Tuesday, March 08, 2016

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

VOLUME CLI, ISSUE 27

WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

Two-step verification bolsters cyber protection Two small steps for students, one giant leap for internet safety with new security protocol

By RACHEL GOLD SENIOR STAFF WRITER

CHRISTINE KIM / HERALD

Students for Justice in Palestine demanded that the University remove Sabra Hummus from its eateries because of Sabra’s involvement with the Israel Defense Forces. The University recently added Cedar’s Hummus to shelves.

Hummus options added after SJP protest In response to Students for Justice in Palestine petition against Sabra, U. adds Cedar’s Hummus

By ELI BINDER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

In response to requests from Students for Justice in Palestine to boycott Sabra Hummus, Dining Services has recently

begun offering Cedar’s Hummus in University eateries.

Sabra is an American company partially owned by the Israeli Strauss Group, which has been a target of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement over its ties to the Israel Defense Forces. The group has contributed food and care packages to the IDF’s Golani and Givati Brigades, several sources said.

These brigades have “been accused

many times in the past of human rights violations,” said Peter Makhlouf ’16, speaking on behalf of Students for Justice in Palestine. The brigades “have carried out several massacres throughout the West Bank and Gaza.”

SJP “didn’t want to be purchasing a product that supported those human rights violations, so we pushed for a boycott and an alternative,” Makhlouf said. » See SJP, page 2

Logging into Banner just got a little bit harder. As of last week, all students, with the exception of those studying abroad, have been enrolled in the new two-step verification system that adds an additional layer of security to the Brown network, said Ravi Pendse, vice president for computing and information services and chief information officer.

Two-step verification systems require users not only to enter their username and password to access University resources but also to validate the login by responding to a notification on a smartphone, answering a call on a cell phone or entering a code.

“It combines what you know — your password — with what you have — like your smartphone — and is the best way to keep all of us safe online,” Pendse said. Users can authorize their web browsers for 30 days so they only have to provide the second element once a month, he added.

The added step between the user

and the network could be the difference between an account being phished or kept in the hands of its owner, Pendse said.

A phishing attack directs users to a page where they enter login credentials. Users think they are accessing the University’s network, but they are instead providing information to the hacker, said John Spadaro, deputy chief information officer.

“The moment somebody gets hold of your password, it’s game over. Then, there is nothing the computer can do to distinguish between me and a malicious student masquerading as me,” said Shriram Krishnamurthi, professor of computer science.

Once armed with functional credentials, hackers have access to all the information stored in the Brown network, including grades in Banner, data in Canvas and — in the case of University employees — the payroll system in Workday. In one known instance, an employee’s payroll account was redirected in June or July, the months during which employees are notified of pay raises, Pendse said.

More than 400 individuals have fallen victim to phishing attacks since September. Not only are the attacks increasing in frequency, but they are also becoming more sophisticated, » See BANNER, page 2

BuDS cooking workshop Disgust still limits same-sex equality in India Nussbaum lecture aids students off meal plan Martha cites philosophy of disgust Assistant Chef Aaron Fitzsenry teaches students art of homemade pesto, science behind cooking

By MADISON RIVLIN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

A peppery, full-bodied aroma of fresh basil filled the air as Assistant Chef for Brown Dining Services Aaron Fitzsenry welcomed students to the pesto pasta cooking class in the Ivy Room Sunday.

In front of the students lay 12 promising piles of flour on a cooking work table. Friendly to all levels of experience, Fitzsenry’s pesto pasta workshop coached students on basic recipes for three different kinds of pesto (basil, spinach and basil and arugula) and techniques for making pasta from scratch.

Students began by kneading

ARTS & CULTURE

INSIDE

together flour and eggs to make fresh pasta dough. They then experimented with the pesto ingredients, creating their own sauce to garnish their handmade farfalle, pappardelle or ricotta ravioli.

Throughout the workshop, Fitzsenry offered fun facts about cooking. He also detailed the science behind kneading dough and explained the essentials of Italian cooking, emphasizing that “a few simple basics and good ingredients will get you great results.”

Students were receptive to Fitzsenry’s teachings and enjoyed the class as a resource to help with the off-mealplan program. “Knowing that you could make a meal like that over the course of just an hour is especially helpful because I’m off meal plan,” Pranav Sharma ’17 said, adding that he will attend another workshop because he “can’t turn down a chance to learn and eat at the same time.”

Prior to working for Dining Services, Fitzsenry was head chef at the Vanderbilt » See BUDS, page 2

as cause of global legal, cultural discrimination

By JULIANNE CENTER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, delivered a lecture titled “Disgust or Equality? The Struggle over Sexual Orientation Law Outside the U.S.” Monday to a crowd of nearly 100 people in the Salomon Center. The event, sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, fostered a discussion about the changing “landscape of same-sex law around the world” through the lens of the philosophy of disgust.

