SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2021
VOLUME CLVI, ISSUE XII
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
UNIVERSITY NEWS
One year later: Brown’s journey through COVID-19 pandemic A year after COVID-19 upended U. operations, students reflect on days before March move-out BY LIVIA GIMENES UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR At this time of the year in 2020, College Hill woke up to its typical bustling scene. Students left their doubles and triples and headed to packed lecture halls and huddled around eight-person tables at the Sharpe Refectory. Colin Olson ’23 was just getting acclimated during his second semester at the University. Olson divided his time between taking classes, playing field hockey with his club team and teaching soccer at a local community center, carving out time to enjoy the first glimpses of sunlight from the early New England spring. While Olson’s father was visiting him on campus right after his birthday that February, he gave Olson a couple of N95 masks. “Why would I need these?” Olson wondered at the time. ”My dad
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OLIVIA GEORGE / HERALD
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Med school profs, grads look back on past year Practicing professors, students recall working on frontlines of COVID-19 pandemic BY GAYA GUPTA CONTRIBUTING WRITER For some, the past year has felt like a decade. For others, it has gone by in what feels like a few days. For the professors and recent Alpert Medical School graduates who were drafted to work on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, the months since the pandemic started have been anything but easy. ‘Just trying to survive’ If you had asked Megan Ranney MPH’10, founding director of the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health and associate professor of emergency medicine, what she thought the next year would look like on March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, she would not have had an answer. “I was just looking at the next day,”
said Ranney. “I was just trying to survive, both literally and emotionally, as a public health professional, a professor and as a mom.” Philip Chan, consultant medical director for RIDOH and associate professor of medicine at the University, recalls that the initial few weeks, after the first cases of COVID-19 in Rhode Island were recorded, moved at a “crazy unsustainable pace.” “In the beginning, we were working 16-17 hour days, seven days a week for several months,” Chan said. Now, the department has “staffed-up” around the state, with an entire statewide team to address COVID-19. The days are still long, added Chan, but things have been “less crazy.” Rhode Island confirmed its first official case on March 1, 2020. Chan was at his mother’s house in New Hampshire when he got the call on February 29, 2020, prompting him to drive straight back to Rhode Island and meet with other members of the Department of Health and decide their next steps before they announced the case to the public the following day. “I never actually thought we would see a pandemic to this degree,” he
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Students reflect on year of remote study On anniversary of campus closing for COVID-19, some students remain far BY JACK WALKER SENIOR STAFF WRITER On a Thursday afternoon in March 2020, unassembled cardboard boxes appeared in the entryways of dorms across Brown’s campus, shrouding bulletin boards of colorful flyers and event invites. They jutted into halls that led to lounges once full of laughing residents and dining halls packed with students rushing to get one last bite in before class. Squeezing past the boxes, students were left with a reminder that, soon, the lives they had created on their college campus would have to be packed neatly away for the long trek back home to be continued remotely. As Harshini Venkatachalam ’23 shipped a haphazardly-taped cardboard box of possessions back home to Arizona, she had no idea that one year later they would remain in her house, packaged in a translucent green container beneath her bed. Venkatachalam did not realize how long the COVID-19 pandemic would last. As she spent her spring and sum-
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mer under the hot southwestern sun, she worried about the safety of flying across the country for the fall semester, especially as the pandemic continued to worsen. When the time came to decide whether she would return to campus for the fall, Venkatachalam chose to stay home. Now, one year into her experience with online instruction, she said that remote learning has been exhausting. “I thought it would get easier,” they said, “but I’ve been having a lot of problems being able to learn effectively online.” “None of us really knew what we were doing, so there was sort of a feeling of impermanence,” said Una Lomax-Emrick ’23. For Lomax-Emrick, quarantine meant spending the remainder of the spring semester at home in a small town two-and-a-half hours north of San Francisco. As the end of the summer drew near, they also had to decide whether or not to return to Providence for the fall. It was a decision not only for themself, but also for their parents, both of whom are high-risk. “There were some concerns about what would happen if I got the virus, and potentially wasn’t able to come home,” they said. Although the difficulties of remote learning at the end
of the spring semester made them wary of continuing online school, Lomax-Emrick made the decision to study remotely for the fall “to make sure that (they) would be able to keep (their parents safe)” — a decision they made again for spring 2021. Jordan Kei-Rahn ’21 decided to continue studying remotely after seeing the surge in positive COVID-19 cases over the summer. Feeling that living in a dorm would be unsafe, he spent the past year in West Hartford, Connecticut, living at home with his mother. As a Residential Peer Leader, he “didn’t feel comfortable with (the) level of engagement in-person” that his residential experience would require. “I didn’t want to sacrifice my personal health in order to test out the stringent COVID-19 guidelines that (colleges) were starting to put in place,” Kei-Rahn said. Because COVID-19 cases continued to increase as the fall semester came to a close, he made the decision to study remotely for the spring semester — his last semester as an undergraduate at Brown. For Kei-Rahn, the University’s hybrid model has posed additional logistical and accessibility challenges in remote study. “I’m not a believer in the hybrid model at all,” he said. “I have had class-
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News
Sports
Commentary
A timeline tracking key developments in Brown’s response to COVID-19 over the past 365 days. Page 6
Michael Hoecht ’20, LA Rams defensive lineman, prepares for second NFL season as only Brown alum in league. Page 8
Reed ’21: Political university environments breed toxic campus culture, stifle academic discourse. Page 11
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
Friday, March 12, 2021
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Grad Students face bleak job market among university hiring freezes Grad students express uncertainty, insecurity in search for academic appointments BY KASHIF ANSARI CONTRIBUTING WRITER
al students pursuing paths outside of academia. Initiatives in recent years, such as the Brown Executive Scholars Training Program, have attempted to give graduate students the opportunity to explore administrative careers in higher education, Lewis said. But some graduate students are still questioning the University’s fundamental decision to initiate the hiring freeze,
Graduate student job prospects have declined after universities across the United States implemented staff and faculty hiring freezes following financial constraints triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brown was among the first universities in the country, and first in the Ivy Plus Consortium, to institute a hiring freeze in March 2020. The “large financial impact” of COVID-19 on academic institutions nationwide has resulted in many universities carefully adjusting to an economically “precarious situation,” said Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Religious Studies Thomas Lewis, who is also co-deputy of the Graduate School. Although the exact landscape of the job market is currently hard to gauge, Lewis said that the data will be clearer in retrospect, adding that “the University is trying to be proactive in responding to” these changes. Despite the pervasiveness of academic hiring freezes, Lewis said that there are still “a number of students who are receiving tenure track positions” around the country, and several “institutions (have been) stepping up and creating additional opportunities” to address graduate students’ concerns. One such example is the Emerging Voices Fellowship, a new program sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies in light of the depleted job prospects due to COVID-19. This program supports young scholars from underrepresented backgrounds — people “whose voices and perspectives are particularly important to strengthening higher education,” Lewis said. The University has also implemented its own reforms, one being the expansion of the Deans’ Faculty Fellows Program, an opportunity that allows graduating doctoral students at Brown to work for an additional year at the University as a visiting assistant professor. The program, Lewis said, is a temporary job opportunity that will serve as a “springboard” for doctoral students in their careers. Additionally, the Graduate School has been collaborating with the CareerLab to expand support for doctor-
worried about the message it sends to other institutions. “When the wealthiest universities at the top of the food chain are doing this kind of thing, it causes universities all over the country to do the same,” said Rithika Ramamurthy GS, president of the Graduate Labor Organization, a student employee union that advocates for graduate workers’ needs and protections. “This was one of the most bleak years for academic employment, not just for the humanities, but all across the board,” she told The Herald. Many of the decisions regarding graduate workers have come directly from the administration without much input from the larger Brown academic community, she said. According to Lewis, there have been multiple committees created to respond to COVID-19 that have “brought together faculty, students and staff to understand the challenges as well as to develop responses,” he wrote in an email to The Herald. Lewis also added that the Graduate School is routinely in contact with “representatives of the graduate student body and affinity groups” to discuss their concerns and support their needs. Some universities have declared financial exigency and eliminated entire departments due to budget cuts, causing faculty, even those with tenure, to lose their jobs, according to Ramamurthy. Instead of offering tenure track positions, she said that many universities are turning to adjunct faculty on short-term contracts who are paid significantly less than tenured faculty and often have fewer to no healthcare benefits. As for doctoral students whose research was upended by the coronavirus pandemic, GLO has fought for students to be able to receive Appointment Extensions for additional stipend support, Ramamurthy said. The extensions allow doctoral students another year to finish their dissertation research, and the University has approved 100 percent of these requests, she said. Lewis believes that the University’s approval of all 68 applicants for
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of his remote classes have “exceeded the expectation of how (he) thought they would go,” and that many professors “worked hard” to ensure their classes would be accessible for remote instruction. Navigating time zones has raised additional challenges of the remote student experience. Joon Nam ’23, who has studied from his home in South Korea since the closure of campus last March, has found it hard to fully engage with his classes through online instruction because of the disruption the sixteen-hour time difference has caused to his day-to-day schedule. “You know you probably should be taking (classes) more seriously and you should have the same level of motivation,” he said, but, “for international
es where sometimes even half the class for a seminar is spent just dealing with technical difficulties, so it really detracts from the learning environment.” On one occasion in the fall semester, one of Kei-Rahn’s professors — teaching some students in person while others tuned in over Zoom — forgot to turn on the computer’s audio, preventing remote students from asking questions or contributing to the class altogether. Additionally, “sometimes it’s very difficult to hear the professors or the discussions going on in class, and we often have to remind the professors or students to vocalize better or enunciate better so we can hear,” he added. However, Kei-Rahn said that many
VICTORIA YIN / HERALD
Graduate students face declining job prospects amid COVID-19-related restraints on faculty and staff hiring at universities across the country due to financial challenges brought on by the pandemic. COVID-19 Appointment Extensions “reflects the priority that the University places on providing students with the resources and support” to pursue careers in academia, he wrote in an email to The Herald. The Appointment Extensions was just one of several requests made by the GLO last spring, which also included asking for protection of international students’ visa status. Ramamurthy said GLO’s recent negotiations’ successes have boosted solidarity among graduate students across departments and shown them the importance of having a student union. GLO member Claire Grandy GS applauded the work of the student union in light of the academic hardships that have emerged due to COVID-19. “I think the University needs to keep negotiating with the union because that is the voice of the graduate students, and they need to keep coming to the table,” Grandy said. Grandy added that the job market for postdoc positions in her field is incredibly diminished, which has increased the competition for the few positions available. For example, a position she applied for at the University of Southern California received 1200 applications and only accepted about five applicants. Most of the postdoc positions Grandy applied for received a record num-
ber of applications this year, causing “more crowding” in an already saturated postdoc job market. “There are (so) few jobs, and it does turn into this kind of lottery,” she said. Although she was accepted into the Deans’ Faculty Fellows Program for next year, she remains skeptical about whether the University has used all its available resources to help graduate students. Considering the limited number of fellowships, Grandy said she felt lucky to have the position next year, but that she questioned what support there would be for those who did not receive a fellowship. University Spokesman Brain Clark said the University has “redoubled efforts to provide professional development opportunities for graduate students” in response to the challenges facing students in the employment market as a result of COVID-19. In addition to the Dean Faculty Fellows Program, Clark said Brown’s decision to pause admission for many doctoral programs this past year was another effort taken by the University to support “current students while working to strengthen programs in light of the challenges presented by the pandemic.” Ali Madani GS, a GLO member and sixth-year graduate student in the English department, said that when COVID-19 hit, a position he was being considered for abruptly got canceled.
