Friday, April 8th, 2022

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

VOLUME CLVII, ISSUE 28

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

UNIVERSITY NEWS

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Class of 2026 discusses acceptances

First Wellness cohort reflects on living experience

Students reflect on anxiety, excitement, say COVID-19 had little impact on applications

Residents discuss engagement with Wellness resources, reasons for applying

BY JACK TAJMAJER SENIOR STAFF WRITER The University released its Regular Decision application results March 31 at 7 p.m., admitting 1,651 students for a total of 2,546 students to the Class of 2026, The Herald previously reported.

Admitted students came from across the world, with intended concentrations ranging from computer science, biology and environmental studies to English, philosophy and political science.

Six admitted applicants spoke to The Herald, describing feelings of anxiety, excitement and shock at their acceptances.

Katya Scott, from Havertown, Pennsylvania, said she was “nervous” about opening her letter. While she felt “pretty confident” in her writing samples and extracurriculars, her standardized testing scores made her unsure of her chances.

BY NEIL MEHTA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

YUQING MAO / HERALD

“Brown has always been a dream school,” she said, “so sending (my application) in, I didn’t feel that confident.”

Scott recalled “crying tears of joy” after opening her decision and calling her mother, who “started crying too.”

After realizing “how big of an accomplishment” her acceptance was, Scott felt a sense of pride, as if “all of (her) years of hard work in high school (were) finally coming together.”

Bernardo Jimenez, from Bethpage, New York, was similarly surprised by his acceptance because he “pushed off a lot of essays” and “didn’t feel that great” about the application. Upon opening

his acceptance letter, Jimenez recalled doing a “double-take” before rushing to tell his mother about the news.

Angela Lian, from the Philadelphia area in Pennsylvania, wrote in an email to The Herald that she “just stared in disbelief for a solid ten seconds before screaming” when she received her acceptance “I prepared myself for rejection and pictured getting rejected in my head,” she explained.

Arissa Campbell, from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, said she “felt really good

SEE ACCEPTANCE PAGE 3

This semester, the first cohort of students to complete a full academic year in the Wellness Center and Residence Hall will end their residence at 450 Brook Street.

Wellness, “an immersive living-learning experience in Brown’s new residence hall,” aims to provide “peer education, community building, collaboration, and outreach” to foster wellness on campus, according to the Wellness website. Many residents prefer the building’s design and facilities to other dorms on campus, The Herald previously reported.

According to Wellness Residential Peer Leader Jasmine Cardichon ’22, while some students take advantage of the resources that Wellness has to

offer, other students are solely motivated to join because of the dorm’s facilities.

“There’s two types of people who live here,” Cardichon said. There are “those who do just come here (because) it’s a nice building but don’t partake in anything else. And then there’s those who did apply here with the intention of being a steward of the space.”

Cardichon noted that the combination of the new facilities and the programming are both important to residents’ overall wellness. “Even for those people that just come here (because) it’s a nice space … it being a nice space still helps in some way,” she said. “I do think it’s the fact that the (programming and space) are intertwined.”

According to an email to The Herald from BWell Health Promotions Director Tanya Purdy, the BWell office expects “that even if someone applied to live in the building for the sole purpose of its condition, that they would still participate in and benefit from

SEE WELLNESS PAGE 4

UNIVERSITY NEWS

ARTS & CULTURE

SGA kicks off revamped spring 2022 election

Black Biennial enters closing weekend

Election procedures changed to increase accessibility for candidates

BY KATHY WANG SENIOR STAFF WRITER The newly formed Student Government Association kicked off its first combined student government elections for the Undergraduate Council of Students, the Undergraduate Finance Board and the Class Coordinating Board with an information session Thursday night.

All prospective candidates had to attend the information session to be eligible to run, according to an April 4 CCB email.

Established at the end of last semester, the SGA — which is composed of UCS, UFB and CCB leadership —has worked to standardize the student government elections procedures and code of conduct, The Herald previously reported.

The SGA has restructured elections for all three branches “to make things

more accessible,” said Mel Cui ’22, senior co-president of CCB. Changes made to the spring 2022 elections procedures include reducing the number of signatures required for candidates to run from 100 to 50, shortening the election timeline from four weeks to one week, transitioning the traditional candidate debate into a less structured open platform event and eliminating official student groups endorsements, The Herald previously reported.

The SGA eliminated student group endorsements due to concerns about the association’s ability to manage endorsements for all candidates in the combined election. Due to this change, the SGA will not officially regulate or publicize any endorsements, and they will not be listed on the ballot.

Another change is rolling approval for campaign materials, Cui added. With this new rolling approval, students will be able to submit campaign materials to the SGA for approval as soon as their candidacy is verified.

According to Cui, CCB hosted an open platform event during its fall

SEE SGA PAGE 3

Team of students organize, showcase wide array of work featuring Black artists

BY LAURA DAVID ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR After a month-long run at the RISD Museum’s Gelman Gallery, the inaugural Black Biennial exhibition is entering its closing weekend. Co-curated by Rey Londres, a RISD senior, and Melaine Ferdinand-King GS, the show features the works of over 80 Black artists from the Providence community and will remain on display until April 10.

“We were conscious of pretty tense relations between Providence community members and the students and faculty at institutions like Brown and RISD,” Ferdinand-King explained.

As a result, Ferdinand-King continued, she and Londres wanted to provide a space for community artists to highlight their work and experiences.

“Given that Providence is known as a creative capital of the state, there’s a lot of history, especially as it pertains to Black and Indigenous artists, that

Metro

Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

J Life Mart opens on Thayer Street with Asian snacks, products Page 2

Pacific colonization immersive art exhibit comes to campus Page 2

Season 3 of thriller series “Servant” returns to Apple TV Page 4

LAURA DAVID / HERALD

Co-curators Rey Londres and Melaine Ferdinand-King wanted to provide a space to highlight Black artists within the community. we feel (needs) to come to light,” she said.

Londres and Ferdinand-King first conceptualized the project back in 2020, but the pandemic forced them to put the event on hold. Once museums and creative agencies opened back up, the pair was given the green light from RISD administrators and searched for funding, space and a team to support their project. They then put out an open call for artists and began the curatorial process.

