Wednesday, September 11, 2019 by The Brown Daily Herald

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

VOLUME CLIV, ISSUE 6

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SCIENCE AND RESEARCH

University awarded more than $50 million grant for Alzheimer’s research Award given over five years largest federal grant in University history BY CATE RYAN SCIENCE AND RESEARCH EDITOR

In the University’s largest federal grant award in its history, the National Institute on Aging has promised more than $50 million over five years to examine how non-drug Alzheimer’s care can realistically improve quality of life. This project comes as Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s-related dementia challenge researchers and caregivers across the nation. Alzheimer’s currently affects 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 65, and the number of people with Alzheimers will increase toward 14 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The disease is the most common cause of dementia and cannot yet be cured through drug treatment. The University, in collaboration with Boston-based and Harvard-affiliated Hebrew SeniorLife, will spearhead a national effort to improve care and quality of life by evaluating nondrug care and establishing best practices for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, according to a University press release. The $53.4 million project will be co-led by Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice Vincent Mor, who is based at the School of Public Health, in partnership with Susan Mitchell, a senior scientist

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice Vincent Mor will co-lead the NIA Imbedded Pragmatic AD/ADRD Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Collaboratory. He brings expertise in big data and quality measurement to his partnership with Susan Mitchell, physician scientist at Hebrew SeniorLife. at HSL’s aging research center and a professor of medicine at Harvard. “These kinds of very large, pragmatic trials are pretty new here in America,” Mor said. A project with this scope promises to redefine how Alzheimer’s and

dementia are managed in healthcare settings by empirically assessing how care is delivered and who is capable of delivering it. Through funding and support of up to 40 proposed pilot programs, the grant will help test existing intervention ideas in varying

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Harambee House will remain on campus this semester after risking its program house status last year due to low enrollment, marking its 25th year at the University. The house, founded in 1993, “serves as a community space centered on the issues and concerns of the black community at Brown,” according to its profile on the Student Activities Office’s website.

News

Commentary

Lana Del Rey’s fifth album “NFR” evokes 60s nostalgia Page 2

Verizon Network 5G capabilities extend to Providence Page 4

Hall ’20: Intro economics fundamentally flawed Page 6

Aman ’20: Dear Blueno reveals gaps in academic advising Page 7

BY KAMRAN KING

SEE GRANT PAGE 3

“the opportunity and the desire” to live in-house. Leaders have also been making improvements to Harambee’s home in Chapin, which had become “a little destitute,” Jones said. They added a mural to Harambee’s stairwell, painted by Zoe Carson ’23, renovated its lounge and worked with the University to repaint the space, according to Events Coordinator Aliko LeBlanc ’22. “We’re just trying to celebrate Harambee and the people who use Harambee,” said Community Building Director Christina Bonaparte ’22. In addition to its 2018-19 recruitment difficulties, Harambee struggled with low enrollment in 2009 and 2013.

Brown, RISD dual degree relaxes liberal arts requirements

Harambee House was listed on the University’s unrecognized organizations webpage in January 2019. But it did not lose its program house status, wrote Assistant Director for Greek and Program House Engagement Megan Fox in an email to The Herald. Instead, “a leadership change … needed to take place and the new leadership took on the role of keeping things going,” she wrote. Under new leadership, Harambee recruited 33 students to live in its allotted space in Chapin House this year, and its leaders are looking to grow the house further. By spreading awareness of Harambee to first-year students, House Head and President Jared Jones ’22 said the executive board hopes to give the Class of ’23

SENIOR STAFF WRITER

plement the care that best improves quality of life and reduces stress, Mor said. “You are now going to see if the nurse who has been employed by the healthcare system can actually learn

ARTS AND CULTURE

Harambee bounces back after low enrollment Harambee House struggled with low membership, lives on to see 25th year on campus

real-world healthcare systems. The team plans to have three or four pilots funded and running as soon as March 2020, Mor said. The project will investigate whether professionals like nursing aides and doctor’s secretaries can im-