Nussbaum opened the lecture with a quote by Indian philosopher, educator and poet Rabindranath Tagore: “Come you outcast. Dispelled be the burden of all insults.”

She analyzed the role of disgust as the driving force in opposition to samesex equality in the United States and

JULIANNE CENTER / HERALD

Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, explained the significance of disgust as an obstacle to legal equality.

India. Despite the “surface absence of disgust” from recent debates regarding homosexuality in the United States,

Nussbaum said that, similar to racial segregation, the denial of rights to » See DISGUST, page 4

WEATHER

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

NEWS Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital find epilepsy corelated with cognitive performance

NEWS Dining Services undergoes review regarding allergy-friendly practices in campus eateries

COMMENTARY O’Shea ’19: Ivy League athletes demonstrate intellectual, physical grit in competition

COMMENTARY Malik ’18: Federal government shouldn’t limit humanities funding at universities

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NEWS

PAGE 2 • TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

» SJP, from page 1 In November, SJP began to circulate a petition calling for Dining Services to boycott Sabra products. The petition received 225 signatures in about three months.

“The concept of choice is important to the team at Brown Dining,” wrote Emily MacCoy, the marketing and communications specialist for Dining Services in an email to The Herald. “In this spirit and in response to the concerns of these students, a second hummus option was added so the Brown community would have the opportunity to make their own decisions on which to purchase,” she wrote.

In December 2014, Wesleyan also began stocking Cedar’s alongside

» BANNER, from page 1 Spadaro said. “Some of them are amazingly good. We ourselves look at them and ask whether they’re phish or real.”

CIS takes advantage of in-house talent in the Department of Computer Science as it searches for the most effective way to prevent phishing, Krishnamurthi said.

“They are curious about new technologies but are conservative about

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Sabra.

Daniel Youkilis ’19, a member of Brown Students for Israel and J Street U Brown, said that he personally feels that adding another hummus option was not a big deal.

“But I think that bowing to the pressure of an economic boycott isn’t a good precedent to set,” he said, adding that boycotting Sabra products only serves to “demonize Israel.”

“It is very easy to trivialize a hummus boycott,” but the Dining Services movement is “the single strategy for Palestinian rights from our perspective as students,” Makhlouf said.

Youkilis took issue with a flyer circulated by SJP encouraging a student boycott of Sabra that stated hummus is appropriated by Israel. He said that

this claim was “factually wrong,” because Israel is home to nearly three million Mizrahi Jews — Jews with Middle Eastern heritage. Because their “ancestors have been eating hummus, (and) they have been eating hummus for their whole lives,” Israel is not appropriating the food, he said, adding that SJP should not “erase the existence of Mizrahi Jews.”

Makhlouf agreed that hummus is a part of Mizrahi Jewish culture but noted that while Mizrahi foods are celebrated as part of Israeli culture, Mizrahi Jews are “virulently discriminated against” in Israel.

“The appropriation of various Arab foods, whether those Arabs be Muslim, Christian or Jewish, is part of a colonial project,” Makhlouf added.

adopting them because they have to make sure everything runs all the time,” he said. “This is the right way to do it because your campus access should not be driven by my research prototypes.”

“CIS is made up of a lot of experts and very talented people doing a lot of stuff you don’t know exists,” Spadaro said.

But as Pendse sees it, the cybersecurity team must include the entire

campus. The only way to eliminate phishing as a threat is to ensure students do not fall victim to it, but the two-step verification system promises to be an effective safety net, Pendse said.

“It is going to be a great system until someone figures out how to get around it,” Spadaro said. “And they will. I don’t know what the next exploit is going to be, but we have to react to the exploits as they come up.”

Letters, please! letters@browndailyherald.com

MADISON RIVLIN / HERALD

Students watch as Dining Services Assistant Chef Aaron Fitzsenry demonstrates how to prepare three kinds of pesto pasta in the Ivy Room.

» BUDS, from page 1 Grace in Newport, R.I. where he honed many of the skills and techniques he has brought to Brown. Fitzsenry was initially drawn to the University for its location in Providence but was later impressed with the community itself: “Hanging with people that are smart and motivated keeps you motivated,” he said. “When you work in a kitchen and feed strangers, you never know what they think. Here, they tell you.”

A fairly recent addition to the Brown University Dining Services program, Fitzsenry’s cooking classes, hosted in the Ivy Room since spring 2014, are a product of staff and student collaboration.

As a freshman, Taylor Viggiano ’17 was interested in bringing new culinary programs to campus, she said. She developed a student body survey regarding meal plan options.

Viggiano said she was disappointed by the limited resources offered to students adjusting to life at Brown without a meal plan. “I thought (the workshops) would be a great resource for kids going

off meal plan to help them learn to cook for themselves.”

