SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2019
VOLUME CLIV, ISSUE 32
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Quarter of undergrads support Warren in Dem. race Student groups on campus organize in support of various candidates
BY SPENCER SCHULTZ SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Pettit said. “She’s progressive to her core, which is obviously a quality that a lot of Brown students value, but I think she’s also … obviously someone with a plan.” The group has worked to involve students in Warren’s campaign by hosting debate watch parties, canvasing in New Hampshire and run-
The United States’ health care system is broken and the only solution is a single payer plan, argued local leaders of Physicians for a National Health Program at an event Tuesday night. James Cowan, an internal medicine specialist, and J. Mark Ryan MD ’84, clinical assistant professor of medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Chapter president of PNHP, explained the differences between a single payer health care system, a public option and other propos-
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SEE MEDICARE PAGE 5
SARAH MARTINEZ / HERALD
Richard Arenberg, visiting professor of the practice of political science. “However, I am somewhat surprised that her advantage is so great, but the general direction of the primary has clearly been trending in that direction, toward Warren really becoming the frontrunner.” The gap between Warren and Sanders is substantially smaller among undergraduates nationally, according to
an Oct. 15 poll from education technology company Chegg. Warren polled at 32 percent, followed by Sanders at 27 percent. Members of Brown Students for Warren are encouraged by Warren’s lead on campus, said Nathaniel Pettit ’20, a coordinator of the group. “I am not at all surprised that Elizabeth Warren is the candidate who resonates with a lot of Brown students,”
SPORTS
Berkman ’23 leads water polo over MIT Attacker Leo Berkman ’23 contributes three goals to secure a 17-12 victory for Bears
METRO
Infante-Green spearheads Providence school takeover Angélica InfanteGreen motivated by personal history, ties to community
BY AMELIA SPALTER STAFF WRITER
BY CLARA GUTMAN ARGEMÍ STAFF WRITER
Brown beat Massachusetts Institute of Technology 17-12 at home Saturday with a hat trick from attacker Leo Berkman ’23 that helped the Bears short circuit the Engineers. All the water in the pool could not extinguish Berkman’s hot streak as he came away from the match with three goals, an assist and five ejections drawn. Before arriving at Brown, Berkman was captain of his high school’s varsity water polo team in Miramonte, California. He also played for Lamorinda Water Polo Club, where he helped lead his team to a top four finish in the Junior Olympics. Berkman won two Olympic Development Program national titles, including a national championship in 2018, and he was awarded USA Water Polo Academic All-America honors three times. For
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Physicians advocate for single payer system
James Cowan, J. Mark Ryan argue single payer system would increase access, affordability
BY CAELYN PENDER STAFF WRITER Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has emerged as the most popular Democratic presidential candidate among University undergraduates, with 24.2 percent indicating that they would vote for her if the 2020 primary were held today, according to The Herald’s fall 2019 poll. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and entrepreneur Andrew Yang ’96 followed Warren’s lead, earning 12.2 percent and 10.1 percent of student support, respectively. The fourth and fifth polling places went to former Vice President Joe Biden with 8.7 percent and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, with 7 percent of the student body. “I would have expected Warren and Sanders to be pretty much at the top of the list for Brown students,” said
UNIVERSITY NEWS
COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS
Leo Berkman ’23 has had a breakout first year on the men’s water polo team, scoring the second-highest number of goals.
News
News
Commentary
Sandi Tan discusses the creation of her documentary film Shirkers at RISD Page 3
“Rigged” film discusses partisan gerrymandering, voter ID laws Page 4
Aman ’20: Legacy students, athletes should not have advantage in admissions Page 6
When Angélica Infante-Green’s son was diagnosed with autism, she was told not to speak to him in Spanish. A Manhattan-raised daughter of parents who emigrated from the Dominican Republic, Infante-Green was used to speaking Spanish at home, and resolved to keep doing so. While serving as a senior administrator in the New York Department of Education, she chose to do more to help others like her son. “Instead of conforming, what I did was I created the first dual language inclusion program for kids on the spectrum in New York City,” she said in an interview with The Herald. Now, in her position as Rhode Island’s Commissioner of Education, Infante-Green will spearhead another pioneering effort: the state’s administrative takeover of the Providence Public School District.
Last April, Infante-Green decided to postpone her retirement for a few years to step into the top job of Rhode Island’s Department of Education, becoming the first Latina and the first woman of color to fill that role. One of her first moves as Commissioner was to request Johns Hopkins University to conduct a review of the Providence school district. The results, published in June, revealed PPSD’s systemic deficiencies and set the unprecedented takeover process in motion. The state will assume control of Providence schools Nov. 1, kick-starting a process that will last at least five years and will centralize the district’s curriculum, Infante-Green said. Additionally, as part of the takeover, some underperforming schools may be closed down. She may also wish to modify the current teachers’ contract. The Commissioner’s next steps include naming a new superintendent, which she intends to do in the coming weeks. Years before releasing Tuesday’s order, the New York local first experienced Providence by stepping into its classrooms. In 2011, Infante-Green helped put together a report on the
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Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice Friday, October 18, 2019 Memory Dishes: Women & African Diasporic Cooking Exhibition and Reception 4:00pm-6:00pm Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice 94 Waterman Street, Providence, RI Memory Dishes highlights the cooking practices of six Rhode Island families. This exhibition pays homage to female cooks, both seen and unseen, and the ways their labor connects a vast and diverse diasporic peoples across generations. Please join us Friday afternoon for a special gallery reception. Saturday, October 19, 2019 10 years after re-criminalization: Reflecting on a decade of anti trafficking activism in Rhode Island 10:00-10:50am IBES, Room 130, 85 Waterman Street In 2019 a historic House Bill was introduced to study the impact of the 2009 re-criminalization of indoor prostitution in the state. Join us for this Family Weekend Forum featuring Professor Elena Shih, COYOTE RI's Bella Robinson, and students of the CSSJ Human Trafficking research cluster as they discuss their research. Slavery & Legacy Walking Tour 11:00 am Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle Meet us at the Ruth J Simmons Quad at 11:00 AM to learn about the history and legacy of slavery as it pertains to Brown University and the state of Rhode Island. Major stops on this hour-long walking tour includes the Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle, University Hall, the Slavery Memorial and the Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice. Free tickets can be reserved at https://cssjwalkingtour.eventbrite.com Open House at the Center for the Study of Slavery & Justice 11:00 am-2:00 pm 94 Waterman Street, Providence, RI We invite you to the Center’s 19th century house for a special reception to meet our faculty, staff and students. While here you can learn about student opportunities at the CSSJ, view the exhibition on display in our gallery, Memory Dishes: Women & African Diasporic Cooking, a stunning glass wall art piece, Rising to Freedom and a symbolic slave garden. All photos courtesy of Rythum Vinoben
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Sandi Tan details 23-year saga behind film ‘Shirkers’ Documentary director develops film from lost footage stolen by former mentor BY PREETI GANESH CONTRIBUTING WRITER During the summer of 1992, Sandi Tan partnered with her friends Jasmine Ng and Sophia Siddique and her mentor Georges Cardona to shoot an independent road movie called “Shirkers” on the streets of Singapore. After returning to college, Tan discovered that Cardona had stolen all the footage, leaving her and her friends traumatized. Twenty-three years later, Tan used the eventually recovered footage to develop her documentary film of the same name. The documentary focuses on the events surrounding Tan’s youth, the production of the original feature film “Shirkers,” the mysterious legacy of Georges Cardona and much more. It marks Tan’s road to recovery after decades of carrying the weight of the loss of the original footage. Tan knew that her story would make for a more interesting film than just the original concept. “It’s like an editorial feat to have combined all those years of footage,” said Alexandra Anthony, a senior critic at the Film/Animation/Video department at Rhode Island School of Design. The film exists as a “mosaic,” poetically
showcasing Tan’s “interpersonal relationships with other collaborators (and) history of her own passion for film,” Anthony added. The film cut together footage from the original “Shirkers” movie, with other pieces of evidence documenting Tan’s experiences with Cardona and new footage of her interactions with Ng, Siddique and Cardona’s widow, who remains anonymous in the film. Tan visited RISD on Monday to speak about “Shirkers” — which won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018. “The reason I made (the original) film is because I grew up in a place which I saw was disappearing before my very eyes in 1992, and this film was an excuse to put everything I cared about and everyone I cared about and everyone I thought was kind of funny-looking and goofy-looking, and I captured them on film before they all vanished.” Losing the original footage was “such a painful experience and also so shameful,” which became an unspoken secret among her and her friends, even though none of them could have foreseen that Cardona would have stolen the footage. She eventually moved on with her life, pretending it had never happened — until Sept. 11, 2011. That day, she received an email from Cardona’s widow, who had discovered the footage and offered to return it. Opening up that discussion was like “reviving this ghost or reanimating a
corpse that you don’t want in your life anymore,” she said. Cardona had not only stored 70 cannisters of 16mm film, but also storyboards, log sheets, faxes to bus companies and even receipts to parking tickets, much to her surprise. “When you put seven boxes stacked on top of each other, they’re vertical, they resemble a vertical coffin, like a sarcophagus or something. This thing began haunting my life for three years before I had the courage to open them up,” Tan said. She feared that the footage would be “rotten” and “all the stories that I had played in my head were for nothing.” In the end, she wanted the film to be a portrait of Georges and of friends. “He wants to be remembered; he wants to be mythic. I was very resistant to making this film because I didn’t want to make Georges mythic, I didn’t want to have him be remembered … I was fighting against that, but you can’t tell this story without telling Georges’s story.” But despite their history,“to this day, he’s the best storyteller I’ve ever met,” she said. “People were afraid for me,” Tan added. But she knew she had to follow the project through to completion — “This is a story only I can tell.” Making the movie out of the 16mm film would also be extremely expensive. She eventually worked with colorists who had worked on Kirk Douglas movies, aspiring toward a ’50s and ’60s film palette, inspired by “what Wes Anderson might have been going for in his
COURTESY OF RHODE ISLAND DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
R.I. Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green will oversee the state’s takeover of Providence schools starting on Nov. 1.
