requesting angel food cake for my nineteenth fucking birthday because it was the cake with the least number of calories...

“I would just like to state on-record that the winter witch of the shower nozzle can go fuck herself.”t “The Weeknd is like ‘I do cocaine!’ and Lana Del Rey is like *breathy voice* ‘iiiii….do….cocaaaaaaine.’”

Fantasies to Get You Through Midterms

1. Not having midterms

6. A warm body

2. Solo travelling! Staying in youth hostels! Adventuring across a country!

7. Trampolines instead of sidewalks

3. Being a little rodent hibernating in a tiny house <3 4. Un-inventing chemistry 5. Perfectly mastering the “We’re All In This Together” Just Dance

post–

Want to be involved?

Email: olivia_howe@brown.edu!

8. Slowly pulling your mask down while making intense eye contact with that person in your pod you’ve always wanted to be with 9. Actually getting into cottagecore like those TikTok girlies are always talking about 10. Disappearing into the forest and becoming the next Bigfoot

It’s blue. A bit darker than “Facebook blue” and nowhere near as light as “Twitter blue.” The icon isn’t that memorable. Blue and white—points for simplicity. The cellphone app didn’t exist then. But even now, no one actually downloads and uses the app.

The website works best on a computer. Honestly, the site hasn’t changed much since 2013.

I shouldn’t be too surprised. My Anime List (MAL) exists for the sole purpose of updating, organizing, and ranking anime, not for modifying their website design. At 21, it’s a little jarring looking at a site with no obvious changes. The profile icon is still in the corner, anime and manga statistics make up the center, and general anime, manga, character, and voice actor favorite bars are listed near the bottom of the page...

ARTS & CULTURE

A Star Drawn with My Left Hand rhythms of reality in iu’s “celebrity”

By Nicole Kim Stepping into the departures terminal at SFO, my suitcase filled with various fermented Korean sauces and clothes I probably wouldn’t be wearing to Zoom University, I felt the same sense of relief wash over me that I’ve always experienced when I fly out to Providence. It had been almost nine months since I last made the trip I usually take around half a dozen times per year. Even with the knowledge that I was going to be spending most of the semester in an apartment befriending my laptop screen, my desperate brain was soothed by this false pretense of normalcy—the streamlined process of traveling from origin to destination...

LIFESTYLE

Mentally in the 2000s

a playlist to wipe the dust off of your old sony walkmans, ipods, and flip phones

by Alexandra Herrera Now, more than ever, I—and perhaps yourself— feel constrained and emotionally drained by the predictability of daily life. Having so much time to ruminate has allowed me to further fuel my obsession with the aesthetic and culture of the early 2000s that, for me, always felt bright and hopeful in comparison to the current state of the world. Even before the pandemic, I loved scrolling through the Instagram feeds of accounts dedicated to 00s culture with their quippy catchphrases and bedazzled everything...

February 26, 2021 55

6

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

Friday, February 26, 2021

Reproductive health services provide unexpected benefits

BY ARJUN SHANMUGAN STAFF COLUMNIST

Because of factors such as poverty, sexism and cultural and religious stigma, women in low-income countries often struggle to access reproductive health services. Just 59 percent of women in these nations give birth in health facilities, for instance, and 218 million of them need contraception but lack access. In this light, it makes sense that governments, policymakers and researchers in low-income countries have long asked whether the provision of reproductive health services can increase living standards and wealth in the developing world by helping women to lead happier, healthier lives.

Hoping to answer that question, NGOs and aid organizations have made the provision of reproductive health services a central part of their development agenda, finding empirical results suggesting that provision has benefits reaching far beyond just lowering fertility rates.

Evidence of the link between family planning programs and fertility in developing countries is far from clear-cut. Nonetheless, offering reproductive health services can contribute to economic development by giving families more choice in when to have children, leaving them better off financially and socially.

In rich and poor countries alike, women who become mothers at an early age are often forced to give up education. But by offering contraception in poor countries, where 225 million women still lack access to birth control, governments and activists can work to ensure that women in adolescence and young adulthood are able to take full advantage of the returns to education. Stanford professor Grant Miller substantiates that claim in his study of Profamilia, which was Colombia’s “dominant family planning provider” for decades. In rural areas where family planning services were hard to come by, Profamilia filled

the gaps. In cities, it democratized access to contraceptive devices, selling them at cost to drugstores. And perhaps most importantly, the organization worked to change cultural attitudes through community outreach. Because Profamilia’s expansion from district to district in Colombia was relatively random, Miller is able to estimate the impact of its services by comparing social outcomes in areas where the

ed. While the provision of reproductive health services might not drastically reduce overall fertility rates, it can give women economic security through higher wages.