He has noticed a trend of “horrifying stories” of job revocation across colleges, with some students even signing contracts for jobs and then the offer suddenly being retracted. Madani is grateful to have been granted the Appointment Extension funding by the University for next year, “a cushion for the likely event that jobs don’t work out this year,” but said that some graduate students are still in need of assistance. “I benefit a great deal from this extra funding, this extra appointment for another year,” he said. “But I know at the same time that there are people who are incredible scholars, who are incredibly prepared for a job, who were denied this additional (Deans’ Faculty Fellows Program) fellowship that Brown offered, and that’s really unfortunate.” Madani appreciates all the work the GLO has done to advocate for student concerns and added that friends of his at other Ivy League universities which do not have graduate unions have had a more difficult time dealing with their administrations during the pandemic. But although Madani thinks “Brown has done a good job for some people,” he said there is “always more that could be done.”
students at least, it’s absolutely tiring every time that you go to class.” With increased accessibility to class materials, “remote learning is very powerful and a very effective tool when it’s a choice,” Nam said. The issue is that, for Nam, it is currently “involuntary” due to financial constraints and looming health concerns for international travelers. Venkatachalam said that, as a teaching assistant for CSCI 0180: “Computer Science: An Integrated Introduction,” remote instruction has provided students with greater access to help for their projects and studies. She hopes departments at Brown will continue exploring ways in which remote education can augment the student experience. Still, being physically separated
from campus has made it difficult for remote students to feel fully connected to the Brown community. Many seek a return to normalcy and hope that, soon, they will be able to pick up where they left off one year ago, on a chilly March afternoon. “(I’m just) looking forward to being present for an entire year,” Nam said — something he has not done since his arrival at Brown in fall 2019. He’s looking forward to experiencing everything from “the mundane things” to the “wealth of events” that happen on campus. Throughout their time as a remote student, Lomax-Emrick has been “continuously grateful” for their reliable internet connection and accommodating professors. In navigating their
newfound academic and social life, they have also begun “to be more generous with (themself)” and learn “when to say no.” Most of all, they are excited for the day when they will get to see friends in person. “I really miss the in-person interaction, that was the best part of going to Brown for me,” Venkatachalam said. “That’s what made that college experience really special, but remotely it’s really hard to replicate that same feeling of connection.” With additional reporting by Rebecca Carcieri.
Friday, March 12, 2021
YEAR FROM PAGE 1 was just like, ‘Hold on to them in case something crazy happens.’” Before an unprecedented time That March, Annie Wang ’22 was buried in midterms. Wang, a Chinese international student, said she was already “pretty scared” and concerned about COVID-19, as she had family members under strict lockdown at home. Still, she went on with her daily life. Initially, the virus did not really worry Anna House ’20, who had first heard about COVID-19 from a friend studying abroad in China. But as the spring blossomed, so too did concerns about a pandemic that would soon take root in the United States. Rumors about positive cases on College Hill pervaded campus. Between March 6 and March 12, students’ inboxes were saturated with emails from the University administration. In a span of six days, the University went from restricting events of more than 100 attendees to canceling varsity sports along with the rest of the Ivy League, to fully canceling classes on March 12. “It kind of felt like a wave of everything starting to close,” said Tommy Bellaire ’23. “My brother’s high school was closing; my mom and my dad’s work was closing, and it became apparent that Brown was going to close too.” A series of closures and announcements “We were just waiting for the ball to drop,” said Aanya Parikh ’21. From March 6 onward, Parikh and her group of friends were awaiting the inevitable from Brown as colleges across New England announced new shutdowns every day, feeling increasingly concerned by the University’s seemingly delayed response. As an international student from India, Parikh scrambled to buy flights back home amongst a sea of uncertainty about the University’s plan, as well as misinformation and questions about whether or not her country would lock
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS down. Her last few days on campus saw a rushed trip to Home Depot to buy boxes as campus faced a temporary shortage right before the announcement. She tried to pack two semesters worth of belongings from her New Dorm suite into a series of boxes that she couldn’t even put in storage because of the timing of her flight. “I was honestly just stressed,” Parikh said. “I was really sad that I couldn’t see my friends … and felt like I couldn’t say goodbye to them.” A continent away, Elizabeth Wells ’21 also scrambled to find her way home from her study abroad program in Granada. Whispers of Wells’ program shutting down arose with the closure of the Brown study abroad programs in Italy, Wells said. With cases in Spain hitting the thousands that week, Wells was told by her program director that ongoing travel bans would likely send them home, as Spain would soon reach Level 3 of the Centers for Disease Control’s COVID-19 risk assessment. Still, at that time, Wells and members of the Brown in Granada program were given the option to stay one more week. Planning to return in a few days later, Wells culminated her last days in Granada by eating delicious meals with her host family and spending her last night with her friends overlooking the south of Spain from the Alhambra, a mid-13th century mosque open to the public. Later that evening, Wells headed to a local club to reminisce on her last days in the Iberean Peninsula. “I will never forget that because I remember we were in the club and then Trump made the announcement” that all American citizens must return to the United States as soon as possible because of a newly issued travel ban to Europe, she said. “Everyone started crying.” Luckily, Wells’ mother was awake in the United States when the announcement came out, and was able to “rebook the already rebooked” flight to bring her daughter home. “We were all in kind of fight or flight mode. All that we wanted was to get home,” Wells said. “I just remember being on the flight home completely booked to the brim, people packed next
to each other, half of the people who were on Spring Break in Barcelona or Madrid and the other half were just study abroad students.” Soon after she left, Spain enforced a national lockdown that closed down its borders and prohibited anyone from leaving the country. In Providence, House watched campus pack up as she and the members of her house planned to stay in College Hill for the rest of the semester. In one last gathering on March 14, House, her housemates and some other friends were celebrating the last few moments they had together when the University announced that a member of the community had tested positive. Surrounded by drinks and treasuring these final fleeting moments together, her friends who lived on campus desperately called their parents as they tried to understand what the announcement meant for their plans. Like Parikh, Bellaire’s last days on campus were occupied by “putting everything into boxes” and trying to say goodbye to all of his friends a semester sooner than he expected, not knowing when he would be able to see them again. “It feels kind of like a fever dream that actually happened, that life just changed so dramatically in the span of a week,” Bellaire said. “I am impressed that I was able to actually pack up and move so quickly.” Olson also said that his final days on campus were filled with last meals on the Andrews terrace and conversations on the Main Green, which was still populated with students playing Frisbee and Spikeball. “If I am being honest it didn’t feel like campus was shutting down in stages,” Olson said. “It wasn’t like everything occurred in steps, where one day we wear masks, the next day were six feet apart … it seemed like we went from being relatively out of a COVID era to just being in one overnight as soon as we got sent home.” The new normal After she arrived at the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, Wells started “bawling her eyes out” when she saw her parents waiting to pick her up.
