Friday, April 20, 2018

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018

VOLUME CLII, ISSUE 52

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Students talk mental health at town hall Activist articulates nuances of Black Lives Matter NYU professor Frank Roberts talks history, challenges with defining BLM movement

By SOPHIE CULPEPPER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

COURTESY OF VANDHANA RAVI

Student panelists at a town hall shared their experiences with mental health resources on campus. They called for increased transparency and access and emphasized the importance of continuous improvement.

Organized by Project LETS, town hall part of Disability Justice Day of Action for Mental Health

By ANNA KRAMER UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

At a mental health town hall yesterday, five student panelists praised reforms to mental health and disability services

on campus while also vocalizing their discontent with a continued lack of transparency and systemic limits to resource accessibility. Students shared their stories as part of a larger nationwide event called the Disability Justice Day of Action for Mental Health, which also took place at Yale, Columbia and Bergen Community College, among others.

Most of the panelists described mixed experiences with on-campus resources, ranging from positive and invaluable to

baffling and debilitating. “I still encourage people to use resources. I think we should use them, but also critique them when they’re not okay,” said Valentina Cano ’19, echoing a theme of the nearly two-hour conversation.

The town hall, which took place in Barus and Holley, was organized by Project LETS, a student-run organization that coordinates a peer mental health advocacy program and provides mental » See HEALTH, page 2

The speaker’s black t-shirt matched his baseball cap. The shirt read “UNARMED CIVILIAN.” “Let’s be clear: There’s a reason why I show up like this. Because I want to assault your assumptions of what political black leadership is supposed to look like.

I want to assault your assumptions about what a college professor is supposed to look like. When I show up in the classroom, this is how I show up. I’m not interested in being in a suit and tie,” said New York University Professor Frank Roberts in a lecture about the essence of the Black Lives Matter movement and its role in the Trump era yesterday afternoon. The event was organized by the Cogut Institute for the Humanities and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America.

Roberts is the professor of the first class on Black Lives Matter in the United States and creator of the “public

educational curriculum,” “The Black Lives Matter Syllabus,” according to his website. In his lecture, Roberts described Black Lives Matter in 10 terms — a human rights movement, intersectional, feminist, LGBT-driven, youth-led, against the politics of respectability, abolitionist, global, artistic — and a prayer. Often abandoning the lectern, Roberts walked the audience through these points of the movement in ardent words.

“I’d like to think of tonight as a kind of provocation and a kind of call to action to and for community that you all can be co-participants in,” Roberts said. He characterized the movement as “more alive now, more relevant now” than it ever has been before in “this strange and dangerous moment in history that we find ourselves in.”

This moment is one to “affirm our global commitment to being troublemakers,” Roberts said. He considers this an “unprecedented opportunity to engage in coalitional work.”

Historical roots Throughout his talk, Roberts explained Black Lives Matter as an evolving entity in a living history. » See BLM, page 4

Non-Brown, Pro-Israel Carly Paul ’18.5 sets long jump school record finish in group stirs controversy First-place Alabama meet gives track, Students protest Students Supporting Israel’s messaging, alleged harassment

By MELISSA CRUZ SENIOR REPORTER

Tensions rose on campus last week when a non-Brown-affiliated, pro-Israel group allegedly harassed students outside the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center. On the morning of April 11, Students Supporting Israel set up a table with posters and handouts on the corner of Brown and Waterman Streets to advance their views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, but several students with diverse views on the conflict took issue with the messages being advertised.

Some students asked the group to leave, and around 15 others established an impromptu sit-in near SSI’s table, said Ethan Shire ’19, a member of Brown Students for Israel. Shire and SSI president Ilan Sinelnikov reported that the conversation became heated at approximately 12 p.m., with many raised voices.

A Muslim student who wears a hijab and asked to remain anonymous wrote she

INSIDE

was called a “terrorist” by SSI members.

Sinelnikov denied that SSI members called a student a terrorist. “Completely not possible,” he said.

SSI’s table also featured a sign that read “Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas,” wrote a member of Students for Justice in Palestine who asked to remain anonymous for fear of personal repercussions in a message to The Herald. She said she was “honestly very disturbed and petrified seeing them with their booth and signs” and disheartened to see that SSI was receiving some student support from passersby.

In an op-ed published in The Herald, Shire and former BSI president Benjamin Gladstone ’18 condemned SSI’s factually inaccurate and simplistic messaging, as well as its “provocative” tactics. “It is very important to us to never generalize about Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs or any other national, ethnic, religious or racial group,” they wrote.

Sinelnikov said that he and his team of two other SSI members were touring Ivy League universities to hold conversations with students about the Israel-Palestine conflict, film their reactions and gauge their opinions. According to their website, SSI is an “international campus movement » See ISRAEL, page 3

field athlete high hopes for national title

By EMORY HINGORANI STAFF WRITER

Last weekend, track and field athlete Carly Paul ’18.5 traveled to Alabama to compete in the Auburn Tiger Track Classic. Over the course of the two-day meet, she finished in first place in the women’s heptathlon with 5,509 points and set a new University record in the event. Paul’s score broke the 18-year-old standing record of 5,504 points set by Lindsay Taylor ’01 in 2000. She also won and set an additional Brown record in long jump with a 20’ 3.75” leap.

For her outstanding accomplishments in the heptathlon and long jump last weekend, Paul has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week.

Herald: Congratulations on setting two school records last weekend!

What was going through your mind before, during and after the meet?

Paul: The nature of the heptathlon is that you don’t get to do it every week, so I only

ANITA SHEIH / HERALD

Carly Paul ’18.5 broke the University’s 18-year-old standing record for her performance in the long jump at the Auburn Tiger Track Classic. do two heptathlons every outdoor season.

This was the first one, and the second

will be at our conference championship. » See AOTW, page 2

WEATHER

FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018

NEWS 102 members of class of 2018 elected to prestigious honor organization Phi Beta Kappa

NEWS The Herald’s spring poll found that 22 percent of students call home at least once a day

COMMENTARY Mulligan ’19: Portrayal of millennials’ food insecurity misrepresented as entitlement

COMMENTARY Morelion ’20: Rhode Island should take legislative action to secure reproductive rights

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NEWS

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Miller ’70 dissects free will in new book Defender of evolution education strives to bridge gap between religious faith, modern science

By CHRIS SCHUTTE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

What began as a debate in 1981 between Professor of Biology Kenneth Miller ’70 and scientific creationist Henry Morris has evolved into the publication of a biology textbook, appearances on television programs, involvement in court cases and the publication of books such as “Finding Darwin’s God” and, most recently, “The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will.” Following the book’s release, Miller spoke at the Brown Bookstore Thursday evening to discuss the material of his book and its implications.