Ferdinand-King and Londres guided the exhibition’s curation, each approaching the task from different angles due to their own distinct background experiences, Ferdinand-King said. While Londres works as a portraitist and photographer, Ferdinand-King studies political theory and aesthetics as a PhD student in the University’s Africana Studies department. Both she and Londres had

SEE EXHIBITION PAGE 8

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

METRO

J Life Mart brings Asian snacks, products to Thayer Street Students welcome store’s snack, drink, beauty product selection

BY AHLEY GUO SENIOR STAFF WRITER Since its opening April 1, Japanese convenience store J Life Mart — located on 231 Thayer St. — has welcomed many eager students and customers to see its offerings. Upon entering, patrons are greeted by colorful shopping baskets to use as they peruse aisle after aisle of Asian snacks and goods.

The shelves are stocked with popular Japanese snacks and other Asian treats, with an entire aisle dedicated to instant ramen brands. The beauty section carries face masks, makeup, hygiene products and more. The store’s fridges contain drinks, teas and sponge cakes, while its freezer holds ice cream and other frozen goods. The store also has a toy and stationery section.

J Life Mart is open 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, and 10 a.m to 10 p.m. on weekends.

Store owner Jason Chou also owns two Vivi Bubble Tea locations — one at 224 Thayer St. and the other in the Providence Place Mall. He shared that J Life Mart is a new project that came from his desire to enter the retail space.

Chou was inspired by Daiso, a large Japanese discount store franchise, but he wanted to start in a smaller space.

“We focus on snacks first, and a little bit of makeup, some ice cream, desserts and drinks.” Chou said. “Maybe in the future there will be more exciting items.”

According to Chou, the store was named J Life Mart for two reasons: 70% of their products are Japanese and Chou and his business partner both have the first initial “J.” J Life Mart had a half-off sale during the day of its grand opening April 1, and has since seen a lot of business, Chou said. “Thayer is a very busy street, and students like new stuff,” he added.

“There’s no other store like this” on

Thayer, Chou said.

University students especially appreciated the unique offering of Asian products that J Life Mart carries.

“I like that it’s a place that has Asian snacks because you don’t really see that around Providence,” Camille Leung ’24 said. “As an Asian person, it’s comforting to be able to go to a shop that stocks the snacks that you’re familiar with and enjoy.”

“I loved the store’s selection of foods and was surprised to see that they also had some skincare and hygienic products from Asian brands I was familiar with,” Jackie Cho ’24 said. “I’m just glad there’s now a place where I know I can get some of my favorite Asian childhood snacks and drinks.”

Customer feedback is also highly appreciated at J Life Mart, Chou said, adding that he is attentive and will fill the shelves according to customer’s wishes.

“What you want on the shelves, we will try to get it,” he said. “It’s not just my store, it’s everyone’s store.”

ELSA CHOI-HAUSMAN / HERALD

J Life Mart is located at 231 Thayer St. and greets patrons with colorful shopping baskets to shop for Asian snacks and goods.

ARTS & CULTURE

“in Pursuit of Venus [infected]” reimagines Pacific colonization 64-minute immersive art installation depicting colonization makes East Coast debut

BY MAGDALENA DEL VALLE SENIOR STAFF WRITER Three Polynesian women donning grass skirts and wearing flowers on their heads dance gracefully on a lush green field. An 18th-century European man in full military garb works on a desk by the waterfront. A mother crouches in the grass and comforts her young son, rocking him back and forth.

Created by multi-disciplinary artist Lisa Reihana, the 64-minute multimedia immersive art installation “in Pursuit of Venus [infected]” projects scenes of 18th-century European exploration and colonization in the Pacific on a 70-foot wall in the David Winton Bell Gallery in List Art Center. The installation made its East Coast debut Feb. 21 and will remain at the gallery until May 29. A public reception and celebration for Reihana will be held at the gallery April 29 at 6 p.m.

Images of Indigenous and European individuals scroll through the projection in an “imagined Tahitian landscape,” said Kate Kraczon, director of exhibitions and chief curator at the Brown Arts Institute and the David Winton Bell Gallery.

In the exhibit’s program, Reihana wrote that she seeks to “challenge the stereotypes that developed in those times and since” of the Pacific.

Through the installation, “the gaze of imperialism is turned back on itself with a speculative twist that disrupts notions of beauty, authenticity and history and uncovers myth-making,” she added.

The limited representation of Indigenous peoples in Joseph Dufour et Cie’s 19th-century wallpaper “Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique”

DANA RICHIE / HERALD

Lisa Reihana’s exhibit will be housed at the David Winton Bell Gallery until May 29. In the exhibit, “the gaze of imperialism is turned back on itself with a speculative twist that disrupts notions of beauty, authenticity and history and uncovers myth-making,” Reihana wrote in the program.

— French for “The Native Peoples of the Pacific Ocean” — led Reihana to create “in Pursuit of Venus [infected]” with a goal to “reimagine what could have actually happened while knowing that authenticity is never possible,” Kraczon said.

As an artist of Māori descent, Reihana was not satisfied with the original wallpaper’s representation of 24 groups of Māori, Pacific and First Nations peoples, most of whom were depicted in Greco-Roman clothing and with Europeanized features, she wrote in the program. When she was commissioned to create such a large piece, Reihanna chose to center an image from the background of the wallpaper — the death of Captain James Cook — and more aptly

portrayed the diversity of Indigenous communities.

“The fact that there’s always something going on in my periphery and I can’t keep track of everything at once definitely corresponds to how the cycles really did play out in history,” said Anthony Bishop-Gylys ’24, who attended the installation. “You can’t point to any one of them, but it’s multiple different things happening together.” “in Pursuit of Venus [infected]” has a beginning, middle and end but runs on a loop of 32-minute cycles with no end credits. In the first cycle, Cook is depicted as a man. In the second, he is depicted as a woman.

The piece included several other historical figures: Omai, a Raiatean

man who traveled to Europe and accompanied Cook on his third voyage; Tupaia, a Raiatean priest, navigator and translator; and Joseph Banks, an English botanist.

“Reihana has transformed these utopian depictions of Captain James Cook’s voyages into surreal vignettes of curiosity, caution, desire and predation,” Kraczon wrote in an introductory pamphlet to the piece.

The exhibition displays a hand-painted seaside background superimposed with images of dozens of actors and performers filmed on a green screen. The piece uses five different projectors and images overlapped and synched onto the projection.

“Not only do you have five channels

of video, you have multiple soundscapes that scroll alongside each vignette,” Kraczon explained. Viewers can hear distinct Pacific languages being spoken, the sounds of waves and animals native to Pacific regions, Hawaiian pahu drums and even Bach’s “The Art of the Fugue” during the projection.

