Tuesday, November 10, 2015

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015

VOLUME CL, ISSUE 103

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Panel focuses on crisis communication Student startup offers Administrators, students delivery service via texting survey campus-wide emails following three instances of crisis

With over $15,000 raised, student business goes live, brings requested items to students within set radius

By BAYLOR KNOBLOCH SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Six administrators and students grappled with the University’s presentation and circulation of information during times of crisis at a panel Monday evening. The panel marked the first installment in a two-part series centered on the University’s response to emergencies, tragedy, trauma and unrest.

The two-hour discussion was structured around three specific instances of crisis on campus: the protest and shutdown of a lecture by former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in October 2013; the date-rape drug and sexual assault cases last October; and the suicide of a graduate student last spring. Approximately 30 students attended some portion of the event.

The series is “an attempt to get the University and the students talking about these things together,” co-organizer Kristina Lee ’16 told The Herald.

The panel’s location of the Leung

By NORA GOSSELIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

SADIE HOPE-GUND/ HERALD

Alissa Rhee ’16 and Sazzy Gourley ’16, president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, served as the two undergraduate panelists.

Gallery in the Stephen Robert ’62 all three instances of crisis under conCampus Center, which is “literally sideration. located in the center of campus,” gaveIn determining whether an inciconversations that typically transpire dent necessitates a campus-wide email, in University Hall a more transparent administrators take into account the platform, Lee said. “breadth, visibility and level of comLee planned the event with Jessica munity impact,” Carey said, adding Brown ’16, Justice Gaines ’16 and Vice that they also consider laws such as President for Academic Development, the Clery Act. Diversity and Inclusion Liza CariagaAdministrators strive for “a balance Lo, crafting the night’s questions and between communicating quickly but choosing the panelists. also with as much context as possible” Panelist Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, when crafting campus-wide emails, executive vice president for planning Carey said. They also aim to both and policy, was closely involved in “disseminate factual information” and crafting the University responses to » See CRISIS, page 4

The Number — a campus delivery service designed by three undergraduates — went live Monday after weeks of extensive research and promotion.

The new company’s premise is simple: Students can text a number and have anything within a specified radius delivered.

The Number’s creators — Isabella Amram’17, Esra Koc ’19 and David Kebudi ’19 — made the delivery radius extend from Tortilla Flats on Hope Street to Wickenden Street. The radius does not yet include shops on Wickenden, Amram said.

The service will run daily from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. and additionally from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on weekends.

Before using the service, Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students must confirm their student status by

providing a school email address.

Though the concept of a third-party delivery service has been implemented elsewhere by companies such as GoButler and Magic, Amram said The Number is unique in that it targets solely college students and employs its own student deliverers.

Amram said she conceived of the idea last year when she was sick in bed during a blizzard and wished she had someone to text to deliver her food or medicine. She soon began thinking about a way to satisfy this desire and held interviews for a partner to start a new company in the fall.

Kebudi, who ultimately filled this role, said he arrived on campus full of ideas for potential entrepreneurial endeavors but this opportunity was too good to pass up. His first interview with Amram turned into an intense, threehour brainstorming session, Amram said. Shortly after Kebudi joined, he brought Koc — a longtime friend — onto the project, knowing the team could use someone “calm, cool and collected” to mediate any potential disagreements, Amram added. » See NUMBER, page 3

Article outlines strategies to Brown Science Prep takes students to Mars Weekly tutoring program lower generic drug prices engages high schoolers Licenses, contract, futures market among suggestions for making generic drugs affordable

By ELENA RENKEN STAFF WRITER

The pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli made headlines this summer when he raised the price of a generic drug by over 5,000 percent. Led by Clay Wiske MD ’16, a team of researchers presented strategies to prevent such price spikes and increase competition in the markets for generic drugs in the United States.

Their article was published online Oct. 29 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

When a pharmaceutical company patents a drug, the company enjoys 20 years of exclusivity to manufacture and sell it. After the patent expires, another company can enter the market and reproduce the same drug, which is then referred to as a generic drug.

The first generic manufacturer

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

INSIDE

has a monopoly on the generic label during a 180-day period, after which other firms can rush into the market in an effort to make money while the price is high. An increase in the number of suppliers causes the price of the drug to drop and firms to start leaving the market, according to the article.

“Prices spike when a number of firms exit, leaving only one or two to dominate the generics market,” Wiske said.

Shkreli, who runs Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of the drug Daraprim overnight from $13.50 to $750 per tablet in August. The drug is used to treat the disease toxoplasmosis, which is caused by a parasitic infection that is particularly lifethreatening for those without strong immune systems and is commonly used as treatment for malaria. After resulting public outcry, the price was lowered.

