SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019
VOLUME CLIV, ISSUE 42
UNIVERSITY NEWS
U. lowers minimum for GET deposits to $10 Starting today, minimum reduced to remove barriers for small expenses BY SARAH WANG SENIOR STAFF WRITER When students, faculty and staff log onto their GET portals after 9 a.m. this morning, they will find a lower minimum deposit requirement for their Bear Bucks accounts. Following advocacy from the Undergraduate Council of Students, the University halved the minimum online GET deposit from $20 to $10. The change was spearheaded by UCS President William Zhou ’20 and Vice President Jason Carroll ’21, who began working on the initiative over the summer. Any of the eight ValuePort machines across campus and the Cashier’s Office in Page-Robinson Hall still accept deposits as low as $1. But this did not necessarily help with accessibility, Zhou said, adding that
“even though there are nine locations to deposit cash in any increment around campus, a lot of ATMs around only give out $20 bills, so it’s essentially the same problem.” Students have consistently told UCS that the previous $20 minimum requirement was a financial barrier that made it difficult to afford common small expenses such as laundry and printing, Zhou and Carroll said. After hearing student experiences and observing that 58 percent of all deposits made through GET over the last year were the $20 minimum, the University decided to lower the deposit requirement, said Elizabeth Gentry, assistant vice president of business and financial services. A minimum deposit amount exists because the University is responsible for paying the fees associated with credit card transactions, Gentry said. Smaller dollar transactions are not as favorable to credit card companies, and as a result, there is a higher fee rate for them. The University is “will-
SEE GET PORTAL PAGE 9
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
ARTS & CULTURE
Weitzman’s shoes evolve from staples to icons Stuart Weitzman walks students through turning points in his career BY ELISE RYAN ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR Stuart Weitzman, the creative and entrepreneurial mind behind many famed shoe silhouettes, stepped onto the Martinos Auditorium stage in silver shoes last night to discuss his career’s trajectory. Hosted by Fashion@Brown and The Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, Weitzman’s talk offered students advice — and for some, the chance to walk in his shoes. Today, Weitzman’s designs — including the brand’s thigh high boot and the Nudist sandal — populate both street style and high fashion. But this was not always the case. Before Weitzman was a household name, he had to “think outside of the shoebox” to find his entrance into an already oversaturated market. “You have to do something special to gain even a bit of presence, … and I knew I needed to create a niche,” Weitzman said.
REBECCA HO / HERALD
On Thursday, designer Stuart Weitzman detailed the moments that defined and reshaped his decades-long career in the fashion industry. Playing into celebrities’ desire to wear unique but comfortable shoes to red carpets and events, Weitzman decided to devote part of his business to constructing custom shoes for stars. It was an uncertain step, but one he saw as necessary to further his brand. “Risk is not a four-letter word. … For designers, without risk, we’re not going anywhere,” Weitzman said. Weitzman took that risk, investing in a small custom shoe factory. His first major client was Aretha Franklin, who celebrated the design by being photo-
graphed at the 1983 American Music Awards holding her award in one hand, and her custom shoes in the other. “Talk about a risk worth taking,” Weitzman said, reflecting on the free publicity the moment provided his brand. His custom shoe service continued, bringing his designs to red carpets and then to Buckingham Palace, when Queen Elizabeth II requested Weitzman’s service. “She hadn’t bought shoes in 26 years, and she needed new shoes,” Weitzman
SEE WEITZMAN PAGE 2
UNIVERSITY NEWS
METRO
Brown Dems, Republicans debate election topics
R.I. test scores increase slightly from 2018
Political groups discuss health care, gun control, immigration, free speech
R.I. public school standardized test scores still lag behind Massachusetts
BY LIVIA GIMENES STAFF WRITER The Brown Democrats and Brown Republicans engaged in a respectful but heated exchange of ideas at the No Labels 2020 Election Debate, covering topics such as health care, gun control, immigration and free speech. The discussion, hosted by non-partisan student group No Labels, was mediated by Bob Hackey, adjunct lecturer in international and public affairs. The event began with the topic of health care, and both parties agreed that the current system has serious problems but disagreed on the government’s role in the solution. “Economics is the study of human choice, however, health care is not a human choice — it’s a right,” said Michael LeClerc ’20.5 from the Brown Dems when defending the government’s role in providing health care for all. Adam Shepardson ’22, treasurer of the Brown Republicans, countered by defending the private sector’s role. “I
BY BEN BALINT-KURTI CONTRIBUTING WRITER
DANIELLE EMERSON / HERALD
Non-partisan student group No Labels hosted a debate between the Brown Democrats and Brown Republicans Wednesday night. don’t think the government is capable of innovating in the same way as the private sector, and if the health industry was more open to deregulation rather than putting more and more red tape on doctors, we could spur more innovation and also close the gap in supply and demand that’s plaguing the industry and driving up the prices,” he said. When the debate transitioned into gun control, Ben Lipson ’22, political representative of the Brown Dems, emphasized the need for background checks to decrease the number of homicides. Shepardson refuted, stating that the need for gun control cannot be justified solely by statistics
because they often include suicide numbers. He added that gun control would actually prevent people from protecting themselves. Lipson responded that gun control could also be used to prevent suicides. Shepardson countered, stating that the government should not play a role in preventing suicide, as this should be the families and the communities’ role. Zoë Mermelstein ’21, president of the Brown Dems, removed her driver’s license from her wallet during this portion of the debate. “It took six months to get this. There is a con-
A&C Review
Commentary
Sports
Netflix’s “The Politician” lacks depth in addressing nuaced sociopolitical issues Page 3
Han ’23: Alternative meat options should become widespread and affordable Page 4
Raphino ’23 scored two goals against Cornell to keep women’s soccer rolling BACK
SEE DEBATE PAGE 12
Students in grades 3-8 improved their reading and math scores on an R.I. standardized test by 5 and 3 percent respectively this year, according to results released by the Rhode Island Department of Education last week. Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System results for the 201819 school year still fell short of the high standards set by Massachusetts. Overall proficiency in the subjects remained low, at 38 percent in English Language Arts and 30 percent in Mathematics. The tests, administered at the end of the school year for all students in grades 3-8, are a new tool the state uses to measure school performance and accountability. The state adopted RICAS for the first time last year. Meg Geoghegan, spokesperson for the Rhode Island Department of Education, tempered expectations about this year’s score
increases. “It’s a national trend that when you’ve adopted a new assessment, the second year you see that bump.” But she, as well as Fran Gallo, interim superintendent of Providence Public Schools, remained encouraged: “I am very pleased to see improvements in PPSD’s RICAS scores; however, I know our work is far from over. …While we know we have a long way to go, these scores are promising,” Gallo wrote in an email to The Herald. The RICAS testing system is the same assessment as the MCAS, the system used by Massachusetts. Rhode Island adopted the system last year to allow for comparison with Massachusetts’ education standards. “Massachusetts is really the leader in national education; that’s the comparison we should be making, not only as they’re the national leader but they’re also our neighboring state. So having that apples to apples comparison is really helpful for us,” Geoghegan said. Rhode Island considers Massachusetts a “trusted partner,” she added. After multiple changes to the testing systems used by the state, Rhode Island plans to stick with this system
SEE SCORES PAGE 10
TODAY
TOMORROW
57 / 34
53 / 38
2
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019
METRO
State ban on flavored vape products triggers lawsuit Vape advocates challenge Governor Raimondo’s ban on flavored e-cigarettes BY MAIA ROSENFELD SENIOR STAFF WRITER Today marks one month since Gov. Gina Raimondo and the Rhode Island Department of Health banned the sale of flavored vaping products in the state in an effort to address growing public health concerns around vaping, particularly among youth. The ban has received mixed reviews and also sparked a lawsuit: The Vapor Technology Association and the owner of RI e-Cig & Vapes have challenged the ban in court, claiming it will destroy the Rhode Island vaping industry and affect hundreds of small business owners. They are asking a Superior Court judge to grant a temporary restraining order on RIDOH’s emergency health regulations that currently enforce the ban, a tactic used to challenge similar bans in other states, said Donna Dionne, owner of RI e-Cig & Vapes. The Vapor Technology Association could not provide a comment by press time. The ban is a response to what RIDOH Public Information Officer Joseph Wendelken calls a “public health epidemic of e-cigarette use among young people in Rhode Island.” The ban aims to decrease electronic cigarette use particularly among youth, who are often drawn to vaping for its novel flavors, Wendelken said. According to Wendelken, 20 percent of Rhode Island high school students report regular e-cigarette use and 15 percent of Rhode Island middle school students report experimenting with e-cigarettes at some point. At the University, approximately
WEITZMAN FROM PAGE 1 said. He remembered her laughing as he traced the soles of her feet. The Duchess of Cambridge would also go on to sport his designs — specifically, two varieties of five-inch wedges — on a mountain in Australia and while playing beach volleyball, moments which both made headlines. “If you do it in a different way you have more fun, you get noticed quicker and people write about it,” Weitzman said. “Once and a while, you get a little lucky. But unless you’re there playing, the luck doesn’t come.” There have been many similar moments — combinations of luck and careful planning — that have advanced Weitzman’s designs. Sales exploded when Jennifer Aniston was photographed wearing Stuart Weitzman espadrilles for many days one spring, which resulted in a People magazine spread heralding the shoe’s versatility. Recently, pop-stars Jennifer Lopez and Taylor Swift have furthered the iconography of Weitzman’s thigh-
18 percent of undergraduate students reported using e-cigarettes, with just over 4 percent reporting daily use, according to The Herald’s Fall 2019 poll. In comparison, youth smoking rates in Rhode Island for traditional cigarettes are around 5 percent. This gap is widening, with rates of e-cigarette use among youth steadily climbing while use of traditional cigarettes among youth continues to drop, Wendelken added. The decline in traditional cigarette use among youth comes after decades of state efforts to educate people about the dangers of smoking and provide resources to help them quit, Wendelken said. But similar efforts to reduce youth e-cigarette use have been ineffective, he added, describing the youth vaping rates in Rhode Island as “enormously high” and “very unsettling.” But Dionne has concerns about the ban’s impact not only on businesses but also on those who rely on flavored vaping products to avoid traditional cigarettes. “We’re here to try to help people quit smoking and save lives,” she said. “I have my customers who have been around for years saying, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ They’re in tears or they’re very upset and angry, and they say they’re going to go back to cigarettes, that they don’t have any other choices.” After 15 years of smoking and several attempts to quit through traditional nicotine replacement options, Dionne received a vaping as a gift and quit smoking traditional cigarettes within days. Her husband, who she described as “a two-pack-a-day guy,” then tried vaping and dropped his cigarette habit within a week. “I was seeing that all these people were quitting with these devices, and I needed to do something,” Dionne said. So she resigned from her position as
