Wednesday, November 18, 2015

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015

VOLUME CL, ISSUE 109

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Saving grace: Students reconcile religion with mental health treatment Spirituality can help students cope, but may also isolate them from other sources of treatment

By KATE TALERICO SENIOR STAFF WRITER

This story is the second in a three-part series about mental health at Brown and students’ attempts to navigate the gaps in treatment and understanding.

MIND THE GAPS Against all pleas by his mother, Mike Darby ’18 decided after one session of faith-based therapy that he would not be coming back — he wanted more than “bible study” to help him cope with his depression.

The therapist Darby had seen, recommended by his mother, specialized in using a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and prayer to teach mindfulness. But for Darby, the spiritual approach brought no healing.

“She believed the reasons for my problems were that I didn’t believe in God anymore,” he said.

It was true that he did not believe in God. Though Darby grew up a Christian, he declared in his senior year of high school — in what came as a sudden revelation to his parents — that he was an atheist.

This declaration left his mother

feeling as if she no longer knew the same boy whom she had raised a devout Christian. “God is light, and without him is darkness,” she said.

“Mike walked into darkness.”

Darby’s and his mother’s opposing views about religion have shaped their conversations about how to treat his depression. Such tensions are common in the relationship about mental health and religion. While for some, like Darby, religion can be a barrier to seeking the treatment they want, for many, it acts as a healing agent itself.

Navigating mental health and religion The first instinct for students battling mental health issues at Brown may be to book an appointment with Counseling and Psychological Services. But a floor below its offices in J. Walter Wilson is a place to which many students are also turning for help: the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life.

“The idea that religion and health of any kind are counter-opposed is a bit of a red herring,” said Janet Cooper Nelson, University chaplain. “I can’t come up with an argument in Christianity that would say in any way that one should not receive help for mental health.”

Students need not be religious to utilize resources provided by the chaplains.

Rachel, whose name has been

changed to preserve her anonymity, is a sophomore and identifies as an atheist. When facing mental health concerns last year, she spoke with Cooper Nelson and Michelle Dardashti, rabbi of Brown/RISD Hillel and associate University chaplain. Both chaplains expressed empathy and understanding, she said.

The chaplains “are an underutilized resource, and I wish people were more willing to take advantage” of them, Rachel said.

Though students may feel their mental health treatment does not intersect with their religious life, Cooper Nelson believes the line between the two is “pretty seamless,” she said.

Mental health treatment should be approached from multiple dimensions, and for spiritual people, that includes religion, said Keith Meador, director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society, whose research focuses on the intersection of mental health and religion.

“We should never insinuate that, if you need medication, you are too weak, or tell the person who goes for faith-based care that they are overspiritualizing their symptoms,” Meador said.

Yet while religion can be a source of healing for mental health issues, it should not be presented as the cause of them, he said.

Those who use religion to interpret or explain their mental health

ROLAND HIGH / HERALD

struggles risk encountering “spiritual bypassing,” said Adrian Wood-Smith, associate University chaplain for the Muslim community.

Coined by psychologist John

Welwood in 1984, spiritual bypassing is a defense mechanism in which one uses spiritual beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings. » See RELIGION, page 2

BrownTogether sees Lucitante brings Cofán story to Brown Protagonist of 2014 First documentary early alumni support Readings matriculates at U., starts Initiatives related to diversity, Med School generate conversation amongst alumni leaders

By BRIGITTE DALE STAFF WRITER

Many alums have reacted with support for and pledged donations to BrownTogether, the University’s $3 billion comprehensive campaign, since it launched Oct. 23, said Preston Calvert ’76 MD’79, president of the Brown Medical Alumni Association.

As the University’s largest fundraising campaign to date, BrownTogether more than doubles the original $1.4 billion goal of the previous comprehensive campaign, under former President Ruth Simmons.

“The first thing you say is, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money,’” Calvert said, adding that $3 billion “is an enormous number.”

“But change only happens through substantial giving,” he said. “It’s about more than the money. It’s about the

INSIDE

commitment to the community and the educational ideals of Brown.”

The campaign will finance the initiatives outlined in President Christina Paxson’s P’19 operational plan. Theses initiatives fall into four key areas: integrative scholarship, educational leadership, academic excellence and campus development.

The diversity initiatives outlined in the operational plan have sparked conversation among some alums. The operational plan’s section on “Developing and Sustaining Diversity” notes the University’s forthcoming Diversity Action Plan, which Paxson announced in a community-wide email Monday will be a “plan for diversity and inclusion at Brown.” The plan will be released Friday as a working document, she wrote.

“I do a lot of alumni work for the University, so I’ve had a lot of conversations about the tenets of what BrownTogether really stand for, especially around issues of diversity,” said Ryan Grubbs » See ALUMS, page 3

foundation for his tribe

By MELISSA CRUZ STAFF WRITER

Prior to matriculating at Brown, Hugo Lucitante ’19 was a protagonist in the class of 2018’s First Readings assignment — the 2014 documentary “Oil and Water.”

“Oil and Water” told the stories of Lucitante and David Poritz ’12, who founded Equitable Origin, a system that ensures “energy development is conducted under the highest social and environmental standards,” according to its website. In a journey documented by the film, Poritz observed the exploitation of Cofán territory in Northern Ecuador by large companies that extracted oil and left the land in shambles.

After the film came to College Hill, so did Lucitante, who has since cofounded the Cofán Heritage Project in an effort to preserve the culture and

history of the Cofán tribe of which he is a member.

Fearing for its extinction, Lucitante’s community sent him to the United States when he was 10 years old. His tribe hoped the opportunities for education he would find in America would allow him to lead the tribe in future years, said Lucitante, who is now 28.

