SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020
VOLUME CLV, ISSUE 18
SCIENCE & RESEARCH
Jessica Meir ’99 virtually visits U. from ISS Meir ’99 answers student questions about NASA experiences, climate change
METRO
Rhode Island House votes to ban ‘ghost guns’ Activists, SecondAmendment protesters rally at Rhode Island State House
BY CATE RYAN SENIOR SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITOR Every year, alums from around the world visit the University to see how the campus has evolved in their absence and to interact with a new generation of Brunonians. On Thursday, Jessica Meir ’99 made perhaps the most unique homecoming to her alma mater as she spoke to students, faculty and community members from her current post aboard the International Space Station. While the visit was virtual — she was broadcast through a video chat in the Salomon Center — her presence was palpable in the excitement of students and staff alike who cheered when the video chat was projected above the stage. Thursday’s event featured opening remarks by Dean of the College Rashid Zia ’01 and Distinguished Professor of Geological Sciences Jim Head PhD’69. President Christina Paxson P’19 was also present to welcome Meir to the
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
BY KARLOS BAUTISTA SENIOR STAFF WRITER
LEON JIANG / HERALD
Jessica Meir ’99, a member of NASA’s first all-female space walk, was broadcast through a video chat in the Salomon Center Thursday. screen before a question-and-answer session. The event was part of the University’s yearlong celebration of the Open Curriculum at 50. Originally scheduled to occur during Family Weekend in October, the event was postponed when Meir was slated for a historic space walk. Alongside Christina Koch, a fellow NASA astronaut who returned to Earth Feb. 6 after 328 days in orbit, Meir was part of NASA’s first all-female space walk. When the event was moved, it gave students and faculty the opportunity to fill the void in their schedule by turning their attention toward the history-making moment, Zia said. “It was a fortunate series of
events that led us there because there were so many more people on campus aware of (Meir’s) accomplishments and watching with us,” Zia said. “We really need to make sure that what we are doing as we are moving forward is a reflection of our society, a reflection of all of humankind,” Meir said, reflecting on the significance of the space walk. “As astronauts, we are the face representing that and we need to make sure we are representing everyone.” During the question and answer portion of the event, Bella Carlos ’21,
SEE NASA PAGE 10
The Rhode Island House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would ban 3D-printed guns and other untraceable firearms, commonly known as “ghost guns,” according to a press release from the State of Rhode Island General Assembly. University gun violence prevention group Thoughts Prayers Action and other supporters of Bill 2020-H 7102 held a rally in the Rhode Island State House rotunda before the vote. Members of the Rhode Island 2nd Amendment Coalition also gathered in the rotunda to oppose the bill. Thoughts Prayers Action planned the rally, entitled “Valentines Not Gun Violence: Rally for Our Loved Ones,” for the day before the two-year anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida, that left 17 people dead and another 17 injured. Gabe Mernoff ’22, co-director of the group, said that it was “serendipitous” that the House vote had been rescheduled from last week to the same day as the rally, meaning more people would be in attendance. “We’re really sending a strong message, a love-themed message that people should act, that politicians should act on these bills,” Mernoff said. “We want to bring people together. It’s hard to do that on this issue but we want to do that the best we can. And we want to spread a positive message and hopefully help reduce gun violence in Rhode Island.” Mernoff explained the danger of ghost guns: “They don’t have a serial number, they’re impossible to track.” He cited testimony from Colonel James Manni, head of the R.I. State Police, who told the R.I. Senate Judiciary Committee Jan. 21 that of 52 guns seized from a motorcycle gang a year and a half ago, 11 were ghost guns. Six speakers, including General Treasurer Seth Magaziner ’06, two youth gun violence activists, two Provi-
SEE GUNS PAGE 2
UNIVERSITY NEWS
SPORTS
Students want more say in U. financial policies
Beaudoin ’20 fuels Bears’ offense over weekend
UCS undergraduate poll reveals student desire for gift, investment decision-making ability CAELYN PENDER SENIOR STAFF WRITER According to the 2019 Undergraduate Council of Students Fall Poll Report, 73.8 percent of undergraduate students want more decision-making ability in the University’s gift-acceptance and investment policies. UCS surveyed 2,670 undergraduate students between Oct. 30 and Nov. 8, 2019, immediately after the University’s Oct. 26 release of their gift acceptance and investment policy. The policy included a statement that the acceptance of a gift does not imply University endorsement of the donor’s “views, opinions, businesses or activities.” The poll’s results appear “very consistent” with student opinion, UCS President William Zhou ’20 said. Many students believe that accepting a gift comes “with more implications for how the University views a donor or a company’s actions,” he continued.
Zhou thinks that many students have strong opinions on gift acceptance and investment decisions because they view the University as a “moral high ground” and “students want to be able to uphold that vision.” Among students who desire greater decision-making ability, 41 percent prefer student participation in working groups and committees, 38 percent prefer an anonymous online feedback form, 20 percent prefer community forums or town halls and 1 percent suggested other options as methods for increasing student input, according to the poll. President Christina Paxson P’19 wrote in a statement to The Herald that the University “has a strong commitment to shared governance” with the student body in cases such as student feedback on the academic curriculum. “With respect to the core financial matters, while the Corporation holds ultimate fiduciary responsibility by law, shared governance means that faculty, staff and students can and do play advisory roles,” she wrote. “Students provide valuable input through these advisory committees. Ultimately,
SEE GIFT PAGE 10
Senior forward scores twice, gives Bruno early lead over No. 15 Quinnipiac Saturday BY ALEXANDRA RUSSELL SENIOR REPORTER The men’s hockey team earned a critical three points in conference play last weekend, eclipsing Princeton 4-3 in a comeback victory Friday and tying No. 15 Quinnipiac University 2-2 Saturday. The Bears’ prolific offense was highlighted by an impressive performance from Brent Beaudoin ’20, who scored a pair of goals to give the team an early lead over the Bobcats. Beaudoin also recorded an assist against Princeton the night prior to close out the weekend with a trio of points. Since arriving at the University in 2016, Beaudoin has made a significant mark on the Brown hockey program, becoming the first member of the current squad to skate in over 100 games throughout his collegiate career. The forward, who now leads Bruno as an assistant captain, has been a key contributor to Brown’s offense, finishing in the top five on the team in scoring in each of his seasons as a Bear. He has recorded seven goals and five assists in
News
S&R
Commentary
Sharpe House renovations connect History department, make all floors accessible Page 2
U. Researchers to begin innovative Alzheimer’s clinical trial Page 9
Frankel ’20: The U.S. should look to the Netherlands to improve sex education. Page 11
DANIELLE EMERSON / HERALD
Brent Beaudoin ’20, who posted two goals and an assist last weekend, has recorded seven goals and five assists this season. his senior campaign so far. For his outstanding performances on the ice this weekend and throughout the season, Beaudoin has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week. Herald: Congratulations on the three-point weekend! What were those games like for you? Beaudoin: Personally I felt like they were good stepping stones —the biggest part for my game this year is trying to
play consistent and do what I can to help the team win. So for me, I felt like I did my part this weekend, and that was a good feeling. What are your individual and team goals before playoffs begin in March? Right now our focus is getting home ice in the playoffs. We have a couple more games — about six I believe — this
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Completed Sharpe House renovations unify History department New bridge connects Sharpe, Peter Green houses, all floors now accessible BY TYLER JACOBSON STAFF WRITER After 18 months of renovations, Sharpe House reopened its doors to history professors and students alike last January. Newly connected to Peter Green House on Brown Street via a glass bridge on the second and third floors and an open-air loggia on the ground floor, Sharpe House now boasts an elevator that makes all of its floors fully accessible to people with physical disabilities. The renovations also added two classrooms to Sharpe House, one by converting a faculty office and the other by adding an extension to the building, said Robert Self, professor and chair of the history department. “The additions really leveraged the potential to have more of a symbiotic relationship between the two buildings,” said Albert Garcia, principal and
AOTW FROM PAGE 1 year, so we need to win probably three of them to get home ice. That’s pretty much our main focus right now. When did you first start playing hockey? I actually started skating when I was two. I’m not sure exactly when hockey came into the picture, but I’ve been on skates for a very long time. Did you play any other sports growing up? Yeah, I played a little bit of baseball. I didn’t really find it too interesting — it was a little boring for me. I played soccer, I liked soccer a lot — I actually played (it) up through middle school and then stopped playing to focus on hockey. Do you have a favorite NHL team and a player that you like to watch? I don’t have a particular team, but the Toronto Maple Leafs are a fun team to watch with Auston Matthews. The Chicago Blackhawks are fun. Being from the New England area, I like to watch the (Boston) Bruins as well, and they’ve had pretty good success this year, being in first place right now. Do you have a favorite game day breakfast or meal? I eat the same thing every game day. I wake up, and I have three eggs over easy with some sriracha and two strips of turkey bacon and a bowl of oatmeal with honey. Is there anything that you like to do to get in the zone and mentally prepare for a game? Yeah, for me it’s mostly about routine. I wouldn’t say I’m superstitious — I just believe in doing things consistently the same way, and that will get you in the mindset of a game. For me it’s waking up at the same time, eating breakfast, going to the rink, doing … some kind of light cardio where you’re moving around, and then rolling out. … And then from there I go home, maybe read a book for a little bit until (our) team meal. The team meal is fun: You get to talk to the guys a
