Commencement Magazine 2019

COMMENCEMENT

BROWN UNIVERSITY 2019

The open curriculum turns 50

The Herald reviews the controversy and evolution of a defining characteristic of Brown half a century after its conception.

BY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Jason Klein ’00 gives back & pays it forward AS YOU LAUNCH INTO

THE FUTURE

Jason has served as a long-time Brown volunteer and has donated each year since he graduated.

He earmarked money for Brown in his first will, drafted at age 24 when he started his first business. “It wasn’t all that impressive, but it was something that I wanted to make a part of my giving,” Jason says.

“As I’ve gotten older and created an income for myself, I’ve continued to make Brown a larger part of my philanthropy. Hopefully I can be a reminder that even when life is just ramping up, it’s never too early to think about where and how you can give and plan your estate.”

DON’T FORGET TO

LOOK BACK

You can follow in Jason’s footsteps and support future Brown students with an estate gift— no matter what stage of life you’re in. Contact The Office of Planned Giving at 401-863-9119 or Planned_Giving@brown.edu today to discuss your options.

Congrats Class of 201 !

Best wishes from Brown’s Office of Planned Giving

Planned_Giving_ad 201

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Contents

Commencement Magazine by The Brown Daily Herald

Commencement Senior Orators 4

Honorary Degree Recipients 5

Features

May 24-26, 2019

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ver the last year, the University has operated in a -

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for change that still resonates today, and at the same time, recognize that we have not moved in a linear path

bled a collection of senior voices, who by no means represent the totality of to interrogate who might deserve access to Brown; another looks ahead to contemplate the ethics of living in

Open Curriculum at 50 8

History of the Brown Mascot 10

Weekend, one that mixes together —The 128th Editorial Board

Brain Science Sustainable Blooms at Brown 14 Investing 16

Year in Review 24 Elena Renken ‘19

Alex Skidmore ‘19

Editors

Designers

Elena Renken

Bilal Ismail Ahmed Keelin Lyons

Alex Skidmore

Opinions Editors

Senior Voices 28 Senior Survey 42

Writers

Photographers

Elena Renken Elise Ryan

Copy Editors

Alex Skidmore Alex Smolar

Amanda Brynn Krista Stapleford

Roland High Spring 2019

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Senior Orators

Ruth Miller ’19

written by OLIVIA BURDETTE BROWN UNIVERSITY

Patricia Rodarte ’19 MD’23

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Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

Honorary Degree Recipients

written by BEN SHUMATE BROWN UNIVERSITY

Sheryl Brissett Chapman ’71 Sheryl Brissett Chapman ’71 is the executive director of The National Center for Children and Families, a nonprofit community organization serving vulnerable children and families in the Washington D.C. area. She received a bachelor of arts in English and Theatre Arts from Brown in 1971 and has received the University’s John Hope Award for Public Service.

Ken Burns Ken Burns is a filmmaker whose influential historical documentaries have earned him five Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. Since beginning his professional career in the 1980s, Burns has been involved with over 30 films, including “The Civil War” (1990), “Baseball” (1994) and “The Vietnam War” (2017).

John Krasinski ’01 John Krasinski ’01 is an award-winning actor, writer and director. After receiving a bachelor of arts in English from Brown in 2001, Krasinski’s career took off playing the role of Jim Halpert in NBC’s “The Office” (2004). After nine seasons with the show, Krasinski has since starred in feature films and television series, including “13 Hours” (2016), “A Quiet Place” (2018) and “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” (2018).

Jennifer Anne Richeson ’94 Jennifer Anne Richeson ’94 is a social psychologist and professor of psychology at Yale. Her research focuses on racial identity and bias. Richeson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2015 and has written opinion pieces on race for national publications, including The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. She received a bachelor of science in psychology from Brown in 1994.

David M. Rubenstein David M. Rubenstein is the co-founder and co-executive chairman of the Carlyle Group, a worldrenowned investment firm. Rubenstein has pledged to donate more than half of his wealth to charities and has supported a range of environmental, educational and artistic causes. He sits on the board of several organizations, including Harvard, Duke University, the University of Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution.

E. Paul Sorensen ’71 MS’75 PhD’77 P’06 E. Paul Sorensen is a software developer and businessman who has worked for Hibbitt, Karlsson and Sorenson, Inc., which created a program used widely in structural and mechanical engineering.

Sorensen has been involved in many philanthropic causes, including serving as a co-chair for the BrownTogether fundraising campaign at the University. He completed all of his education at Brown, earning a bachelor’s degree in economics and engineering in 1971 and then master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering.

Joan Wernig Sorensen ’72 P’06 Joan Wernig Sorensen is a Brown Corporation member and has served in a wide range of educational roles in Rhode Island. She is a co-chair for the BrownTogether campaign and has previously served as a co-chair for the Brown Annual Fund. Sorensen has been recognized with the Elwood Leonard Jr. ’51 Distinguished Service Award and was the first woman president of the Brown Club of Rhode Island.

She received a bachelor of arts in psychology from Brown in 1972.

Spring 2019

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The Brown University Library congratulates this year’s graduates and welcomes families to campus.

Connect with the Library this weekend to experience our unique events and exhibits.

Exhibit

Forum

Open Exhibits

Friday, May 24 • 4:00 – 6:00 Pm remarks at 5:00 pm

Saturday, May 25 3:30 – 4:30 Pm

Learning through Play: British and French Tabletop Games from the 18th and 19th Centuries John Hay Library (main gallery) 20 Prospect St. Ellen Liman ’58 P’88 and filmmaker Doug Liman ’88 will open the exhibit featuring items from their gift and loan.

The Vietnam War — Enduring Impact on the Brown Community John Hay Library 20 Prospect St. An alumni reunion forum sponsored by the Library and the Brown Alumni Association.

Transcultural by Design: Iranian Ceramics from the Minassian Collection John Hay Library (Willis room) 20 Prospect St. Rules on Battle: Toy Soldiers and Miniature Wargaming rockefeller Library (finn room) 10 Prospect St. Learning through Play: British and French Tabletop Games from the 18th and 19th Centuries John Hay Library (main gallery) 20 Prospect St.

Mary & Jerome Vascellaro ’74, P’07 and Matt Vascellaro ’07 Welcome all Brown University Alumni, Alumnae, Students, Parents, Faculty, Staff and Friends to a Reception on Martha’s Vineyard with Brown University President Christina Paxson 8FEOesday, August , 201 5:30 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. For more information, please contact Special_Events@brown.edu or 401.863.6010

JOIN

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Congratulations to the Class of 2019

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OPEN CURRICULUM AT 50 A

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e W e r o f e B s r a e B e r We A 115-YEAR HISTORY OF BROWN'S MASCOT written by TESS DEMEYER DAPHNE ZHAO

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Dear Jessica, I love you and your adventuresome spirit.

I hope you will continue to pursue your dreams in the next chapter of your life.

Congratulations on this wonderful accomplishment!

With Love, Mom

Cheers to you, Alainey Leigh Hellman!

Congratulations Sean!

Love, Your Family

With proud and happy hearts, you are wished sincere congratulations on your college graduation.

Much love always, Your Family

The Brown family congratulates Ian Brown and Molly McCarthy class of 2019!

Congratulations, Sam Berube!

May your future endeavors be as amazing and as beautiful as your photos.

We are so proud of you!

Love you, Mom, Dad, Emma, Matthew and George

You were full of life and beauty then, and even more so now.

We are so proud of you, Katie, our Tiz.

Keep sharing that light inside of you.

Love, Mom, Dad, Megan and Clare

Congratulations Molly!

We are very proud of you and love you!

Your family

Congratulations Julian!

We are so proud of you and all of your accomplishments!

We’re certain that wherever life takes you next, you will succeed.

Love, Mom, Dad, Mandy, Buela & Otis

BRAIN SCIENCE BLOOMS AT BROWN written by ELENA RENKEN

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JOSH SANES, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR BRAIN SCIENCE AT HARVARD, CONSIDERS THE BRAIN’S FUNCTIONING TO BE THE CENTURY’S GREATEST INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGE.

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CROSS-POLLINATING IDEAS

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How is Brown Investing in Sustainability?

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“THEORY AND PRACTICE OF SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENT”

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Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

“You can invest with your principles and generate top-tier performance as well.”

—Robert Klaber ’07

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Love, Your families

Congratulations Molly Catherine Komyatte!

With that special pride known only by grandparents, we have witnessed your many educational accomplishments, culminating now with your Brown degree. Our best wishes for your studies at the London School of Economics.

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We are so proud of you, Jen! The Kaplan Family (and Buddy, Lily, Skip & Albus!)

