Monday, November 1st, 2021 - The Brown Daily Herald

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

VOLUME CLVI, ISSUE XXXIII

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

SPORTS

SCIENCE AND

Women’s soccer wins Ivy title after beating Penn

RESEARCH

Bears become most decorated women’s soccer program in Ivy league history

BY BENJAMIN POLLARD METRO EDITOR The women’s soccer team (11-3-0, 6-0-0 Ivy) clinched the Ivy League title after defeating Penn (9-4-2, 3-30 Ivy) Saturday at home. With the victory, the Bears won their second consecutive, and 14th overall, soccer championship, making them the most decorated women’s soccer program in Ivy League history.

The Bears brought strong offensive pressure from the offset, keeping the ball largely on Penn’s side of the field for the first eight minutes. After multiple shots, forward Ava Seelenfreund ’23.5 scored the only goal of the game with an assist from Evelyn Calhoon ’24 and Brittany Raphino ’23.

While scoring the game winning goal was “great,” Seelenfreund said it was “really a team goal” at the end

Brown alum wins Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics Guido Imbens wins the prize for his work in statistical inference

BY CASEY CHAN STAFF WRITER

Seelenfreund said the win was the result of “teamwork,” rather than just one player, crediting the importance of the defense in ensuring a clean sheet.

Guido Imbens MA ’89, PhD ’91, applied econometrics professor and professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, sits in front of two square images of his children playing chess.

Both of his sons started playing the game more during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. He

SEE SOCCER PAGE 3

SEE NOBEL PAGE 6

COURTESY OF DAVID SILVERMAN VIA BROWN ATHLETICS

The team also celebrated their Senior Night, where nine players from the senior class were honored before the game. They hope to close out their Ivy careers with a win against Yale next week for a 7-0 streak. of the day.

Brown ended the first half with 10 shots to Penn’s one. The Bears maintained their dominance with a total of 19 shots to Penn’s two by the end

of the game.

Goalie Kayla Thompson ’22 only had to fend off one shot on goal, with the Bears’ defense keeping the Quakers contained all game.

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Deans of aid, admission explain effects of new financial aid investments Removal of home equity, move to needblind int’l admission bolsters access

BY WILL KUBZANSKY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Last week, the University announced that it would add nearly $25 million to its annual financial aid budget by the

$1,000 for students with no parental contribution.

“I was elated,” Dean of Admission

announce the investments “even earlier” than expected, he noted.

In interviews with The Herald, Pow-

$125,000 a year because of the elimination of home equity — effectively, the value of a home — from financial aid

2024-25 academic year.

That expansion includes the elimination of tuition for most families earning under $125,000 a year, a move to need-blind admission for international students and the deduction of the summer earnings contribution by

Logan Powell said of the announcement.

“This was something we had hoped to announce for quite some time.”

This year’s unprecedented returns on the endowment, and the continued success of Brown’s charitable giving campaign, allowed the University to

ell and James Tilton, dean of financial aid, explained the impacts of the new investments, including how admission and aid processes will change because of them.

Scholarships will expand to cover tuition for most families earning under

package calculations.

To understand the importance of eliminating home equity, Tilton explained, it’s important to understand how the University calculates a parental

SEE AID PAGE 5

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Only as horrifying as reality: U. researchers explore horror genre Researchers across disciplines study fearinducing media as vehicles for debate

BY CLAIRE LIU SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITOR A masked squadron in brightly colored jumpsuits, singularly focused, ready to kill at any moment, inspiring second-hand fear in the viewer. The game enforcers in this year’s Netflix phenomenon “Squid Game” might come to mind as fitting this description. This character depiction

also manifests in the similarly masked, jumpsuit-clad, violent characters in Jordan Peele’s 2019 “Us,” or the Spanish crime hit “La Casa de Papel” or “Money Heist” in English.

These massively popular productions show the power of manipulating common storytelling devices, social tropes and film techniques in different ways to get under the skin of millions of viewers. In tackling the themes most central to the human experience — life and death, good and evil and past and present — how we create and consume horror has become a valuable area of study for researchers across a variety of fields.

Roots of horror Veronica Fitzpatrick, a postdoctoral fellow in Modern Culture and Media and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, became interested in studying the horror genre because it was “the only genre that presents the world as frightening as it actually is,” she said. She is developing a dissertation on the significance of sexual trauma in modern horror films and will teach an MCM course in the spring on the genre.

The history of horror, or “cinematic explorations of violence,” is as old as the medium of cinema and can be tied further back to early spectacles like the public ASHLEY CHOI / HERALD

SEE HORROR PAGE 7

Arts & Culture

S&R

Sports

Commentary

Asali Solomon’s new novel explores issues of class and race Page 2

U. professor co-publishes book about partisan health care policies Page 2

Men’s soccer wins 2-0 in shut out against Penn at home on Saturday Page 3

Editorial Page Board: U. should end legacy admissions for students Page 7

TODAY

TOMORROW

57 / 39

55 / 37

2

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE

Asali Solomon navigates consciousness amid intersectional oppression Solomon adds her voice to likes of Woolf, Morrison, Lorde with her profound novel

BY AALIA JAGWANI SENIOR STAFF WRITER “Liselle’s 41 years of research suggested that no matter how distant, abusive, judgemental, unloving and useless one’s mother was, one called her when things fell apart.”

This is how Asali Solomon’s “The Days of Afrekete” begins ­­­— ­with the less-than-comforting phone call between the protagonist Liselle and her mother Verity, the former’s life on the verge of being uprooted. But this interaction reveals the cracks that have always existed in the life Liselle crafted for herself, fractures that deepen as the novel progresses. It also instantly establishes her relationship with her mother, whose unforgiving honesty and acute intuition Liselle depends on in ways she never fully acknowledges. Although she is never actually seen, Verity remains a lingering presence throughout the novel as it explores the layers of Liselle’s consciousness through an intimate third-person perspective.

The entire novel takes place over a single day in which Liselle is hosting a dinner party, shifting between the past and present not unlike Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.” Solomon directly alludes to Woolf, as well as Toni Morrison’s “Sula” and Audre Lorde’s “Zami,” all of which were significant

inspirations for the novel. Solomon adeptly evokes the voices of these women ­— stylistically, relationally and verbally — without ever losing her own.

In fact, Solomon creates in Liselle a character so multifaceted, she becomes a person too real and complicated to be constrained by ink and paper. Liselle’s semi-ironic comments about “the routine deprivations of being Black, female and gay in America” are just as revealing as her deeply personal admissions about her ex-girlfriend Selena from college. She frequently recalls their intimate interactions: “As they ribbed each other, she suddenly felt the rightness of the world. Knowing, however, that the world was dead wrong, she knew the feeling must be Selena.”