co-owner of KITE Architects, the company tasked with renovating Sharpe House. “There’s a very open, even flow from one building to another. … They in effect act as one.” The main priorities for the renovations included accessibility within the building, connectivity between the Sharpe and Peter Green houses and increased natural light in the buildings, Self said. The renovations reimagined the layout of the interior of Sharpe House. Once a duplex separated by a party wall, the old Sharpe House had only one door per floor that connected the two halves of the building, Self said, making it a “very confusing and challenging building to navigate.” KITE Architects tore down the dividing wall and created a new core for the building, which “eliminated the sense of the building being divided in half,” Self added. “It’s a much more comfortable space for those kinds of informal interactions,” in which students could study and chat with professors. The new bridge connecting the two houses also makes all floors of Peter Green House accessible. “As the design
little bit, get some food in you. Then I go home, take a nap, and then when I wake up I just go straight to the rink, and then from there I’ve got another list of things I do once I get to the rink. Do you like to listen to music when you work out? What do you like to listen to? I feel like I’m kind of weird in a sense where I don’t need to listen to music when I work out — I don’t usually wear headphones. Even if there isn’t any music playing, I’ll just work out, I don’t know. I do enjoy the music in the weight room occasionally, … but I’m not usually the one that’s choosing the songs. What do you like to do to relax on your own time? I like to read, and I like to watch a couple of games — there’s usually a game on pretty much every night. And then obviously get into some kind of show, if I’m into a Netflix show or something I’ll kind of binge-watch — I’ll probably just watch the whole series if it’s available. Do you have any plans for after graduation? I’m hoping to play professionally, (I’m) not sure where. I haven’t really explored the whole possibility yet — for me the next step is getting an agent basically and then seeing what interest there is. I’d like to play after school, so I’ll basically go wherever I’m wanted. Has there been a most memorable moment or experience in your Brown career? Sweeping Quinnipiac last year at their rink was a pretty awesome thing. The past few years, we had lost to them in the playoffs (and) Princeton too, so last year it was really nice (that) we got to beat them at home in overtime and then beat Quinnipiac as well in their own rink. For me that was kind of a personal justice for the team. The Bears face off against Dartmouth tonight and No. 17 Harvard Saturday. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
unfolded,” Garcia said, “we found that ... if we configured the building in a certain way, we could potentially solve accessibility issues in the Peter Green building.” Previously, only two of the three floors of the Peter Green House were accessible. “I have nothing but positive, incredible things to say about KITE with the job they did,” Self said. He also praised KITE Architects’ use of glass to bring natural light “as deep into the building as possible.” Kaylee Ding ’20, co-coordinator for the History Departmental Undergraduate Group, said that she likes “that it’s all connected.” “It’s nice that the history department is in one building since it makes it easier to build a community between history concentrators and for the professors to be so close” to one another, she said. During the renovations, professors and faculty situated in the Sharpe House were relocated to Norwood House and Arnold Laboratories. “It’s been frustrating having the history department located in so many different places,” she said. The renovation process included the relocation of Sharpe House from
NICOLE KIM / HERALD
The renovations, which took 18 months, added faculty offices, classrooms and accessibility to Sharpe House. its previous location on Angell Street using movable dollies in December 2018. The Sharpe House was moved to create space for the new Performing Arts Center between Angell and Olive streets, The Herald previously reported. The inspiration behind the renovations for Garcia came from the Victorian-style of Sharpe House itself. “Whenever you are working with historic buildings, one of the more
important things is to recognize and be respectful of the way the original building was fabricated as you consider the new construction.” He modeled the renovations by incorporating the material and stylistic choices of the old Sharpe House. “As a history department, it was a nice parallel,” Garcia said. “The building becomes a nice metaphor to look toward the past and understand … how we look toward the future.”
GUNS FROM PAGE 1 dence reverends and a survivor of gun violence gave speeches before the vote in favor of the proposed legislation. Gov. Gina Raimondo was slated to speak, but canceled before the rally. Supporters of the bill chanted “thoughts and prayers are not enough!” while opposing protesters interjected with shouts and boos. They interrupted the speeches with calls for “no new laws” and to “love our 2nd Amendment” and “protect it till the end.” Members of the 2nd Amendment Coalition in yellow t-shirts held signs reading “If lawful gun owners were the problem you’d know it!” Supporters of Thoughts Prayers Action held signs and wore t-shirts reading “Valentines not Violence,” which were designed by One Gun Gone, a Rhode Island student group aimed at preventing gun violence through visual art. Scott Lapham, who founded the group, has lost four of his students to gun violence in Providence. Lapham started creating art around gun violence prevention after seeing that gun violence “was taking more people from my life than chronic disease or car accidents.” After the speeches, supporters and protesters moved to the gallery above the House chamber, where the vote would take place. Members of the Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence passed out Valentine’s Day cards in support of the bill to representatives seated in the chamber, while 2nd-Amendment protesters assembled outside the chamber doors. Nina Gregg, a Rhode Island School of Design student who graduated from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2016, said “it was a really big shock and quite frustrating” to see protesters opposing the legislation. “In this day and age, people still don’t understand the goal of what we’re trying to do” in preventing gun violence, she said. “I wish they did.” Dan Bidondi, an organizer for the Rhode Island 2nd Amendment Coalition, said that banning ghost guns “would be an attack against our 2nd
KARLOS BAUTISTA / HERALD
Pro-gun-control and Second-Amendment activists rally in the State House before Representatives voted on a bill to ban “ghost guns.” Amendment rights.” Brenda Jacob, secretary of the Rhode Island Revolver and Rifle Association, said she feels like “every time something violent happens, that I’m the one who’s paying the price for it because they come after us and they want to take our guns, they want to restrict us more and more.” She said that the creators of the ghost-gun bill “don’t focus on the criminals, and they also don’t help with mental health
issues.” Supporters of the ghost-gun bill also rallied in support of another gun-control bill that the House of Representatives may vote on soon. This second bill would ban the use of high capacity magazines, limiting the maximum number of bullets in a magazine to 10. Limiting magazine capacity would make it “so you have to reload more … (and) help prevent mass shootings,” Mernoff said.
In This Issue
Bad Romance
JULIAN TOWERS 7
Sweet Hearts
DANA SCHNEIDER 6
To All The Friends I’ve Loved Before
KAITLAN BUI 5
The Era of E-boys
GAYA GUPTA 4
GRIFFIN PLAAG 8
The Whole Universe in Opals
postCover by Hee Won Chung
FEB 14
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VOL 25 —
ISSUE 13
FEATURE
The Era of E-boys
the hard truth about soft-boys BY GAYA GUPTA ILLUSTRATED BY RÉMY POISSON
O
ver winter break, I did what I promised myself I would never do: I downloaded TikTok. I am quick to tell people it began as a joke. Some close friends from back home had started making TikTok dances for fun and, despite being warned about the app’s addictive videos and cringey trends, I wanted to see what my friends were up to—only that (I swear). But when I began swiping through TikTok’s FYP (For You Page), a feed that includes popular videos catered to a wide range of tastes and categories, things rapidly deteriorated. TikTok’s videos are designed to be addictive. They’re short (no more than a minute), largely feature visually pleasing dances set to trendy music, and joke about relatable—and sometimes taboo—topics that people rarely talk about on other forms of social media, like eating cereal for dinner when the dining hall food sucks, or feeling the need to straighten curly hair in order to be viewed as beautiful. I remember realizing in horror that TikTok wasn’t just a joke anymore when I rewatched a video that I thought was actually really
funny—and, worse, when I paused to download and send that video to a friend. Turns out, what I had initially found so off-putting about TikTok—users’ prevailing, desperate drive to go viral—in fact entertained me. And the more I scrolled and saved, the more TikTok’s algorithms tailored its FYP to appeal to my preferences, further enabling my vice. By the end of winter break, despite my best intentions, I had saved more than 30 TikToks to my phone. During my time on TikTok (now my secondmost used app after Messages), I came across many interesting trends, like the Renegade dance (what my friends back home first tried to recreate, consisting of claps, “whoas,” and other body swivels made famous by Charli D’Amelio), the Hype House (a mansion in LA that houses a collective of TikTok’s most elite and viral influencers), and, especially relevant to me, a surprising amount of content commiserating about the difficulties of being an ABCD, or American-Born Confused Desi, struggling to reconcile American culture at school with strict, South Asian parents and tradition at home.
