37 minute read
ROB ERT CAPRON
Portrait of a Senior on Fire on friendship, love, and dwindling time BY ROBERT CAPRON ILLUSTRATED BY ASHLEY CHUNG
Valentine’s Day has passed and the end is nigh. I don’t speak of heartbreak, let alone any impending apocalypse: I refer to the t-minus-three months until the Class of 2020 passes through the Van Wickle gates for the second and final time. A certain poignancy, a melancholic sense of the inevitable, has cast a cloud over my beloved campus. Each drunken dash to Jo’s, each harrowing warning of “Caution: Bus is Turning” is but a last-minute addition to what will soon be the archives of our college lives. Naught to do but accept my fate and enjoy the last glimmers of half-fledged adulthood as best as I see fit. As I...see fit. Huh. What do I want to do with my remaining days? I’ve already made a Brown Bucket list; it’s admittedly a paltry one. The single, measly activity I can think of is getting shitfaced in our local Shake Shack (yes, they sell wine, and yes, you too can do this). But what next? Spend as much time with friends as possible? Finally find a way inside Blueno’s hollow interior? Focus on classes? Truthfully, I’ve always been a nostalgic person. I’m prone to passionate rants about childhood shows and the genius of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. Half the songs I listen to come from iconic scenes in movies; I boot up Spotify not to uncover new singles but to find comfort in familiar hits, to reminisce about the moments that left me with my jaw on the floor. I cannot help but want to memorialize my time at Brown, to condense the myriad feelings and experiences this place has given me into a single set of objects, a select series of photos, carefully curated three-to-four minute blasts into the eardrums. And now I find myself longing to uncover as many of these mementos as possible, even in the midst of the very moments I strive to preserve.
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Of course, such strategies do little but ofer flickers of what was first felt. For all our technological innovation, for all our methods and means of memorialization, we cannot replicate the past, relive the moments, reexperience the magic. So what can you do but thrive in the moments you have? Exist fully in the present? Live as if you “know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them” (thanks, Andy Bernard)? And then, when you do leave those good old days—leave them in the past, and take what is possible into the present? For they never quite die. We cannot let them.
Two weeks ago, I saw a film that changed me forever. IFF’s advance screenings have always been exciting for me; my little film snob brain loves the idea of seeing a movie earlier than most other people. In any event, I walked into Granof on a last-minute whim fully prepared to watch yet another beautifully shot but emotionally distant period piece. I walked out utterly spellbound, convinced I had just seen what was nothing less than a meditation on the meaning of why we make art and the connection fostered between its subject and its creator.
To avoid spoilers (I would never, ever spoil this for someone else), the narrative follows an aristocratic woman named Héloïse who refuses to pose for a portrait; its impending delivery to her Milanese suitor is but the first step toward a forced marriage and the complete loss of what little autonomy she has on a small island of the coast of Brittany. When a painter named Marianne arrives on the island and begins to work on a portrait in secret, she and Héloïse quickly find themselves embroiled in a passionate—and utterly forbidden—afair. If you’re sensing shades of Call Me by Your Name, you’re absolutely right; the two films are very much two sides of the same coin. But Portrait takes a divergent approach to its central romance through a melancholic examination of its inevitable dissolution. From its opening frames— in which an apprentice of the now-older Marianne questions the history behind a spellbinding painting of a woman staring out into the night—the audience is immediately positioned to experience what follows as imbued with a sense of tragedy. The film’s world will not allow its audience the luxury of hope any more than it will its characters.
Yet this could not matter less. To spoil this film is not to provide a Wikipedia-style summation of its story. No, what matters here are the particulars. The little details, the blink-and-you-miss-its, the moments where the connection between two souls on this giant rock hurtling through space defies all laws of science, society, class, and world order. It is a film where a smile cannot help but make you smile. Where a glance conveys sentiments incapable of being expressed through words. Where each successive draft of a painting, each slight variation in position and portrayal, shows further progression toward total understanding of the person before you. In short, what makes this film sing is its journey, not its destination.
