Friday, April 18, 2025

THE BROWN DAILY HER ALD

COMMENTARY

ARTS & CULTURE

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

RISD students rally against revocation of one international student’s visa

4

Student-led documentary to highlight 50 years of women’s sports SEE DOCUMENTARY PAGE 6

Nine Brown alums respond to the Trump administration’s threats

SEE ALUMNI PAGE 11

The stories behind four Fashion@Brown collections

F@B PAGE 13

The science behind one of Brown students’ favorite intoxicants

INTOXICANT PAGE 15

Brown

Other universities have also turned to alternative liquidity streams

BY CATE LATIMER UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

Brown took out a $300 million loan last Friday amid the Trump administration’s recent threats to the University’s federal funding.

A White House official previous-

ly told The Herald that it planned to freeze $510 million of Brown’s federal funding as it reviews the University’s response to alleged antisemitism and Brown’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

The loan — from an unidentified lender — holds a 4.86% interest rate and will mature in 2032, according to a regulatory filing from April 15.

This additional debt comes as the University faces a $46 million budget deficit. Brown’s endowment sat at $7.2 billion as

Planned cuts would result in $2 million annual loss for Brown, according to court filings

BY ELISE HAULUND & CLAIRE SONG SCIENCE & RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS

Brown, eight other universities, the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education and the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities filed a lawsuit Monday in an attempt to stop funding cuts by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The planned cut, which would affect admin-

astate scientific research.”

of June 2024.

“Given the volatility in the capital markets and the uncertainty regarding future federal policy related to research and other important priorities of Brown, the University is fortunate to have a number of sources of liquidity … that are available to help us manage our finances and priorities during this period,” University Spokesperson Amanda McGregor wrote in an email to The Herald.

“Rather than entering the public taxable debt markets, as some other highly

The DOE announced Friday that they would limit financial support of universities’ indirect research costs to 15% — an action they said is “projected to generate over $405 million in annual cost savings for the American people” and delivers on Trump’s “commitment to bring greater transparency and efficiency to federal government spending.” The average rate of indirect costs at universities is currently over 30%, according to the DOE press release.

In fiscal year 2023, DOE financed $7.7 million of research and development expenditures at Brown. The DOE funds research in “energy production, energy use, fundamental energy sciences, environmental management and defense nuclear

rated peers have done recently, Brown chose to negotiate directly with a lender in order to tailor the loan to our particular objectives,” she added.

Earlier this month and amid similar threats to federal funding, Harvard announced plans to issue $750 million in issuing bonds. Harvard currently faces a $2.2 billion freeze to its federal funding after refusing to meet a list of demands made by the Trump administration.

In a faculty town hall earlier this month, President Christina Paxson P’19

P’MD’20 described Columbia’s compliance to the Trump administration’s demands in the face of funding cuts as “ineffective.” Brown has not yet received a list of demands from the White House, and as of Monday, the University still has not received official government communication regarding the planned $510 million funding freeze.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 16, 2025.

Amid threats to student visas, GLO contract takes on new relevance

BY ETHAN SCHENKER & EMILY FEIL UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR & SENIOR STAFF WRITER

As international students nationwide confront federal threats challenging their ability to study in the United States, certain provisions of the Graduate Labor Organization’s most recent contract have taken on newfound relevance in protecting students on visa status.

A section of the 2023 contract requires Brown to create an assistance fund of no less than $30,000 each year to help cover certain immigration-related legal fees for international graduate students. It also requires the University to make “reasonable

efforts” to allow graduate student workers to continue their employment outside the country if they are denied entry. International graduate students are also entitled up to five paid days off to attend immigration-related proceedings.

The contract also prohibits Brown from sharing graduate student visa holders’ personal information with federal authorities, unless required by law. The University has reiterated a similar policy for all Brown community members in recent weeks.

These provisions were drafted in anticipation of “a bad or worst case scenario,” GLO President Michael Ziegler GS said.

Chun-Tak Suen GS, GLO’s lead organizer for international students, said that the organization was “already thinking about another Trump term that is hostile to non-citizens” when drafting

The union negotiated some protections for international students in 2023 contract SEE CONTRACT PAGE 3

The loan — from an unidentified lender — holds a 4.86% interest rate and will mature in 2032, according to a regulatory

UNIVERSITY NEWS

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

UNIVERSITY NEWS

ADMISSIONS

As some high schoolers decide if they will commit to Brown, federal funding is top-of-mind

The Herald spoke to nearly two dozen admitted students

BY ANNIKA SINGH & ALEJANDRO RUIZ SENIOR STAFF WRITER & STAFF WRITER

Just weeks ahead of the May 1 deadline by which admitted applicants must decide whether they will spend the next four years on College Hill, many prospective students are processing how the Trump administration’s $510 million federal funding freeze to the University may impact their time at Brown.

During A Day on College Hill, the University’s twice-annual admitted students day, The Herald spoke to nearly two dozen admitted students about their initial reactions to the federal funding freeze and whether it affects their college decision-making process.

Some students said the federal actions are factoring into their college decision

For Dakota Pippins, who hadn’t yet committed to Brown as of Friday, the news was disheartening. “It’s not great to hear that the place you’re hoping to go is losing money,” he said.

Although Elle Graham is unsure how the planned funding cuts would affect Brown, she said the news is “scary enough.”

Like Pippins, many other prospective students expressed concerns that losing fed-

CORPORATION

eral funding could impact the undergraduate experience at Brown.

Jaden Barrack-Anidi noted that the proposed cuts could make it “more difficult for people to get the experiences that I think they deserve and need to be the best students that they can.”

While some admitted students are factoring the potential freeze into their college decisions, others said they were unaffected by the news.

“I haven’t really thought about it that much,” said Brendan Reichard, who has not yet committed to the University. Reichard said funding is not a major factor in deciding his future school.

Like Reichard, Lucas Connors said the news didn’t change his perspective on Brown. Connors had already committed to attending

the University before the news broke.

“I still think I’m able to have a fulfilling education here” despite the cuts, he added.

Although the planned funding cuts are allegedly due in part to Brown’s DEI programs, many prospective students said they still appreciate the University’s efforts to promote diversity.

Mira Flood said the Trump administration’s actions “did impact my decision but not in the way you would think.”

“It actually makes me like Brown more because I like that they are strong on their values and care about keeping this campus as wonderfully diverse as it is,” she said.

Students are concerned research opportunities may be limited Many prospective students also expressed

concerns about the future of research at Brown. Since Trump took office in January, at least $8 million in research grants at Brown have been cut by the National Institutes of Health, leaving many researchers and faculty members in limbo.

“I am a little bit concerned, especially because I want to go into biomedical research,” said Kari Harris.

Sabine Cladis, who intends to concentrate in political science and literary arts, said she was concerned about whether humanities research opportunities would be cut at Brown. All of the research grants confirmed by The Herald to have been cut thus far have been in the sciences.

Jonas Coats shared that a family member conducting research at Johns Hopkins University was impacted by the cuts, which has left him “uncertain” about whether pursuing a career in research was a still viable option. As of Friday, Coats had not yet committed to Brown.

A national issue

When Darian Estrada heard about the Trump administration’s plans, he was “disappointed but honestly not surprised.”

“Most of the places I have gotten into and am considering have been affected by the budget cuts,” Jacob Lipman told The Herald.

Given that Brown’s endowment is the smallest among its Ivy League peers, Nadia Patel said the proposed cuts to the University were especially concerning.

The University’s response

The University has yet to tell the Brown student body how they will respond to the planned cuts, leaving many students uncertain.

It is unclear which areas of Brown’s funding are targeted by the cuts, but Kendall Turner expressed concern that the freeze may impact the University’s financial aid program. “I hope that doesn’t make it so that some people don’t have the opportunity to come here,” she said.

Dean of Financial Aid Sean Ferns did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment.

If Brown’s funding is cut, Alexandra Rawz is curious how Brown is “going to manage to keep up the same level of high-level education that they offer as a prestigious university.” Rawz was admitted to Brown last fall as a member of the binding early decision admissions pool.

How is Brown “going to handle the administration for the next four years?” asked Raven Thomas. “Because this administration is my undergrad college experience.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 13 , 2025.

Athena Gao, who had not yet committed to Brown when interviewed, highlighted that other universities have been targeted with larger funding cuts. Last week, the White House froze $790 million in funding from Northwestern University and $1 billion from Cornell.

Here are the alumni running for positions on the Brown Corporation

Voting for New Alumni Trustee, Alumni Trustee positions closes May 2

BY ROMA SHAH SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The Brown Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — is currently undergoing elections for its New Alumni Trustee and Alumni Trustee positions. The voting period will close on May 2.

The Corporation oversees the University’s long-term development through responsibilities such as selecting the University president and setting the budget.

Established in 2009, the New Alumni Trustee position provides the opportunity for newly graduated alums to serve on the Corporation. New Alumni Trustees hold the same responsibilities as other members of the Corporation but contribute a perspective closer to the current student experience, according to the Corporation’s webpage.

The Corporation has two positions for New Alumni Trustees, who serve in staggered three-year terms. One New Alumni Trustee position is up for election this cycle. Only undergraduate, graduate and medical students in their last year of study, as well as alumni who have graduated in the past three years, are eligible for candidacy. Graduating students and alumni within five years of graduation are eligible to place ballots in the New Alumni Trustee election.

One Alumni Trustee position is also open for election this year. Trustees usually serve six-year terms, and all alumni are eligible to vote for the position. A third of Brown’s trustees are elected through the Alumni Election — a process held every year.

The Herald obtained a copy of the candi-

dates’ biographies. Here are the candidates for the New Alumni Trustee and Alumni Trustee elections.

Kevin Boyce Jr. ’21 MPA’22: New Alumni Trustee

Kevin Boyce Jr. ’21 MPA’22 graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business, entrepreneurship and organizations, as well as a master’s of public affairs. At Brown, he served on the Task Force on Anti-Black Racism and the Student Advisory Board of the Brown Center for Students of Color. Boyce’s efforts have earned him the University’s Master’s Award for Engaged Citizenship and Community Service.

Boyce works as a consultant at global professional services network Deloitte, where he specializes in higher education.

He also mentors current Brown students and serves on Beta Omega Chi Fraternity’s alumni board.

“Brown is special because of its commitment to protecting academic freedoms,” Boyce wrote in his candidate biography.

“It’s special because we understand the importance of bringing people together from diverse perspectives to pursue its mission.”

Kathryn Thompson PhD’23: New Alumni Trustee

Kathryn Thompson PhD’23 obtained her PhD in health services research at Brown’s School of Public Health. While at Brown, she looked to improve student life and strengthen graduate student support through her work with the Graduate Student Council, Samuel M. Nabrit Black Graduate Student Association and Brown University Community Council. Thompson also served on a Brown PhD admissions committee and other University-wide search committees for leadership roles.

Since graduation, Thompson has worked as an assistant professor at the Boston Uni-

versity School of Public Health. She hopes to serve on the Corporation to “give back to the institution that has given me so much,” Thompson wrote in her biography, adding that she believes in “Brown’s mission and its commitment to students, staff, faculty and the Providence community.”

Jada Wooten ’24: New Alumni Trustee

Jada Wooten ’24 received her bachelor’s degree from Brown in education studies and theatre arts and performance studies. During her time at Brown, she was co-president of the Black Student Union and a recipient of various University awards and fellowships like the Royce Fellowship and the Undergraduate Student Leader of the Year Award. Wooten is currently pursuing the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s master’s program in education leadership, organization and entrepreneurship.

“My time at Brown reflects the university’s strong valuing of academics, diversity, public service and the arts,” Wooten wrote in her candidate biography. “As a trustee, I would strive to embody these values because they made my time at Brown feel like home.”

Zaid Ashai ’99: Alumni Trustee

Zaid Ashai ’99 graduated with a bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics. He was a Royce Fellow and senior editor of the Brown Journal of World Affairs. Ashai is currently the CEO of Nexamp, a solar company focused on clean energy solutions. He has over two decades of experience in sustainability, finance and entrepreneurship, and has lectured on these subjects at Brown.

“Brown University shaped the way I think, lead and engage with the world,” Ashai wrote in his biography. “I would be honored to serve as a trustee, ensuring that Brown remains a place where bold

ideas thrive, inclusion and equity are prioritized and students are empowered and equipped to shape a more just and sustainable world.”

Tanya Katerí Hernandez ’86 P’20: Alumni Trustee

Tanya Katerí Hernandez ’86 P’20 received her bachelor’s degree in sociology. She is currently a professor of law and an associate director of the Center on Race, Law and Justice at Fordham University. Hernandez was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Specialist Grant in 2015 to consult on racial equality projects in Paris and Trinidad. She has numerous publications, including “Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law and the New Civil Rights Response” and “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality.”

“Not only did Brown allow me to flourish with its Open Curriculum, it nurtured and supported me before there was such a thing as The Brown Promise and needblind admissions,” Hernandez wrote in her biography. “I would be honored to be afforded the opportunity to continue being of service as a trustee seeking to

assist Brown (in upholding) its traditions of inclusion and unfettered intellectual curiosity,” she added.

Andrea Razzaghi ’82: Alumni Trustee

Andrea Razzaghi ’82 graduated with her bachelor’s degree in engineering. Currently, she serves as the director of the NASA Office of Jet Propulsion Laboratory Management and Oversight. She has also worked as NASA’s deputy director of astrophysics and a senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Razzaghi was the 2014 recipient of the Brown University Engineering Alumni Medal.

“The ethos of the Brown community, with its emphasis on intellectual independence, social consciousness, collaboration and the spirit of open inquiry, informed the way I carry myself through life and the world,” Razzaghi wrote in her biography. “I would be honored and delighted to continue service to Brown as a trustee to assure the special Brown experience nurtures the next generations of scholars and leaders.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 16, 2025.

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD Many prospective students expressed concerns about the future of research at Brown.

KAIA

YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

Established in 2009, the New Alumni Trustee position allows newly graduated alums to serve on the Corporation.

the provisions — which were ratified via GLO’s second contract in December 2023. Suen added that the idea for the protections came after the Trump administration’s later-scrapped plan to deport all international students who were not enrolled in in-person classes in 2020.

“We were worried that if Trump got elected he might put up some very drastic immigration measures, which we are experiencing right now,” Suen said.