3 After a nine-hour flight, Wells had to wait in line in customs for more than three hours right after she landed. She had no personal protective equipment since most of the PPE had already been sold out in Spain, and she tried to cover her face with a jacket while stuck in a packed room where social distancing was not enforced. Ten days later, Wells tested positive for COVID-19. “It was even more unknown (at the time) what the virus was like and what the symptoms you could have (were),” Wells said. “There was no immediate remedy for having COVID.” Wells contracted a severe case of COVID-19, uncommon for people her age, which left her unable to complete her remote classes from the University of Granada for two to three months. She still feels the effects of the sickness to this day. Olson, who attended boarding school for all of high school, said that being back home and having to entirely migrate his school life to his home felt displacing. “It had been the first time I had used my desk to do my homework since eighth grade, so it felt like I was almost living in a sort of doll house — like everything was shrunken down,” he said. Wang felt a similar feeling of peculiarity as she stayed on College Hill for the remainder of the spring semester in a University dorm. Because her visa would expire in August, Wang stayed in Providence on a campus that now was only sparsely populated by some passing local community members. Wang had to acclimate herself to grab-andgo meals and a pared down social life. The last days on campus for House meant sheltering in place with her nine housemates as they watched apocalypse movies over the first weeks after the University canceled classes. For House, the rest of the semester “just felt really depressing.” She tried her best to finish her two other classes, as both her Independent Study lab and Capstone project were canceled, unable to be replicated online. As the semester ended, House and her friends gathered around their living room to watch their virtual Commencement ceremony.
“It’s such a major event, and most people didn’t experience what my class got to experience,” House said. 365 days of a pandemic A year later in 2021, College Hill woke up to a new — but changed — bustling scene. Students lightly sprint around Wriston Quad with brown paper bags in hand and masks donned as they rush to sit in distanced classrooms or back to their single rooms to start a day of packed Zoom rooms. “Everyone automatically adapted to it,” Parikh said. She recalls thinking, a year ago, that life may be back to normal in a matter of months. Olson also had similar expectations, believing that by the summer or fall the pandemic would have subsided. ”The idea that it could last for more than a year was something that was really shocking,” Olson said. As a public health concentrator, Wells felt more pessimistic about the course of the crisis. Still, she was surprised by the duration of the pandemic and its lasting effects on her and society more broadly. Because of her experience with COVID-19 and the healthcare system, Wells plans to pursue a master’s degree in public health at the University. The pandemic also brought new meaning to the concept of home for Wang, who has stayed in the United States since the start of the pandemic. “Before COVID, I saw going home as something that was really easy,” she said. Wang added that the pandemic has allowed her to develop skills like cooking, cleaning and self-care. Bellaire echoed a similar feeling, adding that the pandemic has made him “more aware of issues related to … education and related to social justice,” and also about accessibility and his own mental health. The anniversary “makes me reminiscent of when things were in person and I could talk to people outside of my cohort and not wear a mask everywhere and have classes in person that are bigger than 20 people,’’ he said. “It makes me long for a sense of normalcy to think back especially to that time that normalcy stopped.”
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Percentage Project showcases underrepresented students in CS Student group collects data on computer science students, strives to foster inclusivity BY JESSICA CHIU CONTRIBUTING WRITER As soon as Percentage Project President and Co-Founder Stephanie Tang first stepped into her AP computer science class, she realized she was the only female student in her grade. The lack of diversity she encountered in computer science didn’t end there — throughout Tang’s college career, she only had one female computer science professor. Experiences like these encouraged Tang and Director of Outreach and Co-Founder Lucia Huo to fill the gap in quantitative data about underrepresented computer science students in college, prompting them to create the Percentage Project at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. The organization focuses on data-driven advocacy by collecting “data on college campuses across the country and creating awareness about” underrepresented
CS students’ experiences, Tang said. The non-profit has since grown to work with 11 schools across the country, including Brown. The organization’s Brown Computer Science Survey asks questions about students’ experiences in the classroom and within the University community, as well as broader encounters with biases or microaggressions in the field of computer science, according to Brown’s Percentage Project Campus Director Luna Ito-Fisher ’21. The survey was sent to Brown students who have taken at least one computer science course, and it received 367 responses this year. The responses were then grouped by gender, year, concentration, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, first-generation status and socioeconomic status. “Brown, in general, is a much more progressive school than a lot of other schools and a lot of other CS departments,” Ito-Fisher said. Brown’s gender ratios in computer science are higher relative to those of national levels. According to the University’s Department of Computer Science, last year 39 percent of their computer science
graduates were women compared to the 18 percent national average. But Ito-Fisher believes that there is still more work that can be done, especially considering the lack of diversity among CS faculty. “I’ve had two women professors … so I definitely think faculty representation could be improved,” she said, referring to her undergraduate computer science career. And, according to the Brown Computer Science Survey, representation in faculty has an impact — 70 percent of first-generation, 57 percent of female and 55 percent of non-binary students would feel more comfortable in a class taught by a professor who shares a similar identity. As a first-generation student, Elizabeth Wang ’21 hopes that the Percentage Project can increase support not just for gender diversity issues but also for background diversity. Wang had never taken a computer science course before Brown and said there was a large discrepancy in student experiences in the field. “It’s a really big difference,” Wang said, when “other people may have had better resources when they were young and (may have) been exposed to CS … before college.”
Additionally, the survey found that first-generation students and students with disabilities at Brown report considering leaving their computer science-related field of study at higher rates. Forty percent of first-generation students and 55 percent of students with a disability have “seriously considered” leaving their CS-related field of study compared to 29 percent of non-first-generation students and 27 percent of students without a disability, according to the Percentage Project’s executive summary. Ito-Fisher’s team has been working with the Diversity Committee in the University’s computer science department to use the data to create “actionable ways of increasing support for certain demographics” within the department and “turning this into a way for us to track our progress,” Ito-Fisher said. The CS Department has been engaging critically in conversations about inclusivity. “The biggest progress in my mind is the fact that we are having these conversations … There’s an opportunity for students to share challenges and barriers with faculty and to have
their voices heard,” said CS Department Financial and Outreach Coordinator Laura Dobler. “And so I think that these culture shifts have been subtle, but they’ve been really important in terms of creating a more accountable and transparent culture within the CS department.” Diversity and inclusion advocates in the department are focused on increasing representation of underrepresented minorities in the field, Dobler said. The CS department recently created a student mentorship program for students in the LGBTQIA+ community, and will soon host alums in the tech industry for a panel on “what it’s like to ... navigate the tech world as LGBTQIA+,” she added. The Percentage Project’s goal “has always been to help students reflect on and become aware of the status (and) the climate in their engineering schools,” Huo said. “It’s really important to have data and actually collect it so that we understand where the disparities are,” Tang added.