a state social worker and opened RI e-Cig & Vapes in 2014. “I’ve had people come in who smoked for 50 years and who quit using a vaping with the flavored e-liquid,” she said, adding that this transition likely would not have been possible without flavored vaping products. Flavored vaping products comprise 80 percent of Dionne’s sales, and since taking these products off the shelves, she has had very little business. Dionne had to close her store in Coventry, one of two locations, and lay off seven of her 10 employees. She worries about the ban’s effect on the employees of vaping businesses in Rhode Island. Dionne said she has not seen customers turn to unflavored vaping products to replace the flavored products. Instead, customers have told her they are going back to smoking traditional cigarettes, or traveling to other states
to purchase flavored vaping products. Gary Zhou ’20 has bought flavored vaping products for his friends in places where they are legal, like New York. Although he noted that the ban makes it much more inconvenient for people to continue their vaping habits, Zhou does not oppose the ban. In fact, he credits it with helping several of his friends quit vaping. Many of Zhou’s friends were previously “on the cusp” of quitting vaping, he said, but Rhode Island’s recent ban has pushed them “over the edge.” Although some of his friends continue to rely on others who buy flavored vaping products in bulk when traveling to other states, several are planning to stop vaping once they run out of their current supply. He doesn’t know anyone who is planning to turn to traditional cigarettes instead. Josh Marinelli ’20, a daily user, be-
gan vaping two years ago when he was 19, but plans to quit because of the ban. Marinelli never smoked cigarettes before he began vaping and does not plan to begin after he quits. Like many others, he was drawn to e-cigarettes because of their enticing flavors. Although Marinelli had previously considered quitting vaping due to both its financial and health costs, he said his current plan to quit is “a direct result” of the ban. “Now it’s like what choice do you have but to (quit), unless you like tobacco flavored, which I don’t,” he said. Like Zhou, Marinelli sees the benefits to banning flavored vaping products, noting the prevalence of underage vaping. But he added that the ban unduly limits adult vaping users, who he thinks should be able to make these kinds of decisions for themselves.
high boots by wearing various glittering and extra-tall renditions of the style in their world-tour wardrobes. At two points in his lecture, Weitzman invited students from the audience to model a pair of his shoes. Sasha Pinto ’21, president of F@B, demonstrated a cheetah-print rendition of Weitzman’s classic Nudist sandal. “This shoe was created in a morning. It took two months to engineer its fit. We made 19 modifications to this shoe,” Weitzman said. Another student, Yereem Chun ’22, modeled his glittering million-dollar shoe, a pump adorned with 464 diamonds that Weitzman first crafted for actress Laura Harring to wear to the 2002 Academy Awards. But the shoe designer said that the imagery associated with his signature styles would not have reached such a wide audience without his collaborations with creatives like former Vogue photographer Mario Testino, actor and director James Franco, architect Zaha Hadid and models Kate Moss and Gigi Hadid. In 2013, Weitzman joined Testino and
Franco to create “Made for Walking,” an advertisement that featured Moss and introduced the world to his new boot styles. Strutting through London streets in multiple renditions of Weitzman’s boot, Moss turned heads to the tune of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walkin’.” The advertisement cemented the thigh-high boot as a staple piece in Weitzman’s repertoire, where the style has remained, season after season. The advertisement followed a tipping point in his career — when the daughter of a friend said she recognized his name, but only because her mother wore his shoes. “That girl said five words to me, and it changed my whole company. It did something that probably eventually I would have been forced to do, … but she changed my company,” Weitzman said. With the help of Moss and others, Weitzman’s shoes went from high-fashion staple to cultural icon. “None of you will be able to do the best you can do if you do it alone,” Weitzman said, emphasizing that his company would not have succeeded
without the vision of his collaborators. In 2015, Weitzman sold his shoe-empire to Coach, Inc. for $574 million, marking the first-ever acquisition for Coach, a brand that had experienced losses in years prior. In the fiscal year following the acquisition, Coach reported an overall net sales increase of 7 percent, according to Business Wire. Both brands are now encompassed under Tapestry, a global fashion house that also includes Kate Spade. In early October, Penn officially renamed its School of Design the “Stuart Weitzman School of Design” in honor of Weitzman’s “incomparable support to the school of design” and following a sizeable donation by Weitzman, the Daily Pennsylvanian reported. The change received some pushback from students, who said that Weitzman’s name, while recognizable, would give a false impression of the program, which did not include a fashion design track, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian. Still, Weitzman’s donation to Penn
reflected the same educational effort represented by Weitzman’s talk at the University: Since selling his company, much of Weitzman’s focus has shifted toward educating the next generation of business and fashion leaders. After Weitzman “sold his company in 2015 and transitioned out as creative director in 2017, one of his retirement ‘jobs’ has been to share his entrepreneurial expertise with students around the world through talks like these,” Pinto wrote in an email to The Herald. “Hearing someone like Stuart Weitzman ignites our imaginations and inspires us to forge our own paths,” Pinto wrote. Ford Bennett ’23 said he attended Weitzman’s talk because, as a first-year, he is trying to experience as many things as possible. He enjoyed Weitzman’s stories of success, as well as hearing the “countless messages and lessons that he has learned throughout his life, that can be applied to my life and other students here.”
SUMMER ZHANG / HERALD
In This Issue
Screen Memory
ROB CAPRON 5
A Brief History of Sorry ANNELIESE MAIR 4
An (Asian) American Abroad
NAOMI KIM 3
Cracking Open a Cold One
SYDNEY LO 2 JENNIFER OSBORNE
A$AP Ruski
5
postCover by Sophie Morse
NOV 1
—
VOL 24 —
ISSUE 8
FEATURE
Cracking Open a Cold One
One Woman's Exploration of Beer's Past and Present BY SYDNEY LO ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVIA LUNGER
A
bottle of Heineken turns slowly on the screen, revealing the logo of the UEFA Champions League. The final game is the coming Saturday and, according to the narrator, “you are going to watch it with your friends, having a Heineken.” This is an actual commercial that aired in Brazil in May of 2014. The best part is, you can do this all “without ditching your wife, because this time, she is the one ditching you.” The narrator then announces the Heineken Shoe Sale: A women’s shoe sale that the company has scheduled at the exact time of the soccer game. The commercial goes on to delve into details and discounts, but the ultimate message remains: Soccer and beer (specifically Heineken) are for men, shoes and shopping are for women. Perhaps predictably, the commercial provoked public outcry and was eventually removed from Heineken’s YouTube page. However, the commercial’s disappointing—and borderline nonsensical—assertions are nothing new in beer advertising.
In a Business Insider article about the ad in question, reporter Aaron Taube remarks, “It’s a curious business strategy. Why tell an entire one half of the world population not to buy your product? If a beer was advertised to both sexes, would men stop drinking it?” Yet this male-exclusive marketing has, more or less, been the reality of the industry until very recently. Even in the past year, I have seen countless commercials that suggested I, a woman, would and should have no interest in the beverage. For example, take the 2004 Miller High Life 5 O’Clock Shadow commercial, which describes how every “High Life man” knows when 5:00 p.m.—the universal time at which consuming alcohol becomes acceptable—has arrived from the growth of his beard. Or recall Bud Light Lime’s “The Ultimate Fantasy” commercial, featuring UFC ring girl Arianny Celeste half-covered in a pile of limes, talking about how much she likes a guy that “can go more than one round.” Aside from the fact that these companies divide people up based on the gender
binary, a flawed idea in and of itself, and play into stereotypes, they aren’t wrong for having a targeted audience. Brands like Nike or Coca-Cola produce ads directed specifically at men, women, and/or children in order to garner more attention for their products by forming connections between specific identity groups and their brands. What is strange is when an entire industry and its associated brands consistently target one audience exclusively and ignore or alienate everyone else. In a way, this strategy is effective, given that compared to women, men are far more likely to favor beer over other alcoholic beverages, according to a 2017 Gallup Consumption Habits Survey. A 2018 laboratory simulation corroborated that men consume more beer in group settings than alone in order to assert their masculinity. Indeed, beer has rooted itself in Western culture as the quintessential manly drink. On television, even when shows like How I Met Your Mother and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feature all people drinking beer, male characters tend to be restricted to beer while women can select from the full spectrum of alcoholic beverages. Additionally, I have heard a myriad of casual remarks made at parties, restaurants, and even family gatherings that paint beer as “a Man’s Man drink” or the go-to beverage for men in social settings and conjure images of men standing around a grill, drinking Coronas. Beer is the definitive cool drink, the opposite of “girly cocktails” or wine. Notably, the masculinization of beer is relatively recent in Western culture. The earliest hard evidence of beer production reveals that Ancient Mesopotamian communities were brewing barley concoctions as early as 3400 B.C.E., though some historians believe that people had been brewing for hundreds of years prior. At that time, beer would have been a clean, nutritional alternative to drinking water from nearby contaminated rivers. Furthermore, as beer brewing was a kitchen task completed in the home, it was most likely considered women’s work. This is supported by the prevalence of female goddesses of beer in these ancient cultures. For instance, a clay tablet from 1800 B.C.E. contains
Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, It’s finally time, folks. The best month of the year is here. Sorry, Halloween lovers, but nothing in the world beats the magical month of November, filled with amber leaves on the trees and in the gutters, breezes so cold that you finally get to break out the winter jacket, and gratitude overflowing in preparation for Thanksgiving. Maybe your midterms are dying down (or, at the very least, the first round of midterms are) and you have some....free time? Free time can be scary—suddenly, hours upon hours of the afternoon are opened up, begging you to do something with your time—anything! You can’t just keep watching Bon Appetit videos on YouTube and reading 30 pages of a novel before getting bored, Nicole! November is for discovering new hobbies, enjoying the outdoors before it gets too cold, and getting to experience this campus in ways you haven’t before. Have you ever sat at Prospect Park while the sun sets? Ever done work in one of those window beds at 85 Waterman? Ever gone to the Nelson? Don’t worry, I haven’t done that last one either, but this is the
2! POST–
Top 10 Signs It’s November
season for trying new things, my friends. post- is here to fill all of your free-time needs. You can cozy up with this week’s copy and feast on our Feature, an exploration of the complicated relationship between beer, masculinity, and sexism. You can read our Narrative pieces and find yourself ruminating on the prevalence of “sorry” in our vernacular, or transported to Dublin to understand the study-abroad experience through an AsianAmerican perspective. Finally, you can peruse our Arts & Culture section, which brings you a piece about the filmic magic of Hitchcock’s Rear Window and another about how an A$AP Rocky lyrical mispronunciation hints at the intersection of Russian and American rap. So rejoice for November, and get ready for a month of gratitude, blankets, and more post- coming your way!