But my most surprising find? The e-boy. The most popular guys on TikTok are not what I expected—they lack some of American society’s most traditional features of masculinity. Many consider themselves e-boys, or as Urban Dictionary defines them, “a boy who has black painted nails, skates, wears black clothes and chains and beanies, and they sometimes have their hair parted down the middle.” This surprised me; I expected an app that relies so heavily on physical appearance to adhere rigidly to typical (and toxic) American standards of attractiveness for men. Yet the most popular male TikTokers are not known for their chiseled abs or muscular physiques. They’re defined by their baggy dark clothing, thinness, androgyny, distinct lack of muscles, and painted nails. To be sure, the e-boys of TikTok are still objectively attractive straight white males, but their aesthetic, which has since become mainstream, draws on punk, alternative, and goth subcultures. Their viral videos often feel moody, even subversive, including intense stares at the camera which highlight their jawlines and alternative, edgy background music. Their blackpainted fingernails match the aesthetic of their dark clothing and silver chains. How has TikTok, one of today’s most popular apps, managed to popularize trends that once belonged to ostracized communities? I was first introduced to the e-boys of TikTok through Chase Hudson, a seventeen-year-old with more than 12 million followers who showed up on my FYP. I immediately noticed his painted nails and middle part (which vaguely reminded me of a young Leonardo DiCaprio) and simultaneously noticed the abundance of videos made by female users dedicated to fawning over him (just search #chasehudson on TikTok). Yet for all Hudson’s popularity and physical appeal, he’s not your typical bro-y guy. He’s not sought out explicitly for his physique; he’s also known for his emotional and edgy online persona, displaying traits which don’t typically define masculinity. I am not a longtime TikTok user, nor am I wellversed in the subcultures that e-boys draw from, but Ka’Dia Dhatnubia dissects these influences in a publication of SCAD, or Savannah College of Art and Design. Despite visible similarities between e-boy
Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, I love love. Frankly, I love everything about it. I love the warm giddy feeling of having a crush, the adventure of getting to know someone, and the deep comfort of someone getting to know you better than anyone else. I love friend love and romantic love and amorphous love— but I’m getting ahead of myself. To back up a little bit: It’s Valentine’s Day, and even though this is clearly a holiday designed entirely to perpetuate capitalism and the myth that we need a partner to feel whole, I’m always a bit enamored of the way the whole world turns pink and lovely for a day. We celebrate so many things I don’t even know about (no one’s ever fully explained Arbor Day to me), so why not love? That being said, I get the skepticism around Valentine’s Day. Do we really want CVS chocolates and a cheesy Hallmark card? Why isn’t it enough to just love the people you love all year round? I propose the radical idea: Celebrate today with the ones you love, and go buck vwild! Go crazy places with the friends you adore, Skype your
4!POST–
parents and catch up for hours, and maybe even stream your favorite rom-com with your boo somewhere online. Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be all commercial and weird—this year, whether you love love or hate love, post- has the issue for you! Our Feature talks about the phenomena of soft boys and e-boys, and how the media portrays masculinity. In Narrative, one author writes a love letter to all of her friends and meditates on the evolution of friendships, and another author uses conversation hearts as prompts for vignettes about love. Finally, in Arts & Culture, we have a piece about unconventional love songs and the struggle to emote, and another about the film Uncut Gems and its exploration of the relationship between material goods, the soul, and love. Love isn’t simple—it’s complicated and exists in many forms and iterations, and there’s no better way to celebrate its multifaceted nature than by cuddling up with a copy of post-.
Love,
Nicole Fegan Narrative Managing Editor
Tinder Bio Catchphrases 1. Here for a good time, not a long time 2. *A blatant falsehood about my height* if it matters 3. Swipe right to be on my TikTok 4. Last pic is my dog 5. Super likes are accidents 6. Swipe right, I’ll swipe you into the Ratty 7. I’ll make it weird irl 8. We don’t bite…unless you like it 9. Meet me in Blueno 10. Lookin for a waifu
fashion and emo, goth, and punk trends (mostly-black aesthetics consisting of band tees, tight jeans, and lots of layers), Dhatnubia argues that an e-boy’s style is strategically fitted to accentuate their thinness, diverging from the ill-fitting and wrinkled looks of the past era. Unlike the various communities that have inspired them, e-boys are ultimately inseparable from the internet: The e stands for electronic, after all. What defines an e-boy above all, as one Vox article explains, is that he exists solely online in the form of posts, videos, and tweets. Still, although e-boys may have been conceived on the internet, they are not bound to it. A recent Vox article discusses how some of TikTok’s most popular users are branching out to pursue mainstream celebrity status. Last month, Hudson signed onto WMA, a London-based digital talent agency representing creatives found on social media. Other famous TikTokers, like sisters Charli and Dixie D’Amelio, are doing the same. Given Hudson’s popularity on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to continue his ascent within mainstream media. And, in some ways, the e-boy and soft-boy aesthetics exemplified by internet stars like Hudson has already permeated society’s ideals of masculinity. Remember in 2010 when Channing Tatum was all the rage? Or even way back in the early 2000s, when actors like Brad Pitt seemed to represent masculinity—defining society’s “ideal” male celebrity as tall, white, and athletically well-defined? TV Shows such as The Vampire Diaries and Gossip Girl prided themselves on their chiseled male casts, as did popular young adult movies including the Twilight and Hunger Games franchises. In previous decades, the media’s most popular male characters embodied conventional attractiveness through traits like extreme physical strength, a ripped physique, and wealth. Now, think about today, when one of Hollywood’s most desirable celebrities had his breakout role playing a lanky teen falling in love in 1980s Italy (shoutout to Timothée Chalamet), when many popular teen TV shows feature introverted, shy, or emotional male leads (think Otis in Sex Education, Jughead in Riverdale, and even Joe in You, in a creepy way). If the media is any indication, it would seem that society’s standards for attractive men are changing. Aforementioned Timothée Chalamet isn’t your typical objectified male celebrity, at least not according to popular expectations of a decade or two earlier: He’s skinny and androgynous, exuding a certain intellectual charm, no doubt influenced by his repeated roles as smart-alecky students. According to the dozens of articles more or less titled “So Why is Timothée Chalamet So Popular?” his allure comes largely from what he is not. He’s not stoic and emotionally unavailable, but instead appears vulnerable and open. He’s attractive, not because he’s your traditional frat boy, but more because he resembles the cute, nerdy guy in your anthro class. The popularization of increased emotional vulnerability makes for a seemingly healthy trend, to be sure, but only when it’s genuine—and in the case of the “indie soft-boy,” it almost certainly isn’t. Perhaps you know or have heard of one (I sure have), but a soft-boy is characterized by his affinity for alternative music, films, and books; his performative sensitivity and vulnerability for the purpose of receiving female attention; and, often,
his pretentious love of philosophy that he’ll discuss with girls, again for the sole intention of impressing them. Intentional or not, Chalamet’s intellectualism and preppy style represent a hallmark of the soft-boy aesthetic. In this way, the edginess and sensitivity of the e-boy and the soft-boy are not necessarily avenues of selfexpression, but rather serve as ways to garner romantic attention. This could come from a popular expectation that vulnerability and “niceness” will guarantee romantic success, as illustrated in an SNL skit entitled “Girl at a Bar,” which portrays men pretending to be feminists and boasting about their political engagement against Trump to get girls to sleep with them. Instagram’s @beam_me_ up_soft_boi account also sharply captures the superiority complex attached to soft-boys. Personally, even I have received a fair share of Tinder messages inquiring about my thoughts on “philosophy and the universe” or suggesting we cry over Frank Ocean songs. An Atlantic article published this past October points out that today’s soft-boy is not new—popular forms of white male angst can be traced back to the likes of Kurt Cobain and Leonard Cohen—but their recent resurgence has been fueled and exacerbated on the internet by Instagram, Tinder, and of course, TikTok. Though e-boys and soft-boys may appear to subvert traditional images of masculinity, the article argues that this trend continues to portray “women as emotional suppliers rather than people,” cloaking toxic masculinity in apparent sensitivity. The pattern is particularly prevalent in music, where lyrics of beloved artists such as Rex Orange County and Hobo Johnson repeatedly rely on the woman of their desires to carry out all of their emotional labor. Still, none of this is to say that truly nice guys don’t exist. In an interview with Iona Erskine, the creator of @beam_me_up_soft_bois account, she says the difference between soft-boys and genuinely vulnerable men is that “the softboi would try to lord his nicheness over people. They have blind faith that the people they want to impress will fall at their feet simply because they’re different.” Additionally, this is also not to say that soft-boys are limited to cisgender men—emotional exploitation isn’t dependent on gender, which is why the term “soft-boi” rather than “soft-boy” is sometimes used to capture the fluidity in gender expression. TikTok and other social media platforms hold immense power over popular culture; if you’re not on TikTok, you may not realize how many of today’s top songs were made viral through TikTok trends and dances. For the moment, TikTok’s popularity doesn’t seem to be letting up, but perhaps, as all trends tend to do, the faux-intellectualism and angst of e-boys and soft-boys will die out eventually. In the meantime, I’ll continue scrolling endlessly on TikTok, admiring the e-boys I encounter from afar.
