Monday, February 29, 2016

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016

VOLUME CLI, ISSUE 22

Student visa extension program in question Program granting longer residence to international STEM students after graduation under review

By LAURA FELENSTEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Neuroscience concentrator Pu-Ning Chiang ’16 is one of the 182 international students in her class year. Hailing from Taiwan, Chiang will rely on the Department of Homeland Security’s Optional Practical Training program to continue living in the United States legally following her graduation in the spring.

But the program has expired, and the federal government has until May 10 to make necessary changes. In the meantime, the fate of a number of international students, including some from Brown, is uncertain.

As an extension of the student visa, the OPT program gives international students and recent college graduates the opportunity to work in the United States for a year after graduation. In 2008, an extension was created that allows graduates studying science, technology, engineering and math to work for an additional 17 months, for a total of 29.

But in 2014, a labor union called the Washington Alliance of Technological Workers sued the DHS on the basis that international students were taking away jobs in STEM fields from American graduates. Now, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget must approve the program, or the 17-month extension will be eliminated.

In an email to The Herald, Elke Breker, director of Brown’s office of international student and scholar services, stated that the decision regarding the new proposal for the OPT program is expected to be released by March 10.

This 60-day cushion should ensure that the verdict is made on time.

Breker declined to comment on how Brown students might be affected by a ruling in the future.

Thirty-seven percent of graduate school students at Brown are internationals, according to the graduate school’s website. Of undergraduates, 12.1 percent are international, according to statistics from the 2014-15 school year.

Tom Doeppner, vice chair of the computer science department, expressed his concern about the potential impact the elimination of the extension could have on international students concentrating » See OPT, page 2

M. LACROSSE

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

Dylan Molloy ’17 dekes a defender as he goes for the goal. The junior, who was the Ivy League’s player of the year last season, is off to a hot start this year with eight goals and six assists through the team’s first two games.

No. 9 Bruno topples No. 19 Stony Brook Bears continue strong start to season behind Molloy’s nine points, Kelly’s 20 saves

By NIKKO PASANEN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

It was exactly the kind of result the men’s lacrosse team was looking for

Prof. wins Presidential Early Career Award Erika Edwards commended for work, research on plant evolution, photosynthesis CONTRIBUTING WRITER

INSIDE

— a big road win against a ranked opponent. The No. 9 Bears (2-0) knew there was a lot on the line in their trip to No. 19 Stony Brook, and they made sure to take advantage of the early-season opportunity, beating the Seawolves 16-14.

“It’s huge obviously — Stony Brook is a really good team and one we hadn’t seen before,” said Alec Tulett ’17. “It’s really exciting to see us off

Disappointing weekend sees Brown fall to 11th in ECAC

By MATT BROWNSWORD SPORTS EDITOR

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Edwards has been honored with the country’s most prestigious award for engineers and scientists in the early stages of their research careers. that vets the quality and scope of their research. In its press release, the NSF lauded Edwards’ “innovative research leading to exciting breakthroughs” in studying the drivers of plant evolutionary innovation, particularly the evolution of plant form and photosynthesis systems,” according to the organization’s website.

All those considered for the award

receive five-year grants through the Faculty Early Career Development Program, which is run by the NSF. The organization then selects winners of the PECASE from the list of grant recipients.

Edwards received her nomination and grant in 2013, she said.

Edwards was “in a state of shock” when she received the award, especially » See EDWARDS, page 2

to another hot start: reminds me of the first couple games last season, and I know we’re all getting fired up for another big one against UMass next Saturday.”

If you like goals, Saturday’s contest between two of the nation’s highest-scoring offenses was for you.

The Bears outlasted the Seawolves in a fast-paced, highly entertaining » See M. LAX, page 2

M. HOCKEY

Loss to Quinnipiac, tie with Princeton mean Brown to travel to RPI for playoffs’ first round

By M.C. NANDA

On Feb. 18, Erika Edwards, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the U.S. government’s highest award for engineers and scientists in the early stages of their independent research careers. Edwards was acknowledged for her research on plant evolution and photosynthesis systems. She was among 104 other honorees who will accept the award at the White House this spring.

Established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, PECASE credits those “in their pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology,” with special attention to their community service through scientific leadership, public education or community outreach, according to the National Science Foundation’s website.

The NSF nominated 21 of the 106 honorees, including Edwards, after an intensive, multi-year peer review process

WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

Last season, the men’s hockey team built some momentum heading into the playoffs, going on the road and tying leagueleaders Quinnipiac before clobbering Princeton by a score of 4-1.

This year, the Bears (5-17-7, 3-13-6 ECAC) had no such luck in their last two-game series before the postseason, falling to the No. 1 Bobcats (25-2-7, 16-15) 4-1 and allowing a last-second goal to the Tigers (5-21-3, 3-16-3) to force a tie.

Brown came into the weekend as the No. 10 seed up a point on Colgate, looking to avoid a matchup with Dartmouth in the first round of the ECAC playoffs.

The Bears have lost to the Big Green five straight times, including by scores of 6-3 and 7-3 this year.

But with the ECAC regular season title on the line, Quinnipiac left no room

for the Bears to ruin its season. An early penalty to Max Gottlieb ’19 led to a Travis St. Denis power play goal, highlighting Brown’s abysmal 75 percent penalty kill percentage. Brown’s penalty kill is even worse in conference play, ranking last in the conference with a 73.3 percent success rate. But the Bears were 6-for-7 on the weekend, even scoring their first shorthanded goal of the season against Princeton.

The Bears received another boost as Max Willman ’18 — initially ruled out for the season with a broken hand — was back in the lineup after doctors had told him he could play with a cast on his hand.

“Obviously that’s huge moving forward,” said captain Mark Naclerio ’16.

“He’s a really big part of our lineup and definitely a guy that can create for us.”

The gap in talent between the Bobcats and the Bears was evident throughout the first two periods, as Quinnipiac outshot Bruno 25-14. Tim Clifton gave the Bobcats a 2-0 advantage through the first two frames before Kevin McKernan opened the third period to put the game » See M. HOCKEY, page 2

WEATHER

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016

SPORTS Men’s basketball splits against Harvard, Dartmouth in final home games for Kuakumensah ’16

SPORTS Women’s basketball suffers two consecutive losses to Ivies, largely due to rebounding struggles

COMMENTARY Tildon ’19: Educators must be inclusive in classrooms, respect students’ diverse experiences

COMMENTARY Logan: Tildon ’19 should not equate disagreement to dismissal, rush to accuse

PAGE 3

BACK

PAGE 6

PAGE 7

TODAY

TOMORROW

55 / 33

48 / 34

NEWS

PAGE 2 • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016

» M. HOCKEY, from page 1 out of reach.

“We did not have our best effort,” Naclerio said. “Quinnipiac’s a really good defensive team, but we need to do a better job in getting more scoring chances in front of the net.”

Davey Middleton ’17 scored the lone goal of the game against Quinnipiac, his first of two on the weekend.

Meanwhile, Colgate won its first game against RPI, moving Brown back down to the 11 seed — one point behind the Raiders.

Middleton notched his second tally of the weekend with a shorthanded goal against the Tigers, and Tyler Bird ’18 added another on the power play. Brown went into the third period with a 2-1 lead over the cellar-dwelling Tigers.