Nicole Fegan
Arts & Culture Section Editor
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Your calendar app says so Someone’s playing Mariah Carey Christmas sales …which means Christmas shopping— better quit while you’re ahead Starbucks switches to its Christmascolored cups You have to start pretending you like eggnog A Christmas Carol starts showing up in your recommended on Netflix Rotting Jack-o-Lanterns A hike in airline ticket prices post- starts making Christmas jokes
an ode to Ninkasi—the Sumerian goddess of beer— as well as a female priestess’s beer recipe. Female goddesses of beer were not limited to Mesopotamia— Ancient Egyptians also worshipped a goddess of beer, Tenenit, and in Baltic and Slavic mythology, the goddess Raugutiene gave protection to beer and brewing. When beer production became a business rather than another household chore, women initially maintained authority. In the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, “every mention of a tavern owner uses ‘she,’” states archeological anthropologist Patty Hamrick. Alewives, women who sold excess beer they’d made, emerged as a group around the fifth century C.E.. A few even ran small bars out of their homes. In the Benedictine Convent of Rupertsberg (12th century C.E.), Hildegard Von Bingen recommended hops as a preserving agent in her medical book Physica, at least 500 years before it would be popularized throughout the rest of Europe. However, while homebrewing by women would persist for centuries (even well into the formation of the United States), the Renaissance saw the rise of trade guilds and large-scale production breweries. The laws which regulated these institutions excluded women entirely. Even worse, an estimated 80,000 suspected witches were put to death during the witch trials of Europe, 80 percent of whom were women, many female brewers among them. In her article “How Women Brewsters Saved the World,” historian Tara Nunin explains, “Some historians see clear similarities between brewsters and illustrations selected for anti-witch propaganda.” By the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, control over the brewing industry had transitioned almost entirely to men. Teri Fahrendorf, founder of the Pink Boots Society, an organization for women in the beer industry, explains how this historic transition made beer into the cultural touchstone it is today, stating, “Beer became known as a man’s beverage because it was made by men . . . Suddenly it was maybe not so ladylike to have a beer.” More recently, in the United States, “the tightly defined gender roles of the ’50s and Mad Men-era marketers created an image of beer as a drink for men, made by commercial breweries where women were valued only as promotional vehicles,” according to Tara Nurin. Women were wiped off the byline of beer as if they’d never been there, and beer-drinking was branded as a masculine activity. One interesting and perhaps counterintuitive residual of this trend is the enduring trope of the beerliking woman. Popularized by movies like There’s Something About Mary and Miss Congeniality, this ideal involves female characters and love interests enjoying a beer or bemoaning “girly” drinks. For instance, in the former movie, Mary (played by Cameron Diaz) explains her ideal man to a friend: “I want a guy who can play 36 holes of golf and still have enough energy to take Warren and me to a baseball game, and eat sausages, and beer, not light beer, but BEER.” These “cool” girls have miraculously
managed to not be turned off by the endless beer ads utilizing rhetoric that ignores or denigrates their experiences. Some advertisements, like a 1996 Bud Light Commercial about a woman who insists on keeping her bottle of beer from her partner, even perpetuate this female ideal. I have met many women who legitimately like beer, many who drink it if it’s present, and many who despise it. And for every man I’ve met who feels pressured to drink beer, I’ve met a woman who feels a similar pressure. I myself have never particularly enjoyed beer, though I’ve also never actively disliked it. Still, I have certainly picked up a can of Narragansett at a dorm party in an attempt to look cool. Yet the pressure women feel to drink beer is intrinsically different from that of men; while men might drink beer to be “real men,” women often consume the beverage so as to “not be like other girls.” It’s not just that beer is known to be a masculine drink, it’s that other more typically feminine-coded drinks are widely perceived as less than, and thus so are those who drink them. It’s an irrational mindset, basing a person’s value on their alcoholic beverage preference—made all the more ridiculous given that those so-called “girly drinks” tend to have a much higher alcohol content (wine, for example, contains 11-13% alcohol, while beer has only 4.5%) and are thus “tougher” on the body. However, with the rise of the craft beer industry and cultural movements against sexism like #MeToo during the 21st century, beer is slowly but surely shedding its historic exclusivity. Twenty-nine percent of brewery workers in the United States are female according to a 2014 study by Auburn University, which despite being a small percentage represents a meaningful increase from decades past. In 2018, the first female-focused beer festival in the United States, Dames and Dregs, took place in Atlanta, Georgia, providing an opportunity for women in the industry to share their work and experiences. Women-led organizations like the Pinks Boots Society offer scholarships, networking, and other resources, empowering women in the beer industry to advance their careers. Since its founding in 2007, the Pink Boots Society has expanded from 16 members to over 2,500 in about 30 countries today. Perhaps the most public display of this shift can be found in the most recent NFL Super Bowl in February 2019. Two major beer brands, Stella Artois and Michelob Ultra, produced commercials featuring actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Zoe Kravitz respectively. The ads show Parker in her titular role of Carrie Bradshaw, advocating for Stella Artois’s partnership for the #PourItForward clean water campaign, and Kravitz performing ASMR with a bottle of Michelob Ultra. The actresses are shown not as sexualized accessories to their respective beers, but as people who simply enjoy the beverages. Even more exciting: The Michelob Ultra ad was produced by a womenled team. The advertising campaign was also commissioned by a woman, Azania Andrews, who
is the current vice-president of Anheuser-Busch. Marketing, the department responsible for the public image of major beer brands like Budweiser, Michelob, and Natural Light. Much work has to be done before beer can truly be considered an inclusive, gender-neutral beverage. Nevertheless, the work of women in beer is slowly but surely turning the tide. Even more importantly, these women are creating a future for others. Andrews states in an interview with Advertising Age, "First and foremost, as a woman in marketing, a woman in beer, with all the conversations around diversity, I feel that I want to use my power for good, and I feel a responsibility to try to create equity in the industry by creating opportunities for women." As consumers, we also have the power to change the beer industry for the better. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone has to drink beer. But if you do like to crack open a cold one, perhaps take a little extra time to consider beer’s complex history the next time you do—and pick a brand committed to making beer a beverage for all.
An (Asian) American Abroad A Dispatch from Dublin BY NAOMI KIM ILLUSTRATED BY CECILIA CAO
In America, I never felt very American. When I became an American citizen at sixteen, questions exploded in my mind like a never-ending show of Fourth of July fireworks: What is an American and what does it mean for me to be one and where am I from and what on earth does it mean to be Asian American? Oddly enough, the first time I claimed an American identity was in French class. I learned to say je suis américaine two years after my naturalization. It felt all kinds of wrong. French felt foreign in my mouth—the syllables strange, the accent elusive. Americanness itself felt foreign as well: a scratchy, too-small sweater someone was forcing over my head. But what other answer could I give when asked quelle est ta nationalité? My American passport, my parents’ naturalization, made me American. But here in Dublin, having left America, is where I have truly become an American. *** I come face-to-face with my identity in the taxi I take into Dublin from the airport, when my amiable driver begins to chat with me about American politics. “Your president,” he says. “You all,” he says. “It’s a shame, how you all aren’t even ready for a female president!” It’s my first day in Ireland, and I am already being identified as part of an American collective I never really thought I belonged to. Oh, I think, almost startled. I’m an American. It turns out that I carry this Americanness with me
“Clogged pores are my state of existence.” “I think you’ll enjoy my essay. It’s about human suffering.”