To All the Friends I’ve Loved Before a series of letters on capital-L Love BY KAITLAN BUI ILLUSTRATED BY NINA YUCHI
To All the Friends I’ve Loved Before, I’m not exactly sure how to begin this letter—just like I’m not exactly sure how or why or even when we became “friends.” Was there ever an aha moment, some sort of benchmark we passed before settling into the safe shelter we now enjoy? Did you each make a conscious decision to love and keep loving? Because I can’t remember if I did. Maybe it started 14 years ago, when we cooked up “mud pancakes” and I made fun of you for not spelling “spaghetti” correctly (really sorry about that, by the way). Maybe it was the first sleepover, the first crush, the second crush, the more-than-just-a-crush. Maybe it was our silly conversations about burning cherries, or perhaps our more serious ones about God. Was it weathering the horrible high school teachers or sneakily playing unblocked computer games? The songs we belted on the bus or the stomach butterflies before our sprint competitions (oorah, Pacifica)? Cooking street tacos together or posing for pictures on rollercoasters? I could be wrong, but I think the sticky Beijing heat plastered us together. The shared Pepto-Bismol pills and the vomit by the side of the road made us laugh and let loose. Maybe it was when we prayed over our steaming bowls of mǎlātáng, or maybe it was the panicked video call at 10 p.m., me asking you for help boarding the bus because I didn’t understand Chinese well enough. Or was it the late night “sad boy hours” in our dorm’s dingy common room? The many sticky notes we left on each other’s desks? Hours of conversation over Andrews poké bowls? Falling asleep literally everywhere, crying on the bus on the way back from church, eating too much ramen, answering NYT’s “36 Questions That Lead to Love,” karaoking ’til night’s end, walking to the Nelson for our 7 a.m. “Astronaut Training”… ♥️ ♥️ ♥️ To All the Friends I’ve Loved Before, Thank you for granting me such precious snippets of time, ones I know are fully mine because I can pause and play and repeat them whenever I want. Thank you for holding me in your arms when I felt like I didn’t belong, for reminding me that I’m never alone. You metamorphosed from “what-was-your-name-again” to “are-you-free-Ineed-to-talk.” You are the best cheerleaders any human being could ever ask for.
“One of my professors said he has an Iron Man fetish.” “I just think morals are unattractive.” FEBRUARY 14 , 2020!5
NARRATIVE Thank you for not obsessing over commitment, for a kindness that runs deeper than a stranger’s politeness, for your spontaneity and intentionality and forgiveness. You’ve taught me that friendship is both beauty and brokenness. Thank you for being people I can come back to, think about, and be grateful for—even if we don’t talk as much as we used to. You’ve taught me that life has its seasons, and sometimes the leaves that fall don’t grow back. That’s okay, though. The tree still stands. In short, thank you for being complicated and simple all at once, for not having a precise beginning and ending. You have managed to outstrip linear time in the same way you have outstripped age and physicality and distance. If only we approached romantic love like we approach each other, right? Cool and calm and casual. “Cupid is in the air” is just another way of saying “lonely college kids wishing for a four-letter feeling,” because when you’re 18-23, Valentine’s Day is a reminder that “you should just shoot your shot.” But let’s be honest here: You taught me that every day is a shot at capital-L Love. Ours is a romance of comradery, constancy, trust— which I’d venture to say is the best kind there is. Maybe we shouldn’t approach this Valentine’s Day kind of “love” any differently at all. ♥️ ♥️ ♥️ To All the Friends I’ve Loved Before, It makes me kind of sad to think that you all don’t know each other, because you would really just hit it off and then we’d be a glittering plexus of friendships on friendships. But see, you’ve taught me this too: It’s okay to not have everything at once, it’s okay to be silent for a while—you’re not going anywhere. We might not work at some point, but that’s fine, too; we’ll just slip into something softer then. We can move on, even if it stings at first, and we can make friends with other people in other places without ever breaking the integrity and the depth of what we had. For now, I’ll just be grateful for the things you do with me—for accompanying me to go rock climbing late at night, for planning the best “surprise” birthday party ever, for blocking off some of your Google Calendar to enjoy a Ratty brunch with me. Thank you for FaceTiming despite the three-hour (or 16-hour) time difference, for reading every word of my poetry, for sending over song recommendations and giving me laptop stickers and asking me how my week was. It’s crazy that we’ve come this far. And I earnestly hope we go even further, but I won’t push or pressure you into it. It’s okay if we don’t work out at some point, even if that hurts for a while. Friendship is more than just expectation, and you are worth more to me than my pride—worth more than my need to feel needed. ♥️ ♥️ ♥️
To All the Friends I’ve Loved Before, I loved you before and I love you now and I probably won’t ever stop loving you, because that’s how real capital-L Love works. Whatever happens, just know that you are as eternal as the memories we’ve made together. I’m sorry if I don’t tell you that enough. ♥️ ♥️ ♥️ To All the Friends I’ve Loved Before, My love for you is not like a rose, because the majority of roses end up at either Walgreens or Costco and are sniffed relentlessly by the general population. My love for you is not like the ocean, either—because, geez, pollution. No, my love for you is like this letter, which, even if forgotten, will always exist in some deep dark corner of the internet. Just kidding. You know I love you more than Google loves big data. You’re tucked into a corner of my heart, which is to say, forever. I hope you know that. Much Love (and I mean the capital-L kind), Kaitlan
Sweet Hearts
candy that does the talking BY DANA SCHNEIDER ILLUSTRATED BY IRIS XIE
The candy heart was originally meant to be a lozenge. The trend of the time (the 1840s) were these small medicinal candies to ease your aches and pains. Simple, sweet, and easy as that. Candy hearts became medicine for a different type of pain—saying a sweet thing out loud that can be gobbled up impolitely. The first ones weren’t hearts at all, but scalloped shapes with full meandering sentences. Stuff like “How long shall I have to wait? Please be considerate.” Eventually, they decided to be more concise. To cut to the chase and put it in a heart-shaped case. Candy hearts are simple: sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, gum, coloring, and artificial flavoring. Gelatin is an animal byproduct derived from tissue. It gives candy its form, its fluff. To be more on the nose, it’s bone dust. Pink colored flavored bone dust is wetted and put into molds, hundreds of thousands of sweet hearts pressed between machine, sheet, and mat. Ready to be pressed one last time before they are pressed into your beloved’s palm with phrases like… EVER AFTER My favorite valentine I’ve ever gotten was written on the back of a tomato soup label, and it wasn’t really a valentine, and it wasn’t really for me. You may know that
soup labels dissolve easily when exposed to water. You may also know that it is often hard to say the things we mean because they come out flatter in words than they are in our bodies. What if we thought to write to each other as if the words were dissolving, as if we could try it again, and again, and again… LOVE BIRD When I say I love bats, I am thinking that they are me and that I am trying to love that, too. How they communicate with the world so that they, the bats, might move through it—sending clicks ahead of themselves, moving the air gently with the force of their bodies, sending out waves of sound that wash over each other and the trees and the cement and the empty air. It’s such an elegant and efficient way to be exactly as they are, to be bats. CHARM ME There is something that happens between the hesitation of my hand and your shoulder and their first, final, fleeting contact. That something is a rule we have silently made and unmade—a glowing necklace, cracked and set alive with phosphorescent purple, around our necks as we crane them up to watch where the stars would be if we weren’t glowing so brightly, for this simple touch that has opened us up to the night. HOME SOON Mom loves flamingos. Always has. Most people know that they get their pink color from the food they eat. They chew with their head hanging from their long hose of a neck—things like shrimp, algae, crustaceans. Something happens between their beaks and their stomachs and all that ocean matter turns their bodies pink. Pink, like the last color the sky lets out before it goes dark. Pink, like Rihanna’s dress at the 2015 Grammy Awards. Pink, like a Hostess Sno Ball before you bite in and realize the cake is chocolate. Pink, like flamingos who most people know are pink from their diet but fewer realize are guardian angels. NATURE LOVER Sometimes when I look at you I have the sensation of wrecking, the blurred slipping forward into thinking how I might protect myself, how I might survive after this thing has stopped crashing. We drive two tons of metal at breakneck speeds and yawn while doing it. In February, a deer came barreling into the side of our jade green minivan, crunching the door on my side. It got up and ran back into the woods. The glass of the window glittered. MAGIC I’m picturing a slightly chipped pink and indigo shell blushing, lying on a clean porcelain sink. I’m picturing coniferous plants dropping their fragrant needles onto the earth so that your feet have a carpet to walk on. I’m picturing freshly washed hair. I’m picturing you smiling to yourself as you drive along the highway at sunset, the birds silently flocking away from the tree line. UR A QT With that said, you are very pretty. COOL DUDE A limb of afternoon sun is reaching its way into the bar, despite the owner’s best efforts to keep his patrons unencumbered by day. The barkeep is making his daughter a pink lemonade, swirling grenadine into Minute Maid. She’s doing her math homework at a table in the corner, and her dad checks over her shoulder, telling her she’s smarter than the average bear. ME + YOU Windmills are cutting the pastel winter blue sky
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ARTS & CULTURE on an afternoon in Providence, Rhode Island. They look like pizza cutters. I’m watching an ASMR video of sharp metal against soft dough. I’m reading a nickel paperback romance by an author who’s talking a lot about canines against skin. The blades in the machine press down against the gelatinous dough of the soonto-be candy hearts. The molar bites through a sugared xoxo. The machine presses into the expansive dough, leaving only pastel hearts behind. The body cleaves in two, to better envelop you. After many years together, we began to reminisce on what we called our “first impression” of one another. This is what we do: We press against each other to see what shape we might leave behind. The cutter kisses the dough to see itself again, and again, and again… PURR FECT Don’t trust men who hate cats. They only love things that will come when they call. BE MINE I’m slurping down a Cherry Coke faster than I should be—sipping and gratitude are counterintuitive. There’s no time. More than 10,000 Coke products are consumed every second. We have to sell ourselves as quickly. By the time I have arrived at the end of my sentence, your eyes are resting slightly above me, like the world’s most interesting TV show is happening up there. There’s something like 80,000 calories in a human body. A horse contains 200,000, and a bear three times as much. The world is a slip, and our attention goes with it. Love is a grasp. Hold it, hold it.