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MEDICAL FROM PAGE 1 admitted. People died in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, Chan recalled, due to secondary bacterial pneumonia. Given modern-day antibiotics, Chan was optimistic that the pandemic would soon be under control. Instead, the country saw a national shortage of masks and frontline workers, as states asked retired physicians to return to clinical work when existing healthcare workers were stretched thin at overflowing hospitals. In fact, in an unprecedented and historical move, the University’s Warren Alpert Medical School gave fourth-year medical students who had completed their degree requirements the opportunity to graduate six weeks early and start working in hospitals immediately. James Scharfen MD’20 was one of 30 graduates who graduated early to work clinically at either Lifespan or Care New England. More than a hundred of his other classmates volunteered to work at the RIDOH and local hospitals managing call centers and medical records. Scharfen didn’t know what to expect going into his first few days as a doctor. “There’s a different level of responsibility being a doctor,” he said. “You feel very responsible for those you take care of, and you feel the responsibility to do right by them — and that’s intimidating on your first few days, especially
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS as the whole system is stressed.” The weeks Scharfen spent immediately after graduating early likely had a negligible impact on his overall training, but gave him and other graduates much more experience working in respiratory cases and with ventilators in the intensive care unit. “It’s the irony of medical training that because of the hardships our patients are going through, we see some really very good on-the-ground training,” Scharfen said. As hospital activity has slowed down, Scharfen, now a first-year resident at Rhode Island Hospital, has been able to approach his patients more presently. “As you get more accustomed to the job, you have to kind of break yourself out of that habit of the constant rush,” Scharfen said. “You have to remind yourself to kind of take that breath and really spend that time with each patient.” ‘The politicization of the pandemic’ Ranney believes that the country has done both better and worse than she anticipated, emphasizing that disorganization and misinformation, as well as the politicization of the pandemic, have contributed to the “unchecked spread” of the virus. “I never anticipated that we would get vaccinations this quickly,” Ranney said. “But I really thought (last March)
that if we just set up the right structures, the federal government would come in and get this pandemic under control.” Ranney noted that the Biden administration has been able to improve the country’s response in ways they can control, particularly in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated policies and guidance. But, Ranney added, they haven’t been able to change the “unfortunate politicization” of the pandemic, nor have they been able to control the spread of misinformation. “What the Biden administration is doing is not based on politics, but on data and public health,” said Ranney. “But between the mask burning in Iowa and the lifting of mandates in Texas, this is seen as a political issue.” “We’ve never done anything like this before in the country, let alone the state of Rhode Island,” Chan said. RIDOH’s goal, according to Chan, is to vaccinate the entire population of the state, and urges all individuals, whether they think they’re at risk or not, to get the vaccine. “Even if you are young and otherwise healthy and don’t think you’re at risk, you have got to get the vaccine for the people around you,” Chan urged. “There are people dying left and right from older populations, so you (have) got to protect people in your household — maybe your parents, your grandpar-
Friday, March 12, 2021
ents — the reason to get the vaccine is for them.” Ranney echoed Chan, adding that vaccinations against the novel variants of the virus are critical in avoiding a resurgence of cases. “Our ability to go back to normal is all predicated on the fact that our vaccines are effective against novel variants,” said Ranney. “But we’re going to have to change our definition of normal.” ‘Back to normal, whatever that may mean’ While President Biden’s announcement that all Americans would have access to a vaccine by the end of May indicates the end may be near, Chan and Ranney both warn that the pandemic is definitely not over yet. Ranney, Chan and Scharfen have all experienced the toll the pandemic has taken on their mental health. “Burnout rates among healthcare providers are sky-high,” said Chan. “Mental illness is through the roof in general in our population.” Chan has maintained his own physical and mental health by running every day, making sure to get enough sleep and eating healthily. Ranney remarked on the power of social media to keep people connected as social distancing mandates kept families and friends apart. “Social media has really served as
an amazing support system for me,” Ranney said. She said she wouldn’t have made it through the past year without phone calls and connections on Twitter with friends and colleagues across the country. Looking back on themselves a year ago, both physicians don’t think they would have done anything differently. Though Chan wishes his team could have responded more aggressively and instated travel mandates earlier, he says he otherwise regrets nothing. He noted that his team and the scientific community have gained a lot of experience and will be able to better handle a similar situation in the future if there is one. Ranney similarly wouldn’t have done anything differently, besides remind herself and her children to hug their grandparents while it was still safe. Though her parents live nearby and she has seen them outdoors, the hardest part has been not being able to spend “real time with them.” The power of collective voices has been the most surprising outcome of the pandemic, Ranney said. “I’ve been impressed with how many people are willing to step up in a crisis,” she said. “It’s been amazing to watch people move in a whole new direction and go out of their way to come together for change.”
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Friday, March 12, 2021
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MAR 12 — VOL 27 — ISSUE 6
FEATURE
See Full Issue: POST.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
NARRATIVE
The One
on finding refuge in family and reality tv By Siri Pierce There is nothing quite like watching someone punch a hole in a window. It’s the kind of sickening feeling you get in your gut when all of the fireworks explode at the same time on the 4th of July. A pounding, queasy, please-stay-down-fried-dough feeling. The aftermath unfolded before I could process its cause. Shards of glass catapulted in all directions and skidded across the floor. As onlookers swarmed around him, JJ stood in the mosaic of glass shrapnel, wildly shaking his blood-stained knuckles.
A Hidden Front racism in the pandemic from an asian perspective by Joyce Gao illustrated by Joanne Han For the majority of the U.S. population, March marks a year since the beginning of the pandemic. For me, a Chinese international student studying in the States, the chaos began in early January, when news of COVID-19 was still just an internet punchline next to more pressing issues, and the rest of the world went on with their lives as usual. Most Chinese international students tried to suppress our worries and carry on with life as usual. We shut our mouths, lowered our heads, quietly hoarded masks that we dared not wear in public, and curled tightly inside ourselves so none of our concerns would spill out like a shameful secret. Narratives and surveillance camera footage of hate crimes stick to my senses like stubborn
afterimages, imprinted in my mind. Asian-American students were bullied at school for a cough, a Chinese woman was chased and beaten in the New York subway for wearing a mask, the car of a southeast Fresno family was vandalized with graffiti that read “fuck Asians and Coronavirus.” The list goes on.
I was sitting on the floor at the base of my parents’ bed when it happened. I looked back to see their mouths suspended open, and the remote held tightly in my dad’s hand. A few chuckles escaped our lips. Gradually, our laughter accelerated, overlapping and increasing in volume until our cheeks burned and our chests seized. We should have seen it coming. The tense love
But these reports—of high school bullies who pointed and shouted “coronavirus,” men who
triangle between Simone, Jacy, and JJ had been building for days. Every insult and sassy comeback
repeatedly struck an Asian woman with an umbrella, bolded curse words that needed to be redacted
ARTS & CULTURE
Drag
in photos—are only part of the story. The camera captures the moment of action, then slowly pans away. What happens then? What about the acts that
a love song
don’t fit such simple narratives? These early-stage pandemic feelings resemble my overall experience in the States. In my small New England prep school, Chinese students and the rest of the community maintained a polite distance from each other. Partially as a result of this distance, I experienced no overt acts of racism throughout my four years in high school. But not ending up in the hospital is a low bar. Racism takes many forms. Slurs or being shoved in the streets are obvious, but there is far more that lies beneath the surface. There is the
By Andrew Lu The first seed of my interest in drag was planted during the summer of 2008, when the Olympics came to Beijing. Between the third and fourth ring of the rippling city, my mother, father, big brother and I lived in a small apartment, burning under a sky that was, at the time, still blue. I was six years old then and did not yet know the heavy burden of gender. I did not understand what it meant to be in love, how it felt to be trapped in a body, or what a pain it could be to attempt escape. These realizations came later, but in
“Fruitian slips are like banana peels.”
the summer of 2008, I was simply a child watching the Olympics in a city lit by fireworks, and China was
LIFEST YLE “I love a man whose skin falls off with ease!”
Warm Weather Activities
1. Picnics on the greens
6. Sports <3
2. Walking around topless
7. Actually enjoying a cold beverage without your fingers falling off
3. Sunbathing! Actually possible! Stock up on Vit. D! 4. Outside run downtown, outside walk back up 5. Melting the icicles midterms put on your heart
post–
Want to be involved? Email: olivia_howe@brown.edu!
8. Undiagnosing yourself with seasonal affective disorder 9. Ice cream! 10. "Do homework" outside. Permissible procrastination.
