Wednesday, November 12, 2014

THE

BROWN DAILY HERALD vol. cxlix, no. 108

since 1891

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014

Undergrad sexual assault forum draws few attendees

ELI WHITE / HERALD

Ted Low ’49 delivers an address at Soldier’s Arch, joining students, alums and Providence Mayor-elect Jorge Elorza in celebrating military service.

Task Force on Sexual Assault’s public forum explores discourse over sexual violence

By CAMILLA BRANDFIELD-HARVEY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

ASHLEY SO / HERALD

ASHLEY SO / HERALD

The Patriot Battalion Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps processes across the main green toward Soldier’s Arch.

President Christina Paxson joins veterans and students during Tuesday’s commemoration of Veteran’s Day.

Veteran’s Day juxtaposes celebration, continued misconception of veteran, cadet students

military and non-military students. Students who have served or plan to serve, said they experience a lack of visibility, stereotypes and a general lack of awareness of military science that can make civilian students hesitant to engage in conversation.

Veterans Day marks the one day each year when an often overlooked segment of the student body is brought

Serving silently: Military culture on a civilian campus CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Of the University’s more than 8,000 students, only 25 are U.S. veterans — 11 undergraduates, 13 graduate students and one medical student. The University

does not actively track international students who have served, either voluntarily or by conscription, in their home countries, according to the Student Veterans and Commissioning Programs Office.

The University’s small veteran population creates a disconnect between

Slavic Studies enrollment drops 75 percent in four years Enrollment decline follows former professor Claude Carey’s retirement, Slavic Studies professors say

By SHAVON BELL CONTRIBUTING WRITER

inside

The Department of Slavic Studies has seen enrollment in its courses decrease about 75 percent over a fouryear period, from 1,153 students in the 2009-10 academic year to a low of 287 students in the 2013-14 academic year, according to data from the Office of Institutional Research.

This decline resulted largely because of one retirement within the department, though it also falls within a broader and more gradual decline in enrollments across the humanities, said Svetlana Evdokimova, chair of the Department of Slavic Studies

and professor of Slavic Studies and comparative literature.

Claude Carey, previously an associate professor of Slavic Languages, retired at the end of last year. She had not been teaching courses for the three years before her retirement, said Alexander Levitsky, professor of Slavic Studies and Literatures.

Carey taught courses that drew large numbers of students, Levitsky said. “She was very much admired and loved” by a large contingent of undergrads, he added.

Evdokimova also attributed the decline in department enrollments to Carey’s retirement.

After 2010, the department hired temporary professors to account for Carey’s absence, Evdokimova said.

Temporary professors historically do not garner high numbers of enrollments in their courses, she added. » See SLAVIC, page 4

Nick Offerman to speak on campus

Brown Lecture Board hosts Offerman after student poll selections unavailable

By CLARISSA CLEMM CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Actor, writer and carpenter Nick Offerman will be Brown Lecture Board’s fall speaker, said Lecture Board President Kaivan Shroff ’15.

Offerman, who portrays Ron Swanson on the acclaimed sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” will give his lecture Dec. 4 in Salomon 101. His 45-minute talk will be followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session.

“Offerman is an atypical celebrity with a personality of his own and an interesting perspective,” Shroff said.

“We expect this will be a lecture hybrid show which will merge a typical lecture style with a mild amount » See OFFERMAN, page 2

Commentary

COURTESY OF KEPPLER SPEAKERS

Nick Offerman is known for his portrayal of Ron Swanson on the sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” He will speak on campus Dec. 4.

Science & Research

Aluthge ’15: Misuse of statistics wastes research funding and enforces stereotypes

Blake ’17: State and federal policies should support a patient’s right to assisted suicide

Study finds administering anesthesia does not affect cancer screening procedure

Forum discusses improving infrastructure to foster healthier lifestyles for communities

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weather

By NATALIE FONDRIEST

to the forefront of campus discussion.

Yesterday’s celebration included a procession from the Main Green to Soldier’s Arch, where speakers, including Providence Mayor-elect Jorge Elorza, and student veterans and alumni, addressed the crowd. The event featured a color guard provided by the Patriot Battalion Army Reserve Officers’ Training » See VETERANS, page 4

Only seven members of the Brown community attended the Task Force on Sexual Assault’s undergraduate public forum in Salomon 001 Tuesday night, transforming what might have been an informational presentation into an intimate discussion among student leaders, student survivors of sexual assault and staff members.

President Christina Paxson was also in attendance.

The 19-member task force was represented by co-chairs Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, executive vice president for planning and policy, and Michele Cyr, associate dean for academic affairs for biology and medicine, and members James Valles, professor of physics, Sara Matthiesen GS, Katherine Byron ’15, Justice Gaines ’16, Michael Grabo, associate counsel in the Office of the Vice President and General Counsel, and Francie Mantak, director of health promotion.

The campus culture of sexual intimacy and sexual violence, a predominant topic in the discussion, elicited a variety of descriptions and » See FORUM, page 2

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2 university news » OFFERMAN, from page 1 of stand-up and even some guitarplaying,” said Mariska Raglow-DeFranco ’15, vice president of campus relations for Lecture Board. “Offerman is very interested in talking to young people and teaching them about things like how to grow mustaches and how to make boats.”

As in past years, students will be able to get free tickets by entering an online lottery. Some seats will also be offered to students who wait in the standby line at the door.

For those who are unable to get tickets or standby seating, the event will also be live streamed on a screen in Salomon 001. Though Offerman’s talk will not be webcast, Lecture Board leaders hope to webcast future events this year.

Earlier this semester, Lecture Board sent undergraduates a link to an online poll, which asked them to rank their preferences of potential fall speakers. Options included Mindy Kaling, Toni Morrison, Jane Goodall, Kevin Spacey and Sir Ian McKellan.

Toni Morrison emerged as the favorite among the 1,891 respondents.

“She was available, but given her age, the strain of travel and the weather here, her team didn’t think it would be a good decision to make the trip,” Shroff said.

Upon learning that Morrison could not come to College Hill, Lecture Board leaders contacted other potential speakers from the poll, Shroff said. But when none were available, Lecture Board leaders conducted an internal poll of the group’s

members to generate a list of five new potential speakers, and Offerman emerged as the top choice.