Selena was a first-year in college when Liselle was in her senior year, and they entered a passionate relationship that lasted four months. After guiding readers fairly deep into the consciousness of Liselle, the novel shifts briefly to Selena’s perspective. It details her suicidal thoughts, stays at psychiatric hospitals and the meticulous routine she crafted in an attempt to retain mental stability while working two jobs and staying with her “unhappy parents.”

While Selena’s character is also vivid and strongly developed, the shift in perspective toward the end of the novel seems somewhat abrupt and insufficient, falling short of the seamlessness with which Woolf weaves together the consciousness of her characters in “Mrs. Dalloway.”

In spite of this, Solomon’s novel is undoubtedly a masterpiece. With the same incisiveness with which she devel-

COURTESY OF FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

Asali Solomon draws inspiration from works like Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway,” Toni Morrison’s “Sula” and Audre Lorde’s “Zami. ops the emotional complexities of her characters, she captures the social and political climate of the exact historical moment in which her novel is set, the second term of Barack Obama’s presidency. “The night they went to bed and there was a stupid old white president and when they awoke there was a smart, youngish, Black one,” Solomon writes.

Her evocation of this historical period is not restricted to the backdrop of a political event with widespread implications. It seeps into the daily interactions of her characters, even apart from their own involvement in politics.

The collective optimism characteristic of Obama’s presidency is presented

alongside the persistence of prejudice among the affluent white population in the novel — the implicit racism, the microaggressions, the continued gentrification.

But if Solomon’s social commentary is unparalleled, it is ultimately for its exploration of class privilege and intersectionality. Although she comes from “humble beginnings,” Liselle is now decidedly rich, and the dinner party she is hosting has a guest list made up of equally privileged people.

The presence of Xochitl, the daughter of the domestic help Liselle employs, looms over the event ­— her presence is made more significant by Liselle’s hy-

perawareness. Xochitl is a PhD student and immigration rights activist, and Liselle’s discomfort at making someone more educated than her clear her tables is not insignificant, nor is her shame at having Xochitl’s mother, “an old woman with bad knees,” cleaning her toilets.

Still, though she seems emotionally unprepared for the privilege she now enjoys — and that creates an awkwardness heightened by her experience as a Black, gay woman — she is physically accustomed to it on some level, making only weak attempts to help with the household chores. This duplicity is not lost on her: “She felt her ever twoness as the Black mistress of a tiny plantation.”

Intersectionality is a fairly new concept — the word was coined in 1989 and popularized even more recently. Not only does this mean that Solomon’s exploration of privilege and oppression through the intersectional lens lends itself to the precise socio-political climate she so vividly evokes, but it also makes her novel a rare and powerful presentation of how the frictions caused by intersectional identities manifest on a personal, everyday level.

It is safe to say, for these reasons, that Solomon’s “The Days of Afrekete” is groundbreaking work. Under the layers of insight, at the very heart of the novel, is a gut-wrenching and profound relationship between two women. It is the depiction of this relationship that will propel readers forward until they reach the end, which comes much too quickly.

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

U. Professor’s book offers nonpartisan overview of health policy Textbook covers range of healthcare topics from Democratic, Republican perspectives

BY KATHLEEN MEININGER SENIOR STAFF WRITER In their new book “Today’s Health Care Issues: Democrats and Republicans,” co-authors Robert Hackey, an adjunct lecturer in international and public affairs, and Todd Olszewski, an associate professor of health policy and management at Providence College, provide what they describe as a nonpartisan overview of current health policy issues from a Democrat and Republican perspective.

Designed to provide undergraduate and graduate students with a strong foundation in health policy and health care reform, the book discusses topics ranging from the evolution of policies including the Affordable Care Act and legalization of marijuana to public health issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic and health care for underserved populations.

The authors hope to “introduce people to Republican and Democratic perspectives on a variety of public policy issues,” Hackey said. By walking readers through major policy milestones and explaining where political parties stand on public health and policy issues, Hackey and Olszewski

hope to “give people the tools they need to make more informed judgment(s)” about these issues themselves, Hackey added.

Wendy Schiller, director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, said the book provides “substantive explanations of key issues with the positions of the two major political parties clearly stated at the same time.”

“I find a lot of students recognize that health policy is very important and they want to learn more but are kind of unclear how to get started,” said Kelley Smith, an assistant professor of political science at Stetson University, who was not involved with writing the book. “And I think what this volume does is help remedy that by giving a really clear read that helps us understand not only current health politics and problems but also some of the historical background.”

Shifting grounds Hackey began writing the book in June 2018 as part of “Across the Aisle,” a series of books published

by ABC-CLIO approaching contemporary topics with perspectives from both Democrats and Republicans.

He asked Olszewski to co-author the book, believing that Olszewski’s experience as a medical historian would complement his own background in contemporary political policy. The authors wanted to focus on current health policy issues while framing

COURTESY OF ABC-CLIO

Hackey’s and Olszewski’s textbook details current partisan viewpoints about policy issues while also providing historical background. them in historical context.

“One of the things that was most challenging is that the ground was shifting under our feet as we were writing the book,” Hackey said, referring to events such as the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the ACA in California v. Texas this summer and several votes on marijuana legislation. The authors had to include information about these changes in the middle of the writing process — for example, a chapter on the COVID-19 pandemic was added.

Across the aisle In an era of increased political polarization, public health has suffered,

Olszewski said.

“Individuals on both sides of the aisle don’t tend to want to look across the aisle,” Olszewski said. “We’ve become very siloed in our own sort of respective belief systems.” Although many of these disagreements boil down to differences in political values, other disagreements involve facts about the issues themselves, he added.

“Policy debates rely on both sides agreeing on the same set of basic facts,” Olszewski said. “That isn’t necessarily always the case in this day and age.”

Olszewski cited the COVID-19 pandemic as an example, saying that “Democrats and Republicans have disagreed about virtually everything about COVID: the origin, the name … and especially the masking and vaccine mandates.” Democrats and Republicans are at odds over ideological differences like the role of government in healthcare, and even basic information regarding the danger of the COVID-19 virus and the effects of the vaccine has become politicized, he added.

“Today, we have a highly polarized world. ... Everybody has their own facts and their own opinions, and it’s been very detrimental to public health,” said Darrell West, a former University professor of political science and vice president and director for governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

“We clearly have seen that in the case of COVID, where everything has be-

come politicized, even wearing masks and getting a vaccine.”

Hackey and Olszewski’s book provides foundational facts then builds on them by discussing how the different parties evaluate these facts and how ideological differences lead to division, Olszewski said.

“The challenge we have is that with many of these policy issues, different values are in conflict,” Hackey said. “Are we going to empower government to regulate and to play a more informed and active role in things or are we suspicious of government and want to keep it on a short leash? Those are big themes that run through almost all of our chapters.”