Living in a Virtual World online treasures
by Caitlin McCartney We often talk—and complain—about how our lives are mostly online these days. There is not much we can change about that, except for taking breaks outside (especially since the weather is actually decent now). However, we can change the way we interact with the digital world we are forced to exist in. From Zoom classes to virtual hangouts and entertainment, it is easy to feel the strain as these online activities become monotonous and even draining. Here, I have compiled some online platforms, tools, and websites March 12, 2021
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Friday, March 12, 2021
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SPORTS
Defensive lineman Michael Hoecht ’20 prepares for NFL season on Rams Hoecht hopes to break through in second NFL season after year on Rams practice squad BY PETER SWOPE CONTRIBUTING WRITER Michael Hoecht ’20, Brown football’s team captain in the 2019 season, spent the 2020 NFL season on the practice squad of the Los Angeles Rams after going undrafted. He looks to earn his way onto the playing field in his sophomore campaign after building on a year of practice against NFL competition. “He’s only scratching the surface,” said Brown football coach James Perry ’00. “Some of his best qualities will start to show up at these practices, at these workouts. As they see him work and how great a practicer he is, he’s gonna make that team.” His senior season at Brown, Hoecht tallied 4.5 sacks and was named Second Team All-Ivy League. But Hoecht’s impact on games went beyond the statistics sheet, according to Brown defensive line coach Michael Donovan. “As a defensive tackle, he was very disruptive. Sometimes that disruption isn’t measured in statistics,” Donovan said. “He was very difficult to block. He was always someone the offense had to account for.” Hoecht’s coaches noted how difficult he was to double team and how much trouble centers had blocking him. He also worked to lose weight before his senior season to accommodate a defensive scheme change. Despite Hoecht’s size (he is currently listed at 6 feet 4 inches tall and 310 pounds on the Rams roster), his coaches at Brown sometimes had him rush as a defensive end, demonstrating how highly they valued his speed and athleticism. Perry also emphasized Hoecht’s leadership and work ethic. “He was our captain and he really epitomized what a captain should be,” Perry said. “That’s a nice thing, when your most talented guy is also a great worker.” After his senior season ended, Hoecht started training in Boston to prepare for the NFL Draft. But the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early March 2020 complicated his plans. A workout with the San Francisco 49ers that Hoecht was scheduled to attend was cancelled at the last minute when
the team’s scouts stopped travelling as the pandemic worsened. His pro day was also cancelled, leading Hoecht to improvise and hold his own pro day, which he videoed and sent to scouts. Hoecht, like so many others, had to adapt his training as a result of the pandemic. “You just kinda had to make do,” he told The Herald. “There have been a lot of people who have struggled to make the transition to the virtual work, but I think that I was able to navigate that well.” At his virtual pro day, Hoecht posted gaudy numbers, especially considering his size. He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.65 seconds, ran the 20-yard short shuttle in 4.21 seconds and completed the three-cone drill in 7.05 seconds. Each of these times would have been among the very best among interior defensive line prospects at the 2020 NFL Combine. These times were not just hollow numbers, according to Perry. “Not only was he a (sub-4.7) guy at 290 (pounds), but he really played fast on the field, and that’s not always true,” Perry said. “He had the ability to convert some of those Combine numbers to production on the field.” After going undrafted, Hoecht signed a contract with the Los Angeles Rams as an undrafted free agent, a fit he said he couldn’t be happier with. “From a scheme and a culture standpoint, the Rams were my number one choice,” he said. For Hoecht, draft position — or even going undrafted — is less important than how one actually plays. He remains focused on his future in the NFL, rather than how he got there. “All that matters is that you get (to the NFL) and then it’s up to you to figure out what you do with that opportunity,” he said. The process of making the practice squad during the COVID-19 pandemic was far different from usual. The pandemic resulted in a truncated NFL offseason, with normal activities such as rookie minicamp and offseason training activities being cancelled. Preseason games, which are typically prime opportunities for young players like Hoecht to showcase their skills in true game settings, did not happen. Instead, the league only held training camp. On his first day of training camp, Hoecht was found to be a close contact to someone who tested positive for COVID-19 under the NFL’s contact tracing program. Fortunately
for Hoecht, he did not contract the virus and, after repeated negative test results, he was cleared to return to the field. Hoecht was released before the start of the NFL season but was re-signed to the Rams practice squad. While his status as a practice squad player meant he didn’t get any true game experience, the practice time he got against NFL-caliber opponents was invaluable. “There’s a huge difference between an eight-year vet on an NFL offensive line versus Ivy League football,” he said. “There’s such a huge leap to the next level, so every one of those reps was important to me.” Looking back, Hoecht is content with how his first NFL season went. “My mentality is that it was a redshirt year — a year for growth, a year for development, a year for understanding the system and transitioning from being a college player to becoming a professional,” he said. “I grew a ton and learned a ton.” Being on the practice squad during a season altered by the pandemic was not entirely without its perks. In a traditional season, practice squad players typically don’t travel with the team to road games. But due to the pandemic, the NFL altered its rules and allowed for certain practice squad players to be temporarily added to the gameday roster. While Hoecht was never elevated to the roster, he and the rest of the practice squad players did travel with the team to road games. “As far as years to be on the practice squad, I don’t wanna say I lucked out, but I got a ton of exposure and experience that in a normal year I probably wouldn’t get,” he said. Hoecht signed a reserve/futures contract, which allows teams to sign a player not currently on an NFL active roster for the next season before the official start of free agency, with the Rams January 18. The deal makes Hoecht the only Brown alum currently signed to an NFL team. Hoecht has benefitted from being a member of a talent-laden Rams defensive line position group headlined by three-time AP Defensive Player of the Year Aaron Donald and longtime Rams starter Michael Brockers. The group is coached by Rams defensive line coach and run game coordinator Eric Henderson. “The amount of knowledge in that room is insane,” Hoecht said. Hoecht compared himself to Rams
CA L E N DA R
COURTESY OF MICHAEL HOECHT
Former Brown football captain and defensive lineman for the Rams Hoecht hopes to make a breakthrough in his second NFL season. defensive lineman Morgan Fox, who recorded six sacks in the 2020-2021 season. “I have good quickness, good speed and can rush the passer really, really well,” Hoecht said of his playstyle, which compares to that of Fox. They’ve also taken similar career paths — Fox attended a lesser-known football school, Colorado State University Pueblo. Fox spent time on the practice squad before finally breaking through and becoming a productive NFL player, a trajectory Hoecht hopes to follow. Hoecht praised the Rams culture and his teammates, who were always supportive of younger players. He emphasized that, despite being world-class athletes, the players in an NFL locker room are just normal people who come from a variety of backgrounds and bring a variety of perspectives. “At the end of the day, football guys are football guys,” he said. “It’s not like these people are necessarily different in any way; they’re just really good at football.” “Now that I have a year of expe-
rience under my belt, I know what is required of me and where I need to grow to become the player that I need to be,” Hoecht added. “”Year one, (the goal) was to get on the team. Year two will be to get on the active roster and begin to produce, something I’m very much looking forward to doing.” Hoecht’s coaches at Brown offered optimistic assessments of his NFL future. “A guy like Michael, with that work ethic, can hang in there and earn that type of opportunity,” Donovan said. “He has the athletic traits and he has the work ethic, and when you have those two things and that direction, good things are going to happen.” After adding star quarterback Matthew Stafford to a talented roster that made the playoffs last year, the Rams look to make a deep playoff run in 2021. “We’re gonna give a lot of people problems,” Hoecht said.”
COVID -19 AT BROWN LAST 7 DAYS*
MARCH S
7
Completed Tests
People Tested
M
Tu
W
Th
F
S
14,770
8,520
1
2
3
4
5
6
Confirmed Positives
Positivity Rates
22
0.1 %
8
9
10
11
12
13 SINCE AUGUST 24, 2020*
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
Completed Tests
People Tested
285,075
10,497
Total Cases
Prevalence
444
4.2 %
*AS OF MARCH 12
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ARTS & CULTURE
Three independent Providence bookstores persist in digital age Twenty Stories, Paper Nautilus, Symposium Books preserve inperson nostalgia BY AALIA JAGWANI CONTRIBUTING WRITER “I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers — booksellers really are a special breed. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it.” It is tempting to accept this quote from Mary Ann Shaffer’s historical novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, as truth; it makes the world seem like a warm and uncomplicated place — or at least a complicated place with warm, uncomplicated corners to escape to. Unfortunately, the world of bookstores is less glamorous than the books on their shelves suggest, and most booksellers in Providence struggle to find the time to actually read, in spite of their shared love of books (that much remains untainted). As it turns out, there still exists a breed of people that can resist the lure of Amazon, with its omnipresence, dirt-cheap prices and near-immediate shipping; a breed of people who choose to get up and make the trip to the bookstore around the corner. With the survival of this breed comes the survival of communities of booksellers and booklovers, bound to each other by the written word. It shouldn’t be surprising that this community has survived and thrived, but it is. And it
needs to be preserved. Independent bookstores are communities of their own, but they are also integral pieces of the larger communities they are a part of — the bookstores in a city can reveal much about the city itself. Providence is no exception to this: its bookstores thrive on art and artists, on idealistic college students who need the warmth to survive or who are just finding their way. Whether it is for a glimpse into the spirit of Providence, the community you will stumble upon or for a temporary escapist sanctuary, these three independent Providence bookstores are definitely worth your day and your dollar. Twenty Stories Twenty Stories is a small bookstore on Ives Street in Fox Point, conceptualized so that you never have to have a “bad first date” with a book again. The owners, Alexa Trembly and Emory Harkins, are both “writers and huge readers.” They graduated from college together, worked at different jobs for a while and then quit to open their store when they realized they weren’t happy there. “We just wanted to be around books and create a writing community,” Harkins said. Every month, Trembly and Harkins personally curate 20 new titles to feature in the store, lending the store its name. “We definitely read a lot of them, and then we do a lot of research. … It’s a lot of sifting through, we look at hundreds of titles every month,” Harkins said, describing how the pair curates
each month’s selection. “We try to make sure nothing’s overlapping too much, and that there’s something in there for everyone.” Apart from the 20 stories of each month, they also keep previous month’s selections in the store, and they’re always willing to help you find the perfect match. Harkins sometimes spends an hour with customers, “just recommending books to them and getting to know them.” Shopping at Twenty Stories is an extremely personalized experience, and it is therefore entirely impossible to replicate. As Harkins said, “You get to talk to a real human, you get to have a conversation, you get to connect about reading and writing.” Paper Nautilus Walking into Paper Nautilus is like walking into a time capsule. Located on South Angell Street near Wayland Square, it is one of those rare places that you simply can’t be inside without having a profound sense of the history surrounding you — of the unquantifiable wisdom somehow contained within yellowing pages and refurbished leather. There are shelves stocked with old, rare books and locked glass cupboards full of especially precious ones. There are inscriptions from different decades and pictures that cannot be replicated. And there’s Kristin Sollenberger, the woman who has owned Paper Nautilus for the last 24 years. Sollenberger’s love affair with books is not a whirlwind romance, but rather a long, steady journey that started with
a love of art and books. It began when she was a student at RISD working at Cellar Stories in Downtown Providence. “I was a very frequent customer and then one day (the owner) just offered me a job to fill in for one of his employees,” she said. Having graduated with a painting degree from RISD and lacking many job prospects, Sollenberger continued to work at the bookstore. The owner “eventually opened another shop here at Wayland Manor and I worked there too, and then he closed that branch, so I bought his inventory and moved it here,” she said. Beyond its books, Paper Nautilus also displays art exhibits that change frequently, and Sollenberger’s own work is often displayed. Apart from regular customers with whom the owner has long-standing personal relationships, Paper Nautilus also attracts people from outside of Providence. It has become a landmark for lovers of books, history and beautiful things. Symposium Books Symposium Books is an indie store in Downtown Providence, which sells vinyl records in addition to a carefully curated collection of new, used and bargain books. The tables in the store never look the same for too long, adapting to the social and political climate of the times, among other things, said employee Scott McCullough, who has worked there for 17 years. If you walk into the store now, you’ll find several books on feminism and gender issues on display in homage to
Women’s History Month, and there’s a table full of political books that has been “very important in the last four years,” according to McCullough. “It’s a constant give-and-take with the community. “We see what the customers want, what they’re reacting to, things like that,” he added. Symposium Books sits on Westminster Street, in the heart of Downtown, making it a central part of the Providence community. A customer in the store called it her “go-to,” not only because it’s close to where she lives but because she loves the layout and curation of Symposium. Although many of the booksellers did note that the footfall has decreased over the course of the pandemic, this customer said that going to a bookstore “is an outing; it’s an occasion, and especially during COVID, I feel like we need that ‘treat yourself’ time.” If three magical corners of the city aren’t enough, Providence is also home to several other independent bookstores like Cellar Stories and Books on the Square. Each of these bookstores have added their own special brand of warmth to Providence, and each is as integral to the city as the next. As Harkins from Twenty Stories said, “if you buy from one of the big guys, you’re not going to have that personal connection — and you’re also not going to be able to keep something that’s in your community in the community. … It will leave eventually if you don’t support it.”