The Cofán Heritage Project — co-founded by Professor of Latin American History James Green — aims to gather documentation and raise awareness of the Cofán people’s struggle for survival, Lucitante said.

The tribe has been immensely affected by colonial conquests and land exploitation, he added.

Green works closely with Lucitante, serving as an adviser and aiding in the collection of historical documentation that will eventually be made available on an online platform with translations in English, Cofán and Spanish.

Lucitante is a “very sincere, open, honest, humble person,” Green said.

One of the project’s first events will be a screening of Oil and Water today at 7:30 p.m. at the Watson Institute for

International and Public Affairs. Lucitante and Green also hope to fundraise to provide tablets for Cofán students in Ecuador, hold a clothing drive and produce a student-made documentary featuring Lucitante to detail his continued efforts, Green said.

“I have always been fascinated about the ways that they have managed to survive the onslaught of colonization, diseases and outsiders’ environmental destruction of their lands,” Green said. “My respect for the Cofán comes from my respect for the peoples of Latin America but also in my admiration for (Lucitante’s) desire to save his people and their culture from extinction.”

Lucitante serves as a bridge between the Western world and his Cofán tribe, Green said.

“It’s a lot of responsibility, but ultimately, I take advantage of it,” Lucitante said. “I realized that I need to become an expert on my own people.”

Lucitante is the “first indigenous person from the Amazon River basin of South America whose first language is indigenous who has entered an Ivy » See LUCITANTE , page 3

WEATHER

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015

ARTS & CULTURE A capella groups from Brown, Providence College fundraise for Global Brigades winter trip

ARTS & CULTURE Gilbert and Sullivan rework antiquated themes of ‘Princess Ida’ with modern perspective

COMMENTARY Al-Salem ’17: Focus on Paris to the exclusion of Beirut and Baghdad is dehumanizing

COMMENTARY Esemplare ’18: We as a society are vulnerable to being manipulated by information and advertising

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UNIVERSITY NEWS PAGE 2 • WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015

MARIANNA MCMURDOCK / HERALD

Janet Cooper Nelson heads the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life. All students — religious or not — can utilize the office’s resources.

» RELIGION, from page 1 Meador said this problem can arise for those who believe they can prevent mental health issues by being devoted to their faith.

“Faith communities are doubleedged,” he said.

“In some ways, those communities can be very protective for persons,” he said. But while that community can provide “resilience and a method for coping with their inevitable psychological and emotional struggles,” those facing mental health issues may be told that they need only be more faithful to heal.

“That leaves people within those communities who do have those struggles feeling as if they haven’t been good enough Christians and feeling even more oppressed and vulnerable,” Meador said.

A survey by LifeWay Research, a firm that measures trends within Christian communities, found that 48 percent of evangelical or fundamentalist Christians believe mental illness can be cured by bible study and prayer alone.

Eddie Park ’02, who leads Brown’s chapter of the Reformed University Fellowship, an evangelical Christian campus ministry, said he “comes from a denomination that’s pretty wishywashy.”

“If you come from a church background, there exists a whole new set of words and ideas that can be food for mental illness and might aggravate it,” Park said. “There’s an underlayer of guilt. You might ask, ‘Did God do this to me? What did I do to deserve this?’”

But Park argues that religious people have a right to be suspicious of medicinal therapies for mental health.

“Ten years ago we didn’t understand the brain as well as we do now,” he said. “The psychiatry and psychology community have made some mistakes they have had to reckon with.”

Cooper Nelson, though, said she believes religion should not be considered a replacement for medicine.

“Religion isn’t some capsule you can put in your mouth and instantly feel good,” she said. “To me, that’s a very demeaning notion of God.” Meador likens the belief that religion alone can solve mental health problems to a belief in miracles.

“In most of life, that doesn’t occur.

That’s why it’s called a miracle,” he said.

“Most of the time, we must trust that

the people who have the gifts to assist in healing are gifts from God as well.”

Religion and treatment at odds Finals period had been rough on Darby. The week of stress and frantic studying brought a difficult first semester to a close.

Returning to New York City for winter break, Darby hoped the four weeks at home would allow him to confront the depression and anxiety that had come to a head during finals.

But the visit with his therapist had not gone well, and he did not schedule another appointment with her — or any other therapist — for the remainder of winter break.

His mom wanted to find someone on whom they could agree — someone who shared their Christian views and could also offer Darby the treatment he needed. But such an agreement was not reached.

In January, Darby returned to campus feeling worse than when he left.

“Most mornings, I couldn’t get out of bed properly. I spent most days in a haze,” Darby said. His depression left him without the motivation to complete schoolwork or to even leave his room.

From afar, his mom saw that his lack of organizational skills had stuck him in a rut from which he could not escape. As his mom saw it, he “decided he could stay up all night,” was not showering and was not eating.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD “If you’re doing this consistently for eight months, that is going to put you in a depressed mood,” she said.

Again, Darby and his mother could not reach an agreement — this time on the cause of his mental illness.

To Darby, it is clear that his inability to fall asleep and stay organized are symptoms of his depression. But to his mom, those behaviors are not results, but rather the causes of his distressed state.

Debra Giaramita, the therapist whom Darby’s mother recommended, expressed similar concerns. “In my experience, depression and anxiety can result from a lack of self-care,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.

Darby said his parents offered other suggestions for healing: “Had he been reading the bible? What about that church nearby? Those Christian friends you mentioned, have you been talking to them?”

Within three weeks of his return, he had booked a session with CAPS. His mother did not know.

The therapist with whom Darby was matched brought him great relief.