Offerman received the Television Critics Award for Individual Achievement in Comedy for his performance on “Parks and Recreation.” In addition to this recurring role, Offerman has appeared in several shows, including “George Lopez,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Monk” and “American Body Shop.” His recent forays into film include roles in “Men Who Stare at Goats,” “The Kings of Summer” and “We’re the Millers.”

In an interview with Jimmy Fallon about why he likes speaking at college campuses, Offerman said, “I want to pass along some of the great lessons I’ve been given to the young people, so they can save the planet from assholes like my generation.”

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» FORUM, from page 1 suggestions. In order to understand student sentiment, Carey said the task force has reached out to the public directly, meeting with representatives from the Brown Center for Students of Color, members of the Greek community and members from student groups involved specifically with sexual assault, such as Imagine Rape Zero and the Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse.

Carey added that it is difficult even for alums to get a sense of the contemporary campus culture and turned to the undergraduates in the audience for their thoughts on the topic.

Several participants shared anecdotes of their own experiences with campus culture or with sexual violence.

Radhika Rajan ’15 said spaces where date rape occurs are well known by some students on campus, adding that her friends were told which fraternity houses use date-rape drugs during their first few weeks on campus as first-years. Rajan also said students’ ideas of what constitutes sexual harassment vary and asked how to establish a common definition of harassment.

A staff member, who said her department assisted in creating the online module on health and sexual assault for faculty and staff members, added that though the module has been billed as mandatory for employment, many faculty and staff members have not completed it.

Faculty and staff members need to be held accountable, she said, suggesting, among other ideas, that those who do not complete the necessary modules should not receive a salary raise.

“It takes a whole community to change,” she said, explaining that without engagement on all fronts, the campus cannot improve.

Carey said the appropriate sanctions for those found responsible for

sexual violence have also been a frequent topic of discussion at forums and among the task force members.

One student, who described herself as a survivor of an incident of sexual harassment that occurred on campus last semester, said the overlap of public and private space at Brown can complicate sanctions in some cases. At a private institution with an open campus like Brown, the line between what is on and off campus can blur, she said. Though the alleged perpetrator in her case has been suspended, she said she has seen him more than once around campus.

The student also said she felt “doubly victimized” by the disciplinary procedures after she reported the incident. Describing it as a space where “power dynamics played out” along lines of race, gender and disability, she added that she played into the system for her own self-defense by dressing and carrying herself in a certain way throughout the hearing.

She asked the task force whether there can be better training for the hearing adjudicators going forward in order to avoid these circumstances.

Another student said the University needs to bolster training for Meiklejohn peer advisers whose advisees may approach them about experiences with sexual violence. She said she would feel ill-equipped to handle such a situation when it arises.

Maahika Srinivasan ’15, president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, agreed that there is a dearth of resources for Meiklejohns on the issue.

Toward the end of the forum, Leah Kazar ’17 asked Carey about the timeline for the task force’s recommendations, since she said many students are anxious to see changes to Brown’s sexual assault policies and procedures. Carey responded that the task force plans to release a preliminary set of immediate-action recommendations in December.

“We feel that urgency and want to balance it with the care to do this well,” Carey said.

university news 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014

» COBB, from page 8

TOM SULLIVAN / HERALD

The owner of Gourmet Heaven was arrested in February for multiple wage theft charges.

Gourmet Heaven owner requests leniency in court Regional grocery chain owner potentially faces five-year prison sentence for wage theft charges

By ALIZA REISNER STAFF WRITER

After his arrest in February on 42 felony and misdemeanor charges of wage theft, owner of Gourmet Heaven Chung Cho sat for a final hearing Nov. 3, the Yale Daily News reported.

The court heard his request for accelerated rehabilitation, which if granted would allow Cho to avoid a trial and prison sentence and erase his criminal record. The grocery chain Gourmet Heaven has two locations in Providence on Meeting Street and Weybosset Street in addition to its two New Haven stores.

Cho’s prison sentence could stretch as long as five years, said James BhandaryAlexander, the lawyer representing five of the workers who are victims of alleged wage theft in the criminal case.

The February charges comprised violations of discrimination against workers, failure to keep wage records, charges of felony wage theft and misdemeanor counts of defrauding immigrant workers, The Herald reported at the time.

The Nov. 3 hearing in New Haven marked the second and final hearing before the judge must approve or deny Cho’s request for accelerated rehabilitation, Bhandary-Alexander said.

The complainants’ argument is that Cho’s alleged wage theft is too serious to go unpunished and that he is likely to offend again if not under close supervision, Bhandary-Alexander said.

Cho’s lawyer argues that his crimes are not serious because he paid workers what he had previously stolen — as much as a quarter million dollars, he said. He added that Cho’s lawyer also made statements about “how Mr. Cho brought New Haven back from the dead and made it a nice place to live.”

At the hearing, workers whom Bhandary-Alexander represents spoke out against Cho, claiming he fired them for cooperating with the Connecticut Department of Labor’s investigation, the YDN reported. Meanwhile, more than a dozen workers brought in by Cho’s lawyer praised their boss, sharing stories about how Cho gave them birthday gifts, treated them to meals at nearby restaurants and let them live in a house he owned without initially paying rent.

Bhandary-Alexander said the judge can deny Cho’s motion for accelerated rehabilitation if she finds that either the crime is too serious or that Cho is likely to reoffend. Bhandary-Alexander and his

clients are arguing the judge should not grant Cho accelerated rehabilitation due to the importance of his record stating his wrongdoing and the seriousness of wage theft as a crime.

Mohamed Masaud, manager of Gourmet Heaven on Weybosset Street in Providence, said the Providence locations were not affected by the events in New Haven because there have been no violations in these locations. “We have already interviewed every employee with the Department of Labor, and none of us has any problem here. Everyone follows the minimum wage law,” he added.

But Bhandary-Alexander said he finds it “inconceivable that there were massive violations in the Connecticut locations and not at the Rhode Island locations,” adding that “The odds of that I would put at about one in a thousand.”

Even if the Providence locations are complying with the law now when under a microscope, “what were they doing a year ago?” he asked.

Evelyn Nunez, president of MEChA de Yale, a Yale student social justice group, has been a key figure in leading student protests against Gourmet Heaven. The protests brought attention to Cho’s alleged crimes and led Yale administrators to terminate Gourmet Heaven’s lease in its location near campus once it expires in June 2015, the YDN reported.