At the event, Miller quoted excerpts from his book while explaining the prevailing topics. “The Human Instinct” aims to explain the presence of free will and consciousness and how evolution is not a degradation of human significance, but rather evidence to support humans’ true nature and importance. “Of all the creatures of all the forms of life, … only the human creature seeks answers to questions in the stars,” Miller said, quoting his

» HEALTH, from page 1 health education on campus. Shivani Nishar ’20, program coordinator for Project LETS and incoming wellness chair for the Undergraduate Council of Students, and Anna Harvey ’20, the mental health advocacy group’s storytelling coordinator, moderated the discussion. Several University administrators were invited to attend the event, as the coordinators aimed to “facilitate better connection between administrators and students, as we find there is not a lot of dialogue that happens between the two,” Nishar said.

Much of the conversation centered around medical leave and involuntary hospitalization and treatment.

Vanessa Garcia ’19.5 took two medical leaves during her first two years at Brown. “The heartbreaking part about my leaves (was that) I thought I was dropping out. It was a really intense feeling,” she said. But she returned, in part because she “just had so many connections that were drawing me back.”

When Garcia applied to return from her medical leave, her application was denied. She was forced to appeal the decision, and while she did win her appeal, she was frustrated by the lack of transparency surrounding the process.

But the University has “done a lot of great work” improving the process since her experience, she said.

An anonymous audience member texted the moderators to ask panelists about times they thought they would not return from medical leave and how they overcame those moments. “It’s okay if your leave takes you longer than you thought it would, or even if you have to come back and then leave again,” Cano said, adding that she has taken a year off during her time at the University.

Mireya Gonzalez ’20, an American studies concentrator with a focus on medicine and disability studies, took a year off for medical leave and has experienced both voluntary and involuntary hospitalization. Matthew Flathers ’19 has received both voluntary and involuntary

book. On free will, Miller maintains that a purely deterministic approach would oppose the human choices that define the scientific process.

Though Miller’s academic work is more focused on cellular biology, he has become a notable spokesperson for the teaching of evolution, serving as an expert witness in two federal court cases regarding the use of his textbook in school districts. Additionally, his writings advocate for connecting religious faith and evolutionary principles. “I wanted to convince other people that you can look at the evolutionary history of our species and use that evolutionary history to confirm the special place and the special responsibility that human beings have,” Miller said.

During the event, Miller mentioned notable names as inspirations for his work, including Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and Marilynne Robinson ’66, a novelist.

Miller identified Robinson’s work as one of the inspirations for his treatment of “bigger picture issues,” he said.

“This woman is not a science denier, and yet, she fnds these Darwinian implications to be, as she put it, ‘chilling,’” Miller said. Robinson’s work, which includes “Absence of Mind” and “The Death of Adam,” speaks to the issues with a purely evolutionary foundation of thought. “Natural selection produced a species … that

was capable of transcending the mere demands of survival and reproduction,” he said. “From that transcendence, we derive the great characteristics of civilization.”

In attendance were friends, family and colleagues anxious to hear about Miller’s newest work.

Clare Grossman ’21, a student in Miller’s biology course, attended to support her professor and because of her general interest in science. “It’s very important work to reconcile the theory of evolution with the belief that so many Americans hold, because evolution is such an important part of understanding science,” she said.

Following his talk at the bookstore, Miller plans to attend a plethora of events in the coming months and hopes that his book will further the discussion of scientific inquiry as complementary to religious faith, he said. He also said he hopes the book serves as a “pep talk for the human race” and generates “a sense of optimism about human nature, about the capabilities of the human species and a sense, also, that evolution … doesn’t limit and define what human beings are capable.”

“We really do have a special place, not just on this planet, but even in the universe itself,” Miller said. “This book attempts to provide scientific support for that.”

treatments, while Charlie Steinman ’20 was forced to talk with a dean after having two encounters with Emergency Medical Services in one weekend.

“I definitely didn’t want to go on leave” when police officers and EMS presented that as an option, Steinman said.

“Having to prove over and over again that you’re okay when you’re not” in order to avoid forced leave or forced treatment “is just really exhausting,” he added. “There needs to be a way to be honest about your condition” without being threatened with leave or being forced to change academic plans, Steinman said. Audience members and fellow panelists snapped and nodded in affirmation.

Towards the end of the event, Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Will Meek, who was present in the audience, responded to questions about involuntary hospitalization. “It’s something that we have to do under certain conditions” in part because of state laws, “but we’re trying to do everything we can to create a layer of safety” and “prevent an unnecessary trip to the hospital,” he said.

When the moderators asked panelists to discuss their experiences with resources on campus, proclamations of gratitude rang out for the work of Project LETS and Gail Cohee, director of the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center.

“All the people I’ve met, for the most part, have been really awesome, wonderful people who want to help me, but for a long time, I didn’t know what the resources are or how to use the resources or the context in which the resources could be forced upon me. … LETS is what stopped me from leaving Brown because I thought I couldn’t handle it here,” Flathers said.

Cano also expressed both appreciation for available resources and concerns about access. After finding that a reduced three-class course load vastly improved her life at Brown, she met with someone in the office of Student and Employee Accessibility Services who introduced her to the tuition adjustment program, which would allow her to take three courses per

semester over nine semesters without suffering undue financial burden. Without his help, she would not have known about the tuition adjustment program, she said.

“It’s hard to do certain things if you don’t have the resources,” Cano said, adding that would love to see increased access to and transparency about programs like tuition adjustment.

Over the last few years, reforms of various mental health and disability services on campus have addressed student concerns by removing the seven-session limit for CAPS and increasing the number of service providers from historically underrepresented groups, among other changes, The Herald previously reported. But student understanding of the resources available from SEAS and CAPS are built upon “years of bad experiences,” Flathers said, calling for CAPS to increase transparency about changes.

Steinman concurred. “I know things have changed at CAPS, but it’s hard for me to figure out exactly what those things are,” he said.

Nishar also shared a similar sentiment, praising recent change while calling for further action. “I wanted to speak to the increasingly diverse staff that we have at CAPS,” she said, adding that “as someone whose mental health is super influenced by my identity as a South Asian woman, that has been super critical for me. … (But) we need to see that in other departments also, especially Health Services.”

While the town hall discussion delved into Brown-specific stories, yesterday’s day of action centered on a list of shared demands for improving mental health and disability access on college campuses across the country. Those demands included increased transparency about the effectiveness of mental health care services, support for students on psychiatric leave, the creation of crisis services separate from public safety and police forces, training for professors on accommodations and a public release of crisis policies, among others, according to the day of action’s website.

» AOTW, from page 1 Going into the first multi (event) of the season is always really exciting, but you try to stay calm because it’s early on. But I definitely knew I was shooting for a PR in the overall score and PR in the individual events within it. I think during this multi, I was definitely the most cool, calm (and) level-headed that I’ve been, and I think that really worked to my advantage. It was exciting to come back and see everyone, and people were pretty excited for me. I was the only one who went out to Alabama — I just went with my coach and everyone else was at a home meet here, so it was exciting to come back and see everyone.

How did you initially get into track and field? Did you play other sports growing up?

I was a dancer for a very long time, which I think has benefited me a lot with picking up different events (in track), and just having body awareness. I started doing track because my mom and aunt had hurdled and high jumped in high school.

I tried that out because of them, and it just kind of stuck. I also played volleyball in high school too.

Why did you choose Brown?