EDUCATION FROM PAGE 1 special education services in PPSD, including multilingual programs. The review was conducted by the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the largest urban public school systems in the U.S. The findings of the 2019 Johns Hopkins report, whose review of PPSD catalyzed the state takeover, were similar to the ones from the report she helped put together eight years before, which she described as “disheartening.” When she was offered the job of Commissioner, she decided to return to Providence to address that feeling: “This was the place where I needed to come.” While she is not from Rhode Island, Infante-Green — who describes herself as “highly competitive by nature” — feels qualified by her professional and personal experiences to meet the needs of the PPSD. In her career as a teacher and an administrator, she has
often worked in districts with underperforming schools and students who feel disempowered. The educational challenges that concern many PPSD families “are important to me because I understand.” Infante-Green grew up in Washington Heights, a working-class neighborhood in upper Manhattan, on W. 181st St.— the setting for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, a musical about the largely Hispanic-American community in the neighborhood. “The moment you walked into my house, it was like you walked into the Dominican Republic. … When your family is of immigrant descent, you go through two worlds.” Many Providence families, she said, navigate more than one culture every day. As a teenager, Infante-Green had the opportunity to attend a good school, where she built lasting relationships with teachers. “I feel very lucky that I had that. Kids that are in
poverty or in challenging situations, they need to feel like there are more people in their corner.” She believes that a good educational experience, which includes fulfilling relationships with teachers, plays a decisive role in any child’s future: “My family valued education, they understood that that was the only way out of poverty for me. Most families do.” The Commissioner views the “Providence challenge as an opportunity for us to really be in a better place. … People are going to be watching us, because we’re going to be doing things that people never expected.” The guiding principle behind any of the policies her team implements is written on a poster hanging on her office wall, which she gestures to often: “Our Policy is Children First, Everything Else Second.” Some of this “everything else,” however, seems to sometimes crowd out the Children First priority — especially
COURTESY OF NETFLIX
Sandi Tan spoke about her film “Shirkers” at RISD on Monday. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award in 2018. films.” After reviewing the film with a colorist, Tan realized the footage might have appeal for a “wider audience.” She also felt responsible for “all these people who just gave it their best shot and had their futures kind of stolen away from them.” Tan and her friends had employed a dedicated cast of actors who had volunteered their time, on top of full-time jobs, to be in an independent film shot by college students. “One of the joys of creating a film like this … is you get to create your soundscape.” Tan wanted the audience to be moved back and forth in time: “To do that, you have to capture the people emotionally.” She believed that
collaborating with a sound designer was “working with an artist that you can really play with.” She also worked with an editor who had never worked on a full-length feature film and was therefore willing to experiment. “The fact that she is so open to using people with less experience in the film industry, giving them both practice and exposure, is extremely inspiring to me,” said Tamia Jackson, a sophomore at RISD. “Back in 1992, if we finished it and we showed it, they would have laughed us out of town. … We would have just felt like failures and never pursued it. Whereas the fact that it was never finished kept the dream alive for all of us.”
politics. During the initial five-year period of the takeover, the second terms of both Governor Gina Raimondo and Mayor Jorge Elorza will end, and neither politician can run for reelection. Infante-Green, who was recommended for the job by Raimondo, knows that “the community (…) has concerns” about the takeover being interrupted or discontinued by changes in leadership after 2022. “This can’t be about me, the Governor, the Mayor, anyone. It has to be a very solid plan that will be carried on regardless of who’s here.” To ensure this continuity, the community must “have been an integral part in developing the plan,” she said. But Infante-Green faced criticism when she did not grant some community members a formal role in the takeover at a hearing in September, The Herald previously reported. She said her decision was driven by the fact that their representative, the Rhode Island Center for Justice, only acted on behalf of a fraction of the community at the hearing. “Those were a subset of groups, and this has to be about everyone,” she said. For her, including the whole community means reaching out to all the places where the community goes — including faith-based organizations and supermarkets. “We want to reach out to all the community and bring them in, and make sure that they’re a part of what’s happening.” The Commissioner intends to incorporate the community through two pathways. First, community members will be a part of a “Design Team” that will help create the plan for the process to move forward, according to RIDE spokesperson Meg Geoghegan. The team will be made up of parents, educators, principals and “everyone that wants to work to see a better system.” It will be set up
in the next few weeks. Second, the Commissioner intends to consult committees already in existence: Community Advisory Boards and Parent Action Groups. CABs oversee the improvement plans for the state’s lowest performing schools and are regulated by Rhode Island’s implementation of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Separately, the Commissioner meets monthly with a Rhode Island Parent Action Group and a Providence Parent Action Group. According to Geogheghan, there is a role for all of these groups to play in “giving feedback and helping to design” the plan to move forward. Universities in the state, including Brown, also have a responsibility in the takeover. Infante-Green has been “in conversations with Brown,” and said that some of the ways in which the University can effectively contribute to PPSD include providing professional development for schools. The University may also “adopt” a couple of schools, a reference to a new partnership program that Brown plans on launching this fall, The Herald previously reported. “I’m talking about really adopting” the schools, she said, “not just going to read a book. I’m talking about really making it an extension of Brown.” She also mentioned Brown’s $10 million endowment, which was “supposed to be raising money for Providence. That has not happened.” In order to maximize efficiency of current efforts to support PPSD, the Commissioner has asked many Rhode Island colleges and universities to conduct an inventory of their current initiatives supporting PPSD. “Part of the problem that I see not just with Brown but with other universities is that everyone has 10 million initiatives going on, and we need to be focused on two or three.”
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2019
UNIVERSITY NEWS
‘Rigged: the Voter Suppression Playbook’ examines voting laws, gerrymandering
Yesterday’s documentary screening of “Rigged” spotlighted how conservative politicians have drawn electoral districts to benefit Republican candidates.