SEE HARAMBEE PAGE 3

Other changes include new capstone course, moving orientation date, more self-care support BY EMILY TENG SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program welcomed its eleventh class of incoming students at the start of the month, which arrived on campus to a newly reformed program. In recent years, students, faculty and staff have worked to lower stress levels and foster diversity throughout the high-intensity program, which admitted a mere 15 students from a pool of over seven

hundred this year. Dual degree students are admitted to both the University and Rhode Island School of Design. They choose a concentration at the University and a major at RISD, ultimately receiving two degrees after five years. Adjusting course requirements was one step program administrators took to help students with the anxiety of scheduling classes at two different institutions. “It’s hard to figure out what you want to do at one school … trying to navigate that (process) twice in the same program … is near impossible,” said Jake Ruggiero ’22, a third-year dual degree student concentrating

SEE DUAL PAGE 3

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

ARTS AND CULTURE

Lana Del Rey’s album explores meaning of nostalgia Lana Del Rey releases new album ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell!’ to critical acclaim BY KATHERINE OK SENIOR STAFF WRITER

On her fifth major-label studio album, “Norman Fucking Rockwell!,” Lana Del Rey delivers 67 minutes of psychedelic, soft-rock ego trip. Rich with references to Californian Laurel Canyon rock, the album’s greatest strength is what its popularity says about her audience’s attraction to nostalgia. “NFR!” is Lana Del Rey’s highest-rated album of her discography. Metacritic, a music review aggregator, assigned “NFR!” an 87 out of 100, a score higher than any of her previous albums. Jenn Pelly of the music publication Pitchfork wrote that the album is “Lana at her deepest, and it arrives at a time when the history of America as we know it is being rewritten.” In receiving a rare Pitchfork rating of 9.4 out of 10, “NFR!” nearly doubles the 5.5 score of Del Rey’s debut album, “Born to Die,” which was criticized as melodramatic, hedonistic and in the Rolling Stone’s words, “pop trash.” But “NFR!” has similar themes of dark, twisted, American nostalgia, so what makes it so different from her previous albums like “Born to Die”? Del Rey has always liked to sing about American things in a post-ironic way — it doesn’t take a die-hard “stan” to know that her discography fixates on cocaine, Coney Island, trucks, flags and now, California and Norman Rockwell. Her artistic identity and persona have steadily been built upon the same selfaware glamor and aesthetic complexity for which “NFR!” is lauded. Like her other albums, “NFR!” paints dazzling, poetic scenes, revealing Del Rey’s prime talent: showcasing cultural zeitgeist in a way that hits our nostalgia spots just right. Songs like “Venice Bitch” provide an escape to a Los Angelean loneliness by coalescing a failed relationship with recollections of Venice Beach, Hallmark, jeans and leather. In “California,” she invokes a Joan Didion sort of poeticism, writing of cultural niches like how “The Santa Ana moves you.” Del Rey casually yearns for “the bar where the Beach Boys would go / Dennis’ last stop before Kokomo.” Where “NFR!” departs from her previous albums is in its complex understanding of intimate nostalgia through arguably reductive fantasies of the ’60s. As always, Del Rey indulges her listeners in minute cultural trivia — like in “Bartender,” in which she sings “All the ladies of the canyon / Wearing black to their house parties / Crosby, Stills and