“Given the fact that Gourmet Heaven was a location so close to campus, we thought it was imperative for students to get involved, as they had a direct stake in what was happening there,” Nunez said. Students made up the largest customer base at Gourmet Heaven and had a choice of whether or not to frequent the business in light of Cho’s alleged criminal activity, she added.

While some have protested against Cho, others have remained loyal to him and his business. A petition in support of Gourmet Heaven remaining in business has garnered more than 2,000 signatures from Yale students and community members, the YDN reported.

“It doesn’t really reflect the actual attitude of the customers,” Nunez said of the petition. “If people were signing that petition, they probably don’t really know what’s going on.”

Nunez urged Brown students to engage in a similar protest if it becomes clear that Gourmet Heaven workers’ rights were similarly violated in Providence. “The students at Brown also have a stake in what’s happening, and they can show solidarity with the workers if they bring forward this complaint,” she said. “Students should act as allies of any employee in any area who would want to bring forward wage theft allegations.”

tradition” of blacks throughout the American South’s history. As slaves, blacks didn’t participate in protests or sit-ins, but they still organized escapes, revolts and assassinations. This tradition carried into the civil rights movement, which many regular people — including sharecroppers, small farmers and maids — shaped, he said.

Cobb highlighted how harsh the South was toward black people, labeling it a “murderous society” that advertised lynchings of black World War I veterans in newspapers. He also discussed his own arrest when he was working as a young field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi.

The author said he uses guns as a device for framing the narrative of racial conflict in the South.

Americans need to understand the actions of black people as ordinary humans faced with white terrorism, Cobb said. In this situation, people “will act to protect themselves as best they can,” he said, adding that they may resort to gun violence. Black people in the 1960s saw no contradiction in saying they were part of the nonviolent

movement while being simultaneously dependent on armed self-defense for survival.

“I reject the notion that there’s some kind of dichotomy between nonviolence and armed self-defense,” Cobb said, noting instances of gun violence during the civil rights era which he said had furthered the movement but are often forgotten. For example, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, one of the cities in which King organized protests, desegregated in less than a year thanks in part to a group of armed activists who protected peaceful protestors from being harmed. “They kept down violence in this Ku Klux Klan town,” Cobb said.

Ku Klux Klan members didn’t pursue violence against people they knew would fight back, Cobb noted.

“As much as white supremacists talked about white supremacy and ‘necessitated’ white supremacy, they simply weren’t prepared to die for it,” he added.

Cobb stressed history’s continuous impact on society. Problems that blacks fought to resolve in the 1960s had their roots in the founding of the country, he said. Even though laws changed and slaves were freed, attitudes toward blacks prevailed, he added.

This tradition of ingrained racial attitudes tied to Cobb’s argument that the idea of “white people didn’t exist before the United States created them to justify slavery.” A belief in white superiority was necessary to perpetuate slavery as a system, he said.

Cobb also connected the nature of history to the relevance of the civil rights movement today.

“To understand the civil rights movement, you have to understand how ordinary people can effect change.

That’s important,” Cobb said. “You don’t want people thinking that they have to be Martin Luther King to change things.”

The author stressed that it is “important for students to see what students can do” to advance social justice, citing the role played by SNCC and students during the 1960s. Campus talks about history and activism are a great way to influence and inspire young people, he said.

Cobb’s future research will analyze what from the 1960s movement is still relevant, he said. “Today, we see things we thought were settled 50 years ago resurfacing, like voting rights,” he said.

“It may be time to think about renewing the struggle.”

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4 university news » SLAVIC, from page 1 Carey’s courses accounted for large percentages of the department’s course enrollments during the years she was at Brown. According to the Critical Review, in the 200910 academic year, Carey taught five courses, amounting to a total of 889 students — roughly 77 percent of total course enrollments in the Slavic Studies department that year. During the previous academic year, 2008-09, Carey taught 636 students in the same number of courses, which constituted about 56 percent of that year’s course enrollments.

High-enrollment courses that Carey taught multiple times during her tenure at Brown — including RUSS 0930: “Cultures and Literatures of the Russian and Soviet Empires,” RUSS 0990: “The Black Experience in Russia and the Soviet Union” and RUSS 1320: “Soviet Literature from 1917 to 1953” — have not been offered since the fall of 2011, the last semester for which Carey is listed teaching, according to the Critical Review.

But Carey’s departure from the department may not be the only factor

» VETERANS, from page 1 Corps , a wreath-laying ceremony and a National Anthem Performance by the Jabberwocks a capella group.

This year, the University’s Veterans Day recognition is more extensive than in the past. A portion of the University’s 250th anniversary budget was allocated to the celebration, allowing recognition to expand into a month of veteransrelated events, including Professor of English Beth Taylor’s presentation ‘Letters Home: Brown Alumni at War’ Nov. 12 and a symposium “Back to Iraq?”

Nov. 14.

While the University’s decision to divert 250th funds to the project signals an institution-wide effort to provide greater support for the veteran community, compared to other Ivy League schools, Brown lags behind in offering opportunities for students to engage with the military on campus.

All other Ivy League schools either host a ROTC branch directly on campus, or have partnered with a local institution to host a significant portion of ROTC events, said James Rattner ’15, student coordinator at SVCP and an editorial page board editor at The Herald.

ROTC is a college classroom and field program that introduces students to military science and prepares cadets to enter the U.S. military as officers upon graduation.

In 1969, during the height of the Vietnam War, Brown banned ROTC from campus. This ban was brought into question in 2011, when the militar revealed its ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy, which barred openly gay and lesbian indivuals from military service. Debates revolving around ROTC’s campus presence rocked Brown in fall 2011, the Herald reported at the time. Then, former President Ruth Simmons recommended that the University keep its ban in place.

After the ban was upheld, Simmons reestablished the University’s relationship with the Patriot Battalion Army ROTC at Providence College — a satellite-only program that Brown still maintains today.

On campus, SVCP, which was founded in 2012, offers academic and professional support for students involved in

contributing to enrollment declines.

In the fall of 2011, she taught 85 students in two courses, both of which had mich higher enrollments each time they were offered in previous semesters. For example, RUSS 0990 lists 44 enrollments in the fall of 2011, compared to 148 in the fall of 2010 and 194 in the fall of 2009.

More broadly, the slower decade-long decline may be related to changes in U.S.-Russian relations, Levitsky said.

