Issuu

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

VOLUME CLVII, ISSUE 25

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

UNIVERSITY NEWS

First woman Ivy League daily EIC reflects

Legacy of Women of Brown United revisted, decades later

Beverly Hodgson recounts lessons learned, lifelong friendships

Group led discussions on abortion, women faculty pay, women’s studies on campus

BY KATHY WANG SENIOR STAFF WRITER

BY WILL KUBZANSKY & KATY PICKENS SECTION EDITORS

When Beverly Hodgson ’70 became editor-in-chief of The Brown Daily Herald in 1969, she made national headlines as the “First Woman Editor of (an) Ivy League Daily.” But there’s more to this story than Hodgson’s title. She was a leading force among a group of women who helped bring about an era of rapid change at both the University and The Herald.

Applying to Brown as “a bit of a maverick” Growing up in Bristol, Rhode Island, Hodgson used to bike to the Haffenreffer Museum and meet up with University graduate students “who thought the local kids were sort of fun,” she recalled. “It gave me the idea

COURTESY OF BEVERLY HODGSON

In 1966, when Hodgson started her first year at Brown, there were 750 male students and 250 female students. that Brown would be in my future.” Indeed, Brown was in her future. Applying for admission at a private

university made Hodgson “a bit of a

SEE EIC PAGE 12

When students returned to College Hill in the fall of 1970, they quickly encountered fliers asking a list of questions. “Does it bother you that the secretaries at Pembroke earn less than the secretaries at Brown?” “Have you ever wondered why only 8% of the faculty is female even though 53% of the population is female (and 30% of the graduate school)?” The bills, posted by Beverley Edwards of the Chaplain’s Office, advertised a meeting on September 24, 1970 in Alumnae Hall. While previous women’s meetings featured small groups in Pembroke lounges, that meeting marked a vast expansion of feminist

organizing on campus, forming what would become the activist group Women of Brown United. Over 100 women — faculty, staff, undergraduates and graduates — attended that meeting, including Mimi Pichey ’72, who went on to compile a comprehensive history of WBU. “People came back to campus that fall with renewed vigor,” Pichey said. The fliers were printed on the heels of the Women’s Strike for Equality in New York, which drew attendance of 50,000 women in August 1970. And on campus, activists called for educational reform, racial equity, gay rights and the end of the Vietnam War, Pichey added. “It was this incredibly fraught time in the nation, similar to what we are living through now,” said Mary Murphy, Pembroke Center archivist. WBU, Pichey said, quickly became the voice of undergraduate women on campus outside of the Pembroke College administrative structure. Pichey left the first meeting “ex-

SEE ACTIVIST PAGE 8

UNIVERSITY NEWS

SPORTS

U. announces ‘Race, Power and Privilege’ designation

Women’s sports leaders create community

Course designation replaces DIAP to more closely address issues of race, inequality BY QUINN SEIDENMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER The College Curriculum Council approved a new curricular designation, “Race, Power and Privilege,” which will be implemented for courses beginning in the Summer 2022 term, according to a March 16 Today@ Brown announcement. Replacing the University’s previously instituted “DIAP Courses: Race, Gender and Inequality” course designation, the RPP designation aims to more narrowly “highlight the University’s commitment to the study of race, racial formations, inequality and social justice,” the University’s announcement stated. Many of the criteria and courses will be the same between the DIAP and RPP designations, but the naming of the designation is crucial to the University’s aim to address in-

equalities, wrote Besenia Rodriguez ’00, deputy dean of the College for curriculum and co-curriculum. Rodriguez served on the 2016 Task Force to consider the efficacy of Brown’s curriculum in providing students with opportunities to engage with issues of race and power, and she chaired the 2020-21 Working Group on Diversity in the Undergraduate Curriculum. The RPP designation was originally recommended by the 2016 Task Force on Diversity in the Curriculum with the goal to “more accurately reflect the institutional priorities delineated” in Building on Distinction, Brown’s 2013 strategic plan, and the 2016 DIAP action plan, according to the 2016 DIAP report. In addition to recommending the implementation of the RPP designation, the 2016 Task Force Report also called for reconvening a committee in three years to “evaluate the progress made on the recommendations.” At the time, the CCC supported the Task Force’s new definition of the curricular designation but decided on the “DIAP Courses: Race, Gender and

SEE RPP PAGE 11

Members of women’s water polo, track, crew teams speak on empowerment in sports

For Emily Kompelien ’22, captain of the women’s track distance team, fully dedicating herself to her sport can be challenging at times. The task is made easier, though, with her teammates holding “each other to be their best athletic selves” and giving each other support, she said. The Herald spoke to four women who lead varsity spring teams at the University about how a sense of community motivates their teams, drives their love for their sports and creates support systems both in and out of competition. Kompelien explained that while each of her team members are training for their own event, they always work together when it comes to meets. Similarly, a sense of individual performance complements the collective teamwork within women’s crew, according to Bridget O’Callahan ’22,

University News University News Sports Elena Shih delivers the annual gender and sexuality lecture Thursday Page 2

New Brook Street dorm will be completed by fall 2023 Page 3

i.is

BY ELYSEE BARAKETT STAFF WRTIER

Men’s and women’s swim and dive teams finish record-breaking seasons Page 10

É i

SIMONE STRAUS / HERALD

co-captain of women’s crew. When you’re on the rowing machine, crew can feel like an individual sport, she explained. “But then when we’re actually racing, you’re in a boat of eight people and you have to be totally in sync,” she said. O’Callahan added that having a team mentality is more

important than focusing on how each teammate does individually. Hannah Yazdani ’22, co-captain of women’s crew, said that as an upperclassmen, she advises her teammates about how they can tackle difficult ex-

SEE CAPTAINS PAGE 7

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NEIL MEHTA ’25 DESIGN EDITOR

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Annual lecture discusses policing of Asian migrant women workers Elena Shih speaks on policing of Asian women in massage industry NEIL MEHTA SENIOR STAFF WRITER Elena Shih, assistant professor of American studies and ethnic studies, delivered the Annual Elizabeth Munves Sherman ’77, P’06, P’09 Lecture in Gender and Sexuality Studies Thursday afternoon in Pembroke Hall. Her lecture, titled “The Trafficking Deportation Pipeline: Asian Massage Work and the Policing of Racialized Poverty,” discussed the policing of Asian migrant women workers and Asian massage work. The lecture took place “in light of the one year remembrance of the shootings at three massage businesses in Atlanta in 2021,” according to a March 24 Today@Brown announcement. “In the past year, Asian massage work in the United States has become synonymous with human trafficking,” Shih said. “And this is not accidental, but an active target and communication campaign of anti-trafficking organizations.” According to Shih, the conflation of massage businesses and human trafficking causes the policing of massage businesses and strengthens the “entanglements between state power,

vigilante justice, white supremacy and its counterpart, white saviorhood.” Ultimately, she said, “the anti-trafficking movement has allowed rescue organizations to speak on behalf of the victimization of Asian migrant communities, amassing millions of dollars in funding and profits to perpetuate the surveillance and policing of our communities.” These forms of power are often disguised using “the extraordinarily profitable and popular global project to combat human trafficking,” Shih said. Numerous anti-trafficking organizations receive millions of dollars with the stated purpose of freeing victims of trafficking, she added. The resulting policing of Asian massage workers leads to raids in their workplaces as well as detainment and deportation, according to Shih. Shih referenced the “anti-trafficking industrial complex,” describing a system of anti-trafficking organizations and police “committed to profit-seeking objectives” in efforts to stop human trafficking. According to Shih, some sex workers are classified as “rescue victims of trafficking” and are placed in rehabilitation organizations that teach them how to make and sell jewelry in the United States. Many individuals turn to sex work — and are subsequently subject to this rehabiliation — after finding that “work in the garment industry, in restaurants (and) as domestic workers (provide