Documentary follows efforts of state legislators, elections from 2008-2016 BY DYLAN CLARK METRO EDITOR Community members filed into Stephen Robert ’62 Hall for a showing and panel discussion of the documentary “Rigged: the Voter Suppression Playbook” Thursday. The documentary examines the variety of efforts employed by conservative state legislatures from 2008-2016 to disenfranchise voters belonging to oppositional parties, as well as minority and young voters. Audience members watched as conservative politicians gerrymandered states along racial and partisan lines with the support of conservative ac-
AOTW FROM PAGE 1 his efforts against MIT, Berkman has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week. Herald: Why did you choose Brown? Berkman: I chose Brown because I thought the school had a very unique and authentic attitude toward learning and living. I was intrigued by the possibilities and opportunities as well as the apparent passion of the students. What’s the most difficult part about being a water polo athlete? Probably the physical taxation. A lot of times you have multiple games or multiple practices in a day and it’s … very challenging. There’s really no time to rest because when you’re out there playing, the game is pretty fluid.
tion groups and the use of tools like the “Red Map,” a blueprint of drawing electoral districts to benefit Republican candidates. Members of Voter Integrity Project, a conservative action group, are also shown discussing their lobbying of state legislators to implement strict new voting laws in a variety of states, such as Texas and North Carolina. After sweeping state elections, conservative politicians carried out the goals of the conservative action groups by passing stringent voting laws, according to the documentary. Following the documentary, a panel spoke about how the measures depicted in the documentary hurt voters from accessing ballots and diminished their electoral power. “We have young people of color … who have never been given the opportunity to vote,” said Marcela Betacur, the director of the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University, who spoke on the panel. Richard Arenberg, a senior fellow
Once you get going, you really have to stay on it and be working hard the whole time. How did you first get started playing water polo? Where I’m from, a lot of people swim and play water polo. I was a pretty good swimmer from a young age so I tried out water polo and once I started, I couldn’t stop. What away game are you most looking forward to this season? I’m looking forward to playing Harvard, because we just played them at home, and we didn’t have our best game. I know we’re all very excited for a chance to play them again and show them what we’re really capable of. What’s a fun fact about you? One time I made a really good ceramic bowl. It was kind of a miracle.
at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, noted that that the federal court system played a vital role in upholding and ending the controversial voting laws discussed in the documentary. “This is of particular concern because, if you look at the record of the Supreme Court … it’s been remarkably unhelpful in instances of voter suppression that we’ve been talking about here,” he said. For instance, in June, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of North Carolina’s partisanly gerrymandered state districts. Lower federal courts also determine the constitutionality of voting rights laws. Given the importance of lower courts, “all that the Senate is doing right now is confirming judges. It’s like a conveyor belt,” Arenberg said, referencing the desire of political parties to appoint partisan judges in key seats. During the panel, Bentacur criticized Rhode Island’s state legislature
I was spinning it and put my thumb in the clay, and it formed a beautiful bowl. I made it at school, but I brought it home and gave it to my mom for her birthday. She really likes it. What’s your personal highlight of the season so far? Hitting a “double bar” in against Harvard. It looked really cool, but it was also satisfying. What’s an inside tip about water polo that spectators should know? The refs are pretty sensitive. … I’ve gotten in trouble for saying the most basic things to the ref while I’m playing. So, if you (as a fan) feel comfortable, you should let the refs know your opinion, because the players can’t. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
for passing its own voter ID law back in 2011, which she said made it harder for people to vote. “The big things that are taking down our democracy are happening at home, at your state legislature just five minutes away,” she said. But while the documentary showed that the actions of state legislators affected ballot access, Tim Smith ’75, the executive director of the documentary, pointed out to the audience that “more people are voting in a higher percentage,” as evidenced by turnout during the 2018 midterm elections. “In 2014, only 13.9 percent of (Brown) students voted. We worked hard with student partners in 2018 elections to make sure more students voted, and we just got the numbers back and found that 45 percent of students voted,” said Betsy Shimberg, the director of student development at the Swearer Center, who also spoke on the panel. Shimberg also spoke about the Swearer Center’s work with campus
DYLAN CLARK / HERALD
groups to maintain electoral participation among students by publicizing services like TurboVote, an online service that helps voters request absentee ballots, update their voter registration or register to vote. Students shouldn’t have to worry about “really complicated absentee mail ballot applications,” Shimberg said. Zoe Mermelstein ’21, president of the Brown Dems, also outlined some of the ways the Brown Dems are working to ensure proper representation in the state. “This semester we’re focusing on census work, which is very critical … because it’s at risk if populations are counted correctly,” Mermelstein said. Proper census accounts critically determine the allocation of federal funds for “welfare and public service programs,” she added. “If we can mobilize people to make sure they’re engaged in the census, we can also use this as a vehicle for get out the vote campaigns.”
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
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MEDICARE FROM PAGE 1 als discussed in the 2020 Democratic primaries. “What is Medicare for All, and Why Does It Matter” was hosted by Students for a National Health Program and Brown Medical Democratic Socialists Organization, according to Robert Fain MD ’22, a member of SNaHP. After Cowan and Ryan delivered their keynote speech, a question-and-answer session followed. Under a single payer national health insurance, also known as “Medicare for All,” a single public entity would organize health care financing, while private groups would remain largely responsible for the delivery of care, according to the PNHP website. A single payer program would be funded by the existing government expenses on health care, in addition to modest tax increases based on ability to pay, Cowan and Ryan said. A single payer system would streamline the current system, which includes multiple insurance payers, Ryan said. Currently, over 100 insurance companies and payors control the flow of money between individuals and providers of care by taking premiums from people who need health care. The single payer plan “gets rid of the middle men, and that’s it.” By eliminating multiple insurance payors, a single payer system would solve the problems of health care access and affordability, Cowan said. Around 30 million people remain uninsured under the current U.S. healthcare system because many Americans cannot afford the inflated cost of insurance, he added.
PRIMARY FROM PAGE 1 ning a phone bank. Pettit emphasized Warren’s progressive policies in areas such as affordable housing and climate change as compelling to Brown students. “She is truly the right person for the job and wouldn’t do it if she didn’t genuinely believe that,” Pettit said. Brown Students for Bernie, on the other hand, was slightly disappointed that Sanders does not have more supporters on campus. “Hopefully we’ll be able to … sway some of the people who marked that they didn’t know or they didn’t plan on voting and try to convince them how important the election is this year,” said Connor Johnson ’21, a member of Brown Students for Bernie. “We all sort of see him as the only candidate who will be able to … make the change that we need.” Sanders’s support for the Green New Deal, plan for universal health care and commitment to canceling student loan debt are also points of interest, Johnson added. Tej Stead ’23, who is working to establish a student group in support of Yang, was pleasantly surprised to see Yang’s third-place ranking in the poll. “It is significantly higher compared to his national polling average,” Stead said. “If 10.1 percent of people at Brown are supporting him, then it means that I am more easily able to connect with people who are supporters and hopefully organize things.” Stead supports Yang because of his plans to establish a universal basic income of $1000 per month and manage the problems he anticipates will follow automation in various industries. Automation is “something that other candidates are sort of brushing off, but it’s going to have major effects on the economy, and you need to have a
SPENCER SCHULTZ / HERALD
The Students for a National Health Program and the Brown Democratic Socialists Organization co-hosted the event explaining Medicare for All. “Medicare for All” would also provide more inclusive coverage than the current system, Ryan said. Under the current system, the United States government provides Medicare for citizens over the age of 65. “Suddenly, you have an insurance plan you can’t lose. Once you have Medicare, you’re insured, and it makes a huge difference in your ability to access health care which in turn results in (an improvement) in health and life expectancy.” Ryan addressed the common criticism that a single payer system would be too costly to administer. Taxes and public spending currently account for
plan to deal with the displaced workers,” Stead said. Another factor that students may find compelling is Yang’s status as a Brown alum. “The fact that he’s an alum might give him a lot more weight than he might otherwise have in popular American politics,” said Ashley Chang ’23, who is not affiliated with Stead’s group. Philip Yang ’21 is working to create a student organization in support of Buttigieg. Philip Yang is from South Bend, and he worked as an intern in Buttigieg’s office over the summer. “Just doing that, being on the ground, seeing what Pete has done for the residents of South Bend was very inspiring,” Philip Yang said. “I was a bit surprised that Joe Biden was polling higher than Pete,” Philip Yang said. He had expected that “Pete’s generational message would really resonate with the student body here” and was “pleasantly surprised … that there is a strong base of support for Pete here on campus.” Philip Yang, who supports Buttigieg in part for his single-payer health care plan and Green New Deal endorsement, plans to hold meetings where students can talk about Buttigieg and his policies, and he hopes to garner support from undecided student voters. Despite the support for more left-leaning candidates around campus, some students are concerned with their electability. “Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump, but I am worried about the electability of the rest of them,” said Bintou Diarra ’23. There are currently no registered student groups to campaign for Biden, according to BearSync, and no group in support of Biden is currently seeking recognition, according to Undergraduate Council of Students Student Activities Chair Alex Song ’20.