The Bears almost escaped with the win, holding off Princeton for 19 minutes and 53 seconds of the frame before Max Veronneau tied the game with

seven seconds left. It was the second game in two weeks in which Brown let up a game-tying goal with 10 seconds or less to play. The overtime was scoreless, giving Brown a tie against the league’s worst team.

“It was disappointing,” Naclerio said.

“We really need to learn how to close games out. We were leading since the second period on, so to not get the win is disappointing. Hopefully we’ll have a good week of practice heading into the weekend.”

But because Colgate beat Union, settling for the tie instead of the win had no effect on Brown’s place in the conference standings. Rensselaer’s tie against Cornell pushed it past Dartmouth for the sixth spot, putting the Engineers in place to host Bruno next weekend.

“They’re a good team, but we think we match up well with them,” Naclerio said. “My freshman year, we went there and won our series in three games, so we think we can do that again.”

Percent of international students among undergraduates by year

goes away, it is going to make it pretty tough for our students to get their green card,” Doeppner said. “It’s going to have a negative effect on their education.”

According to Doeppner, there is a

new proposal by the DHS would bump the 17-month extension to 24 additional months on top of the original 12 for a total of 36.

The suggested update to the law would also implement protection for American workers in response to the criticism by WashTech, according to media site Marketplace. Under the revised OPT program, preventative measures would be put in place to stop employers from hiring foreign workers in the place of Americans.

But, according to the National Science Foundation, hiring international workers does not necessarily indicate that American workers will be displaced from jobs.

In the computer science department at Brown, there does not seem to be a problem, Doeppner said.

“As far as our students and graduates are concerned, they’re all getting plenty of job offers, and there’s no notion that international students are taking job offers that should otherwise be going to American students,” he said.

Concerns about the shortage of STEM labor demand aside, the OPT program’s extension is widely well received

for expanding international students’ workplace opportunities and advancing U.S. technology as a whole.

“For the country in general, there is a shortage of qualified people for high-tech jobs. And if we do anything that makes it more difficult for highly qualified people graduating from top universities to continue on in high-tech positions, it’s going to be bad for the country’s tech industries, which is going to make us less competitive with the rest of the world,” Doeppner said.

Others feel the OPT program serves a purpose other than bolstering America’s STEM research.

John Miano, the lawyer representing WashTech workers in the lawsuit against the DHS and a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the OPT program is modifying student visas in order to compensate for a problem within the system to attain a worker visa. Rather than amend the OPT program to gain more high quality workers, the DHS should attempt to control the quality of workers applying for worker visas, as the system is currently overflowing with relatively low-skilled workers, Miano said.

on three goals as well.

At the face-off X, the Bears were aided by the stellar play of Will Gural ’16, who captured 20 of 30 attempts.

Tiffany credited Gural’s ability to generate possessions as a key reason for the Bears’ win.

When the opening whistle blew Saturday, Bruno got off to a quick start, scoring two goals within the first four minutes. But the Seawolves climbed right back into the game, evening things up just minutes later.

The teams then went on to trade pairs of goals until Molloy scored unassisted with under two minutes remaining in the first frame to give the Bears a 5-4 lead. Stony Brook looked to have a great opportunity to tie things up at the quarter’s end, but Kelly dove to block the shot in what could be a save-of-the-year contender come season’s end.

The second period was a backand-forth affair until the Bears grabbed three of the quarter’s last four goals to take a 10-7 lead going into the half. While that scoreline might

seem like a fitting final score for a lacrosse game, that was anything but the case for these two high-powered offensive teams.

In the third frame, the Bears pushed their lead to four goals, putting themselves in a solid position to take home the victory. But the Seawolves had no intention of making it easy. They stormed out of the gate in the fourth, scoring twice within the first three minutes of the period to grab the momentum. Luckily for the Bears, Tulett brought a momentary halt to the comeback bid a mere 14 seconds later, scoring a spectacular goal from about 15 yards out after receiving a pass from Molloy.

“The first couple minutes of every quarter have a lot of potential to swing the momentum of the game, and unfortunately Stony Brook rallied for the first two of the fourth quarter,” Tulett said. But “our fast tempo style of play often results in several multi-goal runs throughout the game, and that’s what we started when Molloy hit me in transition for our 14th of the game.”

But Stony Brook remained unfazed, pouring in another two goals to bring the margin to just one. With under seven minutes left and the pressure building, Bruno kept its composure and scored twice courtesy of Bellistri and Caputo. The three-goal lead proved to be enough of a cushion, with the final score settling at 16-14.

The Bears are now right where they want to be after outlasting a difficult Seawolves side and having dismantled Quinnipiac in their opening contest.

Up next is the home opener against UMass, which fell to No. 14 Harvard in overtime Saturday. The Minutemen, who have already beaten then-No. 11 Ohio State, will certainly provide a tough test for Bruno. The contest will also mark the 49th rendition of New England’s oldest lacrosse rivalry.

“This is always a huge game for us,” Tulett said. “I still haven’t forgotten the humbling loss against them freshman year, and I guarantee practice this week will reflect the energy that we will bring to our home opener against them Saturday.”

» EDWARDS, from page 1

15 percent 12 9 6 3 0 '05 '06 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 '13 '14 '15

Source: The Office of Institutional Diversity KATE TALERICO / HERALD

in STEM disciplines. “OPT, as it is right now, is just 12 months. … If the extension

» M. LAX, from page 1 contest that saw an impressive 30 tallies. For a team that preaches a “fast, frenetic pace” and “free of fear” style of play, it was exactly the kind of game Bruno expected, said Head Coach Lars Tiffany ’04.

Despite the barrage of goals, the Bears’ difference maker was goalie Jack Kelly ’16, who made 20 saves — several of which were worthy of any highlight reel.

Tiffany and Tulett both praised the goalie for his role in the win. “He absolutely stood on his head, making one of the best saves I have personally ever seen at the end of the first quarter,” Tulett said.

On the offensive end, Dylan Molloy ’17 paced the attack with three goals and an impressive six assists.

The high assist tally is a promising sign for a player who is likely to get double-teamed throughout the season after a breakout sophomore campaign.

Henry Blynn ’16, Kylor Bellistri ’16 and Brendan Caputo ’16 each tacked

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

Nick Lappin ’16 looks for a pass. The senior, who has played an instrumental role in the offense this year, was held scoreless in back-to-back games for the first time this season in tilts against Quinnipiac and Princeton. significant number of international STEM students and recent graduates from Brown working through this program in his department.

As a student thinking about pursuing OPT for neuroscience following graduation, Chiang said that the extra time granted by the extension would better her experience. With only a year to work, rather than 29 months, she would have less time to apply for a worker visa.

Entering the lottery for a visa is risky ­— especially with a time constraint — as only 65,000 are available each year, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website. Without acquiring a worker visa following the initial 12 months granted by OPT, Chiang could have to leave the country, a situation she has seen a friend forced into before.

“We all want to stay here,” Chiang said. “America is a good place. I like it here.”

But should the plan currently under review be approved, Chiang will be granted more time in the United States than she would have had under the original extension. Among other revisions, the

The proportion of international students in the undergraduate student body each year has grown by 192 percent in the last 10 years, nearly doubling since 2005.

» OPT, from page 1

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Follow Sports! twitter.com/bdh_sports

as a botanist, she added.

