Friday, April 2nd, 2021

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 2021

VOLUME CLVI, ISSUE IX

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Admission officers create next year’s class from home Combination of “heartbreak,” hope in sifting through record amount of applicants

BY WILL KUBZANSKY SENIOR STAFF WRITER During a normal fall, Chrissy Fulton’s days are filled with high school visits.

She breaks up meetings with time in her car listening to NPR podcasts as she eats a granola bar or drives to a lunch spot recommended by a high school counselor.

But for the past year, Fulton’s days have been punctuated by 6 a.m. wake up calls — so she can take her dog for long walks in hopes of preventing background barking while she sits on Zoom meetings and reads applications.

Fulton is a Brown admission officer responsible for a scattered set of regions, including Boston, Cambridge, West Los Angeles, parts of Manhattan, Hong Kong and Singapore. She is one of 20 admission officers — the people, along with the rest of the office of admission, who facilitate the process of

holistic admissions.

Admission officers make the case to high schoolers as to why they should apply to the University. They read applications, argue on behalf of applicants in committee meetings and deliberate on the final decision an applicant receives. The grueling work all serves a larger goal: attracting, admitting and yielding an incoming first-year class.

The brunt of the work will largely end on Tuesday, April 6 at 7 p.m., known by applicants as Ivy Day, when more than 40,900 students will open their decision notifications from the University — not counting the students who were deferred in the early decision round, who will also receive notifications. Applicants to the class of 2025 applied to the University in record numbers — the 46,469 that applied during the early and regular decision rounds eclipses last year’s total by nearly 10,000. A staggering number of applicants, paired with a consistent number of limited spots in next year’s class, indicates that this year’s regular

SEE ADMISSIONS PAGE 3

UNIVERSITY NEWS

First-years’ mental health in COVID-19 Isolation, stress have made first-year experience especially taxing

BY KATY PICKENS STAFF WRITER Mason Thompson ’24 knew that starting college during a pandemic would be a challenge, but she had not anticipated just quite how difficult it would be.

“I wasn’t expecting to feel so constricted,” she said. “It was really hard for me, especially socially, because I am quite a bit of an introvert.”

Despite acclimating herself to College Hill for the first month and a half of the semester, stress, a limited social life and public health restrictions were taking a toll on Thompson’s mental health, driving her decision to finish the semester remotely at home.

Thompson is one of several firstyear students who, after starting the semester on campus, chose to return home. As of March 31, 27 of the 150 students who have left campus to study remotely have been first-years, according to Associate Vice President for Campus Life and Dean of Students

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Isabel Wilkerson delivers Lemley Lecture Pulitzer winner discusses history of race, social hierarchy in U.S.

EMILY TENG / HERALD

Twenty-seven of the 150 students who have left campus to study remotely have been first-years, as of March 31.

Koren Bakkegard.

“I don’t think I predicted just how bad the isolation would be,” said Em ’24, a first-year who asked to be identified only by their first name for fear of personal repercussions. They switched their location of study to remote mid-way through the semester.

“I felt extremely lonely and isolated, and my mental health was really bad while I was (on campus).”

They explained that it was difficult to meet people on campus, and that as the weeks wore on, socializing became

SAMEER SINHA / HERALD

similarities between the treatment of the “untouchables” in India and that of African Americans in the United States.

King “thought about how (Black Americans) were being held in a fixed place,” she said, prevented from voting, using public services, and having basic rights as citizens. “He thought about it, and said ‘I am an untouchable, and every Black person in the United States is an untouchable too.’”

Wilkerson went on to elaborate on how a caste system persists in the United States today. She defined caste as a “graded ranking of human value in a society,” and said that the hierarchy does not result from any individual’s actions, but from being born into a

certain group.

“In our country, the metric that the early colonists used to divide and to rank people … was the metric of race,” she said. “Race was used to determine who could own property and who could be property.” Wilkerson said that this racial hierarchy was manifested in the institutions of slavery and Jim Crow, both of which “cast a shadow” to the present day.

She specifically referenced the continued influence of racial hierarchy on recent events such as the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, and the Capitol in-

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Pipatjarasgit ’21: U. Senior Gift committee leaves unsavory taste in pandemic year Page 7

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SEE FIRST-YEARS PAGE 4

Female econ professors on gender dynamics in field

BY CLAIRE LIU SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Writer Isabel Wilkerson discusses her new book, ‘Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,’ with University Professor Amanda Anderson.

exhausting. “I felt it was much harder to sustain connections with people,” Em said. “I noticed that hanging out with people became almost a chore, or something on my to-do list I had to scratch off because I felt obligated.”

Though their mental health has improved since going home, Em said, “it’s still not ideal.”

“It doesn’t feel great to accept that my first semester in college is happening from my living room,” Em said.

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Woman-identifying scholars discuss importance of mentorship

BY SAMEER SINHA CONTRIBUTING WRITER Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson likened racial divisions in the U.S. to a caste system during the Lemley Lecture on April 1 about her new book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”

“Caste is with us whether we recognize it or not. It’s working within our society, whether we see it or not,” Wilkerson said. “We have seen a continuing manifestation of the centuries-old divisions and hatred that we have inherited.”

Wilkerson said that while the United States’ caste system is less well known than India’s, it still foments social divisions.

“When (Dr. Martin Luther King) went to the southern part of (India,) he wanted to see people who were, at the time, known as ‘untouchables,’” those who were a part of a marginalized caste, Wilkerson said. When he visited a South Indian school, the principal introduced him as “a fellow untouchable.” Although initially unhappy at this title, Wilkerson said, King soon drew

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

The percentage of women in full-time professor positions in research-oriented economics departments is 8 to 13 percent, according to an Institute of Labor Economics study in 2018.