I really didn’t have my sights set on Brown until I was contacted by coach Ken (Hunt). After that it was really just my dream school. I was pretty set on Brown because I went on an official visit and I definitely liked the energy … I really liked the cooperative nature of it. I think it was definitely the best academically and athletically balanced opportunity that I had coming out of high school, and that was really important to me.

Who has been the biggest influence on your track career?

I had a very good high jump coach in high school. His name’s Coach Square.

He was just a really fun guy, really quite knowledgeable about the high jump, and really pushed me to be a be better athlete

all-around and be a level-headed athlete. …(That) is one of the biggest skills you need and has helped me be successful at the multis.

Going forward, what are your team and individual goals for the rest of the season?

Our women’s team has a lot of potential to do well as a team in our conference. In our indoor championship we kind of fell short of our potential — a lot of girls just missed finals and we had a couple people that were injured. We’re a very young team, so it’s just up from here. I think in the outdoor championships we have really high sights for our women’s team to place much higher in team rankings. As far as myself, breaking the heptathlon record was a really big goal for me. I just came short of breaking the pentathlon record in indoor, and so I definitely have my sights on that for this outdoor season. But my main goal is to make it to nationals in the heptathlon or in an individual event.

I have regional qualifying marks for long jump and high jump, so maybe I can make it to one of those or the heptathlon.

What are your plans after graduation? Do you want to stay involved with athletics?

I don’t know what I see myself doing immediately after college. My degree is in international development, so something in that. I’ve been thinking more often lately about coaching at some point in my future — I would love to coach maybe at a high school level later on in my life.

I think track has made me value a really active lifestyle, so I’ll definitely continue to do outdoor stuff. Being from Colorado, I miss a lot of the hiking and biking and stuff I used to do in nature, so that’ll be a big part of my post-collegiate life. I could definitely see myself needing some form of competition — maybe that’ll translate into triathlons. Another thing I’d really like to do is go back to playing volleyball.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

NEWS

FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

102 seniors elected to Phi Beta Kappa Members of graduating class recognized by Rhode Island Alpha Chapter for academic achievement

By ALEXANDRA RUSSELL SPORTS EDITOR

One hundred and two members of the class of 2018 were elected to the University’s Phi Beta Kappa Society April 10, wrote Chapter Administrator Mary Jo Foley in an e-mail to The Herald.

Phi Beta Kappa is the “oldest and most prestigious academic honors organization” in the United States, Foley wrote. The society has 286 chapters at colleges and universities nationwide.

Founded in 1830, the University’s Rhode Island Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa is the seventh oldest in the nation, she added.

Students are elected to the organization on the basis of exceptional academic performance in “the course of a broad liberal education,” according to the election procedures posted on the University’s website. The chapter holds three elections each year: one in February to elect juniors, one in April to elect seniors and another in May to elect seniors who transferred to the University as juniors.

No more than one-sixth of any graduating class may be elected to the organization, according to the website.

Those elected are as follows: Clemens Alfred Aeppli ’18 Fadwa Ahmed ’18 Nour W. Asfour ’18 Maria Averkiou ’18 Elizabeth Bower Basso ’18 John Cameron Beck ’18 Lucas Bernard Benjamin ’18 Felix Biver ’18 Pieter C. S. Brower ’18 Oona Kathryn Cahill ’18 Ying Bonny Cai ’18 Bryce Maguire Campanelli ’18 Can Cao ’18 Brandon Wen Loong Chia ’18 Lianne Cho ’18 Elizabeth V. Cory ’18 Diana Katherine Dangoor ’18 Coda Lavaluka Danu-Asmara ’18 Christine Katherine Dreyer ’18 Matthew Jacob Dudak ’18 Martha Knight Edwards ’18 David Joseph Engel ’18 Nicholas Gary Esemplare ’18 Alana Christine Felton ’18 Alexander Jones Floyd ’18 Jacob Alex Freund ’18 Axel Tower Getz ’18 Zoe Beth Gilbard ’18 Brian James Gilbert ’18 Benjamin Seth Gladstone ’18 Jason Luke Goettisheim ’18 Jake T. Gogats ’18 Kevin Michael Haggerty ’18

Kara Ann Hartig ’18 Kathleen Marguerite Hay ’18 Shelby Mayne Heitner ’18 Claire Olivia Hernon ’18 Philip John Hinch ’18 Susannah Virginia Howe ’18 Nicholas Burns Hoynes ’18 Edward Harrison Hu ’18 Samuel Dallas Jones ’18 Nathaniel Hunter Kazlow ’18 Geoffrey Daniel Kocks ’18 Emma Laura Kurihara ’18 Christine J. Lee ’18 Eleonora Lekaviciute ’18 Kevin Li ’18 Ameer Aziz Malik ’18, former Herald design editor Mika Elizabeth Matsuno ’18 Patrick Tucker McMenamin ’18 Grayson M. Metzger ’18 Matthew Leo Gajda Meyer ’18 Austin Thomas Meyer ’18 Anna Rigby Meyer ’18 Samuel A. Miller-Smith ’18 Keith Andrew Mills ’18 Mili Mitra ’18, former Herald opinions editor Sonia Mittal ’18 Grace Miriam Monk ’18 Dylan Galano Morrissey ’18 Michael D. Mueller ’18 Jacob Alan Mukand ’18 Cameron Julia Neath ’18 Sarah Helene Novicoff ’18 Daniela Paternina ’18 Noah Alexander Picard ’18

Marta Romanivna Pysak ’18 Emma Elain Radmilovic ’18 Abinaya Raman ’18 Chiara Repetti-Ludlow ’18 Ivan Rios-Fetchko ’18 Henry Cecil Ritter ’18, former Herald general manager Anastasio Anthony Sapalidis ’18 Eleonora Saravalle ’18 Rebecca C. Sarfati ’18 Michelle H. Schein ’18 Laura Megan Shea ’18 Lewis B. Rabson Silletto ’18 Luiza Osorio Silva ’18 Praveen Ram Srinivasan ’18 Andrew Vieira Stone ’18 Yashil Sukurdeep ’18 Cecelia Pauline Tamburro ’18 Yu Tanifuji ’18 Miles Herbert Taylor ’18 Scott David Theer ’18 Edward Kai Yan Tie ’18 Maria S. Tikhonov ’18 Lilith Doris Richards Todd ’18 Elaine My Tran ’18 Natalie Tsang ’18 Hwai-Ray Tung ’18 Amelie-Sophie Vavrovsky ’18 Anh Quoc Vo ’18 Andre Constantin Vogel ’18 Jordan Matalon Waller ’18 Jade Yixuan Wang ’18 Wen Wen ’18 Jeanelle Maria Wheeler ’18 Reena Zhan ’18 Huilin Zhang ’18

Med students organize road race for asthma camp Breeze Against Wheeze 5k enters 17th year, proceeds will benefit asthma patients in financial need

By CORMAC CUMMISKEY STAFF WRITER

On Saturday, members of the Providence community will lose their breath running up Hope Street so that young Rhode Islanders can catch theirs.