From this desire to aid students in their transition to procuring meals off campus, Viggiano began to work with Fitzsenry in developing monthly classes that interest the student body and incorporate recipes for easy, homemade dishes.

“I had done other cooking demos in the past, but it all started when Taylor first came to us with ideas about how to improve the dining program,” Fitzsenry said.

Fitzsenry recognizes that, given the academic rigor of Brown, students have limited time to spend cooking a balanced meal. “I can only imagine what it must be like to say, ‘Now I have to cook for myself.’ So I want to show them that there are some nice things to cook that aren’t too hard.”

The classes also are an opportunity for students to let off steam and relax for a minute, Fitzsenry said. “Working with your hands is such a nice break from studying. People are always so happy when they come.”

NEWS

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Researchers find link between cognitive impairment, epilepsy New study shows epilepsy correlated with information recall, raises further questions about effective treatment

By KATHERINE LUO CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Researchers from Rhode Island Hospital have found a link between cognitive impairment and epilepsy, according to a study published in the journal Epilepsy and Behavior this month.

While epilepsy itself is not always neurodegenerative, the study revealed that those with epilepsy exhibit “much higher clinical cognitive impairment,” said Lindsay Miller, postdoctoral fellow in neuropsychology at Rhode Island Hospital.

The study involved epileptic patients 55 or older and a control group of healthy adults with no cognitive impairments. Patients were tested on their ability to learn and retain information over time.

Scientists conducted a variety of experiments to evaluate each patient’s memory. “One test was for verbal information, looking at how well they remembered word lists or a story they might be hearing,” said Jennifer Davis, an author of the study and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Alpert Medical School and neuropsychologist at Rhode Island Hospital. “The other type is looking at pictures. We would give them a series of geometric shapes that could not be easily named,” she added.

“We found that the group with epilepsy had worse cognitive performance across all different domains we tested,”

Davis said.

While the study sheds new light on some of the disease’s effects, there are still many questions to be answered about whether epileptic episodes can be predicted and how epilepsy can be treated.

Compared to other neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, epilepsy’s symptoms are far more varied, making universal treatment difficult.

While most people associate epilepsy with regular seizures, there are many other symptoms: Patients commonly exhibit memory problems or anxiety or mood disorders.

Treatments currently available for Alzheimer’s have been tested on epilepsy patients, but they showed little success in alleviating symptoms. In the future, Davis suggests researchers focus on “screening for mood,” especially because patients often lack an outlet to discuss epilepsy’s comorbidities — the presence of more than one chronic disease in a patient — or simply “don’t think about going to a psychiatrist.”

“Fifty percent of patients with epilepsy have depression,” Davis said.

“We already know how depression and anxiety affect the brain, so how do both of these diseases come together to affect thinking even more?” she asked.

Miller also expressed concern about the lack of focus on epilepsy’s comorbidities. “Things like depression and anxiety are common in epilepsy,

but no one has looked at the impact on cognition,” Miller said.

Today, there are a variety of treatments for those with epilepsy, but they do not address the side effects with which patients are most concerned.

Patients “rely mainly on medications and” anti-epileptic drugs to alleviate seizures, said Andrew Blum, medical director of the comprehensive epilepsy program at Rhode Island Hospital.

“But in epilepsy, cognitive changes and memory problems are the most common complaints from patients,” Blum said. “It can be the biggest problem they face.”

The research completed by Miller,

Davis and Blum has the potential to address these concerns and acknowledge the role anxiety and depression play in the patients’ test results. As they look toward the future, the scientists hope to further develop their research in order to address many patients’ concerns about the progression of cognitive impairment.

“We’re looking to develop interventions for patients and their families to cope with seizures,” Davis said. This new focus could provide many patients with the kind of support they need, she added.

Additionally, Blum and Miller hope to further study how epilepsy

develops over time. While the team will need to find funding for further research, its members are not worried about finding a wide body of participants for their experiments. Recruiting patients for the most recent study was easy, Blum said. “The fact that people really wanted to participate reflected that they were interested and worried about the problem,” he added.

With a greater sample size and more time, Miller, Davis and Blum’s research has the potential to not only shed more light on the markers and treatment of epilepsy, but ultimately improve the lives of their patients and their families.

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NEWS

PAGE 4 • TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

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Dining services undergoes external audit of allergy practices Recommendations include increased staff training, new offerings, more public information

By ROLAND HIGH STAFF WRITER

Following concerns from students with allergies, the organization Food Allergy Research and Education conducted a review Feb. 23 and 24 regarding how Brown Dining Services prepares and serves food and recommended changes to make the process more allergy-friendly.

“When I first got on campus, I had an allergic reaction before I was able to get a consultation with (Student and Employee Accessibility Services) and register with SEAS, and you’re supposed to start the process way before you get to campus,” said Teri Minogue ’18.