The share of women academics in economics is slowly increasing, but senior and junior figures alike remain a minority in the profession.

Four women professors in the economics department spoke with The Herald about their journeys into academia, their experiences navigating gender dynamics and what equity might look like for the field.

Carving out space in the field Rachel Friedberg, distinguished senior lecturer in economics and department director of undergraduate studies, is a recognizable face to undergraduate students taking the introductory economics course, ECON 0110: “Principles of Econom-

ics.” Around half of the undergraduate body takes the class before graduating, Friedberg said.

Friedberg was “very drawn to the academic life” from the start, which may have been influenced by her growing up in a college town, she said. “I discovered that my real love in economics was in teaching,” which led her to switch from an assistant professor to a lecturer in the department.

As the primary instructor for Brown’s gateway course into economics for over a decade, “I love having the opportunity to be the person who can get people excited about economics,” especially those “who don’t think it’s going to be interesting,” she said.

“I also really appreciate (having) the platform as a woman, so that people’s first experience of the field is having a woman explain to them so that (it) doesn’t enter their minds that this (would) be something that’s meant for guys,” she said. Friedberg hopes women taking her class will not be dissuaded from pursuing graduate school, where she was the only woman in her class herself. “I felt it was so silly that it should be so male,” she recalled.

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ECON FROM PAGE 1 Professor and Chair of Economics Anna Aizer joined Friedberg as the second woman in the economics department in 2003. During her time at Brown, she became the first tenured woman in the economics department and the first female chair of the department, a position she holds today.

Aizer’s path to academia was unconventional: She studied history while an undergraduate student and first became interested in public health economics after graduation through working on government policy evaluation. While in graduate school at UCLA, Aizer’s advisor Janet Currie served as an “incredible role model” on “how to navigate (gender issues in the profession) at a very early stage in my career,” she said.

She found the same care and mentorship at Brown; Andrew Foster, the department chair at the time, was “extremely supportive” when Aizer was having her first child shortly after arriving at Brown. “It’s enormously important to have a chair who is supportive of junior faculty,” Aizer said.

Bryce Steinberg, IJC assistant professor of economics and international and public affairs, recalled taking a class taught by Aizer after the summer that helped cement her decision to pursue academia. Steinberg originally planned to pursue a career in law until an experience during her sophomore year summer working for David Weil, James and Merryl Tisch professor of economics, exposed her to academia as a viable career.

Coming from a working class background with only one parent attending college, Steinberg arrived with the mindset that the goal of attending an elite university was attaining a lucrative job, she said. During her summer research experience, she had the opportunity to sit in on an economics conference for the first time and was “totally blown away that this was an option for a person’s job,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg also credited Emily Oster, professor of economics and international and public affairs, as a more seasoned mentor figure, whom she was able to observe and learn from. “There’s this very strong camaraderie amongst women in economics because there aren’t that many of us,” she said.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS Gendered hostility in economics “Women received 12 percent more questions than men (in economics seminars), and they were more likely to get questions that were patronizing or hostile.” Covered in The New York Times, this finding came from a study called “Gender and the Dynamics of Economics Seminars,” which was published this February by the National Bureau of Economics Research. The study is the first to quantify any differences in how female and male-identifying presenters in economics seminars are treated by the audience.

Aizer, Friedberg and Steinberg agreed that economics seminars can be “combative” spaces, as Friedberg described. The questions and constructive criticisms that presenters receive are important to the field: “Only work that can really withstand tests and criticism will survive and become part of our body of knowledge,” Friedberg said.

But questioning beyond a certain extent can be unproductive, Aizer said.

During a recent virtual seminar, Aizer experienced aggressive questioning from the male host, which was “a waste of his time and my time, and all the other people who were at the seminar,” she said. Some of the attendees emailed Aizer afterwards apologizing on behalf of the questioner.

Brown’s economics department implemented rules for seminars two years ago to help prevent similar situations, she said. The presenter is allowed the first ten to fifteen minutes to speak uninterrupted, and the seminar organizer can ask a person to refrain from questions if they are “badgering” the speaker.

“In this case, the person who’s doing the badgering was the seminar organizer,” as well as a Nobel Laureate, Aizer added. “Had I been junior (in the field), that would’ve been really devastating for me.”

During a talk at the University of Chicago, Steinberg recalled being “shouted down on the first couple of slides” before having the opportunity to explain her paper’s topic. Though it’s difficult to explicitly attribute the treatment to her gender, “I definitely believe that there’s an enormous amount of implicit bias that drives a lot of this behavior in ways that people don’t understand,” Steinberg said.

Friday, April 2, 2021

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Distinguished, female figures of the University’s Economics department Anna Aizer, Rachel Friedberg, Bryce Steinberg and Amy Handlan discuss common experiences and challenges to diversity in their field.

A changing landscape: the future of the field “There’s a lot of push for female representation, but I have noticed that things are different when women are actually doing it,” Steinberg said. Aizer and Steinberg, who were on the department’s hiring committee this year, were able to extend offers to more women than ever before.

Amy Handlan, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Minnesota, is one of two women who will be joining the department this summer as an associate professor. Handlan specializes in macroeconomics, a subfield that she has explored in greater depth at the University of Minnesota, which has a partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Macroeconomics is generally understood to be a heavily male dominated area within economics, Handlan said.

Knowing about these gender dynamics was not a deterring factor in pursuing her career, though Handlan has experienced “additional time costs” as a woman that she “did not expect to be as much of a balancing act as it is.”