The social impacts of providing reproductive health services are especially comforting in the face of a key public health challenge: sex-based health discrepancies, which are even more pronounced in the developing world. Fortunately,

“Offering reproductive health services can contribute to economic development by giving families more choice in when to have children, leaving them better off financially and socially.” organization operated to those where it didn’t.

Profamila had a limited impact on lifetime fertility rates; it could only have been responsible for 6 to 7 percent of the decrease in Colombian fertility rates over the time period that Miller studies. Perhaps Colombian women had fewer and fewer children not because they finally had contraceptives, but because they were becoming richer. Indeed, the components of industrialization, including urbanization, higher levels of education and a shift away from agriculture, drastically alter the costs and benefits of procreation.

But when their impact beyond fertility rates is taken into account, Profamilia likely changed lives. Women living in districts where Profamilia operated ended up better off than those living in districts where it didn’t. They stayed in school longer than their peers and enjoyed a 4 to 7 percent increase in “the probability of formal sector employment.” These two trends suggest that even though Profamilia didn’t drastically change fertility rates, it allowed young women to postpone childbearing to get educat-

family planning and reproductive health services programs can help address that inequality.

The Matlab project, a massive family planning and medical services intervention in Matlab, Bangladesh, helps illuminate that link. Using data from 1977 — the first year of the program — to 1996, T. Paul Schultz and Shareen Joshi, economists at Yale and Georgetown respectively, compare a treatment group receiving the benefits of the program, to a control group receiving only limited medical support. They then evaluated differences in the fertility and health of the two groups.

Women who received the benefits of the program had, on average, one fewer child and one unit higher BMI than those who did not.

For those near malnourishment, that increase in BMI could be substantial for economic productivity, not to mention general well-being.

It seems, too, that healthier, less time-restricted individuals are better able to consider preventive health measures such as vaccination.

And each form of preventive health care that the authors assessed was more common in the

treatment group. The Matlab program went far beyond just decreasing fertility. It also made a range of women healthier and turned them into even more effective workers and mothers.

But, concerns about the Matlab program’s potential for general use of the Matlab program are valid. Joshi and Schultz themselves note that “(Over) time … additional services (beyond those related to reproductive health) were added to the program,” such as the provision of diarrheal medication. Though skeptics might argue that the study fails to isolate the causal impact of providing reproductive health services alone on economic development, Miller’s study was limited to family planning services, allowing us to more plausibly interpret his results as causal. Even if intervention beyond reproductive services enhanced welfare among Matlab recipients, evidence from Colombia reinforces the link between reproductive health services and development. Those results suggest that family planning itself gives women the chance to invest in their own education and health.

People and groups fighting to improve lives in developing countries are right to look toward family planning services — if not to lower fertility rates, then to deliver better health, give women the chance to get educated and let them live more comfortably. Aid efforts cannot afford to neglect the capacity of reproductive health services to better the realities faced by citizens.

Low-income countries need these services not just so that families can choose to have fewer children, but so that they can have better lives even if they don’t.

Arjun Shanmugam ’23 can be reached at arjun_shanmugam@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.

Want daily headlines or weekly Brown Bites in your inbox? linktr.ee/browndailyherald CA L E N DA R

COVID -19 AT BROWN LAST 7 DAYS*

FEBRUARY S

7

Completed Tests

People Tested

M

Tu

W

Th

F

S

12,179

7,945

1

2

3

4

5

6

Confirmed Positives

Positivity Rates

31

0.3%

8

9

10

11

12

13 SINCE AUGUST 24, 2020*

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

Completed Tests

People Tested

253,452

10,416

Total Cases

Prevalence

374

3.6%

*AS OF FEB. 26

Friday, February 26, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

7

Equity in admissions isn’t optional. The SATs should be.

ZOË FUAD OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

In 1968, Black students at Brown staged a walkout to protest, among other inequalities, the disproportionately white student body. They demanded that incoming classes be at least 11 percent Black, so as to reflect the United States population at the time.

Since then, BIPOC students of all races have staged three more major protests demanding the same thing: equity in admissions. But to no avail: Admissions data from 2019 show an incoming class that’s 7.6 percent Black, 9.8 percent Hispanic/Latinx, 0.2 percent Native Hawaiian and 0.2 percent Native American. Each falls well below their national percentage. Over 50 years have passed since the first 1968 walkout, and we haven’t even met the 11 percent goal.

Why is that? Are Black, Indigenous and Latinx communities disproportionately unfit for an Ivy League education? Or, more likely, are qualified BIPOC applicants being consistently and systemically overlooked by Brown’s admissions?