When Levitsky first arrived at the University in 1970 during the Cold War, he taught nearly 300 students per semester, he said. Students were urged to study Russian culture and Slavic languages at that time, when the Soviet Union was considered an “enemy” of the United States, he added. Given recently building tensions in U.S.-Russian diplomacy, Levitsky predicts that the Slavic Studies department will see another small wave of increasing enrollments.

Natasha Bluth, head of the Slavic Studies DUG and a Herald editorial page member, said she agrees with this prediction.

Evdokimova and Levitsky also link the trend in their department

to a decrease in humanities enrollments at the University and across the nation. While Evdokimova and Levitsky said they do not view the larger trend within the humanities to be the chief reason for sharply declining enrollments in the Slavic languages department, they both said this broader factor has played a role.

Most humanities departments at the University have seen a drop in course enrollments over the same time period as the Slavic Studies department, according to the Office of Institutional Research. Course enrollments overall in foreign languages have dropped by around 200 students in the last year alone, The Herald previously reported.

Recently, many faculty members have discussed this trend as well as modes of mitigating its effects, Evidokimova said, adding that the University needs to emphasize diversity from a wide range of disciplines in its admission processes.

“We need to put more emphasis on the perspectives of other nations and the world at large,” she said. “It’s important to study these cultures from within, not only from outside.”

The task of the humanities is to

both domestic and international military officer commissioning programs.

Mills said, as cadets’ character and values are revealed under pressure.

The University’s liberal environment may often come into tension with the military’s politics.

U.S. Navy veteran Matthew Ricci ’16 said Brown’s culture “puts you in an odd position when you are sometimes conflated” with the military as a whole, adding that the general public’s anger or disagreement regarding military conflict and missions is often misdirected toward individual veterans.

The common misconception of a member of the military as a “drone” is inaccurate. “In some ways, members of the military are the biggest doves you would find because they’re the ones that are going to die,” Ricci added.

“If you want to see a more liberal military, you can join it. You can do it yourself,” Mills said, but he noted this was not part of his motivation for joining.

Mills said he values the notion of the “citizen soldier, like the minutemen in Boston,” who were “crucial” to the history of the United States. Whether a liberal student in the heavily conservative military, or a military student at a heavily liberal school, the mingling of diverse perspectives benefits both groups, Mills sai. He added that the lack of veterans “in our nation’s liberal elite” disappoints him.

Mills added that PLC has allowed him to enjoy job security while having the freedom to pursue the courses that interest him during his time at Brown.

Mills said he benefits from his ability to see through the leadership lens he has learned in the military in his positions as captain of the men’s crew team and chair of the Undergraduate Council of Students Campus Life Committee.

Students who are not involved in the military often wonder about other students’ motivations to join, Mills said.

“Everyone wants to know why,” he said, calling it “the million dollar question” and adding that he finds such curiosity flattering. “It’s a complicated answer because there’s no one reason. So I find myself answering that question in different ways at different times.” Students are always surprised, but never negative when they learn of his career

Spotting the uniform on campus Though Veterans Day puts a spotlight on military service, to see a student in uniform is an anomaly rather than routine on campus.

Students who wear the uniform have found that doing so can create an opportunity to discover unexpected connections.

“At most you’re going to see six people Wednesday … maybe just a couple hours, wearing a uniform,” Rattner said, adding that, were the University to launch a full ROTC branch, more students, faculty and staff would be to able connect over shared experiences.

Students in uniform are not necessarily assumed to attend Brown, but instead, “You might just think … they wandered off the nearest base.”

Even simple awareness of student involvement in the military can foster great support on campus, Rattner said.

He added that when he participates in ROTC drill exercises in uniform, wearing it “gives you a sense of pride and consciousness.”

Liberal school, conservative military Stereotypes can amplify the disconnect between military and non-military communities at Brown.

Walker Mills ’15 said he plans to enter the Marine Corps as a second Lieutenant upon graduation. Mills, a Herald opinions columnist, comes from what is “in no way a military family” — his mother melted his toy guns in the oven when he was a boy, he said. Though his childhood “fascination with the military … didn’t quite fade,” Mills said he did not seriously consider the option until he met the Marine Corps recruiters at a career fair during his sophomore year. He was not surprised to find the recruiters available to talk, he said, as he did not expect many Brown students to approach them.

For the past two summers, Mills has spent six intensive weeks training at the Platoon Leader’s Class officer candidate school in Virgina. The “weeding” program quickly fosters deep connections,

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014

EMMA JERZYK / HERALD

force students to consider alternate modes of thought and to questiontheir own ways of thinking, Levitsky said.

Levitsky compared the idea of comparative thinking to mathematics, saying that scientists who can calculate in both metric and imperial systems have an advantage within their fields. The domain of the humanities is to allow students to measure the world using different methods, he said.

Both professors also noted that the University should increase its

commitment to study abroad programs.

Levitsky said that the University must invest “in true internationalization.” Evdokimova added that the University must not allow study abroad experiences to be obstructed by financial difficulties.

Because the Slavic Studies department is “such an enriching domain, you bring together all these different things,” Bluth said.

“That has really opened my eyes to the other things I’m interested in at Brown,” she added.

goals, he said.

was “not very well-thought-out.” He added, “I’m totally okay with admitting that … and I’m not apologizing either.”

The decision was personal, Ricci said, rather than patriotic — his patriotism was a result rather than a direct cause of his service.

Originally, Ricci intended to join the Marines, but chose the Navy instead in honor of his grandfather, whom Ricci called “the number one influence” on his life.

Time in service “drastically alter(ed) the way I connected with the people I knew,” Ricci said. “You start to think about that stuff too much — it can really weigh you down.”

Common ground can be forged between veteran and non-veteran students, with effort and an open mind, Ricci said.

Especially for Resumed Undergraduate Education students, accepting and learning to communicate one’s identity is an essential step toward connecting with traditional students, Ricci said.

An essential first step in breaking down barriers between military and non-military students is accepting that the more traditional student might not have any context to understand your experiences, Ricci said.

Ricci said he would like to see Resumed Undergraduate Studies become more visible on campus by integrating RUE into the general first-year orientation.

Looking forward Karen McNeil, program director at SVCP, said she is working to increase the number of veterans on campus in order to strengthen the veteran community.