nearly two-thirds of overall health care costs, he said. “The idea that we’re suddenly going to shift how health care is being paid for is not true. It’s already being paid for publicly in the majority of the dollars that go into the system.” Ryan also clarified the distinction between a single payer plan and socialized medicine. “We are not talking about socialized medicine here,” he said, describing socialized medicine as a system in which the government is “the insurer, owns the hospitals and employs the doctors.” During the event, Ryan and Cowan
expressed support for two single payer plan bills that have been introduced in the United States House of Representative and Senate, sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), respectively. Both plans provide comprehensive coverage and eliminate barriers to care, Ryan said. Some Democratic candidates have advocated for a mixed system of both private and public health insurance, such as Pete Buttigieg’s “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan, which would allow individuals to opt in to public insurance or remain privately insured.
But hybrid plans would not improve existing problems, Cowan said. “Any proposal for incremental changes fails to do two things: It fails to capture and reduce the waste in the current system … and fails to address the issue of affordability.” Katherine Hobbs MD ’23, who attended the event, appreciated how the speakers clearly described the single payer plan. But she wished they had compared the plan against other “proposals by (Democratic) candidates, … just so that we can be armed with more nuanced arguments” going into the election.
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2019
End athletic recruitment and legacy admission BY REBECCA AMAN ’20 OPINIONS EDITOR On Oct. 1, a federal court upheld Harvard’s race conscious admission practice. During the case, Harvard was forced to publish admission data from 2009 to 2014, offering an unprecedented inside look at the college admission process at an elite American university. In September, three economics professors — Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler and Tyler Ransom — published a study analyzing this data. The results are striking: Admitted legacy applicants and recruited athletes were overwhelmingly wealthy and white. To combat widening income inequality and declining social mobility, Ivy League universities must take action: It’s time to end legacy admission and athletic involvement in the admission process. Arcidiacono et al. found a strong advantage for applicants with “legacy status” and recruited athletes: Legacy applicants were 5.7 times more likely to be admitted, and recruited athletes were 14 times more likely to be admitted. Nearly 70 percent of legacy and recruited athlete applicants who were admitted to Harvard during the studied period were white. Additionally, for the class of 2019, 40.7 percent of legacy students and 26 percent of recruited athletes came from families earning more than $500,000 a year, compared to 15.4 percent of the class as a whole. Ultimately, if Harvard did not consider legacy status, it would theoretically decrease the number of white admitted students by 4 percent and raise the number of admits from other racial groups by 4 to 5 percent each. Similarly, if Harvard stopped recruiting athletes, the proportion of white admits could decrease by 6 per-
cent, while the number of Hispanic and Asian American admits would rise 7 and 9 percent respectively; African American admits would remain unchanged. There is evidence that these admission practices operate similarly at other elite universities, including Brown. In 2002, James Schulman and former Princeton President William Bowen studied admission at 30 selective colleges and found that “athletes were given a 48 percent boost in admissions, compared with 25 percent for legacies and 18 percent for racial minori-
newspapers criticizing the practice. Thus, I will focus the rest of my argument on why ending athletic recruitment is necessary. Like legacy admission, athletic recruitment disproportionately favors wealthy and white children. Increasingly, athletic success requires a lot of cash. According to the Aspen Institute, the average family spends $2,292 annually on sports. This cost is one reason why children from low-income families are half as likely to play sports as children from families that make $100,000 or more a year. Like legacy admission,
At elite universities, both legacy status and athletic recruitment boost the admission chances for the most privileged applicants.
ties.” Additionally, the demographics of athletes at Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League are similar — 65 percent of Ivy League athletes are white. These statistics paint a clear picture: at elite universities, Both legacy status and athletic recruitment boost the admission chances for the most privileged applicants. While ending legacy admission and athletic recruitment are both important, legacy admission practices have garnered more attention: There are numerous opinion pieces in The Herald, the Daily Pennsylvanian, the Harvard Crimson, the Yale Daily News and other college
athletic recruitment amplifies existing inequalities. According to the Ivy League website, “Coaches may communicate to the Admissions Office their support for candidates who are athletic recruits.” As a result, athletic recruits are highly likely— though not guaranteed— to be admitted. For example, athletic recruits with scores of 1 or 2 on Harvard’s scale of 1 to 6 have an acceptance rate of 86 percent, compared to 16 percent for other applicants with similar scores. Athletes with scores of 4 have a 70 percent acceptance rate, compared to .076 percent for non-athletes applicants with the same score.
To make the admission process more equitable, coaches should not be able to communicate with admission offices. This isn’t to say that athletics shouldn’t be considered at all during the application process. Playing a sport teaches teamwork and discipline. Athletes must manage their time carefully to balance athletics and schoolwork. These skills are valuable and should be considered by admission officers — just during the regular admission process and without the influence of coaches. Some may be concerned that if coaches cannot help athletes gain admission, talented athletes may choose to go elsewhere. This may happen. But being good at sports should not supersede combating inequality. Others may argue that successful teams are important because they help colleges raise funds. While there is some research that indicates a positive relationship between donations and athletic success, much of these donations go to athletics directly, and may even “crowd out” academic funding. The Ivy League already holds its schools to stricter standards than the NCAA. For example, Ivy league schools cannot give athletic scholarships. It is feasible that the Ivy league could prohibit its coaches from communicating with admission offices. Ultimately, when five of the eight Ivy League schools have more students from the top 1 percent of the income distribution than the bottom 60 percent, it’s clear that it’s time to end all unfair admission practices. Rebecca Aman ’20 can be reached at rebecca_aman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
CLA R IF ICAT I O N
CORRECT I ON
A previous version of the Oct. 15 article titled “University develops new programs to support PPSD” stated that “The University has separately invested over $800,000 in the district through a fund.” In fact, that sum is invested through several centers and departments, not one central fund. The article also stated that the University had established an administrative working group to “develop a partnership with designated public schools in the city.” In fact, it is an administrative task force that will develop a plan for Brown’s engagement with PPSD. The article has been updated to reflect those changes. The Herald regrets the error.
A previous version of the Oct. 17 article titled “PhD programs eliminate GRE requirement” stated that the policy change allowed departments to make the subject-specific GRE exams optional. In fact, the policy only affected the general GRE exam. The Herald regrets the error.
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A previous version of the Oct. 17 op-ed titled “Administration should reverse ban of drug checking program” stated that the School of Public Health is home to national leaders in harm reduction research, such as Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine Geoffrey Capraro. In fact, Capraro works at the Warren Alpert Medical School. The Herald regrets the error.