“There just aren’t a lot of pure botanists, so just to have that science recognized is unusual and very exciting,” Edwards said. “It makes me proud for my plant community.”

While Edwards teaches BIOL0430: “The Evolution of Plant Diversity” every fall, her proposal was to develop a new spring course that she is teaching this semester on the biology of desert plants.

“My PhD was on this same topic, so I’ve been working on succulent plants and desert plants since the year 2000,” she said.

The money from her grant will go to the class and a spring break research trip to Peru, she said. There, Edwards and her students are teaming up with Peruvian botanists and their students.

They will spend a week surveying the photosynthesis systems and the ecological sorting of vegetation in the deserts of Peru from sea level to the Andes.

“We’re going to keep our eyes out for plants that have different types of photosynthesis systems,” such as plants with C4 and cam photosynthesis, Edwards said. These are “really interesting evolutionary innovations that plants have built multiple times over the last 30 million years.”

SPORTS

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

M. BASKETBALL

OT win highlights last home weekend Kuakumensah’s ’16 final games at Pizzitola end in win over Big Green, loss to Crimson

By CALEB MILLER STAFF WRITER

Cedric Kuakumensah ’16 added a game-winning dunk to his list of impressive career accomplishments Friday when his slam vaulted the men’s basketball team ahead of Dartmouth (9-17, 3-9 Ivy) in the penultimate minute of overtime. But Saturday, his Senior Night ended on a sour note, as Harvard (12-16, 4-8) edged Bruno (8-18, 3-9) in a low-scoring affair.

Kuakumensah closed his illustrious career at the Pizzitola in style with a pair of double-doubles. Led by its three-year captain, Bruno closed its penultimate weekend with a 3-8 record in league play, tied for sixth in the top-heavy Ivy League. Dominant Yale and Princeton will fight for the title in the coming weeks while five of the league’s eight teams have losing records in conference.

Brown 84, Dartmouth 83 In what has become a frequent sight for Brown fans, Kuakumensah and Tavon Blackmon ’17 teamed up for a beautiful play that propelled the Bears over Dartmouth late in overtime. Kuakumensah snared an offensive rebound and kicked it out to Blackmon on the perimeter. The elusive point guard penetrated the lane and drew multiple Big Green defenders before dropping a nifty pass off to Kuakumensah, who threw it home.

Leading 84-83 after the dunk, Bruno kept Dartmouth off the scoreboard in the final 1:06 to secure its third Ivy win.

“I don’t think we played our best, but we overcame a lot,” said Head Coach Mike Martin ’04.

The Blackmon-to-Kuakumensah game-winner never would have happened were it not for their teammate JR Hobbie ’17. The sharpshooter was having a pretty ugly day, missing each of his three attempts and even air-balling one. But with the Bears trailing 75-72 with 20 seconds remaining in regulation, Martin sent Hobbie into the game.

A scramble in the game’s final play left Obi Okolie ’19 with the ball near

the lane. Hobbie alertly slid from the top of the key to the left wing, where Okolie found him with a pass. A defender closed fast, so Hobbie was forced to shoot off-balance. But the ball found the bottom of the net, sending the crowd into a frenzy and the game into overtime.

“We made a lot of big plays – none bigger than JR’s shot,” Martin said.

Aside from Hobbie’s key threepointer and Kuakumensah’s dunk, much of the second-half and overtime scoring came from the free throw line.

Quick whistles and success at the charity stripe helped Dartmouth keep close during Bruno’s second-half run, but the free throw line became the Bears’ ally in overtime, accounting for seven of the team’s nine points in the period.

Brown had led much of the second half, even pushing the advantage to 11 with nine minutes to play. But the Big Green shot 6-for-6 in the game’s final five minutes to take a short-lived lead before Hobbie’s heroics.

With locker-room speeches from Kuakumensah, the Bears came out firing on all cylinders to start each half.

A 10-0 run to open the game and a 9-0 spurt to start the second half helped Bruno to the lead it carried through much of the final 20 minutes. The first half belonged to Dartmouth, after it countered Bruno’s opening run with an 18-2 streak of its own.

Martin attributed the victory to defensive rebounding, particularly keeping the Big Green to just two secondchance points after allowing them to amass 16 in Hanover two weeks ago.

“Last time we played these guys, they killed us on the boards,” Kuakumensah said. “The past two weeks in practice we have been focusing on box outs … and everyone has been contributing.”

Steven Spieth ’17 managed to lead all scorers with 21 points despite fouling out of the game with 3:31 to play in regulation. With his brother, world No. 1 ranked golfer Jordan Spieth, in attendance, Spieth opened the game red hot, going 4-for-4 from beyond the arc.

“I went into the game trying to be aggressive,” Spieth said. “It helps to make the first couple.”

Blackmon finished his night with an impressive line — 19 points and seven assists — and Kuakumensah’s 17 points and 11 rebounds marked his

ALEX WAINGER / HERALD

Cedric Kuakumensah ’16 drives by a defender in his last home game. The senior holds the Ivy career blocks record, securing his place in team history.

11th double-double of the year.

Harvard 61, Brown 52 The Crimson led wire to wire Saturday night, closing out the win and leaving Kuakumensah 0-8 in his four years against the conference rival.

The night started with a celebration of Kuakumensah and fellow senior Joe Sharkey ’16. Sharkey missed the last three seasons with injuries suffered from a punch to the back of the head that put him in a coma and in the hospital for almost two months, but he has remained a committed member of the program.

It took the announcer a while to get through the long list of Kuakumensah’s accomplishments. He will graduate with the 19th-most points and fourth-most rebounds in Brown history as well as, of course, the most blocks of anyone to don an Ivy jersey.

Kuakumensah scored Bruno’s first points of the night on a strong post move and did his part the whole contest. The captain finished his senior night with 19 points, 14 rebounds and a block.

But unfortunately for the Bears, the rest of the team had all kinds of trouble putting the ball through the net. Three starters — Okolie, Spieth and Kyle Haber ’18 — combined to shoot a staggering 0-for-19 from the floor. The team combined to shoot 30.9 percent from the floor, its lowest mark since a Dec. 7 contest at Georgetown.

“The ball didn’t go in the basket,” Martin said. The “shots were pretty good … We have guys that are good shooters, and they just didn’t make shots.”

Despite the putrid shooting performance, the Bears remained in the game with solid defense. Harvard’s Corey Johnson came out red hot with two three-pointers to open the game and four total in the first half. Brown forced him into a low percentage after the early minutes, but he still managed to rack up a game-high 24 points.

Bruno closed an early 15-point deficit to seven at the halfway point, and a Kuakumensah offensive board and put-back cut it to five to open the second half, but Harvard managed to inch away as the Bears struggled to score.

Any comeback attempt was thwarted by Bruno’s inability to convert. Even the Bears’ trusty friend, the free-throw line, abandoned them. Over the course of three minutes in the middle of the second half, Bruno clanged six consecutive free throws that could have cut the lead to five again.

Late in the game, Harvard’s Agunwa Okolie — older brother of Bruno’s Obi — started snatching up offensive rebounds left and right. Harvard had multiple possessions of over a minute thanks to extra chances. Agunwa finished with a career-high 19 rebounds, and Harvard dominated the glass 4934.