NEIL MEHTA / HERALD

The Annual Elizabeth Munves Sherman ’77, P’06, P’09 Lecture in Gender and Sexuality Studies was delivered this year by Elena Shih, assistant professor of American studies and ethnic studies. them) far less dignity and autonomy than sex work,” she added. Shih concluded by posing questions about the relationship between anti-trafficking movements, labor rights and violence. “How do we widen our lens of violence to include not just individual attacks in the subway, but also wage theft, deportation, rescue, forced rehabilitation … (while) recognizing the self-reliant modes of community care?”

Attendees including Monica Zhang ’25 praised Shih for discussing an issue they were not previously aware of. “As an Asian American woman, you come in thinking that you know some background,” Zhang said. “But I (had) never heard about what she talked about.” “Most impressive to me was the way that (Shih) managed to connect all these transnational movements that … are very daunting and huge and

complex,” said Zoe Fuad ’23, another attendee at the event. “It really helps to articulate exactly … how a lot of our policing here is very closely connected to colonial apparatus.” Faud added that she was surprised by how much joy the lecture brought her. “It wasn’t a super dreary, gloomy conversation,” Faud said. “I think (Shih is) someone who understands the need to not burn out during revolution.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Brook Sreet residence hall on track to be completed by fall 2023 Project head shares updates, students cite mixed feelings about construction RHEA RASQUINHA SENIOR STAFF WRITER The new residence hall on Brook Street is currently on schedule to be complete and ready for occupancy by August 2023. “The project in general is very healthy,” said Assistant Vice President of Planning, Design & Construction Paul Dietel. The project faced some supply chain issues after the record-breaking freeze in Texas in February 2021, The Herald previously reported, but there are no continuing impacts as of now, Dietel said. Delays were anticipated in the initial planning of the project, so early funding, mechanical, electrical and trade partners were bought months in advance of when they normally would be. The construction timeline has remained the same: “It’s a very aggressive schedule,” Dietel added, “but we feel we have it staffed appropriately.” The new building has a “very modern design,” with pod-style suites, kitchens on every floor and a lot of natural daylight, Dietel said. Much like in Wellness Residence Hall, the HVAC system — which usually runs on fossil fuels — is all electric in the Brook Street dormitory. According to Dietel, the University “is in the midst of a decarbonization program,” and one of the goals for this project was to design it in terms of LEED silver standards. The dorm will consist of two buildings on opposite sides of the street that together will house 353 students, over double the 162 that Wellness currently houses. The original plan for a 375-bed dorm would have crossed through the Providence Historic District, but the revised plan still faced strong opposition from residents and community stakeholders, The Herald previously reported. Criticisms included the plan’s demolition of Bagel Gourmet and East

KATY PICKENS / HERALD

The dorm will consist of two buildings on opposite sides of the street that together will house 353 students, more than double the 162 that Wellness currently houses. Side Mini-Mart. While the construction team faced challenges with retail neighbors for the Wellness project, the Brook Street project is directly adjacent to two occupied dorms: Vartan Gregorian Quadrangle and Barbour Hall. According to Dietel, Facilities Management has had “a couple of isolated complaints” but “have not had major issues.” “I think we’ve done a good job staying out in front of communications with the students,” he said, including a webinar in the fall to explain the process and logistics plans, along with links to the Facilities website that has weekly construction updates. Construction is currently in the concrete foundation installation phase, which Dietel called “the noisy phase” because of the heavy equipment used. “There’s just no way around that, we need the equipment we need to get out of the ground,” he said. One of the biggest complaints has surrounded backup alarms on equipment, which are required for safety. The team is using a new industry-permitted backup alarm called “the growler,” which is much less

intrusive, Dietel said. Construction has a strict 7 a.m. start and takes place on weekdays only. For the first 30 minutes, an agreement has been set with the contractor to “ease into the day with quieter activities” such as toolbox talks, planning and layout of the day’s work. Noisy work generally starts between 7:30 and 8 a.m, Dietel said. If work needs to be done on weekends in the future, it will not start before 8 a.m. Ahad Bashir ’24, who lives in Barbour Hall, said that while “the construction seems to be making a lot of progress now … there has been an incredible amount of noise.” “I’ve had friends tell me they’ve basically been conditioned to wake up in anticipation of construction,” he added. “The construction has been very disruptive to mine and my suitemate’s daily lives,” Sarosh Nadeem ’24, whose Barbour suite directly faces the site, wrote in a message to The Herald. Nadeem and her suitemate tried to request pushing back the start time by an hour or two, as most of

the work currently wraps up around 2 p.m., but their request has yet to be accepted. They were given noise-canceling headphones by the University, which were “a relief to receive,” she wrote, “but there is only so much that headphones can do with very loud drilling outside.” Nadeem is also concerned for next month as Ramadan approaches, as she will be fasting from sunrise to sunset, heavily relying on being able to sleep in to make it through the day. “With the construction happening outside every day (during the week), I don’t know if it will be that easy,” she wrote. Although the new dorm is supposed to include “green public spaces,” there used to be multiple large, old trees taller than Barbour at the construction site that were all cut down, Nadeem explained. Another challenge has been the condition of windows in Barbour, some of which flap open and close in the wind and have amplified the construction noise, she added. Both students have mixed feelings about the new dorm. “I feel that simply

creating new dorms doesn’t address the issue of people wanting to live in apartments instead of dorms,” Bashir said. As of now, no decision has been made regarding the student population that will reside in the dorm nor how these spaces will be filled, wrote Senior Associate Dean & Senior Director of Residential Life Brenda Ice. The Office of Residential Life “is an active partner and contributor in new construction as well as renovation projects,” according to Ice. “I, along with members of my team, attend a variety of planning meetings discussing project timelines and how the physical structure compliments our vision for our residential students — creating a welcoming, supportive and inclusive community,” she added. The construction of Wellness and the Brook Street dorm is the result of a 2018 housing master plan study conducted by an outside architectural firm. One of the goals identified in this study was to add rooms for 400 to 500 students on campus; Wellness and the new dorm combined add 515 beds. In its decarbonization plan, the University outlined its goals to make all renovations and new construction “net-zero or net-zero ready.” The University has a central heating plant near the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center which provides a loop of hot water around campus. “Many, if not all, of the existing residence halls are already on the central heating loop,” and after the conversion, will be fed by an all-electric heating source. Renewal work is always done in the summer, notwithstanding some pandemic-related budget deferrals, Dietal said. There are no finalized projects in the works because the 2020-22 fiscal years just wrapped up, he added. Dietel and his team are in the process of planning for the 2023-25 fiscal years, but the budget and projects included have not yet been finalized and will be reviewed in May. “It’s very safe to say that over the next three years we will be performing renovations to existing dormitories,” Dietel said, “working with (ResLife) to determine where those priorities are.”