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In This Issue
When in Newport
SIENA CAPONE 4
Family Moments
POST- FAMILY 2 JAMES FEINBERG 5
Growing Pains
JULIAN TOWERS 6
Parent Trap
postCover by Iris Xie
OCT 18
—
VOL 24 —
ISSUE 6
FEATURE
Family Moments
A Collection of Memories by post- Editors BY SYDNEY LO, AMANDA NGO, CELINA SUN, ANITA SHEIH, JULIAN TOWERS ILLUSTRATED BY KATIE FLIEGEL
T
hree years ago today, my parents flew from Minnesota to Providence for my first Family Weekend at Brown. We had been apart for barely over a month but hugged in front of Soban like it had been a year. I’d never been away from home for that long before, and though I was slowly acclimating to university life and talked with them regularly on the phone, I still missed our little routines: tired morning goodbyes over coffee, watching Wheel of Fortune with my mom over dinner, my dad and I finishing our respective work on the couch. As we discussed plans for the weekend over bibimbap, we decided that we could all use a little
of what used to be ordinary. So, instead of attending all the events Brown University had to offer, we sat together in my parents’ AirBnB and marathoned Will & Grace. This show was one of many sitcoms that had played constantly in my house, a pleasant background noise to chores, meals, and conversations. Halfwatching the show and wedged between my parents as my dad recalled the first time he’d seen this episode, I was struck by how much I’d missed that noise. I don’t even remember what happened in the episodes we watched that night, but I do remember finally feeling at home in Providence. When my parents left a few days later, it was back to
my new life, my new world. There were midterms to study for, papers to write, friends to meet up with. But now, when I had the spare time, I turned on an episode of Parks and Recreation I had watched a hundred times before. I brought a piece of my old life into my new and, each time, felt a little more prepared for whatever the rest of the semester had to offer. *** “When do you get out of your meeting? We’ll be there in a few hours to get the calculator,” my mom said to me over FaceTime. Thanks to Texas Instruments’s pricing model, it was cheaper for my
Letter from the Editor Hello, Readers, and welcome to our sixth issue of the semester! I’m sure most (if not all) of you have noticed that change is afoot. You feel it in the crisp breeze no matter how many layers you wear. You hear it in the crunch of the leaves under your boots on the Main Green. You smell it in the air. You see it in the resurgence of Halloween memes, and you taste it in excessive amounts of cinnamon in the Blue Room. For those of you who have been here before, you know what it means. It’s fall (or autumn, as literally any other country would say. But I digress. This is not a treatise on British versus American English, though that is incidentally an essay well worth being written). As Providence truly welcomes fall (and midterm season), student stress levels continue soaring to unprecedented heights. It’s once again the time of year when bleary-eyed students can be seen stocking up on Starbucks (read: pumpkin spice lattes), comfort food, and extra-credit assignments. Fortunately, Family Weekend is here to break the cycle of anxiety that New England fall perpetuates.
2! POST–
Unless you’re an international student, like me— in which case, homesickness will likely be your only visitor. But worry not, because whether you’re from Ohio or Timbuktu, this week’s issue of post- will still be available for you to read. In honor of Family Weekend, we have A&C pieces on dad-rock and Little Shop of Horrors, a feature piece reminiscing about cherished familial memories, and a narrative reflection on privilege —both inside and outside the Brown bubble. So here’s your weekly reminder: Make sure you stay hydrated during midterm season, dress warmly so you don’t fall sick, etc. Oh, and make sure to read post- so you stay up to date on what’s going on at Brown this week! Yours in 3,000 layers of clothing,
Kahini
Lifestyle Editor
Pumpkin-Flavored Things
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Pumpkins Jack-o’-lanterns Not pumpkin spice lattes Midterm stress on Halloween night Pumpkin-scented Febreze (although we don’t recommend ingesting it) Pumpkin Spice SPAM Squash that you can pass off as pumpkin Anything from the Blue Room with pumpkins in it Smashing Pumpkins, the alt-rock band Pumpkin spice popcorn—it’s really good!
parents to drive from Boston to Providence to get my old calculator than buy a new one for my sister. It was the second week of fifth semester, and I had just moved out of the only place I could consider my real home into an off-campus apartment with a million problems. That day, I expected to see my family for a few minutes before they made their way back. To my surprise, my mother came in lugging a tote bag and a garbage bag, and my father a hefty set of tools. My sister trailed behind empty-handed but with arms opened for a hug. Mom called me into the kitchen. “I got you two loaves of bánh mì. And frozen har gow. And har cheung. And here—some Vietnamese coffee. Oh! I also made you some kimchi.” She pulled out these foods as if from some bottomless magic hat while my dad banged away with his tools. I found him installing a new doorknob to my room, which had been broken since I moved in. “It closes and locks now. See?” My sister snuggled up in my bed after pulling a body pillow out of the garbage bag. “I brought you your favorite pillow. And Ollie,” she said, revealing a pink plush octopus: one of my only stuffed animals. By the time they left, my fridge was full, my room secured and insulated, and my bed cozier than it had been that morning. Everything feels incomplete without my family, but their visit made my apartment feel a little more like a home. *** I vividly remember how I learned that—spoiler alert—Santa Claus isn’t real. I must have been seven or eight, on the cusp of realizing that the world isn’t all magic and mystery and sunshine. We had just arrived home from a long day out at Strike, a bowling and arcade establishment where I spent many a birthday knocking down very few pins but winning quite a few tickets. I remember it being Christmas Eve. My mom, dad, sister, and I often went to Strike during the holidays. It was late, probably past my bedtime, and as I shrugged off my coat to hang it on the back of my chair in the dining room, I saw my mom gesture to my dad, who dutifully went down into the basement. When he resurfaced, his arms were full of wrapped presents that he put under our tree— bedecked in lights and ornaments, a beacon to Santa. Who, apparently, was my dad. I don’t remember my exact reaction to this stunning revelation, which means I probably already had some inkling that old Father Christmas didn’t exist (after all, who would want to live somewhere so cold all the time?). But I definitely asked questions— so, who wrote back to me every year in such pretty cursive after I sent out my wishlist? Was it always Dad who ate all the cookies and drank all the milk? I do remember that the year before, I had woken up in the middle of the night to a loud thump and the creaking of floorboards. Guess that was just Dad. Years later, my parents asked me, “How did you learn that Santa not real?” I recounted the story, but my mom furrowed her brow. “We wouldn’t do that. Right in front of you? That doesn’t make sense.” “This is definitely how it happened,” I protested, looking to my sister.
She shrugged. “I don’t know… Would Strike even be open so close to Christmas?” It was an outrage. I went to my room and dug out the diary I’d kept back then. And there it was, written in my shaky, baby handwriting: We went bowling! It was fun! Then we came home and dad put presents under the tree!!! Santa isn’t real!!!! I ran downstairs and placed my diary on the dining room table for all to see. “I told you so!” My mom looked at it. “I don’t know... You sure it wasn’t just dream you wrote down? I don’t remember.” My dad deferred to my mom, and my sister laughed. But I knew the answers to the questions I remembered asking. The post office had a special program that replied to children’s letters to Santa. My dad was always the one to stay up, but sometimes he put the cookies back in their container. The moral of the story: Sometimes your parents, for whatever reason, won’t admit the truth—but you know what you know. *** Many kids are familiar with the practice of writing letters to Santa Claus, proclaiming their goodness and advocating for the right to presents each Christmas. I, with the help of my mom, did that too every year without fail. Another regular pen pal I had growing up was the Tooth Fairy. So I would regale her with tales of my labor—my constant tweaking and twisting, prolonged days of soreness and sensitivity due to my wobbling canines, and elaborate doorknob-string-pulley systems. The best part of this practice was that they would always write back. Santa Claus would congratulate me on another year of spotless report cards, timely chore completion, and getting along with my older sister (most of the time). The Tooth Fairy would celebrate the newest gap in my smile with me and would urge me to take good care of the latest state in my quarter collection—would it be New Hampshire? Or Texas? I would listen to my mom read these letters aloud, grinning and captivated, hanging onto every last word from my fantastical friend who was so far away but felt so near. As I got older, I started to read the letters myself, relishing in their crisp folds, the festive patterns bordering the text, and the beautiful words and wishes the Tooth Fairy wanted to share with me. Then I began to notice some oddities in the letters—a grammar error here or a misspelled word there. My mom would reassure me in her fluid Cantonese, “The Tooth Fairy is just very busy. No time for spell check!” One evening, I was playing in my mother’s closet, rummaging around to see what shiny jewelry and beautiful fabrics she was hiding. I found a box, deep in a shelf stuffed full of thick sweaters. I opened it, hoping for treasure, and instead discovered letters. Years of my correspondence with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, neatly stacked in the box. The delicate fantasy I had fought so hard to maintain shattered before my eyes. I remember crying, a whole-body cry.