Nash is playing / Wine is flowing with Bacardi.” At first listen, these cultural fantasies do not diverge from previous works like “Brooklyn Baby,” in which she references beat poets and Lou Reed. But in the case of “NFR!,” nostalgia is used as a tool to converse with the past in order to emphasize common qualms with the present. “NFR!” resonates with us because we crave the relief of nostalgia and the advantage of hindsight now more than ever. In “The Greatest,” Del Rey speaks for all of us when she sings, “The culture is lit, and I had a ball ... L.A. is in flames, it’s getting hot / Kanye West is blond and gone.” These words, importantly, represent a more significant creative departure from Del Rey’s previous artistic visions. Here, in “NFR!,” Del Rey balances all three concepts of hope, nostalgia and the present. She laments current disasters while looking back and searching for the supposed comfort of the past. In a way, when examining her devices of cultural nostalgia, Del Rey’s artistry is not so different from Quentin Tarantino’s recent direction of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Tarantino’s film finds its aesthetic swagger in antiquated ’60s radio snippets and manual-shift cars, while Del Rey’s sonic identity in “NFR!” subtly references psychedelic rock’s whirs and whines and very specific apartment complexes by the seaside. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which reimagined the Manson family’s murders, rested its artistic vision on an infinite hallucination of the ’60s — what if this era that often symbolizes new American social and creative identity never ended? And in a similar vein, “NFR!” relies on these elements of cultural nostalgia to revive a certain idea of American tenderness and identity that may have been shattered. “Many people I know in Los Angeles,” Didion once wrote, “believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire.” But in “NFR!,” Del Rey declares that her listeners can recall and follow ’60s cultural crumbs as a way to re-affirm the future, despite the environmental, social and political disasters of the present. We yearn to remember specific Dennis Wilson-frequented bars and rock ‘n’ roll because Del Rey’s nostalgia proves we continue to live. Even if the ’60s ended on August 9, 1969, we are attracted to lyricism of “NFR!” because it revives familiar historical minutiae and asserts our ability to relish in past experiences despite not knowing the future. In “NFR!,” Del Rey tells listeners and critics that “hope is a dangerous thing” to have, but they already have it.

COURTESY OF HARMONY GERBER

Lana Del Rey, American singer, songwriter and pop culture icon, is known for her melancholic tunes and captivating voice. Her new album features songs such as “Bartender” and explores the depths of intimate nostalgia.

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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

DUAL FROM PAGE 1 in biology. “I think the dual degree (program) needs to do a better job at making that clearer to students — that the more direction you have coming in, the better off you’ll be.” Scheduling courses “is still really a puzzle,” Michele Zager, the dual degree program’s assistant director and academic advisor, said. In May 2018, the dual degree program made strides to relax its students’ RISD liberal arts requirements, which increased class options at the University. Before last year, students had to follow RISD’s distributive curriculum, which entailed selecting 10 courses in fields across literary arts, history, social science and philosophy at either institution. Today, dual degree students are no longer restricted to the fields in the distribution to complete the liberal arts RISD requirement. “This (change) is designed so that students can access the STEM curriculum a little bit more, and other students not in STEM can access a little bit more of the (Brown) open curriculum,” Zager said. But “shopping period is not quite the same because certain classes are automatically ruled out,” Ruggiero said. Zagar added that first-semester dual degree students “are limited to choosing first-year seminars that work

GRANT FROM PAGE 1 how to do the intervention in the way it was originally designed,” he said. The University and HSL will create a research incubator that will support the pilot trials as they are implemented in medical centers across the nation. The incubator, called the NIA Imbedded Pragmatic AD/ADRD Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Collaboratory, will consist of eight groups — called corps — that will provide support to researchers behind the pilots. Each group will have dedicated experts who provide assistance in areas ranging from medical ethics to statistics, the measurement of outcomes and healthcare systems. One group will facilitate “marriage making” between research projects and healthcare systems, Mor said. Mitchell and Mor have collabo-

within the RISD curriculum, which basically means they can’t meet more than twice a week.” Students in the program are also required to present a capstone project at the end of their fifth year, which is intended to be the culmination of their interdisciplinary experience at both institutions. Since the beginning of last Wintersession, the dual degree program has offered an additional capstone-specific course for its incoming students to ensure that they have a scheduled time to work on these projects. This year, the program has also taken strides to foster diversity and provide resources for students of color. “This year for the first time, we hired a minority peer counselor,” said Christopher Dennis, the deputy dean of the University and Brown’s co-chair of the dual degree program. The new minority peer advisor serves as a resource for students around issues of equity and inclusion. This initiative was proposed by dual degree students in last year’s “Sustained Dialogue” series, a bimonthly discourse between the Brown Center for Students of Color’s Assistant Director Olivia McNeill and dual degree students of color. “Student advocacy and experience has always been really central to the changes that the program has made,” Zager said. Faculty members from both institutions and dual degree