I, a 21-year-old child in man’s clothing, would never dare attempt to define art in broad strokes. But I believe this film truly succeeds in capturing the flickers of passion that drive both the subject and artist of its titular portrait, such that when we finally see the finished product—its function in the “outside world” little more than a commodity to “advance” Heloise’s station in life— we have been granted access to the beauty that fostered its development, even as the purpose behind its creation proves to be little more than transactional. The Milanese suitor will see only the end product. We, the audience, have been given the true gift.
Perhaps the “best” art is that which transgresses this boundary, that which allows for subjectivity and personal history to intermix with the initial intentions behind its creation. I think of my own writing, my desperate attempts to capture the seismic shifts in worldview I have experienced over the past four years. The need to convey my newfound understanding of the world. Hell, in this very article, the pressure to capture what it is about Brown that causes me to hold it so dear. And at the end of the day, despite all my abstract and sprawling monologues about the cosmos, I find that what I really wish to tell you about are the flickers of life I have seen in others. The look of gratitude at the end of a long day of shooting film. The shared sense of exhaustion over cofees at Blue State. Giggles and goofy smiles in response to the amazing punching power of a mantis shrimp (look it up, it is insane). These moments are not planned. Not orchestrated. They are spontaneous, unexpected, and utterly profound, like the helpless smile of a woman who cannot help but love another—even as their paths forward demand otherwise, they have shared an experience. They have lived.
I will live. I will love. I will find a way into Blueno’s hollow interior. And most of all, I will know that I am doing my best in each and every one of those stupid, infuriating, beautiful little moments that make up a day on College Hill. For we cannot relive them.
“Nigella Lawson is arguably the paragon of home
cooking, especially in an era when all Food Network
seems to show are high-octane competitions involving
wicker baskets filled with rooster feet and ostrich eggs and far too much puree.” -Danielle Emerson, “bootleg access” -Anna Harvey, “bring on the butter” 2.22.19
2.23.18
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Chas W. Freeman, Jr. spoke on America’s international failures, domestic setbacks
BY KARLOS BAUTISTA SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr., Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs senior fellow, compared the current political and economic state of Washington, D.C. to that of St. Petersburg (then called Petrograd) during the last days of the Russian tsar at a lecture entitled “America in Distress” at the Joukowsky Forum.
“America (is) losing its aura of imperial purpose and invincibility,” Freeman said to a packed audience Thursday night.
A career diplomat, Freeman specialized in Chinese affairs, acting as the principal American interpreter for President Richard Nixon during his 1972 visit to Beijing. Freeman has also acted as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Freeman was also Chargé d’Affaires in Bangkok and Beijing. Director of the Watson Institute Edward Steinfeld introduced Freeman, calling him a “jaw-dropping” intellect and “illuminating” presence at the Watson. Freeman “has provided us a series of perspectives … on the shifting geopolitical situation globally, and, fortunately or unfortunately for us, that situation keeps shifting so much that we keep needing (Freeman) to come back and give us new perspective,” Steinfeld said to audience members.
Freeman outlined his views on the current state of American diplomacy and hegemony, criticizing actions taken by the federal government since the Cold War, and explaining the implications and ramifcations of U.S. involvement and infuence in foreign and domestic affairs.
“The norms of long-moderated and international and domestic behavior have been largely erased” in recent history, Freeman said. “Incivility is now ubiquitous. Political systems everywhere have been overtaken by socioeconomic and technological change, and there is no sign that (the systems) are catching up.”
Responding to how analysts have attributed the current “global and American despondency” to President Trump, Freeman said “the trends that underline the shocks we’re experiencing began long before” Trump’s emergence. “Washington’s given up on diplomacy,” he said, and instead has turned to “taunts, threats, unilateral sanctions, ultimatums, cyber warfare, drone and missile attacks, assassinations, proxy warfare and military invasions and pacifcation campaigns” to exercise its infuence abroad.