Minorities in the field in general can be asked more often to do tasks that do not directly benefit their career, or “invisible service,” Handlan said.

These requests, such as speaking to undergraduate students interested in studying economics, are asked less often of her male counterparts in her doctoral program. While visible representation of minorities helps encourage more diverse students to major in economics, “this is time that is spent taking away from time that I could have been doing research” or other activities in the best interest of her professional development, Handlan said.

If departments are interested in addressing discrimination in the profession, soliciting feedback from a variety of different people and identities is important, Handlan said.

The NBER study “had enough women presenting in seminars that they could do a study on women presenting in seminars; there weren’t enough economists of other minority groups to even (study them),” she said.

“A lot of work has been done on (and) is being done on gender; I think

there’s a long way to go on race and ethnicity,” Friedberg agreed.

The problem of underrepresentation in the department occurs “through the whole pipeline,” she said. For instance, hiring more diverse faculty may be difficult for Brown’s department to address since it ties back to underrepresentation in doctoral programs, Friedberg said.

At the same time, having a diverse faculty enables the department to offer classes that might appeal to a broader and more diverse set of students, Aizer said, who may later enter doctoral programs. “We can’t just hope that women will pursue economics; we actually have to do the work of convincing them,” Aizer said.

“I’m optimistic that (the) profession is moving towards a direction that it should, where problems shouldn’t be hidden but … brought out into the open (so) that we can address them,” Handlan said.

“It’s been a real privilege to watch the field and the department grow in that way,” Friedberg said.

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Friday, April 2, 2021

ADMISSIONS FROM PAGE 1 decision pool will likely be admitted at a record-low rate.

While the spike in applicants didn’t change the admission process, the timing of the surge, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic, certainly did.

The Herald spoke with two admission committees that cover New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, each consisting of three admission officers and chaired by either Dean of Admission Logan Powell or Director of Admission Julia Bengochea. Together, the group — encompassing six officers and two departmental leaders — discussed life inside the admission process this year.

This year, they found themselves faced with new challenges: altered work-life balances, longer days, the loss of informal communication and Zoom. But admitting a first-year class also offered a sense of normalcy — and even hope.

Recruiting via Zoom School visits, often tightly-scheduled and occurring “back-to-back-toback,” required officers to “bolt out the door” to get to the next school on time, explained Pat Rounds, who covers Philadelphia, Eastern Pennsylvania and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, including Silicon Valley and San Jose included.

But the dynamic changed this year: All high school visits went virtual, as did visits to community-based organizations, international groups and college counseling programs.

For Fulton, that meant saying the “same things over and over again” in the “same chair.”

Eliminating the time crunch, though, added some benefits, especially when multiple students showed up for “office hours” with their regional admission officer on Zoom.

“It really became an in-depth conversation,” Rounds said. “You had that ease of being virtual. You could really take the time. I was able to have long discussions with some of the students who wanted to chat.”

Large-scale information sessions that the University typically offers, said Katrina Souder, also became more personal for the admission officer leading the session.

“I had 2,000 students and their families from Manhattan in my living room,” said Souder, who covers parts of Manhattan in addition to Staten Island and a large chunk of New Jersey.

“Usually in admissions, you would never see your admission officer’s choice in paintings or wall art.”

Finding comfort in reading applications during an abnormal year When “reading season” came along this year — the weeks when officers dive into applications — it was accompanied by a sense of renewed normalcy and hope, Fulton said.

After an applicant hits the “submit” button, the next person to see their transcript, essays, recommendations and test scores is often an admission officer. The University has two readers look at each application and decide if it proceeds to committee, with no cutoffs or formulas in place to narrow the pool, Powell said.

“Burrowing into applications was actually the first part of the last calendar year that felt normal to me,” Fulton said. The University, she explained, has previously allowed officers to work from home during reading season in a normal year.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS “It was the first time where I was like, ‘Yeah, this is what I would normally be doing in January.’ There was something that was sort of comforting about that.”

Rounds agreed with Fulton’s assessment, noting that he tried to maintain some semblance of pre-pandemic life in his routine.

“I was trying to be cognizant of my

also at home for periods of time. And while Souder does not have children, she does live in an apartment with residents who are raising an “active and loud” toddler.

Fulton added that the record high size of the applicant pool stretched her days even longer.

Not every student makes it to committee, he said, and with more and more

3 bottle. And usually someone brings some delicious baked goods.”

Zoom also exacerbated some awkwardness already built into the committee process, said Matt Price, who covers North and East Texas, the Dallas-Fort Worth region, Georgia and Northern Virginia: When an admission officer presents an applicant’s case in person, the other officers in the room are still

LOKI OLIN / HERALD

routine,” he added. “Get up, shower, shave, dress, eat your breakfast and then go sit at your desk and try to replicate normality as much as possible.”

But even under normal circumstances, maintaining a work-life balance in admissions is always challenging, said James Walsh, who covers Central and Western Pennsylvania as well as Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, upstate New York and Western New York. During the pandemic, when the lines blurred further, maintaining that balance became even more difficult.

The opportunity to tune out the rest of the world proved valuable to Walsh.

“Last year, it was very easy to feel kind of hopeless with the news cycle,” he said. “With reading season, it was kind of a blessing. Even though there were so many applications, it was so inspiring to see all these young people that were going to change the world someday. I got a lot of energy out of that.”

Increased use of video submissions alongside applications — which became the de facto alternative to the alumni interviews that were canceled for the 2020-21 admission cycle — also made the process more enjoyable for officers.