This incident stood out from others due to the magnitude of the price spike and because “there was sort of a villain everyone could point to,” Wiske said. Price spikes “will continue to happen until we have better » See DRUG, page 8

in interactive activities, creative lessons

By HATTIE XU STAFF WRITER

About 45 high school students visiting Brown on Saturday walked on the surface of Mars, landed in a crater and suddenly found themselves on the surface of the moon. The students never left the Yurt Ultimate Reality Theatre, where they were able to experience these places as Johannes Novotny GS switched through the machine’s images.

The YURT visit was organized as part of Brown Science Prep, a weekly tutoring program that meets Saturdays in Barus and Holley. The program aims to “get high school students around the state excited about science through interactive activities and creative lessons,” said Joey Botros ’16, a coordinator of BSP and a biology concentrator.

Founded 15 years ago, BSP grew out of the Swearer Center for Public Service, Botros said. The program now has 18 undergraduate mentors

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

SADIE HOPE-GUND / HERALD

Students attending Brown Science Prep Saturday visited the Yurt Ultimate Reality Theater and were immersed in images of the moon and Mars. and around 100 affiliated high school students, who attend the two-hour sessions voluntarily after a brief application process, he said. Mentors design lesson plans covering a variety of fields in science, he added.

This week’s trip to the YURT was integrated into an astronomy lesson.

The YURT uses 69 projectors, satellite imagery and 3D data to immerse users in spaces such as the topography of Mars and virtual reality paintings, Novotny said.

Back in the classroom, the mentors used charts, images, videos and other graphic representations to teach students about basic astronomy, with

a focus on topics such as dark matter, stars and planets.

The mentors are allowed to develop lessons around any topics they are passionate about, Botros said. Each week, the mentors pair up to plan or edit a lesson, which can be as long as 15 pages, said Ryan Bahar ’18, a BSP mentor.

The mentors design every lesson to be different from any taught before, Bahar said, adding that one of his favorite demonstrations enabled students to see an MRI machine as part of a neuroscience lesson.

Karen Gutierrez ’17, another BSP » See BSP, page 4

WEATHER

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015

UNIVERSITY NEWS Watson Institute lecture examines potential of tactical diversification for militant groups

METRO Providence ambulance company under FBI fraud investigation, not currently facing charges

COMMENTARY Sundlee ’16: Liberal values of Brown students do not align with those of majority in country

COMMENTARY Malik ’18: Students should consider personal benefits in their academic, professional work

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UNIVERSITY NEWS PAGE 2 • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015

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Watson talk covers pros and cons of tactical diversification University of Virginia assistant professor outlines coauthored paper about militant organizations’ strategies

By JULIA CHOI STAFF WRITER

All militant organizations must make decisions about how to employ a number of tactics to most effectively achieve strategic objectives, said Philip Potter, assistant professor of politics at the University of Virginia and principal investigator for a Minerva Initiative project sponsored by the Department of Defense. Potter discussed how militant organizations use tactics including hijacking, kidnapping and suicide bombing in a talk Monday evening titled “Tactical Diversity in Militant Violence” at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

In the lecture, Potter outlined the paper he co-authored last month with Michael Horowitz, associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Evan Perkoski, a postdoctoral research fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Tactical diversification — using a strategically varied set of militant tactics within an organization — strengthens militant leadership and is important to consider when dismantling threats and planning counterterrorism attacks, he said.

Statistical evidence shows that successful militant groups generally use

more tactics than unsuccessful ones, he said. “So why do only some groups choose to diversify?” he asked. While advantages of tactical diversification include better “adaptation to counterterrorist innovations” and a “psychological advantage” against the opponent, there are also disadvantages, he said.

“It dilutes focus and introduces new vulnerabilities” as well as diminishing the strength of command, he said. “It becomes harder to control your foot soldiers, harder to ensure your orders are being carried out,” he said, adding that the lack of strong, centralized leadership could lead to increased indiscriminate violence and use of force.

In addition, tactical diversification diminishes defensive resources and increases the risk of failed attacks, Potter said. Innovation and experimentation sometimes “lead to situations that fail,” he said, adding that failure represents not only a loss of the militant group but also “a loss of credibility in the eyes of the people.”

Militant organizations are typically conservative and have the mentality of “short- to medium-term survival as opposed to long-term strategic objectives,” Potter said. “There are high rewards and high risks to diversification,” which demonstrates why tactical diversification does not occur more often, he said.

Potter highlighted two trends from

SADIE HOPE-GUND / HERALD

Philip Potter, assistant professor of politics at the University of Virginia, said during a lecture Monday at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs that successful militant groups use more tactics. the paper that may explain increases in tactical diversity: heightened pressure from state governments and competition with other militant groups. Since diversification allows groups to act in a variety of ways, it mitigates singular pressure from the group as a whole, he said.