The purpose of the book is not to change the opinions of its readers, Hackey said. Instead, “what we do hope is that it will give people a greater understanding of how others look at the issue.”

“We want to be having informed conversations, and to have an informed conversation means that you have to listen to where other people are coming from,” Hackey said.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

3

SPORTS

Men’s soccer beats Penn 2-0 in downpour in first Ivy home win of season Leaping volley by Elliott, header by Schwartz give Bears the 2-0 win

BY RYAN HANDEL SPORTS EDITOR The men’s soccer team (5-8-1, 2-21 Ivy) took down Penn (7-4-3, 1-2-2 Ivy) 2-0 at home Saturday afternoon, clinching Bruno its first Ivy home win of the season. Midfielder Paul Elliott ’23 gave the Bears the lead with a long, unassisted shot in the 17th minute, and defender Owen Schwartz ’23 extended the advantage with a close-range header in the 22nd minute. Goalkeeper Max Waldau ’22 put in a strong effort in goal with five saves to maintain Bruno’s clean sheet.

The game was played in pouring rain, which Brown was able to take advantage of, according to midfielder Kojo Dadzie ’24. “In soccer, the rain actually speeds things up,” Dadzie said. “(It) makes the game move a lot faster, but we kept our touches clean.”

Still, the game started slowly as the Ivy League rivals felt each other out.

Neither team managed a shot on goal in the first 16 minutes, but Elliott suddenly and spectacularly got the action going. The Quakers cleared the ball away from their goal as Brown made a

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

The victory against the Quakers Saturday marked the team’s first consecutive win this season, having previously defeated Holy Cross 3-2 Wednesday evening. The team cited the win as a boost to its morale. run down the field. Elliott jumped and struck the ball mid-air with his right foot from well outside the penalty box, sending a bullet past the entire Penn defense that the Quakers’ goalkeeper had no chance of saving.

“It’s just one of those things that happens every once in a while,” Elliott said. “You’re trying to make sure there’s no counterattack, you just hit

it and it ends up going in.”

Brown kept its momentum going with two consecutive corner kicks. The first was sent out of bounds by the Penn defense for another corner. But the second corner deflected off defender Taha Kina ’24, landing near Schwartz who converted the tap-in header for a 2-0 Bruno lead. The Bears held off the Quakers for the remainder of the

half, taking the two-goal lead into the locker room.

Waldau continued to keep Penn out of the goal after the break, stopping a short range header directly on goal early in the half. The save set up a Brown counter, culminating in a strong shot by midfielder Derek Waleffe ’22 which required a leaping save by Penn’s goalkeeper. The Bears’ best chance to

nior Night made the day even more special, Seelenfreund said. Seniors “are the foundation of the program,” she added, “it means the world, really.”

Overall, Head Coach Kia McNeill said the team played a “really good game of soccer,” adding that they are “peaking at the right time,” with many players “hitting their stride and playing really well.”

While McNeill noted the team could have had “a little bit more composure

in the final third,” still, she said they “dominated for the most part.”

“It’s a shame that we only got one goal, but it was a well-deserved one,” midfielder Kayla Duran ’22 said, adding that she was “really proud” of the team.

“Every game is a battle, and to come out, have a shutout and win, … it’s an amazing feeling,” she said.

Calhoon described the win as the culmination of a season’s worth of hard work. “Memories from this entire sea-

son are hitting me,” she said. “Just all the hours we put in.”

Looking ahead, McNeill said the team has their eyes set on playing against Yale next week. “Even though we clinched the championship this weekend, I think it’s really important to us to go 7-0 — that’s something that hasn’t been done in about 31 years for Brown women’s soccer.”

With the win against Penn, the Bears secured the NCAA Automatic

add to their lead during the remainder of the game came on another counterattack by forward Dennis Pyetsukh ’22, whose shot was also gathered by the Penn goalkeeper.

The Bears kept their clean sheet as the clock wound down with more strong play in goal from Waldau. With 15 minutes left in the contest, Waldau made consecutive saves to just barely keep Penn out of the net. Another diving save with nine minutes left on the clock kept Bruno’s defense unscathed.

The Quakers appeared to finally get on the board with one minute left in the game, but their goal was called offsides and Brown finished off the shutout.

“We executed on (the) offensive and defensive ends,” Dadzie said. “It was a complete 90-minute performance.”

The Bears’ victory marked their first time winning consecutive games this season after they knocked off College of the Holy Cross 3-2 Wednesday evening. “Whenever you get a second win in a row, it helps with the confidence,” Head Coach Patrick Laughlin said. “You can see successful teams, the level of confidence they have, because it’s wins built on wins built on wins.”

Brown will wrap up its non-conference schedule Wednesday at Central Connecticut State University before taking on Ivy League foe Yale in New Haven Saturday.

SOCCER FROM PAGE 1 The teamwork the group showed on the field was the result of close bonds between team members, Seelenfreund added. “Everyone on this team is so close, so it’s like everyone’s best friends are out here playing.”

The game also functioned as the team’s Senior Night. The nine players from the senior class were honored before the playing began.

Winning the championship on Se-

Qualifier and will appear in the NCAA Tournament for the eighth time.

“We’ve secured our bid,” Seelenfreund said, “so (we are entering) big stages now. It’s really exciting for our program.”

“We can grow so much more,” Calhoon said. “A beautiful thing about this team is that we accomplish something, but then we look forward.”

SPORTS

Women’s field hockey falls to 2-4 against Princeton in Ivy League play Bears cap home schedule with defeat against Princeton on Senior Day

BY GABRIELLA SARTORI SENIOR STAFF WRITER The field hockey team (6-10, 2-4 Ivy) lost 3-0 to No. 18 Princeton (9-7, 5-1 Ivy) in its final home game of the season. The Bears held off Princeton in the first quarter, but the Tigers’ attack proved too tough to quell. Princeton scored in each of the final three quarters to pull away with the victory.

The Tigers converted the first goal of the game in the second quarter after capitalizing off a penalty stroke.

Princeton doubled its lead three minutes into the third quarter off a setup on the far post that resulted in a tap-in past goalie Jodie Brine ’23, who ended with four saves in the game.

Princeton sealed its win with just under two and a half minutes left in

COURTESY OF BROWN ATHLETICS

The team hosted their Senior Day against Princeton, honoring its three senior players Rosen, Cooper and van Rootselaar prior to the game. the fourth quarter as a far shot broke through the Bears’ defense for a 3-0 Tigers lead.

Each team had the same number of penalty shot opportunities, with

both receiving two in the game. The Tigers held an 11-5 advantage in shots over the Bears and a 7-3 edge in shots on goal.

Captain Emma Rosen ’22 expressed

disappointment in the Bears’ slow start. “I think we just had something missing,” she said. “Toward the last minute we tried coming together with more communication and hustle, but unfortunately, it was too late.”