NOVEMBER 1 , 2019!3
NARRATIVE
everywhere, like the very breath that lives in my lungs. Simply opening my mouth often broadcasts it. I meet an Australian girl who says, as soon as I introduce myself, “So I take it you’re from the States?” An Irish student tells me that she can hear some “stateside twang” when I talk. Stateside twang? To me, my American accent sounds flat. Boring. I hear myself saying “sorry” as I squeeze past people on the sidewalk, the o drawn out into an ugly ah. Sorry. S-ah-rry. I start to say sorry the way I hear it from others, like s-oh-rry. I start calling America “the States.” Hi, I’m Naomi, I say over and over again. I’m from the States. While my accent immediately exposes my Americanness, I suspect that many people don’t expect me to be American before they hear me speak. I don’t look American—which is to say that I’m not white. (Another question: What does an American look like? And another: What do people think an American looks like?) I tell an elderly Irish man I’m from the States, and he awkwardly asks me what my “background” is. Background? He clarifies, “Your, um…ethnic background.” I still don’t know how I feel about his question—is it funny, or is it discomfiting? Not wanting to betray either reaction, I just reply that I’m Korean American. We end up having a short-lived and stilted conversation about how California has a large Korean American population. (I’ve never been to California.) On bustling Grafton Street, I’m twice flagged down by Chinese tourists who mistake me for one of them. Surprise colors the face of one woman after I say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not Chinese,” and, caught off guard, she stammers, “Thank you.” This, at least, is a familiar experience—even in the States, Asians and non-Asians alike frequently assume I am Chinese. At Han Sung Asian Market across the river, is the cashier surprised by the American debit card I use to pay for my sesame oil and gochujang? What about those working at Tesco and Lidl? *** One Sunday, at a church service I walk too far to attend, an elderly woman sits down next to me and asks if this is my first time here. (It is.) Friendly and conversational, Joan asks me where I’m from. I say, “I’m from the States.” “Oh!” says Joan. Am I imagining the hint of surprise in her voice? Later, Joan introduces me to another American in the church because of our shared nationality. I’m relieved that I’ve been spared a stuttering conversation with the other Koreans in attendance, whom I overheard fluently conversing in Korean. I’m not confident that my language skills could endure a conversation with a true native speaker. And how could I explain, “Well, I’m Korean, but Korean American,” and at what point would the distinction become necessary? Because surely it is. If this were America, would I have been introduced to the Korean congregants instead? 4!POST–
In America, the “Asian” part of “Asian American” feels most visible—not just to non-Asians, but to me as well. I frequently wrestle with the question of what it means to be Asian in America, the question of what it means to be an Asian American. Sharing a living space with white Americans, I worry that frying kimchi will leave behind an offensive smell in the communal kitchen. I feel oddly out of place cooking rice on the stove. I tell myself I’m being ridiculous for feeling this way without reason. Here in Ireland, the “American” in “Asian American” seems to draw more attention. Perhaps it’s because people want to avoid saying anything potentially insensitive, or perhaps it’s because Americanness is foreign and interesting enough on its own. But in any case, I have never felt so squarely American in my life. Once we’re downstairs for tea and coffee at the church, one woman tells me about her sister who married an American, moved to Georgia—my home state— and developed a thick Southern accent. She treats me to a nasally, exaggerated Southern drawl, imitating her sister’s complaints about the lack of free soda refills in Ireland: “But in America…” For the first time, I find myself holding onto my newfound American identity without struggling violently with or against it. Maybe it’s because America is something familiar in this country where cars drive on the left side of the road and the h sound goes missing from Thursday and thirty. Maybe it’s because leaving has made me realize that when I think of home, I think of America. Maybe it’s because, finally, I want to assert that, despite my own ongoing questions and despite others’ doubts, I, too, belong in America. *** I can say it now, much more easily: je suis américaine. After two years of studying French, the language does not seem terribly foreign anymore. Likewise, I’ve become more comfortable with my Americanness, although I would be lying if I said the sweater isn’t sometimes still too small, too scratchy. But I will lay claim to it and wear it nonetheless, so that it stretches to make room for me, so that the knitting softens against my skin.
A Brief History of Sorry adj. (and int.)
BY ANNELIESE MAIR ILLUSTRATED BY CAROL DEMICK
I do not recall the first time I was scolded, nor do I remember the first time I was Sorry for it. I don’t know when I first used Sorry to qualify my shortcomings, to ask for something, to excuse myself; I’m not sure when I adopted it as a space-filler, a shadow over the rest of my words, making myself smaller. And I can’t remember
the number of times I had already used it the day my professor leveled his eyes at me and said, “You know, Anneliese, you don’t have to apologize for everything.” I hadn’t even realized that I’d apologized for sharing my thoughts on Euripide's Hippolytos. And in response to my professor’s scorn? “Oh…Sorry about that.” After the crimson shame began to drain from my cheeks, I wondered when and how I’d fallen into such stagnant repetition—how I’d etched Sorry into my every conversation while hardly ever meaning the same thing by it, if anything at all. My mind fails to construct a cohesive timeline of my apologetic behavior. But I doubt this is a matter of memory alone. Sorry must have formed elsewhere, whether in text or in conscience; it must have started somewhere for me to find myself here. I trace Sorry’s origins through several catalog searches at the Rock library, to a section shelving titles about politics, apologies, and public life, where I find a novel on the bottom left shelf of aisle eight whose name has long faded. Frayed binding has rubbed uneven holes through the spine; shadowed edges merge into a creamcolored center, each page a magnified coffee stain. The text reads to me like an old man’s voice, booming and polite: “We reveal our secrets, we teach, we make love, we flatter, we scold, we tell lies, with our manners.” I picture this novel when it breathed as a tree, imagine it feeding the pair of lungs that chopped it down to create a now century-old guide to manners. I brush the corners that countless fingers have swept before mine, all intent on grasping the secrets of this “Fine Art.” Every pageturn swells into a small wave of dust, a greeting from the past, phrases punctuated by a sharp sneeze. I trace its winding chapters, following an elaborate construction of foundations and absolutes: setting the table, dinner party etiquette, looking nice for your Husband when he comes home. Establishing behavioral cornerstones: technique, intent—all that is Correct. I close the binding in a frustrated clap, only half-afraid I broke the thing. The text has evaded, carefully and unintentionally, a word that the Oxford English Dictionary describes with eighteen different definitions—paving the way for several histories of Sorry. The word’s collective history is breathed to life when a child is first scorned, exhaled when we repeat ourselves into the blurred edges of Sorry’s confines: a frame, an all-encompassing air. It’s a history recycled in becoming, temporarily, this amorphous noun. To balance whatever gesture or mistake I think I’ve made, I subordinate myself to Sorry: I describe my own being only in defining an enclosure. When I declare that I am Sorry, I modify myself; I place myself in a shallow space to be received by a nod, an acceptance of stability or its attempt. I become legible in the code of Manner. I won’t find this code—at least not here, in aisle eight of the Rock—in any written form. I can only hear it enacted, just about anywhere, from my voice or others'. Most frequently from those of other women. In several occurrences, Sorry operates as something other than an acknowledgment of wrongdoing: It acts as an afterthought- or forethought to comments made in class, softens any recognition of physical existence, noting fault for non-harmful accidental contact, peacefully introducing the right to a study room booked in advance. I think at some point we intertwine politeness and maturity; we mistake Sorry for a bridge, an olive branch. The acceptance of this artificial stability paves way for repetition; expectations of appropriate behavior are set loosely and nonuniformly; for some, Sorry begins to drive the breath, and the word gathers itself endlessly into white noise of our world. I’d been trying to build a foundation upon Sorry, setting a cornerstone for my public persona in adherence to social norms. But the texture of Sorry is viscous—it
ARTS & CULTURE
seeps through the body like glue. It is this quiet fluidity that allows the word to envelop whole parts of us. The very entity that tries to restore balance actually clouds the truth; it begins to undercut the threads that hold one’s identity together. In growing into the shell of my “adult” or mature self, I had begun to confine myself to the edges of existence: I was constantly losing track of myself, often becoming Sorry instead. Sorry can become dangerous when it acts as an apology for existence. In repetition, some of us are bound by the air we learn to breathe; some become Sorry for taking up any space at all. What is this becoming? This word with almost infinite intention, endless use—what is it collecting? A history: spoken and written, sticky and shrunken, told and untelling—one that is seemingly too diverse and too volatile to be contained. My search to define and trace histories of Sorry feels like turning on high beams in the fog: Trying to shine a light only leaves the surrounding shadows thicker, richer, and my own understanding all the more opaque. In mapping out the blueprints of Sorry, I reside in familiar unnamed spaces, and here, hovering, suspended, I drift in its currents like seaweed.