After overlapping the video of the performers onto the hand-painted background, Reihana ensured that every individual had a shadow.

“It’s so impressive,” said Brianna Bridges ’24, who has been working three-hour shifts at the front desk of the Bell since the fall. “I (still) find myself seeing new things that I’ve never seen before.”

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

ACCEPTANCE FROM PAGE 1 about” being admitted because she had spent so much time on the application process and was “cautiously optimistic” while “still kind of nervous.”

Applicants were asked to answer two new supplementary essay prompts this year. One asked about a time when the applicant was challenged by a differing perspective, and the other asked applicants to discuss something that brings them joy.

Matteo Papadopoulos, from Birmingham, Michigan, wrote in an email to The Herald that his essay on perspective was about what he considered “to be the difference between music and noise.” Papadopoulos used this essay as a way of “reconciling” the “classical and experimental” sides of himself. His essay on joy discussed how his experiences living in Greece inspired his

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

passion for urban planning.

Gabriel Burstyn, from Skokie, Illinois, wrote about learning by “asking difficult questions” and “being the opposer in classroom discussions.”

Scott said she wrote about a conversation she had with a friend concerning the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Her dad is a police officer, so she had a totally different perspective on it,” she said. “I’m African American, so I have my own feelings about it that aren’t gonna change. … We’re still friends, but it made me realize why people have the opinions they do.”

Campbell wrote about how she likes to do “countdowns for things” in her essay on what brings her joy, while Lian focused on her love for fashion.

Reflecting on their feelings after being accepted, the students mentioned being relieved at the end of the college application process and excited about

KATHY WANG / HERALD

The SGA eliminated student group endorsements due to concerns over the ability to oversee endorsements of all candidates in each election.

3

their university prospects.

Papadopoulos wrote that he “was prepared for a rejection but hoping for a miracle” and that the minutes after opening his letter “were entirely a blur.”

After processing the news, he experienced “the weird feeling of being done with the whole college (application) process.”

Lian added she had to “restrain” herself from “skipping everywhere instead of walking.”

Speaking on what drew him to the University, Burstyn “thought the campus was beautiful” and said he “started to fall in love” with Brown more because of “the choices” available to him through the Open Curriculum. Campbell, Scott and Jimenez shared similar sentiments about the opportunities for academic freedom at Brown.

“One of the things that excites me about Brown is seeing all of the

diversity and different people,” Scott mentioned. “I’m used to being the only person of color in my higher-level classes and I’m just excited to meet other people like me.”

Papadopoulos wrote that he liked the “open curriculum, close student-instructor relationships (and) flexibility (in) academic exploration.” In terms of the broader Providence community, Papadopoulous was drawn to the city’s “strong queer community (and) arts culture.”

For Lian, Brown has been her “dream school since sophomore year.”

Many of the admitted students said that financial aid was their primary concern when it came to deciding on which institution to attend.

Most of the schools Scott was deciding between were strong academically, so making a decision to enroll was “now a matter of money.”

The University’s financial aid offer to Jimenez “wasn’t all that great (and) a little sobering,” he said. “I gotta see the money (from) everywhere.”

None of the interviewed admitted students felt that the COVID-19 pandemic had any significant impact on their application process, though Scott said “it kind of helped in a way because everyone was in the same boat.”

COVID-19 mainly changed “how prepared” Campbell felt about entering college, as the pandemic shifted her into online learning during her junior year.

Of the students who have committed, many said they were excited to meet new people and explore the campus.

“I’m just looking forward to being there,” Campbell said. “I’m just in a whirlwind of excitement.”

SGA FROM PAGE 1

class, said current UCS President Summer Dai ’22.

The candidacy requirements include 50 signatures, a candidate statement of no more than 250 words and a photo of the candidate, according to slides presented at the information session.

All candidate statements will be included in a schoolwide email sent at the beginning of the voting period, Cui said. She added that the SGA aims to maintain transparency by sending a list of approved candidates to all students running.

The open platform event is required for all presidential candidates for each branch and optional for everyone else,

according to CCB senior co-president Bree Zhang ’22. According to the handbook, the event allows participants “to explain and discuss their platform with students.”

The open platform event is “a really great opportunity for you to interact with (other) students and also with your fellow candidates,” Cui said.

The open platform event will take place April 12 in Sayles Hall.

Online voting will take place April 13 to April 15, and winning candidates will be announced April 18 on the steps of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center.

elections. The SGA will use an open platform for all three branches this spring in place of the traditional UCS and UFB debate.

Under the current elections timeline, prospective candidates can gather signatures and apply for candidacy up until April 10 at midnight, according to the SGA 2022 Elections Handbook, which was emailed to undergraduates.

While UCS and UFB candidates can get signatures from all undergraduate students, CCB candidates must obtain signatures only from students in their

CUBES3

VICTORIA YIN / HERALD

Cubes are all around us. That Rubik’s cube you have tucked away in your drawer, the sugar cubes Nanny would drop into her tea every afternoon and, most importantly, the cubic nature of the CIT. Because we all know everyone in there is a square! ;)

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

ARTS & CULTURE

Season 3 of ‘Servant’ captivates with secrets, cinematography Show keeps viewers in suspense, leaving questions with each installment

BY RYA VALLABHANENI SENIOR STAFF WRITER This year, M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller series “Servant” returned to Apple TV in an episodic fashion. Starting in late January, segments of the show’s third season were released every week, culminating in a shocking finale at the end of March. Viewers followed as the show’s plot revealed itself piece by piece in a wait that never quite ended, leaving viewers with questions even after the last episode.

“Servant” follows the story of Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), who has been hired as a nanny by Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell) for their son, Jericho (Julius Belford). Hailing from a cult in Wisconsin, Leanne is neither a normal girl nor is she in a normal situation.

Jericho actually passed away, and it is revealed that Leanne has been brought to watch over a therapeutic doll which the Turners have been parenting in his place. Leanne’s arrival, however, flips this already unusual situation up-

WELLNESS FROM PAGE 1 the efforts of the wellness community.”

This year, students in Wellness were able to participate in 33 wellness-related programs, including a walking club, journaling night and an open dance studio, Purdy noted.

Current resident Lila Zimbalist ’23 said that while many of these offerings for Wellness residents have been helpful, they are difficult to share with the larger Brown residential community.