The Bears hosted their Senior Day against Princeton, and honored their three seniors prior to the game: Rosen, Amanda Cooper ’22 and Danielle van Rootselaar ’22.

Cooper described what kind of legacy the seniors hoped to leave the future field hockey teams at Brown.

“The three of us have a lot of love for this program,” Cooper said. “We wanted to leave this program better than we found it, and I think we did just that.”

Head Coach Jill Reeve echoed these praises, emphasizing the lasting impact these seniors left the program. “They’re all incredible people and dedicated to the program. They are a great gift to the game, and we are really gonna miss them,” Reeve said.

Van Rootselaar was proud of the effort her and her fellow seniors put

in in their final home game, despite coming up short against Princeton.

“It’s unfortunate to lose on Senior Day, but we fought like we always do,” van Rootselaar said. “We have so much heart and discipline in this program, and I hope it stays that way because that’s what Brown field hockey is and always will be.”

The Bears close out the season next Saturday on the road in Cambridge against No. 18 Harvard (14-1, 6-0 Ivy).

4

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

McGough ’23: Biking in Providence is bad and Brown is part of the problem

BY JACKSON MCGOUGH STAFF COLUMNIST

Since the relocation of I-195 East, the Providence waterfront has come to represent the city’s urban renaissance. Every key feature of a modern city can be found there, including new housing, green space, transit connections and walkable streets. The fulfillment of a decades-long push to remake the city, the ongoing rebirth of the Providence riverfront has been described as a “dramatic” realization of new urbanist principles.

The latest improvement in the neighborhood, the addition of bike lanes on South Water Street, was shamelessly opposed by our own Brown University on grounds that bike infrastructure ought not “come at the expense of a lane of (car) travel.” The University — citing potential safety concerns while also wanting the preserve the car lane to ease transportation for Brown-associated deliveries — helped sponsor a traffic study in the area alongside a coalition of local businesses. The results of the study were then sent to the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, with the request that RIDOT intervene in the city’s project and expressing support of construction of the bike lanes on adjacent parkland.

The episode on South Water Street is just the latest example of how Brown is not adequately supporting Providence’s urban revival. Despite its claims to the contrary, the University is part of the problem when it comes to Providence’s paltry bike offerings.

Under Mayor Jorge Elorza, Providence has been undertaking an ambitious — if slow-moving — plan to remake the city’s transportation network, the Great Streets Initiative. The plan, which identifies Providence as one of the most polluted cities in New England, sets out to replace car traffic by implementing a “Citywide Urban Trail Network” that would connect every neighborhood to jobs, shopping and public spaces via low-stress bike lanes and other improvements to transportation infrastructure. The plan also aptly points out that College Hill residents would be major beneficiaries of this plan, given that 69% of neighborhood residents do not drive.

The initiative is a desperately needed step for Providence. In February, PeopleForBikes, an organization that advocates for bike-friendly cities, gave the city an overall bike network score of 29 out of 100. This score was buoyed by the generous 61 out of 100 the city got for recreational biking. On

the ease of biking to work or shopping, the city got pitiful scores of 22 and 15, respectively. For a city seeking to thrive amid a post-industrial transformation, the current state of biking is unacceptable, and the Great Streets Initiative is a commendable effort to fix the problem.

The South Water Street bike improve-

projects or initiatives the University should undertake to improve infrastructure on campus.

The one step the University has taken that one could call “concrete” is the rule that requires all new construction include bike parking. This would be a welcome move but digging deeper reveals this guarantee is

“The University can and should do better to promote cycling not just on campus, but in the city at large.”

ments, including the removal of a car travel lane, were identified in the plan as key components of a “diet” for the waterfront road.

“Dieting” here means narrowing streets for the purpose of reducing traffic speeds and volumes, sometimes including a focus on converting car trips to bike or transit trips.

By making driving less comfortable compared to other options, diets aim to revive streetscapes by returning space to locals and to combat climate change by promoting forms of transportation other than driving.

With this in mind, Brown’s opposition to the current bike project is irresponsible. The coalition’s complaint that a one-lane South Water Street could not handle the “current volume of vehicles” is entirely missing the point: The goal of replacing car lanes with bike lanes is to reduce car traffic volume, not to simply separate bike and car traffic. Whether the University is aware of this or willfully ignorant is unknown, but what is clear is that this is but one example of Brown’s anemic support for cycling.

Notably, the University has failed to make firm commitments to promoting biking in official documentation. The Institutional Master Plan, first published in 2017 and amended thrice since, indicates support for biking at Brown but lacks any meaningful plans.

The transportation component of the plan touts three campus bike sharing programs — but these programs combined only support around 50 bicycles. Despite bragging of a “significant level of investment” in biking, the plan stops short of recommending any

less than impressive: University construction standards require only six bike parking spaces for any project. Regardless of whether most projects include more spaces than the minimum, this standard drastically lags behind progressive transportation goals — many urban-minded cities require at least one bike space per residential unit.

Brown’s unenthusiastic support for biking is obvious at the new Wellness Center and Residence Hall. Despite being designed for “150 students who share a deep commitment to sustaining healthy lifestyles,” the dorm includes only about two dozen indoor bike parking stalls and even fewer outdoor spaces, denying the majority of residents the option to even keep a bike. A generous estimate would say about one in five dorm residents could keep one. Especially for a dorm supposedly focused on promoting wellness, the decision not to provide sufficient bike parking is evidence that the University does not consider biking — even if just for recreation — an important option for healthy living.

Even more disappointing is Brown’s lack of commitment to improving biking infrastructure on streets. On College Hill, not one street has dedicated bike lanes, though many are marked with notorious “sharing arrows” that have been linked to increased cycling injuries. The University has considerable political capital in local affairs and ample cash reserves hidden away in the endowment. If Brown was truly committed to promoting biking, it would not have to spend much to get a few miles of bike lanes paint-

CA L E N DA R

ed on streets around campus, especially given the focus Providence has on improving its streets.

In the coming years, Providence plans to add bike improvements along Angell, Benefit, Brook, Brown, Hope and Waterman streets, potentially including road diets, separated bike lanes and traffic calming solutions. The University’s opposition to the bike lanes on South Water Street and its otherwise apathetic support for biking in general should make it clear to students that the administration is uninterested in supporting these initiatives — or is only interested insofar as they do not affect the flow of car traffic. As local bike projects enter the planning stages, it will be up to the student body to demand that the University support them.

Just as important is ensuring that all new infrastructure is built with biking in mind. It is imperative that the new dorms under construction this year on Brook Street include enough bike spaces for its resident population and basic bike repair kiosks — speaking of which, the University needs to replace the long-forgotten bike kiosk hidden next to the Brown Bookstore on Olive Street, and then place more throughout campus. If the administration is serious about promoting biking, these are not options but necessities.