ENERGY FROM PAGE 1

This suit mirrors a similar complaint filed by Brown and other universities in February alleging that cuts to indirect costs on National Institutes of Health grants were unconstitutional. A federal judge later ordered an injunction on the cuts.

In a Tuesday letter to the Brown community, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 and Provost Francis Doyle explained that “Brown felt it was important to become a named plaintiff in the lawsuit … to advocate against the destructive impacts on innovative research that is advancing everything from medical imaging and fastcharging electronics, to security systems for banking and personal data.”

In the letter, Paxson and Doyle described DOE’s funding cuts as “troubling and unsettling” and pointed out that at Brown, DOE funding supports research in artificial intelligence, quantum information science and nuclear technology.

Vice President for Research Greg Hirth ScM’87 PhD’91 submitted a declaration in the lawsuit on behalf of Brown, attesting that the reduced indirect cost rate ceiling and termination of grants will have “devastating effects on Brown’s research initiatives and the progression of science.”

In the declaration, Hirth added that the endowment “cannot make up for the significant gap in funding a reduction in (facilities and administrative costs) or total termination of DOE awards would create.”

While Ziegler said graduate students have typically used the assistance fund for visa fees, international graduate workers are now “looking at the fund a little bit differently.”

“The fund is available not just for helping renew a visa,” he said. “If you do get in some kind of difficulty with your status, it’s also there for that.”

In an interview with The Herald, GLO Vice President Victoria Antonetti GS said that the union also plans to meet with the University to ask for more money to be added to the fund — a process outlined

“The endowment provides an essential source of support for the University’s financial aid, faculty salaries and academic and co-curricular programs and consists of over 3,800 unique funds that are legal contracts given as charitable gifts by alumni, parents, students, and friends of the University,” Hirth wrote. “These are restricted by law and purpose for their designated use, and cannot simply be reallocated.”

With “no other identified source of funds,” Brown will have “little choice but to significantly scale back the amount of research it conducts,” Hirth wrote.

In addition, Hirth wrote that Brown would have to scale back on staff, eliminating “positions that support the research enterprise and facilities, such as administrators, research coordinators, lab managers, custodial staff and security officers.” The Herald previously reported that some researchers have already had to lay off staff from their projects due to NIH grant cuts.

In his declaration, Hirth pointed out that in the 2024 fiscal year, Brown received over $253 million in federal funding — 19% of Brown’s operating revenue — with over $69 million in indirect costs. For the 2025 fiscal year, that number is projected to grow to $300 million, with $73 million in indirect costs.

According to a statement from the AAU, the APLU and the ACE, these cuts would have an “immediate and dire impact on critical energy, physical sciences and engineering research nationwide” and set a “very dangerous precedent that could be

in the contract.

The University did not respond to a request for comment.

Similarly, Antonetti said that the union plans to ask the University to host office hours with immigration lawyers each semester.

“When it comes to this contract, the overall picture is that the University and the union are quite on the same page,” Suen said.

But since President Trump took office, GLO has called on Brown to establish more protections for international

used to undermine federal investments in research at many other federal agencies.”

Last Thursday, University officials announced that the Department of Health and Human Services had expanded a Title VI investigation — originally reviewing the Warren Alpert Medical School — to include the entire University, for the time period from Oct. 7, 2023 to the present. HHS originally launched the investigation into Warren Alpert in February for alleged antisemitism at a May 2024 protest at the medical school’s commencement ceremony “We are confident that our actions in response to the May 2024 protest — which occurred outside the church where the medical school ceremony was held and on an adjacent public sidewalk — were in compliance with Title VI,” the Thursday email reads.

These actions come in the wake of a

UNIVERSITY NEWS

graduate student workers.

At an April 3 rally, GLO organizers delivered a petition to Provost Francis Doyle containing demands they say are necessary to protect “vulnerable members” of the GLO community. The “GLO Petition for Community Protection” asked Brown to commit to challenging subpoenas for “any community member’s records” and destroy “captured or held surveillance, security camera or other footage of political speech on campus.”

The petition also asks the University

planned $510 million funding freeze over alleged antisemitism on campus and the University’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a White House official told The Herald. The freeze was announced April 3, but the University has not yet confirmed receipt of a formal notification from federal officials regarding the freeze to The Herald. This suit against DOE does not mention the Trump administration’s planned $510 million federal funding freeze to Brown.

At least $8 million of NIH grants funding Brown’s research have been cut since the Trump administration took office, The Herald previously reported. Gender- and diversity-related terminology was cited as a reason for several of these funding cuts. It is unclear whether these cuts are related to the planned $510 million federal funding freeze.

An HHS spokesperson previously told The Herald that the agency “is partnering

to continue providing gender-affirming care and adopt a policy “stating that holding anti-Zionist beliefs, and expressing or advocating such beliefs, are protected rights and do not constitute antisemitism.”

In an interview with The Herald, Antonetti urged University administrators to offer more detailed, frequent communication to students affected by recent federal actions.

“I really think this is a time to be precise and to be consistently keeping us informed,” Antonetti said.

with other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of grants awarded to universities that have failed to protect students from discriminatory behavior.”

Paxson has affirmed Brown’s commitment to responding to federal actions threatening “academic freedom” multiple times over recent weeks. In a March 20 letter to the campus community, Paxson wrote that if the University faced federal actions threatening its academic and operational capabilities, Brown “would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms.” At a faculty town hall last Tuesday, Paxson characterized Columbia’s compliance with White House requirements as ineffective.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 14, 2025.

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METRO

RISD students rally against the revocation of one international student’s visa

The State Department has revoked over 300 student visas as of March 27

BY SANAI RASHID METRO EDITOR

On Friday afternoon, approximately 35 Rhode Island School of Design students rallied outside 20 Washington Place — a RISD administrative building known as Prov-Wash — in response to the revocation of one international RISD student’s visa.

Last Monday, RISD President Crystal Williams sent a campus-wide email informing the community of the visa revocation. Williams did not disclose the name of the student and said the school had “not been told the reason for the terminated status.”

“This revocation comes as a threat to our international, undocumented, refugee and immigrant students,” said a RISD Students for Justice in Palestine spokesperson, who was granted anonymity due to safety concerns, at the rally. International students make up 33% of RISD undergraduates enrolled this academic year, according to the college’s website.

Through visa cancellations and deportations, the Trump administration “actively builds an environment where the state can kidnap, disappear and deport our community members with no accountability,” they added. “These disappearances are political.”

The RSJP spokesperson pointed to the detainment of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident who was involved in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia. Khalil was taken to a detention

TARIFFS

SANAI RASHID / HERALD

“If RISD refuses to keep us safe,” said an RSJP spokesperson at Friday’s rally, “we will keep us safe.”

center in Louisiana, away from his pregnant wife who is a U.S. citizen. On Friday, an immigration judge ruled that he could be deported.

“We cannot isolate from each other and the issue at hand,” the RSJP spokesperson said to the rallying students. “This is happening on our campus, right here, right now.”

“When (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) comes onto our campus, we need to stand together and resist Trump's fascist rhetoric,” the spokesperson added.

“We demand the RISD administration ban ICE from campus. We demand the RISD administration refuse to comply with Trump's MAGA rhetoric.”

A member of RSJP also read a letter on behalf of an international student addressed to Williams. The international student wished to be anonymous and was not identified at the rally.

“Dear Crystal, I’m so glad you’re finally seeking to be a community of care because as an international student, I didn’t know we meant something to you besides stacks of cash exploit,” the student wrote.

“You and this board of trustees that chose you have a moral backbone of a leaf in the wind,” they added. “We are here today to do the work of building the community you speak of because you have failed us.”

A RISD spokesperson pointed to recent

community announcements and guidance page in response to a request for comment.

Before Friday’s rally, Williams sent a campus-wide email affirming students' right to protest but cautioned against pressuring others to do so.

Some international students expressed “pressure from their peers to participate in activities that might heighten their vulnerability,” she wrote. “Gathering and protesting peacefully is everyone’s right. Pressuring others to do so — in any way — is unacceptable.”

“We did not explicitly call out international students to show up to our rally,” the RSJP spokesperson said. Instead RSJP “encouraged the broader RISD and Provi-

dence community to fight back” against the Trump administration targeting the international and undocumented community.

In her Monday email, Williams acknowledged the similar wave of visa revocations happening at higher education institutions across the country.

Last Thursday, at least one Brown student and a “small number” of recent graduates had their visas revoked, according to the University’s Office of International Student and Scholar Services.

Similar to RISD, the University did not receive notification from federal agencies about the revocations and had “no official information to provide” regarding the reasons behind the visa cancellations.

International students at Columbia, Harvard and Stanford University have also had their visas revoked. On March 27, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department had revoked about 300 student visas.

RSJP is currently demanding a meeting with Williams and other RISD administrators to discuss an appeal process to the January rejection of a student-led divestment proposal by the RISD Board of Trustees, according to the spokesperson. The proposal concerned the school’s relationship with companies affiliated with Israel.

According to the RSJP spokesperson, RISD’s administration has not responded to their demands yet.

“If RISD refuses to keep us safe,” said the RSJP spokesperson at the rally, “we will keep us safe.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 13, 2025.

Trump’s tariffs could impact RI electric vehicle adoption, sustainability goals

Increased import costs may stall RI’s net-zero carbon emission goals

BY TALIA EGNAL SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Rhode Island has previously set objectives to stop sales of gas-fueled cars by 2035 and shared goals to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But with the Trump administration’s recent swath of tariffs, these goals may now be under threat.

Several environmental experts told The Herald that the tariffs will raise the costs of electric vehicles, leading to decreased demand and impacting the state’s emission goals.

Transportation makes up 36.6% of the Ocean State’s greenhouse gas emissions, making a transition to electric vehicles critical, according to Tina Munter, the R.I. policy advocate for the Green Energy Consumers Alliance.

On April 9, the Trump administration announced a pause on some reciprocal tariffs but excluding Chinese imports, which have been hit by multiple levies. Chinese electric vehicles may face a minimum 247.5% tax, while imported lithium-ion batteries — which are used in most electric vehicles and primarily manufactured in China — could face a 173% tariff.

There are a variety of planned and ongoing 25% tariffs on vehicles, car parts, steel and aluminum imports.

Approximately 39% of electric vehi-

cles sold in the U.S. are imported, Reuters recently reported.

Professor of Environment and Society, Environmental Studies and Sociology Timmons Roberts believes that these tariffs will “highly” inflate the cost of electric vehicles imported from Europe and Asia, he said in an interview with The Herald.

Munter agreed that these tariffs may negatively impact demand for electric vehicles, but argues that other economic policies — like the “potential loss of incentives (and) rebates” — pose a greater harm.

State programs, like the Driving Rhode Island to Vehicle Electrification program, offer an up to $1,500 rebate for certain new and used EVs, as well as plug-in hybrids.

The DRIVE program has awarded over 2,400 rebates so far and “helped make electric vehicles more accessible and affordable while supporting local dealerships,” Robert Beadle, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, wrote in an email to The Herald. He added that the program has also helped reduce transportation-related emissions.

The department has not yet received updates or discussed the potential impacts of tariffs on EVs, Beadle said.

But, funding remains an issue for the state’s vehicle electrification goals, Beadle wrote, adding that the department is currently awaiting further guidance on funding that has been paused for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program. As of last year, the program provided R.I. with a combined $28.5

million in federal and state funding to build publicly accessible electric charging stations, according to a press release.

“Rhode Island recognizes the critical role electric vehicles play in advancing a cleaner and more sustainable transportation system,” Beadle wrote. “R.I. has made consistent efforts to support (electric vehicle) adoption through initiatives like the DRIVE program, fleet transitions and public charging infrastructure.”

Munter highlighted that adopting elec-

tric vehicles would particularly benefit people living near highways and industrial areas, such as residents in R.I.’s urban core — which includes Providence and other nearby municipalities. These communities are disproportionately exposed to air pollution, which can result in negative health effects, she said.

In order to meet climate goals and improve public health, Roberts believes that New England communities should stop using internal combustion engines.

He added that Trump’s tariffs will have negative impacts beyond transportation, affecting other sectors like wind and solar technologies.

“This decade is crucial for avoiding the worst levels of warming that will occur if we don't stop burning fossil fuels,” Roberts said.

CHLOE JOHNSON / HERALD

Smiley unveils $624 million city budget, proposing 7.5% increase in tax levy

Proposed budget balances education, employee obligations, city services

BY NORA ROWE STAFF WRITER

On Wednesday, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley unveiled his $624 million fiscal year 2026 budget, proposing a 7.5% increase in the tax levy — the total amount of collected tax revenue.

In drafting the budget, “we had to make sacrifices, and we were faced with difficult decisions,” Smiley said during an address before the Providence City Council. He cited a need to balance education funding, the importance of meeting employee obligations and ensuring the provision of city services.

In addition to raising tax revenue, Smiley said that his proposal would prioritize new revenue sources and cut city costs. Providence has also removed 23 staff positions and cut expenses in the vast majority of the city’s departments.

Under the proposed budget, the property tax for Providence’s single-family homes will increase by 4% — an average increase of around $13 a month. But multi-family residencies with between two and five units may face a 16% increase in property taxes.

built or maintained over 1,600 affordable housing units in Providence.

The proposal will also double Providence’s existing tax exemption for veterans and increase the elderly exemption by 25%.

Smiley also announced the creation of a new city services hub to expand service provisions for Providence locals — an initiative he promised will be tax neutral.

In his address, Smiley also emphasized the importance of community-centered policies despite uncertainty at the federal level.

The budget would be “the largest investment in Providence schools since

Smiley has called on the Rhode Island General Assembly for one-time permission to raise the tax levy of the city beyond its cap of 4%. Last month, the City Council approved a resolution supporting a State House bill that would allow the city to raise the levy up to 8%.

2006,” Smiley said. The proposal comes after the city’s $15 million settlement with the Rhode Island Department of Education to address the Providence Public School District’s $11 million budget deficit for the 2024-25 academic year.

During a press conference after his speech to the city council, Smiley said that “the rent burden in the city is a real problem,” adding that the city planned on building “permanently supported affordable housing and cutting tax rates for apartment buildings.”