“Diversification is a reaction to pressure on organizations,” Potter said.

“Organizations diversify under duress.”

He provided a simplified sketch of

the research design behind the paper, which showed tactics of various militant organizations spanning the last 30 to 40 years. While Potter said there is still “much to know about these organizations,” he added that he would be interested in investigating whether the phenomenon of increased diversity under pressure similarly arises from intra-organizational pressures.

Nicholas Miller, assistant professor of nuclear security and policy, political

science and international and public affairs, offered his own academic perspective on Potter’s paper after the talk.

Tactical diversification matters because it helps gauge the unpredictability of “a militant group’s repertoire of violence,” Miller said. But the research in the paper did not account for the variance of domestic resources available to different groups, he said. Nonetheless, “it is fun to read a paper that explores something new,” he added.

UNIVERSITY NEWS

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015 • PAGE 3

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» NUMBER, from page 1 “We came to realize that the food and goods sold on Thayer are highly demanded. So the question was why are we not buying them?” Kebudi said.

Students spend an average of one hour and 52 minutes a day walking from one place to another, and the team realized that people only go out and buy items when they have the time to do so, Kebudi said. “Basically our motto is ‘save The Number, save time,”’ he said.

Based on their estimations of the budgets for marketing, the team set up a page on the fundraising website IndieGoGo and set the original goal of $6,519. Within 28 days, The Number had raised a total of $15,535. The trio used the money to pay for posters and stickers, fund launch events and add both a graphic designer and an iOS application developer to the team.

A substantial portion of the funds have also been placed in what Amram describes as “the money pool” — a bank account that is used for purchasing customers’ desired items.

When someone texts The Number at 413-345-9500 with a request, student-hired deliverers pay for the good requested with debit cards provided by the company and make the delivery.

Customers then pay the full price of the good — using Square, Venmo or cash — plus an additional $3.50 service fee, which increases during times of high demand such as Saturday nights or periods of poor weather conditions like rain or snow. This money is placed directly back into the bank account.

Prior to its launch, The Number

COURTESY OF CLARA AMRAM

Esra Koc ’19, Isabella Amram ’17 and David Kebudi ’19 launched their student delivery service, The Number, Monday. The startup has hired and trained approximately 40 student deliverers, who will work in pairs to cover North and South campuses during each shift. hired approximately 40 deliverers, who underwent a training process that included both interviews and workshops.

The workshop was “casual and fun,” said Hershel Caywood ’16, adding that he was motivated by Amram’s passion for the startup to join as a deliverer.

In these workshops, the managerial team described the pay model and reviewed potential issues they might face. They also encouraged all deliverers to share any of their ideas, hoping

to make the company as interactive and inclusive as possible, Kebudi said.

“Deliverers are not technically employees; they’re independent contractors. In every area, their ideas are always welcome,” Koc said.

Two delivers work during each shift — one for North campus and one for South campus. They can earn $25 to $30 an hour, and sometimes more, Amram said.

Danai Benopoulou ’19, another

newly hired deliverer, decided to attend an info session after seeing all the promotional work around campus.

“I found how much they organized and thought through everything amazing so I decided to get involved,” Benopoulou said. “They emphasized that we’re not working for them, we’re working with them.”

Students said the app sounded promising, though they suggested several potential improvements.

The Number “could be better as an app,” said Julian Espanil ’19. “It’s more intuitive to use an app nowadays than to text a number, and that way you could keep track of your orders,” he said.

“It’s a good idea, but not everyone in college can afford to spend $3 extra on unnecessary stuff,” said Maria Camila Arbelaez ’19. “I guess I would use it for an emergency if I couldn’t contact my friends.”

METRO

PAGE 4 • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

FBI raids R.I. ambulance company Investigation ongoing, company still operating with no proven indication of wrongdoing

By ISABELA KARIBJANIAN STAFF WRITER

Professional Ambulance, a Providencebased ambulance company located on River Avenue, was raided by federal investigators in late October but is not currently facing any criminal or civil charges and remains fully operational, said the company’s lawyer, Matthew Dawson of Lynch and Pine Attorneys at Law, in a statement.

Ambulance or other healthcare service providers are often implicated in fraud investigations due to suspicion of overcharging, said Tom Forsythe ’74, a former adjunct professor in accounting who currently serves as an audit partner and member of the anti-fraud team at the accounting firm DiSanto, Priest and Co. Forsythe said he has seen a few situations over the past decade that resemble the recent raid.

Kristen Setera, spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Boston Division, confirmed the agency’s ongoing involvement with the investigation.