Freeman mentioned the recent American intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the nuclear agreement with Iran and the Trans-Pacifc Partnership as examples of the United States’ “capricious abrogation of treaties, … wanton sabotage of multilateral compacts and money-grubbing hedging of security commitments.”
In addition to talk of foreign policy, Freeman also spent time discussing the American dollar’s role in the global economy. “An erosion of economic primacy could have profound effects on American hegemony,” he said, adding that “U.S. ability to print money and exchange it for foreign goods and services would be reduced, if not ended.” “Little green portraits of dead presidents would be regarded as works of arts rather than things of value,” he said.
America’s shortcomings abroad and at home are “examples of American self-sabotage, not predatory foreign COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY Chas Freeman Jr., a Watson Institute senior fellow, outlined his views on the current state of American diplomacy at a lecture Thursday.
behavior,” Freeman explained. “Curing these deviations from past practice and their pernicious consequences requires introspection and reform in Washington, more than anywhere else.”
Freeman commended the Watson Institute for its Costs of War Project, saying the institute has taken up an issue Congress should be dealing with. “There is a role for our great universities in stimulating the debate about the state of the nation and its future,” he said. Freeman ended his lecture by posing a question to the audience: “Is it too much to hope that American civil society will intervene where our increasingly ineffectual government has failed to?”
Of the students that attended the lecture, Kevin Kang ’23 said the lecture made him reconsider U.S. foreign policy.
“I think a lot of Brown students are very invested in the American political system,” Kang said. “I think, in regards to foreign affairs and domestic affairs, he has some very acute observations that I think I haven’t even considered, especially when you’re talking about how the (US dollar) is the biggest pillar that supports the underlying American hegemony around the world.”
CAMERAS FROM PAGE 1
crime activity, Porter said. He stressed that DPS does not monitor University security cameras “around the clock,” including those in Hegeman. Rather, DPS uses them “as an investigative tool,” Porter said.
The decision to implement cameras was made collectively and primarily by the Offce of Campus Life, the Offce of Institutional Equity and Diversity and DPS, Bakkegard and Estes wrote in an email to the Herald. The LGBTQ Center and the Department of Facilities Management also joined conversations with those offces starting in early December to address the situation, they said.
Porter said that DPS felt it was necessary “to utilize (cameras) to assist in solving this type of crime” and emphasized the importance of preserving student privacy. “Our goal is to deter and solve this crime. Our goal is not to place cameras outside of student rooms and in other private space, but rather to put them in specifc common hallways or entrances where most of these incidents have occurred,” Porter added.
The University will later determine whether more cameras are necessary or whether the cameras can be deactivated or removed after the completion of the investigation, Bakkegard said. Before deciding to implement cameras, Bakkegard and Estes had hoped that students would come forward with information to DPS following email communications with Hegeman residents on Jan. 17 and Feb. 5. “There hasn’t been any additional information shared with DPS since those communications, and since the behavior hasn’t stopped, that was why we reached this point,” Bakkegard said.
Current Hegeman residents acknowledged the tension between student safety and privacy and questioned the University’s usage of cameras in the residence hall.
“How do you investigate something like this where it takes (perpetrators) fve seconds to commit a hate crime?” said Jack Waters ’21, one of the Hegeman resident who found the most recent swastika graffti. “Something so extreme is also so brief, and I don’t know what else (the University) could do other than condemn it” and continue to investigate, he added.
Michael LeClerc ’20.5, another Hegeman resident who discovered the anti-Semitic graffti, said that he would prefer a community-based response over cameras. Though the University originally guided students to resources like Counseling and Psychological Services and the LGBTQ Center and recently held a community gathering, LeClerc noted that the University has not yet organized a Hegeman-wide meeting addressing the incidences.
LeClerc expressed concern about “sacrifcing (residents’) ability to not feel watched” in the name of safety rather than relying on community accountability. “I think the community can and should be trusted to police itself now that it knows what to be looking for,” he said.