But, according to Purdy, BWell has additional wellness programming available to community members outside of Wellness as well. “We have many University partners we collaborate with to make wellness programming accessible and available throughout campus,” she wrote.

Still, according to current resident

side down: when she arrives, the doll is transformed into a real baby — and not just any baby, but Jericho himself.

Throughout the show’s first two seasons, much of the show focuses on Leanne’s defiance of her former cult, the Church of the Lesser Saints, who do not approve of her relationship with Dorothy and Sean. At the end of the second season, Leanne makes her final break from the group when she murderers her Aunt Josephine. In that same episode, viewers also learn that Jericho tragically died after being forgotten by his mother in a hot car all day, a memory Dorothy has blocked out entirely.

Despite the chaos of previous seasons, the Turner family takes an unexpected return to traditional and unassuming domestic life during the third season. Dorothy looks to make friends for Jericho, her brother Julian (Rupert Grint) has taken to cycling upon his return from rehab and Sean is topping his pizza with mostarda, per usual.

Leanne is the only member of the Turner household who seems unable to get past the events of the previous seasons, spending the entire first half of the season hiding in the family’s brownstone. Afraid that the cult will return for her, she adopts a wide mistrust for strangers.

But after Leanne discovers that a

group of homeless children Sean feeds in the park are actually dissidents of her former cult, she gains a newfound self-assurance as she endeavors to help them escape.

Dorothy, who is wary of this new Leanne, begins to fear for Jericho’s safety.

She attempts to send Leanne away to dance camp, and, when that fails, tries to institutionalize her. When Leanne remains insistent on staying, Dorothy decides that she will leave instead.

As is usual for the franchise, this new season of “Servant” raised more questions than it answered. When, for example, is Dorothy going to finally remember her son’s death? Is Leanne, with her newfound authority, going to force Dorothy to face the truth, or is she still looking to protect her? And how exactly did Jericho return from the dead?

The show’s acting has been phenomenal since the beginning, but with each passing episode the actors bring additional layers to life. Free shows her ability to simultaneously play a shy, pious girl in addition to an assertive young woman. Ambrose is a stunning madwoman and Kebbell is impossibly likable — comedically normal despite the traumatic situation unfolding around him. Grint provides the show with a similar levity, but can still masterfully switch to self-criticism when

Chloe Rosenkranz ’23, there is little accountability for Wellness residents to attend programming in the building.

“There are events here every so often,” she said. “But I don’t really think that there’s anything keeping anyone accountable to doing the things they said that they would do. When there’s nothing making you show up (to these events), you probably won’t show up.”

“Last semester, they brought over one of the instructors from the Nelson … and they had two free (fitness) classes a week,” she said. “I was the only person that showed up to it every week, so then they canceled it.”

This year, over 1,600 students applied to Wellness, Purdy noted. Students were selected by University graduate and medical students hired by the Office of Residential Life and BWell.

Rosenkranz suggested that the

popularity of Wellness comes from the quality of the building itself rather than its programming.

“If they had this program in any other building, I don’t think it would be as popular,” Rosenkranz said. “It really is because of the building. If it were held in any other dorm that wasn’t as nice I don’t think you’d have as many people apply.”

Some students questioned the effectiveness of the Wellness application.

The application “definitely has leading questions in regards to it asking you about your wellness practices,” said current resident Laura Xu ’23. “There’s definitely room for embellishment in your answers.”

While Zimbalist noted that the Wellness application encourages students to share what they learn in the program with other residential com-

CA L E N DA R

COURTESY OF APPLE TV

Apple TV renewed “Servant” for its fourth season, which creator M. Night Shyamalan said will be its last. necessary.

To complement its brilliant cast, “Servant” uses some of the most intriguing cinematography found in television today. Each shot is a piece of art. Careful attention is paid to objects, such as a fork or a glass of wine, and the details of each character, like Leanne’s long hair or Jericho’s toes. Many conversations are filmed entirely at the facial level, with the camera zooming in on one person at a time, centering the characters in each scene.

“Servant” also skillfully conveys constant contrast, with shots of Sean’s delicious cooking followed immediately by something disgusting like a bug or rodent lurking within the house. The

effect is both engrossing and strangely beautiful.

Apple TV has renewed “Servant” for a fourth season, but Shyamalan plans for this to be its last. The choice is an admirable one, as the series really does have it all: fantastic acting, one-of-akind cinematography, an unpinnable plotline and the ability to divulge its secrets only in pieces, keeping viewers in barely-endurable suspense. But these admirable traits do not mean the show has to be dragged out over ten seasons.

Rather, the concentration of Leanne and the Turner family’s story in forty episodes will keep it from growing stale.

“Servant,” as a result, might go down as one of Shyalaman’s best works yet.

JULIA GROSSMAN / HERALD

Wellness seeks to bring programming centered around peer education and community collaboration to its residential community. munities, she “hasn’t really seen that happening.”

“There’s a lot of good perks,” Zimbalist said. “During finals week in the fall, they dropped off wellness care packages. For the people living (in Wellness), they do a good job of having events.” But these offerings are confined to the dorm, she added.

“It’s really nice to have access to these resources and activities,” Xu added. “But I do feel like since Wellness is geographically really far from everything else on campus, it’s probably hard for the rest of the student population to access those resources.”

“It does feel very targeted toward a very small population,” she said.

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Individuals who traveled over spring recess (March 26 - April 3) must take a rapid test the day they return to campus and a second test two days later.

*APPROXIMATE

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | POST-

post-

APR 8 — VOL 29 — ISSUE 7

FEATURE

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See Full Issue: ISSUU.COM/POSTMAGAZINEBDH

NARRATIVE

At CVS on Thayer St.

a trip down shampoo lane

by Catherine Kasparyan I stand in the haircare aisle for six minutes.

There are other customers near me, so I press myself to one side, sheepishly smiling at them as they squeeze past me in the narrow aisle. They really should’ve designed the aisles better: They’re not quite large enough for two people to walk by each other without one twisting their body sideways in order to make it through.

The interruptions and awkward shuffling distract me from the task at hand. I look across the shelves again and then back down to my phone. And then back to the shelves. And back down to my phone again. then, I’m trapped here in my indecision ...