Because first-year students are very dependent on Dining Services, many with dietary restrictions are left vulnerable if they do not register beforehand, she said.

Students may be shocked when they realize they need SEAS accomodations. The process to receive a SEAS consultation takes a few weeks, she added. On top of that, students must face the added difficulties of navigating their allergies within campus eateries.

“The way the dining halls are set up is self-serve, which is the most dangerous way for students with food allergies,” Minogue said.

Currently, Andrews Dining Commons is the only nut-free dining hall. At other University facilities, allergens exist openly: Chickpeas are placed next to the lettuce and other toppings at the salad bar, risking cross-contamination. Peanut butter sits out in the open at the Verney Wooley Dining Hall next to other condiments.

Minogue said she felt the

» DISGUST, from page 1 LGBTQ individuals is based on irrational aversion and stigmatization.

Nussbaum introduced Paul Rozin’s theory that all human beings share an acute discomfort when confronted by their own bodily fluids and decay. The discomfort with the animalistic nature of humanity is the cause of primary disgust, a form of rejection of our own “animality,” Nussbaum said.

People project their own disgust upon others by creating subgroups that act as embodiments of the animalistic qualities they find uncomfortable, she added.

This pattern can be seen throughout

University was not doing enough to guide students with allergies, and after speaking to others with similar dietary restrictions, she found that she was not alone.

Minogue called Kristi Grim, the college outreach manager for FARE, and she agreed to audit the University through the organization’s new College Food Allergy Program despite the fact that Brown does not number among the 12 universities chosen to pilot the initiative. The program, which aims to recommend and provide funding for improvements on campuses, was launched in 2014 and is still in development.

Jessie Curran, the dietician for BuDS, said she has been working closely with FARE “to further our support of students managing allergens on campus” and make allergen information available for all dining halls.

FARE covered the costs of Brown’s audit and training for BuDS staff members, Minogue said.

The organization has only just started the process of making changes at Brown, which may include hanging up posters in the kitchen to remind staffers about the risk of cross-contamination while cooking and expanding the food choices available, Grim said.

Grim suggested more training will be necessary for employees in retail areas like Andrews and the Blue Room. “We’ll need to come up with some of those step-by-step processes that will allow a student with a food allergy to confidently order food.”

She also said that FARE would consider taking steps “to communicate to students their responsibilities and what they need to do to keep themselves safe on campus.”

Curran also recently started a listserv for students with food allergies to reach out to each other and share their experiences and resources.

Minogue also sees a need for expanding the variety of options

available through the allergy-friendly pantry, accessible by key in the Sharpe Refectory, and the preordering system, which students with medically necessary diets may use to order safe meals from dining halls around campus in advance.

“The biggest challenge I see is really in adding more food options for students with food allergies or celiac disease,” Grim said. “Of course, safety has to be the number one priority, but students also want to have access to a larger variety of tasty foods, and they may not always be able to plan their meal schedule out in advance.”

In order to get there, Grim said, “ingredient information needs to be accessible to students for more dining locations.” Currently, students may view ingredients and nutritional content for food served at the Ratty or the VDub with the My Meal application, available for smart phones, Curran said.

In February, Dining Services invited 30 students with dietary restrictions for a taste test of the products in the allergy-friendly pantry. “Through their feedback, we will be rolling out a new rotation of allergy-friendly products in the next few weeks,” she said.

history, informing the stereotypes forced on Jews during the Holocaust, African-Americans in the United States and the “untouchable caste” in India, Nussbaum said. Groups marginalized by “projective disgust” are stereotyped as being “smelly” and “hypersexual,” she said. This disgust is particularly evident in the treatment and stigmatization of LGBTQ individuals in India.

“Today’s India has forgotten the joyful method of inclusion” because of the puritan ideals of chastity and purity brought with British colonization, Nussbaum said. To show how the current Indian government has been shaped by British disgust, Nussbaum described Hinduism as the religion

that “most unequivocally celebrates the body and its pleasures” — especially sexuality.

As an example, Nussbaum introduced the Hijra caste, a group of individuals who do not identify as either male or female and their transition from a revered position in society to one of marginalization. By introducing to Indian society the concept that homosexuality was “against the order of nature,” colonization altered the fundamental cultural inclusivity of India, Nussbaum said.

During the question-and-answer session, Kirun Sankaran GS asked what “institutional structures there are to abate the actions of the new disgust

KATE TALERICO / HERALD

Teri Minogue ’18 has several food allergies, including chickpeas. She must avoid cross-contamination from the exposed chickpeas in the salad line.

KATE TALERICO / HERALD

Teri Minogue ’18 pulls out her iPhone to check the My Meal application before grabbing lunch. The app displays nutrition information and ingredients for food items at the Sharpe Refectory and the Verney-Woolley. politics” of the Hindu Right nationalists.