Darby found himself able to open up to her, and they talked about his symptoms in a way that made sense to him — from a perspective that analyzed his brain chemistry and mental processes.

But in what seemed to him like a short period of time, Darby had used his allotted seven sessions for that academic year and was barred from scheduling additional CAPS appointments until this semester. Without a therapist, Darby said he wanted to find a psychiatrist who could prescribe him the medication he felt he needed.

While CAPS has supported Darby in finding an off-campus therapist, the therapist he chooses must still be screened by his mom, who gets a say since it is to her mailing address that the therapist’s bill will be sent, he said.

And while Darby’s parents are now supportive of his receiving therapy, they do not want him seeing someone they do not know anything about.

“I said, ‘You need to find someone good. You need to look at their ratings, I need to look at their ratings, and we need to see what the feedback is from the patients,’” Darby’s mom recounted. “You can’t just hop into anyone’s office.”

Finding a counselor who is educated in one’s spiritual tradition can be of huge importance for those who are spiritual. If not, therapy may end

ARJUN NARAYEN / HERALD

Mike Darby ’18 sought treatment for depression but found the faithbased therapist recommended by his mother unhelpful.

up invalidating religion.

Deconstructing faith While counseling can alleviate mental health problems, it can also put pressures on religious beliefs.

“Practicing students may feel that mental health professionals, without a background or knowledge of the traditions of the religion, are deconstructing their personal faith,” WoodSmith said.

He said he once worked with a student who had been asked by her counselor what her coping mechanisms were for dealing with mental illness.

The student said she became more diligent about praying five times a day.

“From the student’s perspective, that’s normal religious practice. It’s not a burden. But from the counselor’s perspective, that’s obsessive behavior,” Wood-Smith said, adding that the counselor seemed to be telling the student to pray less.

Wood-Smith said he has also heard of counselors deconstructing the Islamic belief in an ever-watchful God.

the one with which she had grown up.

Raised Catholic, Miller became an agnostic in high school. “I always felt like I had a lack of nerve to go with what I knew was true,” Miller said. “I felt that in believing in something, I should have conviction” — something she said she was missing in her faith.

Looking for healthy coping mechanisms, Miller used meditation to practice mindfulness. She also started to pray again.

Rather than returning to Catholicism, Miller explored several religions that she had not previously taken the time to understand thoroughly. So she read — the Old and New Testaments, Daoist texts, Buddhist literature. Eventually, her studies of the Quran pulled her toward Islam.

“It’s very much about being logical and rational in your approach to your faith,” Miller said. An astrophysics major, Miller was drawn to the idea of a religion that believes in multiple human prophets and strays from the seemingly “magical” stories of Christ, she said.

ARJUN NARAYEN / HERALD

Michelle Miller ’18.5 used art and religion to help her cope with depression during her medical leave of absence.

“That’s something a counselor could hear someone talking about and say, ‘That’s not healthy to feel a force or angel watching over them. Let me help this person remove that idea.’”

“Those might, in fact, be really deeply held beliefs that aren’t really open for discussion,” he said.

“Mental health professionals may see that a theology or a religion is causing a client stress,” he said. But “that’s not a conversation that a professional should have with a client alone if there’s not an understanding of the tradition and faith.”

On a more basic level, Muslim students seeking help must be mindful of the counseling environment they enter. For example, under Islamic law, it is forbidden for an unrelated man and woman to be in an enclosed space together where no one can see them.

“While that may seem like a nitpicky thing, that could be a legitimate reason for why a student feels uncomfortable going to CAPS,” Wood-Smith said. He added that he works with CAPS to ensure that students of faith receive treatment they feel comfortable with.

Healing through religion Halfway through a medical leave of absence she took to confront her depression, Michelle Miller ’18.5 decided to return to religion, though not

The word Islam itself means “submission to God” — a principle that has supported Miller in her healing.

Even on days in which she falls into depressive episodes, she said she can “accomplish something in the name of God.” Islam’s guidelines for prayer — performed five times a day in accordance with the sun’s position in the sky — have provided Miller with a structure to self-evaluate her mental health.

“That idea of constant mindfulness is really appealing,” she said.

This same consistency of religion can provide healing within the Christian tradition, Park said. As students may find themselves constantly caught under the pressure of schoolwork, the “regularity of prayer cuts against the grain,” Park added, noting that religion “comes with rigor in its own way.”

The prayer schedule has also provided Miller with motivation to get through the day and push through moments of difficulty. “At the end of the day, I still have to get up and pray,” she said.

But Miller’s religious revival has not precluded other ways of combatting her depression.

Along with meditation and prayer, Miller used medication to help feel stable enough to reapply to Brown. She was readmitted in June and returned to campus this fall.

UNIVERSITY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

» ALUMS, from page 1 ’10, president of Brown Transgender, Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Alumni. “People are dedicated to seeing Brown as a place for students, faculty and staff of all walks of life.”

Grubbs said he is enthusiastic about the increased attention to faculty and student diversity, though he would have liked to “see a little bit more of a breakdown when it comes to diversity initiatives.” The operational plan was “a bit broad” in this area, which “can be good and bad,” he said.

The plan’s sections on “Understanding the Human Brain” and “Deciphering

» LUCITANTE, from page 1 League university,” Green wrote in an email to The Herald.

“It’s hard,” he said of being at Brown, adding, “I’ve never had to read so much in my life, but it’s a reason to continue. It’s a drive.”

“Being a young parent changed my outlook on life and what I want her to have,” he said, adding that his twoyear-old daughter is already picking up the Cofán language.

Lucitante noted the recognition he receives from sophomores on campus.