ARTS & CULTURE

Bicoastal Being

on human mobility, home, and attachment

Naruto and The Hero’s Journey Re: Re-Finding Fantasy

by Adi Thatai

by Ellyse Givens illustrated by John Gendron I saw this TikTok that said the trip from college back to your hometown is like a “portal between two

Within this town of palm trees and diamondhued water, I live a different life than I do at Brown.

different worlds.” To me, flying from Brown back home to San Diego, the plane feels like a portal between two different lives. I peer over the sleeping bodies

I’m not a different person—I remain situated in my same body—yet I inhabit, respond to, and draw from

It’s been a year since you wrote Re-Finding Fantasy, that piece about reclaiming your love for

a different external world. At home in San Diego, I’m a daughter, a neighbor, a sister, a little girl who somehow grew up before onlookers had a chance to

speculative fiction after re-reading your favorite fantasy story, Eragon from The Inheritance Cycle. You have a lot of exciting stuff in front of

blink. I’m a homebody. I make oatmeal in specific ceramic bowls; I sleep within the same duvet set that I have for the last five years; I watch The Bachelor

you. You’re going to be an uncle soon, and baby Lily will be the most adorable. You’re going to split your summer between San Francisco and

on Mondays. I’m the girl behind the front desk of the local yoga studio, the ‘runner’ who stops every 5 minutes to take pictures of the coast. I look through

Providence, and you’re going to visit Stockholm at the end. You’re going to get your ears pierced, get closer to some lovely people, and take some

my portal’s window, at the tiny Lego town ...

really rewarding classes. I don’t want to make you nervous, but you also have a lot of pain in front of you. Kanval Uncle is in the hospital, Daadi falls

of my fellow passengers out the window, and see the faint outline of the coast slowly materialize from the fogginess of the clouds. We sink further, and suddenly I can see the city lights—the tiny cars scurrying about like insects, the miniature houses arranged in perfectly rectangular patterns, their yellow lights fading and reigniting. When I was a little girl, this was my favorite part of the flight, moments before you land—when the world looks like a tiny Lego town.

“What do you mean active service? Oh, acts of service?"

“It’s giving goo goo, it’s giving ga ga. It’s giving doo doo, it’s giving dada… ISM!” “They’re like, ‘Do you like green eggs and ham?’

And I’m like, ‘No, I’m kosher.’”

“I felt the wonder and reverence and fear and veneration as the scope of the universe crashed over me like a wave. I turned to my sister and said the only thing that could begin to describe the ecstasy churning inside of me: ‘I feel so… small.’”

— Adi Thatai, “The More Loving One” 03.19.21

“A strangely calculated math equation, intent on delivering as much “happiness” as possible: Nintendo DSi + Mario Kart DS + struggling college student = a direct path to instant paradise. But, of course, it’s not that simple.”

—Danielle Emerson, “I Bought a Used Nintendo DSi” 03.13.20

post–

Want to be involved?

Email: kyoko_leaman@brown.edu!

Dear Adi,

and her dementia gets worse, ...

LIFEST YLE

The Ultimate Spring Music Compilation

four playlists to keep on repeat

by Olivia Cohen Last October, post- brought you this playlist roundup to suit all of your fall music needs. But so much has happened since then: a deer has broken and entered into MoChamp lounge, everyone and their lab partner have gotten COVID-19, mask mandates have been lifted, record-breaking blizzards have hit Providence, and you have scrolled through dozens of Instagram photo dumps of spring break trips ...

April 8, 2022

5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

6

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

Levine ’23: Disney and Marvel films promote anti-progressive narratives In a famous column from a couple of years ago, Martin Scorsese explained his viral Empire magazine interview where he said that Marvel movies aren’t cinema. “Nothing is at risk,” he wrote about the franchise. “The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.” He’s right, of course. The most recent Oscars — a boring slog that cut important categories like editing and production design in order to give a fan-voted award to a singular moment from Zach Snyder’s Justice League — only reinforced the growing sensation that Hollywood cinema as an art form is practically a relic of the past.

But what is particularly sinister about the ascension of Marvel movies and Disney blockbusters is their cultural dominance paired with their political worldview. Despite their superficial liberal window-dressing, these movies actively antagonize progressive structural change through depicting villains that aim to upset the status quo. The day is saved by heroes usurping these villains and ascending to positions of power. In short, the protagonists are heroic because they reinforce the system as it already exists.

Movies like The Lion King, Aladdin and Black Panther spend most of their runtime exposing the flaws of their political systems: Absolute monarchies are violent and unjust and poverty lies in direct opposition to freedom.

But all we are offered in the climatic resolution of these films is the victory of a good king over a bad king — merely a balm that fails to rectify deeper social problems in these fictional societies. In this reality, a good king is not only possible, but the best outcome we can hope for.

By vesting trust in benevolent monarchs, these movies cannot imagine a world in which a different, more democratic, system may order our lives.

With the recent rise of the #girlboss trend, in a calibrated effort to satisfy liberal audiences, Disney now passes the power from a bad king to a good queen. See the live action Aladdin, which made efforts to rectify its original version’s problematic elements not by altering any of the original film’s rampant and racist Orientalism, but by giving Jasmine

the crown at the film’s conclusion. This posits that the problems with Agrabah as a society were never the sultan as a political entity or the poverty that imprisoned Aladdin in an unfulfilling and alienating life of crime. It was Jafar — the individual — and male rulers more generally who were at fault. As soon as a woman wields the same absolute power, the kingdom can become a liberal utopia despite being devoid of democracy.

structive capability of a nuclear power become a government-regulated entity? Of course not.

Because the government is bad and billionaire weapons contractors are good, the movie implies.

In Spider-Man: Far From Home, the day is saved when thousands of death drones are taken from the bad guy and instead controlled by the good guy — you know, the sixteen-year-old white kid from Queens. This does not seem co-

“If these movies wanted their social critique to address society’s deep, systemic problems, Disney would have to comprehensively tackle class inequality or imperialism.”

Not every movie has to say something about society and how it should be organized; in fact, more movies attempt this than are actually equipped to. But superhero narratives have long been deliberate metaphors for social problems. The villain represents a social ill plaguing society, and our hero stands for the solution, whether it be truth or technofascism. Yet recent blockbuster iterations of superhero stories have offered a serious understanding of good and evil that is meant to resonate with audiences paired with an insincere effort to structurally critique society.

If these movies wanted their social critique to address society’s deep, systemic problems, Disney would have to comprehensively tackle class inequality or imperialism. And it can’t because it actively contributes to those problems in the real world. So instead their films explore a series of political themes that feel out of touch, oversimplified and unsophisticated. A political reading of Thanos might suggest that he is an eco-fascist eugenicist. In Captain America: Civil War, the gang takes on libertarianism. Should a vigilante force with the de-

incidental considering the Pentagon’s relationship with Marvel. The Department of Defense has partially funded multiple Marvel projects, exercising influence over Marvel scripts in exchange for the studio’s free use of their equipment.