“There were so many applications where that video portfolio helped to bring that student alive or fill in the edges and help us really understand a lot more about who they were,” Fulton said. “They were also just really fun to watch. It felt like we were connecting with the students, even though they didn’t know.”

Souder, who was an English major in college, said she loves early-morning essay reading: “I immediately want to be up. I want my music on.

I want to be in my zone and in my space,” she said.

The pandemic, though, changed her circumstances: Residents in Souder’s apartment who used to leave for work while she stayed home reading were

students, it’s even more difficult to narrow down the pool.

“There’s a tad more heartbreak,” Rounds added. “Just given how competitive the pool is, you get really attached to some of the students.”

“This process can seem really big from the outside,” Powell said. “But every one of those individual applications that we’re reading, we understand there’s a real person there, and we’re making real decisions about real people.”

“Even though the numbers are larger, this is a very human process for us, and we treat it as such,” Powell said.

Bringing the office — and the committee process — home When reading season ends, officers typically make their way from their desks to committee meetings, during which an admission officer makes the case for applicants they deem to be competitive to a select number of other officers encompassing a broader region at-large. Those officers then review the file, ask questions and vote on a non-binding decision, subject to change when the class is reviewed as a whole one more time.

Those meetings often feel rejuvenating after extended periods of isolation reading applications alone, said Bailey DiOrio, whose regions encompass Michigan, Brooklyn, The Bronx and a number of Boston suburbs.

“It’s the first time you’re back seeing people in person after a long period of either sitting at home or sitting in your office,” she said.

But this year, switching from reading season to committee meetings meant changing the window on a laptop from a virtual pile of applications to a Zoom meeting — not quite the same feeling, DiOrio admitted.

“I miss the feeling of community,” Fulton said. “It feels like you’re a real team marching down the hallway into the committee room with your laptops, your papers, your mug and your water

reading through assorted documents and essays, leaving the room relatively quiet.

“You’ll go on talking about the merits of the case for 90 seconds. And then you’ll be greeted with complete silence from your colleagues. That’s kind of awkward in person, and it’s even more awkward in the Zoom,” Price said.

“Once you get used to it, you can see that people are just staring at the screen, really engrossed in the file,” he noted. But the “level of awkwardness,” Price said, has risen.

Admission officers also approached the process with an added sense of empathy for students, Powell said, noting the difficulties posed by life on Zoom and the loss of extracurriculars. The office, he added, paid special attention to students facing “disproportionate challenges”: students without reliable WiFi, strong mentoring and college counseling or adequate home office facilities.

“Reading and hearing the storytelling in this class of applications, their adjusting to what has been thrown at them — it’s going to be a really great class,” Bengochea said.

DiOrio also misses drop-in conversations with colleagues; Zoom work doesn’t lend itself to spontaneity, she explained.

“One of the things I miss the most about being in-person is not having to schedule everything as a Zoom or phone call, just being able to step into someone’s office to ask a quick question or run a case by them,” she said.

“Those casual interactions are really just impossible now.”

“It’s like jazz: You’re innovating and you’re creating,” Powell said.

Officers are aiming to fill the gaps in interaction created by the pandemic. Before COVID, Price took a weekly walk downtown with a colleague, often starting by discussing an applicant’s file or essay before delving

into other topics. That walk, Price said, has become a regularly scheduled Zoom call.

For Souder, the informal interactions to talk about work turned into FaceTime calls while she made her lunch, or spontaneous Google Meets — meaning that she let her colleagues see her “messy kitchen” at times.

And as Rounds navigated an unexpected “COVID move” with his partner into his one-bedroom studio, his meetings took place wherever he could find space and quiet — sometimes including the roof.

Admissions after the pandemic The Office of Admission has yet to indicate when it will resume normal operations — and Powell expressed that he aims to keep the best parts of virtual outreach for the foreseeable future. But as vaccines roll out, admission officers are eagerly awaiting the return to parts of their jobs they left behind last March.

Souder and Walsh expressed eagerness to return to leading information sessions in Manning Chapel — both noting that they would happily lead the first session when guidelines relax.

“I want well-meaning parents to ask me every single question they have about senior curriculum and SAT scores and their student’s high school and infinitely really personal details of their child,” Souder added.

“I was the first in my family to go to college. I know how scary it is sitting there thinking you’re going to do everything wrong. I just love being the person that gets to peel back the veil for them, and to be like, ‘None of us know what’s going on, so let’s walk through this together.’”

For Rounds, returning to an energized campus not hampered by social distancing requirements is something to look forward to — while for DiOrio, it’s working in person with the admission office’s student employees. Walsh said he’s looking ahead to the first staff meeting back in the office, an energy that just “hits different” compared to a Zoom meeting.

And if the University lifts sanctions on travel again, it will mean that officers can also return to in-person high school visits and college fairs — something Price eagerly awaits.

“I will get on a plane, fly to whichever territory I have and go to a college fair,” he said. “And I don’t care if the line for my table is a mile long, I will stand there and answer every single question until it’s done. I really do miss interacting with prospective students in person.”

Fulton — who noted the challenge of repeatedly saying the same thing in the same chair — echoed Price’s excitement about getting on the road.

“There’s just something about visiting a high school that really helps you to understand where the students are coming from,” she said. “And I’m just really excited to say those things, sitting in all different kinds of chairs and all different places.”

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

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WILKERSON FROM PAGE 1 surrection. Wilkerson said that during the insurrection, “we saw a privilege and entitlement that was not accorded to George Floyd just months before.”

Those who stormed the Capitol are “programmed to see themselves as dominant,” Wilkerson said. Had the rioters been African American, she said, “they would have not lived to tell the tale.”