“I get funny looks. They look at me like: ‘I’ve seen you somewhere.’ I like the fact that I don’t need to do too much explaining, rather just update on what I’m working on. The fact that I’m here at Brown … it’s incredible to me,” Lucitante said.

After watching the documentary, many members of the class of 2018 were left with unanswered questions.

This led one student, Adam Walden ’18, to found the Cofán-Brown Student Alliance.

“Some were moved, and they wanted to do something about it, so we had a meeting and had an overwhelming amount of support,” Lucitante said.

Walden first met Lucitante when he recognized him in a shared class, HIST 0233: “History of Colonial Latin America.” Inspired by Lucitante, Walden said he attended a meeting of the Cofán Heritage Project.

Lucitante “had everyone in the room have an open talk about where they thought they could contribute, … and (he) listened quietly. He sat back and listened to what people had to say and that really left an impact on me,” Walden said.

By the end of the meeting, Walden was motivated to act. “Thanks to (Lucitante’s) leadership style I felt confident embarking on this process,” he added.

To anyone who wants to help, Walden said, “No contribution is too small. … No amount of energy spent

Disease” have also generated some alumni support.

Calvert said he is “excited about the vision for advancing the (Alpert Medical School) and bringing the hospital faculty together with Brown faculty.” The “Deciphering Disease” section of the operational plan notes the Med School’s seven affiliated teaching hospitals and calls for “synergies with faculty across the campus and at our partner hospitals.”

The plan’s suggestion of growing the Division of Biology and Medicine will lead to “a big advance for the city, Rhode Island, the University and the Medical School,” Calvert said.

Calvert also expressed satisfaction on this project is worthless.”

“All indigenous people face some kind of discrimination. They’re marginalized,” said Paja Faudree, associate professor of anthropology and a faculty coordinator for the Cofán Heritage Project. Lucitante’s work on the Cofán Heritage Project is completed in a “collaborative, collective way (that) requires (him) to have a lot of humility, … requires (him) to be a servant to (his) people,” she said.

“People have invested a lot in him and made sacrifices to help, and that alone I think drives him a lot — to know so many people believe in him,” Faudree said.

The Cofán Heritage Project is in early stages with a small group of faculty members working on it.

“It’s really important to have people committed to the project. … It’s a small number but really strong support from really crucial people,” Faudree said.

Lucitante noted the importance that he, as the leader of the group representing the Cofán tribe, is a member of the tribe.

Often, outsiders provide the tribe with recommendations, but “preserving Cofán culture really needs to be driven by Cofán people,” Faudree said.

Lucitante’s goal for his time at Brown is “to set a good example for the other Amazonian students.”

Of his participation in the documentary, Lucitante said the experience was both exciting and also “a challenge because I had to do a lot of translating.”

The Cofáns also wanted to participate because they realize the importance of spreading their story, he added.

For members of the class of 2018, discussing “Oil and Water” provided “a little bit of break with tradition,” as the documentary replaced the usual book format of the First Readings assignment, Faudree said. The change “speaks to the kind of experiences people can have at Brown.”

“When you come to Brown, you don’t know where that experience is gonna take you,” she added.

with the plan’s proposal to make the Brown Institute for Brain Science a top10 research program, adding that “this is where we need to go.”

But Calvert said he wishes the University had demonstrated a greater commitment to increasing financial aid in the operational plan. The plan suggests increasing aid for low- and middle-income students but makes no commitment to implementing need-blind admission for international and transfer students.

“Ultimately, it would be desirable for all students to come to Brown without any concern for funding their education,” said Calvert, who served in the Army to pay for his Brown education.

Many Brown alumni clubs are actively involved in encouraging donations, such as the Brown Club of Fairfield County, Connecticut, which urged its members to “please consider participating in this meaningful capital raise for our campus” via the club’s Facebook page shortly after the BrownTogether campaign was announced.

“From the alumni perspective, it’s exciting to see that Brown is setting sights so high and taking the steps we need to attract the most talented faculty and students,” said Kate Sheehan ’00, copresident of the Brown Club of Cape Cod and the Islands.

BrownTogether represents the

“cornerstones of what makes Brown special and how Brown will remain relevant for the future,” she added.

Calvert, Grubbs and Sheehan all said they plan to donate to BrownTogether. A recent study by researchers at the Teachers College at Columbia found that alums with “high levels of trust in their institutions were more likely than others to say they would donate and give at higher levels,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reported Nov. 6.

“Brown was the most formative time in my life,” Calvert said. “As an alumnus, it’s not just people asking for money. It’s a continued relationship with the Brown community.”

ARTS & CULTURE PAGE 4 • WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

A capella battle supports Global Brigades outreach in Honduras Groups from Brown, Providence College unite in singoff to raise funds for winter medical trip

By EMILY MARTLAND CONTRIBUTING WRITER

By 8 p.m. on Saturday night, the seats of MacMillian 117 were nearly filled — the audience chattering in eager anticipation of “Pitch Please: An AcaBenefit Battle.”

Organized and hosted by Brown’s Global Brigades, the battle featured three of Brown’s a cappella groups, and one group from Providence College. The three emcees of the battle —Anna Lanpher ’16, Kat Zouboulakis ’18 and Kwame McCain ’15 — sauntered to the front of the lecture hall to Fergie’s “Fergalicious,” before introducing the four participating groups — the Ursa Minors, the Bear Necessities, the Chattertocks and PC’s Strictly Speaking.

The battle included four separate challenges, with each a cappella group competing to win points awarded by six judges who were randomly selected from the audience. The judges rated each performance on a scale from one to five.