The Left should use arts, civil society and religion to “mobilize decent, healthy sentiments towards people,” Nussbaum said. Another solution is relying on Bollywood to confront issues of discrimination, she said, noting the success of the media in promoting the acceptance of LGBTQ people in the United States.

Despite the rampant disgust in laws and social practices, there is a “gleam of light,” Nussbaum said. In 2013, the Indian supreme court issued a ruling supporting discrimination against LGBTQ people, precipitating an increase in police violence against LGBTQ

individuals, including those in the Hijra community. But a 2014 ruling established that transgender individuals should be treated under law as a third sex, entitling them to affirmative action in education and employment, Nussbaum said.

“Disgust is a powerful force in human life, and it creates tough obstacles for politics,” Nussbaum said.

As a solution, she proposed following the philosophies of Walt Whitman and Tagore — raising young people without the learned behavior of disgust and thereby preventing projective disgust.

“Disgust is never a sufficient condition to make an act illegal if it causes no harm to others,” Nussbaum said.

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TODAY

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016 • PAGE 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

menu

time for spring

SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS

Pizza: Bacon Chicken Ranch, Spinach and Feta Italian Puff Pocket, Chipotle BBQ Taco JOSIAH’S

BLUE ROOM

Quesadillas

Three Bean Chili, Chicken Kadhai, Aloo Gobhi Masala

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Spring Vegetable & Beef Stir-Fry Chicken Mole Chili Cheese Quesadilla

Roast Turkey Tuscan Pappardelle Pasta Banana Cream Pie

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

Spicy Chicken Wings Grilled Cajun Chicken Sticky Rice with Edamame Beans

Toasted Ravioli with Italian Salsa Pacific Vegetable Blend Penne with Prosciutto

sudoku

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle c r o s s w o r d Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Succotash bean 5 Make a decision 8 Within reach 14 Tree of Life garden 15 Like much sushi 16 Set of lines on personal stationery 17 *Motorist’s headache 19 DNA sample source 20 Vietnamese New Year 21 Dutch South African 22 Censor’s coverup 23 *Enjoy, with “in” 26 Counting everything 29 Part of DJIA: Abbr.

30 *Recap on a sports crawl line 34 Phi __ Kappa 38 Took wing 39 Toward the back of the boat 40 Physics class subject 41 Evergreen shrubs 42 *Kids’ introduction to a full school day 44 Religious sch.

45 Wrinkle-resistant synthetic 46 *Red-carpet movie event 53 TV studio sign 54 Either of two Henry VIII wives 55 Lacking light 58 Victimized lieutenant in “Othello” 60 “Chestnuts roasting” spot ... and a hint to a divided word found in the answers to starred clues 62 Election surprises 63 1921 robot play 64 Pennsylvania port 65 Mall directory listings 66 “What was __ do?”

67 Lemon peel

DOWN 1 It’s not right 2 Just hanging around 3 Vegan no-no 4 Wee hill builder 5 Hunter constellation 6 Peeled with a knife 7 Punk 8 Massage responses 9 Lipton packet 10 Concert auditoriums 11 Bordeaux bye 12 Not even once 13 Hang loosely, as on a clothesline 18 Govt. security 23 Character weaknesses 24 “__ Theme”: “Doctor Zhivago” song 25 Three-time Wimbledon champ Chris 26 Up in the air 27 Aswan High Dam river 28 Once again 31 Less dangerous 32 Burglary, for one

33 “The StarSpangled Banner” contraction 34 Ballerina’s rail 35 List-ending abbr.

36 __ list: chores 37 “I’m with you!”

43 “The Elements of Bridge” author Charles 44 7UP rival 46 Sharpen the image in the viewfinder

47 Ill-suited 48 Rodeo rope 49 Penny pincher 50 New Zealand native 51 Data to be entered 52 January, to José 55 Desperate 56 Commonly purple bloom 57 Swimming event 59 ’40s spy org.

61 Shriner’s hat

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

SAM BERUBE / HERALD

The sun sets over Carrie Tower as the warming trend continues to bring spring weather to Providence.

Temperatures are expected to reach 70 degrees Wednesday.

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

“There is nothing the computer can do to distinguish between me and a malicious student masquerading as

”

me.