“We gave them too many possessions in offensive rebounds,” Martin said.

Bruno has one more weekend to wash the taste of its Senior Night struggles out of its mouth. The Bears travel to the Big Apple for a matchup with Columbia Friday before heading north Saturday to face Cornell in a game that could decide which team will finish last in the conference.

Sports Roundup

BY TANEIL RUFFIN, SPORTS EDITOR

Men’s Swimming and Diving Five record-breaking performances were not enough to sustain Bruno this weekend at the Ivy League Championship. Hosting the three-day event at the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, the men’s swimming and diving team finished seventh out of the Ancient Eight teams with 672 points.

The first night of competition was bookended with historic feats from Riley Springman ’18 and Willy Lee ’18. Springman opened the competition by cutting off 0.2 seconds from his best time — which was also the program record — in the 200-meter individual medley. The performance was good enough for 14th place overall. Leading off the 400-meter relay, Lee swam his leg in record time, but the relay still finished seventh.

The other three records were broken in the second day of the competition, and two came in the same event. The 100-meter breaststroke was the most contested event of the day, with the top program time broken three times on Saturday alone. Outside of a preliminary time, both Christopher Meyers ’16 and Connor Lohman ’17 bested the 54.75 time that Meyers set last season. Meyers’ time of 54.35 Saturday became the fastest performance in Brown history, while Lohman’s finish leaves him second in the program’s record books. The 200-meter relay also set a new record, shaving just under a second off its fastest time.

Women’s Lacrosse After posting two impressive wins against Iona and Central Connecticut to open the 2016 season, the women’s lacrosse team fell to Denver Saturday by a 5-3 decision. Last week’s games showcased Bruno’s (2-1) ability to generate effective offense, but the Pioneers’ (2-2) defense proved to be too much for the Bears — the squad was held to just three goals in the contest, a stark contrast from the 21 combined goals Bruno posted in its previous two games.

In contrast, Denver was quick to get on the scoreboard, scoring two goals within the first 10 minutes of the game. The dry spell finally broke halfway through the first period, as the Bears finally tallied their first point thanks to a goal from Grace Plassche ’19 off an assist from Kerianne Hunt ’17. But Denver scored again before the first half ended, handing Bruno a two-goal deficit going into halftime.

In a similar fashion to the first stanza, the Pioneers came out strong and scored to widen the gap. But about two minutes later, Lauren Toy ’16 scored an unassisted goal in an attempt to turn the tide. The rest of the game proceeded in a seesawing fashion as Denver scored again, but Toy answered, this time with some help from Emma Dahle ’17. Ultimately, the rally was not enough, and the Pioneers were able to stave off Bruno and hand the squad its first loss of the season.

Track and Field As spring slowly but surely approaches, the indoor season for the men’s and women’s track and field teams begins to draw to a close. In one of their final indoor events of the season, the teams competed in the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships at Cornell this weekend. Several strong performances landed the women with a fifth place finish, while the men came in sixth.

On the track Saturday, Ryan Kelly ’16 and Tosin Oyewole ’18 notched third and fourth place finishes, respectively, in the 200-meter race. On the women’s side, Natalie Schudrowitz ’18 finished less than a second behind the first-place finisher from Dartmouth in the 3,000-meter race.

In the field, Owen Russell ’19 set a new personal best in the weight throw.

Maxine Offiaeli ’18 also threw her best toss for the women’s team.

Next up for the Bears is the IC4A Championships.

COMMENTARY PAGE 4 • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

menu

h e at i n g u p

SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS

Pizza: Rhode to Italy, Caprese, BBQ Chicken Ranch Make-Your-Own Fried Rice, Chili Bar JOSIAH’S

BLUE ROOM

Gourmet Grilled Cheese

Turkey Chili, Chicken Noodle Soup, Mediterranean Pockets

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Meatball Grinder, Gnocchi alla Sorrentina, Chocolate-Pretzel Cookies

Pork Chops with Seasoned Bread Crumbs, Spinach Strudel, Chocolate Cake

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

Pulled Pork Sandwich, Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, ChocolatePretzel Cookies

Apricot Beef with Sesame Noodles, Savory Chicken Stew, Chocolate Cupcakes

sudoku

ELI WHITE / HERALD

Temperatures rise in Providence. At the same time, tempers have been rising among the presidential candidates on the eve of Super Tuesday. Results are highly anticipated in a competitive race for the White House.

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

“There just aren’t a lot of pure botanists, so just to have crossword

that science recognized is unusual and very exciting. It makes me proud for my plant community.

”

— Erika Edwards, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology

See EDWARDS on page 1.

CORRECTIONS An article in Friday’s Herald (“Miller reflects on intelligent design case,” Feb. 26) stated that Kenneth Miller ’70 P’02, professor of biology, said “religious ideas that have no place in a publicly finessed science classroom.” In fact, Miller said “religious ideas that have no place in a publicly financed science classroom.” The Herald regrets the error.

An article in Friday’s Herald (“Brown launches funding pilot for student committee members,” Feb. 26) stated that students would receive a stipend for the work they would do on a committee. In fact, they would receive an hourly wage.

The Herald regrets the error.

calendar TODAY

FEBRUARY

S

M

T

W

Th

F

S

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

Jewishly Inspired Meditation 2:00 P.M. Brown-RISD Hillel

GLISP: How to Make the Most of Study Abroad 2:00 P.M. J. Walter Wilson

Feminism, Pedagogy and Social Novel in Lima 4:00 P.M. Watson Institute

Paul Gootenberg: The War on Cocaine 4:00 P.M. Watson Institute

TOMORROW Brown in China Information Session 12:00 P.M. J. Walter Wilson

Brown Unplugged Kickoff Pizza Dinner 6:00 P.M. The Underground

Jeanne Dielman Film Screening 6:30 P.M. List Art Building

Brown Democrats/BPR: Super Tuesday Watch 6:30 P.M. Metcalf Research Building

TODAY

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016 • PAGE 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Compensation for student researchers To the Editor: Last December, Brown decided to fund paid student research assistantships to support the work of two university committees — the Mental Health Community Council and the Title IX Oversight and Advisory Board. The Feb. 26 article titled “Brown launches funding pilot for student committee members” unfortunately misstated a number of details about the intent and implementation of this pilot.

The intent of this initiative is not to compensate students for the customary contributions that are involved with voluntary committee service, but rather to support research that furthers the work of the committees in the pilot. This approach reflects the model of existing research opportunities for Brown’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies.

Undergraduate and graduate students who perform research for a committee will do so as University employees, and they may or may

not be members of the committee.

With appropriate oversight from a staff member on the committee, students will be paid by the hour, not a stipend. While a student may be able to a suggest project, the chair of the committee will have final approval over what is needed to support the work of the committee. This pilot will be evaluated at the end of the semester.

Brown’s administration would have welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the reporter’s article, given that this initiative is being administered by the University this semester.

University committees serve an essential role in advancing Brown’s mission, and research support for the MHCC and the Title IX Oversight and Advisory Board will meet the research needs identified by these two university committees to help meet their objectives.