The first challenge — “Always Rap It Up” — was won by the Bear Necessities with a rendition of Trey Songz’s “Bottoms Up.” The group continued its winning streak through the following two challenges — “Sinful Seducción” and “Otra vez Jueves” — though Strictly Speaking remained a close second.

For the final challenge, Strictly Speaking performed Delta Rae’s “Bottom of the River,” earning enough points to tie with the Bear Necessities. The victor of the battle was decided in a beatbox-off between Will Palmer ’15 of the Bear Necessities and Brannon Walker-Hodges of Strictly Speaking. Though both gentlemen were popular among the audience, the crowd’s “cheer-off ” awarded the title to Strictly Speaking.

Cheers and conversation amongst audience members exiting the Benefit Battle were indicative of their satisfaction with the battle and its outcome.

Brown’s Global Brigades organized Saturday night’s event to help fund the group’s Winter Medical Trip to Honduras. Lanpher, a member of the group’s executive board, said the board was inspired by the riff-off in “Pitch Perfect” while brainstorming fundraising ideas at a meeting.

“It’s a very expensive trip,” she said. Besides flight and program costs, much of the trip’s expenses come from the cost of medications, she added.

The medications delivered to rural Honduran communities on the Global Brigades trip are mostly ones that are relatively easy to access in the United States, including Ibuprofen and Claritin, said Zouboulakis, another member of the Global Brigades e-board. The populations Global Brigades aims to serve are often so

COURTESY OF JOSHUA WILLIAMS

The Bear Necessities won the first challenge of Saturday’s “Pitch Please” benefit battle with a rendition of “Bottoms Up.” The group beat out the Chattertocks, the Ursa Minors and Providence College’s Strictly Speaking. isolated that “people need to drive two or three hours” to reach cities with hospitals, she added. As a result, people frequently die of preventable or treatable health problems, Zouboulakis said.

Global Brigades aims to help the communities through a “step-by-step process,” Lanpher said. The process begins with the medical brigade

delivering medications. Eventually, other brigades follow, helping to develop clean water, infrastructure and electricity, she said. The ultimate goal is to improve the quality of life for people in the community in ways that will allow the community to become self-sufficient, she added.

Zouboulakis said the battle is part of a larger fundraising effort of the

group. Besides the usual bake sales, the group also has a benefit at Point Street Dueling Pianos approaching and is hoping to make the a cappella battle an annual event.

“We’re trying to make a tradition on campus and at the same time fundraise,” Zouboulakis said. “We’ve been living, breathing and thinking a cappella for the past six weeks.”

Huxtable’s lecture tackles identity in lecture Incorporating various media and themes, Huxtable forges unique definiton of identity

By MADISON RIVLIN STAFF WRITER

Through varied media including visual arts, photography, poetry and music, Juliana Huxtable explores the boundaries of identity. The artist shared how she carves out a unique niche of self-expression during a talk at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts Tuesday in the most recent installment of the Student Creative Arts Council’s 2015 Fall Lecture Series.

Huxtable’s work has been featured at institutions such as MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2015 Triennial.

Chronicling her path of self-identification with respect to her own ethnic, gender and artistic identity, Huxtable detailed how she expresses herself through the variety of media she uses. Her work defies categorization as it grapples with diverse and interwoven themes relating to identity, varying from mythology and technology to ethnic and gender expression.

Huxtable’s work is defined by this irreducibility: Since her work encompasses a wide spread of media and themes, “it would be wrong to put her and her work in a single category,” said Isabela Muci ’16, co-director of the Student Creative Arts Council. “She’s much more than that, and that’s what her work is about.

She plays with those categories.”

From the inception of her career, Huxtable said she has been inspired by her journey to comprehend her own identity by utilizing her body as a medium through which to express herself.

Huxtable began by finding inspiration in nightlife, a way for her to tackle questions of identity and begin to explore self-portraiture. The process of getting ready and dressed up gave her a sense of embodiment and freedom that came with the performative aspects of nightlife, she said.

Her self-portraiture and modes of expression subsequently expanded to include self-documentation photography produced in tandem with poetry. These works simultaneously tackle numerous themes: Huxtable explores her relationship with her own body as a transgender woman, the intersection of Christian Liberation theology with science fiction and direct symbols of black history and black identity in the United States.

In her lecture, Huxtable described her process of deconstructing often-used symbols and tropes in her photography.

In a self-portrait photograph, Huxtable, painted purple, squats between beds of black panther fur. Using the photo’s composition, Huxtable reinterprets the symbol of the black panther, interrogating its association with Black Power and resistance throughout history.

One of Huxtable’s poems, “Untitled (For Stewart),” opens with the phrase: “I always picked the girls when I played video games.” The block of text, screaming in all caps, delves into the definition of femininity in modern gaming culture, weaving together images of » See HUXTABLE, page 5

ARTS & CULTURE WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015 • PAGE 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

‘Princess Ida’ sparks social consciousness Play works with problematic source material in interpretation for modern audiences

By ISABELA KARIBJANIAN STAFF WRITER

Brown University Gilbert & Sullivan held their annual fall production this weeekend, performing a unique interpretation of “Princess Ida.” The reworked production featured a shifted tone and a more empowered Ida to make the play more accessible to modern audiences. The play tells the story of Ida — a princess betrothed in infancy who has since rejected men and founded an all-women’s university — as she struggles between the life she is obligated to lead and the one she has made for herself.

Directed by Paul Martino ’17, the play follows two narratives. The audience watches Ida, played by Meg Martinez ’15.5, educating female minds at her university, and her betrothed, Prince Hilarion, played by Nicholas Renton ’19, on a journey to claim Ida as his bride. Hilarion and his friends Cyril and Florian —Harlan Epstein ’19 and Jacob Laden-Guidnon ’18, respectively — sneak into Ida’s university at Castle Adamant and pose as female students. The real students, upon learning of the male intruders and Hilarion’s intent, prepare for battle.

