Tuesday, October 18, 2016

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016

VOLUME CLI, ISSUE 87

WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

Three firstyears join Naval, Air Force ROTC

Okura ’20, Chiacchia ’20, Langlois ’20 become first U. students in programs since Vietnam War

By BELLA ROBERTS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

TIMOTHY MUELLER-HARDER / HERALD

The University currently does not guarantee on-campus housing for graduate students and has no plans to do so. A private developer plans to construct River House, an apartment geared toward graduate, medical and nursing students that will house 270 individuals in the Jewelry District.

Grad students lack on-campus housing options Applications to University-owned housing exceed available units, 100 grad students receive housing

By ISABEL GENSLER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

As the University looks to increase the size and prestige of its graduate programs in coming years, some graduate students are concerned about the availability of housing near campus and the lack of community sparse real estate could cause.

Campus housing is not guaranteed for graduate students, and only 100 of the University’s 2,000 graduate students

live in Brown-owned housing, wrote Dean of the Graduate School Andrew Campbell in an email to The Herald.

Despite the fact that applications for 2016-2017 housing exceeded Brownowned units, the University has no plans to build more graduate student housing, Campbell wrote.

In contrast, other universities in the Ivy League offer graduate students an array of on-campus housing options.

Yale has 11 buildings dedicated solely to graduate student housing, including

both apartments and dormitories, while Cornell has three, according to their websites. Yale and Cornell both have graduate student populations multiple factors larger than Brown’s.

Campbell pointed out that a private developer plans to build “market-rate housing in the Jewelry District that would be geared (toward) graduate, medical and nursing students.” The project is known as River House and will be constructed on the parking lot at Davol Square and designed to house 270 individuals.

Some graduate students feel “less integrated on campus” due to the lack

of graduate student-designated housing, wrote Graduate Student Council President Aislinn Rowan GS in an email to The Herald. This is why one of the main goals of the GSC is to “facilitate community in the grad student population,” she added.

One of the issues with so many students living off campus is that “without the forced community of dormitories, it’s easy for students to become isolated within their departments or corners of the University,” Rowan wrote.

While Brown does provide assistance to students, faculty members » See HOUSING, page 3

This is the first semester since the Vietnam War that the Naval and Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program is available for students at Brown because of new partnerships with the College of the Holy Cross for the Navy and Worcester Polytechnic Institute for the Air Force.

Ben Chiacchia ’20, Luc Langlois ’20 and Melia Okura ’20 are the first to participate in this renewed ROTC program. “When they had the ceremony and they were talking about how this will be the first class in such a long time, it made me inspired to work harder because I realized this is a really big thing,” Okura said.

Both programs have physical training requirements and outside classes at the partner universities, which are both located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Langlois and Okura, who are both in the Air Force program, also complete their physical » See ROTC, page 3

U. researchers among team Marinić discusses refugee crisis, Trump German intellectual testing dementia treatment compares American, Transcranial magnetic stimulation tested as treatment for degenerative brain disease

By GALEN HALL CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Researchers from Brown and Rhode Island hospitals hope that transcranial magnetic stimulation will become the first successful treatment for frontotemporal dementia.

FTD is a neurodegenerative disease and is “the second most common cause of dementia in younger people — individuals under 65 — following Alzheimer’s,” said Brian Ott, a professor at the Warren Alpert Medical School and the director of Rhode Island Hospital’s Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders Center.

INSIDE

The study, led by Ott and Lindsay Oberman, director of the Neuroplasticity and Autism Spectrum Disorder Program at Bradley Hospital, aims to assess TMS’s efficacy as a treatment for FTD. TMS uses an electromagnet device placed on the subject’s head to switch a magnetic field on and off very quickly, creating an electrical current in a localized region of the cerebral cortex of the brain. In cases where TMS improves cognitive function, the benefits are due to “an improvement in the connectivity between the region that they’re stimulating and a connected region,” Oberman said.

Though Alzheimer’s research has been the target of “huge investment,” FTD receives comparatively few research dollars, and there is no treatment for the disorder, Ott said.

Patients suffering from FTD, which » See DEMENTIA, page 2

German political climates in talk about immigration

By ALEX SKIDMORE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Jagoda Marinić, a German author of short stories, plays, essays and novels, engaged in a “transatlantic conversation” on questions of immigration and integration in the United States and Germany at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs Monday night.

Marinić’s work addresses issues of diversity and inclusion, which are extremely relevant in Germany, in the United States and on the University’s campus, wrote Jane Sokolosky, senior lecturer in German studies and one of the event’s organizers, in an email to The Herald. » See MARINIĆ, page 3

ELI WHITE / HERALD

Jagoda Marinić discussed xenophobia as a rising global phenomenon at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

WEATHER

TUESDAY, OC TOBER 18, 2016

NEWS Murphy ’17 develops app that offers courses on coding, humanities in game format

NEWS Professor coauthors report on effects of lead reduction in child reading, cognitive skills

COMMENTARY Ashley ’18: Brown engineering should mimic CS in creativity of assignments, TA program

COMMENTARY Silvert ’20: Seeing issues from multiple perspectives key part of pursuing quality education

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COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Researchers are testing the magnetic field created by transcranial magnetic stimulation as a cure for the symptoms of frontotemporal dementia.