» BSP, from page 1 mentor, said one of her favorite demonstrations involved using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream as part of a lesson on chemistry and phase changes.

“The most important part of BSP is to be as engaging as possible,” Bahar said. “Our lessons are very interdisciplinary because our mentors come from a diverse range of backgrounds.”

BSP draws high school students at all education levels to the weekly lessons.

Maria Calderon, a freshman at Cranston High School East who participates in BSP and plans to attend medical school one day, said she enjoys the hands-on activities BSP offers.

One benefit of the program is that it exposes students to scientific fields that are not usually taught in high schools, said Brian Zhen, a junior at Cranston

Setera and Jim Martin, public information officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Rhode Island, declined to comment further due to the case’s ongoing nature.

Healthcare service providers such as Professional Ambulance often send bills to insurance companies, which eliminates the transparency found in other types of transactions, he said.

“If you, as an individual, ask to have services done and you’re paying for them personally, you … are concerned about reading a bill when it’s handed to you,” Forsythe said. Insurance companies, unlike people paying out-ofpocket, rarely ask questions, he added.

Forsythe said in instances of fraud, companies similar to Professional Ambulance bill the insurance companies for services that are several grades above what was provided, resulting in a more expensive bill. For example, Forsythe said he has seen businesses charge higher rates associated with services provided by a registered nurse but instead send a licensed nurse to do the job.

Because patients are billed through their insurance cards, an individual patient “doesn’t really know what’s happening,” Forsythe said.

Though the mischaracterization of services may only result in a nominal

increase in profit with each overcharge, over time, the payoffs could prove to be substantial, he said. Such exploitative profit margins are attracting attention from the government, which is seeking to enforce more honest practices, as evidenced by several cases of this nature in recent years around the country, multiple news outlets have reported.

“What you saw there was courtauthorized activity,” Martin said.

Ambulance companies have been recent targets for fraud investigations, Katherine Harris, spokesperson for the Office of Inspector General, told WPRI. Professional Ambulance, a locally owned family business founded in 2009, provides emergency and nonemergency transportation contracted through local nursing and assisted living facilities, annually conducting roughly 60,000 transports, according to its website.

Professional Ambulance and its owners were featured as a 2011 small business success story on the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Rhode Island District website and have been honored with community awards for their entrepreneurial success. Representatives of the company declined to comment on the incident.

East, who is interested in astronomy and physics.

Randy Duran, also a junior at Cranston East, said he hopes attending the program will help him figure out what he wants to pursue in the future.

But it is not just the high school students who benefit from BSP. “Taking science classes day to day at (Brown), it’s easy to forget how much you like science,” Bahar said. “But every Saturday when I teach a lesson, seeing the kids be so enthusiastic reminds me of why I continue to study science.”

Teaching the students also helps the mentors develop learning strategies that they can apply in their own lives, Gutierrez said.

“When I was teaching the neuroscience lesson, at first it was hard for me because I didn’t know how to simplify (the material),” Gutierrez said, adding that having to explain the concepts

in a more basic and understandable manner helped her as both a teacher and a student.

The mentors learn about other fields as well through their participation in BSP, Bahar said. As a potential neuroscience concentrator, he has experience with the brain but knows little about computer science or space, he said.

Knowledge gained from the program is not restricted to science. Before each lesson begins, students have the opportunity to bond with their mentors for half an hour and receive any guidance they need, said Sandra Chang ’17, a BSP mentor. Mentors provide advice on topics such as college life and scholarship opportunities, Bahar said.

“For me, (BSP) is the perfect combination of getting science, advising and mentoring and getting to know lots of students,” Chang said.

» CRISIS, from page 1 “build community,” he said.

Alissa Rhee ’16, an undergraduate panelist and co-president of the Bruin Club, asked Carey how administrators acknowledged the racialized nature of the Kelly controversy when writing the emails in response. Those emails were crafted by “groups of people that would have benefitted from more diverse perspectives,” Carey said. “The context was not as clearly articulated as it could have been.”

In the communications regarding the sexual assault cases, the administration faced an additional “conflict between individual privacy and what a community needs to be aware of,” Carey said.

Rhee and the other undergraduate panelist Sazzy Gourley ’16, president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, called for administrators to encourage faculty-guided discussion of these incidents and issues in the classroom.

The University has seen shifts in both “what faculty are expected to incorporate” and “student desires and demands,” said panelist Maud Mandel, dean of the College.

As a result of these changes, there has been a “huge learning curve as universities try to think through their shifting demographics,” she said.

In regards to training faculty on how to respond to these difficult topics, “there are resources here, so I just have trouble with claiming a degree of ignorance when it comes to these issues,” Rhee said.