Though the play was originally written in the 1880s to satirize the “radical” feminists of the day, Martino and his team reworked the play to portray Ida as a woman with whom the audience can sympathize, Martino said. They also attempted to address the perceived transmisogyny of the original production, while ensuring the integrity of the work, he added.

Though Martino said the play’s score is one of Sullivan’s finest, and the dialogue is well-crafted, alterations were necessary to bring “Ida” to modern audiences. The changes he made to the play are not only justified given current campus climate and identities at play, but also warranted by the work itself, he added.

The original play “feels incomplete

REVIEW

… it feels like it’s not ready for the stage,” he said.

Major edits were made to the original work, including the removal of the song “I Am a Maiden,” and the alteration of the final scene, Martino said. The updates were made to prove to modern audiences that the show, written in 1884, could still have relevance and relatability, he added.

“Our Ida is a much more serious and dramatic Ida,” Martino said. The original production’s Ida, who is, as Martino said, “really kind of a laughingstock,” sits in contrast to his revitalized Ida, who is thoughtful, poised and steadfast in her beliefs.

Ida’s emotional depth shines through in Act III’s “I Built Upon a Rock”— an aria that was initially intended to highlight what a fool Ida was. Martinez’s performance allows the audience to lament alongside her as she mourns the inevitable ruin of all that she had worked for.

The true standout moment for Martinez as Ida, and for Martino as director, came at the very end of the play, which took a signficant detour from the original production. Instead of Ida capitulating and marrying Hilarion as she does in the orginial production, Martinez’s Ida stands on the stage with Renton’s Hilarion looming ominously above, cloaked in darkness. Painfully and reluctantly, after several moments standing and staring out over the audience, Martinez takes Renton’s hand and moves slowly offstage.

“By upping that realistic acting, we sort of swapped the audience’s sympathies around. Rather than engaging with the men, I think they much more engaged with Ida,” Martino said.

The performance, which is an opera, owed much of its success to the music directors. The cast’s operatic singing, directed by Sami Overby ’17, accompanied by a student orchestra led by Kenyon Alexander ’18, beautifully complemented the thoughtful acting onstage. Alexander’s orchestra performed emotively and with such presence that it seemed at several moments like a lead character in its own right.

The music, Martino said, is often what initially attracts the few theater groups that choose to perform the

play, which is less popular than other Sullivan works due to its controversial themes. However problematic the content of the story may be, he said, there is no denying that “Ida” is Sullivan’s musical masterpiece.

Yoo Jin Shin ’18, BUGS publicity chair, said that the audience responsed positiviely to the performances over the weekend and to BUGS’s handling of the controversial content matter.

Shin said she made sure to clearly express the director’s intent and reinterpretation of the work on publicity materials in order to dispel any preconceived notions about the play’s content.

“I thought it was interesting how, on the Morning Mail that I learned about (the play) … they had to mention that it was controversial subject material,” said Mark Liang ’19, a Herald staff writer. Despite having mixed feelings about the content of the performance, Liang said the production was handled well and was sufficiently modernized while staying true to its roots.

“As sad as it is to say, there are many places in the world where an original, unedited production of ‘Princess Ida’ would be wildly successful and no one would even question it,” Martino said.

Though he and his team took special care in reworking the play for modern audiences, Martino said that there are certain aspects of the show, such as the cross-dressing of Hilarion, Cyril and Florian, which cannot be completely reconciled with today’s social consciousness.

The original intent of the show shone through in certain lyrics of songs and particular instances of dialogue, hinting that Ida and her students hate men and are less intelligent than the men from whom they shield themselves.

However, spirited and modernized performances, such as a bro chest bump between Ida’s brothers Arac, Guron and Scynthius played by Connor Lightsey ’18, Connor Watts ’18 and Kevin Do ’18, respectively, helped the performance along.

Despite the problematic source material, the cast and crew handled the performance deftly, keeping the audience entertained for all three acts.

» HUXTABLE, from page 4 hyper-sexualized female video game characters such as Street Fighter II’s Chun Li. Though Huxtable’s work incorporates her personal experiences as a black, transgender woman, “it’s not that the work is being created specifically in this queer-advocacy, feminist-advocacy box.

She’s interacting with what it means to grapple with those categories,” said Jake Brodsky ’16, co-director of the Student

Creative Arts Council. Huxtable’s work is “a new way to frame addressing identity politics because of the way she is able to simultaneously grapple with so many themes,” he added.

Students in attendance said they appreciated both the diversity and relatability of Huxtable’s work.

Sebastian Niculescu ’20, a BrownRISD dual-degree student, said, “It’s fascinating how far reaching her thoughts are and her work is. … It engages with much more than I had expected.”

ge t ting down to business

DANIELLE PERELMAN / HERALD

Andrew Gonzales ’16, Joyce Ok ’17 and Christina Park ’17 discuss material on a computer screen at an event hosted by Women in Business.

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COMMENTARY WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015 • PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Western tragedies are not more important SARA AL-SALEM opinions columnist

On Sunday night, Paris was attacked.

We all know this by now because we have seen the world mourn for the City of Light. In shows of sympathy and solidarity, major monuments and Facebook profile pictures adopted the colors of the French flag, and the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” sounded across the world. Tragedy struck, and the world weeped.