» DEMENTIA, from page 1 has historically been confused with Alzheimer’s, can actually have their symptoms exacerbated by Alzheimer’s treatments. But brain imaging and neuropsychological tests can now distinguish between the diseases and allow researchers to develop treatments for FTD, Ott said.

In FTD, neurons die in the frontal and temporal lobes, and this degeneration leads to two main groups of disorders. “One is the behavioral variant that starts out with abnormalities of behavior,” Ott said. “And the other major group is people with progressive aphasia, where it starts out with progressive loss of language and speaking abilities.”

Oberman and Ott hope that with

brief stimulations of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, they will see shortterm benefits in patients suffering from both progressive aphasic and behavioral FTD because this area of the brain connects to neural networks involved in both subgroups of the disorder. “If we see that (improvement), then the next step would be to do a larger clinical trial, to see if we can lead to longer-term improvements,” Oberman said.

William Heindel, professor and chair of the cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences department, and Elena Festa PhD’98, lecturer in CLPS, designed tests to assess the results of this stimulation. Progressive aphasia and behavioral FTD involve two different control paths in the brain, and “the two experimental tests are designed to assess the efficiency

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD of these two different control processes using comparable tasks,” Heindel wrote in an email to The Herald.

The tests of progressive aphasiacs involve assessing the subject’s reaction times in identifying pictures of objects or of people performing actions. Tests of people with the behavioral variant involve showing the subject various “color words printed in a different colored ink — for example, the word ‘RED’ printed in green ink — for a brief period of time,” and asking them to either name the word or the color of the ink, Heindel wrote.

The study’s 12 subjects will undergo both types of tests after receiving real TMS treatment and a placebo. Improvements in their reaction times on these tests following the treatment will indicate that the treatment is successful.

The partnership among hospital researchers, Heindel and Festa, “really is an interdepartmental, cross-institutional collaboration, which is wonderful,” Ott said. This type of joint effort is “reasonably rare,” though “it’s something that Brown and the hospitals are really encouraging,” Oberman said.

“Collaborating with local hospitals is a critical feature” of Heindel’s research into neurodegenerative disorders, and he is “sure that these interactions will grow over time,” he wrote.

The researchers hope that after this study is completed in about six months, they will be able to move on to a larger treatment study. “I think the take-home message is that it has potential and promise for a group of patients where there’s not another good therapy,” Oberman said.

Higher Ed Roundup

BY LAUREN ARATANI, NEWS EDITOR

Princeton to pay $18 million following suit over property-tax exemptions Princeton announced Oct. 17 that it made a settlement with local homeowners in Princeton, New Jersey to pay $18 million over the next six years after its property-tax exemption was challenged in a lawsuit, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Princeton already voluntarily pays about $3 million a year to the town of Princeton under an agreement made in 2014 that is set to expire in 2020.

The lawsuit was filed by 27 plaintiffs, all of whom are lowincome, disabled or retired individuals in the Princeton area, The Wall Street Journal reported. More than half of the payment will be given to an estimated 870 recipients who receive property-tax relief through New Jersey’s homestead benefit program. Each of these individuals will receive about $2,000 over the course of six years, the Journal reported.

The plaintiffs agreed to withdraw the litigation, even though Tax Court Judge Vito Bianco, who was set to hear the case Oct. 17, ruled against a hospital in a “nonprofit tax exemption case that appeared similar to the one filed against” Princeton, the Daily Princetonian reported.

Though Princeton was confident the court would have upheld its property-tax exemption, the university found that the settlement will be a “better expenditure of funds than continuing to incur the considerable costs of litigation,” said Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber in a press release.

Eleven arrested in protest amid Harvard Dining Services strike Eleven individuals were arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts Oct. 14 during a protest supporting the Harvard University Dining Services employees’ historic strike. The individuals — labor organizers and HUDS workers — were arrested for blocking traffic while sitting in a circle in Harvard Square as 100 supporters chanted around them. The arrested individuals will be indicted with disorderly conduct and be put up for bail, according to the Cambridge Police Department.

Around 500 HUDS workers began picketing Oct. 5 outside of dining halls on campus after choosing not to negotiate with Harvard officials, the Harvard Crimson reported. The strike was planned in advance, allowing the university to close some of its dining halls, extend hours at others and stockpile food.

Brian Lang, president of the Boston-based labor union that represents HUDS workers, told the Crimson that the strike marks the first time HUDS employees have walked out during an academic year. Along with a minimum $35,000 salary for each employee, the HUDS workers are also asking for year-round work and a freeze on health costs.

Rakesh Khurana, the dean of Harvard College, encouraged students to participate in respectful dialogue while the HUDS workers strike and emphasized Harvard’s priority of the “health and well-being” of its students in an email to Harvard undergraduates, the Crimson reported.