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Congratulations Zoe! We are so proud of you for being someone that is making the future better for everyone!

Love, Your Family

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Courtesy of BROWN UNIVERSITY Campus celebrated the contributions of student veterans at its annual Veterans Day ceremony.

NAOMY PEDROZA/Herald For the 50-year anniversary of the black student walkout, students organized an event on the Main Green.

Courtesy of BROWN ATHLETICS With 19 wins this season, the men’s basketball team tied its highest win total in the program’s history.

NAOMY PEDROZA/Herald In a campus lecture, former Vice President Joe Biden talked about political breakdown and his relationship with former President Barack Obama.

Courtesy of BROWN UNIVERSITY Senator Elizabeth Warren shared her family’s story and discussed income inequality in a November lecture.

Courtesy of BROWN UNIVERSITY The football team faced Harvard in September.

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SPENCER SCHULTZ/Herald Leaders from the Brown Democrats and the Brown Republicans

Courtesy of BROWN UNIVERSITY At Hack@Brown, students worked on projects related to play and fun — the event’s theme was “Recess.”

HUAYU OUYANG/Herald The Watson unveiled a new building this spring, as well as plans for one concentration combining development studies, international relations and public policy.

Courtesy of BROWN UNIVERSITY Brown’s Orchestra performed during Family Weekend.

JACK JACOBY/Herald Former RNC Chair Michael Steele and DNC Chair Tom Perez ’83 P’18 discussed the midterm elections last fall.

Courtesy of BROWN UNIVERSITY Rashid Zia ’01, professor of engineering, took over as Dean of the College from Maud Mandel.

Courtesy of BROWN UNIVERSITY At the Black Alumni Reunion, former President Ruth Simmons received the Black Legacy Award from the Inman Page Black Alumni Council.

ISABELLE CORDOVA/Herald Students gathered in September to protest sexual assault at a rally that followed Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Brett Kavanaugh.

Spring 2019

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Meet Us at Reunion 2019 Learn About Venture Investing Come meet fellow alumni and learn how Waterman is supporting alumni entrepreneurs, making venture capital investing accessible to accredited investors, and bringing our community together.

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Senior Voices

Thoughts and reflections from 14 members of the graduating class

On writing Mark Liang ‘19

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have this weird ritual at the end of every year. Instead of packing clothes for home as many folks do, I fill my suitcase with books and course packets, napkins and brochures, letters received and written — piles of printed material that I collected over the academic year. There’s the Orgo midterm I failed, drafts of papers I barely remember writing and thousands of other pen-stained notes,

all condemned to sit in the damp basement of my parents’ house. Marie Kondo would be mortified.

Did you know that many Chinese people still believe in the divination of words? You write some characters, your name or something inconsequential like the things you recently ate, and the written lines can reveal something about yourself and your fortune. People around me take grand measures to protect their house with the right character positioned just so or by naming their kids auspiciously.

They call this kind of fortune-telling a lot of other names … literomancy, cèzì (測字). Magic. I wouldn’t know…

I can’t speak a lick of Chinese. Hell, I didn’t even get an A in English.

What I do know is that documentation of my family’s history, which spans two continents and is chockfull of generals and scholars, doctors and do-gooders, fits into a tiny cookie

tin at the bottom of a closet in my grandmother’s house. There are a few pictures of the generations before me, but no writing — no words. It is hard to write, or even save scraps of writing, when you flee a war. When you enter a country where you cannot speak the language well, there are other priorities. To get me to where I am today, my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, toiled quite literally without words.

There is not a day that goes by without me recognizing what a privilege it was to study at a place like Brown. How lucky I was to be able to write for the sake of learning, rather than for a paycheck or a visa.

I met the best writers I have ever known here: My writing mentors, Mili Mitra ’18 and Lainie Rowland ’17, who wrote the most amazing prose and commentary. My professors, in both science and humanities, who showed

“To get me to where I am today, my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, toiled, quite literally, without words.”

attitude that life is a trek best made on your own.

After I moved to Nebraska, I never truly felt that I found my place there.

I could count on two hands the number of people of color in my class.

I was that Asian girl who probably disappointed her parents because she wasn’t in any of the STEM clubs.

I was embarrassed that my lunches were dumplings and steamed buns instead of sandwiches and pastas, self-conscious whenever I drove my parents’ car with seats peeling at the seams and tired from trying so hard to find my place. I learned to exude confidence when I felt the exact opposite. Instead of wrestling

“But just as the winter ice thaws out every spring, I found myself growing and Brown growing on me.”

me the power of taking a stance and the pleasure of defending a well-constructed argument. And most importantly, my family, who for four years sent me their love across the country the only way they could, through texts and emails and birthday cards.

So I keep everything in my

Continued on page 35

Home within me Suvy Qin ‘19

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seatbelt soaked by tears; a bright yellow Penske truck packed full of things; two days of driving into the heart of the Midwest from the bayous of Louisi-

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ana. These are my memories of moving away from the first place I called home. Since then, I’ve gotten used to the motions of cramming everything I own into fraying cardboard boxes and leaving behind empty rooms. I learned to not get too attached to any place, to not grow my roots too deep — who knows when I’ll have to uproot myself again? I was convinced that people will come and people will go, like leaves of the season. These were the walls I built around me because I believed home could only be one place, unchanging and unmoving. Somewhere between the drive to Nebraskan cornfields and the plane ride to the Ocean State, I adopted the

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

with questions of identity, I projected my insecurities into busyness, donning an air of standoffishness and aloofness. I thought community

Continued on page 35

Voices of 2019

Holding greatness close Clare Steinman ‘19

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n the sweltering evening of last year’s Campus Dance, as the Class of 2018 prepared to take the stage for their Senior Sing, I found myself in conversation with an alum visiting Brown for his 30th reunion. We talked about the many ways that this place had changed and stayed the same, and he shared with me a lesson that I returned to over and over throughout my senior year, in order to remind myself, as often as

I can, what a remarkable group I’m here with.

As recorded that night on my phone’s Notes app, he told me, “You expected people who do great things to be a little different.” At first glance, this sounds like a quote from an early Apple “Think Different” ad. And of course, we at Brown pride ourselves on being “different” — the quirky, creative, nonconforming Ivy that sees your norms and shatters them. Maybe that’s what it takes to do great things, that little spark that sets you apart from the crowd.

But he was saying something else, too. When we expect greatness to be hiding among the different, we miss it when it’s right in front of us: in our dorm rooms and dining halls, curled up on our living room couches or running just faster than us on the treadmill. These changemakers that we build up in our heads don’t look like us or act like us. They’re

certainly not sitting next to us in section or asking us to read over their emails before they send them.

But that’s the secret of a place like this: They are.

We come to Brown riding the high of our greatest accomplishment to date — getting here — and are quickly brought down to earth by the scale of the achievements of our classmates. Greatness is everywhere, inescapable and often overwhelming. But then we find our “things” and we find our friends and our friends find their “things” and we forget, all too often, the sense of wonder that our fellow Brunonians once sparked in us. It’s far too easy to fail to recognize the accomplishments of those around us, the effort that it takes to build the communities we take for granted. I know that I often failed to appreciate the work that went into sustaining the organizations that mean the most to me until I saw all that occurs behind

“When we expect greatness to be hiding among the different, we miss it when it’s right in front of us: in our dorm rooms and dining halls, curled up on our living room couches or running just faster than us on the treadmill.”

ical ideology. As college students, it is difficult to believe that our collegiate musings could serve as the centerpiece of our future bibliographies.

However, maybe this forum is more telling than we had imagined.

Though The Herald was never meant to be “vanity press,” as I look back on Brown and my time at this newspaper, I wonder what secrets others may uncover in my writings.

The Buttigieg story makes me see my writing through the eyes of future employers or curious journalists, trying to glimpse the two-dimensional version of me that they might see.

That isn’t to say that I don’t own the words I have written in these pages.

My columns can be seen as a window into my psyche. They reveal my political opinions. They detail my fascinations and my frustrations with Brown and our nation and our world. They chronicle the evolution of my writing, with the help of dedicated teachers

and editors. My opinions columns offer a snapshot of my world over the past four years — many of my views, my grievances and my desires for Brown’s campus and beyond, and my enduring pride in my alma mater. However, they do not paint a complete picture of who I am.

Much like a final paper, my columns are polished products. They do not capture all the late nights in the Rockefeller Library or the import of long and often tense conversations with friends and faculty, all of whom have suffered my stubbornness with grace. They do not recount the endless exploration and thrashing out of ideas with bright and often unlike minds, which is a quintessential part of the Brown experience. These moments of intellectual development are among those I will cherish most from my time at Brown.