— Shriram Krishnamurthi, professor of computer science

See banner on page 1.

xwordeditor@aol.com

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BRIGHT Pathway Global Health Lecture 12:00 P.M. Rhode Island Hospital

Transgender Health in Social Health 4:00 P.M. 121 South Main St., Room 243

Fluids Seminar: Active Magnetic Colloids 3:00 P.M. Barus and Holley 190

House of Cards Study Break 8:00 P.M. Wilson Hall 101

TOMORROW Coffee with a Cop 8:00 A.M. Main Green

Michael Blanding: “The Map Thief” 5:30 P.M. John Carter Brown Library

Global Fashion and Filipino Nationalism 4:00 P.M. Petteruti Lounge

Activism through Movement Action Plan 5:45 P.M. MacMillan Hall 117

COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

comics ENGNS Life| Nathan Amin

The Fistbump Chronicles | Bryn Brunnstrom

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COMMENTARY TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016 • PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Welcome to the Heps RONAN O’SHEA staff columnist Last weekend, in a cold, clear corner of the Empire State, a battle raged. The eight Track and Field teams of the Ivy League assembled for the 68th meeting of the Indoor Heptagonal Games. This grand tradition provided two days of agony and ecstasy to its participants and spectators, as the emotions of an entire season were compressed into a single day. For generations, the Heps has endured as a bastion of the triumph of the human spirit in the pursuit of excellence. Today, as our culture moves to place greater emphasis on the avoidance of hardship, the Heps stands as a reminder to hold restraint as no virtue, to embrace the difficulties that must be overcome for meaningful advancement.

To arrive at the Heps is to step back in time. Cornell’s Barton Hall, which today houses its indoor athletic facilities, was built in 1915, housing airplanes during World War I. This wooden and steel cage with incongruous, mossy masonry at the base evokes the age of the eight-way rivalry that has brought generations of athletes together on a cold

weekend in February. Aside from an electronic timing system and digital photography, this meet remains the same as it was 60 years ago. The commercialism that has seeped into collegiate athletics in recent years is absent. There are no lavish gifts to participants, NBC does not hold exclusive broadcasting rights, and even Nike, our sport’s omnipresent overlord, has not managed to

cal school in England, Bannister trained and competed to become the greatest miler in the world. The strict recruiting and academic standards set by the Ivy League have ensured that any athlete competing in the Ancient Eight is compliant with the academic standards of non-varsity students. Many athletes have thrived under this system, including current Brown runners who

The continuous lineage of Renaissance men and women who have competed and studied in this conference is on full display at the Heps. Well-worn varsity sweaters dot the bleachers like a woolen alphabet soup. These alums intermingle with current students to form a chorus during each race. The continuity of the Ivy League, unlike the shifting ranks of the Power Five

In the Heps, we are elite, not because of wealth or fancy campuses, but rather because of our commitment to success through strenuous effort.

slap its swoosh on anything other than some uniforms and shoes. The best way to tell whether it is 2016 or 1976 is the haircuts. The only trigger warning you will hear is “Set!” In this space one finds a pure competition: feats of strength and endurance untainted by modern excess.

The Heps maintains the tradition of the intrepid amateur that was exemplified by Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in under four minutes. While a fulltime student of neurology at medi-

have earned All-American status or spots on national teams. This weekend, Ivy Leaguers will compete at the NCAA Championships, towing the line with competitors from the nation’s most well-known athletic programs. The ideal of the student striving for greatness beyond the classroom should be applied to all extracurricular pursuits, encouraging students to take on additional responsibilities with the goal of selfbetterment, not as a hollow excuse to shun scholastic excellence.

conferences, serves to heighten the passions of this annual gathering, as the entrenched rivalries play out unpredictably year after year.

What has changed in recent years is the way our League is viewed by outsiders. There has been a great deal of commentary recently describing Ivy League students as “coddled elites,” as cowards maladjusted to the demands and conflicts of the adult world. If our institutions were to drift away from their foundations in rigorous academics

to accommodate such a deleterious shift in the student body, we would surely see a decline in the quality of education we receive and research we produce.

But this is not the League I know.

I invite all our critics to come to the Heps, to step in the cage beside a 250-pound shot putter or try to hang in the pack with our distance runners for just one lap to see what we’re really about. They will find a group of resilient explorers, searching for the limits of human performance in both mind and body.

The term “elite” is thrown around venomously by pundits to describe what they see as a generation of entitled crybabies. In the Heps, we are elite, not because of wealth or fancy campuses, but rather because of our commitment to success through strenuous effort.

The Heps defines what has made the Ivies the world’s most eminent group of universities. It is the responsibility of us all to maintain this standard in all aspects of our institution. If Brown intends to remain the pinnacle of intellectual advancement, we must hold ourselves to rigorous standards and not shy away when adversity causes discomfort.

Ronan O’Shea ’19 can be reached at ronan_oshea@brown.edu.

The gatekeepers of knowledge AMEER MALIK staff columnist As an ardent defender of the humanities who believes they should be valued and encouraged as fields of study, I am disturbed by a news article published recently in the New York Times. The piece, “A Rising Call to Promote STEM Funding and Cut Liberal Arts Education,” describes a growing trend in which state governments are funding science, technology, engineering and math programs offered by public institutions of higher education instead of humanities programs. The article explains that “high-demand” degrees in STEM fields often get preference for government funding and mentions that “several Republicans have portrayed a liberal arts education as an expendable, sometimes frivolous luxury that taxpayers should not be expected to pay for.”