“The resources can be made available, but they’re voluntary,” Mandel said, adding that maintaining faculty autonomy is at the center of every university.

For graduate students who serve as teaching assistants, “there is a lack of communication in terms of who they should be going to” for direction, said panelist Anni Pullagura GS. “Graduate students are often in a dual role,” said panelist Vanessa Ryan, associate dean of the Graduate School, adding that this necessitates support in their work as students and

as instructors.

Crises can affect the graduate and undergraduate populations differently, and the University aims to account for this when developing its responses, Ryan said.

After last semester’s suicide, “the Graduate School followed up with its own communication” and “worked hard to develop graduate-student-only spaces,” Ryan said.

“There was a need for a campuswide communication as quickly as possible because of the visibility” of the suicide, Carey said. But because this need had to be balanced with the medical and legal processes of ruling a death a suicide, the initial email described it as an “apparent suicide,” he added.

The suicide was a “paradoxical situation” because “everybody knew what had happened before we could talk about it,” Mandel said.

As with all campus crises, the initial communications were followed by information on resources and support available to students, such as Counseling and Psychological Services and the Office of the Chaplain and Religious Life.

In her office, Mandel feels the “secondary impact to the crisis,” she said, adding that students often come to her seeking academic accommodations during these times.

Mandel said when she reached out to faculty members and asked them to give accommodations following the suicide, they were “quite responsive.”

Students often lack awareness of available resources or ways of accessing them, Rhee said. “There needs to be more recognition of the amount of energy that it takes some students to seek those resources out,” she said.

Suggestions for increasing accessibility and outreach are “really welcome,” Mandel said, adding that the University is trying to find more effective ways to communicate resources to students.

The second part of the series will occur Tuesday night in Leung Gallery and feature round-table conversations and student recommendations, Brown said.

TODAY

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015 • PAGE 5

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SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS

Pizzas: Bacon Chicken Ranch, Spicy Five Cheese with Garlic, Pepperoni and Meatball JOSIAH’S

BLUE ROOM

Made-to-Order Quesadillas

Chicken Mushroom Xacuti Vegetable Tikka Masala

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Chicken Cutlet Parmesan Sandwich, Cranberry Chocolate Blondie Bars

Korean Teriyaki Chicken Stir Fry, Roast Loin of Pork, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Cajun Apple Cake

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

Honey Mustard Chicken Sandwich, Vegetarian Pot Pie, Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

Italian Meatloaf, General Tso Vegetable Stirfry, French Bread, Washington Apple Cake

sudoku

JULIANNA LEE MARINO / HERALD

The student founders behind The Number — a text message-based delivery system for college students — hand out donuts and other treats on the Main Green to celebrate and promote the launch of their startup.

comic A Campus Fairytale | Kimberly Saltz ‘17

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A WEBSITE OF ONE’S OWN 12:00 P.M. Sarah Doyle Women’s Center

WHY NOT PRISON ABOLITION? 4:00 P.M. Rhode Island Hall 108

BLACKROCK INFO SESSION 6:00 P.M. CareerLAB

COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

EDITORIAL

Crossing disciplinary bounds We are pleased that one of the chief emphases of BrownTogether, the University’s recently released $3 billion comprehensive campaign, is the development and cultivation of interdisciplinary scholarship. Brown is an international hub for interdisciplinary research, answering some of the world’s most complicated and pressing issues. In many ways, the tendency of Brown faculty and students to traverse disciplinary boundaries is reflected in the spirit of the open curriculum, which incentivizes the use of different modes of scholarship to attend to common themes.

As information about summer opportunities begins to inundate the campus, some students may be interested in rigorously engaging in such scholarship over the summer. Though there are many ways in which students can do this, one principal way is through Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards, which fund the scholarly endeavors of many students each summer in addition to during the academic year. UTRA recipients can pursue projects in any field of their choosing, spanning the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and life sciences.

We hope that as the University turns its attention to the ways in which students and faculty can collaborate on interdisciplinary research, initiatives like the UTRA program will encourage undergraduates to join the effort.The prospect of putting together a research project with a faculty member in a traditional field can be intimidating and challenging. Putting together a proposal for an interdisciplinary project, by the same measure, might not even seem realistic for some students.

Last year, the UTRA program introduced Interdisciplinary Team UTRAs to provide established opportunities for two to six students from different disciplines to work together on a common area of interest. Such opportunities are exciting, and the University should work to increase the number of these projects in the future.

Beyond providing established opportunities, however, we hope the University supports workshops for students who want to develop ideas for working one-on-one with a faculty partner or sponsor. While an I-Team UTRA allows students to meet peers who hail from different disciplinary backgrounds, UTRAs also fund one-on-one partnerships between students and faculty members.