Smiley also said that “our primary problem is a supply problem — we have more people than we have homes.” He emphasized that his administration has

“Amid the chaotic, hate-filled headlines that come from Washington every day, I want to reassure our neighbors that Providence is and will remain the safe, inclusive and welcoming city it is known to be,” Smiley said.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 16, 2025.

The 52-year-old One Financial Plaza will be up for auction this June

The building owner previously scheduled an auction for April 10

BY ALLYSON CHEN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

While maybe less expansive than that of New York City or Chicago, Providence’s skyline boasts a number of iconic buildings. Amid the structures lining the Ocean State’s capital is One Financial Plaza — the city’s second-tallest building standing at 28 stories tall.

But what Providence locals can’t see from the outside is that the building will be up for auction this June.

JFR Global Investments, the Brooklyn-based owner of the building located on Weybosset Street, previously sched -

STATE HOUSE

uled an auction on the tower for April 10, but postponed it to June 13. As of 2024, the building’s total value was estimated to be over $48 million, according to a public tax assessing document.

One Financial Plaza earned its new name following a 2003 sale of the Hospital Trust Tower. Soon after, the building saw a large swath of renovations aiming to sever the tower’s shared mechanical systems with its adjoining structure.

Since then, the building has changed hands several times. In 2005, it was sold to CV Properties for $46.2 million. Two years later, it was sold for $65.6 million to Meritage Properties. The most recent sale to JFR Global Investments was finalized a little over six years ago for $51.8 million.

But its history can be traced back to before these transactions.

Completed in 1973, the building is

now 52 years old — “not quite old enough that most people see it as a historic resource, but old enough that it starts to need some maintenance, some real investment,” said Marisa Angell Brown, executive director of the Providence Preservation Society.

PPS is starting to focus its preservation efforts on buildings that are around the age of One Financial Plaza, Marisa Angell Brown added. While buildings like the John E. Fogarty Memorial Building may be demolished and only recognized for its architectural significance afterward, others, like downtown Providence’s Superman Building are, “almost a century later, still a building that people love,” said Edward Connors MA’94, a local historian.

“There’s a dangerous period that all art enters into where they don’t have the patina of age yet, and we’ve just grown

Two RI Senate bills seek to expand access to midwifery care

Midwives, advocates and Brown students testified in support of the bills

BY ALICE XIE STAFF WRITER

On April 10, the Rhode Island Senate Health and Human Services Committee heard two bills that aim to increase the accessibility of lactation counseling and midwife care for pregnant Rhode Islanders.

Members of Reproductive Justice at Brown, a student group that promotes access to reproductive care, testified at the hearing. After the hearing, the Senate committee recommended both measures be held for further study.

Bill S0479 would “require health insurance plans to cover services provided by licensed certified professional midwives,” according to the bill text. In order for CPMs to be reimbursed for their work, patient insurers would also have to report the utilization and cost data of CPM services every year.

If passed, the act would go into effect in 2026.

By “allowing medical insurance to bill these workers, (we) will continue to expand our birth workforce,” bill sponsor Sen. Tiara Mack ’16 (D-Providence) said at the hearing.

The bill could potentially also “increase affordability and access to this amazing care statewide,” wrote Rita Beyene ’27 in her testimony submitted to the Senate.

Even though the United States is currently facing a shortage of primary care providers, the midwifery sector is growing, according to Angela Lima, policy and advocacy program director at the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island.

In his testimony in support of S0479, Alex Ivanchev ’25 GS stated that midwives reduce maternal mortality and improve maternal health. But financial barriers prevent some Rhode Islanders from accessing this beneficial care, he wrote.

“Midwives play an important role in achieving reproductive justice,” he noted. “Yet, their services can only be leveraged if we work to make this option economically accessible to R.I. residents.”

“The people that can’t access that care due to finances … are the people that need it the most,” said Sarah Mead, a CPM, in her testimony at the hearing.

“I think this is a very easy bill for (committee members) to decide on.”

Bill S0478 seeks to expand CPMs’ ability to prescribe medications by allowing them to order and administer local anesthetics, vaccines and intravenous fluids, among other interventions. If passed, the bill would take effect immediately.

CPMs are already trained to administer these therapeutics, Mead noted at the hearing.

Mack testified that expanding CPMs’ “scope of practice” might mitigate the effects of ongoing provider shortages.

The bill “is part of continuing our commitment to bettering all maternal health,” Mack added.

tired of them,” Connors said.

One Financial Plaza was designed in 1970 by John Carl Warnecke and Associates. The tower was initially built as an addition to the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Co. Building, as a financial management bank, according to the Providence Preservation Society’s website.

“The funding for the original Rhode Island Hospital was so incredibly well-established that they had to set up a bank to manage that fund,” Connors said.

By the time construction was completed, the building stood 105 meters tall. While the area in front of it was too small to qualify as a true plaza, it echoed a “trend in the late 1960s to have buildings command a block and create a plaza,” Connors said.

But according to Tripp Evans, a professor of the history of art at Wheaton

College, One Financial Plaza is a generic, mid-century skyscraper.

“The only thing that makes it stand out is the use of travertine on the outside,” a more luxurious material than typically used in buildings from that period, Evans said. Travertine is the same material used in the Colosseum in Rome and other ancient Greek and French architecture, according to the PPS website.

According to Connors, One Financial Plaza is an example of when modernism lost its greater “optimistic vision” and became “programmatic.”

For Marisa Angell Brown, “it’s modern in the sense of just how spare it is.”

“You would never have seen buildings that look like this previous to the 1950s,” she added.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 14, 2025.

ANNIE DENG / HERALD

“The rent burden in the city is a real problem,” Smiley said during a press conference after the assembly.

LACROSSE

Women’s lacrosse extends Ivy League win streak with comeback victory against Dartmouth

First-years stand out as Bears moved to 4–1 in Ivy play

BY GUS BAILEY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Last week, the seniors of No. 16 women’s lacrosse (10-3, 4-1 Ivy) reminded the Ivy League why experience matters. This week, the first-years proclaimed they’re equally hungry for glory.

With an offensive explosion from Avery Doran ’28 and a clutch performance in net from Anne Booth ’28, the team pulled off a stunning 13-12 comeback win over Dartmouth (7-5, 1-4) on Saturday in Hanover, New Hampshire. Storming back from a six-goal deficit to clinch their fourth-straight Ivy League win, the Bears etched their names into the program’s record books for winning at least 10 games in two consecutive seasons.

Doran, who led all players with seven points in the comeback victory, won Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week for her efforts. Posting four goals and three assists, Doran became the third Bear to win the honor this season.

The opening minutes of Saturday’s match-up painted a daunting picture for Brown. Though Doran drew first blood less than two-and-a-half minutes into the game, the Big Green responded with

DOCUMENTARY

three consecutive goals to take a two-goal advantage.

From there, Dartmouth controlled the pace of play. Even with Greta Criqui ’25 clawing Bruno to a second goal, cutting Dartmouth’s lead in half, but the Big Green responded with three goals of their own, giving them a 6-2 advantage to close out the first quarter.

When the second quarter began, Dartmouth built on their early momentum.

Striking twice in under three minutes, the Big Green pushed their advantage to 8-2 before the Bears could find their footing.

But find their footing they did. Brown finally locked down on the defensive end, holding Dartmouth scoreless for the rest of the quarter. Booth, who entered the game late in the first quarter, helped stymie the opposing attack with stellar efforts in goal.

Spurred on by their strong defensive

play, the Bears launched a massive 5-0 run to close out the first half — including a goal and two assists from Doran. Maddie Joyce ’25 put up two goals of her own, including a last-ditch score with only three seconds left on the clock to cut Brown’s deficit down to one.

In the third quarter, the Bears continued their barrage and struck first. Criqui found the back of the net for the second time that day, tying the game at eight.

Though Dartmouth regained the lead less than two minutes later, the Bears could not be stopped. Brown scored the next three, and even though the Big Green notched a final goal before the quarter wound to a close, Bruno escaped into the final frame with a slim one-goal advantage.

In need of a final offensive boost, the Bears turned to their first-year class. Doran and Riley Peterson ’28 scored back-toback goals in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter, bringing the lead to three with 10 minutes to play. Despite two late goals from Dartmouth, Brown’s defense held strong, and Bruno came out on top with a nail-biting, 13-12 victory.

Along with Doran’s seven points, Joyce added a hat trick, while Peterson and Criqui chipped in two goals apiece. Defensively, Booth tallied nine saves and led all players with five ground balls.

The thrilling victory gives Brown their fourth consecutive Ivy League win, putting them in second place behind Princeton. After their 10-5 finish last season, Bruno has now secured back-to-back seasons with double-digit victories.

This upcoming Saturday, Brown will face arguably its toughest test of the season as they take on Princeton on the road. The game will stream on ESPN+.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 14, 2025.

Student-led documentary to highlight 50 years of women’s sports

Filmmaking course chronicled trailblazing athletes, coaches

BY LYDELL DYER SPORTS EDITOR

For the past three semesters, students led by Emmy-nominated filmmaker and Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice Theodore Bogosian have been working on a documentary highlighting the athletes, coaches and storylines that have shaped the past fifty years of women’s sports at Brown.

Titled “Champions and Change: 50 years of Women’s Intercollegiate Athletics at Brown,” the film is scheduled to be released on College Hill this fall. Earlier this month, during a series of panel discussions about women’s athletics at Brown, members of the filmmaking class — ARTS 1013B: “Finalizing Your First Documentary Feature: Content Creation from Script to Screen” — presented a 35-minute teaser of the documentary.

“The documentary is intended to celebrate the 50 years of women’s intercollegiate varsity athletics in the Ivy League, but especially at Brown,” Bogosian said in an interview with The Herald. In the film, “we’re looking at the period between when Title IX was passed and began to influence women’s varsity sports here and the trajectory from those humble beginnings to now.”

Title IX, through its promotion of equality for women’s sports, plays a pivotal role in the documentary, which highlights Cohen v. Brown — a federal court case that restored University funding for women’s sports teams at Brown.

The case will be “a thread that’s woven throughout the whole film,” said Zoey Fisher ’25, a student in the course.

“It’s the foundation of what spurred the

following 50 years of women’s athletics at Brown.”

Apart from its focus on Cohen and Title IX in women’s sports, the documentary will highlight the “firsts, bests and superlatives” that have characterized women’s athletics at Brown, Bogosian said.

Fisher noted that for each sport featured in the documentary, the team picked “a standout story that really defines the sport’s place at Brown.”

Some of the athletes and coaches featured in the film include Olivia Pichardo ’26 — who became the first woman to play varsity baseball in Division I history when she joined the team in 2023 — and Heather Marini, the first female position coach in Division I football.

These achievements are “a wonderful arc of triumph over adversity,” Bogosian said.

Though Bogosian brings his experiences from producing documentaries, he emphasized that the students took charge of the production, while he was “serving in a more of a supervisory role,” he said.

“I’m giving them the opportunity to make as many mistakes as they can, as fast as they can and to learn from those mistakes,” he added. Bogosian also hopes the students “make as many friends as they can along the way and enjoy the process.”

Integrating all the different voices and student perspectives into one coherent documentary has taken a concerted effort, explained Jessie Golden ’26 — the 2024 volleyball Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year — who is also a student in the course. Though they tackled different sports in separate teams, many of the students picked “a

word that defines their part of the film,” Golden said.

Her group, which highlights women’s volleyball and the accomplishments of Head Coach Taylor Virtue, chose the word “confidence.”

“I think sports, in general, just gives people confidence, especially younger girls,” Golden said. “I feel like confidence is the main thing I’ve learned from being here at Brown and being an athlete.”

Fisher added that despite the separation into groups, the production of the documentary is still a collaborative activity.

“Everything that everyone does is presented to the class and everyone gets to weigh in on it,” Fisher said. “Every single person has their hand and their perspective in every aspect of the film, which I think is what is helping to make

it more cohesive.”

But beyond that, “we’re all on the same page about what the overall message is going to be and how we want all the different pieces to highlight that message,” Fisher added.

According to Fisher, one of the main goals of the documentary is to explain what made Brown uniquely suited to creating an atmosphere that enabled so many female athletes to flourish and move women’s sports forward.

Fisher attributed this environment to the Open Curriculum. “Here, we are encouraged to think outside the box, to make our own path, not to do exactly what’s in the book,” she said.

Even though students selected most of the storylines that will be featured in the documentary, the production process has incorporated input from alumni, as well. After the panel event, various former student athletes who didn’t see their sports represented in the documentary’s preview reached out to members of the class to share their stories.

“It’s been really cool to see how this film has inspired female athletes from Brown’s history to come forward and be excited to share their story,” she added. “That will definitely inspire female athletes and students at this school for generations to come.”

“Brown is a place where people are still a part of the community after they graduate, and they want to give back,” Golden shared. “All of the people at the event wanted to help us with the film, and they wanted to be a part of it in any way they could.”

“We’re learning as we go,” Bogosian said. “We had a wonderful reception the other night and I was so proud of my students and their work, and I know we’re going to have a great film.”

COURTESY OF ANDY MEAD VIA BROWN ATHLETICS

Avery Doran '28 won Ivy League Offensive Player of the Week after leading the team with seven points, including four goals and three assists.

COURTESY OF JIMMY PICERELLI

On April 5, Brown Athletics hosted a panel discussion celebrating 50 years of women’s sports at Brown.

REFERENDUM

SGA ballot to include two questions on student response to federal actions

The general election ballot opens April 16 at noon

BY HADLEY CARR UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

On Tuesday, a referendum that would add two questions to the 2025 Student Government Association ballot was approved by the Undergraduate Council of Students.

The revised ballot will ask students to

vote on whether the UCS should “organize a general strike of the student body, if at any point, the University decides to comply with the demands of the federal government following the frozen funds” and whether the UCS should “release public statements and organize University-wide actions to assure the Brown administration of the student body’s wholehearted support in the resistance against the federal government's attack on higher education.”

The general election ballot opens April 16

UNDERGRADUATE COUNCIL OF STUDENTS

at noon and closes April 21 at noon.

The petition for the referendum collected over 300 signatures, according to Balázs Cserneczky ’28 who organized the petition. He is also running for vice president of the Undergraduate Council of Students.

“I truly believe that this is the time to have this referendum, because we must be anticipating the federal government to send demands,” Cserneczky said in an interview with The Herald.