Screen Memory Rear Window and Why We Watch Movies BY ROB CAPRON ILLUSTRATED BY GABY TREVIÑO
At what age, if any, are we old enough to truly watch a movie? What threshold of time and space must be crossed before we can fully understand how a film works and the limitations of the magic it offers? There’s an obvious answer: It depends on the movie and the maturity of the person watching it. But even then, it’s incredibly rare for a child—let alone an adult—to watch one of our modern myths without being told beforehand what to anticipate and what to avoid. I speak, of course, of film ratings. Anonymous bureaucrats provide parents with content warnings, leaving it to them to determine whether their children can handle decapitations or the word “crap”—and God forbid there be any nudity. Societal thresholds for mental and emotional maturity are handed out before the film is even released. But such labels are useless in estimating the influence a film may hold over someone. Perhaps even more crucially, they fail to inform
viewers of the many ways film language can guide these perceptions. All ages welcome here. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic Rear Window is all about that influence—an influence you have to see through in order to understand. I first saw the film when I was nine. Was I mature enough to understand much of the film’s secondary elements—its subtext, its shot structure, its condemnation of the protagonists’ sexual immaturity? Hell no! I didn’t even know that film cameras moved in different directions on purpose until I came to college. And this is coming from a film actor and a film buff— someone who has spent half his life either on or in front of a screen. But even at the age of nine, something about this movie seemed...well, different. As I leaned forward on the couch, the sequences on screen pulled me into a world of watching—both literally and figuratively. For those unfamiliar, Rear Window (eventually sorta remade as Disturbia, if you remember Disturbia) follows injured photographer L.B. Jefferies in the aftermath of a horrible accident. Restless whilst confined to a wheelchair in his apartment complex, Jefferies decides to use his window as a vantage point to spy on his neighbors across the courtyard. He quickly begins to suspect that the man who lives directly across from him has murdered his wife. Throughout the film, supporting characters straight up tell Jefferies that both his hobby and his hunch are creepy. And yet they still want Jefferies to be right. They want the wife to have been murdered. Why? Well, don’t we? It’s an entertaining story, after all. At nine, I was wholly absorbed by this surface question, the one that fascinates Jefferies: Did the neighbor do it? Was he truly responsible? But as the movie and I have grown older, I have begun to see the hidden layers, the subtext I was incapable of deciphering as a child. This movie isn’t just a whodunit. It’s a movie about the art of the whodunit. It’s a movie about watching movies. We do not just see the plot unfold through Jefferies’ eyes—we watch with him, and in a deeper sense, we become him. Hitchcock ingeniously aligns the audience’s perspective with Jefferies’ actual field of vision. More than half of the film is composed of “point-of-view” shots from Jefferies’ window; when he scans one room or another, we engage in the same voyeuristic, creepy “watching.” He is our guiding light, our lens into the film (pun intended); as he looks into his camera and we look through him, we make the same connections and observations. As he grows convinced of his neighbor’s wrongdoing, so do we. In a sense, the very process of filmmaking itself is laid bare before our eyes. Mature viewers will understand the power the camera wields—over what we see, what we think, and what ideas are implanted into our minds. It is this understanding—of the dangers of voyeurism, of film as a medium that allows us to indulge in the creepy shit we’re normally not allowed to do—that has replaced my youthful excitement at a plot whose problematic undertones I had never considered (and I won’t spoil the ending, but it goes without saying that Jefferies—and, by extension, the audience—are rightfully punished for that voyeurism). You’d think it was impossible to reclaim the
same sense of wonder, of being whisked away into a story and absorbed solely by the strength of its composition. It should be easy to see the film now as explicitly a message, a moral—a ham-fisted explanation of why movies are dangerous and why nine-year-olds shouldn’t watch a damn thing. Yet I still feel just how brilliantly Hitchcock turns the process of the investigation—discovery, anticipation, the twisted fun of the waiting and watching—into the most riveting aspect of it all. Watching this movie, you are somehow both utterly immersed and made completely aware of your immersion. Maybe that’s the secret: The whodunnit makes you a nine-year-old viewer again, but the resolution proceeds to complicate your carelessness. Perhaps that’s the line we must walk every time we watch a movie: give in completely or stand back, cold and intellectual. To find that middle ground, it really does take a certain kind of maturity you can’t simply age into. Being directed can only go so far.
A$AP Ruski
The Cultural Problematic of our Babushka Boi BY JENNIFER OSBORNE ILLUSTRATED BY ANNA SEMIZHONOVA
A$AP Rocky - Babushka Boi (Official Video) 25,591,976 views Aug. 28, 2019 *** TiHeich, two days ago “Went from A$AP ROCKY to а ар яоску” The impetus for A$AP Rocky’s latest single “Babushka Boi” has been building since late 2018, ever since the rapper’s tragic Razor scooter accident. To cover up the resultant facial scar for his appearance on The Daily Show, he threw on a yellow headscarf, terming it his “babushka” in reference to the commonplace use of the garment among Russian grandmothers. Even though the babushka no longer serves any functional purpose for Rocky, with his scar a thing of the past thanks to plastic surgery, it continues to be a mainstay in his wardrobe. Indeed, the accessory has become something of a self-conscious trademark, with Rocky changing his Instagram bio to “BABUSHKA BOI” and exhorting his fans “to wear babushkas from here on out. Silk gang, silk city, you know how we do it. Gucci, yeah.” *** Mr. Rabbit, two weeks ago (edited) [2015: Asap Rocky 2019: Asapa Rockievna] Internet trolls around the world soon caught on that Rocky’s headscarves were here to stay, and they had a lot to say. Google image search “A$AP Rocky babushka,” and you will receive hundreds of unflattering results that place the artist next to his fellow garmentfiend Queen Elizabeth II, as well as gaggles of arthritic Eastern European ladies. Nevertheless, his style caught on quickly within celebrity circles, especially after Rocky’s friend and collaborator Frank Ocean posted a selfie rocking a babushka under a hoodie. Other celebs have since replicated the “babushka boi” style, causing Vice to list it as one of the 12 looks that defined 2018. *** Molodoy Senpai, one month ago “A$AP: Uses one Russian word Russians: davay davay asap ruski” RedWolF, one week ago “[Babushka is] not only a russian word” A$AP Rocky’s “Babushka Boi” has garnered international outrage for its mispronounciation and misuse of the word “babushka” (simply meaning NOVEMBER 1 , 2019!5
ARTS&CULTURE
“grandmother”) to refer to an item of clothing. Of course, Rocky is not the first to make this mistake, as “babushka” has long been used by English speakers to refer to Russian grandmother-type headwear. Headscarves themselves are not inherently Eastern European, and as The Calvert Journal, a guide to contemporary New East culture, points out, “What makes the look more Omsk than old Hollywood is precisely the rapper’s insistence on calling it a ‘babushka’ in spite of the lack of a Russian reference point.” The article goes on to speculate that Rocky’s decision to anchor his fashion sense in Eastern European aesthetics is mostly a result of the current hype surrounding Russian fashion, particularly streetwear. Rocky’s trademark headscarf, then, might be a sign that hip hop is experiencing a new cultural exchange with Russia, a country whose rap history dates only as far back as the ’90s and exists precariously in a predominantly white environment. Dazed, a British biweekly style magazine, notes that “A$AP Rocky’s take on Russian culture flips a narrative of cultural appropriation that underpins contemporary Russian rap, which frequently copies tropes of American rap— its mannerisms, style, obsession with luxury brands, and jewellery.” Critics are still debating whether this classifies as cultural appropriation (probably), but the “babushka boi” look has excited rather than offended most Russian youth. It’s now common to see emerging rappers in the U.S. and Russia alike combining a headscarf with their usual tracksuit and sneakers. ***
Элан Камалов, two days ago [Hello from Russia, don’t come it’s bad here :) ] Regardless of the intentions behind Rocky’s apparel, his new song “Babushka Boi” relies heavily on stereotypes surrounding the Russian mafia for its street cred. The trailer created to build hype for the song’s release featured Rocky tap dancing to a hip hop version of “Murka,” a pivotal work of Russia’s criminal folk music tradition. The song’s actual lyrics attempt to set up Rocky as a Scarface-type mobster: references to the movie are found throughout the song, and Rocky directly compares himself to the film’s protagonist, claiming the same propensity for gun violence and highpriced living. The music video is even more overt in its simultaneous portrayal of Rocky as both a dangerous criminal of the American ’20s and a Russian gopnik, a term originally used to refer to young, lower-class Russian men from criminal regions controlled by local mafias. The video opens with several criminals dressed in mobster apparel on the run from the police, portrayed here as anthropomorphic pigs. After robbing a bank, the gang of mobsters—Rocky with prosthetic facial scars and a Luigi-esque caricature of a mustachioed Italian man the most prominent among them—seek refuge with some older white women wearing babushkas. The criminals ultimately confront the police, who unsurprisingly die in the standoff, before being turned into sausages to be sold by the aforementioned Eastern European women at their Soviet-style meat counter. All of this, of course, is in wildly bad taste considering Rocky’s recent arrest and detainment in Sweden. It also forces us to ask an important question:
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Anita Sheih FEATURE Managing Editor Sydney Lo
“Even people who study English go to the career fair.” –Caroline Ribet, “my code is bigger than your code" 11.02.18
Section Editors Sara Shapiro Erin Walden Staff Writer Anna Harvey
“Tap water is clean, which is great. Everything else, though, needs to be filtered.” –Sonya Bui, “conversations with myself” 10.26.17
NARRATIVE Managing Editor Celina Sun Section Editors Liza Edwards-Levin Michelle Liu Jasmine Ngai
Does Rocky simply find the babushka an interesting accessory, or is he making an inappropriate attempt to co-opt the “cool” associated with post-Soviet criminal elements? *** Алексей Малютин, one month ago “YouTube: Sees word "Babushka" YouTube: Ah, I see. I'll recomend this to Russians.” Константин Поезжаев, one month ago (edited) “Hey, Russia love Rocky” Despite all this, Russian reception of the new song has been largely positive. The “Murka” backtrack of the trailer was instantly recognizable to Slavic populations and sent the Russian internet into a frenzy. The hip hop version of “Murka” used in the video was actually written by Russian musicians lildozzzhd and MATXX— the latter now styles himself “Russian babushka boi,” and has released his own version of the song in Russian. Even more spectacularly, there is also a cover version of “Babushka Boi“ on YouTube recorded by actual Russian grandmothers. At the end of the day, it seems, most Russians have bought into the phenomenon. *** y., one month ago “Rocky: Babushka Russians: Allow us to introduce ourselves” Роаогл Оллдш, one month ago “We dont need ur permission moran” The future of Russian trap is promising, and Russians in need of a more tasteful and local alternative to “Babushka Boi” need not look far. Case in point—22year-old rapper Ivan Timofeevich Dryomin, better known by his stage-name FACE, is at the forefront of a new wave of Russian hip hop. Rising to fame in 2017 with a minimalist trap song entitled “Burger,” his music often references his upbringing in a poor, criminal environment—a reality for many post-Soviet kids of his generation. As FACE himself puts it (in a far cry from A$AP Rocky’s posturing), “I know what it means to grow up in Russia—I grew up on the outskirts of a provincial city, Ufa, so I have a right to talk about it. I know what it feels like when you survive on your grandparents’ tiny pension, what it feels like when your mother gets religious and literally loses her mind because of it.” Although FACE confesses that hip hop is still not a major genre in the country, with the charts continuing to be topped by “dumb club music,” it’s definitely on its way. With any luck, Russian hip hop will take off soon: rendering any problematic attempts by Western genre artists to borrow from the Russian tradition pointless rather than groundbreaking.
Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Grace Park ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Julian Towers Section Editors Nicole Fegan Griffin Plaag Staff Writers Rob Capron David Kleinman
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kahini Mehta
SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Camila Pavon
Section Editor Caitlin McCartney
Editor Paola Solano
Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto
HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Rémy Poisson
COPY Copy Chief Amanda Ngo
LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi
Copy Editors Maddy McGrath Jennifer Osborne Mohima Sattar
Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche
Want to be involved? Email: anita_sheih@brown.edu!
6!POST–
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
9
ARTS & CULTURE REVIEW
Netflix’s ‘The Politician’ glosses over complex, intricate social issues Series boasting distinguished names collapses under expectations BY NICHOLAS MICHAEL CONTRIBUTING WRITER Using cynicism splashed with bouts of humor, Ryan Murphy ambitiously takes on a swath of social issues in his newest project, “The Politician,” but this ambition ultimately leads to the show’s downfall. The showrunner and screenwriter’s illustrious portfolio includes popular and award-winning shows like “American Horror Story,” “Glee” and “Pose.” Murphy’s latest eight-episode melodrama, which was released on Netflix in September, critiques privilege and the curation of public image with disillusioned satire, but the series’ conversations remain cursory and unripe. Throughout the comedic drama, Murphy meditates on the concept of political performativity through main character Payton Hobart’s path to presidential election at his opulent high school in Santa Barbara, Calif. For example, after Payton’s opponent and old friend dies by suicide, Payton employs his death as a political prop, promising to heighten restrictions on gun sales and address mental health issues. But Payton never follows through with his promises, leaving the viewer unsure of his original motivations. Played by Ben Platt, Payton is defined by both himself and his peers as ambitious, calculated and callous — leaving the audience even more unsure about his character and what values the series instills. Payton’s campaign is just one of many stepping stones in his meticulously crafted route to power, which he hopes will include admission to Harvard, and eventually, service as President of the United States. In the pilot episode, Payton expresses fears of his own character flaws to his mother, Georgina, played by Gwyneth Paltrow: “I’m worried I don’t have the same feelings as everyone else does. … What if I can’t feel for anyone else? … What if all I’ll ever be able to do is pretend to feel?” Payton laments. Payton’s adoptive mother — somewhat a caricature of the faux-spiritual Goop-founder herself — assures Payton that having feelings doesn’t matter so long as the semblance of vulnerability is upheld. In positing insincerity as dignified, Geor-
GET PORTAL FROM PAGE 1 ing to take on” the higher fees associated with the lower minimum deposit and will monitor the impacts of the change before considering lowering the requirement any further, Gentry said. In UCS’ efforts to convince administration that reducing the deposit amount would be worth the additional costs, Carroll collected student experiences with GET. Carroll said one student told him that because of the minimum deposit amount, she often had to decide between spending $20 or going without clean clothing. “For a lot of students, particularly students who are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, $20 can be a lot,” Carroll said. “If you look at the Brown minimum wage after tax, that would take three hours of working to be able to upload that $20.” Zhou and Carroll ultimately met
COURTESY OF NETFLIX VIA BETH DUBBER
In “The Politician,” high schooler Payton Hobart strives to become class president in hopes of getting into Harvard and one day becoming president of the United States. gina exemplifies the facade of empathy the series hides behind. Sumptuous visuals of multi-million dollar Californian estates serve as the backdrop for the high school dramedy, which might otherwise recall a Murphy of “Glee.” Outside of the similar high school setting and a few musical numbers performed by Payton himself, palatial homes and the luxury wardrobes of the central characters reflect their vapidness, distancing “The Politician” from Murphy’s past successes. Furthermore, while “The Politician” is rich with vibrant colors, luxurious textures and juicy syntax for immediate punchiness, the show is plagued by a sort of emptiness that is never quite filled. For instance, as Georgina sits with Payton on the billowy sheets of his bed
with Gentry and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Barbara Chernow earlier this month to look over the data and rationale of the current system’s structure. Chernow did not respond to request for comment. Both Zhou and Carroll expressed their gratitude for Chernow’s receptiveness and for students who shared their experiences.“It really wouldn’t have been possible so quickly, especially without student input on it,” Carroll said. The GET minimum deposit reduction aligns with other projects UCS is pursuing this semester to improve student life, including discussions on free or subsidized laundry. “For future missions and priorities, UCS always appreciates when students work with us to be able to help identify and then advocate to address these concerns,” Zhou said.
in the opening episode, framed by the ornate floral motifs of his tufted, satin headboard, she consoles her son in his inability to cry. “Your generation got the terrible idea that it was best to vomit every thought and feeling all over each other. It’s a pandemic of over-communication that’s led to an absence of intimacy,” she says. Georgina’s use of rich language against the even richer backdrop merely serves as a distraction from the lack of humanity in her words. In episode three, “October Surprise,” Payton epitomizes this conniving superficiality in his negotiations with Harvard admissions officers. When his master plan is threatened by Harvard’s request for a sizeable family donation as a term of his acceptance, Payton’s immoderate view of self is exposed. “I will be president someday. … Pol-
itics isn’t about policy — a candidate is elected on a story. … If you don’t accept me on my merit and merit alone, the story that I will tell is about how I was rejected from Harvard,” Payton warns with an air of entitlement and ignorance. For Payton, merit is merely part of the story he needs to tell to ensure the fulfillment of his plan. Whether he is actually admitted virtuously is not a concern as long as his narrative remains pristine. “The Politician” is not the first modern media example of this privileged, self-indulgent void that exists to please an Ivy-League audience. In its depiction of characters who are ultimately defined by their elite college acceptances, Murphy’s series echoes Olivia Wilde’s filmic high school comedy “Booksmart” from earlier this year. Both fail to transcend
these superficial, perspectiveless identity markers. One cannot help but feel, then, that the multifarious sociopolitical matters tackled throughout the series seem to lack the depth that might be expected of such nuanced issues. In an attempt to be all-encompassing in its criticisms, “The Politician” merely scratches the surface of each vastly complex -ism, relying on social justice buzzwords and expensive sets to hastily quench the target viewership in just eight episodes. Most of the characters are left vacuous and underdeveloped, as their privilege dominates their personhood. Though meritable for its digestibility and terseness, “The Politician” would achieve more simply by attempting less.
Minimum GET Deposit Decreased from Twenty to Ten Dollars 20
$ $
15
$ $
10
5
0
$ $
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$ USHA BHALLA / HERALD
10
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
SCORES FROM PAGE 1 for the foreseeable future because “the General Assembly actually…passed a law that basically said that we can’t change assessments for the next ten years,” Geoghegan said. But although the RICAS is an important assessment tool, Geoghegan emphasized the holistic approach RIDE takes to evaluate schools. “We have … a whole host of measures that we look at for school performance. … A big part of that is making sure that schools aren’t overly weighting one measure over the other.” Geoghegan explained that “in a lot of systems … the high performance in one area can mask low performance in another. With our accountability system, we really tried to reimagine that.” Rhode Island uses multiple systems to assess its schools, including a five-star system that reflects the performance of the entire school in order to avoid glossing over any subset of poorly performing students. “If you have any student subgroup that is performing at a one-star level, it would be impossible for you to be a five-star school,” she said. This year’s RICAS results reveal some interesting trends, said Professor Kenneth Wong, chair for Education Policy. Notably, performance of the youngest students relatively exceeded that of their older peers in Math, demonstrating a “linear decline.”. Wong noted that “the third graders are actually doing a much better job and they are closest to where their peers are in Massachusetts … But then when you look at the other grades, the gap is wider.” He suggested that without a solid foundation in lower grades, students perhaps fell further behind as the difficulty of their material increased in higher grades.
The state contends with numerous factors that limit its ability to improve public education, which is reflected in low test scores, Wong said. Low-income students often have greater needs in urban areas such as Providence, he added. “Even within a district there are some students who may need more support, so the specific use of resources to support the high-need students becomes a decision that has to be made by the school superintendent and the principals and the teachers.” To an extent, funding from the district currently depends on the seniority of teachers at various schools. Wong suggested that the district could further direct funding to schools on the basis of the needs of students. “We need to … allocate the resources to meet the needs of the student … and use the student as a center of resource allocation,” he said. While Rhode Island ranked eighth in terms of per-pupil expenditure nationally in 2017, Wong also said that the state could improve how and where it spends this money. “Instead of evenly distributing all the money across all the schools, maybe now we need to think about how we can use the budget to respond more effectively to the high-need students.” Smaller class sizes and more teacher attention per student could be possible strategies to help high-need students, Wong added. “One area teachers and district leaders can work together immediately is to identify the 10 percent of the schools that have not been able to show any progress in either of the subjects over the last year, and then try to learn from other schools that have shown making some good progress over the last year,” he said. “Professionals can also work together and learn from each other as well.”
Student Results on Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS) Thirty-eight percent of students in grades 3-8 met or exceeded expectations in English Language Arts, as did thirty percent in Mathematics.