“When it’s just a few token students, it’s going to be difficult for them to get support as a community,” McNeil said.

McNeil cited the anti-military — and even hostile — stigma attached to “schools like Brown” and the logistics of admission for military students as two great challenges in attracting veterans to Brown. She said she aims to reach veterans in the early stages of transition out of the military, which happens on a rolling basis.

The first step in strengthening the on-campus veteran community is to make the military “less exotic” to students at Brown, McNeil said.

Tongue-tied A lack of knowledge of or familiarity with the military inhibits the initiation and development of military-related conversations at Brown. While Veterans Day generates some conversation, a sustained commitment to discourse may foster a stronger sense of belonging for military students at Brown.

Ricci said communicating his military experience “requires more than a 30-second comment in class. This topic can be galvanizing, and rightfully so,” Ricci said. “But real sort of discourse that is deep and well-thought-out I think is necessary and productive.”

When it comes to launching conversations with individuals involved in the military, many students do not even know where to start. Rattner said most of his peers seem to lack enough military knowledge to ask appropriate questions and often assume military interest indicates a specific interest in infantry.

Military jobs are diverse — doctors, engineers, linguists and photojournalists all play roles in the U.S. military.

“There are very few kids at Brown whose parents served, and unless your parents served or your siblings served or for some reason you’re fascinated by military science, you’re not going to know much about it. I think that should be a concern,” Rattner said. To help break down military stereotypes, students should be aware of the basics of a military lifestyle, the general structure of the military and its contracts as well as readjustment challenges for veterans such as post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.

Veterans’ perspectives enhance discussion of heavy topics in class, Ricci said, adding that he believes his military experience benefits his Brown experience by providing “a greater context (through which) to interpret my education.”

Though Ricci said he performed well academically when he first attended college after high school, he felt unfulfilled and in need of knowing what he was going to do with the rest of his life. So he put college on pause to join the military, a decision that Ricci said in retrospect,

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014

menu

t h e b a n n e r y e t wav e s

SATELLITE DINING JOSIAH’S Steamed Dumplings with Dipping Sauces BLUE ROOM Mediterranean Pocket Soups: Hearty Country Vegetable, Tomato Florentine, Baked Potato ANDREWS COMMONS Pizzas: Honey Boo Boo, Mushroom Madness, Thai BBQ Chicken

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Chicken Fingers, Vegan Nuggets, Corn and Sweet Pepper Saute, Fresh Collard Greens

Roast Turkey, Mashed Potatoes, Fresh Whole Green Beans, Vegan Oven Roasted Tofu

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

P u l l e d Po r k S a n dw i ch , Vegetarian Spinach Strudel, Mediterranean Eggplant Saute

Chopped Sirloin with Mushroom Sauce, Pastito, Butternut Squash and Leek Risotto

sudoku sudoku

ELI WHITE / HERALD

The American flag waves upright on the Main Green in time for Veteran’s Day, despite blowing over early in the morning Oct. 23.

comics Mind Grapes | Willa Tracy ’17

crossword

Class Notes | Philip Trammell ’15

calendar TODAY 11:30 A.M. CANS 4 CUPCAKES

TOMORROW 12 P.M. WHEN COURSE CONTENT BRINGS UP EMOTIONS

This community food drive benefits the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and will feature hot cocoa, a photo booth and Brown’s mascot Bruno. Main Green

Course material can sometimes trigger emotional and personal reactions. This seminar, hosted by the LGBTQ Resource Center, will explore strategies for dealing with personal responses. Sarah Doyle Women’s Center

6 P.M. GRATITUDE NIGHT

Participants can thank Brown Annual Fund donors at this event by filming a video, writing a thank-you note or signing up to be on the Annual Fund’s student board.

Sharpe Refectory, Chancellors Dining Room 7 P.M. ADOCH 2015 UNITREP INFO SESSION

Students can learn more about what it takes to be an ADOCH UnitRep. The Bruin Club is seeking undergraduates enthusiastic about hosting accepted students for this threeday event. Wilson 101

6:30 P.M. IN THEIR OWN WORDS: PROVIDENCE SCHOOLS FROM A STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

Twelve current and former Providence high school students will answer questions about the quality of student life in the city’s high schools. Salomon 001 6:30 P.M. A WORKSHOP ON TRANS SOLIDARITY AND ADVOCACY IN QUEER, FEMINIST AND SOCIAL JUSTICE SPACES

Those interested in feminism, activism and social justice are invited to discuss the meaning of solidarity. Faunce Underground

6 commentary

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014

EDITORIAL

The music industry’s swift, painful shift Platforms like Spotify, YouTube and Pandora connect listeners with their favorite artists at a limited cost and inexorably promote musical exploration and discovery. Yet music revenue in the United States has fallen from $38 billion in 2000 to $14 billion in 2014.

Musicians are livid and blame the Internet. Krystian Zimerman, the German classical pianist, reported furiously that his recording label Deutsche Grammophon would not let him record several Beethoven sonatas because there were YouTube videos of those works being performed. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke also spoke out against Spotify, tweeting: “Make no mistake new artists you discover on #Spotify will no (sic) get paid. Meanwhile shareholders will shortly being rolling in it. Simples.”

Spotify published a blog post Monday to defend its role in the industry. In it, the site quotes Quincy Jones, the producer of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, who stated, “Spotify is not the enemy; piracy is the enemy.”

Napster and Limewire were shut down because they disseminated free, downloadable copies of content with no royalties to the copyrighted labels or artists. But does Spotify, the self-proclaimed solution, perpetuate a different model? Nicholas Payton, a jazz trumpeter, cites as the source of his outrage that Spotify provides between $0.006 and $0.0084 in royalties per stream, and while any amount is better than nothing, it is certainly much smaller revenue as compared to the $0.13 artists make from iTunes track purchases.

Since its founding in 2008, Spotify has paid about $2 billion in royalties to artists, payments which it claims would not have changed hands had piracy or buy-only models of listenership dominated the field. Spotify is unusual in that it actually pays money to artists and licensing fees to labels, unlike Grooveshark. Furthermore, as sales from downloads and physical CD downloads plummet in the United States, they are also plummeting in the Canadian market, where Spotify does not exist.