The questions come in response to Pres-

ident Trump’s actions on higher education, which include plans to freeze $510 million of Brown’s federal funding. After a referendum, the UCS “is responsible to represent those majority sentiments in its future actions,” according to the UCS’s Code of Operations. Referendum questions require a simple majority to pass.

The questions were approved in the morning on April 15. Cserneczky said he had the idea for the referendum last week when was reading through the UCS Constitution

to prepare for the election.

Cserneczky presented the petition to the board on April 14, where it was passed by the UCS Executive Board with a two-thirds majority vote.

“We can mobilize the power of UCS as a legitimate representative body of the students to actually organize the students,” he said.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 16, 2025.

Meet the 2025 Undergraduate Council of Students candidates

UCS presidency remains uncontested, three students vying for VP

BY CHIUPONG HUANG SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Voting for the Student Government Association’s Spring 2025 elections opens April 16 at noon. Talib Reddick ’26, the current vice president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, is running unopposed for UCS president. Tommy Medlin ’27, Balázs Cserneczky ’28 and Eugenia Bamfo ’27 are running for the UCS vice presidency.

SGA will host a candidate forum on Monday in collaboration with Brown Political Union to allow candidates to deliver speeches to the student body, followed by open tabling. Last year’s election cycle was shorter and did not include a forum, The Herald previously reported.

Voting will close on April 21 at noon.

Talib Reddick ’26: President Reddick, the current UCS VP, began his time at the UCS as a first-year representative before moving on to serve as chair of the Campus Life committee. Running unopposed, Reddick looks forward to continuing “his vision for student government.”

As VP, Reddick listed his greatest achievement as bringing milkshakes to Josiah’s, saying that the effort was “my main project that I had been focusing on for a little over a year and a half.”

He hopes to continue prioritizing improving several student services such as ensuring accessibility to water dispensers across campus and improving dining options.

Reddick also looks forward to continuing democratization efforts that the UCS has been instituting this year through reinstating the General Body.

In light of the federal government’s interventions in higher education, Reddick promised “we will continue to try our best to ensure that students are safe, protected, and create better plans for the student body.”

Eugenia Bamfo ’27: Vice President Bamfo joined the UCS this fall as a member of the council’s Health and Wellness committee and is now the interim chair of the Campus Life committee.

In an interview with The Herald, Bamfo said she has helped organize student shuttles to the airport, programming around diversity in admissions and various town halls.

UNDERGRADUATE FINANCE BOARD

Bamfo believes that if she is elected as vice

president, her relationships with administrators will help her accomplish the initiatives she decides to take on.

One of her top priorities revolves around strengthening and centralizing resources for students affected by federal government actions.

As VP, she would establish a “UCS Advisory Board” run by students not affiliated with UCS to provide feedback on the council’s decisions and increase student participation.

She also hopes to increase the availability of menstrual products and water filtration systems in residence halls, provide discounts to students who need standardized testing preparatory service discounts and expand the dining council.

Tommy Medlin ’27: Vice President Medlin joined the UCS as a first-year rep-

resentative before advancing to chair of the Student Activities committee.

During their time on the UCS, Medlin reinstated the Spring Activities Fair and dining council — a group of appointed students used by the UCS to gather opinions on dining, Medlin told The Herald. In his campaign materials, Medlin highlights that he introduced the New Clubs Fair.

Medlin emphasized they will prioritize “supporting student activism and free speech under current federal pressure” while accomplishing realistic initiatives centering student quality of life. As a member of the UCS’s Democratization Committee, Medlin spoke to administrators and helped draft a document advocating for greater student influence over the University’s decision-making.

Medlin added that they are “very invested in the Do Not Comply movement,” which has advocated for University administrators to resist any stipulations the Trump administration may pose on federal funding.

Medlin supports the reinstatement of the UCS general body, which previously allowed any student at Brown to voice opinions about student government decisions.

As VP, Medlin would also aim to extend Thanksgiving break and improve coordination for booking rehearsal and performance spaces.

Balázs Cserneczky ’28: Vice President

While he isn’t currently involved in the UCS, Cserneczky first felt the power of student government in the Hungarian public school system. As part of an effort to crack down on education, the government began withdrawing school funds and firing teachers when Cserneczky was in high school.

As the student body president, Cserneczky organized a sit-in that led to a student rally the

Meet the 2025 Undergraduate Finance Board candidates

Candidates for chair and vice chair will run unopposed

BY CHIUPONG HUANG & HADLEY CARR

SENIOR STAFF WRITER & UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

Voting for the Student Government Association’s Spring 2025 elections opens April 16 at noon. The current chair of the Undergraduate Finance Board, Naomi LeDell ’26, will run unopposed alongside Kieran Lucus ’26, who is also running unopposed for vice chair.

SGA will host a candidate forum on Monday in collaboration with Brown Political Union to allow candidates to deliver speeches to the student body, followed by open tabling. Last year’s election cycle was shorter and did not include a forum, The Herald previously reported.

Voting will close on April 21 at noon.

Naomi LeDell ’26: Chair

As the current chair of UFB, LeDell said she secured a $203,000 increase in the Student Activities budget for the 2025-26 academic year. As part of her platform, LeDell plans to advocate for the retention of this increase, particularly in light of a planned $510 million federal funding freeze at Brown.

“I know how UFB works, how to advocate for clubs and how to get things done,” she said in an interview with The Herald.

LeDell’s platform also includes advocacy for access to what she says are underutilized spaces — such as the Lindemann Performing Arts Center — as well as accessible funding processes for clubs. She added that she hopes to continue to build upon personal relationships with student leaders.

“I’ve seen where the process gets stuck.

I have ideas, the relationships and the experience to fix it,” she said. “I’m just proud to say that there’s no learning curve with me.”

This year, LeDell expanded financial support for club events, including funds for critical event costs such as fire safety, the Department of Public Safety and Media Services. She also

restructured annual funding preparation to include office hours and in-person workshops to “make the process more accessible,” she said.

“These are real results, and they reflect my commitment to making UFB be more responsive, more effective and more equitable for the clubs,” LeDell said.

Last year, LeDell ran on a platform with three main priorities: bringing back large, fee-free events, supporting period product accessibility and increasing funding for events focused on improving student mental health.

Kieran Lucus ’26: Vice Chair

Lucus is a current representative at large for the UFB. He is running unopposed for vice chair.

“I honestly have nothing but positive things to say about my experience,” Lucus wrote in an email to the Herald. This year, Lucus is hoping to take on a “bigger leadership role.”

“I realized that my responsibility was to not only advocate for my clubs on a purely financial basis but also to advocate for the communities and undergraduate experiences of all students involved,” he wrote. As vice

next morning. Cserneczky went on to found a city-wide student government representing around 200,000 students.

He hopes to bring this spirit of advocacy to the UCS through three main initiatives: a student senate, institutional protection and a Brown solidarity network.

Cserneczky plans for the student senate to be a representative system for the entire student body that meets around once a month.

“This is a much more engaged, much more direct system of representing student interests,” he said. With the state of higher education under threat by the Trump administration, Cserneczky proposed that the student senate could act as a medium to respond to federal government demands.

“UCS has been mainly defined by its advocacy effort towards the administration, but it has not been taking a central leading role in organizing and mobilizing our community,” Cserneczky said.

He also plans to organize Brown Solidarity Network, an alumni network made up of legal experts, media professionals and government officials to protect “vulnerable communities.”

As the last part of his campaign, Cserneczky proposes free legal counseling for students.

Other policies include advocating for a guarantee by the University to challenge subpoenas for students as well as destroying footage of peaceful protests on campus.

Cserneczky noted that the policies are dependent on approval from and collaboration with the University’s administration. But Cserneczky emphasized the importance of UCS in advocacy.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 14, 2025.

chair, Lucus said he would be responsible for representing the Category 3 clubs.

As part of his platform, Lucus hopes to take a “campus-engaged” approach to funding.

He added that he would host a public forum or policy workshop that allowed for a dialogue between student leaders and UFB.

Lucus also aims to implement a stricter attendance policy within UFB.

“In doing so, I hope that no student groups will be held in limbo, confused about the status of their funding decision,” he wrote.

This year, Lucus also worked to increase baseline funding for clubs to $300.

“To me, the beauty of UFB is that although there is a leadership structure, we function as one cohesive board that makes decisions as a collective,” he wrote.

COURTESY OF TALIB REDDIC, BALAZS CSERNECZKY AND EUGENIA BAMFO VALEN GARCIA / HERALD Talib Reddick ’26 (bottom left) is running unopposed for president. Tommy Medlin ’27 (top left), Balazs Cserneczky ’28 (top right) and Eugenia Bamfo ’27 (bottom right) are running for vice president.

CALEB LEE-KONG / HERALD Kieran Lucus '26 (left) is running for UFB vice chair. Naomi LeDell '26 (right) is running for UFB chair.

COURTESY OF KIERAN LUCUS

HOUSING

From University Hall to Brook Street: Tracing the history of dorms at Brown

The Herald looked back at how dorms have developed since 1770

BY IAN RITTER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

For students planning to live on campus next year, the housing lottery is set to take place this week. Since 1770, when University Hall — Brown’s first building and dormitory on College Hill — was built, generations of Brunonians have lived all over campus in buildings that now house academic departments or no longer exist.

The Herald dove into the archives to explore how and where past and present Brunonians have lived on College Hill for over 250 years.

Early housing: building Middle Campus. The University — first known as Rhode Island College — was founded in 1764 and opened its doors in Warren, R.I. In 1770, Brown moved to its permanent home on College Hill.

The first student housing on campus came in the form of University Hall, which was known as the College Edifice until 1822, when Hope College was constructed.

Students lived on the second floor above their classrooms, according to Martha Mitchell’s Encyclopedia Brunoniana. Mitchell worked as an archivist for the University for over 50 years on and off before retiring in 2003 and later passing away in 2011.

The construction of University Hall was funded by a “public subscription campaign” using money likely tied to slave labor. The Herald previously reported that archival evidence has indicated that at least four enslaved men were forced to aid in the construction of the building.

University Hall housed students until 1925, and its fifth renovation in 1939 converted the building to a fully administrative space.

in operation was not even contemplated.”

Built in 1822, Hope College was the second building on campus and the first dedicated exclusively to student housing.

The construction was funded by Nicholas Brown, and the building was named after his only surviving sister, Hope Brown Ives, according to a 1959 Herald article. After falling into disrepair throughout the early to mid 20th century, Hope College was restored in the late 1950s.

The third in the trio of dorms on the Main Green, then known as Middle Campus, was Slater Hall. The building’s foundation was first built in 1879 along George Street on the Main Green, but some protested the building’s placement, arguing that it would “obstruct the view of the campus,” according to Encyclopedia Brunoniana. The University moved the building to its current spot between Uni-

process of aging.”

Expanding Out: Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle

As the University expanded, student housing options slowly grew. But several of the buildings constructed between the late 1890s and 1950s either no longer house students or no longer exist.

For example, Maxcy Hall, which currently houses the Department of Sociology, was built in 1895 and housed students on and off until 1959. Meanwhile, Richardson Hall — first known as Brunonia Hall — was built as a private dormitory in 1900 and bought by the University in 1920. But in 1996, Richardson Hall was razed to build Macmillan Hall, according to a 1996 Herald article.

A permanent fixture of student living, Caswell Hall was built in 1903 and named after former University President Alexis Caswell, class of 1822. Unlike other dorms that were furnished by students themselves, Caswell’s rooms came fully furnished.

“Each roomer is supplied with a desk, a desk chair, a rocking chair, several straight-backed chairs, a looking glass and a chiffonier,” The Herald reported in 1904.

“Each room contains a brass bedstead and a mattress.”

The University provided furnishing for all dorms on campus starting in 1935, according to Encyclopedia Brunoniana.

Maxcy Hall, in the early 20th century, was known as the site of an “interclass fight,” The Herald mentioned in 1925. The writers worried that the new Hegeman and Littlefield Halls, built the same year, would become the next locations for the battles

due to their proximity to Maxcy.

“Let us not consider the possibilities of such a casualty, but earnestly hope that for the present and in the future interclass conflicts will take place outside the buildings of the University,” The Herald wrote at the time.

In order to build the two new halls, houses in the locations of each dorm were razed in order for their construction, The Herald reported in 1925.

In an interview with The Herald, Bradley Kaplan ’89 explained that he lived on the first floor of Littlefield during his first year, directly next to the door.

“I remember this as a fond memory and a not-so-fond memory: day and night, 24/7, whoever came in and out the front door … it would wake me up if I was asleep.”

Kaplan also recalled a small green space that once existed between Littlefield and the John Carter Brown Library before the library’s Caspersen Building expansion — a location where his band enjoyed per-

forming.

“We would play in front of Littlefield and you could actually have a little crowd, like your buddies, your friends and their friends sitting on this little hill,” Kaplan said. “It was just super cozy and your own little kind of mini, mini green.”

Demolition and Expansion: Wriston and Keeney Quadrangles

Campus housing saw its greatest expansion in the 1950s with the construction of Wriston and Keeney Quadrangles.

Wriston “Quadrangle is designed to promote social life as youthful and gay as people the age of its occupants need in order to be normal, but it is hoped it will discourage the excess and extremes which have long made the caricature of American students so easy and persuasive,” wrote former University President Henry Wriston in the 1952 Herald special edition.

But Wriston’s construction was no easy feat. The University struck a deal with the City of Providence to buy the blocks along Benevolent Street between Brown and Thayer Streets. To make enough space for the quadrangle, the University razed a total of 51 buildings, including multiple historic homes.

The quadrangle, surrounded by a dry moat, provided housing for hundreds of new Brown students and held a new dining hall: the Sharpe Refectory, quickly nicknamed “Rat-factory,” from which today’s “Ratty” moniker evolved. The new dining facility held enough room for 1,640 undergraduates in the main hall and private fraternity dining rooms on the main floor, while the downstairs Ivy Room, with a capacity of 200, was reserved for day students and University employees.

1952 SPECIAL EDITION OF THE HERALD

The Sharpe Refectory when it first opened in the 1950s.

1952 SPECIAL EDITION OF THE HERALD

The cleared space between Brown, Benevolent and Thayer streets.

1952 SPECIAL EDITION OF THE HERALD

blueprint of Wriston Quadrangle.