Group leaks two videos of vandalism on Santa Clara University’s campus

Santa Clara University is investigating two instances of vandalism that occurred within the past month — both of which were caught on tapes leaked by a group identifying itself as “SCUWatch.”

The first incident involved the vandalism of an art installation dedicated to the second anniversary of the Ayotzinapa mass kidnapping where 43 students went missing in Iguala, Mexico in 2014. Two students kicked down figures that represented the 43 missing students Sept. 23, the Santa Clara reported. Video evidence of the incident was leaked by SCUWatch Oct. 12. Santa Clara is investigating the vandalism, though it is unclear if any students have been named responsible.

The second act of vandalism occurred Oct. 8 and involved two students who drew a swastika in blood on a poster advocating LGBTQ rights in an elevator. The University has identified the students who are responsible for the vandalism and will investigate the situation, NBC Bay Area reported.

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NEWS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

» ROTC, from page 1 training twice a week at Providence College.

“It’s more of a mental exercise,” Langlois said. “We work really hard (at Brown) and then have to wake up at 5:45 (a.m.) for physical training.”

In the Air Force classes, Langlois and Okura participate in one hour of classroom teaching with hands-on activities “regarding different aspects of the militaries … like rank structure, customs and courtesies,” as well as two hours of class taught by upperclassmen, Okura said.

As part of the naval program, Chiacchia must complete physical training, which varies from “individual effort training or training as a battalion,” he said. The students must also take a two-hour roundtrip commute to their ROTC classes.

Chiacchia must adhere to a specific course selection — including English, calculus, physics, a security policy

» MARINIĆ, from page 1 As a framework for the lecture, Marinić compared her talk on campus to the last time she visited the United States for a lecture at Davidson College last year. Twelve months ago, Marinić was showing students photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcoming Syrian refugees into Germany, but this year, everything is “so different,” she said. “We live in quite turbulent times.”

To try to explain this change in the political climate, Marinić tied together the German backlash against Syrian refugees, the rise of AfD — a far-right alternative political party in Germany — and Brexit.

» HOUSING, from page 1 and staff members in search of housing through its Office of Auxiliary Housing, graduate students may have difficulty finding affordable housing close to campus on College Hill, as “vacancy rates for apartments in the College Hill neighborhood are less than 5 percent,” Campbell wrote.

For Andrew Jones ’16 GS, a former Herald science and research editor and first-year master’s student, finding housing “was almost identical to finding off-campus housing senior year.”

The only difference was that this year, he found his apartment on Craigslist.

He lives with two graduate students and two undergraduates on Bowen Street, and they each pay $590 per month.

“I walk to work everyday, which is really convenient,” said David Boerma, a fourth-year graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology who lives in a one-bedroom apartment close to campus. Boerma lives with his wife and pays $995 per month. He has lived in the same building since his first year but originally lived in a studio for $600 per month.

Boerma found his apartment through the Office of Auxiliary Housing and said that he feels “pretty tied-in” to campus.

Still, Boerma’s connections to other graduate students on campus are largely restricted to his department, he said.

He feels a “sense of community” among students in his department because it often puts together events that bring grad students together.

Setting aside space specifically for graduate students is another of GSC’s

class and a cultural awareness class — at Brown, as well as attend naval orientations twice a week with “a speaker, more physical training or working through a case study,” he said. “(ROTC) instills the skills and temperament that allow us to go into situations and lead people in a way that’s effective,” Langlois said. “It shows us how to be a leader rather than a boss.”

“You learn so many things that can be applied to daily life,” Okura said.

The presence of ROTC has had a contentious history at Brown since 1969. As a result, there was concern on campus about the reactions that students would have to the participants in the new programs. While Chiacchia has had some negative encounters, “thus far the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said.

“I’ve never gotten a negative reaction,” Okura said, adding that most

of the positivity she has encountered has concerned the physical training she is required to complete.

“The on-campus atmosphere has been very positive,” said Karen McNeil, program director of the Office of Student Veterans and Commissioning Programs.

ROTC is “not the most ubiquitous group on campus,” Langlois said. “I don’t think it is known enough that this is a program at Brown.”

Part of the program’s lack of recognition also comes from its size, McNeil said. “It would be better for the (participants’) experience if the community was bigger,” McNeil said, adding that the program is comprised of the three new students and three preexisting army ROTC students.

“I want Brown to be a part of the community and be really represented,” Chiacchia said.

McNeil said she believes an expansion of ROTC at Brown would benefit all students by bridging the

In 2015, Germany accepted about one million Syrian refugees, Marinić said. While this effort was supposed to be a part of a larger European intake of refugees, “Merkel is alone at the top,” she said.

This year, some of the German populace has rebelled against its singular role in the refugee crisis and has demanded Merkel close Germany’s borders to refugees. Protestors are yelling “ugly things” at Merkel, Marinić said.