So I will do the unthinkable and counter Martin Scorsese: It is untrue that “nothing is at risk.” Yes, emotionally, we know exactly what will happen, as the movie is just a set piece for a revolving collection of the same tropes. But these movies, both on the level of story and as a commodity entangled with the military industrial complex, hawk a harmful political modality. I’m not asking for a neat or obvious moral conclusion to be reached in the form of a film; none of us want to be preached to, and that rarely results in good art anyway. But Marvel left artistic value at the door long ago. I only want us to recognize these movies for what they are, which is not only inherently political but intensely anti-progressive.

There are artistic alternatives when exploring political themes (even if they are still funded by unethical corporations) — to put it sim-

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ply, there are better movies. Dune is all about a colonized planet changing hands from one imperial house to another. The new rulers of House Atreides, including our young hero, Paul, are capable and try their best to be benevolent.

What makes Dune so compelling as an anti-imperialist narrative is precisely that the imperialists are charismatic but fallible. It only further sharpens the critique of the system to reject the merits of benevolent-seeming imperialists.

The antagonists and previous colonizers of Arrakis, the Harkonnens, are not enemies of the Atreides’ because the two oppose each other on any moral grounds — the Atreides have no plans to decolonize Arrakis or otherwise disrupt the trade of its natural resources. Both houses simply want control over the same lucrative territory.

Or take Succession, in which four siblings vie for their sadistic father’s favor in the hope of succeeding him as CEO of a multibillion dollar media empire. There is no hero in this world of congressional hearings and corporate betrayals, a world where five people in a hotel room handpick the Republican presidential candidate. If we find ourselves rooting for any of these people, it implicates us perhaps more than the characters themselves. By thwarting the narrative structure of good versus evil, Succession acknowledges that it is the hierarchy of power itself that is harmful, and that no justice will be done if power simply transfers from one to another. That this system of power can no longer justify its own existence is something the Disney fodder continually proves but cannot explicitly acknowledge in its films. That is because Disney represents the king pitching our own flawed society back to us, hoping that we buy in.

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FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

7

Weinstein: The case for studying literature at Brown One of the few virtues of being old is having a personal sense of history. If I look back in time, it jumps out at me that no one needed to make the case for literature in the past because it was self-evident that literature was alive and well in the Brown curriculum: lots of enrollments, lots of concentrators.

Those days are over. Enrollments in comparative literature courses have dropped off at Brown, as they have across the country. The old “liberal arts” model is fighting for its life, given the enormous prestige of the STEM fields and the understandable worry on students’ minds that a literature concentration might be an iffy proposition in terms of getting a job or eventually paying off one’s student debt. There are major headwinds against spending lots of time reading novels and poems.

Recently I find myself wrestling ever more with the question: Why literature? At the end of one’s career, one is plagued by just such existential questions, since they bear on an entire lifetime in the trenches, and oddly enough, we rarely answer them. To be sure, we have reams of courses dealing with cultures ancient and modern spread across the University, but have we dealt with the core issue: What do you actually learn in a literature course? I assign novels and poems and plays, and my students read those novels and poems and plays. What kind of takeaway is actually involved? And how does this stack up over the course of time?

When I myself, now an old man, reflect back on the courses that meant most to me as student, many decades ago, what is it that has stuck with me, has added not only to what I know but also to who I am?

It has always amazed me that we professors

are in the dark about what we have “achieved” in our classes. Shockingly, there is very little longitudinal feedback. Yes, one gets the odd email or letter from former students, but there is no actual bookkeeping of this stripe. Why doesn’t the University contact its alums, asking them every five or 10 years, “What did you

blurrier picture of human contours than other folks do, and a stronger sense that identity is a more mobile and promiscuous item than we often realize. Further, my identity as a twin has shaped my thinking when it comes to reading literature. I’m convinced that you do not read a novel or poem in remotely the same way you

“We go to literature, not because we’re professors or students, but because the important books shine a unique beam on human behavior, thought and feeling.”

learn in your concentration at Brown?” I do realize that there are alumni questionnaires which pose these questions, but my sights are on the existential as well as the informational issues. “What has your concentration meant to you?” is the harder, trickier question. My guess is that students would find it hard to give substantive answers to such queries. Literature offerings, in particular, are distinctly not “how to” or “problem solving” courses: What ends do they serve?

As an identical twin — only our closest friends in school could distinguish between Arnold and Philip Weinstein — I have a much

read math or physics or economics — or even history or philosophy. It will sound loopy, but I believe we read literature to become other.

After all, reading, say, Sophocles or the Brontës or Kafka or Morrison entails “inhabiting” — for the duration of the reading experience — those characters’ minds and hearts. No other field asks or even permits you to do this.

Now, I am well aware that this last paragraph will be rejected — likely laughed at — by most of my colleagues in Brown’s literature departments. If anything, today’s professional model urges objectivity — indeed distance — as central to our negotiations with the texts

we read. To “identify” with the text is usually thought of as the trap laid for unsophisticated readers. The many schools of criticism that are represented at major universities — focusing on crucial issues of race, class and gender in their older and newer formulations, all keyed to operations of power and ideology that help shape subjectivity itself — are often suspicious of “reader identification.” So, I’m definitely the odd man out on this front. Nonetheless, I won’t back off.

Let me stir the pot even further by facing the bigger question behind all your choices at Brown, pointing to the real elephant who’s been in the room along: What’s in it for you?

After all, people at Brown University have enough on their plates as is without being saddled with pious injunctions to read, read, read . . . literature. What makes it worth doing? I’ll answer that with a question I asked a friend who had devoted her entire life to doing programs on Shakespeare. My question: How much do you know about Shakespeare? Her answer: not as much as he knows about me. Not as much as he knows about me. Chew on this a little. We go to literature, not because we’re professors or students, but because the important books shine a unique beam on human behavior, thought and feeling. Reading these books adds something unique not only to our database but to our actual identity. For we’re never through discovering who we are.