In 1944, fraternities agreed to give their off-campus housing to the University in exchange for recognized space in University housing on the new quadrangle. Buildings such as Angell Hall — which stood near where MacMillan Hall is now — were acquired by the University.

Moveable dividers existed in the hallways of dorms on the new quad to separate the fraternities from unaffiliated students, enlarging or contracting fraternity housing as needed.

Tensions quickly rose as university administrators felt that fraternities were taking over residence halls completely. In 1953, only seven rooms in Wayland House and eight rooms in Chapin House were occupied by students not affiliated with fraternities, according to a Herald article. To combat this, the buildings were completely dedicated to the fraternities, though fraternity members remained ambivalent.

“At least (the dorm members) are prospects for next year’s pledge class,” one fraternity member told The Herald at the time.

A few years later, in 1957, the University opened Keeney Quadrangle, then known as West Quadrangle. Separated into six different, but connected houses, the new quad held enough space for 541 students who were unaffiliated from fraternities, according to a 1957 special edition of The Herald.

Keeney Quadrangle, then known as West Quadrangle, on its construction in 1952. From a 1952 edition of The Herald.

As West Quad opened, the University continued to see an increase in firstyears living on campus. In 1957, about 91% of the first-year class lived on campus, up from 80% in 1956, according to a Herald article.

The opening of West Quad also made the college 83% residential, returning to the levels seen in 1907, wrote former University Secretary Howard Curtis in The Herald. “With the West Quadrangle added to the Wriston Quadrangle, Brown University no longer has to be apologetic about its housing,” Curtis wrote.

But the need for first-year housing continued to increase. Five years later, in 1962, the Corporation dedicated West Quad to only be for first-years upon approval of a Housing Report.

The report also stipulated that fraternities reach a residential membership of at least 50 to “maintain their living and dining facilities,” The Herald reported.

Anne Vollen ’86 lived in Marcy Hall on Wriston Quad her sophomore year. She greatly appreciated the proximity to the dining hall: “We could practically roll into the Ratty a few minutes after waking up to get breakfast,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.

Vollen also enjoyed the social life on Wriston Quad.

“When my father dropped me off for sophomore year, he bought lumber and constructed a sleeping loft for me above (my roommate’s) bed, which maximized the floor space,” she recalled, adding that they used this floor space to host cocktail parties.

Robert Blair ’06, a professor of political science who lived in Harkness Hall his sophomore year, has fond memories of his Wriston dorm.

“I remember I was on the second floor, and there was a really good sense of community there,” he said. “I lived right across the hall from my closest friend, and I ended up making two of my other closest friends at Brown while we were living on that hall.”

Building Pembroke College

In 1891, Brown opened the Women’s College in Brown University — later renamed Pembroke College — its women-only sister school. Pembroke students were first offered on-campus housing in 1900 at the Slater Memorial Homestead, which is located at 66 Benefit Street. Renamed to Hallworth House, the building has recently been used as a center for unhoused people seeking medical care.

The building was sold in 1911 upon the construction of Miller Hall. Metcalf

uate students.

Dorms first went coed in 1969 when 57 Pembrokers moved into the top two floors of Diman Hall on Wriston Quad. Alpha Pi Lambda, which resided in the building at the time, offered associate memberships to women living in the building, according to Encyclopedia Brunoniana.

Kaplan lived on the fourth floor of Diman in the 1980s for two years. During his second year in the building, he lived in a single with a bay window that he

vide for the option of coed living in the proposed facilities — and not by means of a divider wall,” the Pembroke Record wrote at the time.

The design for the dorms won the 1970 Progressive Architecture design award, and construction took place in The design for the dorms won the 1970 Progressive Architecture design award, and construction took place in 1974

Bryant and Byond

In 1969, the University acquired its East

Hall, the second permanent dorm on the Pembroke Campus, was built across from Miller in 1919.

During this time period, various other buildings were used as housing for women, including East House and Sharpe House, according to Encyclopedia Brunoniana. East House was razed in 1952 for the construction of Howard Terrace, where the famous Pembroke Seal now lays. Sharpe House was moved in 2019 and merged with Peter Green House to hold the Department of History, The Herald previously reported.

Other Pembroke dorms included the Ellen Dexter Sharpe House, now known as Machado House, constructed in 1912. Sharpe gave the house to the University as a space for the Romance language departments.

In 1947 — just before Wriston was built — Pembroke gained Andrews Hall.

The building connected Metcalf and Miller Halls and provided Pembrokers with a new dining hall.

Before Pembroke College merged with the College — the men’s college — in 1971, four more dorms were added to Pembroke. Champlin and Morriss Halls were dedicated in 1960, while Emery and Woolley Halls were dedicated in 1963 along with the Verney-Woolley dining hall.

“Pembroke was a very separate campus,” Leila Heckman ’66 told The Herald.

But rules for Pembrokers were strict, including dress codes and curfews.

At the occasional 4 p.m. tea hosted by the University, “we had to wear white gloves,” Heckman recalled. “Men were allowed to visit you in the dorms on Sunday afternoon, but you had to keep the door open.”

During her time on Pembroke, Heckman lived in Andrews Hall before moving into Woolley.

Dorms go coed

The late ’60s saw the construction of the Graduate Center, according to Encyclopedia Brunoniana. As its name suggests, Grad Center was initially constructed for graduate student housing, but soon became a residence hall for undergrad -

turned into a “mini day bed” where he would listen to music from his turntable.

“It just had a vibe and great natural light,” Kaplan said to The Herald. “That single was special.”

As Pembroke College integrated

Campus from Bryant University. New dormitories included Barbour Hall (then Appleby Hall) which was later expanded, Perkins Hall (then Gardner Hall) and King House, which was originally Bryant University’s administrative headquarters,

five years ago.

The University continued its expansion onto the old Bryant Campus with the construction of the Young Orchard dorms. The University first petitioned, as it had many times before, to take over the section of Young Orchard Avenue between Hope and Cooke Streets before proceeding with construction. Several historic houses were razed in 1973 to make room for the new Young Orchard dorms.

The 1990s saw construction of yet another quadrangle on Thayer Street. Later named for Vartan Gregorian, two dorms were constructed along with the dining hall, Josiah’s. The dorms, colloquially known for years as “New Dorm,” are now known to students as “Greg.” Then, in 2002, Minden Hall — a former hotel that was rented as dorms to Johnson and Wales University — was reclaimed by the University and converted to housing for Brown students.

COVID-19 to now

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the University aimed to bring as many students back to campus as possible. Undergraduates ended up living in temporary arrangements, including River House, which is now housing for graduate students, and the Omni Hotel in downtown Providence.

Since 2020, the University has seen the opening of several new dormitories. Wellness Residential Experience at Sternlicht Commons, known to students as Wellness, welcomed residents in summer 2021. As the first new dorm construction in 35 years, the new building emphasized sustainability.

Most recently, the Brook Street residence halls — Chen Family Hall and

with the wider University in the next few years, the rest of the dormitories on campus went coed. In 1970, women threatened a boycott of the housing lottery if more dorms did not go coed.

When asked about coed dorms in 1982, then-University President Howard Swearer said “Do coed dorms create problems or solve them? I would have to say ‘yes.’”

During this debate over coed dormitories, plans for construction of the New Pembroke dorms began in 1969.

“Perhaps the (Building and Planning Committee of the Corporation) does not wish to plan a completely coed dormitory at this time, but they can at least pro -

according to Encyclopedia Brunoniana.

Vollen lived in Perkins her first year, where she formed a “tight-knit group” of friends and enjoyed the late night snacks at now-closed East Campus Dining Center, or “Eck-Deck.”

“We were right across the street from WBRU, so we would ambush bands being interviewed there,” she wrote in an email to The Herald. One band, The English Beat, “even gave my friend and me free tickets and backstage passes to their show at the Living Room.”

WBRU resides at 88 Benevolent Street and now shares its home with The Brown Daily Herald, which moved its headquarters from 195 Angell Street

Danoff Hall, which opened in fall 2023 — capped off the catalogue of available dormitories. The two dorms contain specialty housing focused on religious and spiritual life, sustainability and civic engagement.

After living on Keeney Quad and in Perkins, Faith Chen ’26 has lived in both Wellness and Chen Family Hall.

“It’s insane that we pay the same amount of money for Keeney as we do for Chen,” she said in an interview with The Herald. “I feel like I won the lottery.”

1952 SPECIAL EDITION OF THE HERALD

Keeney Quadrangle, then known as West Quadrangle, on its construction in 1952.

1972 EDITION OF THE HERALD

A photo of Young Orchard Avenue.

OPINIONS

Davis ’27: Lived experience deserves a seat at the table in academic inquiry

“ “

In an emerging reality where Americans don’t believe in institutionalized forms of knowledge, personal narrative as political testimony is

a more effective communication method.

As Indigenous Oklahoman Joy Harjo writes, “in a sense, we never leave Oklahoma, or maybe it would be better said that Oklahoma never leaves us.” Even though I now attend college over 1,000 miles away, it doesn’t change this fact: Oklahoma is an intrinsic part of me and directly alters how I view the world.

My perspectives and assertions in the classroom are all shaped by this state. Often, I find myself turning to how I spent my summers in a sundown town or my grandfather’s stories as a sharecropper to back up my points in lectures about race dynamics in America. But in an academic world, this human perspective is often sidelined in favor of abstract fact and scientific theory, creating an environment where lived experiences are regarded as second-class when in fact they are everything.

Personal anecdotes, experiences and opinions do not make an argument weaker. In fact, they give them strength. Academia and universities like Brown pride themselves on evoking theory, jargon, and universal claims in academic inquiry. But what

is a theory if not an explanation of what happens in our daily lives?

Knowledge does not have to be what academics call objective. Opinions and personal feelings also give meaning to history and the world around us, and without them, the theory we spout is nothing more than a distant abstract. Indigenous knowledge systems, for example, have relied for a millennium on stories and memory as legitimate epistemology.

When I encounter texts about racial dynamics in U.S. cities, I can’t help but carry with me the weight of the Tulsa Race Massacre, an event intrinsically tied to my position as a Black man living in the historic Greenwood neighborhood. When writing papers about the bureaucratic and legal state of tribal nations, I do so with the history of Indian removal and the stories of my Muscogee ancestors etched into my understanding, shaping how I read the present.

These are not simply historical or legal mo-

ments to be theorized and explained. Instead, they are inherent to my being and the place that shaped me. Without this human contextualization, it is impossible to truly understand the phenomena we are taught in class. This personal grounding doesn’t detract from learning. It deepens and enriches it.

And while this may seem to be a problem for academia alone, as we have been shown from the last few weeks, higher education and the current political climate are inextricably linked. Brown and every other university in this country discuss issues of gender, race, climate and more that are playing out in people’s lives — not just in the classroom. To have genuine conversations about these issues, we must consider personal narratives.

As Trumpism and far-right ideology begin to

take hold in the American political machine and anti-intellectualism starts to rise, championing personal stories and narratives offers a compelling alternative that may appeal to a national population more skeptical of higher education institutions and the work they produce. In an emerging reality where Americans don’t believe in institutionalized forms of knowledge, personal narrative as political testimony is a more effective communication method.

Christian Davis ’27 can be reached at christian_davis@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other columns to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

Editorial: Student government actually matters

In this fraught moment for higher education, student government is more important than ever. The upcoming Student Government Association elections — and particularly that of the Undergraduate Council of Students — are an opportunity for our student body to influence how we are represented both on campus and in the world.

The UCS describes itself as a bridge between students, faculty and staff. University activities and student life are now under a national microscope amid investigations, a planned funding freeze and legal pursuits, making student voices all the more consequential. And who speaks for us when it mat-

ters most? Our elected student leaders. When our UCS president makes a statement, the public, the media and the University’s administration may take it as a reflection of the student body’s collective stance. What they don’t see is the fine print: Only a small fraction of the undergraduate population — 21% in the last election — typically cast ballots for the UCS, UFB and CCB elections. It’s also worth noting that our current UCS vice president ran unopposed. That’s a process built on apathy — and it weakens our ability to respond credibly and confidently to the issues that affect us all.

Being civically engaged doesn’t start and end with national elections. It starts here, in our community, with choosing leaders who reflect our values, priorities and needs. Whether it’s advocating for mental health resources, allocating student activities funding or taking a stance during political controversy, student representatives are only representative of the student body if we all do our part in electing them.

There are efforts being made to encourage engagement. The SGA Elections Committee collaborated with the Brown Political Union to host a Spring General Election Candidate Forum on

Monday, where candidates were given the opportunity to deliver speeches and table with attendees. Brown Votes also hosted an SGA candidate canvassing event in collaboration with Ben and Jerry’s last week. However, this is not enough.

Low voter turnout and unopposed races run the risk of enabling a vocal minority to dominate our elected student leadership. By expanding outreach and increasing transparency about the capabilities and influence of the UCS, students who in the past were uninterested may feel more compelled to take part. This would further lend credibility to the UCS as it tries to pursue a campaign for “broad democratic reform at Brown.”

While we trust that the students running for these positions are committed to improving the quality of life at Brown, the student body must now demonstrate the same commitment by participating fully in our own democratic process. All of us should listen to each candidate, engage with their ideas and ultimately cast an informed vote.

This election isn’t just about who gets to hold a title. It’s about ensuring that when statements are issued — and when positions are taken on behalf of the student body — we can trust that those voices truly represent us. The UCS has legitimate power to make improvements for students and speak on our behalf. If you are dissatisfied with the UCS’s exercise of that power — or lack thereof — you must show up to vote.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board, and its views are separate from those of The Herald’s newsroom and the 135th Editorial Board, which leads the paper. This editorial was written by the editorial page board’s members, Ben Aizenberg ’26,

KENDRA EASTEP / HERALD

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

Nine Brown alumni respond to the Trump administration’s threats to federal funding

BY DANIEL SOUWEINE OP-ED CONTRIBUTER

Earlier this month, the Trump administration broke news about plans to freeze $510 million of Brown’s federal funding. The threatened cuts are nothing short of extortion, an attempt to use the power of federal research dollars to force universities like Brown into policy changes that would destroy their autonomy and betray their missions. While the loss of research grants would be detrimental to Brown’s budget, that short-term hardship pales in comparison to the long-term cost of forsaking core principles, both for Brown and our society at large.