But such tributes were absent in the aftermath of the terror that struck Beirut just a couple of days earlier, leaving at least 40 people dead in one of the worst attacks Beirut has seen in the last several years. The same is true of the funeral bombing in Baghdad that killed 17 people. Where are the Lebanese and Iraqi flags? Where is the sadness for anyone who is not the West?

The Beirut attack happened in a scene much like the Paris attack. Both occurred in urban settings where all those who lost their lives were victims of terrorism. It was a normal Thursday evening, and people like Adel Tormas — who sacrificed himself by jumping on top of the second

suicide bomber to shield other innocent lives from being lost — was in the market with his young daughter going about their normal day. Neither survived, but his name, and the many other innocent people of Beirut who were killed, were not widely praised or mentioned in Facebook statuses.

If the media did not care, why should the world?

I’m not one to try and weigh tragedies against each other. Any innocent life lost is a tragedy. What happened

care about the lives of those who are not Western and white.

This is a trend that has been around long before these attacks. Last month, 100 lives were lost, and over 200 people were wounded in Ankara, Turkey, in the same kind of attacks.

Again, the world did not weep for “humanity,” as President Obama said following the Paris attacks: “This is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share.”

Where do the rest of us fit in, Pres-

a city like Paris does not see such violence with regularity. The Middle East, on the other hand, is treated as if it should simply be used to this by now since the region is mired in constant turmoil. Take any average American, and ask them what they imagine when they think of the Middle East, and they will paint you a scene of a war-ravaged region that has never been any other way. So why should said average American feel anything if another hundred die in that region?

I mourn a world that does not care about the lives of those who are not Western and white.

in Paris was unspeakable, and I am sincerely sorry for all those affected.

I mourn with Paris and those who lost their lives to a ruthless and inhumane terrorist agenda. But as someone born and raised in Saudi Arabia who is half-Palestinian, I also mourn with Beirut, with Baghdad and with other cities the Western world does not recognize as important enough to merit recognition of their devastation. I mourn a world that does not

ident Obama? Were our humanity and values not also attacked? I find it especially ironic that places like the Middle East are pushed to the side because most of our tragedy began at the hands of the Western world. Every move the United States has made in the region in the name of “democracy” or “self-defense” has been a strategic and methodical effort to divide and conquer the land.

Paris disturbed the world because

Apparently those lives aren’t as sacred because tragedy was bound to happen. But that has not always been the case. The media tells you the rest of the non-Western world is always in shambles, so you believe the media, and you mourn only when the media tells you to mourn. Because someone like Adel Tormas could never live the same kind of life you live, his tragedy does not feel like it could ever be yours. His life mattered less because,

to you, it was always one where mass murder was just beyond his doorstep.

But Adel Tormas was just like you and me. He was a father, a son, a man out for the evening with his daughter to do some mundane thing either of us could have been doing. If anything, his humanity is even more worthy of recognition given the sacrifice he made to save others. His is a face the world should remember — his life mattered.

I am sorry to the people of Beirut, the people of Baghdad, the people of a world no one cares enough about, and I am sorry to the people of Paris. Your lives mattered, and they were taken away too soon in an act of extreme hatred and evil. I am sorry for the families of those whose lives were taken because I understand that loss, at the end of the day, is a very personal business. I cannot imagine the kind of pain you are in, and I can only hope that our world will one day strive to make it up to you. I hope our world becomes one where your loss is not reduced to a media trend, a world that breaks its heart when anyone is taken away in acts of wrath.

Sara Al-Salem ’17 can be reached at sara_al-salem@brown.edu.

Malleable minds in the Information Age NICHOLAS ESEMPLARE opinions columnist

These days, there’s a pretty simple answer to any question you don’t know the answer to: Google it. Information is more accessible than it has ever been, and, for many reasons, the dissemination of information is one of the most remarkable accomplishments of human civilization to date. But this advancement of society has come at a cost, one far greater than we often acknowledge.

Indeed, as sources of information become more varied, we must confront an unfortunate truth: The human mind is more vulnerable to manipulation than we like to admit, and this vulnerability poses a major threat to society that must be addressed.

“Get the money out of politics” is a common slogan — one that Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-VT, has rallied people around in his presidential campaign. One thing that we often don’t consider, however, is what this phrase actually says about human behavior. After all, the primary role of money in political campaigns is to control the framing of information and the frequency with which it is presented. Money does not literally buy votes, and it doesn’t change the information itself.

What campaign advertisements can do is provide selective information framed in a positive light, which can have a profound impact on prospective voters.

Granted, money is also important for things

such as campaign management, and ads also serve to increase name recognition. All in all, however, political advertisements make up the bulk of campaign spending, and they can have a tremendous amount of importance in swaying or mobilizing voters.

Lost in the argument over money’s role in political campaigns is the fact that this debate implies, and possibly proves, that we are not so much consumers of information as slaves to it.

ternal influence, and it is this susceptibility that makes money in politics powerful.

This phenomenon has far reaching implications. For one, it exposes free will and independent thought as delicate, and perhaps even illusory, features of our existence. These characteristics, long perceived as inherent in our humanity, are revealed, increasingly, to be highly vulnerable and requiring rigorous protection. The persistent illusion of our own independence,

Lost in the argument over money’s role in political campaigns is the fact that this debate implies, and possibly proves, that we are not so much consumers of information as slaves to it.

By asking to “get the money out of politics,” we are consciously acknowledging the vulnerability of our minds. We declare that money is ruining politics but are swayed by the very ads this money buys.

Of course, this type of persuasion did not begin in politics. These same tactics have been used consistently, and with great success, in commercial advertisements for some time. The psychology of marketing paints a frightening picture of our choices and preferences, a picture in which our minds — our intellectual, moral and political identities — are puppets of which we are not the master.