Using the word “caste” is import-

FIRST-YEARS FROM PAGE 1

ant to recognize that the divisions in our society “are purely human-created systems,” Wilkerson said. She hopes readers of her book recognize that humans are not “innately dominant nor subordinate, but we have (all) been given a rank.”

Wilkerson said that the 246 years of slavery in the U.S. that form the very foundation for the American racial hierarchy is not simply a “chapter” in its history. Through modern-day monuments to Confederates and the presence

of the Confederate flag in the Capitol Building, brought in by a member of the mob during the insurrection, “we are witnessing the consequences of this unaddressed history,” Wilkerson said.

In the wake of multiple acts of violence against Asian Americans, Wilkerson added that the caste system divides everybody, not only African Americans, adding that the “model minority” myth dehumanizes Asian Americans and categorizes them into one slot within the hierarchy.

Wilkerson said that, while she may not be able to end the American caste system, she hoped to illuminate it to her readers. “I viewed myself as a kind of building inspector of this old house that is the United States that we have inherited … many of the repairs are going to be more challenging because they have been deferred for so long.”

Although the country’s hierarchical caste system was not created by people in this generation, “it is still ours,” Wilkerson said. The U.S. is at

a crossroads: “Will it follow the path of darkness and division, of hate and hierarchy? Or will it rise to what Dr. King called ‘the heights of the majestic,’ and live up to its creed and become a true democracy?”

“What we have seen (in the past year) has made it wrenchingly clear that Dr. King’s mission, and the mission of those who walked with him for freedom, justice and liberty for all, has not been completed.”

precedented transition, he said.

“The transition to college can be difficult for anyone, and the class of 2024 has certainly faced the additional challenge of adjusting to college in the midst of a global pandemic,” wrote Anja Lee, assistant dean of the college for the first-year and sophomore experience, in an email to The Herald.

“To any first-year students who are struggling, please know that we hear you, we see you and we are here and available to support you,” Lee wrote, through resources such as Counseling and Psychological Services and Student Services.

But some students encountered difficulties accessing information about

these resources, and accessing the services themselves. “I am a low-income student (and) I am on a scholarship.

I had no idea that CAPS was free for students,” said Thompson, who started utilizing CAPS after becoming aware that it was free. “Knowing that changed a lot for me.”

Em wished the University had taken a more active role in creating events where first-years could socialize beyond orientation and better promoted its resources.

“I just felt completely overwhelmed.

There was way too much to do at any given time, and I felt as if Brown wasn’t really trying to support me,” Em said.

“Mental health services should be ac-

tively reaching out to students, not the other way around.”

First-years also felt that the University’s COVID-19 policies and restrictions hindered their ability to socialize. Christopher Vanderpool ’24 has remained on campus this semester and said the need to maintain a pod can limit social interactions. He added that seeing posts on social media of students in large groups can feel isolating. “It feels like you aren’t getting the full experience that a lot of people seem to be having,” he said.

Social pressure combined with online classes have increased strain on students’ mental health across the country. “I was so tired at the end of the

day,” Thompson said. “I didn’t want to go on Zoom to meet people.”

Arenal Haut ’24 also expressed concerns about Zoom fatigue and academics during this semester, adding that she feels concerned about burnout from the compressed and contiguous semesters under this year’s tri-semester calendar.

“The three semesters back to back is going to be rough,” Haut said.

Thompson encouraged her peers to tend to their mental health and make decisions that make sense for them.

“Prioritize your well-being,” she said. “That is so much more important than courses or grades.”

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Zachary Boston ’24 echoed Em, and said that a semester under COVID-19 is more challenging for first-years because, unlike sophomores or juniors, they do not have established friend groups.

“It was difficult for me because I am a pretty extroverted person, and in an environment where you can’t be extroverted,” said Boston, who decided to complete the semester remotely to be closer to his support system and improve his mental and physical health.

Still, Boston believes that the University did its best to try to support students through the difficult and un-

Friday, April 2, 2021

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APR 2 — VOL 27 — ISSUE 9

FEATURE

See Full Issue: POST.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

NARRATIVE

By Ourselves, With Each Other

By Kaitlan Bui

Batter Up on masculinity and athletics

by Jack Walker illustrated by Chloe Chen Fumbling past my brother’s legs, I slid between the driver’s and passenger sides of my dad’s white pickup truck, into a makeshift seat on top of the center console. The swarming summer heat mixed with pine air freshener and made my throat sting.

On our way down the mountain, we wove through a canvas of greens, each different shade plastered on top of another. Turns jostled the whole car, bumping my knee into my brother’s and brushing my shoulder against my dad’s. I felt close to them like this, every unintended touch making the car feel so full, like no matter where I turned I would be surrounded by their love.

We made our way into town and pulled into a gravel parking lot. Our wheels kicked up dust and turned the windows hazy. My brother and I grabbed our bags out from the bed of the truck and walked

to our youth team’s dugout, right in front of the bleachers where my dad would watch us play baseball for the next hour.

I felt a deep apathy for sports, but we would get free pizza and snow cones after games, which made stepping foot onto the field very important. While waiting for my turn to bat or run or catch the ball, I would wonder about the world around me. How could I get into the announcement booth above the concession stand? Who were those older boys over there, building a treehouse in the woods behind the ballpark? Staring in every direction but the field, the gravity of rec league baseball was lost on me.

I was always last in the batting order. I hated the buzzing feeling that would run through my fingertips and up my arms each time I feebly made contact with the ball. But I was fascinated with first base, the idea that once I finally got there I could just keep running, and maybe even score for my team.