Brown’s 1966 statement on Academic Freedom “affirms that faculty members and students alike shall enjoy full freedom in their teaching, learning and research.” I can’t think of a more important moment in the University’s history to ensure this commitment is defended.

In response to these attacks, more than 1000 Brown alumni have signed a petition calling on the University to refuse any of the Trump administration’s demands that would weaken academic freedom, free speech or student safety. Here are why some alums signed the petition:

Tim David-Lang ’94

What has moved me to sign this today is the Trump administration’s demand that the Internal Revenue Service turn over tax filing information to ICE. This will affect many of the families that I work with as a New York City public school guidance counselor, making it even harder for their children to attend public colleges. When confronted, we must stand together.

Bess McKinney ’02

I am a high school educator. When my students tell me they want to attend my alma mater, I feel proud

to say that it’s an amazing place where I learned to think about the world and what matters. The world and what matters is at stake today, and we need institutions like Brown to stand up to the bullying and the anti-intellectualism of the Trump administration. For those future students, Brown must not give in to fear and cowardice but maintain its dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Paul VanDeCarr ’91

I urge Brown to stand up for the values I and so many others learned there, such as compassion, inclusivity and inquiry. Fighting for those values

order to preserve the possibility of democracy and, ultimately, justice. Please, Brown, stand on the right side of history. There is no other option.

Beverly Naigles ’15

I’m a scientist and depend on research grants. I can easily imagine the difficult position researchers at Brown find themselves in and the concern over losing grants. At the same time, as I watch other universities capitulate to these illegal demands, I know that some universities need to stand up and fight back together, and Brown is an institution that should have the courage to do so. Brown standing

now might come at a great financial cost, but it is a necessary fight, both for Brown and for the country. Make your students and alumni proud!

Alisa Algava ’95.5

This is an unprecedented moment in which Brown must live up to the principles it so boldly and proudly has helped generations of students to learn. We must authentically and collectively care for one another in

up and fighting would make me a proud Brunonian!

Nick Goelz ’15

The attack on immigrants is completely antithetical to everything I value and stand for. As a high school teacher at a Title I school in California, I interact with students every day who are in vulnerable positions. Every capitulation from a university, business or politician puts those students slightly more at risk as the current administration slowly asserts absolute

power over larger portions of American life. To echo the famous quote, first they came for the immigrants. Will we fail to speak out as we are not immigrants?

Janice Bloom ’91

Brown was the place that I learned to be a citizen, an activist and an intellectual. Everything that I learned there and have learned since has prepared me to understand that the Trump administration is leading us down the road to fascism. It is the responsibility of both citizens and institutions that believe in democracy to take a stand at this moment. This John Lewis quote sits on my dresser and I look at it every day: “Democracy is not a state. It is an act and each generation must do its part.” It is time for all of us to do our part, however difficult and risky. I hope Brown will not disappoint me and so many of the other activists that it raised.

Noelani Mussman ’00

The beauty of Brown is in the institution’s embrace of diversity of thought and practice. Caving to this administration’s agenda of hate and not standing up for diversity, equity and inclusion and the access it provides for so many is contrary to what Brown stands for. True character shows up in moments of adversity. This is Brown’s moment to shine.

Jessica Stone Levy ’83

Giving in to President Trump and Elon Musk’s demands would force me to reconsider my annual donation to Brown, which is no doubt minimal compared to the gifts of others. More importantly, however, it would cause me to reconsider my pride in the institution and all I believe that it has stood for.

Daniel Souweine ’01 can be reached at dsouweine@ gmail.com. Please send responses to this op-ed to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com

Geller ’71: The story of Passover gives us the courage to fight

During the holiday of Passover, Jews around the world retell the Exodus story — the Israelites’ passage from bondage in Egypt to freedom, from narrow places of fear and intimidation to a more expansive world. As Michael Walzer taught in his book “Exodus and Revolution,” Passover serves as a foundational story to understand political change and the process for creating a better society. In my Seder, we always include his classic line about “what the Exodus first taught … about the meaning and possibility of politics and about its proper form: first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt; second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land; and third, that ‘the way to the land is through the wilderness.’ There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.’”

To so many of us, what is happening now under

the Trump administration feels like a wilderness. At this moment, it is urgent that we join together. Let us be strengthened by the story of the brave midwives, Shifra and Puah, who defied the command of Pharaoh that all Hebrew baby boys be murdered at birth. It is because of their willingness to resist the Pharaoh that Moses survived. That story gives us courage to stand up to the threats and intimidation of the Trump administration. Central among those threats are recent attacks against institutions of higher education who have allegedly failed to protect Jewish students and combat antisemitism on their campuses.

My alma mater, Brown University, is apparently under review for not making its campus safe for Jews, but the Trump administration’s threats actually make the campus less safe for Jews. They evoke classical sentiments of resentment toward

the Jewish community, which Trump is using as a scapegoat and a means to achieve an ulterior motive. That motive is to destroy institutions of higher education and to crush dissent through fear and threat. Making Jews the face of the administration’s despicable campaign may very well lead to a rise in antisemitic attacks. This is not good for Jews or anyone.

In response to this gross weaponization of antisemitism, 33 Jewish clergy, rabbis and cantors, who are also Brown alumni, signed a joint statement to challenge the Trump administration’s actions. Hailing from all over North America and Israel, spanning the graduation years of 1965 to 2006, signatories joined together to declare clearly that Trump’s threats have nothing to do with combating antisemitism. These rabbis and cantors have joined together to urge President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 and her administration to condemn Trump’s assault and not to cede any control of academic decisions to his administration. The 33 signatures and counting symbolize a powerful mutual understanding and collective unity that has led us

to stand in solidarity with those on our campus who are most impacted by the attacks. It is critical that Brown continue to provide intellectual and communal support for everyone — domestic and international students, faculty and staff — and stand up for democracy, constitutional rights and freedom of expression.

I find it amazing that there are so many Brown alumni who are rabbis and cantors. Each of us was nourished in the Brown spirit of asking questions and of crossing disciplines, and it was on Brown’s campus that we were able to explore how important our Jewish identity was to us.

So long as we continue to join hands with our neighbors we will get through the wilderness, standing and marching together.

Rabbi Laura Geller ’71, a former Fellow and Trustee of the Brown Corporation, can be reached at rabbigeller@ gmail.com. Please send responses to this op-ed to letters@ browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@ browndailyherald.com

My alma mater, Brown University, is apparently under review for not making its campus safe for Jews, but the Trump administration’s threats actually make the campus less safe for Jews.

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

ARTS & CULTURE

REVIEW

‘SABLE, fABLE’ is a masterful rebirth by Bon Iver

The album explores what it means to emerge from darkness intact

BY ALYSSIA OUHOCINE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Justin Vernon struck gold with his fifth studio album, “SABLE, fABLE,” which takes the top spot for Bon Iver’s — Vernon’s long-standing solo musical project — most introspective work yet. The transition from songs in “SABLE,” to those that constitute “fABLE” reveal a deluge of emotion that is unabashed and brought to life by incredible production.

One of the album’s first introductions to the world was through the release of “SABLE,” in October 2024. The four-track EP became the opening of “SABLE, fABLE,” the full-length album featuring 13 songs.

“’SABLE,’ was really quite literally me alone in the woods for the first time since” he made his 2007 studio album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago,’ Vernon told Radio Milwaukee on April 11. While “SABLE,” is more about “an unwelcome feeling of familiarity and anxiety,” the tracks on the latter half of the album, “fABLE,” are representative of Vernon’s decision to “take a leap into joy,” he added.

The notion that “SABLE,” acts as a prologue for “fABLE” is evident within the tracks themselves. “...” is the 12-second flatline the album opens with, conjuring the emptiness that pervades the subsequent track, titled “THINGS BEHIND THINGS BEHIND THINGS.” In this song, Vernon’s vocals are powerful as he laments an endless cycle of anxiety. The production of the track most closely resembles that of his 2011 album “Bon Iver, Bon Iver”: hollowed

REVIEW

COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The album encourages listeners to dig deep, and through experimental sounds and breathtaking collaborations, there’s something for everyone.

out, yet visceral.

The songs of “SABLE,” certainly evoke the Bon Iver of the past — mired in endless, painful self-awareness. “S P E Y S I D E” is stripped down with lyrics that set the stage for the unraveling that is yet to come. Lines like “I can’t rest on no dynasty / Yeah, what is wrong with me?” capture how vulnerable Vernon has been — albeit through complicated metaphors and insider references — since he famously entered a cabin and left with the Grammy-winning album “For Emma, Forever Ago.”

“SABLE,” ends with “AWARDS SEASON,” a song that oscillates between soaring instrumentals and an isolated focus on Vernon’s vocals. It is a hopeful end to the

pain of the past. Vernon sings “But I’m a sable,” portraying himself as darkness personified. The transition to the “fABLE” portion of the album is reflected in the lines of “AWARDS SEASON,” a certain standout from the album’s beginning: “Oh, how everything can change / In such a small time frame / You can be remade / You can live again.”

The songs that follow don’t encapsulate joy in the same manner that pop music and dance tracks do. Instead, Vernon retains his trademark emotional depth to obfuscate the simplicity of happiness. His jubilation was born out of the heartbreak that once dominated his sound.

“Short Story” is less than two minutes

Don’t take ‘Drop’ too seriously

The film is a fun addition to the technology-inspired thriller collection

BY GABRIELLA WRIGHTEN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

There are two types of thrillers: the “hold your breath until it ends” kind and the “talk through the entire thing, yelling as if the characters can hear you” kind. While the former option might be more likely to win an Oscar, it’s just not as much fun as the latter. For many thriller fans, there’s truly no better feeling than screaming “Just run away!” or “Don’t go in the creepy basement!” while throwing your hands into the air and spilling the popcorn onto the floor.

“Drop” is exactly this type of movie. The film follows Violet (Meghann Fahy), a single mother and domestic abuse victim who attempts to overcome her trauma and agrees to a date with Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a kind and even-keeled photographer. Within minutes of arriving at the restaurant, Violet starts to receive “DigiDrops” — essentially AirDrops — from an unknown number. The drops start off calm but quickly become threatening as the sender says things like “Tell your date and your son dies” while revealing a masked assailant on Violet’s home security camera.

Honestly, the plot is silly and wide-

ly predictable. In addition to her date himself, Violet speaks to four seemingly random people within two minutes of arriving at the restaurant. If you’ve ever seen a slasher or thriller before, you can easily assume that one of these people is the killer, and the rest will be dead or severely injured before the movie’s over.

But its predictability doesn’t make the film any less enjoyable to watch. Like any good thriller or slasher protagonist, every

choice Violet makes is either completely wrong or unexpectedly clever. The action, although not totally innovative, is engaging. There’s no way to tell if Violet’s next move is going to work or fail fantastically, and it’s easy to get invested in seeing it all play out.

The film joins a recent trend of technology-based horror films from production studio Blumhouse — which also produced “M3GAN” and “Afraid” — but

long but quickly moves into a resounding symphony that signals brighter days ahead. The song transitions effortlessly into “Everything Is Peaceful Love,” which adopts an electronic sound as he shifts from despair to ecstasy. There is an innocence to the song in Vernon’s inability to control his cheer. He plays on images of being caught off guard by the extent of his feelings, an experience likely familiar to listeners.

There’s a sensuality to “Walk Home,” an expression of intimacy made more powerful by its simplicity. The pitched-up intro captures Vernon’s ability to cross genres and willingness to experiment, a facet of his creative process that has remained compelling. The lines “Walk home / Wanna be inside with you” represent how thorough Vernon is. While his plain-style lyricism is often chaste, his emotional delivery points to a palpable desire in his words.

“Day One” is a collaboration between Vernon and artists Dijon and Flock of Dimes. The solo verse by Flock of Dimes is rich and soulful, providing a vibrant foil to Vernon’s often-guttural voice. While “Day One” strikes gold, it is certainly outdone by “If Only I Could Wait,” a collaboration with Danielle Haim. Haim’s clear, strong voice suits the back-and-forth nature of the track, which explores the struggle to leave or stay in a relationship. Both collaborations present Bon Iver in its best light — allowing its trademark, emotional ballads to gain strength and originality from Vernon’s talented collaborators.

The bliss of “fABLE” only grows on “From,” a clear standout from the latter half of the album. Vernon holds no fear in expressing his love, despite the growing challenges he faces in maintaining a romantic connection. The song builds to a breathless bridge that is an explosion of

admiration as the background choir reinforces its liveliness.

The romance continues on “I’ll Be There,” a site of Vernon’s playful lyrics, which would be cringey if not for the sincerity with which he sings them. Lines like “Keep the sad shit off the phone / And get your fine ass on the road” suggest that while he remains introspective, Vernon is more than capable of diversifying his expansive catalogue of music.

“There’s A Rhythmn (sic)” and “Au Revoir” close out the album. While the latter is an instrumental track that acts as a quiet goodbye to this era of Bon Iver, the former encapsulates how “SABLE,” and “fABLE” work together to create Vernon’s newest masterpiece. The song expresses the hope that new love brings but is touched by a knowledge that healing does not happen overnight. The lyrics “And now I think you need some space / I will pause and stand with spade / ’Cause you really are a babe,” sung to lulling instrumentals, represent what life can look like when one emerges from darkness.

“SABLE, fABLE” is an act of bravery for Bon Iver. The album encourages listeners to dig deep, and through experimental sounds and breathtaking collaborations, there’s something for everyone.

“Have the courage to walk away from something that seems to be the greatest thing on Earth, but it’s not serving you,” Vernon said in an April 11 interview with the Guardian. “Have courage to do something bold, not just for bold’s sake, but because you have the patience to locate what’s wrong.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 14, 2025.

the editing sets it apart from the rest. At first, it’s clear the point is just to get to the action. The exposition is a bit lazily written, but that’s very quickly made up for by the sheer amount of strong choices made by editor Ben Baudhuin throughout the film. The messages Violet receives largely aren’t shown on her phone: Rather, they run across the screen in capital letters, changing in size and speed depending on their importance and

Violet’s corresponding emotions. When Violet checks her security cameras on her phone, we see the camera feed blown up behind her, letting us watch both what’s happening at her home and Violet herself at the same time. Baudhuin pushes the limits in a genre whose editing is often purely for scares and suspense. He plays with lighting and sound in an incredibly unique and refreshing way, creating an immersive experience in technology and emotion alike.