The UTRA program represents just one means through which the research advances made on campus can include undergraduates. As the University focuses the comprehensive campaign on methods of strengthening interdisciplinary academic programs, it must consider how this focus will include undergraduates who have been deeply influenced by interdisciplinary scholarship here and are interested in engaging in some of their own.

K I M B E R LY S A LT Z

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

“It’s easy to forget how much you like science. But every Saturday when I teach a lesson, seeing the kids be so enthusiastic reminds me of why I continue to study

”

science.

— Ryan Bahar ’18, Brown Science Prep mentor

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: Emma Axelrod ’18, Noah Fitzgerel ’17 and Aranshi Kumar ’17. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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COMMENTARY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015 • PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

The modern silent majority ROBYN SUNDLEE opinions editor

No recreational marijuana for Ohio.

A defeated measure that would have fought discrimination against the trans community in Houston. The victory of a Virginia gubernatorial candidate who championed Kim Davis. These and other similar results paint the picture of a liberal failure on election day.

The results of this year’s elections should be noted by us here at Brown.

They are a reminder of something we seem to continually forget: Our closely held liberal values do not necessarily align with those of the majority of the United States. We are in no way representative of the whole of a nation that we seek to unify behind our banners of social change, and our approaches often widen the schism.

Whether or not we like it, social conservatives are a sizeable voting bloc that doesn’t seem to be dying out — figuratively and literally — like we keep predicting. Instead, they are multiplying and reacting — incensed by change they do not understand and therefore construe as hostile. I hold that this is at least in part the fault of modern liberal methods of engagement with oppos-

ing views.

I recall one night at a party in some dank basement when I witnessed a student make the assertion that patriarchy does not exist. Needless to say, he was verbally eviscerated on the spot. And I would bet my lunch that the tongue-lashing humiliation he received was enough to ensure he would go forth into the world with a deep seething grudge toward all feminists.

Was the anger against him justified? Probably. Did anyone learn

those who pounced on that unwitting boy. I was angry. It felt good to rip down someone so smugly obtuse and paint that person as everything wrong with the world.

But ultimately anger doesn’t really help anything, does it? It’s understandable, but it’s also self-indulgent, sanctimonious and ineffective. Progress is the product of constructive engagement, not tantrums.

Social media is somewhat to blame for American liberals’ overconfidence in their ranks. On plat-

to toe the social justice line are even more severe.

But the story changes when you move to platforms with more anonymity, such as Imgur, Reddit or the comments section on The Herald’s website. These platforms are where you find the true mood of the millennial demographic that is supposed to be the most progressive.

Rancor brews underneath and boils over in ugly hate-filled posts lashing out at feminists or the Black Lives Matter movement.

We are in no way representative of the whole of a nation that we seek to unify behind our banners of social change, and our approaches often widen the schism. anything? Was any progress made?

Absolutely not.

Of course, this is not how all young liberals act when confronted with opposition. But this incident does characterize the general attitude toward social conservatism on our campus.

I will never make the argument that views formed on a foundation of hate are defensible or innocuous.

But using rage and public abasement as tools transforms someone who is probably merely ignorant into an active adversary.

In truth, at the time, I cheered on

forms where your name is attached to your views, there is intense pressure to image-curate. Few people are interested in cultivating an image of a sexist, racist, transphobic, homophobic Satan — especially when the costs of doing so are usually exuberant cyber tar-and-featherings.

Bigoted leanings are kept hushhush because in Internet-land where your reputation is concerned, being moderately liberal actually gets you virtual pats on the back. Think rainbow-draped profile pics. This is most certainly the case here at Brown, where the consequences for failing

I imagine the same thing happens in the voting booth. Inside that little curtained box, there’s no one to judge, censure or shame. That’s where resentment at liberal political correctness and latent prejudices take the reins. These notions were never displaced by holier-than-thou conditioning; they only sank deeper.

It is at this level that we must engage with those who oppose social justice measures. Practicing unfailing patience, maintaining an even keel and searching for points of understanding is the way to people’s hearts. Responding with self-righ-

teous outrage and personal attacks only feeds feelings of bitterness and retrenches bigotry.

Hailing from a Religious Right stronghold in Middle America, I know the breadth of the divide we must bridge, and I understand what resonates and what does not. Right now, the approach on our campus does not resonate with those who need the most persuasion.

I have no doubt that the goals of social justice will be realized. Contrary to the views of a Nov. 4 Atlantic article entitled “Liberals are losing the culture war,” I believe that in spite of the election results, liberals are indeed winning the culture war.

We’re just doing it too slowly, with far too much vehement opposition.