Between 100 and 150 runners are expected to take part in the 17th annual Breeze Against Wheeze five-kilometer run and three-kilometer walk, according to the four first-year students at the Alpert Medical School who are coordinating the event.

All proceeds from the race — which will start and finish on Hope Street next to Pembroke Field — will benefit the Community Asthma Program of Hasbro Children’s Hospital, helping to fund

a free asthma summer camp for Rhode Island children “who have been diagnosed with moderate or severe asthma and who are often in financial need,” according to the website for the race.

First-year medical students have spearheaded preparations for the event every year since its inception in 2002.

Kristina Hinman MD’21, Julia Bassell MD’21, Sarah Frantz MD’21 and Erica Veazey MD’21 are the current leaders of the Breeze Against Wheeze initiative.

“This year, we’ll raise a little over $6,000,” Bassell said. “We’ve already raised $4,500, and that’s before the actual entries for the race.”

“One of our huge sponsors this year was actually PVDonuts,” Hinman said.

“We reach out to a lot of the restaurants and different exercise gyms … because asthma can affect your ability to enjoy those things, and they can promote runners coming to the actual race day.”

Hinman said all profits from the race will help the Community Asthma

Program offer campers a high-quality primer on asthma management. “The camp provides an environment for them to learn about their asthma, learn about their triggers (and) how to prevent them and how to bond with other kids who have the same condition,” Hinman said. “And it’s all led by physicians and therapists and (emergency medical technicians).”

Though organizing the event has demanded a considerable amount of time and effort, leaders of the club look back on the process in a positive light.

“A large amount of the ability to put on the camp … is because of the fundraising that we do every year,” Bassell added. “So that’s why it’s been really rewarding.”

Bob Rothenberg — a former head coach of the University’s cross country and track and field teams — guided the medical students in their efforts, as he has each year since Breeze Against Wheeze’s second year of operation in

2003.

Before he was directly involved in supervising preparations for the event, Rothenberg lent the group equipment for the first race in 2002. “When they returned the equipment, I asked them how it went. I realized they had only timed first place — they didn’t realize they were supposed to time everyone,” Rothenberg said. “The more I heard, the more I realized it was somewhat of a fiasco, so I said, ‘Next year, you give me a call and I’ll help you.’”

Rothenberg subsequently helped the team revise the 5K race course in order to streamline logistics. “We tried to devise a course that would have relatively few turns, would be easy to manage … (and) wouldn’t infringe on the solitude of the neighborhood,” he said.

Online registration for the race closes today. Runners and walkers can register the day of the event on Saturday morning outside the Nelson Fitness Center.

» ISRAEL, from page 1 that supports the State of Israel,” and their mission is to “be a clear and confident ProIsrael voice on college campuses, and to support students in grassroots Pro-Israel advocacy.” The University does not have an SSI chapter.

Brown students allegedly “got very aggressive and started shouting and screaming. They were not willing to hold a conversation with me or sit down with me,” Sinelnikov said. “Brown was the most hostile of all the schools we visited,” he added.

Sinelnikov sought to “truly engage with students” and respected their wishes if they chose to not be filmed, he said.

The student from SJP contested Sinelnikov’s claim that SSI members stopped filming when asked to do so. On the contrary, cameras were thrust in students’ faces, she said. She is worried that the footage will be used to support the “accusation that Palestenians or people who support Palestine are angry without reason.”

“At Brown, there are a lot of different organizations and professors that have a lot of discussions on Israel and Palestine, and they are nuanced,” she said, adding that in contrast, SSI engaged in “hate speech.”

In their op-ed, Gladstone and Shire wrote that “as much as outside and national groups can, and regularly do, participate in the conversation about Israel and Palestine on Brown’s campus, such groups ought to do so with the permission and facilitation of Brown students or members of the faculty.”

SSI members did not contact BSI or any campus officials prior to setting up their table because they chose a public street owned by Providence as the location, Sinelnikov said. SSI did not partner with existing pro-Israel groups at the University because its intention was not to begin a chapter but to assess campus opinion, he added.

Brown should “not restrict off-campus groups from advocating for their causes on campus,” Shire said, though he added that “students should be aware of whether groups are affiliated with Brown or not.”

“This was a clear effort on the part of the organizers to harass and threaten Palestinian students and all those who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Such efforts must be condemned by the University, as it is unacceptable for any student to feel threatened on campus,” wrote a second member of SJP, who also asked to remain anonymous, in an email to The Herald. “As a Palestinian student, I felt unsafe by this demonstration of racism and hatred on my campus.”

The Office of Campus Life and Student Services and the Department of Public Safety were not alerted or made aware of the rising tensions on campus, said Director of News and Editorial Development Brian Clark. If DPS had been alerted to a student concern, officers would have responded immediately, he added.

However, because the street SSI was on is city-owned, the actions DPS could have taken would have been limited and depended on how the officers perceived the situation, Clark said.

The University limits use of on-campus spaces to student groups or University departments, Clark said. Non-Brown groups can use campus spaces after filing an application with the Scheduling Office, but this avenue is not available for business or political activities, he added.

“The reality is the sidewalk on Waterman Street is not Brown property. When there are groups or individuals or media on that street, they do not need permission” from the University, Clark said.

NEWS

PAGE 4 • FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

22 percent of students call home at least once a day

Students cite stress, homesickness, concern for parents as motivations for frequent calls home

By CELIA HACK SENIOR STAFF WRITER

When Alexis Jackson ’21 left her family in Ohio and arrived on College Hill, she felt overwhelmed by the jarringly difficult pre-med classes. As her first semester ramped up, she found herself struggling with exams and stressed out about her future in medicine. To stay calm and find confidence, Jackson regularly picked up the phone and called her parents, she said.

Like Jackson, 22 percent of student respondents in the Herald’s spring poll call home at least once a day. Sixty percent call home at least once a week, the poll found.

For some students like Jackson,

» BLM, from page 1 One way Black Lives Matter differs from previous struggles for black freedom and empowerment is its decentralized structure, he said. “The age of the black freedom movement being led by the black male preacher figure is dead. And it’s not coming back. We hope not — Black Lives Matter represents a radical changing of the guard of black political leadership in the United States,” he said. Decentralized social movements “are not leaderless; they’re leaderful.” In the 1960s, when the fight for black rights was organized around more centralized leadership, “all of our leaders ended up in caskets,” Roberts added. “Think about what that does to a psyche of a generation.”

For present and past generations, the movement is also “a prayer.”

“Black Lives Matter is a remembrance prayer for the ancestors who didn’t make it out of the bottom of that boat. Black Lives Matter is a remembrance prayer for Michael Brown and Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice and all the names that we don’t know. It’s a remembrance prayer for our grandmothers and our great-great grandmothers; women who washed clothes and scrubbed the toilets at fancy Ivy League institutions like this — so that one day we might see the light of freedom.”

The movement is also an “affirmation prayer,” Roberts said. “We say black lives matter, we believe black lives matter — we look at the material conditions of the world, and obviously the state disagrees.”