Bad Romance
on unconventional love songs BY JULIAN TOWERS
John Lennon’s “Oh Yoko!” for instance, is one of the most musically sublime compositions I know, and I can hardly listen to it. Lennon is so confident in the passion he feels that it becomes sexual, instinctive, unthinking. He absent-mindedly calls out her name in the bath; his “love” is enough to literally “turn [Yoko] on.” It’s too easy. Too happy. I’m not there yet. No, like an asshole, the love songs that are all about the struggle of declaring passion are the ones I can most relate to. Sometimes they’re about how hard it is to even find passion to declare. Here are three of my favorites for Valentine’s Day Listening.
ILLUSTRATED BY TALIA MERMIN
Sincere, unaugmented displays of affection make me squirm—they always have. For a while that was probably okay. Most little kids never like to see their parents kiss, for instance. When my two siblings and I added up to a collective age of 12, my parents could deploy their lip-lock as a kind of dark magic—a parenting hack to end arguments and silence temper tantrums. At the sight of their embrace, we’d set our differences aside and form a unified choir of “gross!” Today, we’re a collective age of 61, and I’m the only one who checks Twitter when Mom gives Dad a peck. I wish vaguely Freudian discomfort was all there was to it. Alas, I find I am simply unable to express sincere love, and the ease with which it comes to others makes me feel like an alien. It is, for instance, impossible for friends and family to get me to say “love you too” on the phone. Usually, I’ll hang up before I need to. My therapists have told me that sarcasm is an entrenched part of my personality, and that this is simply a defense mechanism to protect my identity. I’m not so sure. Each of the numerous attempts I’ve made at romantic relationships with other human beings has likewise crumbled around the third month—in other words, right around the time when she expects me to, y’know, emote. It’s come to the point where, on particularly bitter nights, I’ve found myself stalking FAQ pages about aromanticism. Complicating matters, I’m also a dyed-in-the-wool, too-far-gone music nerd, and 95% of pop music is love songs. How do I cope? Well, most of the time, love songs pivot around an unnamed, possibly nonexistent “boy,” “girl,” “you,” or “baby.” When “Just The Way You Are” hits the minivan speakers, I’m okay. It’s the love songs that are naked, unguarded, and very clearly addressed to another identifiable person that provoke discomfort.
“Wild Horses”—The Rolling Stones The Mick Jagger of “Wild Horses” hasn’t necessarily been a bad boyfriend. It’d be more accurate to say he’s been complacent. At the absolute worst, you might call him neglectful. We don’t hear a lot about him, admittedly, but things are ending, so clearly he’s fucked up somehow. Yet at first blush it appears there’s little he could have actively done wrong: He always brought you the “things you wanted,” and he’s never felt “bitter” or “treated you unkind.” But that’s shallow, basic, and you needed more than that. You were dying right under his nose and you needed somebody ready to save you. History tells us Jagger wrote the song about his ex-flame Marianne Faithfull—a minor celebrity (relative to Jagger) who spiraled into rock ‘n’ roll drug devastation before Jagger realized what was happening and recognized his own inadvertent role as enabler. Now, at the moment of collapse, when the easy, self-preserving thing would be to just back away and claim his “freedom,” Jagger stands his ground. Enter the wild horses of the title—a frankly obvious metaphor for the ravages of, uh, wild living, but damn if it’s not heart-melting as Jagger fights them off. The tragedy is that the beasts will drag him away, but he still dives into a struggle he can’t win. It’s a too-late declaration of love via self-lacerating retribution—it means both nothing, and yet, somehow, everything. “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”—Bob Dylan Bob Dylan is in a rather luckless position: He needs to convince you that he’s not an asshole. This is a difficult task, because he himself is unconvinced that he is not an asshole. “Situations have ended sad / Relationships have all been bad.” Fuck and run—that’s his pattern. You know it, he knows it, and after a final, particularly meaningless coital blowout, you’re about to hit the road
for good. He calls after you; you could have predicted as much. But it’s not to tell you to stay, not to promise things will be better. Dylan knows there’s no hope for that; the song will end and he’ll never see you again. But he wants you to leave knowing something here was different—you were different, you had the chance to change him. “This time ‘round it’s more correct / Right on target, so direct / You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go.” It’s a testament to the dickish character of Dylan that the disclosure of his feelings could come as a shock, something impossible for either party to believe. And herein lies the song’s haunting ambiguity; Dylan is going to be lonely not because you won’t be there, but because the asshole he’s stuck with is himself: “You’re gonna make me wonder what I’m doin’/ Staying far behind without you.” Does Bob really love you, or is he just a self-hating aromantic? Was what he felt a true spark, or merely a kink in your interaction that emphasized the emptiness of his ways? The only way to know would be if you stuck around, but why would you do that? Bob’s the boy who orgasmed Wolf, essentially, and the extent to which I relate to him terrifies me nearly as much as it breaks my heart. “Thinkin Bout You”—Frank Ocean Frank Ocean doesn’t know how you feel about him. That’s scary, and what’s worse is he hardly knows how he feels about you. He has, it bears emphasis, been thinking about you—the song he wrote is not called “conclusions about you” or “idle reflections about you.” These are serious thoughts that have produced minimal answers. But Ocean has thought enough to know something has to change. It’s his courage to make it that renders this song one of the few truly moving love songs I know. Unlike the others I’ve listed, it’s a song rooted in a specific time and place, even if many of its crucial details are fuzzy. We know you’re in Ocean’s room. Maybe you’ve been sleeping with him for a while. Maybe you’re just friends. In any case, it seems you’ve been here before and the context then was much less…emotionally naked. Shit’s a mess. All visual evidence would indicate the boy has had a rough few nights. In inviting you into this embarrassing situation, Ocean has taken the first step on the path to complete vulnerability. Immediately, he trips. The tension is unbearable, so he tries to ease it with a stupid joke about the weather. This goes so poorly he makes another one about having a beach house in Idaho. Finally, he just has to say it: He doesn’t know what you’re thinking, but he’s FEBRUARY 14 , 2020!7
ARTS&CULTURE been thinking about forever. Though Ocean doesn’t frame this as an ultimatum, it clearly is one. Either you feel like him and you’ll follow him into that forever, or everything ends here. There’s no going back. And, crucially, we don’t find out which path you head down. Ocean ends the song dangling in the same awkward pocket it opens in; it’s the love song as unanswered textparagraph, left on “read” for 25 minutes.