40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0
SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Editorial Leadership Editor-in-Chief Emily Davies Managing Editors Anna Kramer Priyanka Podugu Senior Editors Anita Sheih Sarah Wang Editorial Page Editors Grace Layer Krista Stapleford post-magazine Editor-in-Chief Anita Sheih
Sections Arts & Culture Editors Elise Ryan Annabelle Woodward Metro Editors Dylan Clark Sophie Culpepper Alex Reice News Editors Celia Hack Jacob Lockwood Melanie Pincus Allie Reed Science & Research Editors Cate Ryan Chris Schutte Sports Editors Alexandra Russell Alex Smolar
Commentary Opinions Editors Rebecca Aman Jamie Flynn Derek Simshauser Multimedia/Production Design Editors Bilal Ismail Ahmed Keelin Lyons Dylan Tian Head Photo Editors Tiffany Ding
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019
Business General Managers Ravi Betzig Nicholas Masiakowski Office Manager Diane Silvia Directors Sales: Bersabel Yifru Finance: Rudra Srivastava Reynaldo Blandon
Copy Desk Chief Kelley Tackett Illustrations Editor Summer Zhang Graphics Editor Sarah Martinez
@the_herald
facebook.com/browndailyherald
@browndailyherald
youtube.com/browndailyherald
195 Angell St., Providence, RI (401) 351-3372 www.browndailyherald.com Editorial: herald@browndailyherald.com Advertising: advertising@browndailyherald.com
English Language Mathematics Arts
USHA BHALLA / HERALD
Submissions: The Brown Daily Herald publishes submissions in the form of op-eds and letters to the editor. Op-eds are typically between 750 and 1000 words, though we will consider submissions between 500 and 1200 words. Letters to the editor should be around 250 words. While letters to the editor respond to an article or column that has appeared in The Herald, op-eds usually prompt new discussions on campus or frame new arguments about current discourse. All submissions to The Herald cannot have been previously published elsewhere (in print or online — including personal blogs and social media), and they must be exclusive to The Herald. Submissions must include no more than two individual authors. If there are more than two original authors, The Herald can acknowledge the authors in a statement at the end of the letter or op-ed, but the byline can only include up to two names. The Herald will not publish submissions authored by groups. The Herald does not publish anonymous submissions. If you feel your circumstances prevent you from submitting an op-ed or letter with your name, please email herald@browndailyherald.com to explain your situation. You can submit op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com and letters to letters@browndailyherald. com. When you email your submission, please include (1) your full name, (2) an evening or mobile phone number in case your submission is chosen for publication and (3) any affiliation with Brown University or any institution or organization relevant to the content of your submission. Please send in submissions at least 24 hours in advance of your desired publication date. The Herald only publishes submissions while it is in print. The Herald reserves the right to edit all submissions. If your piece is considered for publication, an editor will contact you to discuss potential changes to your submission. Commentary: The editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only. Corrections: The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Postmaster: Please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Advertising: The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.
The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. is a financially independent, nonprofit media organization bringing you The Brown Daily Herald, BlogDailyHerald and Post- Magazine. The Brown Daily Herald has served the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement and once during Orientation by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. Subscription prices: $200 one year daily, $100 one semester daily. Copyright 2019 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY
11
Let’s make alternative meat mainstream BY BLISS HAN ’23 STAFF COLUMNIST Burger King has recently made headlines — as well as literal lines outside their stores — with their Impossible Whopper, which consists of a plant-based patty that tastes and “bleeds” like real meat. It was recently reported that this new burger fueled Burger King’s best quarter of growth in four years. The company behind the Impossible Whopper’s plant patty, Impossible Foods, along with another plant-based meat patty business, Beyond Meat, have helped popularize meat alternatives. These plant-based meats have emerged as a true competitor to the meat industry. But plant-based alternatives come with real problems. Predictably, the price of alternative meat remains high. A 12-oz block of Beyond Meat is around four times more expensive than your standard ground beef, which typically costs $3 a pound. Perhaps more alarming are the health concerns: A Harvard review found that both Impossible and Beyond patties are highly processed, have a high saturated fat content and four times the sodium of a standard ground beef patty. In addition, heme, the ingredient that gives these patties flavor and makes the Impossible burger “bleed,” contains compounds known as isoflavones that have been linked to cancer and hormonal changes. That brings us to what is perhaps the real future of meat alternatives: Lab-grown meat. Though the phrase immediately brings up images of mush that tries to pass off as meat, “laboratory meat” is no longer the butt of the joke. This past Monday, a group of Harvard scientists, led by Dr. Luke MacQueen, published research
that showed how they had made meat in a lab that looks and tastes like real meat by growing animal muscle cells on a gelatin scaffold. There are challenges here too, especially those relating to scale. The world has a ravenous appetite for meat, and there is currently no way that the production of laboratory-made meat can keep up. In addition, the stereotype associated with “lab meat” is hard to remove, and both regula-
proponents of “real” meat are starting to realize that there is no doubt that the meat industry is going to change, because it has to change. While alternative meat raises some concerns, these pale in comparison to the overwhelming ethical and environmental problems caused by the traditional meat industry. Chickens have been genetically modified to produce as much meat as possible, so much so that some
“While alternative meat raises some concerns, these pale in comparison to the overwhelming ethical and environmental problems caused by the traditional meat industry.”
tors and the public are still wary of it, even if it is technically the same thing as the meat from an actual animal. Dr. MacQueen hopes that, “refining this technique and others like it could help more people, including serious carnivores, consider lab-grown meat as a sustainable, ethical alternative to meat raised for slaughter.” Despite the challenges that alternative meat still face, the industry is quickly growing — and the traditional meat producers are beginning to notice. Nearly 30 states are currently debating bills backed by cattlemen’s associations, that would prohibit non-traditional meat from being called “meat.” This suggests that even the
can no longer breathe or walk. We mindlessly slaughter nearly 70 billion chickens, pigs, turkeys and cows each year to satisfy our carnivorous tastes. In addition, the World Health Organization has pointed to red meat as a Group 1 carcinogen, a group that includes cigarette smoke and asbestos, although there has been a slew of contradictory research in recent years. And if the health and ethical arguments don’t win out against your stomach, maybe the environmental one will — over 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from animal agriculture, according to the United Nations. A study led by Dr. Joseph Poore at
the University of Oxford showed that without meat or dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced to a quarter of what it is now and still feed the world. Poore also found that the most sustainable meat products are still much more environmentally damaging than the least environmentally friendly vegetable. “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” according to Poore. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.” In other words, even if the meat you eat isn’t killing you, it is quite literally killing both billions of animals and the Earth itself. Luckily, for those of us who still like a good steak or a plate of hot wings, our options are not limited to veganism. I gave up meat after watching a documentary about its environmental impacts in high school. I have never regretted my choice, but I don’t expect everyone else to do the same. It is natural for people to not want something to get taken away from them, especially something as central to many diets as meat. But I urge you to consider the alternatives. Yes, they have problems, some of them bigger than others. But the current model of the meat industry is neither ethical nor sustainable, and both plant-based and lab-grown meat are pointing us toward healthier futures. Bliss Han ’23 can be reached at bliss_han@ brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald. com.
EDITORIAL
UCS should convert student feedback into tangible change Last Friday, the Editorial Page Board wrote about student engagement with the Undergraduate council of Students after The Herald released its undergraduate student poll results, which reported that just over half of undergrad students held no opinion of the council. While students surely have a responsibility to engage with elected leadership in UCS, this engagement is a twoway street. We again applaud the council’s recent efforts to connect with students, which constitute a step in the right direction, but these measures are not enough. If the objective of the student council is to “actively and authentically pursue student interests,” UCS must do more to turn student feedback into tangible changes, while remaining transparent with students on the council’s progress on various initiatives. In recent months, UCS has shown an interest in collecting student feedback, but we struggle to identify how this feedback is informing the council’s agenda. For instance, when Jason Carroll ’21 ran for vice president, his platform included an extensive list of very specific objectives, such as advocating for need-blind admissions for international students, eliminating the dirty water coming from campus taps, introducing Saturday appointments at Counseling and Psychological Services and bringing an emergency contraception vending machine to campus. We applaud Carroll for the specificity of these goals and his passion for them. To us, his success in the election indicates that his platform resonated with students across campus. But, we cannot tell how much the council has progressed on implementing these goals — no information on the council’s efforts to tackle such initiatives seems readily available on its website. UCS has also not updated its website to include any committee-specific initiatives occurring this year, which could admittedly overlap with Carroll’s aims. In comparison, UCS President Will Zhou’s ’20 platform revolved around a smaller, yet more abstract set of goals. While this may indicate that his objectives are more feasible to accomplish, their vague nature prevents the student body from being able to clearly evaluate the progress he has made on these goals. In a conversation with The Herald, Zhou said his platform’s main three points were: increasing funding
and support for student groups and communities, especially those that are identity-based; making UCS more inclusive and proactive; and holding the University to “higher transparency, equity, and accountability” standards. Like Carroll’s platform, it’s difficult for us to identify to what extent the council has progressed in achieving Zhou’s campaign promises. And, ultimately, addressing a vast number of disparate and abstract goals through policy-making is difficult, if not impossible. We propose that the council — particularly its president and vice president — should create a cohesive and realistic action plan with tangible objectives. Such a plan should consider the senior leadership team’s campaign promises and incorporate the recent feedback that the council has collected through its new student engagement measures. The council should then share this plan with the undergraduate student body. Avenues exist for UCS to hold itself accountable to executing its goals and to give the student body regular updates on its work. Specifically, UCS should take advantage of the multiple digital tools at its disposal. Though they may seem small, the following steps could drastically improve student awareness of the council’s accomplishments and of opportunities to engage with the organization. First, the council should promote each general body meeting in Today@ Brown, a daily email that 71 percent of undergraduates open. Second, UCS needs to update its website. The council appears to provide regular updates on its Facebook page, but its website does not offer a holistic and updated picture of the council’s work. Certain committees highlight their work from previous years without listing their current objectives and ongoing projects. Other committees just offer a broad description of their function within the council. These webpages offer valuable space for the council to both acknowledge and credit members for their ongoing work, while telling students how their perspectives are informing the student government’s agenda. Last, given the council’s push to interact more with students, it should consider publishing a record of frequently-occurring, relevant complaints that it receives from stu-