So many things become lost in this two-dimensional world: countless laughs on the Main Green, late nights,

“But my columns are not complete presentations of myself and my views; they catalog the evolution of my thoughts and serve as a reminder that this development is ever ongoing.”

Continued on page 38

Indelible ink Emily Miller ‘19

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hen Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced his presidential candidacy, few knew where to turn for in-depth analysis of his political philosophy or personal beliefs. The New York Times struck gold when the editors dusted off the opinions columns Buttigieg had written 16 years prior for the Harvard Crimson.

According to the Times, Buttigieg’s writings as an undergraduate constitute the foundation for his current polit-

books devoured and mornings with the cacophony of “CAUTION: BUS

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Voices of 2019

Open curriculum 2.0 Ruth Foster ‘19

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e’ve spent four years (or maybe a little more) wandering around in the open curriculum. For some of us, the course has been relatively straightforward. But I think for most of us, these precious years at Brown have brought about a great deal of questioning and a generous helping of difficult choices.

Even those of us who entered the Van Wickle gates with an unshakeable confidence in our concentration and career trajectory have had to make

choices — deciding whether to stay the course or do something else.

Freshman year, when we were busy moving into dorms and trying not to get lost on the way to class, our worlds were opening up in exciting ways. We met new people, joined groups on campus and, perhaps for the first time ever, had the opportunity to study anything we wanted thanks to the open curriculum.

The open curriculum provides us a great deal of freedom, but this freedom in turn requires a great deal from us — we are asked to think carefully about what we care about, which intellectual tools we want to develop and the kind of people we want to be.

This year, the open curriculum turns 50 years old. What can we, the class of 2019, learn from an educational philosophy that came into being half a century ago?

At its inception, the open curriculum was called the New Curriculum. It blossomed out of a document created

a few years prior, the Magaziner-Maxwell Report. The Report was the product of a year-long independent study project organized by a group of students. Their work provided a blueprint for why and how the University ought to be run.

When I first read the Magaziner-Maxwell Report, it was the spring of my freshman year and I was researching in preparation for proposing an independent concentration. The “Why” section of the independent concentration application form prompted students to read the Report, which also goes by the less glamorous title “Draft of a Working Paper for Education at Brown University.” When I saw that the Magaziner-Maxwell Report was close to three hundred pages long, I was surprised. The open curriculum seemed simple enough. I didn’t get it — what was the point of this big, old paper?

But as I read the introduction, I was struck by just how much the circum-

“This year, the open curriculum turns 50 years old. What can we, the class of 2019, learn from an educational philosophy that came into being half a century ago?” stances that produced this 50-yearold document mirrored the world we live in today. The Magaziner-Maxwell Report was written in mid-60s against a backdrop of social turmoil. The Vietnam War was raging, sparking student

Continued on page 36

Speak to all pasts, and they shall teach thee Rachel Gold ‘19

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n Earth Day this year, my friends and I stood on the Main Green for a few hours and asked passersby to guess the age of our planet. Our team of undergrad geology students had laid out a timeline of Earth’s history that spanned the Green: The formation of Earth was under Faunce Arch, the oxygenation of the atmosphere in front of Sayles Hall, the extinction of the dinosaurs in front of the John Carter Brown Library

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and the entire life of Homo sapiens squeezed into 0.7 centimeters only a meter away from the dinosaurs. We invited students to take a piece of sidewalk chalk, add an event to the timeline and revel in the wild and wonderful history we inherit as Earthlings.

Students’ guesses for the age of Earth were far-flung. “A couple million years?” “Must be older than me!”

“Maybe a trillion years.” The most common answer? “I truly have no idea.” Six semesters ago, before I took my first geology class, I certainly would not have known that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. American high schools seem to agree that Rome matters, the World Wars matter and sometimes, Mesopotamia and Vietnam matter, too. But the Earth? Why would it matter whether the Earth is four million or 4.5 billion years old? Our history educations stop at human timescales, leaving geology and Earth history to collect dust in old books.

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

After four years as a history and geology concentrator, I’m not only obsessed with both human and planetary timescales, but I think that we are irresponsible in studying either in isolation. (I once tried to count a geology class toward my history concentration, though I was unsuccessful.)

Earth history puts human history in (measly) context; human history allows us to understand our relationship with Earth through different languages and lenses. At Brown, my professors in the geology department have taught me that the age of the Earth matters for the same reasons that my professors in the history department have taught me the Middle Ages and Industrial Revolution matter: because the past helps us render judgments on the present and imagine different futures.

If we use the past — and our relative distance from different pasts — to understand ourselves, then we need accurate timescales. The Industrial

“At Brown, we’ve made the commitment — radical, to some, but routine, to us — to read the pasts that are hardest to access.

Every day, I am reminded of the urgency of this commitment.”

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Voices of 2019

On gratitude and uncertainty Kasturi Pananjady ’19

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n 2015, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger published an obituary for Vishal Bokka Reddy ’12, “a software engineer, a neuroscientist, a linguist who spoke four languages, a flutist and a humanist.” Reddy’s life came to an end when he was “hit by a car while jogging,” just three years after graduating from the University. That’s all I know about the family that has, in part, funded my education as an Indian undergraduate at Brown.

The email informing me of my

“named scholarship” arrived right on the heels of a blog post I wrote about struggling with the randomness of generosity — and even being suspicious of it. Gratitude can morph into guilt so quickly in ways that are paralyzing and corrosive, and it has taken me all my time at Brown to try to find more productive ways to think about debt.

When the University went needblind for domestic students in 2003, President Emerita Ruth Simmons described need-blind admission as a moral compulsion. But as José Soria ’19 pointed out in a Herald op-ed last fall, the University has yet to make public a timeline for the implementation of need-blind financial aid for international students, despite being in the midst of a massive fundraising campaign. Being accepted to Brown with University financial aid remains a fraught enterprise for international students even today.

The singular improbability of my

being here only exacerbated my impostor syndrome. The most literal way to pay good fortune forward was working on University fundraising, and I spent some of my first year at the Student Calling Center, making timid fundraising pitches to alumni. In general, student callers are encouraged to share personal stories with the alumni (and if I remember correctly, sometimes the graduating seniors — sorry) that they badger. My hands would get clammy just before I introduced myself and told them where I was from, worried that the person on the other end of the line would give voice to my unspoken fear: Why you?

It wasn’t until I walked into the office of the student newspaper that I felt a sense of purpose on campus.

It wasn’t just the thrill of seeing one of my first stories as a senior staff writer printed in the newspaper, but the knowledge that the story likely wouldn’t have been written if I hadn’t

“Am I saying something when it is best for me to not say anything at all?” pitched it. It was a profile of a student who had co-founded a sexual assault sensitization program in India, Shreena Thakore ’17. She had conducted a workshop at my high school in Bangalore my senior year and was one the reasons I ended up Googling — and applying to — Brown at all. It was a pleasingly cyclical way of coming to terms with the power — symbolic and otherwise — of representation.

I began thinking about people who weren’t in the newsroom with me — at Brown, covering diversity and student life, but also at the pa-

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Making choices, taking chances Saanya Jain ‘19

I

have spent this semester counting my lasts — granola bowls, John Street basement concerts, all-nighters in the Rock. At each occasion of arithmetical gymnastics, one question inevitably arose: Would I do it all again the same way?

Each time, I would think back to a memory from my senior year of high school. My family sat around the kitchen table, the afternoon light streaming in on a warm Tunisian

day, as my parents and I debated, yet again, where I should go to college. My mother insisted on one school and I, naturally, vehemently disagreed. After tears (mostly mine) and slammed doors (all by me), I sat on the staircase, fuming. But I was close enough to hear my father tell my mother: “I want her to make her own choice; then there’s no reason to regret it.”

Up to that point, my life had been defined by serendipity. Whenever anyone asked why I had grown up halfway across the world from where I had been born, I didn’t quite know what to say: some combination of a chance job application, a missed email, a delayed flight and a civil war. These events had brought me to that moment, living in a country my grandparents couldn’t identify on a map, arguing about schools no one in my family had ever been to.

When I decided to come to

Brown, all of that changed. Here, every aspect of my experience — from who my friends were to why I was awake at 4 a.m. — was my choice.

Being solely responsible for mistakes and my successes alike, however, was easier said than done. Every shopping period, I hashed through a multi-sheet, color-coded Excel document with dozens of courses. Each time, I was paralyzed with indecision, wondering if I would be happier filming a short movie or playing around in virtual reality instead.