If the University wants to tout itself as a benefactor of the Providence community, it must also be careful to identify the ways in which it is holding the city back. Continued opposition to bike lanes would be an inappropriate intervention by one of the city’s most powerful institutions against the future of transportation and the battle against climate change. The University can and should do better to promote cycling not just on campus, but in the city at large, and that starts by extending formal support to the Great Streets Initiative and asserting Brown’s unequivocal dedication to promoting biking throughout the city.

Brown’s track record on biking ranges from unimpressive to outright antagonistic, but that can change. Now, as new dorms go up and the city plans projects for College Hill, it is time to pivot toward truly promoting biking as an essential element of Providence’s revival and not just a two-wheeled accessory to car travel.

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

COVID -19 AT BROWN LAST 7 DAYS*

NOVEMBER S

7

Completed Tests

People Tested

M

Tu

W

Th

F

S

3,854

3,606

1

2

3

4

5

6

Confirmed Positives

Positivity Rates

6

0.2 %

8

9

10

11

12

13 SINCE AUGUST 24, 2020*

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

Completed Tests

People Tested

567,893

18,038

Total Cases

Prevalence

817

4.5 %

*AS OF OCT. 31

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

5

AID FROM PAGE 1 contribution. Financial aid officers look at not only a family’s income, but also their assets — investments, trusts, businesses and until recently, home equity.

In most cases, Tilton said, home equity was defined as the value of a family’s house, though the University did have measures in place to “protect” families whose home values had rapidly appreciated while their income had stayed relatively flat.

After summing up assets and considering circumstances such as the age of an older parent, the number of siblings not in college and the location a student applies from, the University factors between 3% and 5% of a family’s assets into a parental contribution. The University did not provide a suggestion of how a family might leverage those assets into paying for college once they determined the contribution, Tilton said.

But with the elimination of home equity from financial aid, that calculation will fundamentally change, according to Tilton. Before last week’s announcement, a family that qualified for aid and held, for example, $350,000 worth of assets — including $200,000 in home equity — would have been required to pay $12,250 from their assets, on top of their contribution from their income. But by eliminating the $200,000 in home equity from the calculation, the expected contribution from assets would drop to $5,250, increasing their scholarship by $7,000, Tilton explained.

An increase like that, Tilton said, will be enough for the majority of families earning less than $125,000 to receive a financial aid package covering all of tuition or more. Their expected parental contribution, he said, will likely only cover fees, room and board and other non-tuition expenses. The exception to this policy are families that make less than $125,000 but still hold considerable assets, not including their home.

“The real world difference in terms of an expected family contribution is thousands of dollars a year,” Powell said. “That’s real. That clearly adds up.”

Adam Rabinowitz MPA’16, communications manager for the American Talent Initiative, an organization working to expand access to higher education for lower-income students, said

NATE HARDY / HERALD

The University was able to announce the increase in investments earlier than expected due to the unprecedented returns on its endowment this year and is currently preparing follow-up communications. that the broader consideration of home equity in financial aid packages was meant to create a more comprehensive picture of a family’s financial assets.

But as the cost of college skyrocketed, it began to come under scrutiny. Eliminating it from financial aid calculations, he said, will better contextualize a student’s financial circumstances.

“It takes out one of the outdated factors that would distort their financial aid package,” he said.

The increase, Rabinowitz added, might mean that a student deciding between their local public flagship institution and Brown wouldn’t face any cost barriers to attending the University — a sentiment that Powell also echoed.

Powell said that the increase will likely help fill the “missing middle,” a priority previously set by the University.

“Students who would fall into that category of moderate income who are incredibly price-sensitive … if we’re missing them because of their concern about cost, we’re missing out,” he said.

The new investments, Powell added, send a message that those students can apply to the University with the assurance that they’ll get the aid they need.

“We hope that more students will be interested in applying, and see it as a more affordable option,” he added. “And

if they’re admitted, we hope that Brown is as affordable, or more affordable, than any option they have.”

Tilton added that he thought more students will apply for financial aid — and that more students would receive financial aid — because of the investments. 44% of undergraduates currently receive aid, a ballpark range that the University has been in for “some period of time” but hopes to increase, he added.

Another increase to the proportion of students on financial aid will likely come as the University shifts to need-blind international admission over the next four years. Currently, Tilton said, the University’s budget for international aid stands at $9 million, the baseline for a need-aware process.

Need-aware admission, Powell said, starts with identifying a range of talented international applicants.

The Office of Financial Aid then calculates the best estimate of those applicants’ demonstrated need, which the Admission Office considers as it narrows down the class of international students.

At that point, Powell said, “gut-wrenching choices” begin as admission officers consider strategically how to allocate the limited resources devoted to international aid.

“It’s very difficult for us as individual admissions staff members,” he said. “We know these students show incredible promise.”

The elimination of home equity will immediately factor into international financial aid, Tilton said. And the budget for international financial aid, contingent on fundraising, will grow to the point that the University plans to be need-blind in its international admissions by the 2024-25 admissions cycle.

“To be able to say we’re need-blind for international students is a transformative moment,” Powell said. The Admission Office, he added, will use the next few years to consider how it will change its presentations to prospective international applicants, as well as how it might expand outreach.

Last week’s initiatives also included a reduction of the summer earnings contribution by $1,000 for students with no expected parental contribution. That, Tilton said, will effectively add $1,000 to the scholarships of the highest-need students, in excess of what they receive for their tuition, room and board, meal plan and other fees.

For many students in that category, Tilton said, the $1,000 will appear

as a credit — $500 in each semester, untied to any specific expense but instead for use in personal costs throughout the year.

An extra $1,000 can make a real difference for a student in paying their rent for a month or two, buying groceries or even just going out for dinner with their friends, according to Rabinowitz. Put simply, he said, it will ultimately address financial needs and alleviate financial stress.

“Those needs could cause students stress, and create such insecurity that they would have struggled in school, or dropped out,” he said.

Both Powell and Tilton agreed on the importance of communication going forward. Because the Corporation only signed off on the initiative last week, Powell said that the Admission Office is just now planning a series of communications to prospective students and their parents.

“We should make clear what an enormous commitment of financial resources this is,” Powell said.

Tilton said the Office of Financial Aid is similarly working toward communicating the changes announced through new FAQs on its website. He cited the FAQs the University provided about COVID-19 as a model for comprehensive and transparent information for students to see what aid they qualify for. New FAQs, he said, will likely go up in the coming weeks.

Rabinowitz also stressed that while the University’s investments hit “critical components” of the application process, more changes could still take place to improve the University’s accessibility. The University, he said, could exempt its lower-income applicants from filling out the College Scholarship Service profile, which he said has come under fire for its sheer number of questions and the amount of information that it requires students to “scramble” to find. The University of Chicago, Rabinowitz noted, offers an alternate, simplified form.