Black Lives Matter is shaping other activist movements in its artistry, structures and methods, Roberts said. He argued that it has created a foundation for social justice movements such as #MeToo and the Parkland push against gun violence. “Black Lives Matter is an intersectional movement that has influenced (and) provided a framework for how these newer social movements have learned to fight back and engage on the internet,” he added.

Challenges of defining the movement Black Lives Matter can suffer from a “lack of conceptual clarity” because “how the movement sees itself is not very often how the public sees the movement,” Roberts said, adding that he believes the fundamental language with

calling home is a source of mental and emotional support.

“There have been times when I’ve just bombed a really hard exam, and I call my mom,” Jackson said. “It’s just so nice to have a calm voice of reason when I’m freaking out.”

Ryan Cohen ’19, who calls home about five days a week, seconded the idea that parents are able to to give an outside perspective on the stresses of college life. For him, phone calls home were a respite from the pressure of studying for the MCAT last fall on top of a full course load and extracurriculars. “(My parents) just kind of told me if … I need to push the test back, it’s fine,” Cohen said. “In the grander scheme of things, no matter what happens, things will turn out fine.”

But for some students, calls home are less about relieving stress and more about making their parents happy. YJ Kim ’21, whose family lives in China, said she calls home about once a week

to touch base with her mom, who is now empty-nested and spends much of her days alone.

“I don’t actually call them when I’m stressed because I don’t want them to worry,” Kim said. “I’m all the way across the ocean, and it sucks if I’m always telling them the bad news,” she added.

Kim turns to another family member and a different form of communication in times of anxiety, she said. She texts her sister, a senior at the University of California-Berkeley, “basically every minute.”

Calls home also allow some students to fight homesickness. Sabrina Whitfill ’19 from Arizona said she initially called home frequently as a way to adjust to being away from home and family for an extended period of time. Now, it allows her a window into the “mundane” happenings in her family that she doesn’t want to miss out on.

“My youngest brother is going through puberty now, so every time I

go home, (he is) drastically different,” Whitfill said. “There was a sense that I wanted to know what was happening, even the really little things.”

At a school where about 90 percent of the undergraduate student body hails from out-of-state and 15 percent are international, distance and rare face time with family members motivate students to stay in more frequent communication with their hometowns, Whitfill said.

“I was going to go to a school that was really close to home in Ohio, and then I got into Brown last minute,” Jackson said. “As much as my parents were very happy for me, I think they had trouble readjusting to the fact that I would be about 14 hours away. … The fact that we can have constant communication makes me feel better.”

Some local students also like to pick up the phone regularly. Sophie Kuhl ’21 is from Nantucket, Massachusetts, and is able to see her parents monthly, but she still likes to call home once a week,

which the movement describes itself is inadequate.

The title of the movement is misleading, Roberts said, because “the debate has never really been about whether black lives matter. The question has always been about whether or not black lives are human lives.”

“This language of Black Lives Matter, in many ways, needs to be rethought — and I say that with all due respect to the black feminist labor that gave birth to it. … When we go back to the 19th century and we read the diaries of those slavemasters — oh, they were real clear that black lives mattered because, without those lives, the U.S. economy would have collapsed.”

Roberts drew a connection between the economic subjugation of black people during slavery and the effects of the contemporary American prisonindustrial complex. “Even today, when we think about the neoconservative Republicans on the right and the neoliberal Democrats on the left, both fighting tooth and nail to privatize our prisonindustrial complex — oh, those people know that black lives matter, because without those lives, without those bodies, our prison cells would be empty.”

The issue of crafting apt language extends from Black Lives Matter to social justice movements in general. Roberts explained how academics and members of the public alike are quick to force social justice movements into the mold of civil rights movements, placing emphasis on legislative progress as the only desirable outcome.

Despite not prioritizing legislative change, fundamental structural change is emphasized by the movement in other ways, Roberts said. “Black Lives Matter is not attempting to simply reform the prison-industrial complex or reform policing in America; Black Lives Matter wants to abolish both. Destruction of systems should not result in “anarchy,” he clarified, but instead affirm “the commitment to building new worlds in its place.”

is the story of how the movement has ushered in an era of Afro-Palestinian solidarity,” he said.

“Let’s look at Ferguson alongside the West Bank. In both instances, you see young people being subjected to constant police and military surveillance. In both instances, you see brown people being warehoused into isolated, economically depressed communities.

In both instances, you see blatant violations of people’s basic human rights, going unsanctioned by the law,” he said.

“The same tear gas used on American civilians in Ferguson is manufactured by … literally the same company that is used in the West Bank,” Roberts added.

Roberts also called out the practice of sending American police officers to Israel for training as an exacerbation of police brutality. “Since 2004, according to the Anti-Defamation League, at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police departments from agencies large and small … from New York to Ferguson to right here in Rhode Island have traveled to Israel for privately funded seminars, to be trained in what officials call ‘counterterrorism techniques.’” One of the martial arts techniques in which they were instructed was used on a child at a Texas pool party in a widely publicized 2015 incident, he added.

“The U.S. state response to vehement protestors is part of a troubling … global story of how powerful, so-called democratic empires are increasingly responding to dissenting populations with brute force,” he explained.

But Black Lives Matter “is so much more than a movement against police violence,” Roberts said. He noted that Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza, two of the three founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, along with Opal Tometi, “are proud members of the queer community; it’s an important part of the story, it’s not a footnote.”

is is a willingness to listen to and center the concerns of poor folk, of hood folk, of ghetto folk, of folk we don’t think are supposed to have a microphone.”

Langston Glaude’s ’18 question articulated concerns about class in the context of the Brown community. Glaude worked to organize against the white supremacist movement which was allegedly responsible for the racist flyers posted around College Hill last month, The Herald previously reported. When Glaude and others worked to organize with members of the Providence community, “there was a kind of distrust” because “we are part of an institution that tends to take a lot of resources out of Providence,” and there are “power dynamics between students at an Ivy League institution” and “working class folk.” Glaude asked how to work across that gap, as well as gaps in socioeconomic status within the black community.

Roberts called this “one of those questions that keeps you up at night” and suggested that first steps include “to democratize who’s in the room, which will change the perspective,” while “those of us in positions of leadership have to have one foot in and outside of the academy at the same time.”

While the talk’s audience consisted primarily of educators, students and community members were also present.

A community member said that looking around the room “and seeing only three people of color — that’s what I’ve been staring at my whole life.”

The community member added that “it’s great that you can sit here and speak all this to people who aren’t of color, so maybe they can get a better understanding of what someone like you and me goes through,” but asked how it would ever be possible to “change that narrative” of overwhelmingly entrenched inequality. Roberts responded that there is no easy answer but that a “marathon” of “slow activism” offers the only hope for meaningful change.

“Your role as students is to understand that unity is not uniformity. You can all have different strategies” for activism, Roberts told The Herald. He said he is “waiting for the invitation” to bring his Black Lives Matter class to Brown and other institutions but also emphasized that, “You have the power to say, ‘Listen, you want a course like this? You don’t have to have Frank Roberts teach it. You can teach it yourself.’”