student representatives are part of a coordinating committee that proposes changes to the curriculum. As a faculty member on the committee, Professor of Visual Arts and Chair of Visual Arts Leslie Bostrom said that she hopes to see more collaboration with the University’s VISA department and the dual degree program. Dual degree students found orientation activities to be sometimes draining. “We’re all really tired … because we are required to do (all the orientation activities),” said Naya Chang ’24, a dual degree student. Orientation now includes more support for self-care to address some of the exhaustion. Before the respective orientation weeks of the University and RISD began, dual degree students participated in a separate orientation that involved intimate conversations with deans, faculty members and organizations relating to self-care, such as the Counseling and Psychological Services office, the Equity and Inclusion Department and the International Student Office. “Having them talk to us directly makes us feel secure,” said Rui Ting (Tina) Guo ’24, a freshman dual degree student planning to concentrate in East Asian Studies at the University and Illustration at RISD.

rated on other projects to improve care for dementia, and their shared effort follows a 40-year tradition of partnership between the University and Hebrew SeniorLife, including 15 years of collaboration between Mitchell and Mor. The pilots, which have yet to be selected, will likely have been tested previously under controlled research settings. The team hopes to fund both new projects and those which have been tested in the past, as well as projects Mor called “hybrids,” which may have seen limited success in research but could have great potential if established in a real healthcare setting. The investigators behind the pilots will ideally be both academic researchers and healthcare professionals already integrated into care delivery systems, Mor said in the press release. After the first five

years and the first cohort of pilots, Mor hopes that the project will receive further funding. If the research is successful and healthcare systems truly reorganize around its principles, then Mor will deem the effort a success. “This grant will harness the collective power of leading-edge scholars at the University, Hebrew SeniorLife and across the nation to advance care and make a positive real-world impact on the individuals most directly affected by these illnesses,” said University President Christina Paxson P’19 in the press release. “I’m hoping that we will learn lessons that people like me, and particularly my junior colleagues, will be able to implement more broadly as we try to make a difference in how care is being delivered to people living with dementia,” Mor said.

TIFFANY DING/ HERALD

Harambee House added improvements to its lounge and a mural to their stairwell to spur greater student involvement.

HARAMBEE FROM PAGE 1 During those years of low enrollment, the group was still able to recruit members to live in-house and thereby maintain its program house status, The Herald previously reported. When Harambee’s status was threatened this time, students petitioned several deans and SAO, Jones said. “Harambee is an extremely important aspect of black student life on campus,” Bonaparte said. The house hosts events like the recent “Black at Brown Barbecue,” which

over 100 people attended Bonaparte said. In addition, student groups like the Black Student Union, the Black Pre-Med Society and the Black Pre-Law Association use Harambee’s space, she added. “It’s a space that, wherever you come from in the black diaspora, you can come and feel comfortable,” LeBlanc said. “Harambee was on the verge of being taken away, and we didn’t want to see that as a community because we felt we needed that space on campus.” Harambee House will host its 25th anniversary party on October 19.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

METRO

Verizon brings 5G cell phone technology to Providence, College Hill

TIFFANY DING / HERALD

Providence residents gained 5G cell phone service this summer. The introduction of 5G has been a source of tension for cities nationwide over concerns of bandwith overload.