Unfortunately, my fear of hitting the ball always outweighed this. Whenever it was my turn to bat, I would refuse to swing and hope the ball would hit me so I could walk to first base. To my chagrin, this rarely worked out, and I had to return to the dugout

“I’m just gonna pretend you said SMEG, which is my favorite brand of mid-century refrigerator.”

“She’s kind in a California way, which scares me because I don’t know what they’re doing over there.”

1. “FOOLS” by Troye Sivan

Fools

2. Booboo The Fool, born yesterday 3. Me most days 4. First person to join the Zoom call who just has to chill with the professor 5. Court jester (dream job)

Want to be involved?

Email: olivia_howe@brown.edu!

ARTS & CULTURE

"If you can't breathe, just scream" By allegra friedman

Tom Petty’s song “Free Fallin’” begins with bright strumming on an acoustic guitar. Accompanied by a sunny chord progression, maracas, and soothing harmonies on the chorus, he sings about wanting to “glide down” over the earth and “free fall out into nothing.” Petty’s look in the music video has the same laid-back vibe as the song itself: He sits in front of a chemically bright blue pool, looking cool and sunkissed in a pair of Ray-Bans. His signature blonde hair is windswept and golden; it could give SNL’s Californians a run for their money.

With his blissed-out demeanor and lyrics, Petty

LIFEST YLE

Spring is Sprung

By Gus Kmetz

6. Pulling The Fool Reversed from the tarot deck 7. Waving your wet hands in front of an empty, unsympathetic paper towel dispenser 8."You fool” (said endearingly, flirtatiously even) 9. April 10. According to Shakespeare, a wise man

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I’m sitting outside my public library, you know, the one that issued me a library card when I was eight. I remember that day had been a proud one for me: I had just learned how to write in cursive— crossing my t’s on the dotted middle line, making sure the loop of the lowercase y fell underneath—and all of a sudden, there I was, diplomatically printing my name on the back of an official piece of plastic. I think the frizzy-haired librarian even complimented my penmanship.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the last time I used cursive with such purpose. I’m not even writing down anything at the moment. I’m recording myself on my phone, sprawled across a scruffy yellow Adirondack, trying not to think about all the missed readings I need to catch up on. Although I’ve journaled a lot, I’ve never actually recorded my life, my voice echoing with awkward inflections.

It feels narcissistic and weird, but we’ve tried a lot of things in the past year, haven’t we? Like binging

Ah, yes, spring in Providence. The air is cold, the ground is always oddly moist, and the pollenladen air makes you feel like the environment itself is trying to bring about your demise. But there are some bright spots—most notably, the fact that the Providence winter is now over, so there are finally literal bright spots around campus. While we can’t do everything we used to do, there are still fabulous places to hang out on Brown’s campus. Because this is an arts magazine, I matched some of the locations with songs that match (each of ) could go here their vibes. I’ll run through a few of them, from the One Direction equivalents to the midwestern garage April 2, 2021 5 5

6

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

Friday, April 2, 2021

SPORTS

Doug Kezirian ’00: from the pool to the ESPN sports desk

COURTESY OF ESPN

Kezirian made his mark as a player on the water polo team during his tenure at Brown, where he also wrote for The Herald and joined WBRU, Brown’s student-run radio station.

Kezirian shares his journey from water polo to the pinnacle of sports broadcasting

BY PERI SHEININ SENIOR STAFF WRITER By the time Doug Kezirian ’00 entered the Van Wickle Gates, he had already begun his transition from an elite athlete to a prominent sports broadcaster.

At Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, Kezirian excelled in water polo and in the classroom. In his first year of high school, his team captured the California Interscholastic Federation Championship. Kezirian was also exploring competitive sports from the sidelines as a reporter. He wrote for The Los Angeles Daily News and served as sports editor for his high school newspaper.

When Kezirian took an acting class in a post-graduate year at Phillips Exeter

Academy, his instructor encouraged him to pursue sports broadcasting.

“As I went through high school, I realized a career in journalism was possible,” Kezirian said in an interview with The Herald.

At Brown, Kezirian played Division I water polo. He scored the game-winning goal to capture the Ivy League men’s water polo championship during his sophomore year. Despite the glory of athletic success, Kezirian knew his time in the spotlight as a competitor would not last forever. While some of his peers chased the possibility of a professional water polo career, Kezirian realized his time in the pool had an expiration date. “That dream of getting to play water polo … would have to fade away,” he said.

Kezirian continued to seek out sports media opportunities as he worked towards a degree in economics. He covered sports for The Herald and joined WBRU, Brown’s student-run

radio station. He complemented his experiences on College Hill with internships in television.

After graduation, Kezirian turned his full attention to sports broadcasting and became the sports director and main sports anchor at KTNV-TV, an ABC affiliate in Las Vegas. Kezirian combined his economics knowledge with his passion for sport to create and co-host a sports betting radio show, “The Las Vegas Sportsline,” which is currently the highest-rated ESPN radio show in Las Vegas. Kezirian used his own athletic experience to bring a unique perspective to interviews with iconic athletes, such as Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson. Kezirian applied the discipline he learned in water polo to strengthen his burgeoning sports media career.

“Water polo helped shape my career. I learned an incredible amount of grind, dedication and commitment to an ultimate goal,” he said. “Grinding

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every day swimming laps, doing the necessary work for the potential payoff, was instrumental” to his career success.