K I M B E R LY S A LT Z

comic The Fistbump Chronicles | Bryn Brunnstrom

Marguerite Joutz ’15 Assistant to the President for Student Affairs and Special Projects

E D I T O R’ S N O T E Today, The Herald has published two full-page op-eds regarding the nature of readings and a guest lecture given in a sociology class at Brown. Kyle Tildon ’19 argues that contents of a guest lecture by Yale Professor of Sociology Elijah Anderson and texts written by Anderson are racist and sexist and that Professor of Sociology John Logan did not appropriately preface these readings or address Tildon’s concerns about them. Logan argues that Anderson’s texts and guest lecture are not racist or sexist and that he did appropriately address Tildon’s concerns.

As the University’s paper of record, The Herald aimed to provide a platform for Tildon to publish his concerns, particularly given that these concerns are relevant to current campus discourse. But The Herald is also cognizant of the weight of these claims and aimed to publish them in a way that is fair to those accused. Prior to the publication of Tildon’s op-ed, The Herald contacted both Anderson and Logan Feb. 25 with a summary of the claims and the proposition that they write op-eds to run on the same day as Tildon’s. Anderson chose not to submit an op-ed.

The Herald also verified the facts on which Tildon bases his claims. The Herald confirmed that the quotes in Tildon’s op-ed are accurate and that Anderson did visit a session of Logan’s class in which Tildon was formerly enrolled. Tildon’s interpretation of these facts is his own, as is Logan’s.

Editors’ notes are written by The Herald’s 126th Editorial Board: Emma Jerzyk ’17, Joseph Zappa ’17, Andrew Flax ’17 and Caroline Kelly ’17.

Find us online! facebook.com/browndailyherald

browndailyherald.com

@the_herald

Location: 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. www.browndailyherald.com

@browndailyherald

youtube.com/browndailyherald

Editorial contact: 401-351-3372 herald@browndailyherald.com

Business contact: 401-351-3260 gm@browndailyherald.com

Submissions: The Brown Daily Herald publishes submissions in the form of op-eds and letters to the editor. Op-eds are typically between 750 and 1000 words, though we will consider submissions between 500 and 1200 words.

Letters to the editor should be around 250 words. While letters to the editor respond to an article or column that has appeared in The Herald, op-eds usually prompt new discussions on campus or frame new arguments about current discourse.

All submissions to The Herald cannot have been previously published elsewhere (in print or online — including personal blogs and social media), and they must be exclusive to The Herald.

Submissions must include no more than two individual authors. If there are more than two original authors, The Herald can acknowledge the authors in a statement at the end of the letter or op-ed, but the byline can only include up to two names. The Herald will not publish submissions authored by groups. The Herald does not publish anonymous submissions. If you feel your circumstances prevent you from submitting an op-ed or letter with your name, please email herald@browndailyherald.com to explain your situation.

Editorial Leadership

Sections

Visuals & Production

Business

Editor-in-Chief Emma Jerzyk

Arts & Culture Editor Jaclyn Torres

Managing Editor Joseph Zappa

News Editors Lauren Aratani Agnes Chan Sandra Lifshits Kate Talerico

Design Editors Meryl Charleston Sonia Geba Andrew Linder Assistants: Nicola Ho, Minah Seo

General Managers Moniyka Sachar Joshua Tartell

Senior Editors Andrew Flax Caroline Kelly POST- MAGAZINE Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu

Sports Editors Matt Brownsword Taneil Ruffin Multimedia Features Editor Baylor Knobloch COMMENTARY Opinions Editors Margaret Hu Lainie Rowland Editorial Page Editors Emma Axelrod Emma Jerzyk

Photo Editors Head: Eli White Sam Berube Marianna McMurdock Matteo Mobilio Ashley So Web Producer Harsha Yeddanapudy Copy Desk Chief Bonnie Henry Illustrations Editor Roland High

Directors Sales: Henry Ritter Finance: Neil Wathore Finance: Benjamin Wesner Business Dev.: Abraham Galindo Sales Managers Antonia Alvarez Erin Lueck Matthew Meyer William Welland Finance Managers Collections: Reena Zhan Collections: Varun Narayan DIGITAL Director of Audience Development Marcy Huang

You can submit op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com and letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. When you email your submission, please include (1) your full name, (2) an evening or mobile phone number in case your submission is chosen for publication and (3) any affiliation with Brown University or any institution or organization relevant to the content of your submission.

Please send in submissions at least 24 hours in advance of your desired publication date. The Herald only publishes submissions while it is in print. The Herald reserves the right to edit all submissions. If your piece is considered for publication, an editor will contact you to discuss potential changes to your submission.

Commentary: The editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

Corrections: The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

Advertising: The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. is a financially independent, nonprofit media organization bringing you The Brown Daily Herald, BlogDailyHerald and Post- Magazine. The Brown Daily Herald has served the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement and once during Orientation by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. Subscription prices: $280 one year daily, $140 one semester daily.

Copyright 2016 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Postmaster: Please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906.

COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

On the classroom KYLE TILDON

op-ed contributor The antiquated concept of the classroom, as it exists today in the minds of many educators and students, actively undermines the goals of higher education. Defining or giving purpose to the concept of a classroom is a seemingly easy task. Simply understood, the classroom is a space for a teacher to instruct and for students to learn what they are presented. To some extent this is partially true, but the classroom is a much more complicated space than just that.

To fully understand what a classroom has the potential to be, the accepted concept of the space itself and its currently associated uses must be separated from that of the stereotypical room with desks. The classical and rigid theoretical construction of the classroom does not provide enough intellectual and even emotional space for both students and educators to bring their historical, epistemological and relevant experiences into the learning environment. To allow outdated understandings of the classroom to limit these crucial aspects of a holistic educational experience is to limit the minds of the students inside it.

I found the more rigid understanding of the classroom to be the environment in a course I enrolled in at the beginning of the spring semester, SOC1330: “Remaking the City,” taught by the renowned sociologist John Logan, author of “Urban Fortunes.” In the second week of class, Logan assigned the chapter “Sex Codes and Family Life among Northton’s Youth,” from Elijah Anderson’s book “Streetwise,” published in 1990. Anderson is a professor of sociology at Yale. The chapter the class was given focuses on the sexual habits of teens in the neighborhood of Northton, Philadelphia. I found the work to perpetuate racist and sexist thought in its representation of black youths and women in this inner-city space. On the second page of the chapter, Anderson wrote: “In each sexual encounter, there is generally a winner and a loser. The girls have a dream, the boys a desire. The girls dream of being carried off by Prince Charming who will love them, provide for them, and give them a family. The boys often desire sex without commitment or babies without responsibility for them.”

This specific excerpt struck me as problematic. First, Anderson’s language makes no specific reference to what he considers his ethnographic research — the methods of which I will come to question later. Rather it insinuates that these are the dreams and desires of all “inner-city youths” as he distinguishes in an earlier paragraph, a gross and racist generalization.

But to portray inner-city boys as hypersexual and girls of color as lazy and incompetent — images about black men and women that have, respectively, been highly perpetuated in American popular culture — within a schol-

arly text is unacceptable. This excerpt, while racially and sexually problematic on its own, becomes even more dangerous when put into broader historical context.

Popular American culture — which most often has meant the parts of black culture white people have chosen to popularize — has, since its inception, demonized and oversexualized the black male body and made the black woman look hopeless with no sense of intelligence or agency. Anderson’s words reinforce these negative and hateful stereotypes of young black men and women who live in inner-city neighborhoods. The very existence of the text itself perpetuates these ideas and goes directly

and did not return. In an email sent shortly after the full class let out, Professor Logan told me that “on close reading I don’t agree that (the text) can be considered racist.”