State governments and Republican politicians are not the only ones calling for plans that devalue the humanities. The piece points out, “The Obama administration, for example, proposed, much to the horror of many in academia, rating the country’s 7,000 colleges and universities not only on measures like completion rates and student loan debt, but also on earnings after graduation.” This means that a school’s funding would be linked to how much money graduates earn, giving the school an incentive to promote STEM fields, which are more likely to provide degrees that lead directly to high-paying jobs.

The strong role that politicians play in determining the knowledge of the voting populace is disturbing. In order for a democracy to function well, for the people to elect politicians whom they think will represent their best interests and for voters to push for legislation that will lead to important changes, the populace has to be informed. They will not be fully informed if they are pushed to study only STEM fields.

Yes, knowledge of STEM allows someone to be informed about specific government policies. For example, strong understanding

edge. STEM programs that gain funding will be at the vanguard of their fields and will allow students to learn about the most recent breakthroughs and discoveries. Humanities programs that do not receive funding from the government might become stagnant, discouraging students from participating.

Judging schools based on their graduates’ earnings is also faulty. Many willingly pursue humanities fields because of deep passions and strong inclinations, though they know that they may not receive the same financial benefits as others who pursue fields more

The strong role that politicians have in determining the knowledge of the voting populace is disturbing.

of environmental science allows one to understand which laws would be the most effective in slowing down climate change. But the humanities are also important. Someone who understands philosophy could feel confident about the immorality of a law that allows capital punishment. A person who reads literature from around the world would be exposed to different ideas about how people should behave and what society should be like, which can guide this person’s support of certain policies. If the state and federal government insist on promoting STEM programs, they are promoting gaps in their constituents’ knowl-

closely linked to higher-paying jobs. Schools shouldn’t feel the need to push these students away from their passions out of fear that they will lose funding, and schools should not be punished when students consider the consequences of their academic pursuits and make well-informed decisions about their futures.

Yes, I understand that politicians have an interest in making sure that college and university graduates are not burdened by student loans and can obtain jobs. But if the government can influence what schools teach, it can promote ideas and suppress information to help it keep its power and to preserve harm-

ful structures in society. For example, if departments devoted to the study of languages, literatures and cultures from around the world lose funding and students, the voting population’s global perspective would erode, and many people might embrace a dangerous and insular view of U.S. exceptionalism. Such a viewpoint would allow voters in senate and presidential elections to support politicians with disastrous foreign policy platforms. Furthermore, concentrations such as ethnic studies and gender and sexuality studies are devoted to providing students with important perspectives that challenge social inequality and injustice. If these departments are diminished, there will be fewer people leaving college well-prepared to fight for a more just and equal country.

In this government that is meant to be “for the people,” leaders can impact the knowledge of the people to whom they are accountable. Though STEM involves important areas of knowledge, the humanities provide insights into morality, society, culture and justice that can challenge the status quo. Though politicians may not deliberately suppress the humanities to preserve their own power, their influence in this area is wrong. Schools should decide how they use their funding.

Members of the government should not be the gatekeepers of knowledge. They should let the democracy of this country run as it should, with an informed populace.

Ameer Malik ’18 is concentrating in literary arts and can be reached at ameer_malik@brown.edu.

ARTS & CULTURE THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2016

Father-son poetry collaboration to be published Literary work explores themes of parenthood, combines languages of art, natural sciences

By REBECCA ELLIS SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Ben Ostrowski ’17 is a psychology concentrator, music enthusiast and likely the only student at the University who has turned an email exchange with his father into a book. This time next year, Ben’s collection of poems, co-written with his father Steven Ostrowski, will hit the stands.

The seeds for the chapbook — a short collection of literary pieces — were planted this winter break when Steven, a professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, decided he wanted to start a “conversation via poem” with his son. Steven first sent Ben a poem ending with the question, “Where’s your flashlight pointed, kiddo?” Ben waited a few days and then responded. Then Steven. Then Ben. Over the course of two weeks, 18 lyrical emails were exchanged in a rapid-fire poetry dialogue.

Once the email exchange had, as Steven said, “enough energy and juice,” the father-son duo brushed it up and sent it out to publishers. In a rare occurrence for the writing world, the manuscript was accepted immediately.

“When I read it, I loved it so much,” said Gloria Mindock, an editor for

Červená Barva Press. “I didn’t want anyone to grab it.”

In many ways, Ben said, the book is a classic father-son tale. The father shows the son how to navigate a world he’s spent 50 years learning. But other portions, Ben said, represent a father and son “walking on the same path, trying to figure out questions we’re asking each other.”