A global movement American police violence is entangled in global forces, which is part of why the Black Lives Matter movement should be understood as global, Roberts said. He emphasized connections with the Israel-Palestine conflict. “One of the untold, undertold, underarticulated stories of the Black Lives Matter movement

Questions of class and community The questions following the event reflected the intense engagement of the audience. Director of the Cogut Institute Amanda Anderson asked Roberts how class fits into Black Lives Matter.

Roberts responded by reiterating the movement’s goal of disrupting the politics of respectability to recognize the constraints of class. “Part of what the movement against respectability politics

she said. A close friendship with her parents inspires their frequent communication, she added.

Jackson, Cohen, Whitfill and Kuhl all said that they call their parents more frequently than their parents call them.

Students typically sneak in these calls between their classes, homework and extracurriculars. For Whitfill, it’s over the course of a daily walk from Andrews Commons to a class past Keeney Quadrangle. For Cohen, it’s typically during a study break at night. Though some students did lament that they sometimes should be studying instead of speaking with their parents, none felt burdened by the frequent calling.

“I acknowledge that it is a real privilege to have a two-parent household with a loving, healthy marriage,” Jackson said. “You only have parents for a certain amount of time, and I really don’t want to waste that time.”

— Additional reporting by Emily Davies

TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018

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BLUE ROOM

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Active Minds, an organization promoting wellness, sings songs to counter the stigma around mental health in a performance featuring student groups and solo artists Thursday night in the Friedman Auditorium.

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

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stars. — Kenneth Miller ’70, professor of biology See MILLER on page 2.

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35 Noodle topper?

36 Monopoly token 37 Sought-after clownfish 38 Nasty cut 40 “__ girl!”

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50 Premarital posting 51 Hog the spotlight 52 Does a film editing job

53 Six-time U.S. Open winner 57 “How __ Your Mother”: CBS sitcom 58 Half a round 59 The yokeʼs on them 61 EPA meas.

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Music Now with Joan Tower 1:00 P.M. Orwig Hall, 109

Aerial Arts Spring Showcase 7:00 P.M. Alumnae Hall

SATURDAY Breeze Against Wheeze 5K 11:00 A.M. Nelson Fitness Center

Jazz Band Seniors Concert 8:00 P.M. Grant Recital Hall

SUNDAY Rinzai Zen Meditation 11:00 A.M. Hillel, Winnick Chapel

Amira Belly Dance 7:00 P.M. List Art Center, 120

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

PAGE 6 • FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Sumatran rhinos nearing extinction due to farming, hunting U. study challenges earlier research that suggested rhinos are genetically doomed to extinction

By EUGENE HRABARCHUK STAFF WRITER

Sumatran rhinoceroses once inhabited a vast expanse of land in mainland East Asia, according to a new study

by University professors. Today, they are located primarily in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Due to hunting, expansion of the human population and increased agriculture, the area occupied by these rhinos has shrunk significantly ever since the start of human development in the first millennium B.C. Now, hunting and agriculture practices still continue to drive down the number of Sumatran rhinos, raising concerns that they will become extinct.

Previous research suggested that “the Sumatran rhino was doomed to die out, and that you could see it in the DNA sequence,” said Brian Lander, assistant professor of history and environment and society.

But DNA does not provide sufficient ability to predict the extinction of living rhinos, Lander said. Current Sumatran rhinos have been separated from the rhinos that existed on mainland China 9,000 years ago, he said.

“So their DNA does not tell us anything about the whole population (of those in Indonesia),” he added.

According to Lander, there is no question that the primary cause of the Sumatran rhino’s impending extinction is humans and not nature. For scientists to suggest otherwise is “very problematic,” he added.

The Sumatran rhino’s ecosystem is affected by the increasing human population and its consequent need for increased agricultural land, said Bathsheba Demuth, assistant professor of

COURTESY OF CHARLES W. HARDIN

Researchers have found that Sumatran rhinoceroses, which are close to extinction, were driven from their habitats by agriculture practices, disputing the idea that they were genetically doomed to die out. history and environment and society.

The issue is that many domesticated species, such as cattle, survive in the same environments that rhinos do, said Tyler Kartzinel, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and of environment and society.

Humans concentrate in these areas where their domesticated animals can live, and impinge on the ecosystems of native animals.

Populations of larger animals are more likely to end up endangered as a result of humans, Kartzinel said. Some large animals are good food sources for humans yet reproduce slowly and end up becoming threatened, he

added.

“Essentially, it’s a combination of humans turning (the Sumatran rhino’s) natural habitat into farmland and hunting them for their horns,” Lander said. “That’s the whole cause. If there were no humans in the region, there would be plenty of rhinos,” he added.

“The only way you can really reverse it at the local level is to maintain ecosystems in their natural form,” he added.

The question essentially comes down to choice and whether humanity in different ecosystems values the animals dead or alive, Demuth said.

Hunting pressure and agricultural land

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expansion are human choices; therefore, it is a human choice to maintain the habitats of creatures such as the Sumatran rhino, she added.

The problem is that people of East Asia regard rhino horns as a powerful medicine, which creates a strong economic incentive to poach these animals, Lander said. Poachers are even hunting rhinos in Africa to sell their horns in the East Asian market, he said.

“The horns of these animals are extremely valuable on the international market for people in countries where they don’t have a lot of economic options” for health care, Demuth said.

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“There is a situation of racial and economic inequality that’s at play,” she added.

“It is so difficult to stop both the processes of land conversion and illegal hunting,” so it is very likely the Sumatran rhino will be driven to extinction, Lander said.

The factors threatening the Sumatran rhinos are the same ones that are affecting many animals, Lander said.

“If you look at it in the larger historical picture, there is nothing particularly unusual about the situation,” he added.

People need to reconsider their interactions with ecosystems by watching fuel usage and creating access to goods and services in an environmentally sustainable way, Demuth said.

Humans should act on another set of cultural values to make that happen, she added. “It is going to take some work and deliberate decision-making to reimagine what our relationship with consumption looks like,” she added.

“But I think this article shows quite convincingly that this is a much longer process,” Demuth said. “It’s not just this particular modern moment, but something that has much deeper roots,” she added.

Rewilding and restoration are two attempts to revitalize nature that could possibly save the Sumatran rhino, Kartzinel said. Rewilding is the practice of placing animals in a new area, such as the Great Plains of the United States, or even Siberia, while restoration is the practice of reintroducing a species of animal that has become nonexistent in a particular place. The Sumatran rhino could be added back to its previous native location of mainland China, he added.

These may be strange and quite controversial ideas, Kartzinel said. But this research may reveal how we may be able to reverse the ways humans have damaged animal populations, he added.

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COMMENTARY FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018 • PAGE 7

Don’t talk down to millennials CAROLINE MULLIGAN staff columnist A 2018 report from Temple University and the Wisconsin Harvesting Opportunities for Postsecondary Education Lab suggests that food insecurity is a much larger issue on college campuses than previously thought, affecting 42 percent of community college students and 36 percent of four-year college students. In a USA Today op-ed, libertarian commentator James Bovard provides a vastly different view, summed up in the article’s title: “College Students Aren’t Hungry, They’re Lazy.”