By alienating today’s silent majority, we are hamstringing the march of progress. There are times for radicalism, aggression and refusal to compromise. These are invaluable tactics for social revolution. But they must be kept only as tactics and never made the overarching strategy.

It isn’t right to have to cajole those who have privilege. Civility and understanding are exhausting, but if we wish to move forward as a nation, they are essential.

Robyn Sundlee ’16 is concentrating in international relations. She can be reached at robyn_sundlee@brown.edu.

The results of our efforts AMEER MALIK opinions columnist

A few weeks ago, I faced a significant academic dilemma: I was very close to dropping one of my courses. I told myself that the course did not count toward my concentration and that it was too hard to handle in addition to the concentration-related ones I was taking. I feared that I could not devote enough energy to the course and that I would receive a poor grade. But I also recognized how much I enjoyed the professor’s lectures and the course material.

It was hard for me to weigh the perceived benefits against the perceived costs, especially because many benefits were out of sight. Yet I should not have relied on a tangible way of measuring the benefits of the course. I should have primarily relied on personal reflection instead.

What should matter are not only the benefits we gain from our work, but also our relationships to the work we do. If we don’t take the time to think about these matters, we could end up dragging our feet as we expend our energy and time inefficiently carrying out jobs, tasks and assignments we don’t even like. We could also end up leaving jobs, classes and lines of work that would have fit us better or that we would have prospered in.

For example, let’s say you are taking a course on painting, which is causing you to devote a lot of time and energy to learning how to paint. I believe that — as unfortunate as it is — societal pressures would make you justify why you were doing this. You would

face a barrage of questions from others, which would make you determine the objective benefits of your endeavour. Which marketable skills would you be gaining from this?

Wouldn’t this course just unnecessarily lower your GPA and therefore hurt your chances of finding a job? Would you ever become a painter as your profession?

These questions ignore the personal aspect of why you do what you do. Attending to this personal aspect is more important for you than making a case for the objective benefits of your work. You can try your best to

tant to think about the personal benefits of your work, because if you can’t find any, then it will be hard for you to be productive and work at your fullest capacity.

Yet when trying to determine the personal benefits, you could still face numerous problems. Even if you are sure that the course on painting will make you a better painter, it could be hard for you to find evidence for this. You may not receive letter grades for the class. The immediate feedback you get from your professor and peers could be mostly critical.

What should matter are not only the benefits we gain from our work, but also our relationship to the work we do.

make a case that pursuing art is an admirable goal (which, for the record, I firmly agree with), but you will not be able to convince everybody.

There will always be people out there — including friends, family members, employers and colleagues — who do not share your perspective or who believe you could be doing something more beneficial. And that is totally okay. You should not rely on external affirmation of your efforts and goals.

Let’s turn back to the personal dimensions of your work. There are two: the benefits you think you will gain from what you do and your relationship to what you do. It is impor-

The key to overcoming this issue is a bit of extra imagination. You may have to expand your vision or stretch your mind a bit to figure out how you are benefiting from your work.

It may take you 50 attempts at a landscape painting before you make one that matches your vision of a good landscape painting.

This mindset can be applied to other fields: You might need to read the chapter in your science textbook about how to design an experiment again and again before you can conduct your own experiment, and you may have to calculate debits and credits until it becomes second nature before you can do more advanced accounting. This extra bit

of imagination is not only useful for providing encouragement regarding your personal skills, but also for helping you see how what you do in one line of work can be beneficial in other aspects of your life. For example, I had no idea that the unit on research methods in my introductory psychology course last year would be vitally useful for me when I wrote my first Herald article, which was about a scientific study.

When I was deciding whether to drop my course, I lacked imagination. I was too focused on immediate concerns, such as my GPA and my concentration requirements. I should have instead allowed for the possibility that what I was learning in the course might be useful to me in the future.

Finally, beyond considering benefits, you have to reflect on your personal relationship with your work. Do you like it? Does it fulfill you? These seem like simple questions, but I fear we do not consider them enough.

I know we often have to take classes or perform jobs that we don’t like. But I hope we can, at some point, make advances toward doing work that we like to some extent. If we are constantly dragging our feet, we will not try our hardest, and we will find it difficult to continue. If we like what we do, we will likely put in greater effort and continue what we are doing.

Hopefully, by expanding your imagination and giving more weight to your personal opinions about your work, you will avoid giving up what you like and be productive in achieving your professional and academic goals.

Ameer Malik ’18 can be reached at ameer_malik@brown.edu.

SCIENCE & RESEARCH THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Science & Research Roundup

BY STEVEN MICHAEL, SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITOR

Examining misconceptions about appendicitis

Researchers from the Hasbro Children’s Hospital surveyed children suspected to have appendicitis and their parents to examine their perceptions of the condition.