“I’m sorry,” my mom said when she found me. “I wanted to help you keep this magic in your life, to help you believe in this beautiful fantasy for as long as I could.” That didn’t help. “But now that you know,” my mom continued as she hugged me tight, “maybe I can help you find this magic somewhere else in your life, in reality.” And knowing that she had and would continue to make my life magical did help me feel better. *** My dad is really all you could ask for: he’s got a strong-willed code of American masculinity that makes him a little scary, but he’s also tender and empathetic—willing to support me no matter what path I take. Deep down, though, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a nerd. Not in the manner of, say, a bully—more like the cheerleading captain that takes pity on the frumpy valedictorian and gives her a makeover. That’s because my dad’s pretty much been that cool high school girl all his life, especially when he was a cool high school boy: top of his class, a track star, lead of every theater production, and, central to his legend, asked out to senior prom every single year. Dance skills apparently held cultural cachet among post-war, predominantly middle-class Jewish communities—and, guess what, he also had the best two-step in town. Even factoring out the two years I spent locked away at an all-boys boarding school, I never stood a chance. My junior prom night was spent eating peppermint Oreos and lazily watching The Passion of the Christ. Somewhere around the seventh minute of Jesus being flagellated by cackling Roman soldiers, my father’s voice carried downstairs to tell me to turn the volume down. His patient, dulcet tones carried a just barely detectable note of sadness. I had a rough first year at NYU; it’s a complicated story that ends with me hooked on cigarettes while obsessively performing stand-up comedy to homeless people. In short, I decided that I was going to transfer within a week of arriving and called my father to tell him not to attend Family Weekend. I’ll never forget the chill of desolation I felt when he told me not to “lose your youth in transit…y’know, like your mother.” (This is how my dad speaks.) By the time he journeyed up to see me at Brown a year and a half later, I had undergone an unprecedented glow-up. I was editing this magazine, I was TA-ing, I was running a film society. Furthering the image of my intense engagement, everywhere we went that day—even esoteric places like the RISD Museum—we ran into someone I knew (understand that I know 14 people in total, so this almost never happens). Reflected back to me off my father’s beaming smile, the new things in my life filled me with pride. It was a kind of pride they hadn’t given me before. I wondered if I hadn’t, deep down, glowed up just for him. When my father left, all the sad, unfulfilled elements of my experience would once again assert themselves—my film society was falling apart, my academic work was unfulfilling. But his validation lingered; it’s good to have the cheerleading captain on your side.
“I learned this entire language from Google.”
“Hey, Siri, set a reminder to get a life tomorrow at 8 p.m.”
OCTOBER 18, 2019!3
NARRATIVE
When in Newport Of Bubbles and Privilege BY SIENA CAPONE ILLUSTRATED BY CAROLINE HU
I used to peer into my dad’s fish tank and wonder where, exactly, the fish thought they lived. Surely not the ocean. And yet, they definitely wouldn’t conclude that they were perched on the granite kitchen counter, within the orbit of my family’s Sunday pasta dinners and loud laughter and political discourse. They couldn’t know; little blue fins wiggling, round discus fish as pink as wounds— they’d spent their whole lives swimming along a plexiglass horizon. I first got the feeling when I entered high school and my chief social activities became sitting in my friend’s Honda, running into people’s moms at Target, and trying to explain to classmates why Andrew Jackson shouldn’t be on the 20-dollar bill. The feeling that my world was only so big—and my viewpoint so limited—was pervasive. My telescope into the outside world was locked in place. And moving it, giving a second thought to the thing my family friend said at that dinner, sounded a lot like seeds rustling in a shaken paper packet—making noise, but remaining confined. A persistent feeling of enclosure. Even if I didn’t realize it until I was 16 and sufficiently jaded, I’d lived there my whole life. I was in a bubble. *** Newport has always held a sort of mythology on campus, especially in declarations of long weekend plans, sandwiched neatly between Boston and NYC. The name conjures up images of grand houses, raw gray cliffs, and condensation on paper cups of Del’s Lemonade. My friends and I had never been to Newport, so the idea of a day trip held novelty, fueled by my desire to not miss out. After all, I appreciate any chance to spend time with the people I love and to ditch, well, the campus bubble. So I stuffed my bag with a seldom-used bikini, a reading I probably wouldn’t do, six pads, and my camera, and met my friends to trek down to the ferry.
The most exciting part, initially, was simply that we were going; poking the carefully constructed College Hill bubble came with a bewildering sort of joy. My American studies professor once joked that Brown students are “allergic to leaving.” And although the weight of books in each of our bags acted as subtle tethers to the gates we left behind, we were going—at least for the day. The Bristol Ferry Dock reflected in our eyes as it passed, the sun falling over Elena as she excitedly pointed out the expanse of blue reeling outside our window. (I, for my part, have ruined many a boating endeavor losing my innards and focused on the inside of my eyelids.) It was perfect beach weather back at school: 80 degrees, sunny. The Main Green was humming with life. And we were running with it, making out like thieves into an entirely new place where we would get to eat things we couldn’t at school, lie on a beach, and tell everyone about it. We stepped off the ferry into a humidity so thick, it felt like Newport was holding us in its mouth. Overhead, the sky was cottony, sunlight struggling to leak through the cracks in the wall of clouds. “Well,” Mary tried, looking down at a weather app, “it changes to partly cloudy around 2 p.m.” Her optimism was the only light present. So the sun didn’t want to leave College Hill either. Go figure. Nonetheless, we set off in pursuit of memorable experiences.And we found them, among pastel houses on waterfronts swallowed by fog and masses of seagulls and shops with weird names like Soap & Water. We poked around in a toffee store and put our faces in a your-face-here cardboard cutout of shellfish with “We’re so fresh!” emblazoned across it. We galloped around the beach attempting to take artsy pictures, and Aidan’s Speedo patterned with gold chains was the most memorable image of all. At one point early in the day, we were browsing a historical gift shop when two tourists entered: a guy holding the door and a woman behind him. Moved to profound emotion by this gesture, she declared to the shoppers before her that “Chivalry is NOT dead.” My eyes fell on a children’s book about women in the Revolutionary War called Independent Dames. I knew that if I looked at any of my friends I would burst out laughing—but I also knew that we all felt, for lack
I first got the feeling when I entered high school and my chief social activities became sitting in my friend’s Honda, running into people’s moms at Target, and trying to explain to classmates why Andrew Jackson shouldn’t be on the 20-dollar bill. The feeling that my world was only so big—and my viewpoint so limited—was pervasive.