Arnold Weinstein can be reached at arnold_weinstein@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

Nyman ’23: We should start preparing for a rise in climate anxiety It’s almost impossible to tune into the news these days without being forced to reckon with humanity’s role in perpetuating the climate crisis. Believe me, I don’t like hearing about my undeniable personal contribution to the degradation of our planet any more than the next person — yet, the spread of such information can be necessary to catalyze change. Unfortunately, for some, being faced with this data can be mentally debilitating, spurring climate anxiety: a psychological disorder connected to an individual’s concern about environmental calamity. As global temperatures rise and conditions worsen, humanity’s mental state is beginning to feel the heat. It has never been more important to distinguish healthy concern about our planet from chronic anxiety.

The present and future state of our environment presents significant cause for worry. Scientists estimate that the upper limit of warming that the planet could sustain is 2 degrees Celsius. Despite this fact, today’s policies currently have the world on track for a more than 3 degree rise in temperature.

In the forms of wildfires, flooding and eroding coastlines, every slight increase in temperature will bring more climate devastation than the last, irreversibly altering life as we know it. A 2021 report in The Lancet, a medical journal, went so far as to state that “climate change will become the defining narrative of human health” — and for good reason.

Temperatures have only risen a single degree since pre-industrial times, and public health is already suffering in countless ways. For example, a study in Nature Climate Change revealed that 37% of heat-related deaths can already be attributed to climate change. Rising extreme temperatures also significantly heighten the risk of maternal hospitalization during pregnancy.

In short, there is a well-established discourse surrounding the detrimental physical health effects of our rapidly changing climate.

However, the discussion of climate change’s impacts on mental health is still in its nascent stages.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the United States, impacting 18.1% of the population annually.

Genetics, life events and brain chemistry are the most typical culprits for anxiety dis-

growing anxieties have prompted some to seek therapy. For example, Caroline Wiese — an 18-year-old who recently began seeing a climate therapist — sought out help because her awareness of climate change repeatedly sent her into “multi-day panic episodes” that interfered with her life. Wiese cited not being able to function and needing therapy to soothe her

“It has never been more important to distinguish healthy worry about our planet from chronic concern.”

orders, but a new cause is on the rise: our changing climate. Rather than promoting productivity and prompting individuals to foster positive environmental change, the growing onslaught of climate news has begun to trigger debilitating symptoms such as panic attacks, loss of appetite, insomnia and obsessive thinking for those suffering from climate anxiety. The condition isn’t a healthy level of worry that spurs fruitful action; instead, it’s a psychological disorder that is increasingly wreaking havoc on the American population.

Efforts to clinically address climate anxiety are expanding, even prompting the appearance of professional certification programs in climate psychology. Such developments are more than warranted — a new study by the American Psychiatric Association found that 55% of people are anxious about climate change’s impact on their mental health. Another study found that 45% of survey respondents’ daily lives are negatively affected by climate change. These

daily anxiety.

Climate anxiety presents a special challenge because it is different from generalized anxiety in terms of its potential treatments.

While there are many effective treatments for generalized anxiety disorder, those same treatments may be ineffective for patients suffering from climate anxiety. Those seeking to alleviate their climate anxiety can take advantage of traditional anxiety lifestyle and home remedies, such as keeping active, maintaining a healthy diet and getting regular sleep. However, one popular anxiety treatment — talking with a therapist — may not be viable, as some experts are still unprepared to respond to this relatively novel form of anxiety. Some patients have voiced concerns after trying to discuss their climate anxieties with long-time therapists, feeling that mental health professionals dismissed their fears as “exaggerated” or assumed they were projecting anxieties from other points in their lives onto climate change. Caroline Hickman, a

psychotherapist and climate psychologist at the University of Bath, does not think this gap in anxiety therapy can be closed simply with more training. Many therapists cannot yet adequately discuss climate anxiety, as discussions with patients can stir up feelings of helplessness and anxiety for therapists themselves, according to Hickman. This nuanced difference between generalized and climate anxiety calls for novel treatments to be developed for this growing disorder.

When one thinks about the consequences of climate change, images of a worsening environment such as wildfires and floods come to mind. Yet, as stated by the CEO of the American Psychiatric Association, “the public … is beginning to understand the impact (global warming) has on overall health and mental health.” In other words, science is beginning to realize that climate change is a mental stressor as much as a physical one.

With rising seas and increasing temperatures, concern about the fate of our planet is essential in order to curb a devastating fate. However, it is vital to remember that while a bit of worry is healthy, it must not overwhelm us. With cases of climate anxiety on the rise, two things are crucial. First, therapists should pursue climate psychology training in order to best serve their clients who are struggling with the condition and seeking help. Second, society must collectively strive to lessen its impact on the planet — calling on policymakers and corporations to take a stand against an unlivable future. With these solutions working hand-in-hand, hopefully humanity can mitigate and adapt to the burden of climate anxiety.

Brooke Nyman ’23 can be reached at brooke_nyman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

8

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Klein, Orlowski-Yang discuss impact of social media on democracy

Explaining the effects of machine learning algorithms, Orlowski-Yang offered the metaphor of a grocery store with machine learning capabilities. If the store tracked not just his purchasing habits — heavy on vegetables — but also the items he eyed without purchasing such as cookies and ice cream, it would respond in the items it then chose to show him. Eventually, it would show him a “lot of ice cream and cookies,” he said.

“I will remove from my internalized experience and worldview the fact that vegetables exist,” he said. “Who the hell eats vegetables?”

Each user on social networks, he said, gets their own “personalized, custom feed” — with many including misinformation introduced by user-generated content.

“Each and every one of us is drifting off in our own direction,” Orlowski-Yang said. “Maybe a bunch of us are drifting in the same direction.”

As that drift occurs, users get sepa-

rated from each other: Their ideas and thoughts become “unique, distant and separate” from people who go different directions, he added.

“We have lost that ability to even relate to that family member you see at Thanksgiving,” Orlowski-Yang said.

“You’re like, what are they seeing? What are they reading?”

Politicians, too, have fallen victim to that drift, Orlowski-Yang added. As the viewpoints that users see get “slightly more extreme” over time, politicians worry that they might also be replaced by “somebody more extreme.”

“We’re only a decade into this experiment. What is it going to look like another decade from now?” he said. “It has me really worried.”

But while Klein shared concerns about social media, he qualified them with uncertainty. “I don’t know what level of threat or non-threat social media is to democracy,” he said.

Democracy’s problems, Klein argued, are not isolated. Considering the

effect of social media on democracy “pretends democracy is a thing being acted on,” he said. In reality, “there’s a problem with the political system.”