In the week prior to the installation, staff members of various University offces held drop-in hours in an empty suite of Hegeman B in an attempt to be present for the Hegeman community, Bakkegard said. These offces included the LGBTQ Center, the Offce of Title IX and Gender Equity, the Offce of the Chaplains and Religious Life, Brown/ RISD Hillel, CAPS, ResLife, the Offce of Campus Life, Student Support Services and the OIED.
“I haven’t asked all of the staff who were present how many students came to see them (but) staff that I happened to see reported that no students came to see them,” said Bakkegard. “I’m not sure if it just turned out not to be a good time for students to come to see us or if that wasn’t the format that was useful for them.”
Both LeClerc and Waters voiced concerns about the tension between granting more attention to perpetrators and educating the community to be attentive to these sorts of incidents. Additionally, they expressed doubt about how effective cameras will ultimately be in fnding perpetrators or addressing the issue.
“By putting surveillance cameras up, it’s not necessarily ending the problem. It’s just preventing (perpetrators) from continuing to do this one expression of the problem,” Waters said. Mollie Redman ’21, a Hegeman resident, was contacted by a DPS detective in early January while she was on campus for her Wintersession course. During winter break, the University discovered several additional instances of homophobic graffti, The Herald previuously reported. Redman shared similar concerns that cameras will give up student privacy, but may not necessarily help investigators fnd the perpetrators.
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AOTW FROM PAGE 1
season after winning the long jump at the Ivy League Championship. She also placed fourth and second at the last two Ivy League Outdoor Track and Field Championships. For her stellar long jump this weekend, she has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week.
Herald: After setting the University long jump record last year, you broke your own record again this past weekend. What inspires you to continue to push yourself?
Uche: My goals. I have a great coach (Ken Hunt), and he’s a great person to be there consistently motivating me and not allowing me to lose sight of my dreams.
You are now ranked 15th in the nation in long jump and fourth in Ivy history. Where do you see yourself by the end of the season?
Hopefully (those rankings) can improve. I don’t want to set anything in stone, but I’m defnitely reaching for it, and my goals are up there. With a great mindset and proper training … I can achieve those goals and knock some people out.
Do you do anything special in your training to get ready for meets?
With training, every day is important — we have speed day, we have tech day, we have speed endurance … I just lock into practice trusting my coach, trusting that whatever he has for me will better me as a jumper. There’s not one thing that I do that really helps me get to that one jump — it’s kind of a rocky road. The trust that I have in my workout plan is really what matters.
How do you prepare yourself for a jump on meet day?
I actually don’t get nervous until I step into the building. Before that I’m not thinking about it much. Once I step in the building, my whole focus is picking up, and I’m holding on to the cues that I’m used to and trusting my body that it knows what to do. Then all I need to do is go out and compete and everything else will come together. COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS On Saturday, Ijeoma Uche broke Brown’s long jump record.
In an individual sport like track and feld, where everyone is training for a different event, how do you work with your teammates to accomplish your goals?
My teammates are awesome. I train with the jumpers, which include high jumpers, pole vaulters, long jumpers and triple jumpers. We beneft from each other because we pick up on the little cues that we don’t personally notice. Having another set of eyes that can help you become a better athlete is really helpful, especially from people that come from another event that have to use their (bodies) in different ways. They help you fgure out how to implement that skill in your own event.
As the indoor season comes to a close, what do you hope to accomplish in the outdoor season?
It’s crazy that indoor season is almost over. Outdoor season is just another time to maintain my momentum with my jumps, keep jumping better and better and achieve more goals that I have for myself. Again, I don’t like to set concrete goals because things change day to day. Keeping the same momentum, attitude and heart for my sport will take me a long way.
get everything?’”
The appeals, Tilton added, come from a common piece of advice: the idea that students should “never take the frst offer.”