To make matters worse, the AfD party has capitalized on the increasingly xenophobic rhetoric surrounding refugees and has spread “ideas that have not been discussed since Nazi Germany,” Marinić said. For

example, one of the party’s leaders demanded that police shoot refugees as they cross into Germany, she said, adding that 15 percent of Germans now support the AfD party.

This trend toward xenophobia and distrust can be seen throughout Europe, most notably in the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union in the Brexit vote, Marinić said. “A lack of solidarity lies at the heart of the European crisis,” she added.

ongoing initiatives. On campus there are currently three graduate student spaces: the Graduate Student Lounge located in Graduate Center, a couple study rooms in the Stephen Roberts ’62 Campus Center and a new study space in the Rockefeller Library.

“The only real space that can be used for social interaction is our lounge, and a single room is simply not sufficient for our needs,” Rowan wrote.

The lounge is used for GSC events, various graduate student group meetings and classes, departmental recruitment events and thesis defense parties. Because of the high demand, the room is often reserved for long periods of time, which detracts from its intended function as an informal social space, Rowan wrote. The GSC is also unable to improve the space while it is so often utilized, she added.

A main obstacle to graduate students finding alternative spaces on campus is that most spaces are currently used by undergraduates. “Many graduate students are uncomfortable being in spaces where they may encounter undergrads whom they teach, supervise in research (and) grade exams for,” Rowan wrote. Though this implies that space would need to be reserved strictly for graduate students, Rowan wrote that the GSC is trying to capitalize on University expansion in order to alleviate space constraints.

“I have not really taken advantage of graduate student spaces,” Jones said.

As a student in computer science, he has utilized the newly renovated eighth floor of the Sciences Library. “I feel like I have plenty of space and resources,” he said.

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Ben Chiacchia ’20, Luc Langlois ’20 and Melia Okura ’20 must complete physical training at other campuses alongside academic coursework. military-civilian divide. “When you have a traditional student at Brown and they meet someone from ROTC, a lot of times it’s the first time they have ever met someone in the

military,” McNeil said. “Many of the students at Brown are going to be leaders in their communities, and experience with the military community is really important.”

Marinić then linked Germany’s situation to the paradoxical nature of the United States, as the country is both the traditional haven of immigrants and the home of Donald Trump. Quoting Paul Krugman, Marinić said, “the (United States) has become more nationalist — more European.”

People in the United States and in Germany feel they are “losing ground,” Marinić said. As a result, the world is becoming “less liberal,

less diverse and less interesting.”

After the lecture, an audience member asked Marinić how countries can combat xenophobia. “Everyone is around people who have the same mindset,” Marinić said, adding that people have become increasingly polarized and are turning against each other.

Nations need to “re-create a bigger space for the common ground,” Marinić said. “We have individualism, but we have too little community.”

NEWS

PAGE 4 • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Murphy ’17 co-develops new app to teach programming Education app Py accepted into Facebook Start, gains popularity on Product Hunt

By EDUARD MUÑOZ-SUÑÉ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Massive Open Online Courses, frequently called MOOCs, overwhelmingly fail to retain the vast majority of people who enroll in them, said Will Murphy ’17, who co-founded a new educational app called Py along with Yale student Derek Lo, who is also set to graduate in May. Py began as an app designed to teach programming. Murphy and Lo were inspired to start the app because peers who had tried to learn how to code online found the resources available “boring” or unhelpful. The two set out to create a mobile platform for coding that would retain people’s interest, and in four days they had finished creating their first unit for the app: a course that would teach Python.

Murphy and Lo have been programming together since high school, where they co-taught a course in coding and built an intelligent polling app.

Since last May when the first course was complete, Murphy and Lo have been tweaking the app. They have added courses in seven other programming languages, including Java and SQL, as well as seven courses

COURTESY OF PY

Will Murphy ’17 and Yale student Derek Lo co-founded Py, an educational mobile app that offers courses on various coding languages, as well as subjects in the sciences and humanities. The app is geared to retain learners through its game-like platform and has received raving reviews so far. in other subjects, including the humanities, mathematics and sciences.

They will soon have created an additional eight courses.

“Py is completely different from a book or video lecture in which you then go and complete an assignment,” Murphy said. “It asks you questions, and if you get them wrong, it changes the content based on how well you’re doing.”

On Sept. 28, the pair posted the

most recent version of the app on Product Hunt, a site on which startups and established companies post new apps for review and feedback. Py was the second-most popular app of the day, Murphy said. According to Lo, the average product on Product Hunt typically receives 80 to 100 upvotes if it’s doing well, while Py has received over 1,100.

“It’s definitely a strong signal for us that people want what we’re making

Thursday, October 20, 2016 Brown Institute for Environment and Society 85 Waterman (ROOM 130) 4:30-6:00 pm reception immediately following Will be Livestreamed

Intersecting the Ivory Tower and Ebony Power Engagement and Exchange in the (Black Lives) Matter of the U.S. Police State and Prison Nation

and already like the initial product that we’re putting out,” Lo said about the app’s initial success on Product Hunt.