4!POST–
of `a better word, the “vibe” of the area we were. This part of Newport is commonly known to be dominated by wealthy white tourists. Its bubble-like nature is as unmistakable as Brown’s. A woman from New Jersey whom we met on the beach expressed this feeling best. My friends and I happened upon large-scale drawings of a particular anatomical feature in the sand on our way out of the beach, and our laughter quickly turned to confusion as we noticed that the artists behind the gallery of phallic shapes were all children under the age of 12. The woman, presumably their mom, offered the following critique: “We’re not in New Jersey anymore; we’re in Rhode Island! You can’t do that here!” (I, personally, would have commented on the drawings’ form, but I understand not wanting to discourage people in the early days of their artistic process.) Humorous as the encounter was, the woman’s oversimplification of the disparate social norms between New Jersey and Rhode Island also made clear that we weren’t alone in feeling the tonal shift present in the touristy parts of Newport. Like us, this family had traveled to Newport from their own hometown bubble, with all of its specific permissions and rules, and were trying their best to exist in a space with new ones. In other words, they were learning a new bubble. Many of us have had to do the same at some point in our lives. When I came to Brown, I felt absolutely floored by the breadth and depth of things I did not know beforehand. While we discussed more wellknown catastrophes, such as the Flint water crisis, in my environmental studies class, we also talked about disasters not as publicized like the gas leak at a pesticide plant in Bhopal. I had never once heard the name “Bhopal.” After that class, a friend and I vented our anger towards the systems of power and passivity that allowed these events to transpire with no consequence. Ignorance like ours can cost lives. We discussed the fact that we never knew about Bhopal and questioned the elaborate, carefully filtered mechanisms in place to feed us information. “And what makes it worse,” my friend pointed out, “is that the only reason we know about it now is because we go here, one of the most privileged places in the world.” She’s right. And yet, I thought I’d tried my best to stay aware, even back in Birmingham, Michigan: home of particularly sheltered childhoods and frequent PTA spats. But there exists a longstanding history of people and systems keeping countless dayto-day tragedies hidden under the radar. And even if we don’t feel unaware, many of us from sheltered backgrounds or identities of privilege often inadvertently perpetuate existing systems of power. The fact that enclosed spaces of privilege exist is not a revelation. I’m not the first person to point this out, nor will I be the last. But I don’t think it should be a revelation. It’s something I have to constantly remind myself of. Even if I didn’t realize it until I was 16 and sufficiently jaded, I was born and raised in a bubble. Birmingham was a checkerboard of suburban lawns and cement driveways that came with fixed rules and defined perimeters. Those rules—and that limited surface area I had access to—informed most of my life before Brown. Bubbles are often places we love and by no means as easy to hate as institutions of bureaucracy or vast chemical companies—we should be careful of this. I love Birmingham and hold onto nostalgic memories of its Target sunsets and the hollow echo of the marching band drumline off the high school stadium bleachers. But I recognize the structures of power and injustice that are at work in the
ARTS & CULTURE very same town. While my friends and I wove through Newport shops, I, like most first-time tourists, thought that it was a place of beauty, fun to visit. But it can’t be reduced to one dimension. Like with all places, there is the bubble constructed for the white and the wealthy, and there are low-income communities and communities of color in Newport that don’t fall within that sphere. Every place holds the disparities they do today because of a complex history rooted in racism, exclusion, and oppression that I seek to understand. The work lies in the act of reconciling the Target sunsets of my hometown with the harmful “opinions” of my high school classmates. It’s about trying to learn as much as I can at Brown while knowing that where I study is not an ordinary place, affiliated with a corporation that certainly does not always have humanity’s best interests at heart. It's about thinking of how I intend to change that, to the best of my abilities. Being grateful that I can. My friends and I stopped by Del’s and then Newport Lobster Shack; we watched the clouds finally break at 2 p.m. Mary wrote the name of her home state in the sand over and over again, like a summons. As if she could’ve conjured up her bubble right there on the beach—Minnesota unfolding onto the sand like a pop-up in a children’s book. We didn’t do any of our readings; we observed the world around us, limited as it was, as flawed as it is. Tried to make sense of it. My books stayed in my bag with my six pads and my camera and a few new postcards to write home on.
Growing Pains
Little Shop of Horrors at the Westside Theatre BY JAMES FEINBERG ILLUSTRATED BY ANNA SEMIZHONOVA
Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s 1982 stage musical Little Shop of Horrors, a clever and funny—if surface-level—dissection of American consumerism in the decades after World War II, generally works because of the man-eating plant. The 1960 Roger Corman B-movie on which Little Shop is based is a mannered farce; Ashman, lyricist and librettist, expanded it into a sci-fi tale about an alien species of flytrap that comes to Earth looking “essentially to / eat Cleveland / and Des Moines / and Peoria / and New York / and this theater.” The alien plant is found by timid florist’s assistant Seymour Krelbourne, who names the creature Audrey II after his co-worker and paramour Audrey. Seymour rises to prominence because of his botanical discovery (even making it to the cover of Life). Unfortunately, Audrey II is the advance force of a floral extraterrestrial invasion and needs to be fertilized with human blood. Seymour, looking to stay on top of the world, eventually feeds his foster father and Audrey herself to the plant. Though Ashman’s writing is overtly silly, he’s playing with serious themes here. In fact, the dilemma is as old as 1001 Nights: The unsuspecting (and, eventually, craven) putz finds himself in control of forces greater than he and plots to use them to gain fortune and notoriety. It’s the same territory Ashman broached, with more pleasant music also written by Menken, in the 1992 movie musical Aladdin. The threat, ultimately, is not the plants themselves but that enough “jerks” will fall for their get-rich-quick pitch and “feed them their fill.”
“They may offer you fortune and fame,” our heroes warn us in the disturbing finale, “Love and money and instant acclaim, / But whatever they offer you / Don’t feed the plants.” It might just as well be “don’t feed the bond traders.” It’s not the aliens who are coming to get us—it’s our own avarice.
until Groff’s appearance, and rightly so. Groff, it turns out, gives a remarkable performance in an essentially unremarkable production. Though I was worried, after the 2015 City Center production starring Jake Gyllenhaal, that this traditionally nebbish role would swerve toward permanent
It’s not the aliens who are coming to get us—it’s our own avarice. Done right, Little Shop should, on some level, inspire deep-seated moral terror. Done right, Little Shop should, on some level, inspire deep-seated moral terror. At minimum, its audience should find themselves avoiding begonias for at least a week. Michael Mayer’s new Off-Broadway production of Little Shop at the Westside Theatre is notable for a cast that includes Tony nominee Jonathan Groff as Seymour and Tony winner Christian Borle as sadistic dentist Orin Scrivello (among other roles). As such, it has inspired ravenous anticipation, impressive ticket sales, and a two-month extension to January 19. Its Audrey II puppet, designed by Nicholas Mahon and voiced by Kingsley Leggs, has been comparatively unheralded, for good reason. It’s well-puppeteered by a team of four, but it’s too smooth and decorative for my taste, more like a Muppet than a monster; though, to be fair, it’s tough to compete with Frank Oz’s masterful puppet from the 1986 film version and its quivering, articulated lips. Groff skillfully manipulates Audrey II’s half-grown version, a hand puppet with a disturbing number of gnashing teeth; its “mouth” snaps shut with a chilling thud that echoes through the 270-seat theater. In Act II, by contrast, Audrey II is larger, but torpid and unthreatening. The big lug (described in Ashman’s stage directions as “a cross between an avocado and a shark”) viciously chomps Audrey (Tammy Blanchard) across the stomach without leaving any visible marks. So much for eating this theater. So this Little Shop isn’t scary, and, as it turns out, isn’t particularly new, either. Risks are few and far between under Michael Mayer’s direction. On a utilitarian set designed by Julian Crouch, Mayer’s staging seems obligatory, a panacea marking time