Perhaps this was why I was attracted to economics, the study of how we make trade-offs given scarce resources. Optimization was straightforward enough in my microeconomics problem sets, where costs and utility were given to me as algebraic expressions. But there are no givens when I had to optimize for my most scarce resource on this campus: time.

“There are no givens when I had to optimize for my most scarce resource on this campus: time.”

Each semester, I got a little better at it. That class that everyone said I had to take? I eventually gathered the courage to drop it. My existential crisis when a philosophy concentrator dropped a theory course at the last minute because it was too theoretical? Turned out to be my favorite one of the year. From seeing my first article in print to jumping onstage in front of five hundred people, I learned

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Spring 2019

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Voices of 2019

UNIV0100: How to Fall in Love Aidan Calvelli ‘19

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ou’re supposed to learn all sorts of things in college: how to read more critically, solve for a p-value, live on your own, manage your time efficiently or maybe even shotgun a beer. Brown tries to prepare its students to “discharge the offices of life with usefulness and reputation.”

Its liberal educational goal is to help students develop the “full range of (their) intellectual capacities.”

Four years later, at least speaking for myself, I think Brown achieved

its mission. My classmates and I are prepared (enough) to start our careers and serve our communities. We’ve gained knowledge and skills while growing into our quasi-adult selves.

But beyond all these important, practical concerns, Brown also taught me something I didn’t expect to learn in college: how to fall in love.

When I first stepped on campus, I explicitly prioritized my educational interests over my romantic ones. My high school girlfriend and I had just (amicably, but painfully) split up for college, so I gave myself a “self-imposed moratorium”: no romantic entanglements until I had fully moved on.

(A journal entry from September 2015 that reads “YOU’RE NOT READY YET” suggests my emotional healing was neither a smooth nor short process.)

That moratorium was tested about three weeks into my first semester during a flirtationship with my nextdoor neighbor in New Pembroke #3.

Rules were rules, though, and since

I was “NOT READY,” I pumped the brakes and got back to my schoolwork. Other unrequited loves followed over the years, throwing me through a crash course in being rejected while staying true to my feelings.

Romantic love, though, was just one of the many kinds of love Brown taught me about. I fell in love with people and ideas, places and memories — and Brown seemed perfectly set up to show me how.

The open curriculum embodies Brown’s commitment to love. Its freedom allows you to figure out what you love and study it. You’re not wedded to any conception of yourself or burdened by requirements you won’t enjoy; instead, you are encouraged to explore your passions with abandon.

The open curriculum pushes you to take personal risks, dive into uncertainty, embrace the potential for failure and learn about people and ideas radically different from your own. I know Brown is anti-requirements, but

“I fell in love with people and ideas, places and memories — and Brown seemed perfectly set up to show me how.” those sound to me like pre-reqs for falling in love.

Even the banal structure of academic life gave me a lesson in love. Life here is broken into short, defined semesters, during which we’re encouraged to immerse ourselves in new classes and new experiences.

Shopping period teaches us to search broadly for our passions and reminds us not to settle for the subpar. Reading period lets you pour all your focus into

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Pondering the path ahead Maya Singh ‘19

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hen I first walked through the Van Wickle Gates three years ago, it was in the company of a much smaller, and perhaps more eclectic, group. As a transfer student, I crossed the threshold with folks who had called other universities their home, had served in the armed forces and had even worked as circus acrobats before continuing their education at Brown. Now approaching the gates again, I invite

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you to consider the trajectory you have chartered here, and where you hope to go next. This may seem daunting and full of unknowns, but Brown has taught us to embrace uncertainty and navigate our own discovery, no matter how meandering the path may be.

My story begins as a first-year student in a small liberal arts college in Maine. Thoroughly unprepared for my first New England winter, I resolved to leave my room only when absolutely necessary. Feeling both cabin-feverish and overwhelmed in the midst of Africana studies, chemistry, cognitive science and religious studies, I ventured out into the snowdrift to seek advice from a professor. I asked whether there was any way to combine the study of the human brain with Buddhist philosophy of the self (or rather, the absence of self). My professor, a Brown alum herself, then said three words: “Go to Brown.” Dodging sheets of ice on the walk home, my mind reeled. Later

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

that evening, sitting in the dim light of my computer, I found the following description on Brown’s transfer page: “Transfers are people who are unwilling to settle. They are willing to do the extra work to get what they want. And they are willing to take the path less traveled to arrive at a better place.” As we prepare to leave and begin again in new communities, this feels particularly apropos. However long you have been here, in a sense, we are all going to be transfer students now. We are about to shift paradigms along with furniture. Let us note this transition.

So, how will you put in the extra work, and what paths are you willing to take to arrive at a better place? With a Brown degree in one hand and a five- (or ten-) year plan in the other, some of us know exactly what we want and are prepared to boldly set out to achieve it. For those of you with lucrative job offers, graduate school admission or meticulous travel plans,

“However long you have been here, in a sense, we are all going to be transfer students now.”

I wish you the best. For many of us, however, our futures are somewhat less settled — we are ambivalently waiting at the Providence Station platform, not quite sure which train to board, where we are going and what detours may lie ahead. Sylvia Plath aptly describes this sentiment in “The Bell Jar” — a paralyzing fear of all the possible futures, like tantalizing figs on branches of a tree, each beckoning in different directions.

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Voices of 2019

On “using everything” Rebecca Okin ‘19

G

ertrude Stein has watched over me for the past four years. Or more specifically, her words, etched into the English department building at 70 Brown St., have: “And then there is using everything.”

They’ve watched me run to Smith-Buonanno Hall on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Shabbat dinners on Fridays. They’ve patiently overseen treks to Page-Robinson Hall to pick up promotional mail and knowingly witnessed interactions at Faunce Arch,

where I’ve promised old friends that I’ll “totally text them about coffee after the weekend.” Of course, they’ve monitored trips in and out of thesis advisor meetings, gawking in disbelief when I showed up in mid-April, with bound copies in hand.

The meaning of this quotation was obvious for my first three years on College Hill. Take all the classes, join all the clubs, meet all the people. Read Today@Brown, for god’s sake. Use all the resources Brown has to offer, not only because we are so lucky to be here, but because the philosophy of liberal learning says so. Like many of my fellow classmates, I obliged, marking myself “Going” — or at the very least, “Interested” — to every Facebook event that came my way. The question that always energized me was: Am I doing enough?

Or more importantly: When I look back on my time in college, will I remember myself as having done enough?

As I prepare to leave Brown, this question is no longer theoretical. Lately,

it has seemed critical that I am able to tell myself that, yes, I did it all. The main problem is, I didn’t. I didn’t go to the Ladd Observatory or play on an intramural team or take an Egyptology class. I didn’t join that group or organize that event or see that performance. I didn’t even do most of the readings. But maybe this quotation, this idea of “using everything,” has nothing to do with how much we utilized shopping period or office hours. Rather, it might teach us how to move on from Brown: by using the outline we’ve created of ourselves here to guide our next step.

It is now, as we leave, that we are meant to “use everything.” It’s about taking what we got here and who we were and what we did and using it all. If I don’t remember the exact concepts I taught as a psychology teaching assistant, I’ll remember the patience it takes to communicate an idea to someone else. If I don’t remember what texts I read for my thesis, I’ll remember what tools I need to drive a personal project,

“It is now, as we leave, that we are meant to ‘use everything.’

It’s about taking what we got here and who we were and what we did and using it all.” both organizationally and mentally. And if I don’t remember whether it was in the fall or spring that I would lie on the Main Green, eyes closed and listening to the sounds of Frisbee and tour groups and skateboards rolling on the cement, I’ll remember how meaningful it can be to take a day off.

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Dreams and diagnoses Julianne Center ‘19

I

joined The Brown Daily Herald because I wanted to be Rory Gilmore. It was as simple as that.

I was a small-town-girl from Southern California, and I knew no one who had navigated the brick-patterned halls of the Ivy League beside my dear friend Rory.

I thought there would be an interview. My school had no newspaper and I had no experience, so instead I packed a black pencil skirt and blazer

for the occasion and carted it across the country in my family’s Subaru.

There was no interview, and for my first meeting, I wore jeans just like everyone else.

I didn’t know much about journalism at the time. I knew my father had the Los Angeles Times delivered each morning. I could still feel the snow melting in my slippers as I trudged across the driveway to fetch it for him on cold winter mornings. I knew I hated Bill O’Reilly, that man who shouted through my father’s TV — but I still thought he was a journalist.