“We’ve probably spent almost 1,000 hours (on it) over the past few months. Will and I talk constantly over message and we talk over the phone every couple of days to catch up on things. It’s almost as if this is a real company and we’re working on it full-time, but obviously we still have the constraints of school,” Lo said.

The feedback received from Product Hunt has been extremely useful, Lo added, as the team is planning on making several key changes to Py in the next month. They want to add a social component, such as sharing results with friends on Facebook, but most importantly want to continue making the app more similar to a game.

“People really like to use something that encourages them, and so we want to make it more like a game because then people feel like they’re accomplishing something and want to keep learning,” Murphy said.

Though Murphy and Lo are the

co-founders and have been the main architects of the app, they have not done it alone. Classmates and professors of theirs from Brown and Yale have helped out with content and programming, they said, and the two also reached out to experts in their fields for help in creating the content of their courses. For example, a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at NASA assisted Murphy and Lo in writing a course on astrophysics.

Murphy and Lo found out Sunday that they were accepted into Facebook Start, an organization run by Facebook “designed to help earlystage mobile startups build and grow their apps,” according to its website.

It helps startups by offering up to $80,000 worth of free or discounted services from a number of partner companies, including Dropbox and Adobe. Facebook Start also connects startups to sessions and conferences with Facebook product managers and engineers, Lo said.

“People really do complete courses in Py. We seem to have cracked that nut, at least in one respect,” Murphy said.

Brown University Community Council Tuesday, October 18, 2016

SPEAKER

4:00 – 5:30 p.m.

Title IX Oversight and Advisory Board Review

Hillary Potter

Asssociate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Update from the Title IX Office Discussion: Title IX at Brown Meetings are open to members of the Brown Community.

Meeting will be held in the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center, Kasper Multipurpose Room To learn more about the Community Council visit: www.brown.edu/about/administration/community-council

Sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion

TODAY

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016 • PAGE 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

menu

ac tive minds

SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS

Pizza: Bacon Chicken Ranch, Spinach and Feta Meatball and Penne Pasta JOSIAH’S

BLUE ROOM

Make-Your-Own Quesdillas

Turkey Sausage and Kale Soup, Turkey Chili

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Roasted Red Potatoes with Fresh Herbs, Curried Quinoa and Chickpea Sauté, Sugar Cookies

Oatmeal Bread, Mexican Infused Rice, Corn with Pimento and Bell Peppers, Apple Crisp

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

Black Bean and Corn Stew, Enchilada Bar, Buffalo Wings, Golden Grahams S’mores Bars

Macaroni Shells Pasta, Thai Basil Pork Stir Fry, Braised Rainbow Swiss Chard, Oatmeal Bread

sudoku

ANITA SHEIH / HERALD

Brown Active Minds, an on-campus organization that raises awareness for mental health, set up a table on the Main Green Monday offering baked goods, hugs and coloring. The event will continue this afternoon.

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

“It shows us how to be a leader rather than a boss.”

— Melia Okura ’20, Air Force ROTC member

crossword

See rotc on page 1.

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Faculty and Staff Flu Clinic 9 A.M. Sayles Hall Auditorium

Emily Owens “Sex, Violence and the Ordinary” 12 P.M. Lippitt House, 101

BURP Neck/Back Massages 1 P.M. Stephen Roberts ’62 Campus Center, Memorial Lounge

The Rise of Trump: What’s Next for American Politics?

8 P.M. Campus Center, 201

TOMORROW Brown Dining’s Farmer’s Market 11 A.M. Sciences Park

Social Security and Retirement Planning 12 P.M. Smith-Buonanno, 106

Society of Women Engineers: Importance of Mentorship 12 P.M. MacMillan Hall, 115

Final Debate Watch Party 8:45 P.M. BERT, 130

COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

EDITORIAL

What objectivity means to The Herald For any news organization, journalistic integrity is paramount. Historically, objectivity has been considered central to an ethical model of journalism. As the Columbia Journalism Review noted in an article on the subject in 2003, journalists “all learned about objectivity in school or at our first job. Along with its twin sentries ‘fairness’ and ‘balance,’ it defined journalistic standards.” But as the author of that same piece points out, objectivity is not so simple. “Ask 10 journalists what objectivity means, and you’ll get 10 different answers.” The journalists who run each news organization must figure out what objectivity means to them and how it translates into journalistic practices. In this editorial, we aim to lay out what objectivity means to us at The Herald.

Critics of the very notion of objectivity will quickly point out that no one, not even the most highly trained or best-intentioned writer, can be objective.

We all have opinions and experiences that shape our views of the world, and these opinions and experiences inform both what we choose to cover and how we cover it. This skeptical view of objectivity may even be gaining popularity as more people become conscious of the privileges and power dynamics that shape their identities and worldviews.

Indeed, no journalist or journalistic institution can be purely objective — no one can entirely escape their subjectivity and the experiences and cultural dynamics that shape it. The goal of ethical journalism is thus not to publish stories totally divorced from our writers’ and editors’ identities. The goal is to limit the extent to which our own views and experiences color our writing. The goal is to limit our subjectivity and approach objectivity as closely as possible, even though we know it cannot be wholly achieved.