That problem surrounds the difficulty of making policy in Congress, he said. When political fights result in tangible policy outcomes, they tend to have a depolarizing effect: The Affordable Care Act and the Bush-era tax cuts, he noted, saw significant jumps in popularity once they went into effect and lost their political connotations.

But the political system has ground to a near halt, Klein said. “When you can’t pass policy, you build (politics) over fights about symbolism and status,” he noted.

And as passing policy has become vexing, “constant outrages and novelty that the algorithms are finding” have filled the “hole” in the news cycle, Klein said. The media then amplifies those outrages, raising “the temperature on politics, … putting the system under a lot of stress.”

Still, he added that the “level of intensity” in politics has gone up as a result of social media, which aims to consume attention by “elicit(ing) a certain emotional energy.” The small share of social media users who consume political content can rally around increasingly extreme candidates, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Klein said.

In the question-and-answer portion of the event, Klein noted that while more extreme Republicans who engage with social media aren’t necessarily common, they have distracted from an increasingly radicalized median.

“The extreme nuts have made a

was not only the work itself and taking the work at face value, but also what was the story of the artists,” she added.

“We wanted this to be a crafted expression of existence that considers the folks who aren’t normally considered deserving of taking space … We denied very few artists, and most of it was due to (spatial) limitation.”

Helping bring the co-curators’ vision to life were the project’s two design leads, Zoë Pulley and Jada Akoto, both RISD students, along with faculty advisor Shiraz Gallab, an assistant professor of graphic design at RISD. “I joined the team in November of 2021 and essentially was working very closely with Jada to come up with the overall identity of the show,” Pulley said. She and Akoto worked together to build out the exhibition’s branding

based on an early logo designed by Nailah Golden, another RISD graduate.

The pair created the exhibition’s design collateral, including the web design, posters and merchandise, along with the labels and tags placed next to the art hung in the gallery, Pulley explained.

In addition, Akoto and Pulley held an active role in designing the physical layout of the gallery, a process Pulley explained was informed by the project’s overall ethos of inclusivity.

“It was really important when we were working with Ray and Melaine (to figure out) how they envisioned pieces looking in the space,” Pulley said. “We were just making sure that all types of artists were represented as well as making sure that there were pieces that were close to one another that we felt were in conversation with each other.”

“As designers,” Akoto said, “we pretty much got free rein to do what we wanted in the space, which I think was really fun. We wanted to keep that emotion but also keep it very simple.”

The team hopes that the Biennial will run every other year, Ferdinand-King explained. In the off years, it aims to produce a catalog of the previous show’s works and artists which will serve as both a “process book and index,” according to Pulley.

“It felt like a blessing because we all came together by different means and ended up still all working really, really wonderfully together,” Pulley said.

“We all came in knowing our skillset and running with that, putting it all on the table.”

While Ferdinand-King is still a fourth-year PhD student and will be

New York Times columnist, director of “The Social Dilemma” speak at Janus Forum

BY WILL KUBZANSKY UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR Social media, Ezra Klein and Jeff Orlowski-Yang agreed, has created many problems. It incentivizes content that makes users “really mad or really excited” and dials up the “intensity” of American politics, Klein said. Social media’s machine learning algorithms, Orlowski-Yang noted, isolate users from viewpoints they do not share.

But at a Thursday night lecture, Klein, a New York Times columnist and co-founder of Vox, offered less certainty than Orlowski-Yang, the director of the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” about the democratic implications of social media.

Organized by the Political Theory Project, the lecture, titled “Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy?” is part of the center’s Janus Forum series which aims to “engage contrasting perspectives simultaneously,” according to the PTP’s website. Klein and Orlowski-Yang’s perspectives contrasted in how definitive they were.

Orlowski-Yang offered a scathing critique of social media that defined it as an existential threat to democracy.

“I fundamentally believe that social media is in direct conflict with our democracy,” he said. “It’s one or the other.”

EXHIBITION FROM PAGE 1 done virtual exhibitions during the pandemic, but this was Ferdinand-King’s first physical installation.

“Rey, with an arts background, has a very traditional and more orthodox approach,” Ferdinand-King said. “He favored very technically strong artistic production, while I was very much interested in the more imaginative and radical aspects of what art potentially could be.”

Under the guiding theme of “new beginnings,” the team featured the works of artists ranging from Brown and RISD students to Providence community members without formal training to formerly-incarcerated individuals, Ferdinand-King said.

“One thing that became a priority

WILL KUBZANSKY / HERALD

Ezra Klein and Jeff Orlowski-Yang agree that social media poses a danger to democracy, but they do not agree on that danger’s extent.

bunch of other nuts look normal,” he said, pointing to votes by the majority of House Republicans to not certify the 2020 election.

“Pulling numbers out of thin air — the mean intensity of American politics was a four before,” Klein said. “And now it’s a 7.5. When things get worse, it becomes a 10 or an 11. The whole system is under constant high-stakes conditions.”

Orlowski-Yang said he was hopeful about the political system “starting to wake up to the way this technology is designed.”

In an interview with The Herald, he noted that the conversation in Washington has changed: While the earliest Senate hearings about social media consisted of lawmakers’ asking Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook makes money, the “tone has completely shifted.”

At the event, Klein noted that one important regulation potentially could consist of “wall(ing) off” social media for children. But in an interview with The Herald, Klein noted that he was unsure if a policy solution — such as taking anti-trust action or addressing who is liable for what is said on social media — could solve its problems.

“It’s a really hard topic,” he said. “I think the level of solidity in our understanding is pretty low.”

Chaelin Jung ’23, a “religious” listener of Klein’s podcast for the Times, “The Ezra Klein Show,” said that the event made her reconsider the way she’ll use social media.

“It made me do a little bit of introspection about how I engage with social media,” she said. “Maybe I’ll go on a social media fast.”

able to see through future iterations of the exhibit, most of her colleagues will be graduating before the next showing planned for 2024, she said. “I’ll be spearheading the next Biennial, but with a new team — hopefully people who can take it on after I (leave) because I’m anticipated to graduate in 2024,” she added.

After multiple years of work on the project, Ferdinand-King considers the overwhelming support the exhibition received “the biggest triumph.”

“This was a dream that came to fruition. … People came (to the exhibit) and said they really felt seen,” Ferdinand-King said. “Certain materials that are very familiar to the Black experience actually (were) given a spotlight in a way that other people haven’t seen or experienced before.”