The Herald taught me otherwise, and they taught me by doing. Ethics training, workshop and practice article completed, I received my first real article. It was a snoozefest that only my mother and the editors of The Herald read. Looking back, I don’t think any of my (otherwise, very supportive) friends have ever really read an article I wrote for The Herald. Looking back, I’m not

sure I blame them.

But I was hooked. I was going to become a journalist, I told my on-and-off hometown boyfriend, and that would bind me to the East Coast, to a wild life that could not include him. Everything else fell behind this dream.

I loved the hours I spent in the office writing headlines, covering breaking news and laughing with fellow Heralders. I loved the way my friends sighed when I said, “I’m off to The Herald!” I loved editing articles, mentoring writers and interviewing people. Even though I hated cutting each and every Oxford comma, I loved that 195 Angell St. was home.

The next summer, my life fell apart.

And it wasn’t just because I didn’t get the big-time journalism internship I craved. I walked in and out of the San Bernardino County Crisis Clinic and straight to the pharmacy next door. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression alongside my sister,

“I do mean to tell those suffering that it’s okay to take a step back.” with whom I walked in and out of hospitals and offices and pharmacies for her own crises. Not only was I responsible for keeping myself alive, but my sister, too. Luckily, I did. We did.

But my identity was split. This new self, who had trouble getting out of bed in the morning, seemed irreconcilable with the editor who stayed up until 2 a.m. to finish a newspaper, then hit the library and still made it to her 9 a.m. the next day.

Luckily, I didn’t have to grapple with this much. Junior fall, I studied abroad in Barcelona, soaking myself in sangria, siestas and Spanish poetry. I

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Spring 2019

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Voices of 2019

Graduating into cataclysmic climate change Benjamin Potee ‘19

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art of graduating is accepting unpredictability. Our graduating class will be forced to reckon with an emerging source of uncertainty: our changing climate and subsequent impacts upon societies, populations and individuals. The existence of climate change has been known for decades, but specific effects on food supply, sea-level rise and natural disasters have become more visible in our time at Brown.

As a result, it is incorrect to say we will be graduating into a wholly uncertain future. Climate change has a definite vector towards privation, recession and violence, in direct contrast to expected global outcomes of economic growth and increased quality of life. In other words, the ever-improving, if deeply flawed, world we expected to be handed upon graduation may no longer exist.

The conclusions reached in the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report mean that a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius would result in extreme temperatures, heavy flooding, extended droughts and more wildfires. Preventing an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius relies on cutting net emissions in half by 2030, and the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius of temperature increase can be measured in tens of millions of lives. We create the

future through our actions, but our options are rapidly dwindling and extensive, multifaceted action is required to avoid cataclysm.

This is the world that awaits us after Brown: Either we will see dramatic emission reductions in the next decade, or we will proceed with business as usual and will be committed to warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius by the middle of the next century. Some individuals will buy electric cars, install solar panels or go vegan, and institutions will continue to sign onto sustainability or carbon reduction pledges. This gradualism would have been welcome 20 years ago, but it cannot save us now. Further, business as usual will result in climate change which initially impacts low-income residents of coastal countries in the developing world. The death toll from climate-induced famines and wars will rise. Those least responsible

“The scope of this crisis invites most disciplines and almost all solutions; your passion is unlikely to be inconsistent with the changes that must come.” for this disaster will be hurt the most while some hedge funds and security companies will profit off a fractured world. Carbon capture and geoengineering could delay and mitigate the worst conse-

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Idlies for the collegiate soul Divya Santhanam ‘19

I

used to have a blue lunch box. I can’t remember the exact shade of blue, but I remember the coarseness of its fabric as I opened it on the first day of senior kindergarten.

It had enough space for a Ziploc bag and a stainless steel, or as my mother would say, ever-silver thermos. Inside it was a note in my dad’s typewriter-like handwriting: “Good luck D, we love you always. Amma and

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Appa.” Underneath was a thermos of pillowy soft idlies, soaked in hearty sambar, my mother’s favorite food.

As I opened it, I could smell the warm scent of our kitchen — the laughter of my grandparents, the sound of our pressure cooker emitting steam, the background noise of Sun TV’s latest Tamil dramas.

“Ew, what is that?” a girl who sat diagonally from me called out as she pointed to my thermos filled with idlies. I heard peals of laughter and felt the corners of my mouth wobble. The desk had never been so brown and the lunch box never so blue. In retrospect, it might have been gray, but in that moment it was blue, as blue as the crayon I used to write in my mom’s phonebooks, so blue that I wanted to drown in it. The memory is blurry, but I can remember its tint and scent. Waxy blue and fermented rice gone bad. For the

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

next three years, I ate my lunch under the desk. The lunch box slowly turned into a Sobeys bag, and then ceased to exist at all in high school, when I managed to fit my thermos into the first zip of my backpack.

During November break of my first year at Brown, I went home for the first time in months and returned with a plastic box chock full of idlies, smeared with fresh hand-ground malaga pudi. As I unpacked my suitcase and opened my mini-fridge, my roommate asked me, “What is that?”

I launched into a performed, sanitized explanation of idlies being a form of fermented rice, but she surprised me with, “Can I have some?” I sprinkled water from our nearby sink (sorry, had to remind readers that I lived in West Andrews) and warmed it in the micro-

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“I don’t know how to describe what that felt like, a group of people relishing what I once feared to be seen with, but the knots in my stomach that slowly formed over the years began to unravel.”

Voices of 2019 Mark Liang

Suvy Qin

hometown, placed in plastic office bins and organized by year in black Sharpie. They’re not so much there for nostalgia or reference than they are a reminder of the things I still have to do. Like my parents, I still walk into rooms filled with people who do not look like me. I joined a newspaper with no experience, believing that I had something worthwhile to say. I think, in a weird kind of way, that writing is indeed like divination, because we define our world and make our own future from the things we put down on paper. I am reminded still that institutions even today limit the voices of those who look different or act different or believe in something different.

This is because words are power: Resistance through words changes the world.

The open curriculum turns 50 this year, and despite its name, it still has one requirement that has held its ground through the years: competency in writing, demonstrated by a year of WRIT-designated classes. For all the lamentations from me and other STEM kids about the impossibility of writing, I find immense pleasure in the fact that Brown prepares all of its students to go out and prove something with their words — even if that thing is as small as bringing my grandmothers down into the basement and watching them beam with pride when I point at the boxes of papers and say, “This is my history.”

This month, we step away from what is most likely the four most productive years of writing in our lives. We walk away from doodles on post-its, battered blue books, heartfelt notes passed around, essays we aced (and didn’t), bubbled-in exams, all of it. We trade in all of our words in exchange for a diploma, that one last slip of paper. I think I know which was worth more.

was a cute concept for college essays and applications, and yet, I constantly sought to feel at home — to feel that I belonged.

I arrived at Brown slightly wary of this place. Am I only here because the University needed representation from the Midwest?

Am I going to fit in when everyone else seems so happy and so put together all the time? Am I going to be exposed for the fraud that I felt I was? I was certain that Brown would be just a stop along this journey called life, since this was only temporary after all. Four years later, it would be time to pack up and move on to the next place, I reminded myself. But just as the winter ice thaws out every spring, I found myself growing and Brown growing on me.

After two concussions in the first month of freshman spring, I remember how weak I felt, lying in my dark dorm room as tears streaked down my cheek and mourning how my workaholic lifestyle was unsustainable. I watched people come alongside me, bring me food and send emails to professors when I couldn’t get up and shower without nausea. As someone who took pride in my ability to produce and achieve on my own, I was confronted with the reality that I couldn’t depend on my accomplishments and intellectual capacity to define me. In those moments of helplessness, I could feel

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Aidan Calvelli

Continued from page 32 final projects that, at their best, engage with your favorite parts of the course. And when one semester ends (and so too does a class you enjoyed), the next semester just rolls around, almost as if Brown is reminding us that the search for love never ends.

Of course, falling in love also happens outside the classroom. College occupies a liminal space, somewhere between child- and adulthood: We are able to take on meaningful projects, yet empowered to start fresh and pursue new interests as they arise. Combine this with a socially engaged campus culture and you have a recipe for students falling in love with the communities they join. I didn’t expect a random club my friend prodded me to join to become central to my identity. But here I am, a tear welling up in my eye as I realize I’ll never attend another Brown Political Review meeting. (I now know how to cry, so I guess Brown also taught me to overcome my tough-guy masculinity complex.)

My best Brown stories involve learning

“My best Brown stories involve learning to love the people, moments and ideas fundamental to my time here.” to love the people, moments and ideas fundamental to my time here. Whether I was obsessing over a comma in a Herald article, journaling from the fire escape of Corliss-Brackett or reciting a Neruda poem on a first date, the freedom and opportunity of Brown taught me to feel fully and love deeply.