Tilton estimated that 45 percent of accepted frst-years receiving fnancial aid ask for a “second look.”
Oscar Barbaza ’23 fell into Tilton’s estimated 45 percent: he fled an appeal almost immediately after the University admitted him. Without an increase in aid, Barbaza said he likely would have attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in his hometown.
Students also often leverage fnancial aid packages from other institutions. In response, the University will examine whether they differ signifcantly from Brown’s offer or include merit-based aid, Tilton said.
“We look at (appeals) individually” in order to determine if the offce might have missed a signifcant detail in a student’s fnancial application, Tilton said, mentioning a case where a student forgot to disclose that they had a sibling paying for college at an Ivy League school.
When students who have already enrolled appeal their fnancial aid, Tilton said, it usually has to do with a major fnancial shift in their life. “For an appeal, something drastic has happened. There’s going to be a diffcult time meeting the expected contribution,” he said. Other discussions about minor aid changes can happen without the appeals process.
Emily Redolf Tezzat ’21 has appealed her fnancial aid twice since enrolling at the University: once at the end of her freshman year when her mother changed jobs and again before studying abroad her junior year.
Before her first appeal, when Redolf Tezzat realized that her aid package would not be suffcient given her mother’s recent change in employment, stress immediately set in. She thought through a number of options, including seeking help from extended family, applying for scholarships or taking on an additional on-campus job. Ultimately, she decided to appeal her package.
No matter if they’re an admitted student or already enrolled, Tilton said, students should reach out to the Offce of Financial Aid before fling an appeal. “Let us know that something’s come up,” Tilton said. Students are assigned a fnancial aid counselor who walks them through whether or not they should appeal and offers them relevant information once they decide to start the process.
“We’d be able to say, ‘This is what we’d expect would be helpful,’” he said. “It’s helpful for you and your family to think about what you say to us when you’re appealing your situation.”
Barbaza said that making his circumstances clear and having his family’s fnancial information prepared — tax returns, other fnancial statements and predicted family income — were pivotal factors when he spoke with an aid counselor.
After a counselor meeting, students fll out an appeal form to request a “re
view of (their) fnancial aid award.”
Listing a number of potential reasons for an appeal, including a “signifcant loss of income” due to a change in employment, a death in the family and high medical, educational or familial expenses, the form says the University won’t consider an appeal on the basis of personal expenses or high consumer debt, expenses that have yet to occur or siblings in graduate school.
The form also requires a detailed explanation and documentation of new costs. In some situations, appeals also require parents’ tax returns and a W-2 form.
For Micah Bruning ’22, the appeals process began when his mother told him about a costly surgery she would need to treat cancer. The process became stressful when Bruning explained to his parents the myriad of forms and documents needed for a successful appeal.
“It’s diffcult to try and explain what you need,” Bruning said. “They don’t always understand how the University’s bureaucratic process works (or) why the University needs certain stuff.”
Once fled, appeals go to a committee for review, Tilton said. The speed of the process varies based on the time of year. It might take 48 hours to a week mid-year, but it could take far longer in the summer, after fnancial aid awards are released in June.
Given that students may see aid as a deciding factor in choosing between schools, the offce tries to process the appeals of incoming first-years as “quickly as possible,” Tilton said.
Barbaza said he received a new package with considerable time to spare. “That was the difference between me staying in my hometown and me going here,” he said.
The difference in packages, he said, was notable but not major: the frst offer relied on his submitted FAFSA and CSS profle, and the second offer more closely refected additional documents and explanations.
In Redolf Tezzat’s case, making a compelling case to an aid counselor before submitting an appeal was the most pivotal part of the process.
“You have to prepare to be politely aggressive,” she said. “Being able to argue for the fact that you genuinely do not have that money and point to specifc parts of your tax returns or changes in your income — they can’t really argue against facts.”
Students don’t appeal for a specifc amount of money, Tilton said, but he emphasized that most commonly, an appeal leads to some change in an aid package, large or small.