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Faculty, students discuss work of Sarah Doyle Center Center has facilitated activism, community building since establishment in 1975 KAITLYN TORRES UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR For 48 years, the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender has been a center for feminist- and gender-centered discussions and activism at the University. “This is really a space that’s thinking about gender more complexly and thinking about how gender intersects with other markers of identity,” said Felicia Salinas-Moniz, director of the center, in an interview with The Herald. The center opened on Sept. 8, 1975 after Pembroke College merged with the University in 1971, Salinas-Moniz said in a March 16 presentation for the Brown Women’s Network. The center formed from a draft proposal — by the Women of Brown United, a University women’s liberation group, and a working group on the Status of Women at Brown — recommending a center which was named after Sarah Elizabeth Doyle, a woman who was central to the founding of Pembroke College. The center was originally located at 185 Meeting St. and was moved in 2001 to its current location at 26 Benevolent St., Salinas-Moniz added in her presentation. She mentioned that the center has always been located in historic homes which has added to the overall warmth of the space. “I’ve always heard that (the center has a) cozy, warm environment” from alumni and others who enter the space, she told The Herald. “My hope is that we can continue to foster that sense that students feel like … this is their space.” Lydia DeFusto ’22, a librarian and archivist for the Sarah Doyle Center, wrote in an email to The Herald that the center is a space for students to “study, relax and be in community.” She added that other students have

often said that the center is a home for them, a feeling she shares. Salinas-Moniz has worked at the center for nine years and was named director on Jan. 19, The Herald previously reported. She said that the center has gone through many iterations, and during her time there she has seen a growth in the diversity of its staff and a continued emphasis on intersectionality. According to Salinas-Moniz, one way that the center has become more inclusive is through its name change in 2018 from the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center to the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender. “This is not just a space for cis women,” she told The Herald, adding that this intersectional approach was not appropriately represented in its former name, prompting them to change the center’s title. Audrey Buhain ’22, a librarian and archivist at the Sarah Doyle Center, said that “everything (the center) aspires to do … is through the practice of feminism.” Next year, the center will also collaborate with the University’s LGBTQ Center with the creation of Women, Gender and Sexuality Peer Counselors, The Herald previously reported. Salinas-Moniz added that the new position would give the center a larger “cohort of students” to help reimagine the center’s future. “We are really growing with the students every year (and) as students’ interests and needs change, we shift and change with those as well,” she said. Salinas-Moniz said that the center has also been the site of activism in the Providence community. In the 1970s, the center hosted meetings that culminated in the creation of Sojourner House, an organization that supports survivors of interpersonal violence, she said. She added that in the 1990s, the center was also the site of meetings that eventually evolved into Youth Pride RI, a local nonprofit organization advocating for LGBTQ youth. “This center has birthed lots of

ELSA CHOI-HAUSMAN / HERALD

The center formed from a draft proposal by the Women of Brown United and a working group on the Status of Women at Brown. beautiful, beautiful organizations and collaborations … and it’s been a nurturing space to help seed ideas,” she said. Currently, the center has a partnership with Sophia Academy, an all-girls school in Providence, said Salinas-Moniz. She explained that this partnership is responsible for a tutoring program between students at Sophia Academy and students from the University. The center has also brought the students of Sophia Academy to campus through talks with people like Margot Lee Shetterly, the author of “Hidden Figures,” and groups like Radical Monarchs, an organization comprised of girls of color who advocate for social justice. Looking toward the future, Salinas-Moniz said that she hopes to collaborate with Sophia Academy again. There are also events and programming hosted by the Sarah Doyle Center for Women’s History Month, including a virtual panel on March 3 with the Auntie Sewing Squad, a mutual aid group which sewed masks in the wake of the pandemic, and a virtual poetry reading by Natalie Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, on March 7. “At the heart of our programming is understanding that our events do make a difference, even in how (we) warmly receive people and how much we listen to people,” Buhain said, adding that this was just as important

CA L E N DA R

as the content of the events themselves. Salinas-Moniz said that many of its events have a strong student leadership component. “We have student staff … help us plan events from idea to implementation,” she said. Salinas-Moniz added that student staff also helped with the installation currently at the center’s gallery, defined as a “feminist creative arts and exhibition space” on the center’s website. The current exhibition is a yarn mural of pompoms made by the center and other University community members for Women’s History Month. According to the Sarah Doyle Center Gallery’s website, the gallery hosts exhibitions that are connected to their stated mission to “engage the campus community through a feminist praxis of activism and academics.” “The gallery has been present since the center’s founding, so it’s actually a historic part of the center and has gone through various iterations,” Salinas-Moniz said. Buhain said that the center hosts a lot of crafting workshops due to the gendered labor of the textile industry. The center looks “at the labor that goes behind gendered art, that often goes overlooked, very seriously,” she added. Other than the mural, the center has hosted earring-making workshops, a crafting circle and a zine making workshop. Another important space within

the Sarah Doyle Center is its library, which houses over 4,000 volumes on topics such as women and gender, DeFusto wrote. Within this collection, the center has a range of materials including academic texts, poetry, zines and a children’s book collection titled “Stories for Free Children”. Buhain said that while not many people use physical books now, there is a deep history within the center’s library that predates its move to the new location in 2001. She added that since some of the books have been donated by members of the Providence community, the library is also a record of the relationship between the center and the city. “By looking through the library you can see what was important to people at a particular time,” she said. The collection is like a “roadmap of feminist organizing and the expansion of what feminism includes on this campus,” she added. The center’s library catalog is separate from University libraries which makes it an additional resource on women and gender studies for students, wrote DeFusto. She added that they also have books that the University library system does not. The center hosted a “Library on Wheels” on March 18, where books from the center’s library were brought to the Main Green so that students could browse through them, DeFusto wrote. For Salinas-Moniz, she wants students to look to the center as both a community and a support system around issues pertaining to gender. When you see issues around the world “impacting women in a detrimental way,” she said, spaces, such as the center, are crucial to discussing these issues. Buhain said she considers the mentorship opportunities at the center “really special.” “You can just feel that (the center) is invested in you becoming someone who will move around the world respecting yourself and respecting the work that other people do,” she said.