matinee idol status, I’m glad to say that Groff’s deeply skilled performance does not rely at all on his beauty, his least interesting trait. His rage as Audrey II takes over his life is exquisitely colored, and his sense of twisted fun is palpable in the delicious “Feed Me (Git It),” a duet with Leggs. It’s a great musical moment in which Seymour, with Audrey II’s help, plans his first murder: “Stop and think it over, pal,” Groff practically shrieks, leaping up on a counter, “The guy sure looks like plant food to me.” Mayer, who directed Groff in his breakout role in the original production of Spring Awakening, seems surest-footed when working with his star. Since Blanchard’s vocal range is limited (tragically, given that Audrey’s two torch numbers, “Somewhere That’s Green” and “Suddenly, Seymour,” are the most powerful in the show) and the hammy Borle has entirely too much fun for his performance’s own good, one increasingly wishes Seymour and his big green buddy could be left alone onstage. Let’s face it—they belong together. On the occasion of this new, minimized, and intimate production, much has been made of the show’s downtown roots (it ran at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village for five years, from 1982 to 1987). But Little Shop isn’t a show specifically aligned with Off-Broadway such as The Fantasticks or Stomp, and it is certainly no more countercultural than its contemporary and spiritual predecessor Sweeney Todd. Therein lies the problem with this largely uninteresting approach to underserved material: So much, from Menken’s brilliant, genrehopping score to Groff’s gorgeous lyric tenor, is crammed into so little space. Where’s the room to grow? OCTOBER 18, 2019!5
ARTS&CULTURE
Parent Trap
What to Expect When Mom & Dad Take the Aux BY JULIAN TOWERS ILLUSTRATED BY GABY TREVIÑO
I’m pretty lame. The highest my pulse rate has been all year was probably when I read that Travis Scott had a new single coming out. My parents are lame, too, but in a sadder way. They haven’t even listened to pop radio since before I was born; maybe your parents haven’t either. Musical complacency can seem like a fate worse than death, but should we really expect our parents to have hot takes on YoungBoy Never Broke Again or Lil Tecca? Looking 20 years down the line, I can hardly hope to keep up with my best friends from high school, let alone the music I liked; it’ll be a miracle if I know that Jaden Smith’s son, Ninja Qwest Smith, is spearheading the 2039 trap-disco revival. Whenever I get in the car with my parents, my ears may resent their choosing to play Bob Dylan Christmas charity albums or the EDM remix of Paul Simon’s Graceland, but my soul makes me grin and bear it. The artists that soundtracked their carefree youths remind them of a time before the grind of adult life. I can’t take that away from them. On the occasion of Family Weekend, I present a guide to the most notable recent releases in parentmusic (colloquially known as “dad-rock,” but that’s a restrictive category in more ways than one). Each record has been rated on two scales: one assessing its musical quality and another grading its potential to facilitate cross-generational bonding. Hopefully you’ll luck out and get handed the aux cord. But if not… Tool—Fear Inoculum Tool and its rabid fans make for disgustingly easy
punchlines, and I will have no part in it. Instead, I’ll say that the parent who explains to their captive child how Lateralus incorporates the Fibonacci sequence is likely the most passionate music fan you’ll find in this guide. Tool began the 1990s making dingy, dive bar sludge rock before somehow levelling up into alternative metal’s reigning Galaxy Brain. Fans obsess over their complex rhythms, unique time signatures, and pseudointellectual references to Carl Jung, Aleister Crowley, and German weed cookies. You could probably turn in one of their lyric sheets and get a B in a high school philosophy class. There’s not, however, a substantial amount of harmonic variation in their basement-dwelling sound. At first blow, each song is the same sludgy nightmare of chunky bass riffs, plunky drums, and preening vocals. Things start to deepen if you have time to learn where all the guitar solos come in, but that’s simply not possible in a single car ride to Boston. Thankfully, you’ll have your parents to guide the way. Fear Inoculum, the band’s latest opus, comes after 13 long years of feverish anticipation (presumably, they were meticulously timing each drum solo to correlate with Kabbalah numerology), so any devoted fan has likely spent a lot of time with it already. I’d recommend faking intense interest as your parents rave about Danny Carey’s expensive sonor acrylic drum kit and point out the secret messages the band has hidden in their time signatures. After all, didn’t they listen when you tried to describe your thesis? Musical Value 7/10
Bonding Value 9/10
Black Keys—“Let’s Rock” On the one hand, the band plays a strain of backyard barbeque blues that is perhaps the most deeply normal and archetypical rock music I can conceive. There’s a reason they’ve always been the de rigueur soundtrack to car advertisements. Squint your eyes, and their latest album will again conjure images of dusty roads, flatbed pickups, and 1.9 percent APR rates. But viewed another way, this band makes deeply surreal, uncanny, and downright odorless music for alien life-forms. Of another human being, has anyone ever sincerely thought they “get low like a valley / Then high like a bird in the sky?” What would it mean to “shine a little light on” another person’s “soul?” Is that…does that mean sex? Sure, they’re not the first band to write almost exclusively in rock cliche. But with the Keys, there’s no dangling humanity—no passion, hedonism, or romance to suggest they’re leading a life that would make someone reach for rock trope in the first place. It’s music that only reveals itself as bad when you ask yourself why
“Even more than peeing my pants, even more than my teacher’s shocked, reddening face, I remember days I spent in the corner of the classroom, by the shelves, reading books.” – Kathy Luo, “the english major” 10.20.17
“He always took my seat in the lounge and left his banana peels on the table. Oh, I’m not bitter." – Divya Santhanam, Jennifer Osborne, Kasturi Pananjady, “too close for comfort” 10.19.18
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Anita Sheih FEATURE Managing Editor Sydney Lo Section Editors Sara Shapiro Erin Walden Staff Writer Anna Harvey NARRATIVE Managing Editor Celina Sun Section Editors Liza Edwards-Levin Michelle Liu Jasmine Ngai
anybody would want to make it—besides ad revenue, that is. Assuming it was played willingly, this is the album I would be most concerned to hear over Family Weekend. Best case scenario, your parents have found new jobs in marketing; at worst, they’ve completely disengaged from all human experience (these could admittedly be co-related elements of the same scenario). Send for help, regardless. Musical Value 4/10
Bonding value 1/10
Nas—The Lost Tapes II “I don't want to go see Nas with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall!” That’s underground rapper and proud Marxist Billy Woods, coming off his track “Spider Hole.” It’s a great line, which I’ve determined is the result of two factors. One: It’ll make you feel better if you sing it after your debit card gets denied. Two: It encapsulates why it’s so hard to care about Nas these days. He’s too rich. Of course, rappers are supposed to get rich. That’s half of their superhero appeal; they sweep up the listener and make their conquest ours. But unlike, say, his enemy Jay-Z (example chosen to piss Nas off, should he be a Herald reader), the guy’s never really known how to make himself a legendary character. At his core, Nas is just an excellent journalist: intensely mouthing off about whatever’s in front of him. On 1994’s timeless Illmatic, recorded when he was a teen living in New York housing projects, that meant matter-of-fact documentation of crime, strife, and Nas’s determination to escape both. On 2019’s time-stamped The Lost Tapes II, it means dry boasts about investing in tech startups, handing luggage to his bellhop, and winning divorce settlements. Whereas even mediocre rappers know how to ride their wealth like a rickety rollercoaster, giving it real stakes and excitement, Nas turns his into a bland human interest story. If anyone could relate, though, it’s probably your parents. From their point of view, Nas building his own venture capital firm is no different than any other “Dad’s got his groove back” move—the rich person equivalent of leasing a sports car or cheating on your wife. We all have to block out the ever-encroaching void somehow. Should The Lost Tapes II come on, it might be wise to feign encouragement the same way you do when your mom talks about her macrame. Try, “Wow, Nas sure does have great really lawyers” or “It’s cool Nas still finds time to read the Wall Street Journal every morning.” You never know; to mock his mid-life crisis might be to mock theirs. Musical Value 5/10
Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Grace Park ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Julian Towers Section Editors Nicole Fegan Griffin Plaag Staff Writer Rob Capron David Kleinman
Bonding value 6/10
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kahini Mehta
SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Camila Pavon
Section Editor Caitlin McCartney
Editor Paola Solano
Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto
HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Rémy Poisson
COPY Copy Chief Amanda Ngo
LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi
Copy Editors Maddy McGrath Jennifer Osborne Mohima Sattar
Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche
Want to be involved? Email: anita_sheih@brown.edu!
6!POST–
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