In another unique genre twist, Fahy and Sklenar have real chemistry as Violet and Henry. If it weren’t for the screaming and stabbing, these two could pass as a rom-com couple (actually, can we get that movie right now?). Director Christopher Landon lets us get caught up in the sweeter moments for just a little longer than expected, making every violent “DigiDrop” notification that much more jarring. In the end, even with its standout editing and smart casting, “Drop” is exactly what you’d expect. The story is a little convoluted and ridiculous. There’s a lot of screaming and a decent amount of blood. The brief deep moments add just the right amount of realism to the story. But most of all, it’s fun. So long as you’re not looking for any in-depth commentary on society or the plights of technology, you’ll have a good time.

A haunted house, a funeral for a wedding, crafted steel and Vincent Van

The looks were modeled on Friday at the group’s annual runway show

EVENT BY SUMMER SHI SENIOR STAFF WRITER

On Friday, students who managed to secure tickets to Fashion@Brown’s annual runway show flocked to 1 Davol Square. This year’s event brought together designers, models, photographers and stylists for a grand showcase of months of creative work.

Across over 30 collections, The Herald spoke to four designers who told the story of their distinct approaches, technical innovation and the narratives woven into their work.

Emma Zwall ’25 described her collection as “eerie, queer, outrageous and fierce.”

“My collection was inspired by a story I wrote about a queer kid in Dust Bowl South Dakota who gets trapped in an old house,” Zwall said, adding that in their story, the house was alive and haunted by the ghosts of two lesbian mothers.

“I wrote it on the train back from New York after interning with a fashion week designer named Gabe whose entire collection was based on this story about a girl’s dance team who kidnapped a boy’s wrestling team and turned them into sex dolls,” Zwall wrote in an email to The Herald.

She said this made her realize that she also wanted her collection to follow a narrative.

Each piece was designed to represent a

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

Among the over 30 collections, The Herald spoke to four designers who told the story of their distinct approaches, technical innovation and the narratives woven into their work.

different part of the house. “One look was the dining room, one look was the living room couch, one was the chandelier in the foyer,” Zwall explained. Other pieces represented the lesbian mothers and the hair in the shower drain.

Other students took different approaches, with Lucas Buckwell ’27 using fashion as a medium for exploring cultural and political themes, he wrote in an email to The Herald. Buckwell’s collection “Feed the Tree” explores “how heritage shapes our present day, and how attempting to erase our pasts has consequences,” he wrote in an email.

The collection represented a funeral for a wedding — “the wedding element being

representative of the unions that shape us, and the funeral aspect mourning the eradication of those unions,” Buckwell said.

Buckwell, who grew up in Miami as the son of immigrants, brings his personal experience into his exploration of cultural identity. “I know firsthand what good cultural diversity does for an individual’s and community’s experience,” he wrote.

He added that the collection’s narrative is intended to “parallel what is going on in politics right now.” Buckwell began conceptualizing the collection in November, just after the 2024 election.

“It was very heavy on my mind,” he added. “The collection is meant to be a warning against homogeneity and is meant to remind us how we got to this present moment.”

Visually, the collection draws from diverse influences, including the work of fashion designer Hussein Chalayan and architectural references like Luis Barragán’s colorful modernist buildings and London’s brutalist-style Barbican Center.

While Buckwell’s collection leans into symbolism and political memory, Chloe Chow ’26 approaches fashion through the lens of material exploration and engineering.

Chow’s collection, “Metalgalactic,” is a fusion of industrial processes and wearable art, built from white canvas and plasma-cut sheet metal.

“How does it feel when sculptural steel

tendrils constrict your ribcage, crest your shoulders or dance at your hem?” Chow asked. This question became the foundation of a collection that treats steel not as a material, but as an entity: cold, reflective, sharp and alive.

As a self-taught seamstress and thirdtime F@B designer, Chow’s journey into fashion started in 2020 when she fired up her mom’s old sewing machine to make face masks at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a mechanical engineering and visual art double concentrator, Chow blends technical ability with fashion, using software and a plasma cutter to design, cut and construct each steel element.

“I have been working with steel for the last 15 months,” Chow added. “I like to say that I have a ‘material fluency’: a deep understanding of the material character that allows my designs to flow freely — the technical process is second nature.”

Julia Clark ’26 drew inspiration from the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, with each garment representing a specific work: “Starry Night,” “Sunflowers” and “Almond Blossoms.”

Clark saw this collection as a way to experiment with techniques and express her love for fine art through fashion. Her “Sunflowers” piece was crocheted — a nod to the painting’s whimsy, she said — while her “Almond Blossoms” dress involved

Reflecting on her fashion journey, Clark described a return to her roots. While her grandmother taught her to sew in elementary school, she reconnected with the craft upon her arrival at Brown. After creating a collection from thrifted tablecloths last year, she approached this year’s show with more precision, intentionality and ambition.

“This collection felt like a culmination

techniques like ruching, gathering and working with mesh. “I really wanted to hone in on my sewing skills this year and try things I’d never done before,” she said.

of all the things I love,” Clark said. “It was something I was really proud to present on the runway.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 16, 2025.

Clark also made deliberate choices in pairing the model and the garment. “I thought carefully about who should wear each piece,” she said. “For ‘Almond Blossoms,’ I envisioned a daintier, more elegant walk. For ‘Starry Night,’ something funkier and more free-spirited.”

‘BoJack Horseman’ creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg talks screenwriting at Ivy Film

BY ANN GRAY GOLPIRA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

On Tuesday afternoon, Ivy Film Festival welcomed Raphael Bob-Waksberg — creator of the hit show “BoJack Horseman” — for a conversation about the series and his other projects, including “Long Story Short,” an upcoming animated comedy at Netflix.

Known for its witty tragicomedy and absurdist sensibilities, “BoJack Horseman” follows an anthropomorphic horse of the same name as he tries to make a comeback in Hollywood while battling addiction and other mental health challenges. The animated, six-season show premiered on Netflix in 2014, and the final episodes were released in 2020. Tuesday’s talk — which was facilitated by Gabriella Wrighten ’25, co-director

of IFF and a current Herald senior staff writer — opened with a discussion about Bob-Waksberg’s time at Bard College, where he studied theater.

At Bard, he was a founding member of campus sketch comedy group “Olde

English.” He said during the talk that the group’s “goofy short sketches” — alongside the “very pretentious plays” he read in class, such as works by Anton Chekhov and Caryl Churchill — were integral to his artistic development.

Bob-Waksberg fostered a comedic, lighthearted tone throughout the event, requesting attendees to rate his responses on a scale from one to 10.

Early in the talk, the screenwriter discussed professional differences between working in Los Angeles and New York, two cities known for their respective arts scenes. As a native Californian, he described the latter city as being “hard, famously,” but he noted that his time there was befitting for his early 20s.

The discussion then turned to “BoJack Horseman” and its fanbase. Reflecting on some of the show’s more intense themes, Bob-Waksberg joked that he “wasn’t designing the show to fuck people up.” He acknowledged that the series can sometimes strike an emotional chord with viewers, but he emphasized that despite the show’s darker material, it is an ultimately hopeful series.

Bob-Waksberg also discussed the importance of accountability in storytelling, especially given BoJack’s anti-

heroic actions and story arc throughout the show. In early seasons, Bob-Waksberg tried to be “edgy” and “push the envelope,” expecting that someone else would keep him in check, he told attendees. But as the show developed, Bob-Waksberg quickly realized this responsibility would fall on himself.

The discussion ultimately opened up to audience questions. Some questions touched on broader subjects such as narrative structure and creative collaboration, while others asked about fan theories — such as whether “BoJack” character Vincent Adultman was actually an adult, or just three kids in a trenchcoat.

Near the end of the talk, Bob-Waksberg addressed the importance of staying true to oneself when screenwriting: “Write for yourself, edit for the audience,” he told attendees.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 16, 2025.

Ivy Film Festival hosted acclaimed writer as part of speaker panel

SCOUT CHEN / HERALD

Throughout the show’s creation, Raphael Bob-Waksberg quickly realized that the responsibility of reeling himself in would fall on himself.

Edie Fine ’25 in one of Zwall’s designs Bennett Lacerte ’27 in one of Buckwell’s designs.

Mina Cho ’27 in Clark’s “Starry Night” inspired dress

Chow’s collection during the runway show. COURTESY OF MATTHEW CHEN

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Brown researchers’ GeoDiffuser model moves mountains, no training required

BY JEFFREY MU STAFF WRITER

Imagine being able to reach into a photograph and change it to your liking.

That’s the thinking that led Brown researcher Rahul Sajnani GS, a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science, to build GeoDiffuser. The geometry-based image editing model optimizes how objects are moved, rotated, translated or removed from within photos.

Developed in partnership with Amazon Robotics, Sajnani and his co-authors won the Best Student Paper award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Computer Vision Foundation Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision.

“Initially, our research was focused on novel view synthesis, taking an image and trying to generate what an object in it would look like from a new angle,” Sajnani said in an interview with The Herald. “But we realized that the idea of applying geometric transformations could extend far beyond that.”

GeoDiffuser works differently from traditional image editing models, which

SLEEP SCIENCE

often require fine-tuning on large visual datasets or retraining the model for different tasks. Instead, Sajnani’s method applies optimization in the form of a geometric transformation, which instructs the model how to rotate or move an object in 3D space, then implements that change into the generative model’s attention layers — the focus of the input data. The result is a training-free technique and an image that is faithful to the qualities of the object being transformed.

“It’s like being a camera operator on a movie set,” Sajnani explained. “You don’t change the scene itself, you’re just choosing where to look.”

GeoDiffuser builds on existing diffusion models, such as the ones powering DALL-E or Stable Diffusion.

The model runs two versions of the image generation in parallel: One recreates the original image, and the other makes the desired edit. The “shared attention” mechanism links the two, so that the model can keep the background and unedited parts consistent between the original and edit ed image.

This link comes from a method Sajnani described as “injecting geometry.”

GeoDiffuser uses depth maps, images that encode the distance of each pixel in a scene from a fixed reference point, as well as transformation matrices to tell

the model where to send each pixel, Sajnani explained. These transformations are slipped into the model’s attention layers and guide edits without changing the model’s core weights, or the most important parameters of the image determined by the input.

First, the model is given an instruction — such as “move this car to the right” or “rotate this dog to face left” — which leads it to compute the corresponding geometric transformation and feed that information into the diffusion process. The model then iteratively refines the image through loss functions that help to reduce the noise.

GeoDiffuser’s design enables the model to efficiently preserve the identity of an object. In one experiment, GeoDiffuser removed a boat sitting on a lake and erased its shadow and reflection on the water automatically.

For Sajnani, the most rewarding part of the project wasn’t just optimizing a tool: It was also about understanding systems and how they operate.

“When you can interpret what a model is doing and then manipulate it to do even more than it was trained for, that’s what excites me,” he said. “That’s the curiosity I want to keep following.

Due to COVID-19, WACV 2025 in Tucson, Arizona was Sajnani’s first in-person conference.

“You read all the papers by people you admire and then suddenly you’re standing in front of them, giving a talk about your own work,” he said. “It was surreal.”

Sajnani hopes to develop new models in the future that could aid perception and training data generation for robotic movement. But, according to Sajnani, the difficult challenge isn’t in moving pixels around but in figuring out where and how to apply transformations within the labyrinth-like layers of a generative model.

“Most of these models don’t have geometry baked in,” he said. “And we don’t fully understand what each layer is doing.”

According to Sajnani, the model can still be improved. GeoDiffuser works best with modest changes on objects — like 45 to 60-degree rotations, translations and removals. Extreme rotations, like turning a human 180 degrees, remain an open challenge, he explained.

Sajnani added that while today’s image editing software might let you nudge a lamp or spin a parked car, tomorrow, it could edit entire 3D environments on the fly.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 13, 2025.

Most college students don’t get enough sleep. What are the consequences?

Sleep plays critical role in reducing risk of depression, cancer

BY JONATHAN KIM SENIOR STAFF WRITER

This is the third in a series of articles about the science of various aspects of college life.

Around 70% of college students report getting less than eight hours of sleep a night. With looming deadlines, buzzing social events and uncomfortable dorm environments, it can be difficult for students to wind down and head to bed at a reasonable time.

But researchers say the long-term effects of poor sleep habits can be detrimental to overall health and learning.

“For almost every function of the brain and the body, there’s some aspect of it that seems to be supported by a good night of sleep and impacted by a bad night of sleep,” said Jared Saletin, the associate director of the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital’s Sleep Research Laboratory.

With how important a good night’s sleep is, what actually happens to the brain and body when students finally crash for the night?

Sleep consists of approximately 90-minute cycles composed of two stages, Saletin explained.

Non-rapid eye movement sleep, which comprises approximately 80% of the cycle, plays a crucial role in memory consolidation, physical repair and restoring cognitive function.

During rapid eye movement sleep, which comprises the remaining 20% of the cycle, the body restores its metabolism and appetite functions, strengthens its immune system and supports emotional regulation,

Saletin explained. Dreams also occur during this phase, which is why REM sleep plays a role in supporting creativity, he added

“REM sleep seems to favor (thoughts) that are very far from each other in your experience, and one of the benefits of that is the ability to stitch dots together that otherwise would not be put together,” he said.

Further, studies have shown that sleep plays a critical role in clearing the brain of amyloid plaques — clumps of protein fragments that are commonly associated with Alzheimer’s disease, Saletin added.

While these 90-minute cycles govern the processes of the brain and body while sleeping, two factors biologically drive people to go to sleep in the first place: sleep

homeostasis and the circadian rhythm.

Sleep homeostasis, the body’s drive to sleep, builds during waking hours and decreases during sleep. This drive is controlled by adenosine — a neurotransmitter that promotes the feeling of sleepiness — by activating certain neurons that restrict the release of chemicals that promote wakefulness, such as dopamine and norepinephrine.

On the other hand, the circadian rhythm relies on the body’s natural lightdark cycle. By responding to environmental cues such as light and temperature, the body is biologically programmed to sleep at night regardless of where an individual is in their sleep drive cycle, Saletin said. So, students who stay up too late — re-

GUZMÁN / HERALD

gardless of whether they took a nap during the day or how much they slept the night before — can experience short-term effects the next day, including “impaired reaction time, mood and alertness,” Saletin said.