I could spend this piece sharing stories that I’ve seen and heard about on campus, about students whose main source of meals is the free swipes at the end of their shifts with Brown University Dining Services, or students who seek out free food or borrowed meal credits because they wouldn’t be able to eat otherwise. But that’s anecdotal evidence, easily hand-waved away, and for the purpose of this piece, it doesn’t really matter if 9 percent or 99 percent of college students have difficulty accessing regular meals. Instead, what I want to look at is the condescending tone that Bovard adopts throughout his piece, a tone reminiscent of the 2017 moment when an Australian millionaire identified avocado toast and coffee as the source of millennials’ money woes. The patronizing rhetoric that some older commentators like Bovard apply when discussing millennial and Generation Z students makes

it difficult to facilitate intergenerational communication, ultimately creating yet another rift in our deeply polarized political climate.

Bovard suggests that college students are unable to accurately identify our problems. Survey respondents were asked “whether they feared ‘food would run out before (they) got money to buy more,’ or if they “ever eat less than (they) felt (they) should because there wasn’t enough money for food?’” to which Bovard responds, “Redefining hunger as abstaining from second servings makes for a push-button crisis.” In likening the conservative consumption of food to just choosing not to have a second serving, Bovard per-

Did they oversleep and miss breakfast?” Bovard chooses to ignore possibilities like students having to purchase an insufficient meal plan because a larger plan would be too expensive.

Instead of challenging the study’s findings, he tries to use sarcasm like a latenight talk show host, assuming that his audience will agree with him instead of looking deeply at the study’s claims.

He again chooses a reactionary approach when he mocks the study’s finding that around 50 percent of Pell Grant recipients qualify as food-insecure: “Apparently, no matter how many handouts government provides, students still cannot be expected or trusted to feed themselves.” However, Pell

their own mistakes, ignoring the bigger picture in which a $6,095, at most, grant can’t cover both food and all other academic expenses.

Bovard attempts to dismantle the study through various angles in his oped, including a particularly interesting moment when he attempts to equate correlation with causality in order to question the study’s observation that LGBTQ+ students are at a greater risk of food insecurity than their heterosexual and/or cisgender peers. He also tries to use rising obesity rates to undermine the possibility of food insecurity — as though there isn’t a high association between poverty and obesity, which suggests that the simultaneous

The patronizing rhetoric that some older commentators apply when discussing Millennial and Generation Z students makes it difficult to facilitate intergenerational communication. petuates the notion that younger generations exaggerate our problems: Our issue isn’t that we don’t have enough food; it’s that we make too big a deal about the basic human need of wanting to not be hungry. This tactic is an attempt to undermine students when they identify problems that might not be apparent to those outside of the situation.

Continuing in this vein, Bovard uses rhetorical questions to ridicule the study’s findings, instead of performing any sort of journalistic investigation into the claims: “The study asserts that 26 percent of students with a college meal plan are ‘food insecure.’

Grants are provided only to students with “exceptional financial need,” according to the Department of Education, and they are maxed out at $6,095.

In addition, students who need Pell Grants likely have to think about other expenses, like housing, textbooks and school supplies. By trying to frame the situation as one of financial irresponsibility, Bovard uses the same tactic as in the aforementioned avocado toast incident, acting as though money problems are solely individual issues, not the result of larger systems of inequality. This argument again presents millennials and the generations after them as demanding handouts to correct for

rise of weight gain and food insecurity on college campuses could be linked.

Both of these statements once again rely on the readers to just accept millennial stereotypes instead of thinking critically about the claims presented.

The second-to-last paragraph drives home the point of how Bovard’s piece is part of the larger dialogue of older commentators attempting to undermine younger ones: “The Post noted in 2012 that ‘the typical student today spends 27 hours a week in study and class time, roughly the same time commitment expected of students in a modern full-day kindergarten.’ But expecting students to use free time to get

a job to feed themselves is beyond the pale.” The arrogant and exaggerated tone he uses when analyzing a statistic with virtually no relevance to his larger claim indicates a sense of superiority on Bovard’s part; he holds the answer — get a job! — that the hungry college student lacks. Never mind the fact that 25 percent of full-time students also work full-time, or that 80 percent of college students work at all. Bovard expects his reader to agree that college students are only as busy as kindergarteners, and above all, that we’re lazy to the point where we would choose hunger over employment.

Is food insecurity a problem on college campuses? Probably. But the larger problem that Bovard’s piece demonstrates is the continued portrayal of younger generations as entitled and demanding, a portrayal that relies on the assumption that the reader won’t critically examine baseless claims. As long as older writers continue to blast younger generations as “narcissistic” and “stunted” — as one in Time magazine recently did — there can be no hope for honest and open communication across generations. And in today’s politically tumultuous world, those conversations are sorely needed.

Caroline Mulligan ’19 can be reached at caroline_mulligan@ brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@ browndailyherald.com and opeds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

Rhode Island must protect reproductive rights ETHAN MORELION op-ed contributor Reproductive rights, as usual, are under attack. Conservative activists have intensified their efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip away access to abortion through legislation at the state level, both in Rhode Island and across the rest of the nation. The threat to reproductive freedom has not been in danger like this, especially on a national scale, in a long time.

It is no secret that President Trump and his administration are hostile to reproductive rights. In April 2017, Trump signed legislation that overturned an Obama administration rule that prohibited states from defunding abortion service providers. In January 2018, Trump spoke at the 45th Annual March for Life rally, an anti-abortion rally that seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade. At the rally, he stated, “Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.”

It is abundantly clear that Trump is not an advocate or defender of the right to choose. Additionally, Vice President Mike Pence has stated that he predicts abortion will “end in our time” and that he would like to see Roe v. Wade in the “ash heap of history.” The threats the Trump administration is making against the right to choose are incredibly alarming. Many have written these threats off as typical Republican rhet-

oric but it is not politics as usual this time.

The risk is greater now than in previous years because Trump is one Supreme Court Justice away from overturning Roe v. Wade. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, said that he believes Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has traditionally served as the Court’s “swing vote,” will announce his retirement this summer. This is incredibly troubling because it would provide the Trump administration another opportunity to nominate a conservative, pro-life replacement. Needless to say, there would be significant ramifications

v. Wade, conservatives are intensifying their efforts to restrict access to abortion on a state level. Mississippi recently passed a restrictive abortion ban in the United States, which outlaws abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The week before the Mississippi legislation was signed into law, Kentucky attempted to ban abortion after just 11 weeks. Other states like South Carolina and Ohio are debating an outright ban of abortion and legislators in Iowa are considering a ban on abortion when a heartbeat is detected.

The threat to bodily autonomy is here and it is real. The bills that these

books that followed the ever-important 1973 Roe v. Wade decision defines human life as commencing “at the instant of conception.” Another law requires a married woman to notify her husband before she can terminate a pregnancy and actually prohibits insurers from covering the procedure. Despite our overwhelmingly democratic state government, Rhode Island is incredibly hostile to reproductive rights and freedom.