Evidence overwhelmingly points to the latter. The most obvious of the many discriminatory systems perpetuating this practice is Brown’s standardized testing policy. Requiring SAT/ACT scores has been repeatedly shown to exacerbate existing inequities and bar underrepresented students from the University. Universities continue to justify their use, despite consistent studies showing that these tests are actually poor predictors of college success.

By going SAT-optional, more than 1,000 institutions have diversified their student pool and seen the same graduation rates and cumulative GPAs as before, if not better. Wake Forest University reported that their student body became “stronger” and better equipped to handle university rigor after going SAT-optional in 2009, and CalTech’s Director of Undergraduate Admissions Nikki Chun has rejected the notion that test scores are needed to identify strong students.

Requiring standardized test scores filters out some of the most qualified and capable applicants while exacerbating existing inequalities: Students who identify as BIPOC, first generation and/or low-income tend to score lower on the SAT/ACTs than their peers, even when con-

trolling for all other factors. Tellingly, Black and Latinx students comprise 12 percent of the top high school GPA decile, but only five percent of the top SAT/ACT score decile; 31 percent of first generation students are in the top two quintiles of high school GPA scores, but only 14 percent are in the top two quintiles of SAT/ACT scores; and SAT/ACT scores are strongly correlated with wealth, while high school GPA is not. Unsurprisingly, a 2018 analysis of 28 SAT-option-

and easy filter for which applications to thoroughly read. According to the former Associate Dean of Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, applications with low test scores are barely skimmed over (and essentially screened out). Only high-scorers are meaningfully evaluated. Consequently, plenty of qualified applicants, most of whom are from historically underrepresented communities, are systematically overlooked.

“Requiring SAT/ACT scores hurts the competitiveness of our student body, and more concerningly, acts as a barrier to underserved students.”

al universities found that students who didn’t submit SAT/ACT scores are more likely to be BIPOC, first-generation and/or low-income than those who did.

Requiring SAT/ACT scores hurts the competitiveness of our student body, and more concerningly, acts as a barrier to underserved students. So why do we maintain such an archaic policy, especially one that so clearly disadvantages underrepresented students?

One answer is that, while standardized testing is a barrier to many, it occasionally acts as an opportunity. Some have argued that standardized testing allows some underserved students, lacking other means of doing so, to prove their ability. But an SAT-optional policy doesn’t rob them of this. Rather, it allows students to choose how they’d best like to be represented — whether through SAT/ACT scores or otherwise.

The reality is that Brown likely keeps the requirement around, in part, because it’s a matter of finances: a choice between quality versus cost and equity versus efficiency.

“As applications to top-ranked institutions have grown exponentially over the past decade, admission offices have not kept up with the labor needed to process them,” argues Marie Brigham, head of the group Admissions Community Cultivating Equity and Peace Today. Universities don’t have enough application-readers to ensure that every student is meaningfully considered. Instead, to save time and labor, they use standardized tests as a quick

Going SAT-optional means spending more time reading applications. It requires hiring additional readers, implementing new protocols and creating new training programs. It would, in short, cost a significant amount of money.

But this investment is already long overdue.

If Brown really hopes to be at the forefront of change and progress, and to fulfill its mission of equity in access, it must allocate its resources accordingly. Top universities, from the University of Chicago to the University of California system, are now test-optional. Standardized testing is on its way out. Why are we still clinging on?

The lack of diversity at Brown, and among the Ivies at large, is a crisis that urgently needs addressing. Yet, in 67 pages of equity plans, Brown’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan only mentions undergraduate admissions briefly in the appendix, with no discussion of evaluating or changing harmful policies.

As a result of the pandemic, Brown has gone SAT-optional for the classes of 2025 and 2026.

This temporary policy shift will, if done right, remove major barriers for already underrepresented students. But such a short timeline may not allow for proper implementation of the “checks and balances” needed to ensure that all students (regardless of whether they submitted scores) are fairly evaluated. “We’ll get through this year, we’ll get through next year, we’ll take what we learn from that to make the best decision,” said Dean of Admissions Logan Powell.

But equity is not achieved through a series of last-minute decisions, and this sort of planning lacks both the intentionality and care needed for meaningful change. Rather, restructuring our broken systems to create fairer and more equitable ones takes time and thoughtful deliberation. It takes a long-term commitment.

More concerningly, this year-by-year planning basis does not show a commitment to seriously considering the merits of the complete removal of standardized test requirements. The SAT-optional policy is only set to be in place for two years. Why not make it permanent? How could we actively decide to re-implement discriminatory and unnecessary practices?