Bruning, Redolf Tezzat and Barbaza all received increases in aid from the appeals process, but the transparency and accessibility of the process could still be improved, they said.
When Bruning’s appeal went through, he received an additional $3,500, but his mother’s surgery cost roughly $5,000 after insurance.
“They gave me a reduction in my total costs, but they didn’t really justify why,” he said, unsure if the gap between the additional aid and the cost of his mom’s surgery had to do with changes to his family’s income the year he appealed. And while the appeals process made a difference for Redolf Tezzat — within three weeks of submitting her appeal for her sophomore year, the aid offce updated her award — she said the process remains largely inaccessible.
“I have helped so many people in my class, some of my upperclassmen friends, sophomores with the appeals process,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know you can appeal in the frst place.” An additional challenge posed is the unexpected nature and timing of changes in circumstances, which are frequently out of students’ control, Redolf Tezzat said.
“These things happen when students are in the middle of midterms. We have our personal lives with our clubs and our family drama,” Redolf Tezzat said. “It can be very nerve-wracking, asking for money — it takes a lot of swallowing your pride, to do what is institutionalized begging.”
She added that she “showed up at (the Financial Aid Offce), and as we were talking, the stress collapsed in on me. I started crying.”
Redolf Tezzat said she found it helpful to work through her case with a friend, a CAPS counselor and a dean before bringing it to the Offce of Financial Aid.
Barbaza, though, said that in the end, he thinks the Offce of Financial Aid is “doing what they should be doing.”
“They were very helpful,” he said. “A couple of my friends appealed and got a portion of what they asked for. They’re giving everybody a fair shot at it.”
CORRECTION
A previous version of the Feb. 20 article “Paxson and Locke refect on ‘Building on Distinction’” described President Paxson as saying it would be diffcult to predict when the University could implement a fully need-blind admission process for international, transfer, undocumented and DACA students. In fact, President Paxson’s statement only referred to international students; undocumented and DACA students have been admitted on a need-blind basis since the class which entered in fall 2017. The Herald regrets the error.
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JONATHAN DOUGLAS ’20 STAFF COLUMNIST
In 2013, President Christina Paxson P’19 unveiled her 10-year strategic plan, “Building on Distinction .” The plan called upon the Brown community to “enhance our capacity in the creative use of online technologies” through “aggressive experimentation in new modes of education.” Just a year earlier, the University had introduced its frst Massive Open Online Course on Coursera, and a majority of students supported the move. Yet three years later, progress had slowed — credit-bearing online courses had not been introduced for undergraduates, despite years of planning and initial student enthusiasm.
This academic year, Brown has offered a few online courses, but the program remains limited to only seven concentrations out of more than 80. The vast majority of online courses are scheduled outside of the typical academic year, and few professors have agreed to teach fully online — many classes are repeats from the same faculty members. The University must further expand its effort to bring courses fully online. Students have an unmet educational need, and online courses will provide them with greater fexibility while maintaining academic rigor. The University’s wide array of dedicated resources to digital learning are well positioned to bring courses out of the classroom and onto the internet; initial experiments in online classes have proved successful. It is thus imperative that more faculty members take a leap of faith and move their content fully online, overcoming their institutional inertia toward online learning. The number of students that support online course offerings has likely only grown since the Fall 2012 poll and the beginning of the online course offering process. In the last eight years, online learning has become increasingly commonplace, both inside and outside the classroom. Professors have integrated online discussion posts, video content and lecture materials onto Canvas pages and course websites, and students have become increasingly reliant on YouTube videos, sophisticated software and online practice problems that enhance learning. Furthermore, students today naturally understand how to navigate online resources, whereas eight years ago students were a part of the transition from the physical to the digital.
The barriers to education that students face have not changed either. Online learning’s fexible timing makes it an attractive alternative for several categories of students. Athletes with dif
fcult travel schedules, STEM students with long lab blocks and art students with lengthy studios all beneft from the ability to attend class and complete assignments outside of the typical class schedule. Low-income students beneft as well from the fexibility, which gives them the ability to work shifts required to support themselves throughout school.