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Hong ’24: What culture shock can tell us about the first-year experience BY JAEHYUN HONG STAFF COLUMNIST
As first-years’ midterms come and go, most of us feel stressed. For students like me who are on campus for our first full semester, midterm stress may be exacerbated by homesickness and irritability. Sometimes, I’ve caught myself feeling unusually short-tempered about small things like the weather. Not knowing why I felt out of sorts, I told myself that it was just stress. But while talking with my family, I stumbled upon another answer: culture shock. Viewing this semester as a cultural adjustment can help us better understand and address first-year stress. For me, coming to the Brown campus from the Midwest was a big move. Adjusting to dorm life, learning to live independently and meeting people from around the country reminded me of when I moved to South Korea for six weeks — I felt like I had entered a different culture. Whether one comes from abroad or simply another state, most of us are adjusting to a new environment and regional culture. Most of us are experiencing some degree of cultural shock. Researchers often describe four stages of culture shock, or cultural adjustment: initial euphoria, irritability and hostility, gradual adjustment and adaptation. Initial euphoria, sometimes called the “honeymoon” phase, is characterized by a delight and wonder in one’s new surroundings. Though my honeymoon phase was checked by pan-
demic restrictions, I remember feeling excited to meet new people and to explore my surroundings. After regulations were relaxed, I remember walking across campus and marveling at even the most ordinary New England-style buildings. Looking back, I can distinctly see myself enjoying this phase. Soon, though, I transitioned to the next stage of adjustment: hostility and irritability. Used in the context of travel, this stage is traditionally caused by growing weary of conversing with (and often misunderstanding) others in a foreign language, wading through incomprehensible
ness and feelings of isolation — each exacerbated by the pandemic — also often occur at this stage. Fatigue, too, becomes a major concern. On top of academic stress, adjusting to new surroundings and interpreting new situations every day is taxing. Add on Zoom fatigue and pandemic worries, and exhaustion becomes a daily companion. At this point, it becomes paramount to find a healthy daily routine to combat fatigue — operating on autopilot saves energy. All of the feelings I’ve described may be familiar to first-years. But there’s a light at the end of the tun-
cultural adjustment, aptly called the “home stage.” In a normal year, keeping oneself busy outdoors and going to social gatherings can help ease feelings of isolation and worry. It goes without saying that the pandemic hasn’t made adjusting any easier. But there are things one can do to keep a positive outlook, moving us out of the hostility stage and toward the humor stage. I’ll try to offer some pandemic-friendly ways to do this. Recently, I started handwriting a gratitude journal. Initially, I thought it might not be helpful — the idea seemed overhyped by self-help en-
“Viewing this semester as a cultural adjustment can help us better understand and address first-year stress.”
administrative procedures and feeling confused about cultural differences. First-years may feel similarly displaced in the unfamiliarity of our surroundings, which can cause plenty of frustration. Not having a set academic routine, losing one’s way around campus, arriving two minutes late to a class because of an unexpected pedestrian jam on the sidewalk — these may seem, at least in the irritable and hostile stage, like “huge catastrophes” instead of manageable problems. I certainly remember occupying this mindset, and I think I am still feeling it now. Homesickness, loneli-
nel, and this is why I find the culture shock lens a helpful tool to navigate the first-year experience. After the hostility phase, things only get better. The next stage is “gradual adjustment” or the “humor stage.” During this time, frustration, impatience and anxiety give way to growing comfort in one’s surroundings. We begin to relax and laugh at little mishaps instead of considering them the end of the world. We feel more energized, since familiarity is less mentally taxing. And it may be many months or years before we get here, but most of us will begin to call our new environment “home.” This is the last stage of
thusiasts. But writing in it daily, I’ve come to appreciate more positive things around me: the people who support me, a particularly good meal I ate, the weather. Better yet, as the pages in my journal fill up, I can easily look back at all the previous days’ entries and smile. Similarly, the Brown Office of International Programs suggests keeping a journal of first impressions and noting specifically positive aspects of one’s new culture — or in our case, our new lives at Brown. Another helpful step is to recognize that if you’re feeling unhappy, frustrated, anxious or sad, you’re
not alone. It’s okay to schedule some personal time for yourself. While it may feel like a waste of time, regularly scheduling a period to rest can relieve stress and help keep you more emotionally stable, and possibly even more productive, in the long run. I enjoy creative hobbies like drawing or writing. Some of my friends make music, cook, bake or learn a new language. These are all hobbies that we like sharing with each other — the ones that really feel worth doing. But any activity that doesn’t build stress and is enjoyable works well. Regardless of where you are in the four stages of cultural adjustment, or how stressed you’re feeling, there is light at the end of the tunnel. And that tunnel may be shorter than you think. Simply recognizing our firstyear experience as a period of cultural adjustment can help us develop more compassionate and proactive solutions to our stress. While grades, work and personal and family responsibilities are important, physical and mental health are equally, if not more, fundamental to our well-being. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote, “health is not everything, but without health, everything is nothing.” So, as the weekend begins, I hope we’ll all take some time for ourselves. Take a breath, have fun with a hobby, rest a little. As for me, I’ll continue writing in my gratitude journal. Jaehyun Hong ’24 can be reached at jaehyun_hong@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.
Murphy ’23: Trump’s Middle East moves may stay BY MEGAN MURPHY STAFF COLUMNIST
As the realization crept into the West Wing that — despite his best efforts to nullify the election — Donald Trump would soon be on his way out of power, last-minute policy decisions came flowing out of Washington. There were ludicrous pardons, environmental protection rollbacks and several rushed executions. But Trump’s last few days were also accompanied by major changes in the U.S. approach to Israel-Palestine, Morocco and Yemen that originally appeared to entrap incoming President Biden with several major headaches in the region. Now that Joe Biden has been in office for 50 days, reflecting on his handling of these “midnight” Middle East changes reveals a mixed record. In contrast to his decisive reversals of Trump’s policy on the domestic level through sweeping executive orders, Biden has chosen, on balance, a much more measured and accommodating approach to the Trump-induced crises in the Middle East. Although there are many honorable aspects of his Middle East approach, especially in ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen, many at-risk populations are being left behind as Biden grapples with Trump’s legacy in the Middle East and North Africa region. Israel was the focus of the Trump administration’s efforts in the Middle East, and his relationship with the
nation was decidedly one-sided and ignorant of U.S. precedent — which officially supported a two-state solution — from the very beginning. From day one, the Trump administration sidestepped peace with the Palestinians in lieu of Pompeo’s evangelical beliefs about who should govern the Holy Land. The frequency of policy shifts with Israel ratcheted up in the final months of the Trump presiden-
that all goods exported to the United States from the settlements must be labeled “Made in Israel,” even if they are made by Palestinians. While the Biden administration has made some moves to restore the pre-Trump status quo, it has also clarified that the majority of Trump’s changes — especially those from his last days — could stay in place. Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised
Bank, announced just 10 days before the 2021 inauguration. Outside of last-minute shifts, Biden still verged on emulating Trump by denouncing the International Criminal Court’s investigation of Israeli abuses and upholding Trump’s sanctions on ICC officials over a perceived offense to Israel. At a briefing earlier this week, U.S. Department of State Spokesperson Ned Price failed to adequate-
“While many anticipated that Joe Biden’s presence in the White House would give rise to sharp rebukes and reversals of Trump’s most provocative policies, Biden’s early decisions in the Middle East may suggest otherwise.”