COVID -19 AT BROWN MAR. 17 TO 23

MARCH S

Confirmed positives

Students in on-campus, designated off-campus quarantine housing

3* MAR. 10 TO 16 Confirmed positives

28 Students in on-campus, designated off-campus quarantine housing

24* *APPROXIMATE

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | POST-

post-

MAR 25 — VOL 29 — ISSUE 6

FEATURE

See Full Issue: ISSUU.COM/POSTMAGAZINEBDH

NARRATIVE

Longing Upward girls on elevated surfaces By Mack ford

Comb, Part, Braid black hair and the fight for acceptance by Ayoola Fadahunsi illustrated by Lucid Clairvoyant ig: l.u.cid “Natural Hair is an Exquisite Crown. … A head full of unique, healthy beauty. NATURAL BEAUTY.” – Stephanie Lahart When my sister was five years old, my aunt decided to forcibly use a chemical relaxer on her hair so that it would be “straight and beautiful.” This event was followed by sounds of torment that rang through the night. Screams filled the house as chemical hair relaxer burned through her scalp, and water was rendered useless against the unrelenting heat. At the time, my aunt was enamored by the models and celebrities advertising the newest hair straightening product that made natural hair easy to manage. She sought to simplify my sister’s daily hairdressing routine from bothersome to effortless. To her, natural hair was

something that needed to be conquered and managed. Internalized hatred for natural, kinky, Afrotextured hair is a deeply rooted mentality that dates back to the colonization of African tribes and countries. During colonization, power, wealth, and innovation were possessed by Europeans, whose silky straight hair was deemed beautiful. In contrast, natural Afrotextured hair was perceived as messy, unkempt, and savage—a rhetoric created during the slave trade and upheld today in the workforce discourse over professionalism and presentability. This association between prestige and hair has forced Black people to manipulate their hair in order to be perceived as beautiful, tame, and employable. Black women have had to make themselves digestible, embodying Eurocentric features in order to avoid drawing attention to their otherness. The reinforced image of acceptable beauty curated by colonialism, entertainment, media, and society has instilled shame in many Black women. My mother, a professional hair-braider, is a different story. She has never felt forced to conform to beauty standards by relaxing natural, kinky hair— so you can imagine her horror and rage when she found out what happened to my sister. For as long as I can remember, my mother was always braiding hair in her shop...

“I just don’t think people who play percussion are that smart.” “It’s not that the questions are difficult, it’s just that I have no will to live.”

It’s a Saturday night, and there’s a drunk girl standing on the bar. Her dark hair, still bearing the remnants of a fading dye job, swings back and forth in time with the plastic beaded necklaces on her chest as she gyrates her hips. She can’t see the boy bouncing below her, waving one fist in the air while his red cup sloshes tepid beer on another girl beside him. She can’t see that girl, wiping the beer out of her carefully tied, trendily braided pigtails that are just starting to frizz. She can’t see the boy standing behind her and staring, wearing a t-shirt that says something like “To the guy who invented zero, thanks for nothing!” and shifting from foot to foot, just slightly off the beat of the music. The girl on the table can’t see any of this; she is so high up. Everything is a mosaic: a collage of people who all look a little softer around the edges from above...

ARTS & CULTURE

Solid Walls of Sound blocking off and breaking down By joe maffa Early last semester, the sound became a little too much to bear. Shuffling back to my room against the jetstream to South Campus where my friends partied on through the night, I passed the cars sauntering down Thayer, trunks bumping along with their hefty subwoofers. For the first few weeks I was in Providence, I appreciated that noise, be it from Thayer or oversized dorm speakers; it reminded me that I was a college student, and in a city too— albeit a small one. But that night, I ran away, my head pounding from the noise and internal dialogue. Closing the door on my room didn’t help; the symphony of adult life modulated into cacophony. So I fought sound with even more sound; that was the first night I put up my own wall of music to fall asleep. *** I should say that it was the first night in a while that I had built this wall. The last time was during my seventh grade stint at sleepaway camp where missed opportunities brought out my most cliché adolescent fears of alienation. My first time alone and away from home promised excitement...

LIFESTYLE

Self-Care Diaries By sarah frank

Breaks to Take in Spring

post–

1. up with your girlfriend, i’m bored

6. Japanese Break-fast

2. Icebreakers

7. Kit Kat

3. -down

8. …a leg!

4. Karate chopping a block of wood

9. Dance break

5. At a retirement community

10. <3

Want to be involved? Email: kyoko_leaman@brown.edu!

Dear Reader, College can be ruthless. College life demands that we make space in our schedules where there isn’t any, that we push back the clock hands to make more time when there never seems to be enough. Personally, I’ve found that since there’s barely enough time to take care of my academic responsibilities, I have even less time to take care of myself. I seem to forget that I, too, am one of my responsibilities... march 25, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

Slusarewicz ’23: Let’s talk about death to destigmatize dying My mom only told me that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer after she was officially cancer-free. I didn’t know what to say. She explained that she’d been getting treatment for the past six months, but she chose to keep it from my sister and me. When my sister asked why we weren’t told earlier, she explained that she didn’t want to stress us out. For months afterward, I wondered what would have happened if the treatment had not worked. How long would my parents have waited to tell us that she might die? Death is difficult to talk about, especially when your loved ones are immediately threatened by it. However, in the United States, our discomfort around death has festered into a taboo. Death is inevitable, yet we refuse to contend with it in a realistic way. This pervasive avoidance stigmatizes the elderly and dying and results in a lower quality of life for those who are close to death and their loved ones. Death’s stigma is very real in the United States. Research has indicated that those who don’t encounter death directly harbor negative feelings toward the dying. This stigma manifests as a collective reticence to discuss death in an honest way, which makes it challenging to accept when encountering it in real life. This cultural resistance to acknowledging the inevitability of death leads to insufficient research and interventions that would ease the burdensome end-of-life process. This results in poor-quality care for patients in their last months of life, astronomical financial expenses and psychological trauma in caregivers long after the loved one has passed. Death stigma also manifests as the mass medicalization of health care in the United

States. This has created a rescue fantasy that insists upon trying every possible treatment to prolong life, even if an individual’s passing is unavoidable. Continuously delaying death at all costs does not always improve a patient’s well-being. By framing death as something that can be defeated, we implicitly see dying as a failure. From a young age, we learn to blame the individual for dying instead of accepting death

the inevitability of death. Furthermore, by socially isolating patients in medical facilities, we reduce civilian contact with the dying, making death feel unfamiliar and thus abnormal. As a result, our society avoids both the subject of death and interacting with the dying. Our current end-of-life care practices often disregard the emotional and physical needs of the dying. However, if we restructure end-of-

“If we create a culture where talking about death is acceptable, it’s possible that death will become easier to cope with when it does come.”