In 2012, Kezirian was invited into the ESPN studio, where he became a SportsCenter anchor and hosted several other programs, including NBA Tonight, Buzzer Beater and First Take. He also hosted halftime updates for college basketball along with College GameDay on ESPN Radio. Kezirian continues to use his economics degree to host Daily Wager, a daily sports betting news and information program on ESPN. His extensive knowledge of both numbers and sports earned Kezirian the role of ESPN’s sports betting analyst.

Despite his impressive achievements in the sports broadcasting world, Kezirian remains focused on improving his skills. “It’s all about what you can do with your craft in your path in life,” he said. “And I try to get better every day.”

Throughout his ascent in sports media, Kezirian has remained loyal

to Brown Athletics and has returned to College Hill multiple times to connect with the next generation of student-athletes. Men’s and women’s water polo Head Coach Felix Mercado shared his admiration for Kezirian.

“He’s such a down to earth person with a great sense of humor. Doug is someone who decided to go after his dream … You can really do whatever you want, especially at Brown and after Brown,” he said.

As Kezirian continues to take center stage in the growing world of sports betting, he remains grateful for his athletic career along with his time at Brown. “With broadcasting, there are so many different ways to get where you want to be,” he said. “I was a resilient person who was shaped by two things: water polo and Brown — navigating the waters on your own. The Brown flavor took over, and I figured it out.”

Friday, April 2, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

7

Pipatjarasgit ’21: Should Brown really ask current students for donations?

BY POOM ANDREW PIPATJARASGIT STAFF COLUMNIST

As a senior graduating from Brown this May, I have been receiving emails since September of last year about the Senior Class Gift and Senior Class Gift Committee. It struck me as odd that although I had not yet walked out the Van Wickle Gates, I was already being asked for money. But the more I looked into the Brown Senior Class Gift, the more I became shocked at what I saw.

The Office of Advancement describes the Senior Class Gift as “a student-led effort,” but this isn’t entirely true; it relies on the infrastructure of the Office of Advancement and a staff member who supports young alumni giving. The Senior Class Gift Committee helps to solicit donations for the Brown Annual Fund.

But there is a barrier to entry for membership on the committee: Students wishing to join the committee must make a gift to the Brown Annual Fund “early in the year” as a prerequisite for membership, a requirement that reeks of exclusivity and privilege. Even if there is no minimum gift amount required, would a senior with limited financial means but enthusiasm for Brown philanthropy feel welcomed to make a humble or modest gift to join the committee, or would they feel deterred by what may appear to be a lofty criterion for inclusion?

According to the Brown Annual Fund Student Volunteers webpage, “Giving through the Senior Class Gift makes a statement that seniors value their Brown experience and want to support the next generation of Brown students.” But is valuing Brown conditioned on having the financial means to do so? What about volunteer service, working at Brown or serving as an alumni interviewer? I haven’t really heard about other ways such as these to show that I “support the next generation of Brown students.”

According to the Senior Class Gift Committee Volunteer Roles and Responsibilities document, students can even buy their way into being an “Honorary Co-Chair,” which is described as follows: “Lend your name to the effort and show your support for the work of the commit-

tee by making a commitment of $1,000 or more to the Brown Annual Fund. Honorary Co-Chairs are not required to actively solicit classmates.”

Considering that almost 20 percent of Brown students “come from the highest-earning 1 (percent) of American households,” this could definitely be alienating for a low-income or middle-class Brown student to hear. Despite appearing to not have any leadership responsibil-

working lunch.” Being a student at Brown is a life-changing experience, and there are many reasons why graduating students and alumni want to donate. Rather, I am drawing attention to the appropriateness of how these initiatives are structured.

Even in a normal year with no pandemic, the University’s efforts to encourage participation in the Senior Class Gift feel highly mis-

“Am I going to look past the many, many structural problems that the University has insufficiently addressed — and indirectly perpetuate these problems by just giving to the University?”

ities, unlike other members of the Senior Class Gift Committee, Honorary Co-Chairs are nonetheless entitled to attend the “exclusive networking lunch with alumni volunteer leaders” and receive “invitations to occasional conference calls with President Paxson.” It is no secret that money is ultimately the driving factor behind any nonprofit organization’s advancement and development efforts, but at Brown, is there a need to expose current students, who have yet to reap the financial benefits of a Brown education, to this type of aggressive constituent development? I graduated high school from a private school, and while parents were solicited for gifts to the school, the school never asked current students to donate.

Giving to Brown, whether a dollar a month or a $1,000 gift to become an Honorary CoChair of the Senior Class Gift Committee, is a highly personal decision, and I have nothing against current seniors or young alumni who wish to do so. I also trust that members of the Senior Class Gift Committee primarily joined these efforts because they love Brown, not because they wanted to attend the “exclusive net-

placed. This year in particular, though, it has reached new heights. According to previous Herald reporting, the University had projected that its budget for the 2020-21 academic year would include a whopping 12 percent increase to the financial aid budget to “support families whose financial circumstances have changed.”

From this, we can infer that a greater number of Brown students and families are struggling this year than in the past. Moreover, various student jobs such as those in dining, which might ordinarily provide students with disposable income that they could use to make a donation to the University, have been unavailable this academic year. Yet, Brown is still asking current seniors for money.

This has been a dreadful academic year for all, including seniors. In addition to significantly earlier deadlines to turn in their honors theses (in the case of honors candidates) and fewer in-person opportunities to enjoy their final semester due to pandemic-related restrictions, graduating students are searching for jobs during a sluggish economic recovery; the unemployment rate and number of unemployed

individuals “remain well above their pre-pandemic levels in February 2020,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The emails I have received from the Office of Advancement highlight that the Annual Fund “allows the University to be nimble and helps support students during challenging times — like the one we’re facing now.” It seems rather insensitive to then request participation in the Annual Fund from individuals who are navigating these exact “challenging times.”