Moreover, certain students may beneft from the inherent nature of an online platform. Students who speak English as a second language or
also partners with edX — and is obligated to produce 12 courses by May 2020 — thus far only fve courses have been offered, and the last course ended in Fall 2018.
As part of its effort to implement online materials and fully-online courses into the University’s curriculum, Brown has built up a sizable team solely dedicated to developing online course content. Within the Computing and Information Services department, Brown has an entire team under Catherine Zabriskie, senior academic tech
Enrollment in Online Courses Per Semester
200
150
100
50
are introverted beneft from the mask of online pseudo-anonymity. Many students are more comfortable participating in class and interacting with their classmates online, according to Elizabeth Taylor MA’84 PhD’89, distinguished senior lecturer in English, who has taught several online courses at the University. Additionally, students who fnd themselves away from campus for extended periods of time beneft from the ability to complete coursework anywhere.
All together, these different groups account for well more than a majority of undergraduates. And while some may argue that there are some innate disadvantages to online education, for some types of students, it is clear that online platforms are advantageous.
Brown’s peer schools have recognized the widespread student need and have taken action. The University of Pennsylvania now offers a full undergraduate degree online, while Harvard and MIT have pushed free, universal access to online courses through their platform edX. These examples are only two among hundreds of others from top schools across the country. Although Brown nology offcer, that works with professors to bring more content online and enhance the learning experience of students. The team of over 30 staff members under Zabriskie integrates media, Canvas functionality and other features into classes and helps professors fully understand the range of options available to them. The group was originally only responsible for integrating online course content into existing courses. But in summer 2019, the team within the School of Professional Studies that helped bring courses fully online for Brown’s programs within that school was moved under CIS, further enhancing the department’s capabilities. In addition to CIS, the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning offers similar help to faculty members, though it does not exclusively focus on online resources.
Despite both student need and this strong institutional backing, Brown has yet to make a signifcant foray into online courses for undergraduates. This disparity may be explained by faculty reluctance to shift from in-person to online learning. The hesitance towards online learning is understandable. Professors are required to completely 0 F S W S 2017 2018 2019 2020 F S W S F S W S F S W *Totals were calculated by adding the number of students enrolled in each class. Students may have been enrolled in more than one class at a time.
Source: Courses@Brown USHA BHALLA / HERALD shift their lecture material online, a time-intensive and often diffcult process with no universally-accepted methods of doing so. Faculty members are forced to shift their schedules to accommodate the lack of rigid structure associated with the course and the scheduling needs of the students taking it, Taylor said. Furthermore, professors are comfortable teaching using methods that they have implemented for decades, which have been successful for generations of students including themselves, and they are thus reluctant to change.
With each of these fundamental barriers blocking online course implementation, it’s surprising that any professors at Brown are willing to teach online. If anything, there is a strong disincentive to try teaching new online courses, especially for faculty members seeking tenure that are evaluated on their teaching.
Brown must therefore lower these barriers and provide incentives to professors to teach online. Adventurous faculty members should be rewarded with reduced teaching loads. Online professor availability should be limited to certain hours, giving faculty members the ability to manage their time more effectively. While some professors do this naturally, a university-mandated offine period would lessen the hesitance from faculty members. Tenure-track professors should be rewarded for experimenting with online teaching, easing the fear of failure at a critical juncture in their careers. The University should also hire faculty members who wish to teach online, rather than attempting to persuade current members to change their teaching style. Together, these changes will help Brown experiment with online methods of learning more effciently and effectively.
When choosing courses to bring online, the University would be smart to increase its focus on courses with large enrollments but limited teaching capacity, as well as those with material that does not change from year to year, ensuring that online content is reusable. Furthermore, experimenting across departments rather than a select few will expose the greatest possible number of students to fully-online methods.