for what it is — a natural conclusion to life. This problem is more important than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. Grieving families bear the burden of the cultural stigma toward death in addition to shame from a COVID-related death. Collective stigmatization of death not only worsens end-of-life care, but it can also further prevent societal acceptance of death. Medicalization has been implicated as a major source of negative feeling towards the dying. In many modern medical centers, the power disparity between doctors and patients risks reducing patients to their illnesses, which can be solved. This results in the dissociation of illness from

life care around the wishes of patients and their families, quality of life could improve significantly. By acknowledging the humanity of death at an institutional level, we can make death easier to accept on a personal level. Discussing death openly has been shown to reduce the stress of dying individuals and their caregivers. If we create a culture where talking about death is acceptable, it’s possible that death will become easier to cope with when it does come. If we want to tackle our cultural stigma around death, the best solution is to be realistic. Other cultures have shown that it is possible to

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

132nd Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief Ben Glickman Managing Editors Benjamin Pollard Caelyn Pender Senior Editors Katie Chen Gaya Gupta Jack Walker post-magazine Editor-in-Chief Kyoko Leaman Sections Arts & Culture Editors Rebecca Carcieri Irene Chou Laura David Metro Editors Brendan Gardner Oliver Kneen Liza Mullett Katy Pickens Sameer Sinha

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approach the topic of death in a practical way. For example, Swedish death cleaning is a practice where elderly individuals declutter their living areas to the bare essentials. The goal is to reduce the items their loved ones must sort through after they pass, thus relieving undue emotional burden. Swedish death cleaning is much more than an organizational system — it facilitates self-reflection which can be therapeutic for those close to death. As psychotherapist Amy Morin said, “Getting rid of items serves as a reminder that things don’t last forever, including us.” However, practices such as Swedish death cleaning cannot become commonplace in America until we can accept the idea of dying in the first place, and that starts with a conversation. There was a time when I felt frustrated at my mother for not telling me about her cancer diagnosis. I felt that she had shut me out and had not given me the opportunity to support her. But I recently realized that it wasn’t about me — she felt ashamed because dying is viewed as a burden on others. I wish my mom had felt comfortable telling us about her cancer while she was still receiving treatment, but neither of us knew how to broach the subject. Death is challenging to talk about, but going forward, I want to have honest conversations with my family to resist the stigma around death in our small way.

General Managers Alexandra Cerda Sophie Silverman

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FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

CAPTAINS FROM PAGE 1 periences and emotions while playing a D1 sport. The team acts as a resource for life outside of crew, giving each other advice on academics and personal struggles, she said. Playing a sport at a highly competitive level has a huge mental component, so it is important for teammates to support each other, according to Claire Pisani ’23, an upperclassman on the women’s water polo team. Pisani said that before the water polo season started, she and another upperclassmen “set up a meeting about team norms and team culture.” In this meeting, the group discussed mental health and showed

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS team members how to access campus resources. The goal of the meeting was to “set up this culture where especially the underclassmen can come to us if they have any questions” and for team members to be able to experience an open dialogue, Pisani said. When she was a first-year, the upperclassmen on her team emulated this culture, so it is something the team has tried to continue each year, Pisani added. Because athletic spaces can be heteronormative, it is important for the team to establish norms to combat biases and be aware of sources for support, she said. For Kompelien, the track team creates a similar “space of love” that encourages team members to speak

about their concerns — including relationships with coaches, injuries or feeling overworked. She explained that this transparency helps destigmatize the issues team members encounter each day. In these conversations, the team has also worked to recognize what healthy and unhealthy relationships with food are and where team members can get support if they are struggling, Kompelien said. It is important for athletes to stay positive about their bodies, because it is their bodies that allow them to excel in their sports, Pisani added. Societal beauty standards can sometimes weigh heavily on athletes, she said, but successful athletes have “so many different body types.”

“What society expects of women and what you need to be as an athlete often are so different,” O’Callahan said, speaking on the expectations that are placed on women beyond appearances. “It’s your image, but also the way you need to act.” “Our ideas of sports and competition are so male-oriented and there’s a much longer history with men’s sports,” which contributes to what society expects from women, she said. For O’Callahan, female representation in sports is important to counter these biases. Because being aggressive and competitive are attributes often associated with men in society, women are sometimes underestimated, she added. Yazdani’s team recognizes that

7 crew is an exclusive sport because it is so expensive. To promote accessibility, the crew team volunteers with STEM to Stern, which aims to create more diversity in crew, she said. STEM to Stern eliminates barriers to the sport by helping community members with transportation, swimming and academics. Members of the crew team fundraise, teach and coach crew for the organization. Each team member The Herald spoke with highlighted how the atmosphere of support on their team allows women to come together for the common purpose of sport. “With 50 other girls doing the same thing,” Kompelien said, “it’s a pretty powerful community.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

ACTIVIST FROM PAGE 1 cited about the possibilities of what we could accomplish if we organized,” she wrote in an email to The Herald. “I felt inspired, empowered and supported.” “I knew we were making history,” she added, “and I felt that we were on the precipice of something monumental.” On-campus activism WBU formed in 1970 on a campus swirling with debates around the position of Pem- broke in relation to the men’s college. “You had women at Brown who … had chosen to go to that school intentionally because of what people viewed as its progressivism,” said Andrea Levere ’77, who was a member of WBU while attending Brown. “It was the ideal pot to stir all of this up.” “We were supposed to be represented through the Pembroke structure within the University,” Pichey said. “But women wanted to speak for themselves. Women of Brown United was the forum to raise our voices about things of concern to us.” While Brown and Pembroke “had always been part of the same institution,” the two merged “under one banner” within the University in 1971, shortly after WBU was founded, Murphy said. During and after the union of the colleges, WBU members advocated for the equal admittance of men and women into the University. According to Pichey’s historical account, in 1970 WBU demanded a one-to-one ratio for male and female students admitted to Brown by 1976. This goal would only reach completion over twenty years later in 1994. WBU also promoted the hiring of more women faculty, as well as equal

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pay and tenure for women professors on campus. Per the history, in 1970 “the percentage of women faculty was 6.8% and tenured regular faculty were 3.9%.” “In simple terms, students (live) and (work) within an institution existing without the participation — on a professional level — of an entire portion of humanity,” Levere wrote in an Oct. 1, 1976 op-ed for The Herald. Levere noted the importance of Mari Jo Buhle, a history professor at the University who was the first faculty member to focus on women’s studies, in expanding course offerings on gender at the University. While discussing the increase of women faculty members, she also credited Louise Lamphere, an anthropology professor who sued the University for discrimination against women after being denied tenure in 1974. Another key piece of WBU activism surrounded the creation of the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender, according to the history. “People began to see the huge need for a place for women” after the merger, Pichey said. WBU activists began petitioning, writing letters in The Herald and raising the idea for the center in “as many forums as possible.” After advocacy from 1972 to 1975, the center opened at 185 Meeting Street, run by Edwards with a minimal budget, according to the history. The lines between WBU and the center were blurred at the time, according to a 1975 article in The Herald: WBU housed six subgroups, though “women employees, the committee on women faculty, women of the Brown community and Alpha Kappa Alpha” also used the center. Two years later, the center received