Precipitously discounted music download websites like mp3mixx.com and mp3million.com sell tracks for $0.15 and $0.10 legally by paying licensing fees to record labels and basing their servers and businesses in other countries. Mp3million is based in Ukraine, but it sells to consumers in England, Canada, the United States and Europe. The licensing structure allows the site to offer a wide selection of both popular and rare music at a much lower price.

All of these forces are pushing down the cost of music for the consumer and making it more readily available. Of the sites that contribute to decreasing revenues for musical artists, Spotify seems the least damaging.

Fledgling artists need initial revenue streams to finance tours, complete recordings and promote themselves. But Spotify promotes artists and allows for the sharing of music through social media and its own internal system. Buying music certainly gives artists more leverage in recording new material and introducing new albums, but Spotify helps give artists the exposure they need to be successful.

The one thing Spotify is certainly guilty of is turning up the heat, thereby tightening the competition. With so much music out there, one really has to pick and choose, and the music business seems much more unforgiving to the up-and-comings and the older, not-in-vogue musicians than ever before.

A N G E L IA WA N G

Q U O T E O F T H E D AY

“This country is very bad with history.”

— Charles Cobb, visiting associate professor of Africana Studies

See cobb on page 8.

CORRECTIONS An article in Thursday’s Herald (“Research spotlight: Researchers utilize 3-D cell cultures to mimic animal tissues,” Nov. 6) incorrectly used the term toxins instead of toxicants in one instance. The article also incorrectly described a slide of cells as infected with a toxicant. In fact, it was exposed to a toxicant. The Herald regrets the errors.

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commentary 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014

Damned lies and bad statistics DILUM ALUTHGE opinions columnist

Women are three times more likely to wear red or pink when ovulating. Men with greater upper body strength are more likely to be fiscally conservative. And Republicans have “significantly different brain structure” compared to Democrats.

All three of these statements are fairly bold, provocative claims. All three were published in reputable, peer-reviewed, academic journals.

And all three are, to put it politely, nothing but hot air.

The unfortunate reality is that all three of the research studies in question contained fundamentally fatal flaws — for example, failing to account for multiple comparisons — in the statistical reasoning employed by the authors to justify their conclusions. Thus, their conclusions, however flashy and provocative they may be, are not supported by statistically significant evidence.

So while the Brown Republicans are welcome to start a recruiting campaign targeting gym-goers, there is no actual evidence that suggests they should.

The examples I have highlighted are just symptoms of a larger insidious trend. Statistical reasoning and methods are regularly misused in

the academic world, and the consequences are serious and far-reaching.

Perhaps the most obvious consequence of the misuse of statistics is that it corrupts the overall body of research literature and ultimately hinders research progress. Take, for example, the field of cardiology. A 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association compiled a list of 85 genetic variants that had been found, in various peer-reviewed papers, to be linked to acute coronary syndrome. When

shaped and directed by these results. Of course, since those results were not in fact correct, this means that such research could have been largely useless. In general, having false results in the literature — no matter the field — can lead to other researchers wasting both time and money pursuing fruitless leads. This problem exerts a financial burden on our research system and institutions while delaying researchers’ work, potentially by years.

In addition to the negative effects on research communities, the

cal reasoning was justifiably widespread. Andrew Gelman, director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University, pointed out some of the most glaring flaws, such as the arbitrary exclusion of data, a failure to account for noise and the use of causal language such as “influenced” and “affected” when discussing correlation. Gelman’s overall assessment? The paper was, as he bluntly put it, “sloppy work.”

What is especially disturbing here is how the use of improper statistical thinking resulted in an un-

Statistical reasoning and methods are regularly misused in the academic world, and the consequences are serious and far-reaching.

the researchers attempted to validate these 85 claims by testing actual patients, they found that only one of the genetic variants was significantly linked to the syndrome, implying serious flaws in most of the papers that were examined.

But most researchers who read these papers did not perform their own validation tests. They assumed that the science and statistics were sound and took the conclusions to be legitimate — the articles were, after all, subjected to peer review.

And their research may have been

misuse of statistics can also serve to perpetuate harmful societal stereotypes and structures. To illustrate this, let’s look at a 2013 study entitled “The Fluctuating Female Vote.”

In this study, a team of researchers found that women’s ovulatory cycles affected their political and religious views. For example, the authors claimed that “ovulation led single women to become more liberal, less religious, and more likely to vote for Barack Obama” in the 2012 presidential election.

Criticism of this paper’s statisti-

substantiated conclusion that perpetuates damaging stereotypes. In this case, the paper served to support the antiquated notion that women are, in some sense, “controlled” by their ovulatory cycle. Thus, the publication of this paper lends credence to those seeking to defend structural and societal sexism through the use of “scientific” arguments. zevery bad paper that is published hands ammunition to those who want to reinforce inequality.

The two previous types of consequences that I discussed — damage

to the research literature and community, and reproduction of structural inequalities — are of a broader, more long-term aspect. But shoddy statistical reasoning can also have more immediate impacts. Take for example the Oct. 23 poll of Rhode Island voters conducted by the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. Patrick Sweeney, campaign manager for Republican gubernatorial nominee Allan Fung, argued that the poll oversampled voters from Providence, which leans Democratic. In the weeks leading up to an election, the results reported by pollsters can impact voter opinion and cause candidates to alter their campaign strategies. So if those conducting the poll make statistical mistakes, such as oversampling a particular portion of the population, the consequences are immediate and real.

Throughout this column, I’ve provided various examples of “bad statistics.” But I want to emphasize that I do not mean to single these authors out. The problem here is not a handful of researchers misusing statistics, but rather a pervasive culture in academia that allows these abuses to continue unchecked.

Dilum Aluthge ’15 MD’19 is an Applied Mathematics concentrator and can be reached at dilum_aluthge@brown.edu.

Death with dignity: The final frontier SEAN BLAKE opinions columnist

On Nov. 1, a terminally ill glioblastoma brain cancer patient took her own life. That patient’s name was Brittany Maynard. At the age of 29, she chose to end her life using drugs legally provided to her by a physician in her home state of Oregon. And with her passing, the debate surrounding assisted suicide has been reignited.

In Maynard’s death, we see a personal decision made by a mentally fit individual. And this decision has come to highlight the failings of this nation’s policies regarding end-of-life issues. It has laid bare a simple reality — we can no longer accept the poorly defined ethical doctrine that has come to dominate the politics of death and dying. Instead, we must demand the right to exercise our own autonomy regarding this most fundamental issue of our humanity.