State lawmakers, city of Providence work with Verizon to implement 5G BY DYLAN CLARK METRO EDITOR

Providence became one of the latest cities to gain 5G cell phone service this summer, providing faster upload and download speeds for customers with 5G-enabled phones in select areas of the city, including Federal Hill and College Hill. Despite its limited coverage, Verizon — the city’s 5G provider — boasts its network carries the most 5G-en-

abled phones. The list contains only four recent devices, including models made by Samsung, LG and Motorolla. The 5G rollout in the Ocean State has been two years in the making. In 2017, the General Assembly passed the Small Cell Siting Act, which determined guidelines for how cities in Rhode Island can negotiate with cell service providers that wish to implement 5G technology. State Senator Gayle Goldin (D — Providence), who voted in favor of the bill, said it was a way of “recognizing it’s an asset to a city to have better coverage,” she said. State Representative Edith Ajello (D — Providence) also voted in favor of the bill. In June 2018, Verizon approached

the city of Providence to work on implementing 5G technology, wrote Victor Morente, spokesperson for Mayor Jorge Elorza, in an email to The Herald. Less than a year later, Providence set regulations to ensure fair negotiations between the city and Verizon. In addition to standard licensing regulations, the rules provided resolutions about how the city could “support this innovative technology while preserving the community investments,” such as the city’s Capital Improvement Plan, a 5-year project to improve the city’s infrastructure, Morente wrote. 5G technology uses short, “millimeter wave” transmitters to provide peak download speeds of up to 1.5 gigabits per second, which should allow users to

download an entire movie in less than a minute, according to a Verizon press release. Still, the new technology has room for improvement; experts have reported that 5G’s short wavelength increases the risk that signal strength is easily interrupted by weather or distance. While Providence and the state have sought the introduction of 5G since 2017, other cities have been much more cautious about opening their doors to the technology. Cities have struggled with negotiating monetization strategies with service providers under Federal Communications Commission guidelines, according to the Wall Street Journal. In addition, the National Ocean-

ic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the American Meteorological Society have raised serious concerns about the bandwidths — the range of frequencies used to transmit a signal — the FCC has chosen to auction to 5G service providers, according to WIRED Magazine. In May, NOAA’s then-acting chief Neil Jacobs testified before Congress that the FCC’s auctioning of 5G bandwidths would interfere with accurate weather predictions, sending weather models back to the 1980s. There has also been an effort to halt 5G expansion due to health concerns, despite the World Health Organization asserting that there are no risks.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | TODAY

CA L E NDA R TODAY

SEPTEMBER

Memory Dishes 9 A.M. 94 Waterman Street

Graduate Fair: This is Public Health Consulting Spotlight 5:30 P.M. 5:30 P.M. Urban Environmental Lab 75 Waterman Street

30 S U D O KU

Utilizing Brown’s Resources 12:00 P.M. Page-Robinson Hall

TOMORROW Taco Thursdays at Swearer Center IPP: Facebook’s Fireside Chat 12 P.M. 4 P.M. Swearer Center CIT Thursday Night Interfaith Supper 5:30 P.M. 58 Keene Street

Brown Women’s Soccer 7 P.M. 58 Keene Street

Q U OTE OF TH E DAY

“Harambee was on the verge of being taken away, and we

didn’t want to see that as a community because we felt we needed that space on campus.”

—Aliko LeBlanc ‘22 SEE HARAMBEE FRONT

PI NWH EEL MEMORI AL CR O S SWO R D

ROSLYN CORIZ / HERALD

A pinwheel exhibit on the Main Green raised awareness of students struggling with suicidality. The light and dark blue pinwheels represent hundreds of college students who attempted or died by suicide.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Principles of Economics should teach the nuance of human rationality BY GALEN HALL STAFF COLUMNIST Every year, around 400 undergraduates sign up for the introductory course Econ 0110: “Principles of Economics.” Nearly four out of every five students in the current iteration of this course are first-years. For them, it may be their first serious exposure to economic policy. It might also be the last, especially judging by Critical Review, which indicates that a large number of attendees do not plan to concentrate in economics. Despite competent and well-intentioned professors, this course, like nearly every other introductory economics course in every liberal university in the western world, presents a highly biased and overly simplistic view of human society. Even worse, it presents that view as hard mathematical fact to people who may eventually go into policymaking with little exposure to the foundations of mainstream economic theory beyond this class. Economics, in its current pedagogical approach, seeks to establish a set of well-defined, abstract axioms from which students and practitioners can derive predictions. (The introductory textbook used at Brown, Gregory Mankiw’s “Principles of Economics,” is renowned and hated among undergraduates for its level of abstraction.) We have all heard about the most famous of these axioms: the laws of supply and demand. Under certain conditions, generally in a free market, these laws lead people to trade goods in ways that make everyone better off. At a very basic level, this result implies that societies with more and freer markets will have happier citizens. It’s simple, according to Mankiw.