“There’s more work to do,” he said, noting that the University could use its endowment returns in a number of other ways to help currently enrolled students. “Access to mental health services, experiential learning opportunities, these are other things that can be done. I want to pay attention to not only the access picture, but the success component as well.”

6

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

could apply up-to-date econometric methods to understand more clearly the causes of homelessness and the difficulties that homeless people found.” Normally, when economists or econometricians collect data, they sample a population manually, Lancaster said — an approach that encounters challenges when looking to sample people experiencing homelessness. Lancaster and Imbens gathered data from homeless shelters and published a series of papers on the subject.

Lancaster said that the precise topic of causal inference arose from Imbens’s interaction with economists such as Donald Rubin, a professor emeritus of statistics at Harvard who has done profound work on the use of statistical data to make causal inferences. Their research in turn built on the work of Jerzy Neymann, a mathematician and statistician from Poland who published papers in the 1930s.

“Economists have a lot of data, and increasingly with the Internet, they have vastly more,” Lancaster said. “And so the question is, what to do with this to cast light onto the solutions to economic problems.”

Econometricians such as Lancaster and Imbens are interested in finding the underlying events that cause relationships like the connection between unemployment and the level of unemployment compensation.

“If we can understand the physiology of some correlation in economics, then we can start to claim that we really do understand the phenomenon, and can use it to guide policy,” Lancaster said. Imbens, Angrist and Card’s research is an example of viewing the structure of economic relations to gain a deeper understanding of worldly phenomena.

“Much research in empirical economics makes use of what are called instrumental variables — variables that influence one economic variable (say, a person’s years of schooling) without directly influencing an outcome (say, the person’s earnings),” Jesse Shapiro, professor of political economy, wrote in an email to The

biomedical and psychological fields.

Imbens said he is not sure where the Nobel Prize will take him in the future.

“It has been a very strange, busy two and a half weeks,” Imbens said.

But, in the long run, he believes it will give him opportunities to get attention for parts of econometrics.

Within economics as well, it helps to make students excited about the field and gives him opportunities to teach a new generation.

For his future work, Imbens is interested in two major topics. He wants to investigate the idea that experiments can be used along with insights from economic theory to determine mechanisms of economic behavior.

Additionally, he wants to use experiments not only to answer specific questions but also to complement observational studies. A combination of these approaches can be integrated to improve the credibility of economic conclusions.

It has always been useful to speak to individuals about their empirical research, Imbens said. He hopes that younger econometricians see the value in collaborating with other economists instead of staying insular.

But at the base of his research, Imbens loves puzzling over problems.

Although he says he does not have much time now, he has found it helpful to work on a problem alone and “think until your head hurts.”

“The ability to sink into a problem and think deeply about it I find very useful, and I still find it very comfortable to do,” he said.

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Imbes met his mentor, Anthony Lancaster, at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, who he eventually followed to Brown University.

NOBEL FROM PAGE 1 wanted to memorialize the first time that they beat him. He himself played chess in the past, a pursuit that he says has given him a good idea of how to focus on one problem for many hours.

This is a type of focus that is essential for Imbens’s work in economics. He recently received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with David Card and Joshua Angrist for his work on causal inference.

Imbens has worked on a variety of projects, including education research and work on inequality and mobility.

Imbens’s career started with studying mathematics, but he wanted to find a way to apply his technical understanding. In the Netherlands, students apply for a specific undergraduate major instead of an entire school, Imbens said. He enjoyed mathematics, but “wanted to do something reasonably technical.” He appreciated that economics could be applied to society and addressed practical problems, but also used enough theoretical mathematical concepts to cater to his interests.

One of those interests was combining different fields, similar to the economic scientist Jan Tinbergen, Imbens said, whom he described as personifying the ideal of connecting economic science and government advising through projects such as the Central Planning Bureau. Tinbergen lent scientific authority to policy decisions and inspired Imbens’s journey through his undergraduate and graduate careers.

Having landed on economics, Imbens has been working to figure out how to draw credible causal inferences in non-experimental settings since the early 1990s. His work is therefore of particular importance to economics, because it can provide frameworks for organizing data.

Imbens attended Erasmus University in the Netherlands for his undergraduate education, and then met his mentor, Anthony Lancaster, at The University of Hull in the United Kingdom. He then followed Lancaster, professor emeritus of economics, to Brown to obtain his MA and PhD. “We worked together on problems of homelessness in New York City,” Lancaster said. “The idea is that we

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Editorial Leadership Editor-in-Chief Kayla Guo Managing Editors Henry Dawson Li Goldstein Senior Editors Kate Ok Kamran King Emily Teng Emilija Sagaityte Editorial Page Editor Johnny Ren

Metro Editors Ben Glickman Ben Pollard Julia Grossman Katie Chen Liza Mullett Victoria Yin News Editors Caroline Nash Caelyn Pender Gaya Gupta Jack Borris Livia Gimenes Jack Walker Science & Research Editors Rahma Ibrahim Claire Liu

post-magazine Editor-in-Chief Olivia Howe Sections Arts & Culture Editors Irene Chou Nicholas Michael

Sports Editor Ryan Handel Commentary Opinions Editors

Augustus Bayard Jaehyun Hong Matt Walsh Clara Gutman-Argemí Johnny Ren Multimedia/Production Design Editors Anya Semizhova Keelin Lyons Lena He Raphael Li Head Photo Editors Areez Khan Nicole Kim Copy Desk Chief Catherine Healy Assistant Copy Desk Chief Lily Lustig Illustrations Head Loki Olin

Graphics Editor Usha Bhalla Podcast Ben Glickman Corey Gelb-Bicknell Olivia Burdette Business General Managers Michael Wang Noah Colón Office Manager Chelsey Barton-Keenes Directors Sales: Annika Sigfstead Finance: Andrew Willwerth Digital Director of Technology Jed Fox

@the_herald

facebook.com/browndailyherald

@browndailyherald

youtube.com/browndailyherald

88 Benevolent St., Providence, RI (401) 351-3372 www.browndailyherald.com Editorial: herald@browndailyherald.com Advertising: advertising@browndailyherald.com

Herald. “Angrist and Imbens taught us new ways to understand what we can learn using instrumental variables.”

In many cases, a randomized experiment is not possible due to ethical or financial considerations, Imbens said. The inability to perform direct experiments makes it difficult for economists to study some of their biggest questions.

“We are not going to take a bunch of individuals, and 100 of them will go to college and the others do not get to go to college,” Imbens said. Instead, economists look for a naturally occurring situation where the individuals only differ by one major variable.