The Whole Universe In Opals uncut gems and love in the commercial age BY GRIFFIN PLAAG
Film nerds, we’ve reason to rejoice; regardless of what you think of Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite, it’s undeniable that its best picture win represents a watershed moment for the arbitrary meritocracy that is the Academy Awards. In the future, every movie-going ingenue who takes their first trip down the list of best picture winners will be forced to watch at least one subtitled, non-Englishlanguage film, and a fucking brilliant one at that. Best picture accuracy notwithstanding, though, I still think 2020 will go down as the year when one of the best films in recent memory got passed over as industry retribution for the likes of Jack and Jill and Click; I’m talking, of course, about the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems, and Adam Sandler’s searing performance as beleaguered diamond dealer Howard Ratner. With the Oscars in the rearview and Valentine’s Day upon us, I’d like to posit that Uncut Gems is a love story. I don’t mean that you should show your date that brilliantly uncomfortable scene in which Howie sexts his girlfriend from her closet, where he’s hiding unbeknownst to her while watching her snap nudes on a couch. What I mean instead is that Uncut Gems exemplifies the pitfalls of romance in an increasingly commercialized and alienated world. Beneath the glitz and bustle of Uncut Gems—the hectic menagerie of the New York jewelry scene, the vibrancy of the titular gem’s ethereal blues, the near-constant noise (the Safdies refuse to filter out or lower background sounds within the audio mix)— lies a tender story about what the pursuit of wealth can do to love, an existential meditation on how to find our humanity while perpetually immersed in an economic
landscape that would rather we forgot about it entirely. The film’s opening seems like the place to start; it begins with a sequence of Ethiopian miners extracting the gem around which the film revolves, working in excruciating conditions at constant risk of injury. The Safdies herein contextualize the gem’s value in its broader history—one of exploitation and greed. Then, in a decision sure to drive away any of the critical-praise-curious grandparents who have missed the memo on the actual content of Uncut Gems (it’s a film in which Adam Sandler impassionedly screams “Go fuck The Weeknd” with a straight face—what were they expecting?), the Safdies go straight for the experimental jugular and spend at least a minute inside the gem before seamlessly transitioning within the molecular setting to a shot of the inside of Howard Ratner’s colon. It’s a funny move, for sure—you get lost in the crystalline beauty of the cells and feel a bit jarred when you realize you’ve just been entranced by Adam Sandler’s inner organs. But it’s also an important one, because it establishes an equivalency between the jewel and the body. In a sense, Ratner has become the gem. It’s as though the camera were trying to thrust the question rudely before our eyes: What is the difference between a man and his wealth? I suppose one could have a more pessimistic reading of the film, and I suppose they would be justified in it. After all, things don’t exactly end well for Howard Ratner. But there are fleeting elements of Uncut Gems that suggest to me a more positive reading, the most notable being Howie’s relationship with the aforementioned Julia. She is, in effect, Howie’s mistress; he’s estranged from his wife Dinah and spends the majority of his time with Julia at the family apartment. Some people have suggested that Julia’s something of an antagonist in the film (if you were wondering who Sandler’s screaming “Go fuck The Weeknd” at, it’s her, moments after he catches her fooling around with The Weeknd—yeah, seriously, The Weeknd playing The Weeknd—in a bathroom), but I think exactly the opposite. Indeed, Julia is the key to the love story of Uncut Gems, or, if you will, the key to understanding what it has to tell us about love. She and Howie share an obvious connection: They’re both risk-takers, they both enjoy the adrenaline rush of what they do, and—as the sexting sequence, which ends with Howie bursting out of the closet and surprising the delighted Julia, indicates—they’re both enamored of each other’s
vanity. In many respects, they’re a perfect match. But, throughout the film, Howie seems distanced from Julia. When he catches her feeling up The Weeknd, he becomes incensed with her, forgetting that the reason she’s talking to the rapper at all is that she’s working on selling him a studded necklace of Michael Jackson’s likeness on a cross. After this, Julia attempts to win him back, and he throws a smoothie at her. Then, when Howie’s at his lowest, Julia finds him in his office and shows him her new tattoo (yeah, it’s his name—I didn’t say Julia always makes good life decisions). And, at long last, when Howie’s managed to complete the sale of the eponymous gem to Celtics superstar Kevin Garnett (who, it bears mentioning, is a shockingly competent actor, even if he is playing himself ), he decides to take the money Garnett has given him and make a desperate gamble that he knows could cost him his life instead of settling down with Julia and walking away unscathed. It seems evident that Howie’s conception of value is empty; he’s more attracted to the accumulation of wealth than he is to human connection. And indeed, the promise of this wealth consistently interferes with his ability to find romantic happiness, even with a person who appears to share his values and to have a similar interest in highstakes jewelry dealing (or at least the accompanying rush). Despite what the skeptics say, I really do think Julia’s in love with Howie. She isn’t using him for his money, as he often suggests—it’s the other way around. So sure, Uncut Gems asks us to examine the ethics of capitalism through the lurking specter of African labor regimes and montages of jewels interspersed with destitute workers. It does a great job of it. But I also think it asks us to examine ourselves and seeks to remind us that love is not about assets or material goods, but about a willingness to leave them behind. “You’re my home,” Julia says to Howie as he sobs in his office chair. “You could come to me.” But Howie doesn’t. He’s become the gem. He’s become his desire for it. As Valentine’s Day dawns, and as we all continue to exist on the threshold of entrance into the same capitalist hellscape that Howie inhabits, here’s a reminder: Don’t become the gem. And if you’re feeling up to it, give Uncut Gems a watch. You’ll learn about the grand tradition of global capitalism and its potential to ruin lives. You’ll learn about what we pay when we put our success before the people we love. And if you’re not interested in that, you’ll get to see Adam Sandler in a fistfight with The Weeknd. You really can’t lose.
“You can’t turn the corner without seeing advertisements for roses and dinner specials (okay, maybe it is a capitalist scheme).” –Sarah Lettes, “20GAYTEEN” 2.8.19
“After all, where there are rocks, there’s romance.” –J. B. Novak, “romance, riches, and rocks” 2.8.18 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amanda Ngo FEATURE Managing Editor Liza Edwards-Levin Section Editors Alice Bai Erin Walden Staff Writers Gaya Gupta Anna Harvey NARRATIVE Managing Editor Nicole Fegan Section Editors Michelle Liu Minako Ogita ILLUSTRATED BY MADDY CHERR
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Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Jordan Hartzell Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Kahini Metha ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Griffin Plaag Section Editors Olivia Howe Maddy McGrath Staff Writers Rob Capron David Kleinman Julian Towers
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Caitlin McCartney
SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Paola Solano
Section Editor Christina Vasquez
Editors Cecilia Barron Tessa Devoe
Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto COPY Copy Chief Moe Sattar Copy Editors Kyoko Leaman Aditi Marshan
Want to be involved? Email: amanda_ngo@brown.edu!
HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Gaby Treviño LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
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SCIENCE & RESEARCH
U. Researchers to start clinical trial funded by Alzheimer’s Association Study follows link found between HIV drug, decreased inflammation BY RAHMA IBRAHIM SENIOR STAFF WRITER University researchers are conducting a phase one clinical trial that will look at the potential therapeutic effect that a class of HIV drugs can have on the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease. The 2.5 year clinical trial was funded through a $750,000 grant from the Alzheimer’s Association Part the Cloud Translational Research Funding program, which the researchers learned they would receive at the end of 2019. This initiative is a relatively new program funded by the largest private financial supporter of Alzheimer’s research in the world, said Stephen Salloway, director of neurology and the memory and aging program at Butler Hospital, Martin M. Zucker professor of psychiatry and human behavior and professor of neurology and co-principal investigator of the trial. “This is a very prestigious award, and we are very excited to have this opportunity.” The researchers’ primary goal for this trial is to test an HIV drug called emtricitabine, sold as Emtriva, in older people with Alzheimer’s disease to ensure that the drug is safe and that patients tolerate it well, Salloway said. Their secondary goal is to look at the effect that emtricitabine has on inflam-
mation, memory and daily function. “This is a very favorable circumstance for research since we have the drug on the shelf, and we can repurpose (it) for another disease,” Salloway said. The study was inspired by earlier experiments conducted by John Sedivy, Hermon C. Bumpus professor of biology and professor of medical science and co-principal investigator of the current clinical trial. The prior studies found that an HIV drug, Lamivudine, could decrease inflammation in various mice tissues. Lamivudine blocks the activity of the HIV-linked reverse transcriptase enzyme, a molecular substance that allows HIV to replicate and incorporate into people’s DNA. The findings showed that retrotransposable elements, which are portions of DNA that can reinsert into other parts of a person’s genome, were likely implicated in this inflammation. While these retrotransposable elements are normally suppressed and therefore unnoticed by the body, Sedivy’s research suggests that the aging body reacts to the activation of the retrotransposable elements and triggers a response from the immune system. This leads to “sterile inflammation.” While most types of inflammation are a response to an infection, sterile inflammation is different because, as far as doctors can tell, those experiencing it are not necessarily infected. “More recently, it is now believed that this sterile inflammation … may not be the cause, but it exacerbates diseases normally associated with old age,” Sedivy said.