dents about campus life — such as the lack of water filling stations in dorms. Put together, these initial steps will facilitate the council’s transparency and assure students that their perspectives matter as UCS accomplishes its goals. But most crucially, we hope that the student leadership of UCS will soon recognize the full potential of its platform, leveraging its access and influence to implement meaningful change on campus. As we’ve mentioned previously, we have seen UCS work at its best during moments like when the council’s leadership permanently changed campus admissions by leading the charge to waive application fees for low-income students applying to Brown. But crucially, UCS did not do this alone. In addition to the council’s partnership with First-Gens@Brown to co-write the proposal, then President Viet Nguyen ’17 worked strategically with national media outlets and first-generation student groups at peer institutions to rally support around the issue and place pressure on University administrators. In leveraging the press to draw public attention to the issue, Nguyen compellingly used a powerful office in student government to translate an ambitious goal into measurable and visible change. And we have most recently seen this form of work when UCS successfully campaigned to reduce the minimum for GET deposits from $20 to $10. We hope that the council will continue to honor this tradition and choose to narrow its focus to a few, specific issues of particular importance to the undergrad student community and serve as a champion, like Nguyen, for these causes to ensure that institutional change is achieved. But ultimately we feel deeply that UCS has the potential to have a lasting and memorable impact on campus. We implore UCS to continue the strides it has already begun toward greater student engagement and to implement tangible goals that resonate with the student community. Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editors, Grace Layer ’20 and Krista Stapleford ’21, and its members, Dylan Tian ’21, Eduard MuñozSuñé ’20, Jonathan Douglas ’20, and Riley Pestorius ’21. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
12
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2019
SPORTS
Raphino ’23 uses offensive firepower to keep soccer undefeated in Ivy League Raphino ’23 scored two goals against Cornell Saturday to give Bears their fifth Ivy win BY RANDI RICHARDSON STAFF WRITER Brittany Raphino ’23 has scored four goals in her last three games for the women’s soccer team and has posted 19 points on the season. Bruno is currently leading the Ivy League with a 5-0-0 conference record and a 12-1-1 overall performance and is set to close out the season a week from tomorrow. For her outstanding contributions to the Bears’ successes this year, Raphino has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week. Herald: How are you liking Brown? Raphino: I am absolutely loving it. The team is amazing. The whole dynamic between everyone — we did a Pitch Perfect riff-off on the ride back from Cornell. It was a six-hour trip, so it was brutal. It was so much fun. Me and the (first-years) keep talking about it. We can’t wait to have another long bus ride just to do it again. It was so much fun. The whole dynamic with the coaches … well, maybe it’s because we’re doing so well, but everything is just so nice and better than I expected. School-wise, I’m loving my classes. What were you like in high school? I was really driven in high school. In the beginning, I knew my goal was to play at a top program, so from freshman year I was really focused on getting my schoolwork done at a high level and also performing on the soccer field. I got really good at balancing both from a young age because I went to a college preparatory high school. Most people would describe me as determined and persistent, because I drilled into my head that I had somewhere to go and I needed to get things done. Socially, I was really close to my soccer team, and I played basketball so I was really close to them, too. I still have best friends who I talk to every week. I wouldn’t describe myself as a jock or anything like that, but definitely someone who was an athletic girl.
DEBATE FROM PAGE 1 sensus that when there are objects that could pose a threat not just to yourself but to other people, there is an obligation as a society that there are appropriate training and regulations to ensure that those items can be used safely,” she said, comparing the process of getting a license to the process of obtaining a gun. On the topic of immigration, the Brown Dems and Republicans both acknowledged that the country’s immigration system is broken and that a legal pathway to citizenship must be accessible. When Hackey asked the panelists for their opinions on the Trump administration’s family separation policy and the effectiveness of physical borders, the discussion got intense. President of the Brown Republicans Julian Haag ’20 supports building a wall as a physical border. “ I do believe in a nation of laws and nation of borders and I think the wall is part of that,” he said. He also described a desire to protect DACA students “because they are Americans,” and
What’s something you really want to do between now and graduation outside of academics and athletics? Travel more. I love going away to other countries, but I want to expand that more. My family’s from Jamaica and Haiti, so we’re always going to Jamaica, and I love it there but I want to try somewhere else. … England, I would love to travel to Europe. That’s why I was so jealous that (the team) got to go to France right before I came. I was doing a summer workout at my high school and my trainer was like, “why aren’t you in France right now?” I was like, “What?” The trainer said, “The whole (Brown) team’s in France right now and you’re here. I was like, “Oh my God.” But (Coach McNeill) was talking to us freshmen and said when (we’re) seniors, (we’ll) get to pick where we go. So that’s cool. What’s the strangest or quirkiest thing you’ve come across at Brown so far? There’s this guy with the snake on campus. He walks around on Thayer. I was coming from Andrews from lunch and I was walking — I was with a recruit, too — and (when I saw it) I screamed and ran away because it was a snake! It was a boa constrictor, and I was like, “What are you doing?!” And then he was like, “Do you want to pet it?” I was like, “No!” Everyone else wanted to pet it. I was staying away because I don’t mess with animals. It was so strange. Do you have any superstitions? Yes. I get anxious before games, so I always have to meditate before. When Beth (the trainer) is taping my ankles, I make sure she does my left first, then my right. It has to happen like that. I wear a headgear and mouth guard, so I also put that on before I do (warm up) shooting. I don’t know why, it’s just something I do. And then in high school, when all the starters were on the field and did the little huddle, we used to spit at the end. Everyone. It’s kind of crazy but it (was) a thing. So I do that here too.
LEON JIANG / HERALD
What is your favorite TV show or movie and the character that you
First year phenom Brittany Raphino ’23 has led the women’s soccer team with eight goals scored and 19 overall points in 14 total games. most relate to? Wake up around 10 a.m. Have a big drop anything, I’m in Sephora. I love My favorite movie… Well, I’m a breakfast because breakfast is my fa- heels, and I love fashion. I know it’s romantic snob. I love “The Walk to vorite meal of the day. … Then watch more than looking pretty, and it’s a Remember.” I love it. I cry every time. some Netflix, take a nap. Go outside, lot of work to be a model. I just can’t Sometimes you just need a good cry, maybe swim. … I love swimming. Then imagine that everyday (my) job (would not because you’re sad, but just to let take another nap, watch some more be) walk down a runway in something it out. I love movies like that, “How to Netflix and have breakfast for dinner. pretty, in heels and just play in makeup. Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “10 Things I Go to bed early. That’s the perfect day. That’d be amazing. And (I’d) travel the Hate About You” and all those types It sounds amazing. world, too, on top of that. of romantic comedies. Those are my favorite, I love them. What is your dream job? This interview has been edited for length I would love to be a model. I would and clarity. What do you consider to be a per- love it. I am obsessed with makeup. fect day? Whenever Fenty Beauty and Rihanna
reiterated the need for general “comprehensive immigration reform.” Mermelstein responded that resources for a wall should be redirected toward addressing other issues such as combating domestic terrorism and mass shootings. Haag stressed that border patrol agents say they need a wall to protect the country, and he disparaged criticism from “this comfortable progressive environment. … We should give deference to the border patrol agents that have something to say.” During the final sequence of the debate, both sides spoke on the value and complexity of free speech. Shepardson said that when all ideas can be expressed, “the best ideas will rise to the top, and the members of the community can decide what is valuable to hear, and what they simply don’t agree with.” “The type of dialogue that we’ve had here has been absolutely fantastic, because it’s been all about the ideas, all about the policies,” Lipson said. He differentiated this kind of dialogue from speech that can incite harm: “If a speaker, for example, has
a history of making homophobic remarks, we should not have him on campus, because they’re going to make remarks that could potentially make certain members of our community feel unsafe.” During Lipson’s last remark, Haag picked up his microphone to interject, but LeClerc interjected first. “As a homosexual, I have been harassed on the street,” LeClerc said. “I don’t think that … it should be acceptable to call across the street to me at 2 o’clock in the morning and yell some sort of epithet at me and threaten to kill me because that is a direct threat to my safety,” he said. “To allow these ideas into the discourse is to give them some sort of salience and some sort of validity — that it is okay to harbor these kinds of views.” Later, Haag made a passionate statement to defend free speech. “That speech, especially hate speech — it can be very much subjective, and I think that we need … to support free speech, even if it’s hateful speech, because at the end of the day, you may want to outlaw hateful speech, but it’s
not going to go away,” Haag said. “By trying to outlaw speech, all you’re going to do is create an underground, a black market — these people will find a way to meet. … The idea that we’re going to create a society in which only tolerable viewpoints are allowed, that’s inherently un-American.” Haag referenced his own experiences as a conservative and a Trump supporter at Brown. “I have to sit here every single day, and I have to hear ‘Nazi, racist, sexist, I’m against immigrants,’’’ he said. “I’m marrying an immigrant,” he added. President of No Labels Aidan Brice ’21 considered the event a success in bridging the gap between both parties in a respectful manner and attributed some of the heated moments to the nature of a debate like this. “They did get very passionate about their views. I think that’s a great part of the discussion because it’s what’s real, and I think it’s really excellent that they had points of agreement,” Brice said. After the debate, Haag agreed that the debate “went well. I think it had the right amount of banter and the right amount of ideas.” But he felt
“very uncomfortable sitting up there knowing that everyone in the crowd doesn’t like what (he has) to say minus a few exceptions.” Audience member Michael Tan ’21 said, “It’s very interesting to see the political diversity at Brown as opposed to the rest of the country.” At Brown, debate centers around “talking about ideas as opposed to specific policies by Trump.” Mermelstein urged more representation in the debate panel, noting that there were no people of color present and that she was the only woman on the entire panel. Brice acknowledged Mermelstein’s critique. “It’s a big concern,” and the group “is trying to aim for a bigger inclusion, and part of that comes from different lived experiences.” Hackey applauded both parties and stressed the need to have difficult conversations in a respectful manner. “That’s what we need to encourage here at Brown,” Hackey said.