To address this issue, some Rhode Island lawmakers have introduced the Reproductive Health Care Act. The Act would prohibit the state or any of

Conservative activists have intensified their efforts to strip away access to abortion through legislation at the state level, both in Rhode Island and across the rest of the nation. for those who rely on access to reproductive health care services, including abortion. This move would define the court for generations, likely stalling any social progress that has been made on many civil, social justice and reproductive health care issues. Low-income communities and black and brown people in particular will be disproportionately affected by the change.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, states could easily impose restrictions that would limit or totally eliminate a woman’s access to abortion services.

Yet, even without overturning Roe

states have passed and are considering can prompt a legal challenge that would make its way to the Supreme Court to challenge Roe v. Wade. Yet, here in Rhode Island, legislators refuse to take action to protect those living in the state, as we prepare for a potentially post-Roe v. Wade world.

In Rhode Island, existing antiquated and, in some cases, unconstitutional laws could completely outlaw abortion services. Several chapters of Rhode Island laws make it a criminal offense to perform an abortion or help a woman obtain one. A law that is still on the

its agencies from interfering with any individual’s reproductive health care, including the ability to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability or after that point in cases when necessary to preserve the woman’s health or life.

It would eliminate the several laws that (at least for now) unconstitutionally limit access to abortion, and repeal laws about definitions of life and permission seeking. In essence, the RHCA would codify Roe v. Wade into state law and protect the fundamental human right to reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy while repealing laws that could

restrict access to legal and safe health care for Rhode Islanders. In the current political climate, with an administration that is hostile to reproductive freedom, a Supreme Court in jeopardy, a conservative national Congress and an emboldened pro-life movement within the state, the need to act is urgent.

The leadership of both the Rhode Island State Senate and House has refused to act and codify Roe v. Wade into state law to keep abortion safe and legal in the state. Consequently, it is on us to take action and hold them accountable.

The fight for reproductive freedom is at a breaking point and we must take action. We must rally, talk to our elected officials and demand a vote on this important bill. We must secure these protections now, rather than reacting later to the rights of millions being taken away. To the Rhode Island House and Senate leadership, the time to act is now.

Ethan Morelion ’20 is a Bonner Community Fellow at Planned Parenthood Southern New England and the Rhode Island Coalition for Reproductive Freedom.

He can be reached at ethan_morelion@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com. If you would like to join the fight for reproductive freedom, you can attend the Lobby Day on April 26 at the Rhode Island State House.

SPORTS

FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2018 • PAGE 8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Which MLB frontrunners are legit?

GEORGE KLEIN sports columnist The Major League Baseball season is underway, and now, after a couple of weeks, some teams look surprisingly unstoppable. The Boston Red Sox came into spring training with plenty of attitude and team chemistry questions but have since raced off to a 15-2 start. The Los Angeles Angels, with the boost of Shohei Ohtani, currently stand with a 13-5 record. Meanwhile, in the National League, it’s 2015 all over again for the New York Mets — with dominant pitching, New York is in first place in the NL East with 13 wins and only four losses. But are any of these early season trends sustainable over the course of the year? Could these teams really be the league’s best?

The Red Sox have the talent to remain at the top; Boston is the best bet of the three frontrunners to make a deep playoff run. Mookie Betts has more than bounced back from a down 2017 season. He has a .390 batting average and a 1.249 OPS thus far.

Hanley Ramírez is a far more surprising comeback candidate. At the age of 34, his swing looks noticeably quicker and more compact, helping him amass a .912 OPS.

The pitching, of course, is the biggest story of Boston’s season so far.

The staff as a whole currently holds a 2.66 ERA and 1.107 WHIP. While those figures are sure to regress, at the very least, they do show us that Boston’s pitching talent is finally performing closer to their collective potential.

David Price struggled against the New York Yankees while battling a hand issue, but his other three starts were fantastic. He only allowed one run in 19 innings. Price, as Boston’s biggest

can remain in contention all summer long. The rotation is healthy for the first time in three years, and the results speak for themselves. While health remains an obvious caveat, the Mets showed in 2015 that they can make a deep and successful postseason run.

Noah Syndergaard and Jacob deGrom are performing up to expectations. Taking into consideration Syndergaard’s 13.92 K/9 ratio and deGrom’s 10.80 mark, it is evident that

even higher level of dominance.

Some members of New York’s lineup are definitely overperforming and should be in for some decline. Asdrúbal Cabrera won’t end up as one of the league’s best hitters with a .343 batting average and .996 OPS. Todd Frazier’s hack-filled approach will drag his on-base percentage far lower than his current .438 mark. With that being said, Yoenis Céspedes, Wilmer Flores and Jay Bruce have all gotten off to slow starts and should heat up

To get this out of the way, Mike Trout is the best player in baseball.

Nothing more needs to be said. However, Jefry Marté is not a .364 hitter, the bullpen is not one of the best in history and Shohei Ohtani is not Babe Ruth. wildcard, will have a major part in dictating the outcome of this season.

Chris Sale, on the other hand, continues to dominate consistently. He has already struck out 31 hitters in only 22 innings, to go along with a sparkling 1.23 ERA. Rick Porcello looks like 2016 Porcello again, another welcome sight. Those three can form a dangerous postseason rotation if everyone performs as expected.

The Mets are another team that

the Mets boast two of the game’s best strikeout artists. Zack Wheeler, finally back on the mound, surrendered only one run in seven innings in his first start of the season. He labored more in his second game, but it is good for New York to see him pitching respectably. Matt Harvey has dropped off big time, and there is talk of sending him to the bullpen. If Harvey can miraculously regain even a little bit of his peak form, this team can reach an

soon. The net effect of regression will be minimal. And with that pitching rotation, the Mets don’t need incredible amounts of offense to compete.

The Angels are the one team that I don’t believe in. To get this out of the way, Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. Nothing more needs to be said. However, Jefry Marté is not a .364 hitter, the bullpen is not one of the best in history and Ohtani is not Babe Ruth.

Ohtani’s start has been impressive though. After he struggled in spring training and some scouts claimed that he should start the year in the minor leagues, Ohtani has been proving doubters wrong from his very first pitch of the season. On the mound, he has a 0.80 WHIP and an 11.4 K/9 ratio. At the plate, Ohtani is hitting .367, with a 1.191 OPS and three home runs. In other words, the 23-year-old has been one of the best pitchers and hitters in the game. That won’t last — eventually, scouts will figure out his weaknesses and force him to adjust.

But it has been a lot of fun to watch.

The problem with the Angels is a lack of depth. Ohtani will eventually hit the rookie wall at some point, and Los Angeles doesn’t have other aboveaverage hitters with whom to surround Trout and Justin Upton in the lineup. Andrelton Simmons, Luis Valbuena and a more-than-washed-up Albert Pujols won’t scare anyone. Add in the inevitable regression of the bullpen and the Angels could face some tough times late in the season.

George Klein ’20 can be reached at george_klein@brown.edu.

Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

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