In practice, aiming for objectivity defined this way means recognizing the biases we hold, not assigning stories to reporters who have clear conflicts of interest with their subject matters, relying on facts as cornerstones of any narrative and speaking to a number of sources with a variety of perspectives on the topics we cover. It means striving for as diverse a staff as possible so we can identify each other’s blind spots. It means constructing truthful narratives that do not reflect our personal opinions.

Journalism striving to be objective in this way has a crucial role to play in society. While first-person narratives and journalistic stories unconcerned with documenting a range of perspectives can certainly shed light on their subject matter, only stories that reject speculation and strive to paint a comprehensive picture of various parties’ viewpoints can speak to readers of a wide variety of backgrounds and serve as a public record.

Moreover, a major purpose of objective journalism is to bring relevant perspectives into dialogue with each other. This is not possible without the notion of objectivity, as sources with conflicting viewpoints would take issue with speaking to reporters known to have a specific angle. At a time when so many people talk past each other rather than to each other, we consider striving for objectivity more important than ever.

P IA M I L E A F- PAT E L

comic The Fistbump Chronicles | Bryn Brunnstrom

Editorials are written by The Herald’s 126th editorial board: Emma Jerzyk ’17, Joseph Zappa ’17, Andrew Flax ’17 and Caroline Kelly ’17. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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Editor-in-Chief Emma Jerzyk

Arts & Culture Editors Rebecca Ellis Jaclyn Torres

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COMMENTARY TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016 • PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Engineering should learn from computer science TODD ASHLEY

op-ed contributor It’s 8 a.m. on a cold Monday morning.

My roommates and I fight the urge to stay under our warm covers and force ourselves out of bed for another long day of classes. We make it to Barus and Holley, open our notebooks, power through a 50-minute lecture and then get on with the rest of our day — more classes, an hour at the gym, homework, teaching assistant hours, labs and maybe a few short breaks to get food with friends or play Rocket League. After that, rinse and repeat until the weekend. While I don’t think that kind of lifestyle is unique to an engineer, it summed up a lot of my daily life as an engineering student.

When I first wanted to be an engineer, I thought of all of the great things that engineering could offer: challenging problems, the ability to create new things, a community of smart and technical people and the satisfaction of solving relevant issues. I don’t think Brown engineering does a bad job of stimulating these things, but it doesn’t do a particularly great job either. Most engineering classes are based around interesting problem sets, but eventually the gratification of turning in another piece of paper riddled with scribbles starts to

dim — after all, we all did that for four years in high school.

The quality of lectures obviously varies by professor, but there are many introductory sequence courses that follow the same format: “Let me derive this equation for you and then show you how it can be applied to the real world.” This can make the lectures monotonous and repetitive. I’ll also never understand why we need to write so many lab reports. I want to build and design things, not write the same old

with computer science in CSCI 0150: “Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming and Computer Science.” Before CS15, I had never thought of myself as a CS kid. I liked to get up early, collaborate with others and work with physical, concrete things — all things that I didn’t think represented computer science. But CS15 changed that perspective completely and quickly became the best class I’ve taken at Brown.

The projects were rewarding and fascinating, the lecture slides were orga-

First, the army of undergraduate TAs was instrumental to my experience. Undergraduate TAs relate to students better than most professors, give instant support via Piazza or office hours and provide a sense of community. Realistically, some professors just won’t be engaging speakers, but undergraduate TAs can make up the difference in a number of ways. They can reinforce the material in a more accessible way after class or just do something ridiculous like performing skits to give

Wake up, Brown engineering! lab report that no one will read.

I don’t want to make it sound like the Brown engineering department is terrible and antiquated — it’s not.

There are some amazing classes such as ENGN 0040: “Dynamics and Vibrations,” which includes interactive projects, engaging lectures (with fun inclass demos and electronic notes that save to Canvas) and problem sets to reinforce the material. Sometimes small things make a huge difference in an otherwise average class — like throwing an egg into the audience, taking a shot of whiskey at 9 a.m., flying a drone above the class to explain an equation or just using a tablet instead of chalk for notes. Classes like this made me want to be an engineer.

But then I had my first encounter

nized and easy to follow, the labs supplemented the material and the army of teaching assistants provided a great support system for students. I got addicted to the coding projects and was excited to spend more time perfecting my assignments and working on extra credit. Now, I’m a CS kid. After just one class, I decided to switch my main concentration to computer science.

This is one of the biggest problems with the engineering courses here. The actual material covered in these courses is just as awesome as the content in computer science. There’s no reason why coding should be more interesting than engineering. Not every class needs to be as involved as CS15, but engineering courses could learn some lessons from the computer science department.

students a break (like in CS15).

There’s also a benefit to having professors own a course. Professor of Technology and Education and of Computer Science Andy van Dam has taught CS15 for such a long time that it’s a part of him. He wants to keep improving the course year after year and see it return better results each time. Many of the lower level engineering courses don’t have that same feel. Some courses have professors rotate teaching shifts, so nobody is responsible long enough to make improvements and see progress. There are plenty of exceptions, and courses with long-term professors are often much better, such as ENGN40.