Brown can strengthen its mission to provide the highest quality education through innovative and creative means online. Moreover, taking these efforts one step further and providing material to the broader world will ensure that Brown has a lasting impact on the global learning community.
Jonathan Douglas ’20 can be reached at jonathan_douglas@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Opinions pieces published in The Herald — which include columns, op-eds , letters to the editor and editorials — are written independently of news coverage.
Let Medicare negotiate with Big Pharma to drive down pharmaceutical prices
ARJUN SHANMUGAM ’23 STAFF COLUMNIST
By the time Alec Raeshawn Smith’s family had made it over to his apartment in June of 2017, it was too late. He was already dead.
Smith was a Type 1 diabetic, who made the fatal decision to ration his insulin once he realized that he would be unable to afford its $1,300 monthly price tag. His death is just one of many examples of the destructive impact of rising drug prices in America.
Indeed, the sheer cost of drugs in the United States sheds light on what has become a case study in market failure. Research can attest to the exorbitant price tags of prescription medication, which are nearly four times higher, on average, than in other developed nations. And the problem is getting worse. Between 2008 and 2016 alone, the price of the most popular brand-name drugs in this country more than tripled.
These costs weigh on the public in two main ways: First, they squeeze the budgets of millions of Americans who rely on prescription drugs; second, they leave taxpayers to foot the bill for ballooning expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The solution — which is, unsurprisingly, hamstrung in Congress — is clear. Medicare needs to leverage the billions in revenue it provides for pharmaceutical companies in order to negotiate lower drug prices. Doing so would mean enormous savings for consumers and the government alike. But consider frst that Medicare wasn’t involved at all in the prescription drug industry until 2003. That was when the Medicare Modernization Act established what we know as Medicare Part D. Under this program, Medicare established contracts with hundreds of insurance providers, who offer insurance plans — bankrolled by the government — that cover prescription drug costs for millions of senior citizens.
But there’s a catch. Pharmaceutical companies knew that this program would turn the government into their largest customer overnight; this would put these industry giants at the mercy of Medicare when it came time to set prices. Big Pharma’s industry lobbyists thus worked hard to slip the “noninterference” clause into the MMA, banning Medicare from being involved with price negotiations, from determining the coverage status of medications and from instituting reimbursements. Instead, these abilities fell to the myriad of insurance providers that offer Medicare Part D plans.
It was genius, albeit insidious: The enormous infuence held by the pharmaceutical industry’s largest buyer was divided among hundreds of players, all competing with one another and unlikely to hold manufacturers accountable for price hikes and other monopolistic behaviors. If a given Part D provider threatened, say, to stop covering a drug because of its sky-high price, its manufacturer would have hundreds of other providers to choose from. Big Pharma successfully turned the system into a seller’s market.
Allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices would concentrate leverage in a single entity, paving the way for real concessions from large frms. Medicare accounts for about one third of their revenue; pharmaceutical companies would have no choice but to negotiate directly with Medicare to earn spots on a national formulary — the list of drugs covered by Medicare plans.
Indeed, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Offce, H.R. 3, the most recent congressional proposal to cede control of drug price negotiations to Medicare, would save over $350 billion by 2029. Those who worry that lower drug prices would reduce the incentive for innovation in pharmaceutical research should recognize that even a fraction of the money saved exceeds the research and development spending of every major pharmaceutical company combined. The government could put some of those billions toward research grants in both the private and public sectors to ensure that new medications continue to come to market, while still having funds left over to put toward solving a plethora of other social issues. The lower costs of prescription medication would spill over into non-Medicare insurance markets as well, as H.R. 3 demands that renegotiated prices are offered to private sector buyers. This means lower costs for everyone — a welcome change in a country where the aggregate cost of health care is projected to hit $6 trillion by 2027. No American should die because they cannot afford life-saving medication. Existing health care law puts Big Pharma’s profts over the lives of people like Alec Raeshawn Smith. It is time for that to change.
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