Professor Logan contacted Professor Anderson about our class discussion and invited him to attend our next meeting to discuss his piece. In preparation for this visit Professor Anderson asked that we read his piece “The White Space,” published in 2015.

During the lecture, Professor Anderson made surprising and troubling statements, like one where he implied that blacks entering predominantly white spaces were physically dirty before making their entrance by saying: “How

Some may argue that bringing issues of race and sexuality into the classroom is an activism not suited for the space.

But I say that it is impossible to interpret the space without such understandings. Race and sexuality do not enter the classroom with these conversations but rather precede it and make up the space. They are, in effect, the very fabric of the space itself. against civil rights work that strives to combat these stereotypical images. But to make matters worse, Logan presented this to students without providing proper historical and social context beforehand, making the writing even more dangerous.

Logan assigned this text to his class without a word of advice about examining the text through a historical lens or even a preface that the text may be difficult to read for some students. Instead, he offered this reading — with its racist, sexist and generalized statements — to a class of 30 or so students whom he could not guarantee would look at it within the necessary historical and systematic framework.

Because professors are given the role of educating and being an authority, they hold power in the classroom. With that power, it is their responsibility to combat systematic discrimination inside their classrooms before hateful ideas in the texts they may assign have the opportunity to take hold inside the minds of their students. By not prefacing this reading, Professor Logan — because of his position of power as a professor — legitimized this text and gave a platform for students that may harbor sexist or racist thoughts (knowingly or subconsciously) to have these hateful ideas reaffirmed not just by the reading but also by his passive participation in systematic racism and sexism.

I raised this issue with Logan twice when the class next met. The first time, Logan dodged my direct critique of him and analyzed the text instead. The second time I questioned his decision not to preface the material, I was told that I was “entitled to my opinion.” Feeling that Logan had effectively written off my argument of systemic racism and sexism as an insignificant opinion, I left class immediately

do you deal with that deficit of credibility as you navigate the white space? One of the ways you deal with it is by working to disabuse people of the idea that the ghetto stereotypes do not apply to me. You wear a tie, you clean your fingernails, put on deodorant.” This comment, along with many others — like one where he insinuated that “decent white folks” marry black people — made for a difficult and hostile class environment. But beyond these racist comments, I questioned Anderson on his writing and practices and their validity as legitimate representation of ethnographic research.

His response was that he joined a “black social club,” a “quasi secret society” as he called it, that gathered once a month, a time frame that, to me, seems insufficient for the generalized comments he makes on middle-class black families in predominantly white environments. He said this is where he focused his ethnographic research for “The White Space.”

In the chapter “Sex Codes” from Anderson’s “Streetwise” I was taken aback by this statement: “Sexual relations, exploitative and otherwise, are common among middleclass teenagers as well, but most middle-class youths take a stronger interest in their future and know what a pregnancy can do to derail it.” When I pressed Professor Anderson on this quote, he said that middle-class families had “a lot more to lose,” a statement completely discrediting the relative realities that the two groups have and, in doing so, prioritizing the middle class youths’ lives over those of innercity youths. While this comment could have been interpreted as the monetary, opportunity or physical loss of possessions middle-class youths could experience from a pregnancy, its ambiguity leaves space for — and almost di-

rectly implies — an interpretation that plays into racist perpetuation. After trying to respond to this statement I was cut off by Professor Logan to watch a video clip. This ended my and Professor Anderson’s conversation.

My interactions with both Professors Logan and Anderson shed light on just how crucial it is for people in positions of authority — especially those who work to educate others — to be informed and conscious of the history and reality of the world around them and how the two can affect everything they say and teach in their classrooms. Instilling ideas of hate and discrimination is never positive. Preventing these ideas before they have the opportunity to take shape in the minds of students is a battle that must be fought in every classroom. This, again, brings up the necessity for classrooms to be spaces inclusive of all the experiences and histories that define the inhabitants of the classroom.

To end my critique by only addressing these individual professors would be naive and, in fact, incomplete. Their behavior and demonstrated lack of understanding of crucial concepts calls attention to not just them, but their own institutions of learning. Both men are highly regarded in the sociological field, which deals intimately with the investigation and eventual education around blackness.

Sadly, both educators seem to have a very basic misunderstanding of the workings of systematic racism — an idea that both should, without a shadow of a doubt, understand, especially considering their urban-centered research.

When examining institutions of higher education, we must ask the question: How it can be that schools award tenure to professors who teach material so crucial to the racial discussion, yet show such low-level understandings of the very mechanisms that drive their field?

To phrase this question differently and put it in the broader context of the classroom: How have these professors’ outmoded conceptions of the classroom and refusal to expand their understandings of the space they have been given been supported and upheld by the school systems they work within? While both Professor Logan’s and Professor Anderson’s actions must be criticized, they are evidence of the larger, more systemic misunderstanding of the classroom within the higher education system itself. Some may argue that bringing issues of race and sexuality into the classroom is an activism not suited for the space. But I say that it is impossible to interpret the space without such understandings. Race and sexuality do not enter the classroom with these conversations but rather precede it and make up the space. They are, in effect, the very fabric of the space itself. Until these systemic problems are recognized as the base of conversation and essential building blocks of the classroom, no learning space will be truly open, inclusive and conducive to higher education for the people it stands to serve.

Kyle Tildon ’19 can be reached at kyle_tildon@brown.edu.

COMMENTARY MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016 • PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Respect in the search for diversity and inclusion JOHN LOGAN

op-ed contributor Kyle Tildon ’19 titles his column “On the classroom.” Most readers will quickly see that the subtext is more like “Racism and sexism surface again at Brown.” This is a hot topic. It’s likely to draw your attention.

I haven’t seen the column so let me begin with an apology in case I guess wrong about its contents. That’s relevant because I am writing about respect. To “show respect” means approaching others as whole people with complicated backgrounds, affording them some degree of trust, putting their words and actions in the larger context of who they are, caring about their wellbeing. It’s at the heart of an inclusive community. Too often we treat others on the basis of simple categories, what antiracist scholars refer to as binaries. Their reference is to binaries of racialization (“because you are black, that’s all I need to know about you”). It is a challenge to get beyond binary thinking, especially in today’s American society where people are so polarized and the media celebrates the most radical oppositions. I saw this before in the 1960s when I was a student. I remember when police were called pigs.

I remember when many sociologists considered Daniel Patrick Moynihan racist because he wrote that black poverty would be hard to overcome if most black women were single mothers. People were routinely reduced to a single category, and the protest movements that I identified with were quite sure of being right.

With this background I would like to address some short messages.

To readers: Tildon writes about my class. If you want to have a basis for judgment, I suggest asking the students who are enrolled in it or reading the syllabus. Tildon also writes about Elijah Anderson and his writing in “Streetwise” and “The White Space.” (You can download the chapter, the essay and my syllabus: https://brownbox.brown.edu/download. php?hash=bd9a04fb.) Professor Anderson was born in the 1940s on a plantation. His family was part of the Great Migration, and his father became a factory worker while his mother did laundry. He is now a prominent black intellectual, professor of sociology and African-American studies at Yale University and one of the world’s leading urban ethnographers. In 2013 he received the Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award from the American Sociological Association.