But there’s still a difference between teaching a course for a long time and owning a course. Owning a course

means constantly trying to improve out of a passion for the subject and pride in the course itself. Many engineering courses feel old and stagnant because they lack this energy.

Brown engineering is definitely improving. The department is set to receive a brand-new building and is revamping many classes, but there is still a long way to go. Lecture classes need to be updated, and all professors need to use newer technologies to share notes and present to students. We need more undergraduate TAs who have taken the same classes and care about the future of the program. Courses need ownership, and professors should be willing to stick with a course long enough to see it improve and change. Projects and labs also need to give more room for creativity and fun.

If I graduate with a Brown engineering degree, I should be able to take an idea and make it a reality. But right now, I feel like most engineering courses only prepare us for completing cookie-cutter labs and building projects that look the same as everyone else’s. So wake up, Brown engineering! It’s time to catch up, get out of your comfort zone and show the Brown community what you’re made of.

Todd Ashley ’18 is a computer science and engineering concentrator and can be reached at todd_ashley@brown.edu.

Orientation and keeping an open mind ELI SILVERT staff columnist Beset by midterms and the daily routine of the semester, I sometimes find myself reflecting on and romanticizing the time when things at Brown still felt fresh, unknown and even a bit mysterious. Everything was far too fast-paced to understand and internalize during orientation, so thinking back on the first few days of college can be useful. With a half semester’s worth of perspective under my belt, it is time to try to make sense of it.

Amid the campus alcohol presentation and the chaos of the ice cream social, my experience in the group discussion on our First Readings text, “My Beloved World” by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, still cuts through my memory. After years of preparation for college, I was excited to finally be here and engage in an intellectually stimulating activity alongside my new peers. I was particularly excited for a conversation like this one because hearing new experiences and perspectives was a big factor in why I initially wanted to come to Brown.

The conversation shifted from introductions to the book with ease, as many students related Sotomayor’s story to their own and augmented the summer reading with their own experiences. This led to valuable insights that I never could have reached on my own.

Halfway through, we landed on the topic of affirmative action — an overarching theme in the book. The discussion leader, a PhD student, asked us how this policy affected Sotomayor’s life and what her feelings are toward it. The talkative group suddenly went silent. Given my own

experiences and exposure I could not imagine how the implications of this policy could have negative effects on those it was meant to help, so I was pretty confident in what I was about to say. I broke the silence: Sotomayor is a proponent of affirmative action; she gladly seized the opportunity to attend a top college and truly made the most of it.

To my surprise, my comment sparked controversy. A few hands shot up. In response to the question and in opposition to my comment, one student reflected on her experience getting into Brown as a Latinx student, saying that when she was accepted, she felt like students at

the common opinion of the group seemed to be that Sotomayor felt the same way.

There were two conflicting perspectives raised during the discussion: the first that affirmative action helped Sotomayor, who advocates the policy as a result, and the second that affirmative action hurts students of color because it leads others to devalue their college acceptances. Can both of these perspectives be valid?

The students participating in the discussion seemed to labor on the latter of the two. This opened my eyes to the nuance inherent in this topic and question. But the existence of conflicting views does not necessitate an absolutist

We can all strive for this open-minded and receptive mindset in which we acknowledge that our own values may sometimes conflict with each other. her high school doubted that it was through her merit alone. They credited her achievement, in part, to the additional factor and force of affirmative action. In her eyes, affirmative action only cheapened her achievement. As I had never had to think about this consequence of affirmative action, this perspective jolted my own.

Other students empathized with this perspective and affirmed it. A black student beamed as she shared that she was the first person from her high school to be accepted at an Ivy League school, but she still couldn’t help but feel like her peers attributed her success partially to her race.

Affirmative action unjustly diffused the significance of her success in college admission. She, too, regarded affirmative action with disdain as having a stigma. The PhD student leading the conversation validated these perspectives, and

approach to addressing the problems to which they pertain. The stigma associated with affirmative action does not counteract all of the benefits it offers; it is possible to problematize ideas and policies while recognizing their net social benefits.

F. Scott Fitzgerald believed that the fact that perspectives are in opposition does not necessarily make them mutually exclusive: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function,” he argued.

Sotomayor possesses this “first-rate intelligence” that Fitzgerald describes, as she reflects on both of the perspectives that my discussion group addressed. Not only that, Sotomayor also industriously employs these perspectives through her writing and legal work. In “My Be-

loved World,” Sotomayor reflects on the shame and embarrassment she felt when her school nurse demanded an explanation for her Princeton acceptance. Meanwhile, throughout the rest of the book, Sotomayor generally regards affirmative action with gratitude. One does not need to read her story to realize this. As a Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor strategically released “My Beloved World” a few months before the decision on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin — a case that questioned the legality of considering race in college admission — so that the benefits of affirmative action would be fresh in the justices’ minds.