State and federal policies should support, not hinder, this process. The right to die with dignity should become as universal and important a human right as any other. We should all be afforded the opportunity to address our own deaths without fear of legal or moral backlash.

The right-to-die movement faces criticism from some people in the medical community who hold that such policies inherently violate the Hippocratic oath. The notion is a simple one: How can physicians who have sworn to do no harm provide the means for patients to take their own lives?

But this question presupposes the benefi-

cial nature of end-of-life treatments, a notion that is not entirely true. In 2009, American patients spent roughly $50 billion on medical treatments during the last two months of their lives. It is estimated that some 20 to 30 percent of those treatments offered no meaningful impact on the health of the patients that received them.

With many doctors offering treatment regimens that provide fleeting benefits, the logical leap to offering patients an option to choose the terms of their own death seems far less out of proportion. Ultimately, such a leap would be made on the grounds of quality of life for those

the amount spent on national education in that year. And it was also more than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security.

Maybe laws that allow terminal patients access to legally prescribed drugs to end their lives prematurely would only be utilized by a fraction of the qualifying population. But this sort of option ought to be restricted to those terminally ill patients mentally fit enough to make a such a definitive declaration about their final days.

And despite the potentially minimal financial impact of this change, it would be a step in the right direction. It would promise a more

The right to die with dignity should become as universal and important a human right as any other. We should all be afforded the opportunity to address our own deaths without fear of legal or moral backlash. patients. This sentiment is a vital one — saying that medical procedures simply prolong life is not sufficient to validate their inherent usefulness.

A medical procedure that promises prolonged suffering should no longer be viewed as more legal or valid than an option that may end that suffering. With death as such a salient reality, terminally ill patients should not be pigeonholed into choosing treatment options that promise only more pain.

The implementation of right-to-die laws nationwide is not a panacea for the enormity of our medical dilemmas. But the $50 billion bill for extensive end-of-life treatment that taxpayer dollars footed in 2009 was more than

rational approach to end-of-life decisions and the spending associated with them. Plus, if these laws were coupled with more rational spending caps for Medicare, we would likely see a reduction in general medical spending that would go a long way toward addressing our national debt.

Ultimately, a morally based opposition to the implementation of death-with-dignity laws is devoid of a logical backing. It reeks of the thinly veiled religiosity that has come to define opposition to equally divisive medical topics like abortion and stem cell research. It ignores potential fiscal benefits and entirely discounts the notion of quality of life. And most importantly, it stalemates discussions of core issues

regarding death by shouting down dissenting voices with blasphemous profanities.

And as each year passes and the baby boomer generation creeps closer and closer to old age, end-of-life issues will loom ever larger. These septuagenarians and octogenarians will soon be our grandparents, our parents, our uncles and aunts and our family friends, if they are not already. But despite the inherently emotional nature of death and dying, we can no longer cling to an outdated mode of addressing one of life’s few inevitabilities.

This foolishness will bankrupt this country and it will ensure that terminal patients spend untold millions of hours clutching to the most tenuous sense of life. In place of that irrationality we must construct end-of-life policies that allow patients to more fully determine their own lives. Death-with-dignity laws are central to these new constructions, as they will afford patients the option to end their lives on their own terms, without the expense — literal and figurative — of painful, superfluous procedures.

I am not advocating for death panels. I do not believe legal access to pharmaceuticals that will ensure death is appropriate in all situations. And I do not believe that any authority other than the patient involved should dictate end-of-life decisions. But for mentally fit, terminally ill patients, we should allow and honor medical decisions that will hasten death. We should at least have the option to die with dignity and the sense of security inherent to it. In death I should be able to exercise my agency just as I did during life.

Sean Blake ’17 can be reached at sean_blake@brown.edu.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014

THE

BROWN DAILY HERALD

science & research

Anesthesia does not affect Forum explores health, urban planning ties cancer screenings, study finds RISD, School of New study addresses patients’ concerns over painful breast cancer diagnostic procedures

By SOPHIE YAN STAFF WRITER

Administering a local anesthetic decreases the pain patients feel during an important procedure for staging breast cancer, but does not interfere with the surgeon’s ability to determine tumor presence, according to a new study by University researchers in the October issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology.

In the past, this procedure ­­— called breast lymphoscintigraphy — has been an integral yet unpleasant part of breast cancer staging. Many breast cancer patients go through this painful lymph node assay, in which a low-activity radioactive substance is injected and absorbed by the lymph nodes. Surgeons then extract and dissect the lymph nodes with the highest levels of radioactivity, searching for signs of metastasizing cancer, which often spreads to the lymph nodes first.

The administration of this radioactive substance “can be quite painful,” said Richard Noto, director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, associate clinical professor at the Alpert Medical School and one of the authors of the study.

“We’ve had comments from patients that one of the worst parts of having breast cancer … was coming to Nuclear Medicine and getting lymphoscintigraphy done,” said Don Yoo, director of nuclear medicine at Miriam Hospital and associate professor of diagnostic imaging, who worked on the study alongside Noto.

Yoo said the treatment is painful because the radiopharmaceutical is acidic. Injections occur at the skin surface, where there are many sensitive nerve endings.

“Some patients really had excruciating pain while they were having the procedure,” Yoo said. The researchers tested administering buffered 2 percent lidocaine before the radiopharmaceutical to decrease the patients’ discomfort. “What we do is very minor, but obviously we want to try to do anything that will help try to improve that experience,” he added.

Noto said in designing the study, the researchers had to consider whether the decreased pain caused by administering lidocaine would offset the additional discomfort caused by another needle stick. In addition, he added, they wanted to ensure “the surgeons would be able to detect the same lymph nodes and the same number” of nodes.

But “lidocaine is what we use in hospital settings so often for minor interventional procedures, and it’s so well tolerated,” Yoo said. “It’s kind of a standard (anesthetic) for so many of these procedures that’s easy to do, widely accessible and pretty cheap.”

Previously, some clinicians had expressed doubts that injecting lidocaine could preserve visualization

quality, Noto said. Since the lidocaine is injected under the surface of the skin in the same location as the radiopharmaceutical, the worry was that the lidocaine would prevent the radioactive substance from reaching the patient’s lymph nodes, he added.