I might soon forget how to find a derivative or what the Supreme Court ruled in Jenness v. Fortson. But I won’t forget what it’s like to devote my life to something or someone, to commit to what I care about with all of my heart. In this passionate, all-consuming way, Brown taught me how to fall in love. Whether I learned that lesson just satisfactorily, or with distinction? Only the registrar knows.

my facade start to crumble.

Through this continuous process of wrestling with my failures and disappointments and questioning my compulsion for control, I’ve found that vulnerability is a source of strength. I recognized that the most meaningful moments are the late-night conversations over Andrews cookie slices and milk, sharing stories of struggle and resilience over cups of coffee and putting down textbooks to cry with a friend. Brown became my home when I opened up to people and pushed the boundaries of what I was comfortable with. Building community means building trust and emotional vulnerability, and I began to see that these relationships were reflections of a sense of belonging.

Like a careful pruning of old branches, I am unlearning self-preservation mechanisms and ingrained fears of future uncertainty to make space for myself to grow.

The question of “Where is home for you?” is still complicated to answer, but I know that Brown has taught me that home is not a place. Home is within me — that feeling of being at home is not defined by distance or location, but rather by my own willingness to open up to those around me.

To be home is to belong as you are, to be known in a world of unknowns. As I part ways with Brown, it will be a bittersweet goodbye, but I’m confident I can weather whatever comes ahead, because I can always trace my roots home.

Emily Miller

Continued from page 29 IS TURNING” and my roommates singing. These moments, however invisible to the readers of my columns, fundamentally shaped my Brown experience.

Brown students are much more than their academic and extracurricular output, just as Brown is a place steadfastly dedicated to inquiry beyond the classroom. We are all part of a vibrant community brimming with hope and intellectual experimentation. Still, each of us has left an indelible mark on this University, and I implore each of you to think about the tangible and intangible marks you have left on campus. I also would like us to look beyond these moments — our tangible achievements or most proud final products — and meditate on the process by which we reached them.

Alright, the New York Times, the Atlantic or even the Washington Examiner, if you ever feel compelled to make sense of me, just peruse my columns from The Herald archives. But my columns are not complete presentations of myself and my views; they catalog the evolution of my thoughts and serve as a reminder that this development is ever ongoing.

In the meantime, thank you to the Brown community for reading my past columns and now this one, my last attempt as a Brown student to offer my appreciation for the most challenging and rewarding four years.

Spring 2019

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Voices of 2019 Kasturi Pananjady

Ruth Foster

Continued from page 31

Continued from page 30

pers I worked at over the summer in India. My first year at Brown was marked by the Blackout, a student protest that catalyzed the creation of the University’s diversity and inclusion action plans.

I began to think about all the stories that we were missing, and what my responsibility was as someone who spent their time in spaces that can be exclusionary. With every interview I did for the paper, my fellow students helped me think through the problem with regard to The Herald, Brown, the United States and journalism more broadly. The question that had haunted me shifted in my mind: Shouldn’t there be more people like me here?

I’ve been a reporter for most of my time at The Herald, and as much as I loved editing opinions, the act of expressing one here seems like poor form. In part, that stems from ethical discomfort, but also a more fundamental fear: Am I saying something when it is best for me to not say anything at all? It’s not an alien concern; I imagine many of us have felt this in the oddly ornate seminar room, losing faith in the value of our contributions before we reach the end of our sentences.

I’m discovering, as I write this, that there’s something about the linear development that a column seems to require that doesn’t seem to leave me much space to acknowledge the terror of needing lightning to strike twice — getting in and getting funded — when I filed my graduate school applications this year.

Or that it took me weeks and therapist appointments to call the Reddys to thank them incoherently and let them know about this column on learning to be confident in my skin and voice.

My housemates and I often joke darkly that Brown has been about the illusion of change and progress. In taking stock of all I’ve done here, sometimes the urge to want to start over is very strong, whether that’s a tough phone call or a column or all of Brown.

But there is value, I think, in capturing this snapshot of who I am and all that I have learned even as — especially as — I become increasingly aware of how much I still have yet to grow.

And as I walk through the Van Wickle Gates, I’ll be telling myself that’s what commencement is about, too.

Rachel Gold

Continued from page 30 Revolution, for example, takes on a different meaning in the context of Earth history, which teaches us that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have not reached the present 415 parts per million since around three million years ago, when sea levels were 60 feet higher than they are today. Deeper timescales also help us recognize the fact that the coal powering the Industrial Revolution formed over a 300-million-year journey in Earth’s crust before being burned in two centuries. Now that’s nonrenewable.

This work of reconstructing the past is not easy.

Over the past four years, while rushing to lab in the Geo-Chem Building or history section in Peter Green House, I’ve been caught off guard by the command etched into the side of the John Carter Brown Library: “Speak to the past and it shall teach thee.” We’re not asked to learn from the past, but to speak to it. The

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Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

protests; the civil rights movement was in full swing; the Chicano movement was growing; and a new wave of feminism was rising. There was a sense in the world that the status quo needed to be challenged and changed.

This desire for challenge and change was felt in all facets of life, including the University. Together, students articulated the aims of a Brown education, and how the organization of the University might facilitate those aims. And so in May 1969, after “three years and a million student work hours of discussion and planning,” the open curriculum was born. In this new vision for Brown education, there were no distribution requirements, grades were de-emphasized and the student was deliberately placed at the center of the educational experience.

We were invited for the first time to be the “architects of our own education.” I like this phrase a lot, but I think it tells only half the story. We are not just the architects of our education — we are also its builders. It’s up to us to ask: What do I care about? What skills do I want to develop? What kind of person do I want to be? Then it’s up to us to act on the answers to those questions. We have to do the work of developing ourselves both as thinkers and as people.

I’ve struggled a lot with these questions during my time at Brown. A little over a year after my independent concentration was finally approved, I started to wonder whether I’d made a mistake. The issues and questions that I felt so deeply compelled by

verb is resoundingly active.

What pasts do we speak to? We’ve learned at Brown that some pasts are more accessible than others. But that doesn’t excuse us from ignoring the histories buried most deeply. I’ll long remember Associate Professor of History Naoko Shibusawa teaching us third-year history students to “read against the grain” for voices missing in the history archives. The geologic past, as a rule of stratigraphy, is generally buried deep. I confronted this reality on Geology Field Trip #1 in GEOL0220, when our professors, Jan and Karen, brought us to North Attleboro, Massachusetts, and asked us to read the rocks. (As you can imagine, the rocks of North Attleboro are not the rocks on the cover of our geology textbook).

Initially, the rocks seemed illegible. But over the next two hours, Jan and Karen helped us decode each paragraph of the story: A layer of larger sand grains hinted at a river flood; parallel scratches across the surface suggested the scouring of a retreating ice

as an underclassman, while still interesting, no longer moved me in the same way.

I started to think about abandoning the concentration I’d spent a year researching and writing to study philosophy instead. I debated all the way into my seventh semester about whether to switch concentrations, but in the end I stayed. I stayed because the thing most representative of my intellectual experience at Brown was not a particular discipline or department. It was the process of creating and executing an independent concentration. A four-year journey that challenged me to reflect, to plan and then to act.

The work that a Brown education asks us to undertake feels especially resonant now that we’re here together — waiting to take a step into the rest of our lives.

As graduation has neared, I’ve felt overwhelmed by just how big the world seems.

There are an infinite number of ways we can choose to live our lives. Where will I go next? What job will I have? In five years will I stay the course or decide to try something new? What issues will I care about? What kind of person will I be? The world is vast and full of choice — it feels like the open curriculum 2.0.

But to me, this is a relief. For the last four years, we’ve been figuring out how to navigate a sea of choices. We’ve learned how to approach complicated questions. We’ve learned how to figure out what is important to us, and what to do when what is important to us changes. To reflect, to plan, to act.

These skills will serve us well because the work of exploration and transformation is never done.

sheet. As it turned out, there was an accessible past written into these rocks. We just needed to learn how to read it.

At Brown, we’ve made the commitment — radical to some but routine to us — to read the pasts that are hardest to access. Every day, I am reminded of the urgency of this commitment. How can we write our future if we can’t read our past? How can we imagine future climate change if our conception of the possible doesn’t include the world three million years ago, when trees grew in Antarctica and the eastern seaboard of the U.S. was flooded and carbon dioxide concentrations last matched the levels we’re causing now? As you go about reading deep histories, Class of 2019, I’m sure you’ll run into sandstones that seem illegible and siltstones that stare blankly back. But I’m confident that you’ll find a way in. I’m confident that you’ll read to understand, to challenge and then to transform. Get out there, read history and rock the world.