cy as his administration pushed the Abraham Accords in the region, producing peace deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco that failed to include a discussion of relations with Palestine. Other subsequent changes moved the United States further and further away from past precedent as the days to the inauguration counted down. In November, Pompeo became the first secretary of state to visit an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and announced
the Abraham Accords as a “very good thing,” and President Biden has committed to reaffirming and building upon the peace deals made under Trump, despite the fact that the deals evade the most pressing matter within the region: the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The changes in approach to settlements and the new labeling of goods produced in the occupied territories have gone unaddressed, and Israel has faced no pushback from Biden regarding the construction of 800 new settler homes in the West
ly answer repeated questions about where Palestinians could go for justice without the potential for ICC trials. Although the peace prospects of the Abraham Accords are a welcome development for Israel, Biden appears unwilling and unable to grapple with Israel’s troubled relationship with Palestine, preferring instead to accept the Trump administration’s model of evasion. As a part of the Abraham Accords push, one of Trump’s final foreign policy moves in the Middle East was
to declare a plan with Morocco: On December 10, Trump announced via Twitter that in exchange for Morocco’s establishing of relations with Israel, the United States would overturn nearly 50 years of policy and recognize the disputed Western Sahara region as Moroccan. Sahrawis, the residents of the disputed region, have fought for sovereignty over the territory since 1975, citing their independent cultural and linguistic heritage. However, under Moroccan military rule, pro-independence movements have long been persecuted, as the state remains in conflict with the Algerian-backed Polisario Front which supports Sahrawi independence. In the past 50 days, the Biden administration has made no effort to undo this major policy change. A bipartisan group of senators led by Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe and Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy urged the administration to “reverse this misguided decision” in a letter stating the change was “short-sighted, undermined decades of consistent U.S. policy and alienated a significant number of African nations.” Nevertheless, the State Department has provided no updates on the situation. Current State and CIA maps of North Africa show no division between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The more time passes, and the more standard the decision becomes, the harder it will be to reverse it,
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Friday, March 12, 2021 indicating that the Biden team may very well accept the Trump changes. But like the Palestinian question, accepting Trump’s last-minute foreign policy moves means vulnerable populations are left without a plan for how to handle the consequences of changes in the relationship. In this case, these are the 160,000 Sahrawi refugees that remain displaced in squalid conditions in Algeria and the many others living under undemocratic conditions in the Sahara. These populations have yet to receive a message from Biden on how the United States will ultimately approach the conflict and remain unaware of whether their U.N.-supported right to a resolution ensuring self-determination will still be respected.
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY A final, late policy decision of the Trump administration came for Yemen when, on January 11, Yemen’s Houthi rebel group was designated as a foreign terrorist organization. International aid groups decried the move, as the FTO ruling could have made it more difficult for aid to enter the region. In contrast to his handling of Palestine and Morocco, Biden’s response to this change and the greater Trump policy on Yemen has proved much more successful, although work still remains to be done. Last month, Biden’s team lifted the FTO ruling as part of a larger shift in Yemeni policy that involved ending support for the Saudi offensive in Yemen, including relevant arms sales. The war between Yemen and Saudi
Arabia, which the United States became involved with through military support for Saudi under former President Obama, has killed an estimated 110,000 civilians and left millions of Yemenis on the brink of starvation. Lawmakers, peace activists and theorists alike have welcomed the Biden Administration’s moves towards ending the war in Yemen. Make no mistake, this policy is excellent both for peace and for Yemenis. However, many barriers to peace remain, such as getting the Houthis to agree to a ceasefire, and the U.S. does not appear totally disengaged from Saudi Arabian violence in the region. Biden’s failure to penalize Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder made that
abundantly clear last week. Therefore, it remains to be decided if peace between Yemen and Saudi Arabia will become an early foreign policy victory for President Biden or if the region will continue to bear the violent consequences of Trump’s policies. While many anticipated that Joe Biden’s presence in the White House would give rise to sharp rebukes and reversals of Trump’s most provocative policies, Biden’s early decisions in the Middle East may suggest otherwise. The most immediate consequence of this response is that Washington will continue to brush aside populations like the Palestinians, Sahrawis and Yemenis in favor of regional hegemons. While it is certainly no easy task to pivot toward a more
11 egalitarian approach — completely abandoning promises made during the Trump administration would spell diplomatic failure — the Biden team cannot ignore the consequences of policies that failed to address the MENA’s most pressing crises and under-represented communities. Meghan Murphy ’23 can be reached at meghan_murphy@ brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@ browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald. com.
Reed ’21: Steven Pinker wants to repair campus culture BY ANDREW REED STAFF COLUMNIST
In a world seemingly beset by problems, Steven Pinker has made a career out of focusing on the positive. For the past decade, the Harvard professor turned celebrity intellectual has been spreading the good news about human progress. Pinker has written two bestsellers on the subject and won the praise of thinkers and commentators from Bill Gates to Joe Rogan. His message? Things are getting better. Progress is not inevitable, but the trends are good. Even though it may not always seem like it, the world is more peaceful, prosperous and happy than even just a few decades ago. Steven Pinker has spent years documenting human progress, and right now he’s worried we may be backsliding. Not in any of the big areas. The overall trends on crime and life expectancy haven’t all of a sudden reversed. Nor is humanity primed to descend into a second Dark Age. Rather, the not-so-newfound concern of Harvard’s Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology hits far closer to home. In the last several years, Pinker has become increasingly concerned about a wave of illiberalism, particularly on college campuses. I spoke to Pinker this past summer after he and several dozen other writers and intellectuals released “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” The letter decried “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” Nowhere is this ideology more widespread than in the halls of America’s colleges and universities. And Pinker has been among the loudest voices pushing back. Political correctness and cancel culture (in effect, if not in name) are not new, though, Pinker says. For decades, the culture on college campuses has trended ever away from free expression and toward censorship — inflicted both overtly and through softer means of subtle intimidation. When he was an undergraduate, Pinker recalls, “There were cancellations; there were disruptions of lectures.” Pinker traces the origins of this dynamic all the way back to 1975 and the publication of E.O. Wilson’s “Sociobiology,” when Wilson and other biologists “would get shouted
down” for expressing the view that genetic and other evolutionary considerations determine, in part, social organization. Still, 1975 was a relatively tender age for the stifling atmosphere we now see on campus, Pinker says. In the 46 years since “Sociobiology,” the window of acceptable views has narrowed and, consequently, the rate of cancellations has grown. Just in the last few years, though, we seem to have reached a fever pitch. In 2017, Evergreen College in Washington State descended into chaos when a white professor refused to leave campus after a group of activists organized a day without white students and faculty.
against Donald Trump. “People feel that classical liberalism, enlightenment ideals have failed and nothing is left for us but to oppose it with brute force. Brute force meaning (using) the administrative apparatus to silence or fire people.” The rise of Trump, combined with flashpoints like the killing of George Floyd, has “served as a focal point for the dissatisfaction with the status quo that has led to some fairly radical responses.” The other explanation is that this new wave of illiberalism “is just the cumulative effect of several generations” of professors having indoctrinated their students in an ideological mixture of postmodernism and Marx-
how to game the system. Claims of mental and physical harm are used to advance political agendas. Statues are taken down. Disfavored speaking events are shut down, and those opposing such moves are treated as though they agree with the content of the speech rather than the principle of free speech itself. But it’s mostly a tactic, Pinker says. “It’s not that we have a generation of snowflakes. Although, there may be some of that. But it’s not so much being wounded but it’s the pretext of being wounded,” which is used as a means to exert power and conscript others into conforming to the ideology. All of this would be moot, though, if it weren’t for campus administra-
“Contrary to the cliché sometimes attributed to Henry Kissinger that ‘academic disputes are so fierce because so little is at stake’ I think a lot is at stake.”