This is a very specific honor for work in the traditions of three African-American scholars.

The award citation states that “few can boast of studying race in urban America as carefully, thoroughly and sensitively” or “of honoring the humanity or what DuBois called the ‘soul beauty’ of black Americans.” This is the person whose work Tildon has judged to be deficient.

Professor Anderson’s curriculum vitae doesn’t place him above critique. I stress to

students that the class readings are chosen to identify questions and points of view about how to approach them and often do not give definitive answers. Professor Anderson’s latest book (similar to “The White Space”) describes the travails of operating in a white world but emphasizes the existence of settings that are safer, mixed spaces (what he calls the cosmopolitan canopy). In a book review, I said he had a too optimistic view of the cosmopolitan canopy. Later I realized I misunderstood his intent — he described the city not as it is, but as it could be. The safe space for civil interaction is an aspirational concept.

“Streetwise” presents a vivid ethnographic account of a poor, inner-city neighborhood.

illustrated the nature of his fieldwork with the video to show how people interacted with him and what kinds of things they said. He took many questions from students. He didn’t flinch when Tildon told him the work is racist, and he engaged Tildon at length in a thoughtful back and forth.

I encourage you to read the material and watch the video. Let me know if you’d like to talk about it.

To Tildon: I am glad you felt enabled to express yourself in class. I regret that you feel I was dismissive of your thoughts. As you know, I encouraged class discussion of your initial comment that “Streetwise” is racist and sexist.

The conversation continued after you left the

To “show respect” means approaching others as whole people with complicated backgrounds, affording them some degree of trust, putting their words and actions in the larger context of who they are, caring about their wellbeing. It’s at the heart of an inclusive community.

Our class discussion began with an overview presentation by a student. I posed this question to her: Does the chapter interpret the behavior of women in the neighborhood (many of them teen mothers) in terms of having the wrong values? She responded clearly, and I think correctly, that their values were very conventional (to have a loved husband and family) but that there were few pathways to achieving those goals. This is, in fact, the general approach taken by many urban sociologists — the “problems” of the inner city are not due to a failure of the norms and values of residents but rather to the constraints of a highly unequal society.

If one reads the chapter thoughtfully, it emerges that Anderson interprets his observations in terms of structural racism. This is an explicitly anti-racist position.

When I invited Professor Anderson at the last minute to visit, he asked that I share “The White Space” and arrange to show a short video about his ethnographic fieldwork in “Streetwise” (http://youtu.be/BZHnZdx25BQ). In class, he talked at length about how difficult it is for a black man to navigate in the white space, how he is expected to “do the dance,” how at any moment his apparent acceptance could be revoked. This is when he referred to how “you wear a tie, you clean your fingernails, put on deodorant.”

He talked at length about what it means to do ethnography. He stressed that everyone has a frame of reference. No matter how carefully a researcher analyzes his data, no matter how many years he stays in the field, he always has to be concerned about how his own frame of reference affects his interpretation. He also pointed out that when people from another frame of reference read his work they may use it as a way to reaffirm their own prejudices. He

classroom, and we went over the chapter in detail. I’m sorry you missed it. As you also know, I offered more encouragement for participation in an email to the class. I wrote, “A good thing happened in class today. A student felt able to express a strong challenge to the point of view of Eli Anderson in his chapter, and we had some thoughtful discussion of how Anderson and Sanchez-Jankowski interpret the culture and behaviors that they describe.” You should not feel that you are not being heard just because I don’t agree with you. We all listened.

You also know that I invited you to talk in person. You brought your faculty adviser with you, and we spent nearly an hour going over the issues. Again you were heard. Before that, I had already decided to devote the whole next class to this and to invite Professor Anderson in person. I rearranged the class schedule to address your issues. Is that less than the dynamic space that you wish for, where students shape the course?

You used the terms “racist” and “sexist” to refer to the possibility that Professor Anderson’s findings could be over-generalized and misapplied to diminish the people whose neighborhood he studied. You didn’t have to use these loaded words. The same ideas can be expressed without calling someone out as racist and sexist, and I think you showed bad judgment in using that language in your op-ed.

It was bad judgment to tape record a person who was our guest in the classroom, to search out phrases or sentences from the recording and report them out of context to make him look foolish. You gave too much weight to your sense of having been offended and not enough to the damage and pain your published words could cause this man. You have written pri-

vately to assure me that you mean “no personal disrespect in the slightest.” This is not good enough, even if you are a serious, thoughtful, well-intentioned person. Your approach to these decisions is binary in the sense that I defined above. It does not show respect to Professor Anderson; it treats him as “other.”

To the editors: Your rush to publish Kyle’s column was poorly considered. I was shocked when you first wrote, mid-afternoon on Thursday, “offering an opportunity” to write a concurrent (not a responsive) column that had to be received by 10 p.m. the same day. I was then surprised when you took the position that the statements in Kyle’s column are true and verified facts, and that you have no responsibility for his interpretation of the facts. Incomplete facts are not facts. Quotes taken out of context are not facts, even if they are exactly right, word for word. And as journal editors you absolutely have to take responsibility for what columns you choose to publish. Not every person is given this same scarce space. My impression is that you decided to lead with the opinion page rather than to work on the news pages. Why make that choice?

You had to know that publishing a charge of racism and sexism against a prominent African American would be noticed and have consequences for his standing. How will Brown succeed in recruiting distinguished faculty members from underrepresented groups if we have the reputation of attacking them when some students don’t like what they write? You now have heard from two other faculty who have first-hand knowledge. One perceives that Professor Anderson’s presentation “provided a space for individuals in the room during that period for open engagement and discussion of the scholarship being presented. Individual students provided different perspectives that were responded to and thoughtfully considered and addressed by Professor Anderson.”

Another, who has discussed the materials with Tildon at length, states he “did not agree with the assertion that either of them were being racist or sexist.” When you have information from multiple sources that a proposed op-ed is misleading or biased, you’re not doing your job if you simply publish it. If you believe that the complaints are worth looking into, then by all means look into them and do your own original reporting. I don’t seek to protect anyone from scrutiny. But by taking the easier path, you did not show respect to our guest.

To myself: John, you know that the University is not separate from society, and whatever currents are circulating outside are sometimes magnified inside the ivory tower. Yes, I understand the goal of a diverse and inclusive community in which each individual’s humanity and dignity are acknowledged and accorded the full respect of the entire University community. But don’t be surprised at how hard it is to make mutual respect the guiding norm for behavior.

John Logan, professor of sociology, can be reached at john_logan@brown.edu.

SPORTS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2016

SOFTBALL

Bears explode with 20-run effort to cap off 4-1 weekend

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

Yeram Park ’18 puts the ball in play. The sophomore launched a three-run homer against Wagner over the weekend, providing her team’s only runs in a 3-2 victory. The win was part of a promising 4-1 start for the Bears.

Schoenewald ’17, Park ’18 lead hitters while Orona ’18, Nakashima ’17 each pitch two complete games

By JAMES SCHAPIRO STAFF WRITER

Last year, after five games, the softball team was 2-3 and had already allowed 28 runs. But this year already feels different, said co-captain Julia Schoenewald ’17.