To give the exchange a focus, Steven chose “Seen/Unseen” as the theme for the conversation. This would go on to become the title of the book.

“There’s a lot of words (in the book) … you might not initially associate with poetry­— a lot of anatomical terms, physical or chemistry terms …‘Seen/ Unseen’ came from that,” Ben said.

Cerebellum, synapses, cells and “summersaulting in the lungs of a star” are all themes featured heavily in the text, a manuscript of which was provided to The Herald.

Ben’s interest in neuroscience and cognitive science, coupled with a biology course he’s currently taking, spurred him to introduce these technical terms to the poetic exchange. He said this knowledge allowed him to take “poetic twists on hard science.”

Before the pair delved into poetry and science, Ben and Steven collaborated on rap and acoustic guitar, producing YouTube videos where Ben rapped while his father strummed along.

Steven said this history of working on rap and music influenced the content of “Seen/Unseen” in a “chemical”

COURTESY OF BEN OSTROWSKI

Ben Ostrowski ’17 and his father Steven Ostrowski pose in matching shirts. The father-son duo has co-written a poetry collaboration, which relies heavily on scientific language. The chapbook is set to come out next year. way.

Ben’s “hip-hop infusion that underlies his work started to affect me and loosen me up,” Steven said. “It was like a permission to be more playful.”

This change in style comes many decades after Steven’s beginnings as a poet. Every day, beginning in the seventh grade, Steven would sit in his backyard in Staten Island and write poetry inspired by the back of Bob Dylan’s album covers, he said.

Ben’s interest in the art form came

later in life. With the exception of a middle-school poetry unit, he said he had not worked much in the form until taking “Poetry I” his sophomore year.

Before the class, he had tried fiction writing, but he said his poetic tendencies made it difficult.

“I would write these short stories … and there would be no plot,” he said.

“I would just spend so long describing the girl’s hair.”

So Ben ditched plot-heavy fiction and found a new creative outlet.

“In poetry, through a collection of poems, I can focus on all these descriptions,” he said. “At the end there is a narrative. I didn’t try to write it — it just happened,” he said.

This mantra applies not only to Ben’s writing skills but also to the book, a two-week long email-exchangeturned published anthology.

But, as Ben admitted, two weeks is not exactly a fair assessment.“It had been building up for 20 years of my life,” he said.

Circle K fundraiser brings Krispy Kremes to College Hill Student community service group qualifies for charter from international parent organization

By ALEXANDRA KLAPPER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

When Connor Watts ’18 and Trang Le ’18 set out to raise money for the community service club Brown Circle K, their thoughts immediately jumped to Krispy Kreme. “Krispy Kreme is not found in this area,” Trang said. “It’s a staple in most places, but since Krispy Kreme is an hour away from campus, no one has the time or capacity to get there.”

The two devised a plan that would allow students to place Krispy Kreme orders on campus and have their donuts delivered one week later.

Watts founded Brown Circle K last spring, and the Krispy Kreme fundraiser is the club’s first big initiative.

Donut deliveries are scheduled for this weekend.

The fundraiser’s first goal — which the club has already met — was to raise the $600 necessary to receive an official charter from Circle K International, Watts said.

Circle K is a collegiate community service organization led by Kiwanis International, its adult service counterpart.

With national recognition, Brown Circle K will receive “lots of benefits that come with being an officially recognized club,” Watts said. The perks

range from the ability to vote at conventions hosted by the organization to increased access to various Circle K charities, such as UNICEF and March of Dimes.

Brown’s Circle K chapter focuses primarily on community-based service, such as volunteering in local soup kitchens and making cards for patients at the Kiwanis Pediatric Trauma Center.

To fund these initiatives, the chapter must raise money throughout the year by organizing fundraisers like the current Krispy Kreme initiative.

The club’s first crack at fundraising has already proven successful. “We got so many orders as soon as we put the Facebook event up,” Wang said.

Over 1,000 donuts have already been ordered, and the club expects more lastminute additions before the fundraiser officially ends Saturday.

“Bringing Krispy Kreme to campus was such a good idea,” said Tyler Johnson ’18. “As soon as I saw the (fundraiser’s) event on Facebook, I started reading about it.”

Watts and Le plan to put funds raised beyond the $600 goal toward the chapter’s in-house service projects.

“We’re planning to do things like make fleece blankets to donate to a local children’s hospital,” Le said.

With the momentum from the fundraiser, Brown Circle K looks to raise awareness on campus. “We’re hoping the publicity from the fundraiser will attract new members, but our biggest goal right now is to get a charter and become an official club first,” Watts said.

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Brown’s chapter of Circle K, an international community service organization, raised over $600 in its recent donut-themed drive. The drive aimed to raise money and garner the group international recognition.