That same year at Middlebury College, students accusing political scientist Charles Murray of racism due to his work on genetics and intelligence prevented him from speaking on campus and assaulted a professor who was escorting him. A year later, Brown Assistant Professor Lisa Littman of the School of Public Health published a peer-reviewed journal article coining the term “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” Upon criticism from trans activists that the study was harmful to trans youth, the University retracted a letter promoting Littman’s study, and the journal that published the article announced a post-publication review of the piece, only to republish the same results several months later. These are not isolated incidents. They speak to a broader trend of cancellations in an increasingly stifling academic environment. To give a more empirical point of reference, the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has tracked disrupted or canceled events going back to 1998 in its “Disinvitation Database.” After remaining relatively stable, the last five years saw 36 percent more disrupted events (166) than the five years prior (122). In other words, things seem to have gotten precipitously worse just recently. When I asked the professor why this might be, he provided two theories. The first is that the recent spike might be a backlash on the left
ist critical theory. Unfortunately, we have just reached the tipping point. But the problem isn’t just some fringe groups of student activists, Pinker says. Many of our institutions, including much of the campus bureaucracy itself, have become radicalized over the years. “So many people in positions of administrative power were brought up with this postmodernist and critical theory ideology that it’s become second-nature.” Professors then indoctrinate the next generation of students in these sorts of beliefs, namely that “history is a struggle,” that “there is no objective truth” and “that argumentation and logic are just pretexts to power.” These students, in turn, go on to become professors themselves primed to indoctrinate the next generation. It’s not that every college administrator or professor shares these views, though, Pinker says. But few are daring enough to express their opposition. When faced with an issue of this sort, colleges too often choose flight over fight. Groveling has become the default setting. “It’s rather disturbing to see the people in charge of our institutions of higher learning repeating clichés and slogans,” Pinker said. “For university administrators, (acquiescence) is often the path of least resistance since a small number of noisy student protestors can make a university president’s life miserable.” Student activists have learned
tors playing along. Student activists have found a partner in university administration and have leveraged its power for political purposes. Nowadays, “the radical student protesters bring in the campus bureaucracy to multiply their own power, something they wouldn’t have been caught dead doing” when Pinker was an undergraduate. “Even though university presidents technically aren’t powerless, they have subcontracted or outsourced” the parts of the job that entail responding to student activists. Consequently, bureaucracies like Title IX and gender equity offices have taken up those tasks. But the missions of those offices, while noble, are not the university’s mission. The transmission of knowledge is just not something these offices concern themselves with. It’s not in their job description. And since they operate largely autonomously, in cases where the two missions conflict, the university winds up on the losing end. The result is that fringe student activists can and do wield an inordinate amount of power on campus. Universities have become political in the extreme, and we should be worried.” Contrary to the cliché sometimes attributed to Henry Kissinger that ‘academic disputes are so fierce because so little is at stake,’ I think a lot is at stake,” Pinker says. “Not only (because) it’s college graduates who populate and control all of our insti-
tutions … but the entire academic ecosystem is at stake.” The ability of universities to inform the public hinges on their credibility. And college administrators, for the most part, have watched silently as that credibility is destroyed. “I have more than once gotten into arguments with conservatives and libertarians over climate change, where I say, ‘there’s no reason to question our best science that climate change is real,’ and they say ‘why should we believe it just because it’s the scientific consensus?’ Universities are so overrun by the political correctness police that we can’t take anything coming out the of the university at face value — if someone dissented, they’d be canceled.’” Solving these problems is not easy. But there are some slam-dunk moves universities and students can take to improve the culture, Pinker says. The number one priority of each and every campus bureaucracy must be to advance the mission of the university. Administrators must also continuously reiterate “the principles that underlie the existence of the university, namely acquisition of knowledge where knowledge inherently involves humility and skepticism.” On the student side, Pinker is optimistic. “I’ve been surprised by how many students are actually appalled by the stifling of debate and the deplatforming of speakers.” But, by and large, these students have watched the battles on campus from a safe distance. “(They) aren’t bringing in the bureaucrats to shut down those they disagree with, they’re not protesting, they’re not setting off fire alarms during lectures,” so we don’t really know how prevalent these views are. But repairing the culture requires that they be more vocal. Whether these kinds of changes are coming anytime soon, Pinker is unsure. But he rejects the notion that the pendulum will swing back from gravity alone. “ I think it could happen and will happen but only if we make it happen. It won’t happen by itself.” Andrew Reed ’21 can be reached at andrew_reed@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
Friday, March 12, 2021
METRO
A year into pandemic, PPSD reopening underscores struggles District’s pandemic response highlighted inequalities among students, educators BY SAMEER SINHA CONTRIBUTING WRITER Almost a year after the Providence Public School District closed its doors in March and transitioned to online learning for the remainder of the school year, faculty, community members and teachers reflect on a difficult year in PPSD. The school district chose to resume in-person learning in September and has since been operating with a hybrid system. PPSD, a district in the midst of a state takeover, has taken public health precautions such as providing personal protective equipment to teachers, establishing a rotating hybrid schedule for middle and high schoolers and enforcing additional social distancing measures and PPE since reopening in the fall, The Herald previously reported. But the challenges of learning in a pandemic continue to take a toll on teachers and students, elucidating existing issues in the district. COVID-19 and inequity in PPSD Lindsay Paiva, a teacher at Webster Avenue Elementary School, said that PPSD has been “historically overlooked based on classist and racist policies,” citing poor building standards and a lack of funding that led to a state takeover. The pandemic has brought some of these issues of inequity to light: For instance, small classrooms sometimes make social distancing difficult or impossible, Paiva said. The increased attention given to the funding and safety of Providence schools as a result of the pandemic has made long-standing issues, like poor ventilation, easier to fight for. While Elliott Rivera, executive director for Youth in Action, a youth organization in Providence, said the school district has “been working on (issues of inequality) for decades,” he questions the quality of the progress that has been made. The pandemic has exacerbated racial inequalities specifically, Rivera said. “If the pandemic is literally killing Black and Latino communities at higher rates, it’s obviously affecting them in different ways, too,” he said. The pandemic may be slowing down reforms made by the state takeover, he said, noting the pandemic’s highlighting of the inequitable access to technology throughout the district. “One family might have a two-bed-
TRACY PAN / HERALD
Since the Providence Public School District closed its doors a year ago at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty and community members have faced a number of challenges associated with the widespread school closures. room apartment where there’s three or four kids sitting around one kitchen table, while another family in the same classroom is in a large home using a home office,” he said. These differences in educational opportunities show pre-existing issues, “but times 10.” Health safety and teacher concerns in Providence classrooms PPSD Director of Communications Laura Hart said that health safety has been the district’s top priority throughout the past year. Beginning in June, PPSD received guidance from the Rhode Island Department of Health, the Rhode Island Department of Education and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on their plans for the following school year. PPSD also sought community input through town hall meetings throughout the summer conducted over Facebook and Zoom. The school district relied on communication with state and federal agencies and the community while creating their partial reopening plan for the fall, Hart said. Jenna Karlin-Diaz, a Providence parent, agreed that parental input was being solicited, but she was unsure of how much of that input was used in crafting the plan. The reopening plan allowed for students to opt-in to an entirely virtual semester, The Herald previously reported. While elementary schools would return five days per week, middle and
high schools would be split into two alternating groups so that only half of the school would be in person at once. But some teachers reported struggles with the new modes of instruction. Paiva said that a lack of leniency from the school about class pacing pressured many teachers, who were not trained or prepared to conduct an entire year virtually. Paiva and Maya Chavez, a teacher at Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School, both
ers. With regard to the power outage, Hart wrote that her understanding was “students were temporarily moved to spaces … that continued to have electricity, but they maintained proper distance. Power was restored during the school day.” The pandemic has also created academic challenges for students. COVID-19 may be affecting students’ academic performance and social and emotional health, Hart said. In
said they did not feel much support from the school district. Chavez said that a rotating schedule requires teachers to provide both synchronous and asynchronous instruction, drastically increasing their workload. Chavez said the district could have been more responsive to teachers’ concerns over the past year. She noted a specific instance when, during a power outage earlier this month, students were forced to crowd together in the few rooms that had heat, despite social distancing guidelines. Chavez said the district ignored this incident, which raised some red flags for her. Hart wrote in an email to The Herald that the district held over two dozen focus groups and group meetings with teachers, employees, staff and students to help inform the reopening plan. Additionally, PPSD has regular meetings with the union to discuss feedback and teachers’ concerns. They offer mindfulness, stress management and other wellness support programs to teach-
response, some schools are offering wellness, coping, meditation and social and emotional support to staff and students. Although class sizes are smaller, students have significant absences due to COVID-19 exposure, diagnosis or having a loved one suffering from the disease, Paiva said. Often, students are absent from the classroom for six to eight weeks at a time, she added. Reflecting and moving forward Rivera thinks PPSD has not done all they can to respond to community needs, citing the lack of funding that predates the pandemic. Karlin-Diaz praised certain aspects of the schools’ reopening, saying she was glad her children could go to school in person, but acknowledged that there is room for improvement. “I think (the district) could have handled it better with more money,” she said, adding that the district’s COVID-19 response was dictated largely by limited financial
resources. In an email to The Herald, Hart wrote that the district’s response “included millions of dollars in personal protective equipment, air filtration and ventilation and cleaning services and supplies.” In spite of the year’s challenges, Karlin-Diaz praised the messaging about safety and mask wearing that her children have received from their classes. “They’re honestly reacting better than some adults right now,” she said. Karli-Diaz hopes the district can “use everything it’s learned (during the pandemic) to continue to make positive change.” Going forward, Rivera stressed the importance of considering students’ concerns when shaping district policies and plans. He said that many problems in PPSD could be solved if the schools would “stop telling (students) what they need” and instead listen to their input. Hart noted in an email to The Herald that the district’s Family and Community Engagement Office “regularly liaises with student groups in the community,” as a means of including students input in district plans, and that student data, generated by the districts efforts to survey students, is “frequently leveraged” to help in shaping policies.