William Stone ’27 said that “on the days when I don’t get as much sleep, I definitely don’t feel as rested and typically not as productive.”

Stone added that they believe academics and nighttime social events are some of the biggest contributors to poor sleep hygiene among college students.

Nighttime is “when you know everyone’s got no class, and so it’s the easiest time to meet up,” Stone said.

BWell offers sleep hygiene resources — including a self-assessment quiz — to

students struggling to get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep.

Additionally, Brown Sleep Society promotes the importance of quality sleep through events such as semesterly workshops centered on sleep hygiene and lucid dreams.

“Our mission is to promote awareness of the importance of sleep to pretty much all aspects of student life, both academically and physically, as well as just teaching people how to better control their sleep,” said Edward Shen ’26, co-president of Brown Sleep Society.

While simply sleeping more is one way to improve sleep hygiene, Shen says there are many other healthy sleep habits that many students are unaware of, which they can learn through the Sleep Society’s workshop offerings.

“Everyone is constantly trying to do as much as they can balancing academics, socialization, extracurriculars, research, everything,” he said. “But (students) underestimate the effect that a good night of sleep has on long-term health and their actual performance and the activities they care about.”

In the long term, poor sleep hygiene has been associated with depression, cancer, Alzheimer’s and numerous other health consequences, Saletin said. He added that while one bad night of sleep will not “rock the long term arc,” maintaining healthy sleep habits is beneficial to good health in the aggregate.

“Not every day is going to be perfect, but if you prioritize sleep, it’s going to help your physical and your mental health in the long run,” Saletin said.

This

Rahul Sajnani GS and his co-authors won Best Student Paper Award

KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD

Rahul Sajnani and coauthors receive the Best Student Paper Award at WACV 2025 for the team's work on GeoDiffuser, a geometry-driven image editing model.

MANUELA

DRUGS

The science behind one of Brown students’ favorite intoxicants: marijuana

This Sunday is April 20 — an unofficial Brown holiday

BY LEAH KORITZ SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Whether you’ve heard it referred to as weed, Mary Jane, pot, reefer or marijuana, cannabis use is prevalent among college students on College Hill.

The drug will be more prevalent this Sunday, as Brunonians celebrate 4/20 — an unofficial Brown holiday — marked by thousands of students smoking it on the greens at 4:20 a.m and p.m.

According to The Herald’s Spring 2024 poll, 63.24% of Brown students have used cannabis in some form — a figure that climbed from 53% among the class of 2027 to 75% among the class of 2024. That’s notably higher than the national adult average of 50%, based on data from a Pew Research study.

But Alexander Sokolovsky, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences, said that 50% is around average for cannabis use among university students.

“From the statistics that I’ve seen, I wouldn’t say that Brown is way out of the distribution in terms of the prevalence of cannabis use on campus,” Sokolovsky said, especially because R.I. law permits recreational use for adults aged 21 and over.

But what chemical interactions are at play that make this intoxicant so popular?

The Cannabis sativa plant — the source of marijuana — produces a “high” comparable to the effects of alcohol or mild psychedelics, depending on the dose and strain.

Although the cannabis plant contains over 400 natural compounds, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol — also known as THC

PHYSICS

— is the primary chemical responsible for the psychoactive high associated with marijuana. Cannabidiol, known as CBD, another major component of the plant, is non-intoxicating and does not produce a high.

Marijuana can be ingested via smoking, vaping, eating edibles and other forms. Once consumed, cannabis enters the bloodstream and makes its way to the brain. There, it primarily binds to CB1 and CB2 receptors, which are G-protein coupled receptors. These are part of the endocannabinoid system — a complex network that helps regulate pain, sleep, hunger and emotions, according to a study by Wake Forest University researchers.

Cannabis also affects the release of neurotransmitters, including gamma-aminobutyric acid and glutamate, which play a role in regulating mood, anxiety and

cognition,

But is cannabis safe to use, and is it addictive?

The question of safety is a nuanced one, Sokolovsky said.

“That risk needs to be evaluated comprehensively in light of what the benefits and the risks are,” he said. For someone replacing alcohol with cannabis, the switch may present a safer alternative. For those using cannabis in addition to alcohol, “that is not necessarily safer,” he cautioned.

Cannabis triggers the release of dopamine, which creates a reinforcing effect that can lead to addiction, according to a review in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology.

Regular users develop increased tolerance over time and experience withdrawal symptoms when their usage stops, Sokolovsky said.

Cannabis “has all the features of other substances that people can become addicted to,” Sokolovsky said.

“There’s lots of people who think cannabis is beneficial for sleep,” he said, adding that “the human body develops a tolerance for those in about four days.”

The more people escalate their use of cannabis to help with sleeping, the more they become reliant on the drug and stuck in a “constant cycle of growing tolerance,” he said.

Developing increased tolerance is just one aspect of cannabis use disorder. According to Sokolovsky, it is important that as cannabis becomes legalized throughout the U.S., lawmakers must be “cautious” with protecting those who may become addicted to the drug.

One Brown sophomore, who spoke to The Herald on the condition of anonymity,

said he began smoking cannabis at 14 years old. He “was pretty consistently smoking cannabis” from when he was 14 to the end of his first year at college. But he has since quit the drug, citing “brain fog” and the expenses of the drug. He added that he “just got bored of it.”

“I don’t think it’s like a harmful drug, but I think it’s a drug that sort of hijacks your brain’s dopamine,” he said.

The student stopped consuming cannabis after 4/20 last year. “I just completely burnt myself out for the next three days, my brain wasn’t working at all,” he said, but he is considering partaking this Sunday. “I have no issues with it, I think it’s fun.”

Another sophomore, who also spoke to The Herald on the condition of anonymity, smokes “most weekends” and sometimes even during the week, but told The Herald that he is careful to use cannabis “purely recreationally” and not “as a coping mechanism.”

The student said that smoking makes him feel “slower” and more free to “do silly, goofy stuff.” He added that smoking sometimes creates “a sensation kind of like sinking into the couch” and makes it “more enjoyable and more immersive” to listen to music.

He views weed “pretty similarly to alcohol” in that “maturity to be able to determine where your line is and what is responsible and what works for you” should be a major component in the decision to consume cannabis.

“It can be a fun thing, it can be a social thing and it can be like a positive thing in your life,” he added. “But also, it’s very easy to fall into abuse, whether that’s through addiction or through … the people that you surround yourself with.”

Additional reporting by Elise Haulund.

New lightsails could help cut space travel time from millennia to decades

Researchers from Brown created more efficient lightsails

BY LEAH KORITZ SENIOR STAFF WRITER

If a scientist were to launch a spacecraft to reach a star or exoplanet tomorrow, it would take tens of thousands of years. But in collaboration with Delft University physicists, Brown researchers have designed a new technology that could help cut that travel time down to just 20 years, according to Associate Professor of Engineering Miguel Bessa.

In a Nature Communications article published in late March, researchers announced that they had created a more efficient way to design and manufacture lightsails — light-reflecting, lightweight membranes that can accelerate in the presence of light. These materials are carefully designed with tiny holes to minimize mass and enhance reflectivity.

When a powerful laser stationed on Earth shines onto a sail for about 10 minutes, “the light bounces off the lightsail,” Bessa explained, and the light’s pressure pushes the sail, and anything attached to it, into outer space. This effect is tied to a phenomenon known as the Doppler Shift, which is also the reason an ambulance siren changes pitch as it passes by.

The team’s lightsail weighs just one gram, which is about the mass of a jelly bean.

Bessa led the theoretical side of the research from Brown, while Richard Norte, an associate professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, ran the experimental side. The two began the project three years ago when Bessa was working in the Netherlands.

According to Bessa, the challenge is to make the sail “as thin and light as possible, and at the same time as reflective as possible for the entire time that the laser will be shining on the lightsail.”

Norte described the fabrication process as similar to “extremely delicate ‘glass blowing.’”

In that one-gram structure is a camera and a lightsail made of single-layer silicon nitride. Norte likened the lightsail to a sheet “1,000 times thinner in diameter” than “a hair on your body.”

Bessa and the researchers tried to find the optimal shape of the holes in the lightsail to ensure the maximum reflectivity from the laser.

In past iterations, lightsail holes were carved using expensive electron beams. But the researchers found a more affordable and efficient alternative: lithography.

To ensure the lightsail was reflective, strong and light enough, the team used artificial intelligence that could “simulate the lightsail in the computer,” Bessa said.

“extremely

The program used optimization to “come up with a new design that we didn’t know before.”

The project draws inspiration from the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, tackling one of the initiative’s major technological challenges. The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative was launched in 2016 by Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner, which aims to send lightsails to nearby star systems within 20 years of launch.

Although the research is still in its early days, Bessa is already thinking about future

uses for the lightsail. “We are wondering if it’s possible to levitate objects with light,” he said.

For the sail to actually reach space, a major agency like NASA or a private company such as SpaceX would need to adopt and scale the project, Bessa said.

“Achieving real-world use, particularly for interstellar travel, will require much more effort from many teams,” said Shunyu Yin GS, an engineering PhD student and author on the paper.

Ognjen Ilic, an engineering professor at

the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email to The Herald that “this is a beautiful piece of work and a significant result for the development of photonic lightsails.”

“Building on the approach that the authors successfully demonstrated will be a key next step for scaling up the technology,” Ilic added.

COURTESY OF RICHARD NORTE

Richard Norte, an associate professor at Delft University of Technology, described the lightsail fabrication process as

delicate glass blowing.”

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NAME / HERALD

UNIVERSITY NEWS

PROGRAM CUT

Staff shocked, disappointed after Brown cuts ties with Choices Program after 35 years

Program provides history curriculum materials to over 8,000 high schools

BY ETHAN SCHENKER UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

Brown is cutting ties with the Choices Program, a long-running high school history curriculum used by over a million students nationwide, citing the program’s financial challenges that could not be effectively managed with existing University resources.

In a Friday Today@Brown announcement, Provost Francis Doyle wrote that the program, founded in 1989, had been facing “financial and staffing challenges” and a weak future sales outlook.

The Choices Program was launched as an outgrowth of Cold War-era educational research and has been housed in Brown’s history department since 2018, according to the program’s website. Since its launch, the program’s curriculum catalogue has grown to include over 40 units, with topics ranging from the American Revolution to the Syrian Civil War as well as a series on current events. According to the program’s website, its materials are now used each year by around a million students.

“While Choices has enjoyed a long history of providing content to teachers and school districts across the country, a detailed assessment of the program’s finances and organization has made clear that it is no longer economically viable in its current structure at Brown,” Doyle wrote, noting that the program’s expenses had exceeded revenue in recent years.

The program’s materials on Israel and Palestine have also attracted a steady stream of criticism in recent years. In March, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy released a report accusing Choices of “foreign influence” that has promoted “anti-Israel bias” in its curriculum materials. Brown has disputed these claims.

The decision to pull support from Choices is all but certain to eliminate access to its digital materials, according to University Spokesperson Amanda McGregor and several program staffers.

McGregor added that the employment of the program’s eight full-time staff members will “end” on June 30, once the University withdraws its financial support.

Program staff and affiliated faculty

University administrators started working with leaders in the history department in summer 2024 to “assess the financial and organizational status of the program and to review possible pathways forward,” Doyle wrote in the announcement. This process accelerated as a result of the University’s goals to reduce its $46 million operating deficit and amid threats to federal funding, he noted.

were informed that Brown was withdrawing support from the program on April 10 — one day before Doyle’s University-wide communications. In interviews with The Herald, faculty and staff involved in the program said they felt blindsided by the decision.

“My reaction was shock,” said Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies Rebecca Nedostup, the program’s faculty director.

Jazz Carlson ’25, a program assistant, described feeling “disappointed,” adding that he believes “Brown is made better by its association with the Choices Program.”

“We were very surprised, perhaps even shocked, by the immediacy of the decision and the unexpected nature of the totality of the decision,” said Assistant Director of Curriculum Development Kevin Hoskins PhD’12 MA’05, who has worked with the program for six years.

“Those of us that are on the board — and speaking for myself here, at least — were shocked by the timing,” said Associate Professor of History Daniel Rodriguez, who sits on the Choices Advisory Board. “I feel like Choices is one of the most important things that Brown University does.”

In an email to The Herald, McGregor wrote that notification to staff followed months of discussions between University administrators and history department leadership.

“Personnel decisions are shared with staff and announced after thoughtful consideration of many factors, and the approach to the communication to staff for this program was not uncommon,” McGregor wrote.

In interviews, Hoskins, Nedostup and Rodriguez each described the curriculum program as historically self-sustaining, relying on funds from licensing fees to support staff and curriculum development costs.

The program, Rodriguez added, “has never once taken a penny from Brown University, but has been self-funding throughout the whole process.” He explained that when the program’s expenses have exceeded revenues, Choices has historically dipped into reserve funds accumulated during years with excess revenue.

The University did not respond to questions about the program’s reliance on University funds. But McGregor wrote that the decision to cut the program is “exclusively financial.”

But Rodriguez argued this downturn does not warrant “the killing of a 30-year program that has provided cutting-edge, excellent and deeply-researched historical curricula” for students nationwide.

Nedostup and Hoskins said in interviews that the program’s end would have an immediate impact on thousands of students and teachers nationwide.

In an email to The Herald, Mimi Stephens, the program’s director of sales and professional development, wrote that she had received messages expressing disappointment from longtime users of the program’s materials.

“Few happenings in my 24-year career teaching high school history have so confounded my sense of what is right and good, but word of the demise of Choices has caused the global community of history teachers to be saddened,” former history teacher Tom Brennan wrote in an email he sent to Stephens and obtained by The Herald.

McGregor wrote that the University notified educators of the change last week in order to enable “teachers and school districts using Choices curriculum to complete the current school year without the need for changes to teaching plans.”

“To cut it off now, while there have been such attacks on how we teach history, is a bit of a gut punch,” Rodriguez said.

“We care immensely about the program, immensely about its content, and I think we hope to preserve it in some way, shape or form,” Hoskins said.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 16, 2025.

Nedostup said she was “devastated to think about the effect, not only first and foremost on the staff, but also on the many educators that rely on Choices materials for their classes.”

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