Implementing a meaningful and effective SAT-optional policy will require a lot more than just slapping on a “test-optional university” label. It will mean completely changing the way students are evaluated, and then re-training application-readers appropriately.

As a world-class research institution, Brown should know that these two years of a slapdash SAT-optional policy aren’t enough for good data. At the very least, we ought to commit to extending this SAT-optional policy for three more years, giving ourselves time to actually study the efficacy of standardized tests at Brown by thoroughly and fairly evaluating non-submitters’ complete college career before making definitive decisions. Anything less isn’t only inequitable, but also just bad research.

If nothing else, 2020 has allowed us to imagine what a “new normal” should be, and we all bear responsibility for turning that vision into reality. The SATs were developed in the 1920s as a thinly disguised form of eugenics. Now, 100 years later, it’s time to stop using them as a gatekeeper of opportunity.

Zoë Fuad ’23 can be reached at zoe_fuad@ brown.edu. Fuad is a member of Students for Educational Equity and is the lead organizer for the SAT-Optional Campaign.

Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

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8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

Friday, February 26, 2021

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Study investigates social networks, alcohol use for class of 2021 Over 81 percent of eligible students have enrolled so far in social network study

BY CLAIRE LIU SENIOR STAFF WRITER ’21 Rising, an ongoing social network study led by Principal Investigator and Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences Nancy Barnett, enrolls members from the class of 2021 in biannual surveys to find out how social networks play a role in their health behaviors.

Students participate in the study by completing online surveys that take around 30 to 40 minutes each, wrote Catherine Costantino, ’21 Rising’s project coordinator, in an email to The Herald. Questions cover the topics of “social network ties (such as friends and family), life experiences relevant for college students and health behaviors, including alcohol use,” Costantino wrote.

The study is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Barnett said. Participants are compensated with between $50 to $70 in Amazon gift cards for completing each survey, according to the study’s website. To address concerns of confidentiality, survey answers are de-identified and coded by an ID number, so individual

participants are not associated with their responses, Barnett said.

The project first enrolled students in the fall of 2019, and is launching the fourth of its five surveys on Feb. 22.

Enrollment has been “very successful so far — over 81 percent of the class is enrolled,” Costantino wrote.

The study aims to enroll as many students in the class of 2021 as possible in order to build a comprehensive picture of the classwide network.

Enrollment via the study’s website is open to all students who currently are or previously were part of the class of 2021, including those who took leave.

As an alcohol use researcher, Barnett hopes to understand “the perspective and the needs of the people” included in her research, she said. She wants to uncover “how you can avoid harm to oneself or to others when choosing to use alcohol or other substances.”

By recruiting members of the class of 2021, the study can capture how social networks and behavior intersect with developmental milestones that typically occur in one’s junior and senior year of college, Barnett said. These milestones include obtaining jobs and deciding on plans after graduation.

The research looks at the long-term effects on graduates as their friendship networks and substance use patterns change, she said.

Barnett previously led the Squad2020

COURTESY OF ’21 RISING

The study is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Participants are compensated for completing online surveys. study in 2016, which examined social networks for first-year students, The Herald previously reported. Squad2020 followed over 90 percent of the class of 2020 during their freshman year and studied the development of alcohol use and other behavioral patterns during their transition into college, Barnett said. ’21 Rising is the “second cycle of that project” and looks at “the experiences of later college years,” Barnett said. “That transition out of college is

really not as well studied when it comes to peers and substance use.”

The timing of the COVID-19 pandemic also “optimally” positions the researchers to study the impact of the pandemic on social networks, behavior and general life experiences, Barnett said. Data was collected prior to and during the pandemic, and will hopefully be collected afterward as well.

The researchers are additionally looking into students’ perception of other people’s drinking behaviors and

how they’re influenced by depictions of alcohol in social media feeds, Barnett said.

The study considers demographics for sexual and gender minority groups and first-generation students.

Melissa Clark, co-investigator for ’21 Rising and professor of health services, policy and practice, is a survey methodologist for the study. She works to ensure the clarity of survey questions and that “the experience is a positive one for students,” she said.

The research team developed the surveys with the goal of “capturing the different aspects of students’ networks,” Clark said. This includes “obvious ones, like roommates or suitemates,” but also other people who students may not interact with daily yet are still “incredibly important” in their lives, she said.

The researchers improved their phrasing of questions and added more questions on topics deemed important to students using feedback from participants of Squad2020, Clark said.

Participants of ’21 Rising are invited to submit feedback after surveys as well.

“We hope that students would be willing to share their experiences,” Clark said. Their experiences “may help us down the road provide programming and support services for students who may need (it). … It’s a gift to students coming after.”