full University funding. According to the history, the WBU budget request explained that a fully funded center would serve as a “central educational and informational resource” that provided space to bring women across campus together, including through WBU meetings. WBU also included an expansion of women’s studies courses as one of its initial demands in 1970 — enough to “enable an independent concentration,” according to Pichey’s history. Some success followed in the establishment of the first feminist course at Brown, “Anthropological Perspectives on Women.” But progress stalled by the time Levere reached campus. With help from Buhle, Levere “founded an independent concentration” in women’s history, writing a thesis about opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment among women, she said. “It was really a sense of, ‘How do we pull together the classes that Mari Jo was teaching, along with other classes that aligned with focusing in on a social history?’” Levere said. She later organized the first independent concentration graduation ceremony, she said, which some professors attended instead of the ceremonies for their own departments. In 1982, the University began offering a women’s studies concentration — emblematic of what Pichey described as a University trend toward absorbing and institutionalizing the activism of WBU. In addition to the new concentration and center, WBU activism led to the creation of the Brown/Fox Point Early Childhood Education Center, incorporated in 1979 and still functional today. In 1972, its activism helped prompt the introduction of reproductive health care on campus, according to the history. “Women had no role models on

campus,” Pichey said. “There was a three-to-one ratio of men to women on campus. Now there’s equal representation.” The only place where WBU’s goals have not come to fruition are in balancing out the gender balance of faculty: In the 2020-21 academic year, only 30.3% of tenured professors and 38.9% of tenure track professors were women. WBU’s final mention in The Herald came in 1991. The Sarah Doyle Center had taken the lead on much of WBU’s former work, Pichey speculated in the history. The group “served its purpose for over 20 years.” LGBTQ issues and race in the movement Throughout the second-wave feminist movement in the United States during the early 1970s, there were general tensions regarding lesbianism and the role queer identity would play in liberation. “In the country at large, you saw this clash of early traditionalists who were not doing well around gay rights, women who were not being friendly to lesbian women,” Murphy said. Pichey described that during the early years of WBU, gay activism on campus was only getting started. “There was a budding gay movement around the same time when I was on campus,” she said. “Most of the people who were in it were men — it was men who were the gay movement at that point. Over time, gay women became more active.” “The anti-gay stigmas were very strong in those days,” Pichey added. According to Pichey’s history, inclusion of queer women in WBU and the Center was difficult initially. The Gay Liberation group, which sought to promote gay rights on campus, primarily served men, and lesbianism was “generally

misunderstood and feared,” Levere wrote in a WBU file. This led to the creation of Gay Women of Brown, a group organized under the WBU umbrella to provide support and allow advocacy and organizing specifically for lesbians. The group’s work and message was not always met positively on campus — in 1978, a bulletin posted by Gay Women of Brown was covered in black spray paint. “The fact that such acts of intolerance and bigotry go unnoticed by the administration and the majority of the student body indicates a general unwillingness to recognize and face up the problems and needs of all minority groups on campus — (non-white) students, women and gays,” read a letter to the editor in The Herald written by WBU members. But race and racism were not commonly discussed topics within the broader context of the feminist movement in the 1970s, Murphy said. “The second wave women’s movement … included racial disparity and required work around race that was not happening,” Murphy explained. “That is a criticism of that movement. We can be positive and inspired by it, (and) we can also be critical of it.” In 1972, there was only one Black member of WBU, according to Pichey’s history. While the organization did host a talk with Gloria Steinem and Margaret Sloane on “Sex and Racism” in 1973, and the Dec. 2, 1970 WBU meeting specifically emphasized that “efforts must be made to hire non-white women,” racism was not a common focus of WBU’s activism. “I can see where the gaps are (now),” Pichey said. “History comes, and you do the best you can with making it as you go along,” she added.

WILL KUBZANSKY & KATY PICKENS / HERALD

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

Abortion WBU’s abortion subgroup played a key role in the organization, Pichey said. When the group was founded, planning quickly started for a conference aiming at the repeal of state laws restricting abortion, which in turn helped spark lawsuits that eventually proved successful after the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, according to the history. Pichey added that the simple act of talking about abortion was radical. Before, if a woman “got into trouble” while at the University, she was sent away to “have it taken care of,” she

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explained. That may have meant going to a home for women to carry the pregnancy to completion and putting the child up for adoption, but it could also mean crossing international lines — Mexico for some students, or Sweden or England for wealthy students — to undergo the procedure, she said. “It was not something that was ever talked about,” Pichey explained. The first group meeting took place in a Pembroke lounge with 10 women — three of whom had undergone an abortion. One was the wife of a

graduate student who raised $600, the equivalent of more than $4,300 in 2022, to receive an illegal procedure, Pichey said. “She showed up, and the (practitioner) said, ‘Okay, hop up on my kitchen table,’” Pichey said. “For some of these women, it was the first time they had told anybody they had an abortion.” After Roe v. Wade, WBU continued its abortion activism. In 1981, The Herald published an op-ed from a student who bused to Washington, D.C. with the Doyle Center and WBU to protest the “Human Life Amendment,”

a catch-all name for constitutional amendments meant to effectively outlaw abortion. In 1985, it began a service that offered to help “patients seeking abortions safely enter the Women’s Medical Center through groups of anti-abortion protestors,” the history said. WBU also published “resource guides” to “contraception, abortion and sexuality services,” according to Pichey’s history. Ahead of this summer, numerous Supreme Court analysts have predicted that the court will weaken abortion rights, if not entirely overturn Roe v.

Wade. Pichey, who currently works with the Warren Alpert Medical School on including reproductive health and justice content in the medical curriculum, encouraged current students to “use every means available” to raise their voices. “That means being out in the streets. It means legal participation in class action suits. It means supporting the providers,” she said. “You can’t give up. We cannot give up.” “When I started Brown, I thought feminism had won,” Levere noted. “How wrong we were.”

V I E WS F R O M TH E STAT E H O U S E

JULIA GROSSMAN / HERALD

Do you enjoy going out to WickPub on Wednesday evenings? You should try the Rhode Island State House — better than any bar in town! Get all your friends together for a Constitutional Convention just like our founding fathers and create your own revolution for the night.