An article recounting their findings was published online Nov. 3 in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery.

When initially surveyed, 82 percent of participants reported that it was “likely” or “very likely” that the appendix would rupture, leading to significant complications and death, according to the study.

In fact, roughly 17 people die from appendicitis each year in the United States — fewer than those killed by lightning strikes or hunting accidents, according to the study.

The researchers aimed to better understand impressions of alternatives to immediate surgery such as antibiotics or antibiotics paired with elective surgery.

After learning about the actual risks of appendicitis, fewer participants believed that immediate surgery was required.

Deforestation decreases require new perspective

A pair of University researchers recently found that in an area of Brazil containing part of the Amazon rainforest, large landowners control much of the remaining forested land, according to a University press release.

In the past, Brazil has had the highest international rate of deforestation. Though this rate has declined, the researchers suggest a shift in perspective to preserve this decrease.

The article, written by Postdoctoral Research Fellow Peter Richards and Associate Professor of Sociology and Environment and Society Leah VanWey, was published online Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The researchers used data from satellites to examine the forest cover in Mato Grosso, the third-largest state in Brazil, according to the press release.

Recent Brazilian government initiatives to prevent deforestation have concentrated on those who own smaller plots but tend to destroy a greater proportion of their property’s forest. The paper argues that the government should pay greater attention to those who own greater expanses of land, as they are in control of more of the total acreage and therefore of more of the remaining forests.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2015

» DRUG, from page 1 policies around generic drugs,” he said.

The article outlines three potential strategies for avoiding situations like the Shkreli case by keeping drugs affordable and available.

The first potential strategy entails the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issuing a limited number of licenses to suppliers of a generic drug.

Under this system, “drug companies know exactly how much competition they’re going to have, so they’re more likely to enter the market and stay because there’s not this risk of an influx of other competitors,” Wiske said.

But Ruth Lopert, adjunct professor of health policy and management at George Washington University, who was not involved with the paper, said “restricting the number of entrants in the market doesn’t actually control the prices.”

“I would argue that rather than restricting the number of suppliers you should stagger them,” Lopert said.

The second possible strategy involves incentivizing long-term contracts with manufacturers. “From the perspective of the drug company, long-term contracts are more

attractive because you can lock in price over time and therefore take some of the risk out of operating in the market,” Wiske said, adding that these long-term contracts might also be “most politically viable.”

“Policies that would give an incentive for entry or long-run presence in a market that are tailored to these really small markets is something that could lead to better competition,” said Jeffrey McCullough, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved with the paper. “You could argue a bunch of different mechanisms, but the underlying idea here — there’s a decent argument for it.”

The last strategy calls for the establishment of a futures market in which contracts for a commodity — in this case a generic drug — are traded and delivered later to avoid volatility. “It often tends to stabilize prices by again locking in prices over a long period of time,” Wiske said, noting that this solution functions much like long-term contracts to increase transparency in the market.

Regarding a potential futures market, Lopert noted that all manufacturers would need approval from

Reloading the matrix

By growing extracellular matrix — a material that supports molecular structure — in specialized molds, University scientists aimed to duplicate the strength and compatibility of the body’s natural equivalent, according to a University press release. An article detailing these findings was published online Nov. 2 in the journal Biomaterials.

Biologically-based extracellular matrix that is grown in other labs is not as strong as that found in the body. To avoid this problem, the researchers aimed to mimic aspects of the in vivo environment that cause the extracellular matrix to grow well in the body, according to the release.

The researchers’ mold-grown matrix, which did not utilize chemicals, proved to be roughly as strong as that in the body, according to the release.

“What we hypothesized is that the cells are making it the same way they do in the body because we’re starting them in a more natural environment,” said Jacquelyn Schell, assistant research professor of molecular pharmacology, physiology and biotechnology, in the press release.

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the FDA, which she described as a “regulatory hurdle.”

McCullough said a futures market is an “interesting” idea, but it likely is “not going to do a lot to address the kind of pricing problems that have been in the media lately.”

Lopert raised the consideration of product differentiation as another potential strategy. “The concept of a branded generic may afford an environment in which direct manufacturers can compete more effectively because they can be identified,” Lopert said.

McCullough suggested subsidies but recognized that it would be challenging to target them toward suppliers in an effective way.

Both Lopert and McCullough said putting money toward the FDA evaluation process could be helpful, and price controls have the potential to be beneficial.

Wiske said we “need to be creative” in solving this problem. Proposals from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are not “super well-developed,” he said, adding, “Simply taxing generics companies is actually going to exacerbate some of the underlying issues.”