Voices of 2019 Continued from page 32

Continued from page 33

Rebecca Okin

Julianne Center

As we have sped toward graduation, it has been difficult to focus on the paths around us stretching into the distance. As students, our value seems predicated on productivity. We have developed our own academic survival instincts to keep moving. I am in awe of my brilliant, bright-eyed friends who are musical and mathematical and read entire books in one morning before diving into problem sets, all while applying for jobs. With so much momentum, it takes a lot for us to come to a grinding halt. As Newton’s first law states, bodies in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by a force of equal and opposite magnitude. Sometimes, whether of our own volition or not, we come up against these unexpected forces. Our bodies change and age.

Paradigms shift and fields of study transform. Governments shut down. In response, we find new inspiration; we gather to resist, advocate and elevate silenced voices. We form coalitions to support our graduate students. We put up fans on the steps of university buildings and fight for fair working conditions for those laboring in seen and unseen spaces on our campus.

Regardless of the force propelling you forward, I will wager that your trajectory will not be linear. Embracing the open curriculum and all it has to offer, Brown has taught us to embrace uncertainty in all forms. We have dropped classes (read: Organic Chemistry), changed concentrations and even made up our own avenues of study. Even with such freedom, we all have had our fair share of academic “what ifs” — if only I concentrated in computer science, spent more time off College Hill supporting local organizers and activists or taken a contemplative studies seminar on happiness. Perhaps then I would know what this whole life-after-college thing is all about. What is important to remember, though, is that many doors are still open. We still have plenty of opportunities, and for that reason, I am left with a feeling of optimism. Brown may be the first place to give us this freedom, but it is not something we have to leave at the Van Wickle Gates when we graduate.

Because the truth is, the open curriculum was never that open. Our class schedules were always structured by passions and paths that guided us to take this over that. My love for literature dictated 90 percent of my own courses every semester.

In the same way, the next phase of our lives will be guided by everything we experienced here, whether or not individual details will survive.

Of course, some individual episodes do stand out, and they aren’t even the ones that taught me a productive skill or life lesson. Like the things that happened that only make “college sense” — the decisions that were effortless at the time but inexplicable in retrospect. Spending the time between a 10 a.m. and a 2 p.m. class saying it’d be pointless to do work for only a few hours, but then staying up all night to finish an essay.

Walking 20 minutes to an obscure building for free pizza, even though it’s May and you have 140 meal credits left. Or that morning sophomore year when I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep, and even though it was 6 a.m. and a weekend, I felt weirdly energized to walk to the Main Green. When I got back to Wriston Quad, I realized that I had forgotten my ID card — something that happened at least once a day that year.

As I laid outside my dorm, waiting for someone to eventually wake up and open the door, I remember thinking about how nice it was to feel a part of this place. How, even when I was locked out of my room, I was still a part of this place. I was a part of this campus and this community and this experience of being here from the fall of 2015 to now.

My biggest hope for my next step is that I find this feeling again, of not only knowing and belonging to a place but becoming a part of it. But I’m pretty confident that this is one of the things I’ll be bringing with me after Brown: the ability to recognize that feeling again and the wisdom to hold onto it. Stein champions the “continuous present,” the notion that things begin again and again. I think this isn’t the last of my time at Brown; it will come with me wherever I go.

was so immediately happy I forgot to be depressed. When spring rolled around, I assured myself I was healed enough to serve on the 128th Editorial Board. As I would learn, mental illness doesn’t work that way.

A little known fact about The Herald: Serving on the editorial board, you spend three to five nights a week on production, which spans from 5 p.m. to whenever the paper is finished, probably somewhere around 1 a.m. on a good night. That’s anywhere from 24 to 40 hours a week. Now add on at least — at least — three meetings a week, which are probably two hours each, reporters’ training on Sunday mornings, emails and late-night phone calls and other ship-running responsibilities. You’re looking at more than a full-time job on top of being a full-time student, never mind a full-time human being.

But I was ready for the commitment. At the end of my first semester on the editorial board, that official half-year mark, I stood atop the counters with other Herald leaders I admired to give a toast. I looked out at the sea of faces that made a daily newspaper possible: writers, photographers, copy editors, designers, videographers and more. I said some sappy words about family. My favorite copy editor teared up. I did, too. This was home.

Another summer passed and when it was time to begin my second and final semester on The Herald’s editorial board, I was less whole.

There were new marks upon my wrist. I should have taken a step back then, should have stepped down from my position, but I felt as if I couldn’t let this family down.

So I continued on until I couldn’t anymore. I was three-quarters of the way through my dream when my mental health forced me to step down from The Herald. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.

I’d like to think that, under the same circumstances, Rory Gilmore would have done the same.

The ship, of course, sailed on. The Herald hasn’t weathered 129 years to go down when one sail tears.

Still, the decision did teach me a

Maya Singh

Continued from page 33

lot about family. Like most Herald members, I sat through many workshops about mental health. But when I stepped down, I did not do so with the support I wanted from my fellow editorial board members. They said the right things, but there was little behind their words. I entered a new period of silence, with very little follow-up, from the people with whom I had once spent 40 hours each week.

I did not receive an invitation to the end-of-semester toast I had given just one semester before. I was in bed when a member of the new editorial board called. They asked that I come, and I did. I almost cried tears of joy on the way there.

But as I listened to the toast that I had given just months ago, I noticed those standing on the counters, my old family, avoided my gaze. They made no mention of my presence.

Nothing was said as I walked out the door.

To some extent, I expected this.

There were expectations of me that I could not fulfill, and disappointment is natural.

But this story might be broader than The Herald. As far as this campus has come, we still struggle to navigate mental health well. We may say we are progressive. We may say mental health comes first. But it is hard to know what to say when actual people in our lives experience mental illness. So often, we say nothing.

The Herald gave me a home, but it did not give me a family. And when I could no longer live in that home, it was my real family — those friends who waited up while I spent long hours at production — that picked up the pieces.

I do not mean to single out an organization that has brought knowledge, awareness, professional skills, community and even love to this campus. But I do mean to tell those suffering that it’s okay to take a step back. It’s okay to disappoint some people. It’s okay to save your life.

And it is worth the empty stares, the empty words and the empty silences that may follow.

I mean to say that we should build homes where there is family. And I mean to say that we need to do better when we talk about mental health.

Here’s a shot into that emptiness.

Spring 2019

37

Saanya Jain

Continued from page 31 to have a little more faith in my ability to make choices that were right for me.

Thus it was through my many missteps (and the occasional right one) that I began to realize that the true value of my Brown experience was not the classes I took or learning how to survive on instant ramen for days on end. It was the privilege

Divya Santhanam Continued from page 34

wave. After handing her a piece, she chewed on it and then paused. “This is some good shit,” she responded matter-of-factly. Ever since, my mom sent double the food, and my first-year floor gathered to eat her soft rotis, perfectly spiced pav bhaji and crunchy manchurian in our basement kitchen. I don’t know how to describe what that felt like, a group of people relishing what I once feared to be seen with, but the knots in my stomach that slowly formed over the years began to unravel.

This was the start of dinners that would turn into late-night conversations, spent in Andrews Lounge savoring hot, 2 a.m. cookie pizzas. Watching the azure sky turn to midnight and then the placid yellow

Benjamin Potee

Continued from page 34 quences of this choice, but they cannot replace fundamental societal changes.

Our second path — a path that we can bring to reality — is one of global reconstruction focused on decarbonization. Standing alone, market-based solutions like carbon taxes present their own challenges: They can be regressive, placing a higher burden on low-income people. Further, they do little to address the already-planned exploration and extraction efforts of oil and gas companies, which will blow past 1.5 degrees Celsius targets on their own. Instead, our path — partially conceptualized in policy as the Green New Deal — must be reliant upon unprecedented levels of governmental investment and regulation, up to and including nationalization of the largest polluters or laws which would put them out of business. Rapid decarbonization would fly in the face of most economic theory and powerful institutional interests. Mobilizing for aggressive climate action is currently the only feasible way to preserve our society.

Commencement is a time for intergenerational contact, and at this point, anger at powerful members of older generations is more than justifiable. To be clear: Our elders have failed us in profoundly human

38

and responsibility of charting my own path every day by defining passion, impact and success for myself.

When I called my father as I stepped out of my last class at Brown, almost exactly four years to the day that we sat around my kitchen table, I asked him what I would do now. It would be easy to no longer take chances without shopping period or S/NCs. It would be tempting to scapegoat “real-world” exigencies and have less ownership

over my choices.