The researchers pushed ahead with the study, hoping that their hypothesis would be proven correct.

Forty-nine patients participated in the random-assignment study, Yoo said. Both patients who received lidocaine and those who did not rated their pain levels before and after the procedure on a standardized scale, and the researchers compared changes from the baseline to derive the study result.

Both authors acknowledged the subjective nature of their measurements.

“There was quite a bit of variability, as you would expect,” Noto said, adding that the researchers took the average values of the data and largely disregarded the variability from one patient to another.

Yoo said the study aimed to minimize subjectivity by using patients of similar ages.

“We tried to be as objective as possible, but everyone does have a different level of pain” tolerance, he said.

Martha Mainiero, professor of diagnostic imaging and director of the Anne C. Pappas Center for Breast Imaging at Rhode Island Hospital, who was not involved in the study, emphasized the objective nature of the study in an email to The Herald.

“The prospective, randomized nature of the trial is a strength of the study,” she wrote.

At the study’s conclusion, the researchers found that the lidocaine injection did indeed decrease pain levels in patients by statistically significant levels.

The procedure “also did not change the number of lymph nodes that on average were seen,” Noto said.

“It was a win-win situation for both things we were trying to evaluate,” Yoo said.

Noto and Yoo have already implemented the protocol of injecting lidocaine before breast lymphoscintigraphy in their own practices, Noto said.

“The results are pretty consistent and convincing both in terms of the pain result and the absence in any change in terms of the lymph node optics,” he added.

Yoo said many practices were already using lidocaine before the procedure, but that this study represents the first concrete proof that the protocol is effective.

“This article gives scientific validity to a technique that has been utilized inconsistently across the country,” Mainiero wrote. “The implication is that the technique of using lidocaine for breast sentinel lymph node injection should become standard.”

Noto added that this study constitutes an important “step forward” in improving the patient experience.

“There is no longer a good reason to not give a patient lidocaine before doing the procedure,” Yoo said.

Public Health host discussion linking poor infrastructure to disease

By JASON NADBOY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Some residential neighborhoods in Providence do not have sidewalks, which is problematic, said Peter Asen, director of the Providence Healthy Communities Office, during the public forum Place Matters: Design for Population Health. The forum, which focused on the importance of creating infrastructure conducive to healthy communities, was hosted jointly by the School of Public Health and the Rhode Island School of Design.

The United States ranks 49th in the world when it comes to life expectancy, even though it spends the largest percentage of its gross domestic product on healthcare, said Richard Jackson, chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles. This may be in part because the country’s infrastructure does not facilitate healthy living styles among citizens, he said.

At the beginning of his keynote address, Jackson noted that his father died of polio when he was young. Growing up in poverty, “illness was the norm,” he said, and it was common for people to catch deadly diseases and die young.

The change in infrastructure over the last 50 years is one of the main reasons why diseases do not impact community health in the same way they used to, Jackson said. But despite declining disease rates, the United States is still not healthy enough, and certain infrastructure still needs improvement.

One issue with urban planning is overcrowding, Jackson said. Urban

SAM KASE / HERALD

Urban planners should create cities with the right density to improve public health, according to policymakers and scholars at Tuesday’s forum. planners should create cities with a “good density,” which involves the right placement of vegetation and light. Designers should “make healthy choices easy,” Jackson added, noting that stairs that are beautifully designed can inspire people to use them rather than taking the elevator.

Jackson emphasized the influence of mayors when it comes to promoting better infrastructure. “Mayors are really important. I’ve given up on the United States government,” he joked.

At a panel discussion following the talk, Akilah Dulin-Keita, assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences at the School of Public Health, said she is working to improve infrastructure in poor communities to promote social change.

“We get to leave, but they have to stay,” she said of researchers working with community members, adding that community members must participate in infrastructure discussions.

Nadine Gerdts, senior critic in the Department of Landscape Architecture at RISD, talked about her work

helping children change their school’s playground. Through planting bulbs in the yard, the students were able to “take ownership” over and appreciate their environment, she said.

Michael Fine, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, said too many tax dollars are wasted and the government should spend more on improving infrastructure.

When an audience member asked about the increasing gentrification that usually occurs when infrastructure improves, Manuel Cordero, president and founder of DownCity Design, noted that all types of diversity — including race, gender and age ­— have to be taken into account to design neighborhoods that serve all residents.

Terrie Fox Wetle, dean of the School of Public Health, told The Herald that she wants this forum to lead to greater collaboration with RISD when it comes to improving community infrastructure.

Designers and public health professionals should collaborate in “rethinking the systems that are at work”, Gerdts told The Herald.

Cobb reassesses civil rights history in talk

Public needs to recognize role of grassroots activism in advancing 1960s movement, author says

By GABRIELLA REYES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Much of the public perception of the 1960s civil rights movement is skewed and needs to be readdressed, said Charles Cobb, a civil rights scholar and visiting associate professor of Africana Studies, during a book talk Tuesday.

Providence community members and students gathered to hear Cobb discuss his book, “This Nonviolent Stuff ’ll Get You Killed,” at the Brown Bookstore. Cobb previously worked as a reporter for National Public Radio and National Geographic and is an inductee in the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame.

“News is shaped more by what is left out than any bias,” he said. “Much of the same thing is true in history.”

While Cobb argued that both scholars and the public distort and misrepresent history in general, he focused on the oversimplification of the mid-20th century civil rights movement in the South. He wrote his recently released book due to his “dissatisfaction with the way the history of

ZEIN KHLEIF / HERALD

Charles Cobb, visiting associate professor of Africana Studies, delivers a talk at the Brown Bookstore on his new book exploring the civil rights era. the movement is presented,” he added.

Cobb highlighted popular misconceptions of the civil rights movement by sharing an anecdotal conversation that he had with an acquaintance.

Cobb said that after he told his friend about his book idea, his friend said, “What the public understands is that Rosa (Parks) sat down and Martin (Luther King Jr.) stood up, and then the white folks saw the light.”

Cobb criticized how Americans study and portray history. “This

country is very bad with history,” he said. “It’s as much a cultural problem as it is a political problem.”

While marches led by high-profile leaders such as King were important, history often forgets about the role ordinary black citizens played in the civil rights movement, Cobb said. “If you really want to understand the movement, you have to look at it from the bottom-up.”

Cobb discussed the “organizing » See COBB, page 3