Patients with Alzheimer’s disease, or other neurologic diseases, have been shown to have inflammation in the brain. “No one really knows where this neuroinflammation is coming from. Our idea is that it might be coming from these retrotransposable elements,” Sedivy added. After discovering what may be a link between the elements and aging-affiliated diseases, Sedivy approached Salloway, who has conducted numerous Alzheimer’s studies. The team for this project also includes University researchers and partners abroad. Rami Kantor, professor of medicine at the division of infectious diseases, HIV physician-scientist and co-director of Providence/Boston Center for AIDS Research, was approached by Sedivy, who expressed interest in the potential incorporation of HIV medications for non-HIV purposes. “My role is to follow the (study participants) clinically to make … sure (the medications) are safe.” For this clinical trial, the researchers are focusing on emtricitabine. “While very similar to Lamivudine, (emtricitabine) has (fewer) side effects, and it is a bit more efficacious,” Kantor said. Yet, the “mechanism of action is the same.” Emtricitabine is currently prescribed to millions of people as HIV therapy and is “very well tolerated,” Sedivy said. Still, the researchers are concerned about unanticipated side effects that these drugs may have when given to the target subjects of the study: older people and specifically
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Stephen Salloway and John Sedivy to co-lead the clinical trial funded by a $750,000 grant. older people with Alzheimer’s disease. But older people with HIV have already been using these kinds of drugs without experiencing adverse reactions exceeding those of younger patients, so “there really are no significant red flags,” Sedivy said. Using emtricitabine and lamivudine in individuals without HIV is not an entirely novel concept. Some people who are at high risk of developing HIV have already taken lamivudine and emtricitabine as components of their treatment and have mostly tolerated the drugs, Kantor said. The researchers are awaiting final approval from the Institutional Review Board. Afterwards, the company that produces Emtriva, Gilead Sciences Inc.,
will prepare and supply the drug for the research. Following media coverage of the trial, people have expressed interest in participating in the study. The double-blind study will provide 25 participants with the active emtricitabine drug and 10 others with a placebo, which is an inactive control drug. All 35 participants will have to have early Alzheimer’s disease to qualify for the trial. “There is the big hope and expectation, which I think everybody shares, that this will possibly be a cure for Alzheimer’s,” Sedivy said. But the phase one clinical trial that the researchers are undertaking “is the very first baby step in that direction.”
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
NASA FROM PAGE 1 a Brown-RISD Dual Degree student concentrating in Anthropology and Illustrations, asked Meir to reflect on the most visually appealing thing she had witnessed from her viewpoint on the International Space Station. “From up here you can really see with your eyes the changing gradient of the atmosphere — first of all, the most remarkable thing is how thin (the atmosphere) is. … It makes you realize how important it is that we protect it.” She also recounted one of her first times in the ISS’s observatory, the Cupola. The ISS passed over the Northeast United States first, and she could see “all four corners of Central Park.” They then passed over the city lights of Europe, Meir said, and finally saw “the most amazing aurora that I have still seen since I’ve been up here — we could see the Northern Lights all across Europe. It’s this very otherworldly effect of this dancing green in all directions.” Meir also spoke about the merits of international diplomacy, diversity and inclusion in the space program, the physiological science experiments currently happening on the ISS and the relevance of climate change. “Every person you know, every place you’ve ever been, everything in the entirety of your life and in the whole evolution of the human species is down there in this one beautiful magnificent ball, and you realize how special and unique that is and how we really need to do our best to protect that,” Meir said. During his introduction to the event, Head, who has been part of the University community since his graduate studies brought him to Providence in 1964, spoke of the “tumultuous times” afflicting the nation and the campus in the years surrounding the Open Curriculum’s founding in 1969. He also spoke about his own path toward space-related research, involving the wisdom of late Professor of Geology Thomas Mutch, who helped turn his attention from stratigraphy on Earth to that of the planets and thus kick-started his career in space. He got a job at NASA following graduation, and went on to work on the Apollo missions, assist with astronaut training and help facilitate NASA’s landing site selection.
For decades, Head taught the class GEOL 0050: “Mars, Moon and the Earth,” which is now taught by Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences John Mustard. “In 1998, one of these bright and highly motivated Brown students — Jessica Meir — enrolled in GEO 5, and ended up receiving the highest grade ever in my class. No surprise there,” Head said, adding that despite her biology concentration, Meir sought out his class because of her lifelong aspiration to become an astronaut. During the event, Meir referenced how both her classes and extracurricular activities on campus set her up for her future. “Education is about transformation,” Zia said, adding that “I don’t know if (Meir), as a student sitting on campus, could have foreseen all that she’s done. I’m happy that Brown and the community here played some small part in helping prepare (Meir) for all that has happened after.” After the event, Dana Kurniawan ’22, an Environmental Studies concentrator who asked Meir a question about climate change during the video chat, told The Herald that she was “really glad that (the event) exposes people to so many of the things that are trans-boundary, that are interdisciplinary. … You need to know so much of the sciences and have such an ineffable curiosity for the incredible amount of things she does.” Since the announcement of Meir’s space flight last April, she has become a bit of a celebrity on campus. Keelin Lyons ’22, one of The Herald’s design editors who works in the Brown Bookstore, helped a customer purchase a Brown flag last semester. After asking for her opinion on two Brown flags, the customer told her that the flag was for Meir to have aboard the ISS. The flag was fastened to the ISS above Meir during the event and visible throughout the entire video broadcast. “I was actually ecstatic, because that’s the closest I’m going to get to the stars,” Lyons said. After the question and answer session ended, Meir took advantage of zero gravity and shot herself upwards out of the camera’s view — leaving just that Brown flag and a teddy bear emblazoned with the Brown logo floating in her place before the video feed cut out.
GIFT FROM PAGE 1 however, the legal responsibility of service as a fiduciary of the University belongs to the Trustees and Fellows of the Corporation of Brown University.” Nina Wolff Landau ’20, a member of the Warren Kanders Must Go campaign, previously served on the Task Force on Climate Change and Business and Investment Practices, and did not feel like she “could adequately represent a broad swath of student opinion,” in her role. “I think it speaks to a larger issue of how students are or, more broadly, are not engaged as stakeholders or equal partners” in the University’s financial decisions. She thinks the poll is important in showing the opinions of students because she believes administrators and Corporation members “are largely more politically and socially conservative than the student body.”
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Managing Editors Sophie Culpepper Allie Reed Senior Editors Elise Ryan Alex Smolar post- magazine Editor-in-Chief Amanda Ngo
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Wolff Landau believes that the University “does not really live up to its ideals around democracy.” She said that financial aspects of University operations are “not transparent” and “do not involve student decision making.” Landau said she and the Warren Kanders Must Go campaign find the policy “neither transparent nor ethical” and will continue to push for the consideration of social harm and violence in University gift acceptance considerations. “Students are absolutely central to the propagation of Brown as an institution,” said Brown Divest member Yara Doumani ’22. She is encouraged that students are speaking out and she thinks the results of the poll are indicative of the work Brown Divest has been doing “educating and mobilizing and politicizing the student body.” UCS has worked with members of Brown Divest in the past to form the
Ad Hoc Committee on Revisions to ACCRIP, The Herald previously reported. The committee has four undergraduate members, with the goal of creating “recommendations that will improve (the University’s) ability to process investments in a way that aligns” with the University’s values, Zhou said. This committee, which meets weekly and is working on its final recommendations, wants to “ensure that (ACCRIP) will have a broader mandate” than before, said Eamon McKeever ’22, a co-appointments chair of UCS and a member of the Ad Hoc Committee on Revisions to ACCRIP. “It will be a forum basically where all students are able to participate and raise concerns.” “People who give us money make their money through different processes, and it doesn’t reflect well on the University to take money from someone who, let’s say, is profiting off of military weapons,” McKeever said.