Our brains are exceedingly susceptible to ex-

however, has made it difficult to enact change.

As time goes on, technological advances figure to increase exponentially the ability of political campaigns to frame information to the electorate, making money in politics all the more valuable — and dangerous. A recent New York Times article refers to the emergence of “neuropolitics,” by which politicians attempt to monitor voters’ responses to ads on a neurological level through such metrics as facial coding and biofeedback.

The insidious effect that our sources of information can have on our views, particularly our political ones, is disconcerting. Our sources of information are profoundly important in shap-

ing our views. A Gallup poll indicates that about 71 percent of teens rated their political beliefs as “about the same” as those of their parents.

With a plethora of news sources available today, people can choose (and often do, according to a recent Pew Research Center study) to view information that aligns with their current beliefs.

Conservatives and liberals alike are susceptible to confirmation bias, or the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconception. As we have seen, so is the increasingly defunct American political system.

The days of mind control may not be around the corner, but a less obvious threat is looming. Sooner or later, we must confront the increasingly apparent fact that our minds are in many ways a product of our surroundings.

In the words of one of my English professors, “Consciousness is constructed.” The thoughts and ideas that we consider our own are not inherently ours but rather are our inheritance as citizens of the world. These thoughts and ideas enter us as if by diffusion throughout our waking lives. Regulations and restrictions may be applied to mitigate this problem, but the overarching issue is rigid. There is no escaping the fact that people will always be shackled by the viewpoints and opinions with which they are presented.

Nicholas Esemplare ’18 is a double concentrator in English and economics. He can be reached at nicholas_esemplare@brown.edu.

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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2015

The Triple Helix publishes palatable science material Magazine discusses current events in science with accessible writing style, illustrations

By REBECCA ELLIS STAFF WRITER

Taking a departure from the multisyllabic science language omnipresent in many science publications and journals, the Triple Helix seeks to put the science occurring around students every day into context.

TTH, a student-run science publication that includes a blog and a biannual magazine exploring the intersection of science and society, was founded at Cornell in 2004. Now the publication has chapters at over 20 colleges in cities across the globe — from Singapore to Berkeley, California, from Melbourne to Providence.

Science reimagined “New knowledge students produce about science typically go into peer journals rather than magazines like the Triple Helix,” said Russell Shelp ’16, editor-in-chief of TTH. Before the introduction of such magazines, that’s where the knowledge stayed — outside the grasp of college students not fluent in the theory of relativity, he added.

TTH takes the same ideas being investigated by students and puts them in a forum where “you don’t

feel like you need a degree,” making it one of the few college publications dedicated exclusively to science that fills the void between professional peer-reviewed journals and a lack of anything, Shelp said.

“Our goal is to not just deliver the findings of science, but to explain how they relate to everyone else’s lives. … We have an interdisciplinary approach to presenting science to the world,” he said.

Case in point, the cover article of TTH’s spring 2015 issue was not an investigation into a new drug or vaccine, but an opinion piece on how and why people achieve long-standing scientific legacies — why do we remember Einstein instead of Tesla, Crick instead of Franklin?

Consider the source For Jacob Kirschenbaum’17, a philosophy and physics concentrator and the author of the piece, it was a fondness for talking about science in abstract terms that led him to science writing. He signed up for TTH as a first-year. Around the same time, he had read an obituary in the New York Times about the death of the primatologist Alison Jolly, an experience that led him to his first story.

From reading the article, Kirschenbaum discovered Jolly was the first scientist to go into the forests of Madagascar and study lemurs — an experience that led her to groundbreaking discoveries about the effect

of continental drift on evolution. Yet no one knows her name.

“I know this sounds trivial because we all learned this in ninth grade bio, but the reason we did that was because of Alison Jolly,” Kirschenbaum says.

“No one knows who she is. If you ask anyone what they know about Madagascar, they’re going to mention the animated movie.”

For Kirschenbaum, TTH stood as the perfect platform to explore this “tension between history and science” — why, in the case of many scientists, no one knows their names, but everyone knows their discoveries.

The nature of TTH’s articles lets writers take a much more interdisciplinary approach than would be permitted by academic journals, but the production process is still professional. Each article is fact-checked by faculty members who are well-versed on the topic.

The graphics are also all original works, Shelp added. For those who have no intention of reading the articles, perusing TTH for the artwork alone will be worthwhile, Shelp said. Brown’s chapter of TTH is the only one that does its own design by recruiting artists from Brown and Rhode Island School of Design. These visual components demonstrate that a person need not be immersed directly in the science world to “contribute something to discussion about science,” Shelp said. “You don’t have to be spending all your time in (the lab) like

COURTESY OF THE TRIPLE HELIX

The Triple Helix magazine sheds light on pertinent problems in scientific research with applications to the Brown community.

I do” to make a difference, he added.

Calling all readers Like most college publications, TTH boasts a largely anonymous reader base. “It’s hard to say how many people read it. I hope a lot of people read it.

I think some people do,” Shelp said.

“It’s a great publication. … It’s so professionally done, really clean, really beautiful,” Kirschenbaum said.

But it’s more than the glossy sheen that makes magazines like TTH stand out. It’s the issues they bring up — problems in society that we’re typically exempt from grappling with when they

remain only in academia.

“We talk a lot on this campus about politics, and we talk a lot about social issues, … and those are things we need to be talking about,” Kirschenbaum said. “But there are crazy things going on with science right now — the ethical questions about medicine, about research, about the environment. …

Those should also be in our campus conversation.”

“I think the Triple Helix — if it had more exposure — would help,” he added.

A new edition of TTH came out last week.