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FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

SPORTS

Record-breaking season for swimming, diving teams comes to close After climbing ranks in NCAA Championship appearance, teams look to future BY ELLERY CAMPBELL STAFF WRITER A record-breaking season for the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams has come to an end following accolades for both teams. The men’s team finished the season with a 4-3 record against its Ivy League opponents and a fourth-place finish at the Ivy League Championships. The women’s team finished the season with a 3-4 record within the Ivy League and a fifth-place finish at the Ivy League Championships. Jenna Reznicek ’25 was a standout female swimmer this season, both at Brown and within the broader Ivy League. In her first season with the Bears, Reznicek won the 100-yard backstroke at the Ivy League Championships with a time of 52.94 seconds. She set Brown’s program record and broke Harvard’s pool record in the prelims with a time of 52.43 seconds. Because of her performance, Reznicek earned an invitation to compete at the NCAA Championships in the 100-yard backstroke, where she placed 35th with a time of 52.61 seconds. Reznicek was the first female swimmer Brown sent to the NCAA Championships since 2004. “I was so thankful that I was given the opportunity to be at the (NCAA Championships) and more importantly (to) represent Brown,” Reznicek said. “The team was definitely the root of

my drive to do well in the race and I was thinking about them a lot.” She also attributed her success this season to her coaches, who she said were “very intentional about preparing me effectively for (my) main event.” Reznicek said both her teammates and coaches “worked so hard, so I was really inspired by that to work hard myself.” Women’s Swim and Dive Head Coach Kate Kovenock wrote in an email to The Herald that Reznicek’s performance was “elite.” She added that she is also proud of divers Julia Feord ’22 and Liv Mitchell ’22, who were “outstanding in dual meet competition.” Kovenock also noted the strong performances of Sam Scott ’24 — who demonstrated a “breakthrough” 50-yard freestyle performance at the Ivy League Championships — and the 400-yard individual medley group made up of Emily Clements ’24, Ellie Brault ’25 and Emma Whall ’22. She also recognized Nell Chidley ’23’s Ivy League finals swims in the 200yard backstroke and 200-yard butterfly, which is “probably the most grueling double in swimming.” “She came through with major points for the team,” Kovenock added. “This was a building year for us in a lot of ways. The majority of our swimmers and divers had a spotty 18-months of training coming in due to COVID,” Kovenock wrote. “I’m so proud of the resiliency of our team navigating that first semester, and I’m also appreciative of the trust they had in our coaching staff.” The team’s trust paid off, Kovenock wrote, as the team “recorded the highest total number and highest percentage of best times at the Ivy Championships this year.” For the men’s team, this season

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

The men’s swimming and diving team finished fourth at the Ivy League Championships, while the women’s team finished fifth. was defined by accomplishments in swimming and diving and an Ivy League Coach of the Year award for Head Coach Kevin Norman. “I (would) not (be) named Coach of the Year if not for all the work my assistant coaches put in and all the work that the team puts in,” Norman said. “It’s truly a team and staff award just as much as it is an individual award.” “I’m kind of the new kid on the block, so to get that award and know that my colleagues were the people that voted really does mean a lot to me,” he added. “I think it’s a sign that our program had a great season.” The men’s team had a record-breaking season, racking up achievements from seven athletes including Jack Kel-

ly ’25, who “absolutely smashed our school records this year in the 100 and 200 (yard) breaststroke,” Norman said. Norman also praised the efforts of Nico Ortega ’22 and Reid Arwood ’22, whose strong performances at the start of the championship meet helped with “setting the tone and taking pressure off” of the underclassmen. Trevor Labuda ’22 was another standout on the men’s team — with multiple record-breaking dives. He broke Brown’s one meter record and broke his own three-meter record multiple times over the course of this season. Labuda was “just happy to be competing and representing Brown one last time” at his final meet, he wrote in a message to The Herald.

I am “very proud of the team culture and standards we set for ourselves outside of the pool,” Labuda wrote. “I am excited to see the classes below myself and the other seniors take on that responsibility.” Norman was especially happy for his team to be competing again after the COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of the 2020-21 season. The team’s performance this season was “fantastic” because of its “consistency and hard work,” he said. “The team did a really good job of staying connected as best as they could, staying on top of each other and keeping each other motivated,” he added. “I think it carried over to a very great year for us.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

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RPP FROM PAGE 1 Inequality” title to “de-center race and to connect to the larger University-wide DIAP process,” Rodriguez wrote. The 2020-21 Working Group restated the 2016 Task Force’s recommendation for the implementation of the RPP designation in a 2021 report with only modest changes for clarity. The 2021 College Curriculum Council Working Group on Diversity in the Undergraduate Curriculum Report cited “increasingly public, racist violence and other national events of the (last) several years” in explaining the importance of implementing the RPP designation. A vast majority of the courses that fulfilled the requirements of the DIAP designation also qualify for the new RPP designation and will be automatically reviewed by the CCC. Instructors of new courses and ones that did not carry the DIAP designation will be able to submit syllabi to request the RPP designation, according to the RPP website. Currently, 140 courses in 30 subject areas are listed under the RPP designation on Courses@Brown over the 2022-23 academic year. Brown has used curricular designations to highlight courses that examine issues of race and racism, and the histories and forms of resistance of communities of color since 1985 when the “American Minority Perspectives” designation was created, according to

TIFFANY DING / HERALD

The RPP designation was originally recommended by the 2016 Task Force on Diversity in the Curriculum with the goal to more closely address racial inequality. the 2016 Task Force’s report. “One of the strengths among Brown undergraduates is their desire to use their knowledge and skills to address

global problems, including addressing inequities,” Rodriguez wrote. Rodriguez also noted the importance of the advising network at Brown

in helping students find interests within the RPP designation. She said that the University hopes that the “advising community … will encourage students

to take RPP courses in areas they may want to concentrate in and in areas that they may be interested in exploring outside of their concentrations.”

EIC FROM PAGE 1 maverick” in the public high school she attended, where “there wasn’t a lot of aspiration.” Many of the students were expected to join the military or attend a state university, she said. Hodgson sustained the high cost of tuition with what she described as “a lot of scholarships.” In 1966, when Hodgson started her first year at Brown, there were 750 male students and 250 female students in her year, she said. “Women were not an afterthought. They were an important part (of) the academic scene and in the social scene,” said Richard Cohen ’69, a member of The Herald’s 78th editorial board, which elected Hodgson to become EIC. “But … from my perspective and my memory, (it) was a largely male campus.” Getting into the University was more difficult for women — who were limited by the size of Pembroke Campus, where female dormitories were located — meaning that female admits underwent a more competitive admission process, Hodgson said. Yet, there were also “low expectations for the women students,” she said. Many deans at that time were accustomed to female students getting married right after college. “While some of the deans had pretty impressive academic credentials themselves, they did not, I think, either recognize or foster much ambition among (female) students,” said Hodgson. Hodgson recalled receiving limited guidance on how to navigate her concentrations, English and American Civilization, because “nobody urged (her) to do anything differently.” The discrepancy between the expectations of female and male students became one of Hodgson’s favorite editorial topics during her tenure at The Herald. “It was an era of change,” she said. “The deans had not yet quite realized that feminism was upon them.” During her time at Brown, Hodgson had planned to apply for an Arnold Fellowship, which was established in 1964 by Thomas J. Watson, Jr. ’37 and named after Provost Samuel T. Arnold, class of 1913. The fellowship funded graduating seniors pursuing independent projects around the world. But, she faced a barrier upon learning that only male students were eligible for the fellowship. “I walked into University Hall, asked for an application and the secretary said, ‘You (have) to be male,’” Hodgson

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said. Barrett Hazeltine — Hodgson’s dean of the college — “heard me and … gave me an application so that I could apply.” The year after, the Arnold Fellowships opened their eligibility to female applicants, and one of Hodgson’s best friends received the fellowship. Hazeltine, now professor emeritus of engineering, remembered Hodgson as “confident (and) self-reliant.” He described her as a “sensible and cheerful” student who was able “to get things done.”