Undergraduate Interest in Greater Decision-Making Ability for Gift Acceptance and Investment
SINCE 1891
Editorial Leadership Editor-in-Chief Colleen Cronin
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020
Copy Desk Chief Vicky Phan Illustrations Editor Summer Zhang Graphics Editor Usha Bhalla Immersive Editor Michael Bass Business General Managers Nicholas Fabrizio Mariel Jackson Office Manager Diane Silvia Directors Rey Blandon Shreya Das Arman Lateef Michael Wang
73.8% of students want increased decision-making ability
26.3% do not
Source: UCS Poll
USHA BHALLA / HERALD
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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY
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The Dutch don’t have sex earlier, they just have sex smarter BY ALLISON FRANKEL ’20 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
“Isabel sent a topless picture to her whole class?” Dumbfounded, eight-year-old me stared at my six-year-old cousin’s birthday invite. She had painted a big six across her chest and belly, striking a pose and pointing at her torso with a huge grin. Isabel and I had a lot in common. We both inherited our grandma’s curly hair and drove our families crazy with ceaseless singing. We watched the same movies, read the same books and both loved Special K with strawberries. But this, I would never do. Despite our similar upbringings and shared genetics, our fundamental difference is that Isabel grew up in the Netherlands, and I grew up in the United States. It wasn’t until years after the birthday invite that I began to recognize my reactions to Dutch culture, like this, to be signs of the puritanical values deeply woven into my worldview. Eightyear-old me did not yet realize that there should be nothing sexual about a six-year-old’s chest. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized more and more that behaviors I grew up seeing as “weird” or “inappropriate” reveal a fundamentally different view of bodies and sexuality, and I’ve begun to recognize that there’s something to the Dutch mentality. It could even help us move past some of our American hypocrisy and public health crises. The Dutch are known to be sensible and straightforward, and the way they handle bodies and sexuality is no exception. The Netherlands’ recognition that sexuality is a normal part of human development has created an education model that promotes informed choices, consent and self-advocacy. It has also been able to maintain one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates in the world. By contrast, the U.S. has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates amongst developed nations. According to a 2011 National Institutes of Health study, the US had 72.2 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls, while the Netherlands had 11.8. Our rates have lowered slightly since then, but our pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates are still among the highest in the developed world. While American liberals and conservatives alike want to fix this unacceptable status, their approaches are polarized. Generally, liberals push for more comprehensive sex education, while conservatives advocate for abstinence-only programs. Our lack of standardization and polarized approaches to sex education have resulted in scattered requirements and contradictory laws across states. The conservative approach has dominated the federal government’s strategy. Until former President Barack Obama advocated for funding to sci-
ence-backed sex education programs, the only federal funding went toward abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. According to Sex Ed for Social Change, Congress put more than two billion dollars into AOUM programs that withhold information about contraceptives and STIs and often rely on scare tactics to promote abstinence as the only option. The Trump administration is actively shifting funding back toward the abstinence-only approach. President Trump is appointing abstinence-only crusaders across the board, such as Valerie Huber, a senior policy advisor at the Office of Global Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services. Huber is notorious for “cherry-picking findings and dismissing large bodies of scientific theory,” according to Jesseca Boyer, senior policy manager at the Guttmacher Institute. Huber and I are in complete agreement on
failed to see that sexual health is far more than simply the prevention of disease or unplanned pregnancy,” said Deb Hauser, president of Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit dedicated to sexuality education. Hauser and other proponents of the Dutch model favor its “broader emphasis on young people’s rights, responsibility and respect that many public health experts say is the foundation of sexual health.” Liberals and conservatives alike are often alarmed to hear that Dutch sexuality education begins in kindergarten. It’s important to clarify what these conversations with four-year-olds sound like. Ineke van der Vlugt, an expert on youth sexual development at Rutgers WPF, the Dutch sexuality research institute behind the sexuality education curriculum, clarifies: “You’ll never hear an explicit reference to sex in a kindergarten class. In fact, what’s being taught here is sexuality edu-
“Our crisis is not teen sexuality. Our crisis is our neglect to handle it sensibly. The conservative approach to sex education continues to fail American teens, and the liberal approach — though on the right track — has yet to move beyond risk
her belief that “abstinence only” is the only certain way to avoid unwanted pregnancies and STIs. Absolutely. Teens who choose abstinence have hands down the lowest pregnancy and STI rates. But Huber chooses to ignore that not all teens are choosing abstinence. The simple fact is that states like Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, that heavily emphasize abstinence, also have some of the highest unwanted teen pregnancy rates. Coincidence? Perhaps not. Advocates for comprehensive sex education align much more with the Dutch model. Like the Dutch, these advocates propose to arm adolescents with accurate, evidence-based information and awareness of resources. But the Dutch are still one step ahead. Even the most comprehensive sex ed in the US tends to overwhelmingly focus on danger and risk prevention for heteronormative sexual activities. The Dutch cover the risks — thoroughly — but they go beyond risk prevention. “We (Americans) have
cation rather than sex education. That’s because the goal is bigger than that, … It’s about self image, developing your own identity, gender roles, and it’s about learning to express yourself, your wishes and your boundaries.” A teacher might ask, “Who here has been in love?” or “How does it feel when someone you like hugs you versus a stranger?” These questions prime the kids on concepts like consent, boundaries and self-advocacy. It’s not until age 11 that conversations around contraceptives and STIs enter the classroom. Interestingly, my progressive San Francisco sex ed also introduced contraceptives and STI information when we were eleven, but we had not been previously primed to cover these topics in a mature and empathetic way like the Dutch. What’s the result of beginning these conversations early on in a child’s life? Perhaps a lot of good. A Rutgers WPF study found that when Dutch teens do begin having sex “nine out of 10 Dutch adolescents used condoms the first time.” What’s
more, when surveyed, most of these teens report “wanted and fun” first experiences, while twothirds of sexually active American teens surveyed said they wished that they’d waited longer to have sex for the first time. While many conservatives worry that earlier sexual education may lead to earlier instances of sexual activity, in reality, Dutch teens are not having sex earlier than American teens. The average age is about the same for both countries, hovering around 17 to 18 years old. It is a fundamental misunderstanding to think that arming teens with information encourages them to start sooner. It’s also crucial to understand that too often, becoming sexually active is not the teen’s choice. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association of Internal Medicine found that “almost 7 percent of women surveyed said their first sexual intercourse experience was involuntary; it happened at age 15 on average, and the man was often several years older.” This disturbing study underscores the importance of the Dutch model. Teens need to be empowered with the knowledge of resources and awareness of their right to self-advocacy. Dutch reform to sexuality education is fairly recent. During the sexual revolution in the late sixties, the Dutch, very much like the Americans, “roundly disapproved of premarital sex,” according to Amy Schalet, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts. The revolution was tumultuous in both countries, but while “American parents and policymakers responded by treating teen sex as a health crisis, the Dutch went another way: They consciously embraced it as natural, though requiring proper guidance,” wrote Peggy Orenstein in her book “Girls and Sex.” If we can look past our ideals and at the data, it’s hard to argue with the progress the Netherlands has made in a short time. Our crisis is not teen sexuality. Our crisis is our neglect to handle it sensibly. The conservative approach to sex education continues to fail American teens, and the liberal approach — though on the right track — has yet to move beyond risk prevention. It’s not too late to reverse the effects of the misinformed, fear driven reaction in the ’60s. Let’s shed some of our puritanical hypocrisy — the hypocrisy that makes us comfortable to watch hypersexualized Hollywood images yet squeamish with basic conversations about love, respect, bodies and health — and replace it with a little more straightforward Dutch sense. Allison Frankel ’20 can be reached at allison_ frankel@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
CORRECT I ON
The case for divestment is riddled with untruths
A previous version of the Feb. 13 article, “R.I. law requires blue card records to be destroyed,” stated in the subheading that blue cards are destroyed after 30 days. In fact, Blue card applications are destroyed after 30 days. The Herald regrets the error.
To the Editor: Brown University should take a moral stand by continuing to keep its investments in Israeli companies. Alums should be proud that our university recognizes that the existence of Israel is necessary in the global fight against anti-Semitism. As a Jewish alumna who is well-versed in the history of Israel and current facts on the ground, I was appalled to see consideration given to proponents of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in an opinion published by The Herald and authored by the senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal. The BDS movement is inherently hateful and discriminatory. It seeks to replace dialogue with demonization and to subvert understanding through
delegitimization. BDS activists seek to chill free speech on campus while promoting anti-Semitic propaganda that dates back decades. The proponents of this movement explicitly seek to stop any pro-Israel voices from entering the conversation by shutting down debates. Their desire to silence anyone who offers a different position promotes anti-Semitic hatred against Israel and Israelis on college campuses. Let’s get the facts straight: Israel is the manifestation of Zionism — the national liberation movement of the Jewish People that goes back centuries. To date, Israel remains the most successful solution for protecting Jews who face systemic discrimination. The country is home to Jewish refugees from across the globe — including Holocaust survivors and their descen-
dants, as well as Jews who were persecuted by anti-Semitic movements in the former Soviet Union, Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Turkey, among other countries. Israel is absolutely central to Jewish identity, not just in our religious liturgy, but as the national nexus for Jews who trace their family histories across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Asia. Birthright Israel was founded to engage Jews with our multi-cultural and multi-faceted history and identity. The Birthright program brings young Jewish adults on a fully subsidized trip to Israel. It actively counters the work of white supremacists and white nationalists, whose racist agenda is anchored in ending the existence of Jews in the world. The arguments for divestment
from Israel stem from ahistorical, inaccurate and, yes, anti-Semitic sources. Dialogue about the Israel-Palestine conflict should be respectful, thoughtful and well-informed. For too many years, outside groups seeking to demonize Israel — like Palestine Legal — have focused on anti-Semitic denormalization of Israel, bringing divisions and bigotry to campus. Enough is enough. Alums should advocate for honest and respectful debate, not disengagement or divestment. Naomi Reinharz ’03 leads the Brown Chapter of Alums for Campus Fairness, a non-profit organization that brings together alums to counteract anti-Semitism on college campuses and further fair Arab-Israeli conflict discussion.
Opinions pieces published in The Herald — which include columns, op-eds , letters to the editor and editorials — are written independently of news coverage.
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