My father paused in his characteristic manner.

Just as I began to wonder if the spotty internet connection had given out yet again, he remarked, “Whatever happens, I have faith, because I know you’ll continue to make your own rules instead of play by someone else’s.”

I knew then I had my answer: No, I wouldn’t do it differently. I hope I’ll be able to say the same about life after Brown as well.

of sunrise, we discussed our childhoods, our families, the borders we had crossed and the borders crossed within us. It was here that I witnessed relationships that were deeply untransactional, where doors were open at any hour of the night when I needed comfort, where arms were always open when I needed warmth, without expecting anything in return. Where people gave, and gave freely. It’s an ethos that is rare, and one I have been privileged to witness in the communities I have been a part of during my time here. Last week, I ventured with four of my housemates to IHOP at 4 a.m. to mark the beginning of the fast as part of Ramadan. As I fell asleep on the shoulder of a friend waiting for our food to come, I realized that after years of longing to return home to Toronto, I was at home here.

There are aspects of Brown that still feel unfamil-

iar. There are spaces that I do not feel that I belong to and, by virtue of the complex identities my peers hold, spaces that will always remain elusive and unknown to many of us. But through the communities I have joined, those I have built, those I have reshaped and those that have reshaped me — I feel a palpable loss thinking about walking through the Van Wickle Gates. I’ve tasted the warm tinge of belonging, and I want it to linger on the tip of my tongue forever.

Instead, it’s time to leave. It feels counterintuitive, to have made the unfamiliar familiar, and to now walk away from it and watch it fade and distort into something else. What am I leaving behind? And what does it mean to start something new entirely? The unknown tastes of mist — sparse and disparate, frustratingly airy but fresh with promise. And, as I step into it, the warmth of what I gained here remains.

ways which will irrevocably alter our lives.

As a result, our graduating class must act on two tracks simultaneously: the first to decarbonize rapidly, the second to prepare for a world where this fails. Under no accepted ethical framework should this be our responsibility, yet it must be our mission. The scope of this crisis invites most disciplines and almost all solutions; your passion is unlikely to be inconsistent with the changes that must come. We will need scientists working on accessible, drought-resistant GMOs and artists reminding us of the better world within our grasp. We will need politicians who can alter systems while guarding against ecofascism or xenophobia and activists using direct action to ensure solutions are rooted in egalitarian justice.

Our actions on either front may not be enough. Each protest attended might be countered by shadowy political donations by oil companies, and all the agricultural knowledge which can be obtained in 20 years might be useless in the face of increasing temperatures, droughts and floods. But at this stage, it’s what we have left. The despair you might feel right now does not have to be an ending, any more than graduation from Brown is an ending.

It is a chance to build communities we are proud to live in, take part in a fight with global consequences and act with a more complete understanding of the future.

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

Clare Steinman

Continued from page 29 the scenes.

In my last weeks here, I’ve seen my friends and classmates present their theses, participate in their final sports competitions, perform in musicals (and puppet shows), win fellowships and accept jobs halfway around the world.

Watching this unfold has brought this sense of wonder back, taking the form of gratitude rather than the imposter syndrome of earlier days.

When I used to think about what it would mean to be a Brown graduate, it was always remote and abstract, but somehow impressive. Now, as that nebulous identity becomes my reality, I still don’t have a grasp on what it means.

What I do know is that I spent a lot of time here thinking about my own path, the skills I wanted to develop and the memories I hoped to make. I doubt I’m alone in this: From the day we choose Brown, we’re immersed in the sense of individuality that starts with the open curriculum and permeates everyday interactions. We’re told to be the architects of our own education and chase our passions, and for the most part we do. But it’s never been a solo journey.

I want to take a step back, and return to the feeling of being overwhelmed. Not overwhelmed by the future (which I am, most of the time, anyway), but overwhelmed by the accomplishments of the people with whom I’m about to take the Commencement stage. Overwhelmed but empowered by knowing that great people — advocates, changemakers, community builders and caretakers — are not different than us. They are us. By forgetting this we do a disservice to our friends and to the world we hope to change. In remembering it, we make that greatness our own.

Experience College This Summer Success with: Challenging Ivy League Academics Students from Around the World

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many exclusive exclusive romantic romanticrelationships relationships How many sexual partners have hadhad during college?

How many How many sexual partners haveyou you during college? How have you you been been in in during during college? college? have

9.9%

6.6%

20.7% 0

15.7%

1-3 19.0% 34.7%

28.1% 25.6%

1

4-6

2

7-9

3

10+ 39.7%

Top five states that seniors plan on on living in following graduation graduation Top five states that seniors plan living in following

19.6% California

29.4% New York

15.7% Washington D.C.

Favorite Classes classes Favorite

1. TAPS 0220: "Persuasive Communication" 2. INTL 1443: "History of American Intervention" 3. EDUC 1010: "The Craft of Teaching" 4. ENGL 0930: "Introduction to Creative Nonfiction" 5. NEUR 1030: "Neural Systems" 6. PLCY 1700M: "Law and Public Policy" 7. POLS 1420: "Money and Power in the International Political Economy"

42

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

0

12.8% Massachusetts

9.8% Rhode Island

Have Haveyou youever...? ever...?

Students living internationally post-grad 13%

11.48% of seniors have taken a class at RISD

Students living state-side post-grad 87%

76.03% of seniors have attended a football game 45.90% of seniors have gone to Loui’s at 5 a.m.

18.03% of seniors have attended a naked party 13.93% of seniors have taken a shot on every floor of the SciLi 7.38% of seniors have had sex in a Brown library 71.90% of seniors have stolen from a campus eatery

your time at Brown, satisfied were you with following?

In your timeInat Brown, howhow satisfied were youthewith the following?

(0 = very dissatisfied, 5 = neutral, 10 = very satisfied)

Housing

Meal Plans

6.1

5.7 Providence

7.7

Teaching

Advising

Research Opportunities

7.3

5.7

6.5

Campus Safety

7.9

Extracurricular Opportunities

7.9

If you could do it all over again...

87.60% of respondents would still choose Brown 79.17% of respondents would still choose their concentration

Spring 2019

43

Which of the following drugshave haveyou youused used at Brown Brown for purposes?

Which of the following drugs forrecreational recreational purposes?

96.7%

Alcohol 74.0%

Marijuana 29.3%

Tobacco 15.4%

Psychedelic mushrooms Ecstasy

12.2%

LSD

11.4% 5.7%

Amphetamines

3.3%

None

2.4%

Opiates 0

20

40

Words ofofwisdom Words Wisdom Find people who make you happy!

It’s never too late to make new friends.

Try to find joy in the little things: the changing leaves, Providence sunsets, a perfect Jo’s quesadilla, a sunny day on the Main Green, or the first bite of a perfectly warm Blue Room muffin.

Take more classes outside your concentration.

Don’t feel like you have to check off certain things at Brown — there’s no one right way to do it.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Go to Counseling and Psychological Services if you’re sad. You deserve to be happy here.

60

80

Which fieldfield are you post-graduation and where do Which areentering you entering post-graduation be in to 10 be years? and whereyou dohope youtohope in 10 years?

Post-grad

44

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

In 10 years

Finance and Banking

7.6% 6.2%

Law and Legal Services

5.9% 11.5% 7.6% 7.1%

Education

11.8%

Technology

8.9% 3.4%

Communications

4.4%

Science and Research Consulting Academia

...

7.6% 9.7% 9.2%

0.9% 1.7% 14.2%

Heath Care and Public Health

2.5%

Arts and Arts Administration

0.8%

Other Stay ever true (to yourself, to your friends, to the good in the world), and there will always be a path forward.

100%

15.0% 12.4% 5.0% 9.7%

Looking for a job but have not finalized plans Not beginning a job after graduation

19.0% 17.4%

Political viewpoint before Brown andand now Now Political Viewpoint Before Brown Somewhat Conservative

Very Conservative

Moderate Somewhat Liberal

Very Liberal

41.2%

49.2%

39.5% 45.8% 14.5% 5.9% 0%

Before

0%

Now

3.3% 1.7%

Sexual orientation before Brown and now Sexual Orientation Before Brown and Now

0.8% 5.9%

0.8% 0.8% 6.6%

1.7%

10.9% 19.0%

5.0%

Straight/Heterosexual Gay/Lesbian

7.4%

Bisexual Unsure/Questioning Queer Asexual

77.3% 63.6%

Before

Non-Binary

Now Spring 2019

45

46

Commencement | The Brown Daily Herald

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