While Sotomayor is truly an exceptional person of “first-rate intelligence,” we can all strive for this open-minded and receptive mindset in which we acknowledge that our own values may sometimes conflict with each other. No value is absolute, and no group of values is mutually exclusive. I realize that my whiteness, male identity and other privileges make the existence of moral ambiguity easier to swallow. But regardless of our racial, gender, religious and other differences, we can acknowledge the conflicting outcomes of affirmative action and other hotbutton issues.

Beyond the context of the First Readings discussion, I ask that we strive for the “first-rate intelligence” that Fitzgerald spoke of. Rather than clinging to one ingrained viewpoint, let’s be receptive to new ones. Let’s allow our own perspectives to accrue, overlap and even oppose one another. In doing so, we can internalize the conflicts between opposing trains of thought, empathize with multiple perspectives and transcend a mindset that sticks to absolute beliefs.

Eli Silvert ’20 can be reached at eli_silvert@brown.edu.

NEWS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2016

Prompted by state policy, reduced lead levels lead to higher test scores R.I. policies mitigate hazards, disproportionately impact low-income children’s scores

By SARAH WANG CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Reducing children’s lead levels can lead to significant positive effects on test scores, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper issued in August co-authored by Anna Aizer, associate professor of economics and public policy.

Though the United States currently has historically low lead levels, even low exposure can still negatively affect test scores. The study also found that “poor and minority children are more likely to be exposed to lead, suggesting that lead poisoning may be one of the causes of continuing gaps in test scores between disadvantaged and other children.”

“It’s pretty well established that children’s early exposure to lead affects the developing nervous system in ways that affect both cognitive performance and behavioral outcomes,” Aizer said. “Lead levels are at historic lows in the (United States), and so it wasn’t so clear … we would still expect to see the same thing.”

Aizer worked alongside Peter Simon, associate professor of the practice in epidemiology, Patrick Vivier ’85 MD’89, associate professor of community health and pediatrics, and Janet Currie, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton. Together, they examined data from children born

between the years of 1997 and 2005.

The study looked specifically at the effects of two Rhode Island policies that required landlords to mitigate hazards in their properties before renting them, lest they face prosecution from the state attorney general’s office. The policies intended to target high-risk areas with older homes more likely to contain traces of lead and more likely to house disadvantaged and minority children, according to Aizer and the study.

The policies led to decreased lead levels in children across the state, but more importantly, to disproportionately lower lead levels for children living in at-risk areas. Researchers also found a greater increase in test scores among African American and Hispanic children in comparison to white children, suggesting that the policies helped close the gap between black students’ test scores and white students’ test scores by 44 percent and the gap between Hispanic students’ test scores and white students’ test scores by 16 percent. Estimates also showed that “a one-unit decrease in average blood lead levels reduces the probability of being substantially below proficient in reading by 3.1 percentage points.”

The study mainly focused on reading test scores, since results for other subjects were more mixed and imprecisely measured, according to the study.

“We looked at math, (but) those estimates were a little noisier,” Aizer said.

“We think (lead) just affects cognitive development more generally.”

In addition to demonstrating the negative effects of lead and the positive

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

R.I. policies requiring landlords to lower lead levels boosted test scores across all demographics and helped close the gap between black and white, as well as Hispanic and white students by 44 and 16 percent, respectively. effects of lead reduction, the authors of the study suggested ways to help address lead remediation. Unlike most other states, Rhode Island mandates lead screening, providing hard data on lead levels that are necessary to understand a state’s lead burden, Aizer said.

The authors also wrote that Rhode Island’s policy for reducing lead exposure “offered more carrots than sticks in the sense that while some landlords were prosecuted, many others were offered training, loans and protection against future lawsuits.”

This strategy was “ultimately effective as opposed to … other states … where they use more sticks than carrots,” she said.

The paper addressed the possibility of other contributing factors affecting test scores and cognition beyond lead levels. The researchers were able to control the results by exploiting the lead policy changes requiring landlords to reduce hazards, Aizer said. In previous generations, there was no requirement, allowing researchers to compare two children born into the same geographical and cultural background but one born after the requirement and the other before, and see how the lead requirement affected their cognition without any other contributing factors, Aizer said.

Looking beyond the results of the study, Aizer said she hopes that

educators will begin looking at more factors when addressing academic progress.

Education policy makers and educators “should think more about the importance of children’s background(s) and health as an important determinant of how they do in school,” Aizer said.

“We can’t … think of these things as separate.”

Vivier, Simon, Michelle Kollett Almeida, lead program manager and program evaluator at the Rhode Island Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Kimberly Pierson, director of data analysis at the Providence Plan, declined to comment or could not be reached for comment by press time.

The Presidential Faculty Award Lecture

October 25th, 2016 at 4:30pm John Carter Brown Library George S. and Nancy B. Parker Professor of Economics

Jesse Shapiro will deliver the Presidential Faculty Award Lecture: How to Talk Like a Republican, and Other Lessons From Using Text as Data