If this seems like an odd approach to a social science given how messy and decidedly not simple human affairs generally are, then you’re right. This practice comes in large part from an effort to increase mathematical rigor in the field of economics. Major economists in the early 20th century (such as Paul Samuelson, who wrote an influential textbook) intentionally mimicked physics in a bid to be seen as more legitimate scientists. That meant reframing flexible but vague theories, such as John Maynard Keynes’ “General Theory of Em-

For a physicist, it would be insane to think we can derive one person’s behavior from basic fundamental principles. And human society is way more complicated. So the assumptions — that people behave rationally, have well-defined preferences and act in easily predictable ways — underpinning Mankiw’s “Principles of Economics” and other introductory textbooks seem completely absurd. (Many of Mankiw’s own students walked out of his course in 2011 over similar concerns.) To be sure, a course is more than just its textbook. But the problems

“Emergent fields such as complexity economics and ecological economics fail to reach undergraduates in introductory classes at elite institutions like Brown.”

ployment, Interest and Money,” as hard-andfast equations. Though professors acknowledge the many complexities of society for which these mathematic economic models fail to account, simplifying assumptions of human rationality remain baked in to the models. In physics, we are quickly taught that many systems are far too complicated and erratic to model precisely using hard-and-fast equations. We imagine that physicists derive deep results from complicated tangles of symbols — but in reality, properties of simple stuff like hunks of rock are often measured first, and then an empirical model develops, and then if we’re lucky that model hooks up to some more general physical theory.

in Mankiw’s reflect deeper issues in the field as a whole. The recent history of economics bears out this concern. The models underpinning economic orthodoxy have failed to predict major economic downturns such as the Great Recession of 2008, even as standard principles become more entrenched in academia. Today, many economists see these assumptions as almost fatally flawed when it comes to modeling complex social systems or quantifying the costs and benefits of government regulations. Worse, these basic principles systematically favor right-wing policy conclusions and justify trends like skyrocketing executive pay and inequality. Critically, climate breakdown, oth-

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er environmental damages and ethics play no role in these models. The Great Recession, like economic depressions before it, brought these massive flaws in economics to the fore. Now, the alternative field of ecological economics continues to gain attention; it attempts to account for the often-ignored but hugely important interactions between human societies and the natural world. And while the seismic shift toward behavioral economics has addressed the problem of over-reliance on basic principles among the economic intelligentsia (producing Nobel prize winners in the process), such changes have yet to fully manifest in lower levels of academia. At Brown, students cannot take ECON 1820: “Theory of Behavioral Economics” unless they take certain math and economics prerequisites. These advancements are thus entrenched among the economic academic elite, with facile assumptions still prevalent among the introductory levels of economic discourse. But even as economists and socio-political theorists continue to define a new kind of economics (many from outside the white, male-dominated mainstream of the field), emergent fields such as complexity economics and ecological economics fail to reach undergraduates in introductory classes at elite institutions like Brown. Instead, we learn an outdated and deeply political discipline, which I believe has helped corporations and wealthy elites justify increasing corporate power and inequality. Many of us are skeptical of these simplistic theories. Galen Hall ’20 can be reached at galen_ hall@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald. com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