Beyond the financial difficulties of this year, students also have plenty of reasons to be ambivalent about donating to Brown — especially recently. President Christina Paxson P’19 failed to clearly acknowledge calls from students or the recommendation from the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Practices to divest from “companies identified as facilitating human rights abuses in Palestine” and instead disregarded ACCRIP’s recommendation, withholding it from a vote by the Corporation. The Office of Advancement remains opaque even after significant scandals during our time as undergraduates. And for months, the University sat on several millions of dollars of 2020 stimulus money without using or distributing it, all while still failing to sufficiently support its students who have been struggling due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Am I going to look past the many, many structural problems that the University has insufficiently addressed — and indirectly perpetuate these problems by just giving to the University? I am so grateful for all of my experiences at Brown, but this doesn’t mean that I don’t have misgivings about the institution.

As I transition from Brown student to Brown alum, I have a lot that I need to figure out: how to pack up and move out, what I will do after graduation and where I will live; the COVID-19 pandemic makes none of this easier. What is certainly not on my list of things to do is donating to Brown.

Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit ’21 can be reached at poom_pipatjarasgit@brown.edu.

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

8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

Friday, April 2, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE

‘Cherry,’ a failed American epic despite sincere performances Tom Holland, Ciara Bravo’s performances cannot save the film from falling flat

BY IRENE CHOU SENIOR STAFF WRITER

territory known as the “Triangle of Death,” Cherry’s helplessness is palpable in Holland’s wide-eyed shock and clench-jawed grief. He becomes another expendable pawn for a disputable cause in a controversial war, relying on sheer luck to stay alive.

In Part One of the film “Cherry,” adapted from Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical 2018 novel of the same title, Tom Holland plays the titular character in a college setting. Sporting choppy bangs and a pair of glasses, Holland stares at Emily (Ciara Bravo), his stunning girlfriend-to-be, during class. Of course, this is the more innocent beginning of his eventual painful downward spiral, from heartbroken college dropout to decorated Iraq Army medic to desperate heroin addict and jaded bank robber.

But at that moment, the similarity between Cherry and Holland’s more light-hearted character of Peter Parker from the “Superman” films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe does not go unnoticed. This prompts the question of whether the actor is able to step up to the challenging mantle of a haunted war veteran, when the audiences are more accustomed to a teenage web-slinger’s quips and acrobatics than riveting acting chops.

Fortunately, Holland proves he’s an A-lister capable of more than just superhero sagas. From choked sobs in nightmare-fueled slumber to the hollow gaze of a trembling, sweat-drenched bank robber suffering from withdrawal, Holland’s performance is impressively convincing and heartbreaking.

Upon his return to the United States, in a gymnasium reverberating with applause, Holland’s Cherry looks dead in the eyes of filmgoers as he tells us, “My one true accomplishment was not dying — and really I had nothing to do with it.”

Awarded with empty valor, a veteran Cherry is tossed casually back into normalcy, expected to work, sleep and function normally when he has returned broken and numb, an empty shell of who he once was — all while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

A gripping scene shows Cherry’s desperation and rage. Stabbing himself repeatedly in the thigh with a hypodermic needle used for frequent heroin injections, Cherry tries to feel something besides the drugged emptiness he has succumbed to.

While Holland’s capabilities are demonstrated in full, the directors of “Cherry” fall short in their pursuit for the status of a Scorsese-esque auteur.

Known for their mega-hit “Avengers: Endgame,” the Russo brothers seem to want to prove their directorial worth by taking on Walker’s operatic life story — a sprawling American epic about war, the opioid crisis and gun-wielding violence. It is serious material that Martin Scorsese himself would recognize as cinema. (The Oscar-winning director has argued that Marvel superhero movies, several of which were helmed by the Russo brothers, aren’t cinema.)

Deployed in Iraq and mired in the

But, at the heart of Walker’s jour-

COURTESY OF APPLE TV +

Tom Holland’s compelling performance is not enough to save the film that fails to go deep enough, with its excessively long run time, hyper-stylized scenes and superfluous characters. ney of recovery and self-realization, redemption does not come easily. He constantly agonizes over actions taken despite moral conflict: the unarmed man he gunned down, the suspected Iraqi homes he broke into and the bank tellers he terrorized. These traumatic sequences are caught on repeat in Walker’s head, as he questions what is right and wrong and scrutinizes the gray between black and white. The film hardly explores this punishing emotional process.

When the clamorous, adrenaline-pumped episodes of bank robberies come to an end, the self-reflective

sentence is not addressed. Instead, a montage with no dialogue is shown in the epilogue of the film. It is apparent that Cherry’s life gradually improves as he emerges from his dependence on drugs and grows a mustache. He is then released, walking toward a golden sunset and a beaming wife. In this use of silent montage, the last — and arguably most significant — stretch of character growth is disappointingly hurried through.

Moreover, the two hour, 20 minute film could benefit from a shorter runtime. Several hyper-stylized scenes and the excessive swells of Puccini and Verdi

stillness of Cherry’s 11-year prison

could be cut down, and some charac-

ters — somewhat pointless in a filmic abbreviation of a much lengthier novel — do not need to be there.

The fact that “Cherry” is chaptered — abridged into chopped-up pieces — does little but simply distract from earnest storytelling. Still, the cast, particularly Holland, tries its best. With this muddled cinematic interpretation of Nico Walker’s debut novel, one may be better off reading the literary work instead.