Hodgson didn’t recall many complexities in the process of being elected as EIC. “By the time you get to junior year, … it was pretty clear who was in the running,” she said. Before serving as EIC , Hodgson was an arts editor and shared that she enjoyed having “free tickets” to events and writing reviews. “One of my English professors referred to me as the commissar of culture because I wrote so many negative articles,” she said.

“She would do a good job, whatever her gender”

“This should not be so novel”

Entering Brown, The Herald appealed to Hodgson not just because of her familiarity with journalism — she had been the editor of her high school newspaper — but also because its staff seemed to her like a “smart and interesting blend of geeky yet cool” people. The gender breakdown of staff at The Herald at that time was approximately one third female and two thirds male, according to Hodgson. Hodgson was elected as editor-in-chief in 1969 after spending five semesters at The Herald. The choice was “obvious,” according to Cohen, one of the three male editor-in-chiefs of the 1968 board — a triumvirate rather than one editor-in-chief — who chose Hodgson for the role. “Even before we made the selection, I think it was pretty obvious to us that she” was the best candidate, Cohen said. He was not aware that Hodgson would be first woman EIC of an Ivy League daily newspaper, though he was “generally aware” that she would be the first woman editor of The Herald. “It was a good thing that The Herald was having a woman as editor, but (it) was not the most important factor,” Cohen added. “The most important factor (was that) she would do a good job, whatever her gender.” He described Hodgson as “friendly, outgoing … and bright” and added that “colleagues at The Herald really enjoyed working with her.” From Cohen’s perspective, Hodgson “took the work seriously without being too serious (and) worked hard, especially as an editor.” For Cohen, it became “more routine” that women were a part of The Herald because of the work of Laurie Robinson ’68, managing editor of the editorial board in 1967, who was “very active with Herald operations” and a “pace setter” for women at The Herald.

Hodgson didn’t consider the “first female EIC of an Ivy League Daily” a title to wear. “This should not be so novel,” she said. “What’s the big deal? I’ve been doing the work, I have colleagues (who) know what I’m doing. The declaration as being the ‘first’ continues to make it unusual that women are in the places that they should be in.” While Hodgson noted many of her male coworkers at the newspaper held liberal ideals and were accepting of her, she recalled one instance when she overheard men from “the most athletic, blondest frats” talking to another woman on campus and saying that “she’s one of those girls like Bev Hodgson.” Despite experiences like these outside The Herald, she found that running the newsroom was an “egalitarian thing.” “Folks your age have a tendency (to consider that time) the bad old days of pre-feminism, but it was actually the good old days,” Hodgson said. “If you were a good reporter and you were fun to have around the newsroom, that was all it took.” “And you were willing to stay up ‘til three in the morning just like everybody else did,” she added with a laugh. Lifelong female friendship at The Herald Laura Salganik ’70, who served as managing editor on the 79th Editorial Board when Hodgson was EIC, visited Hodgson the weekend before Hodgson spoke with The Herald. Salganik stopped by Hodgson’s home in New Haven with her husband Bill Salganik ’68, who was EIC. of the 77th editorial board of The Herald in 1967. Laura Salganik and Hodgson met at The Herald and developed a “natural friendship,” according to Laura Salganik.

FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2022

Growing up in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, Salganik worked at her high school newspaper and wanted to “work in a co-ed environment,” which led her to join The Herald. She was also active in the curriculum reform that led to the Open Curriculum and wrote frequently about the new curriculum, according to Salganik. Working as a managing editor alongside Hodgson, Salganik liked “the thrill of putting out a paper every day.” It gave her a “front-row seat” to events at the University during a time of reform, adding that she was at the faculty meeting where University faculty voted to adopt the Open Curriculum. Even though both Hodgson and Salganik were strong editors, there was no competition between them when it came to selecting who would be EIC, Salganik said. “It wasn’t anything she won. … It just fell out that way,” Salganik said. “I think she got what she wanted (and) I got what I wanted, because I was really more involved in the curriculum reform (while) she wrote most of the editorials.” “We worked very closely,” Hodgson said. “She often reduced the rabid nature of my editorial writing.” Creating a daily newspaper at that time entailed long nights — every word that went into publication had to be typed by hand, Hodgson said. “Part of the work was that every night somebody had to go down to the print shop and be there and edit, then copy edit after the type was set,” she said. “It usually took you until about three in the morning.” But the 3 a.m. nights often conflicted with the 11 p.m. curfew Brown set for women students at the time. “We had to come in after curfew, and I have no idea how they worked that out,” said Salganik, who remembers having to sign out of her dormitory to go to the print shop. During World War II: The Herald-Record During her early years at Brown, the University also had a women’s weekly newspaper called the Pembroke Record, Hodgson said. The Record, established in 1922, published until 1970 and “documented and commented upon life at Pembroke College,” according to the Brown Digital Repository. “It had been the case that women on campus who wanted to get involved in campus journalism were more likely to

do it at The Pembroke Record,” Cohen said. But Hodgson wanted to participate in a daily newspaper, not a weekly. During World War II, from 1943 to 1945, The Herald merged with The Pembroke Record to form the Brown Herald-Record. The Herald-Record had an editorial board that consisted of a “Pembroke Board” and a “Brown Board,” with an editor-in-chief overseeing both boards, according to the Brown Digital Repository. Audrey Mishel ’45 served as managing editor of the Pembroke Board in 1943 and was elected as editor-in-chief of the Herald-Record in 1944. Coincidentally, Hodgson married Mishel’s nephew, according to Encyclopedia Brunoniana. “She actually was the first editor, but I was the first regular, non-war time (editor),” Hodgson added with a laugh. Beating the odds: becoming a woman in law When Hodgson was at Brown, a dean asked her whether she “had thought about jobs in one of the sales programs at one of the department stores,” Hodgson said. “I was extremely annoyed. … I thought I deserved a little more ambition than that.” After Brown, Hodgson received a Master of Arts and Teaching at Harvard University and taught at South Boston High School before attending Yale Law School. No one at Brown advised her on applying to Law School; she navigated the process on her own with the help of her husband, Hodgson said. As a civil rights lawyer, a Title IX case brought Hodgson to the United States Supreme Court, she said. She later became a superior court judge in Connecticut and is now an arbitrator and mediator of civil cases. “She’s been a trendsetter in some ways as a woman in law,” Cohen said. Women not only had “little chance to get into law school, but when … they were there in law school, (it was) more of a difficult experience for them.” It was “challenging for women to become active practicing lawyers during the time that she did it,” he added The Herald helped Hodgson develop time management skills and gave her “a thick enough skin” to bear saying unpopular things or suing “people who didn’t enjoy being sued,” Hodgson said. “In fact,” she added, The Herald “probably gave me a lifelong taste for running things.”