Dear Blueno should not be an academic advisor BY REBECCA AMAN OPINIONS EDITOR “Are there any CS classes that are for people who have zero foundation and just wanna give it a try to see how it is? scared of being destroyed by cs 15.” “I want to take Physics 50 but I haven’t touched math in a while (ever since Math100 freshman year) — is the course doable if I review calc by myself, or should I just do Physics 30?” This is just a small selection of the numerous questions asked through Dear Blueno, an anonymous Facebook page run by Brown students, in the past week. In addition to dominating my Facebook feed, the sheer number of advising-related questions asked on Dear Blueno reveals weaknesses in Brown’s advising system. While I do not doubt that faculty and Meiklejohn peer advisors are working hard to guide students, it is clear that traditional advising is failing to answer many of students’ questions. One-on-one advising is valuable, but it presents two key problems. First, some students, particularly first-years, may hesitate to ask what they perceive as “dumb questions.” Second, individual advisors may not have the knowledge to answer all of their advisees’ questions. Peer advisors are themselves students who can only take a limited number of classes at Brown, so they are unlikely to have knowledge of every class their advisees are shopping. Additionally, some classes are taught by multiple professors; even if a peer advisor has taken the class in question, they may not have first-hand knowledge about each professor. I recognize that one-on-one peer advising can be a valuable resource for many students,

especially those who form deep relationships with their advisors. But it is important to acknowledge that not every student is suited to have a meaningful experience with one individual advisor — especially those who are more introverted or nervous about asking for advice — and the University must do more to provide support for those students. Dear Blueno partially addresses these issues. Dear Blueno posts anonymous submissions, so students may be bolder in asking questions that they would be embarassed to ask otherwise. Further, the page has around 2,400 followers, so there is a deep pool of knowledge and experience available. Yet while Dear Blueno can be a helpful forum, it is an inadequate solution because the majority of advising questions posted remain unanswered. In the face of so many unanswered questions, the University must work to fill the apparent gaps in advising and ensure that students have the information they need to succeed. The University must first work to improve the return rate of the Critical Review, which has the potential to alleviate many of the advising problems Brown students face. The Critical Review is a wonderful resource: Every year, student members of the Critical Review send out surveys to every professor, who then supposedly distribute them to their students. The Critical Review student writers then aggregate information from returned surveys and write summaries that answer students’ most pressing questions: What is the professor like? How much time will this class take? Is this class suitable for non-concentrators? But unfortunately, this resource is hindered by the fact that the Critical Review does not receive completed surveys from every class, likely because not all professors choose to hand them out. This reality leaves many

classes listed without student-curated feedback available. For example, there is no critical review for ENGL 0310A: “Shakespeare” or ENGL1361G: “Tolkien and the Renaissance,” which is perhaps why one Dear Blueno poster asked, “has anyone taken either ENGL 0310A (Shakespeare) or ENGL 1361G (Tolkien and the Renaissance)? I’m a stem major and am looking for a relatively light english to take and was wondering what others thought about the class!” I personally considered several Juda-

system. Students who may feel self-conscious about asking questions themselves will benefit from their peers’ questions and may even have the opportunity to submit questions anonymously. Furthermore, a panel of upperclassmen will be able to share a greater variety of experiences than a single peer advisor. For example, ECON 1110: “ Intermediate Microeconomics,” a prerequisite for most upper-level economics classes, is being taught by three professors this semester. A panel of economics concentrators

“In the face of so many unanswered questions, the University must work to fill the apparent gaps in advising and ensure that students have the information they need to succeed.” ic Studies courses but found that only three of the thirteen courses offered in the department this semester had reviews. Though some of those classes could be new and thus unable to have contributed to the Critical Review, this example shows the importance of a comprehensive student-feedback resource. The University must do more to encourage professors to return surveys for the Critical Review, particularly in departments like English and Judaic Studies where the majority of courses are not reviewed. In addition to bolstering the Critical Review, the University ought to sponsor panel-style advising events — perhaps in conjunction with Departmental Undergraduate Groups — to help fill the gaps in the current advising

would be better able to compare and contrast the different professors’ teaching styles than an individual peer advisor. Through the open curriculum and shopping period, Brown students have incredible academic freedom. And while this freedom is the primary reason many students, including myself, chose Brown, it can also be overwhelming. Ultimately, the University must do more to support students as they navigate their academic journey at Brown. Rebecca Aman ’20 can be reached rebecca_ aman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald. com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

C O M I C : F R EN C H N U R S E RY

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