“This year, we’ve got a great team chemistry, and we have this fire,” she said.

“We want to win, and we’re not going to

settle for anything less.”

The Bears (4-1) entered their first contests of the season at the Winthrop Invitational in Rock Hill, South Carolina, looking to start the season off on the right note. With Katie Orona ’18 — who led the Bears in ERA last season — on the mound against Canisius (2-10), the Bears quickly took control of their opener. Orona did not allow a hit until

the fifth inning, and the Bears cruised to a 5-1 victory.

Bruno then lost to tournament host Winthrop (7-7) but quickly regained its strong form. The team defeated Appalachian State (2-13) 4-1 on another complete game from Orona, then beat Wagner (2-2) 3-2 on a complete game from Leah Nakashima ’17. A three-run home run from Yeram Park ’18 in the sixth inning powered the Bears’ offense.

Closing out the weekend, the Bears defeated Rider (0-5) 20-2, as the mercy rule

ended the game after five innings.

“We had a really great first weekend,” Schoenewald said. “All the bats were pretty hot, and it’s only our first weekend out, so we can all get better.”

For her part, Schoenewald has already proven herself a key contributor.

After batting .186 last year, she was 7-12 with three doubles and a home run in the Bears’ first four games, good for a 1.250 slugging percentage.

“I’m just trying to be confident at the plate,” she said. “I’ve got my teammates behind me, and I’ve been working really hard.”

But the bulk of the Bears’ offensive success over the weekend came from three other players. Co-captain Janet Leung ’16 batted .333 to open the season, while Park went 6-11 with a double and two home runs, driving in six. Outfielder Ashli Lotz ’19 also contributed, batting .563 and stealing three bases.

“The whole lineup was hitting,” Schoenewald said. “Pinch-hitters came in and got some big hits. Everyone was really contributing.”

Meanwhile, a few sources of offense for the Bears in past years have not yet hit their stride. Both Lauren Hanna ’17, who batted .306 last year, and infielder Christina Andrews ’17, who missed most of last season due to injury but batted .288 in 2014, had just one hit in the team’s opening games. If the two can find their offensive rhythms while the rest of the lineup continues to hit, the Bears will be a formidable opponent.

“We have so many strong players on this team, you never really know from one day to the next who’s going to be

on,” Schoenewald said. “We have enough depth this year that everyone can really contribute to the offense. That’s something we haven’t had before.”

Bruno’s pitching staff is also off to a promising start. Behind Orona, who is quickly becoming the team’s ace, the Bears have the depth to compete no matter who takes the mound, Schoenewald said.

The Bears are off until Friday, when they travel to North Carolina for the annual Spartan Classic tournament at UNC Greensboro for five games in three days.

The road ahead is grueling: The squad will play 24 consecutive games on the road before its first home game April 9 against Cornell, and 18 of the games will be played in March.

But after their hot start, the Bears are prepared to take on the season ahead.

“With each game, our team focuses on having quality at-bats on offense and always working hard to get on base and score runs,” Leung wrote in an email to the Herald. “On the defensive side of things, we focus on being aggressive and playing good defense behind our pitcher.

In the end our goal is to be in that final playoff game and win the Ivy League Championship.”

But the team is not yet preoccupied with its upcoming schedule and plans to take the season one game at a time, starting next weekend against Rutgers.

“It was a great way to start our season, being able to play outside in the warm weather,” Leung wrote. “With that being said, there are still things we will take back to Brown and work on and improve for the upcoming weekend.”

W. BASKETBALL

Rebounding margin proves damaging in pair of Ivy losses Alexander ’16 finishes weekend at 990 career points after disappointing weekend on the road

By DANIEL WAYLAND CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The women’s basketball team lost two hard-fought games on the road against Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend, extending its Ivy League losing streak to six games.

Bruno (13-13, 1-11 Ivy) opened the weekend at Dartmouth (12-16, 7-5) Friday, losing a 60-56 game that came down to the wire. Dartmouth came out of the gate strong, grabbing a 34-21 lead at halftime.

“We didn’t come out with the best start,” said guard Shayna Mehta ’19. “We were outrebounded, which is something we’ve been struggling with all season, and that kind of killed us.”

Indeed, Dartmouth controlled the glass for much of the game, outrebounding Brown 36 to 29.

After falling behind 39-21 with 6:19 left in the third quarter, Brown mounted a comeback, going on a 13-3 run sparked by a three-pointer from Mehta, who had nine points in the game.

Guard and captain Jordin Alexander ’16 led Bruno’s rally, netting 20 points, dishing four assists and hitting a jumper with 3:00 left in the fourth quarter to cut Dartmouth’s lead to 55-54. But clutch

free-throw shooting by Dartmouth’s Amber Mixon helped the Big Green finish with a victory.

Bruno looked to bounce back from its defeat against Dartmouth, traveling to Cambridge Saturday to play the Crimson (14-11, 9-3), which was celebrating the team’s Senior Night.

For the second straight night, Brown struggled through the first three quarters, falling into a 65-53 deficit to begin the fourth quarter. Bruno failed to contain Harvard’s three-point shooting, as the Crimson shot a lethal 13-for-28 from beyond the arc.

Poor defensive scheming may have been the root cause of Harvard’s success from three-point territory: “We waited too long to switch from a 2-3 zone to man defense,” said guard Rebecca Musgrove ’17. “We were still in a 2-3 zone in the third quarter, which became a problem.”

Defense was a problem after halftime, as Harvard extended its lead in the third quarter by knocking down a deadly 62.5 percent of its shots from the field, including five threes. But Bruno may just have caught Harvard on the wrong night, as the Crimson rode the energy of a raucous Senior Night crowd. Harvard senior Shilpa Tummala scored 24 points on 7-for-12 shooting while collecting 12 rebounds.

“She must have been hyped for her senior night, making six threes,” Mehta said.

“We had hands in her face, and she was still making contested threes and having a great shooting night. It was a tough game playing away from home, … a crazy

ALEX WAINGER / HERALD

Jordin Alexander ’16 dribbles down the court away from a Harvard defender. Her fourth quarter scoring outburst brought her closer to 1,000 career points, but it was not enough to bring Bruno to a victory over the Crimson. atmosphere and tough to guard them when they kept hitting difficult shots.”

Much like the night before, Bruno mounted a late comeback, trimming Harvard’s lead to 69-65 with 5:35 left in the fourth quarter. Harvard pulled away in the final minutes, and Brown never cut the lead to any less than eight points the rest of the way.

Rebounding was once again an issue for Bruno as Harvard dominated the

interior, outrebounding the Bears 48-30.

Mehta added 13 points and four rebounds for Bruno, while guard Megan Reilly ’18 and forward Janie White ’18 came off the bench to contribute a combined 19 points on 7-for-12 shooting.

For the second straight night, Alexander was Bruno’s star, leading the team’s fourth quarter charge while stuffing the stat sheet: She scored 21 points on 8-for13 shooting, while adding four rebounds,

four assists and three steals. Alexander’s scoring outburst brought her to 990 career points, and, as a 14.4-point-per-game scorer this season, she has an excellent shot to eclipse the 1,000-point threshold Friday at home against Columbia.

Bruno, now 1-11 in Ivy League play, looks to finish the season strong in its final weekend of competition with games against Columbia Friday and Cornell Saturday.