In one such study, Angrist and Alan Krueger, former professor of political economics at Princeton, exploited the fact that compulsory schooling laws affected people differently depending on when they were born. People born on Sept. 30 vs. Oct. 1 are not different in their ability, but they will be sorted into different school years by compulsory schooling laws. The researchers leveraged this variation to investigate causal effects, namely how schooling affects earnings.

In another case, Imbens’s colleague, Wilbert Van der Klaauw, researched the college admissions process. In one process, college admissions officers sorted through applications and scored them. The people in a narrow band on either side of the margin do not differ significantly, but their outcomes are markedly different.

“You can learn something meaningful from comparing individuals close to these thresholds,” Imbens said.

In the case of comparing levels of education,“we are looking for ways of modeling and making credible assumptions about why some people went to school and some people didn’t go to school, in a way that still allows us to draw credible inferences,” Imbens said.

Imbens’s work on causal inference can be applied to different fields. He worked with Donald Rubin to write “Causal Inference for Statistics, Social and Biomedical Sciences.” Imbens has since coauthored papers touching on

Submissions: The Brown Daily Herald publishes submissions in the form of op-eds and letters to the editor. Op-eds are typically between 750 and 1000 words, though we will consider submissions between 500 and 1200 words. Letters to the editor should be around 250 words. While letters to the editor respond to an article or column that has appeared in The Herald, op-eds usually prompt new discussions on campus or frame new arguments about current discourse.

All submissions to The Herald cannot have been previously published elsewhere (in print or online — including personal blogs and social media), and they must be exclusive to The Herald.

Submissions must include no more than two individual authors. If there are more than two original authors, The Herald can acknowledge the authors in a statement at the end of the letter or op-ed, but the byline can only include up to two names. The Herald will not publish submissions authored by groups. The Herald does not publish anonymous submissions. If you feel your circumstances prevent you from submitting an op-ed or letter with your name, please email herald@browndailyherald.com to explain your situation.

You can submit op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com and letters to letters@browndailyherald. com. When you email your submission, please include (1) your full name, (2) an evening or mobile phone number in case your submission is chosen for publication and (3) any affiliation with Brown University or any institution or organization relevant to the content of your submission.

Please send in submissions at least 24 hours in advance of your desired publication date. The Herald only publishes submissions while it is in print. The Herald reserves the right to edit all submissions.

If your piece is considered for publication, an editor will contact you to discuss potential changes to your submission.

Commentary: The editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

Corrections: The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Postmaster: Please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906.

Advertising: The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. is a financially independent, nonprofit media organization bringing you The Brown Daily Herald and Post- Magazine. The Brown Daily Herald has served the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement and once during Orientation by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. Subscription prices: $200 one year daily, $100 one semester daily.

Copyright 2021 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

7

EDITORIAL

For a truly accessible Brown, abolish legacy admission The University recently announced a significant expansion of its financial aid program, along with plans to transition to need-blind admission for international students. In the wake of this decision, a Brown education seems more accessible than ever before. And yet, just as Brown makes progress toward a more equitable future, it remains shackled to tradition, privilege and pedigree. Yes, we are talking about legacy admission.

The goal of the University’s recent investment, according to President Christina Paxson P’19, is to ensure “that the University continues to attract the best and brightest students from all over the world.” If Brown is looking for a reason to abolish legacy preference, it can look to the words of its own president. It should ensure that the best and the brightest students all have a good shot at a Brown education, and not a lesser chance than those whose parents are alums. The University’s commitment to accessibility is incoherent.

Why are we bringing up legacy again?

More and more colleges are abolishing legacy admission practices. The justification is simple: Legacy runs counter to values of equal opportunity. Just last month, Amherst College announced its decision to end legacy preference, as have other institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University, in recent years.

Brown can, and should, do the same. The University’s recent expansion of financial aid and admission practices reminds us that we

have the capacity to take the bold and necessary steps to widen the Van Wickle Gates. By eliminating tuition for most families making under $125,000 a year, an education here becomes far more accessible to a “missing” middle class. Likewise, need-blind admission for international students will help ensure that a more diverse array of students can get a Brown education.

With these steps, Brown has dramatically reimagined who has access to College Hill. It can certainly take the next step — abolishing legacy.

Legacy admission matters, at least in part, because it has a material effect on the character of College Hill. The administration, somewhat confusingly, often touts the impact legacy has on improving alumni engagement, while also minimizing its impact on admission. The University has stated in the past that legacy considerations are only “tie-breaking” between those of similar backgrounds and do not affect the acceptances of most low-income and first-generation students.

But why should legacy be a factor at all?

Apparently, it is because the children of Brown alums grow up immersed in the “values of Brown.” But as this board argued in 2018, this directly undermines the University’s purported goal of accepting students of diverse backgrounds. And at a competitive school where marginal distinctions are often the difference between an acceptance and a rejection, legacy

continues to impact the makeup of our student body. According to University Spokesperson Brian Clark, legacy students comprise around 10% of the class of 2025. This is a staggering figure. And even if legacy is used only to distinguish between those of similar backgrounds, it is still concerning that 10% of a class comes from such a small, disproportionately privileged demographic.

Other defenses of legacy look the same, and we’re tired of them. For example, we’ve heard time and time again that legacy boosts alumni engagement, leading to increased donations crucial for supporting low-income students.

But at a school as wealthy as Brown, we can surely abolish legacy without threatening the status of our low-income students. As this board has noted in the past, we don’t foresee an exodus of angry alums causing our coffers to run dry, and studies seem to support that claim, suggesting that legacy preference does not meaningfully affect alumni giving. Amherst College, in fact, announced the abolition of legacy preference directly alongside a financial aid expansion. If an institution truly cares about accessibility, abolishing legacy preference shouldn’t be a radical decision. The choice to uphold legacy isn’t about the budget, but about Brown’s values. There is no reason why Brown cannot abolish legacy admissions ­— it is choosing not to.

Legacy preference is a statement about who belongs on this campus. For many students,

legacy preference is a reminder of the disadvantages they’ve faced on their way here. If our University cares about equal access and what President Paxson calls “community cohesion,” it should remove a practice that divides us by our parental background and clouds notions of meritocracy.

As Brown students, we are frankly tired of talking about legacy preference. Student advocacy against legacy admission, seen recently in a campaign by Students for Educational Equity, reemerges with an almost metronomic frequency as new generations of Brown students arrive on campus and rightfully grow angry at the senseless policy. In 2014, this board argued for the abolition of legacy preference. In 2018, we advocated for full disclosure policies, asking the University to be transparent about how it considers legacy status in admission. Year after year, the University defers any action, instead supplying us with excuses.

Today, we advocate — yet again — for the abolition of legacy preference. No amount of transparency can justify a process that we know is wrong. Today, we know that the University is capable of making positive change; its recent announcement demonstrates just that. Why isn’t it doing more?

—Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board. This editorial was written by its editor Johnny Ren ’23, and members Clara Gutman Argemí ’22, Catherine Healy ’22, Olivia Burdette ’22, Devan Paul ’24 and Kate Waisel ’24.

HORROR FROM PAGE 1 beheading of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, Fitzpatrick said.

While early horror films usually portrayed fantastical monsters like vampires, most film scholars see the 1960s as the turn from classical to modern horror with movies such as “Psycho,” she said.

Retrospectively, modern horror appears to distinguish itself through a focus on the “mundane and the everyday” forms of horror, though Fitzpatrick argues that these elements have been present throughout the genre’s history.

The horror genre — a nebulous, evolving category — has seen various kinds of horrific tendencies fluctuate in “peaks and valleys” of popularity, she said.

Fitzpatrick plans on exploring “the juxtaposition (or) intersection of aesthetics and ethics” in her course on horror films. The aesthetic techniques that a film utilizes change how it affects the viewer psychologically and as a spectator, she said. For instance, filmmakers can choose to create “quiet aesthetics,” which are intentional moments and atmospheres of silence, or, like in the 1974 classic “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” use “loud aesthetics” of screams and overwhelming noise.

Psychologically, horror movies tap into a reaction in our central nervous system, said Mascha van ’t Wout, associate professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior (Research).

“A fear is super strong; it’s really built straight into our survival responses,” van ’t Wout said.

When a person witnesses or experiences a potentially life-threatening situation, it triggers a fight-or-flight response in the amygdala, the part of the brain and nervous system that processes emotions, leading to the production of sweat and other bodily responses.

While watching a horror movie, “your body responds to these images that you’re seeing, to some degree, as if you (were) there,” van ’t Wout said. The amygdala reacts to the threatening stimuli, perpetuating the same visceral feelings of

being in danger, but knowing that the threat is harmless allows the body to keep watching, she said, instead of physically leaving the theatre. Horror movies are intentionally designed to activate the fear circuit and create a uniquely intense experience for the viewer, which may help explain why horror has fascinated audiences and been consumed as far back as it has.

Horror is a dialogue Theorists have sought to explain viewers’ experiences with horror films.

American film theorist Carol Clover’s “final girl theory” proposes that, by the end of a horror film, the audience will begin identifying with the archetypal, single surviving female character. Assuming the viewer is a young man, to see the woman survive and defeat the monster figure creates a moment of identifying with someone of a different gender, Fitzpatrick said.

But this theory becomes much more complicated if the viewer is not male or young or does not primarily engage with films by identifying with the characters, she said.

Challenging and complicating existing theories and assumptions about the genre and how we engage with horror is not limited to media studies.

Andrés Emil González GS, a second-year PhD student in Comparative Literature, is taking an interdisciplinary approach to horror, most recently applying Carol Clover’s theories on female representation in horror media to art history. He is studying the different renditions of Caravaggio’s painting “Judith Beheading Holofernes,” in which artists have altered the way the woman Judith is depicted in the act of killing.

Reiterating the ideas presented in past works is important to the genre, said González, who explores horror’s many tropes and narrative conventions. “Conventions function almost as a kind of code or kind of language,” he said. The

viewers can engage with that language in recognizing what is similar or different to other films they have watched and draw their own commentary.

González describes a “kind of play between the audience and the piece of media itself” as a significant component of horror. Which character will live, which will die? “It’s always kind of a game of watching,” he said.

Still, horror films and other works don’t have to be seen as derivative or be watched only as metaphors for socio-political issues. What can make a horror movie successful can be something conveyed that is not explicitly laid out or even understood on a conscious level, González said. “The great thing about (horror) is you don’t necessarily have to have a sense of why it works.”

In Latin America, horror has been “making a huge resurgence … as a mode of expression and fiction” over the past few years, Mai Hunt GS, a sixth-year PhD Candidate in Hispanic Studies, said.

Hunt is teaching LACA 1505A: “Haunting Childhood and Social Justice in Latin America” this semester.

One film the course explores is “Fever Dream,” a Spanish psychological horror film just released on Netflix that involves a young woman, a child and a looming environmental disaster. Hunt suggests that the novel, which the film is adapted from, discusses these environmental issues tangibly and creates “opportunities to (also) discuss environmental crises more openly in popular culture,” she said.

The deep history of magical realism in Latin America, with popularized authors like Gabriel García Márquez exploring the mystical in a real world setting, lends itself well to new developments in horror, Hunt said. But her course dives deeper into the understanding of the genre and aims to “think critically about what magical realism means to the rest of the world versus what it means to Latin American artists.”

Much of the understanding of mag-

ical realism comes from Western elite intellectual circles, Hunt said. By using supernatural films as vehicles to discuss magical realism beyond associations from popular culture, Hunt hopes to explore alternatives to Western thought that may be closer to the true origins and essence of the genre.

In his course ENGL 0711C: “Bad Blood: Conflict and the Family in Literature and Cinema,” Christopher Yates PhD’21, a visiting assistant professor of English, hones in on what can be gleaned from “domestic gothic” horror, or works that focus on the home as the site of violence and involve characters who are haunted by something in the past. The genre turns the idea of the home as a place of safety and refuge on its head, while exploring how the past can manifest in the present. It’s about “a past that is never as gone as we’d like it to be — a past that still continues to shape our current present, even from beyond our current control,” he said.

In his course, Yates also plans on comparing the American film “Poltergeist” and the Japanese film “Ring,” which come out of different cultural contexts but are able to be discussed by shared audiences, Yates said. “Horror all around the world has a strikingly consistent vocabulary. In some ways, it does feel to me like a quite unified genre.”

Facing internal fears While horror is an entertaining pastime for most, van ’t Wout is part of a research effort to prove that watching and confronting our greatest fears has potential as a form of treatment for those with post-traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD causes the amygdala to become prone to overreacting to harmless stimuli, such as a loud sound in another room, she explained. In those without PTSD, stimuli register through a slower route through the prefrontal cortex, which recognizes the stimuli as harmless in context and has a “calming-down effect” on the amygdala.

But this regulatory process is thought to work less effectively in those with PTSD. Her research uses virtual reality as a clinical tool to simulate the experience of being back in a combat zone. With the VR headset on, study participants are immersed inside of a combat vehicle, looking out of the windshield, while electrodes attached to the fingers measure skin conductivity rate, an indication of the psychophysiological arousal of the nervous system that activates the sweat glands and increases conductivity.

As explosions and other major stimuli are set off in the virtual environment as the vehicle moves forward, skin conductivity rates spike for veterans both with and without PTSD. Skin conductivity reactivity gradually decreased after repeated trials for both groups, showing that all veterans appear to “habituate similarly over time,” according to the study.

This change is due to a learning process that the brain undergoes, which recalls the memory of the fear from the first time watching the VR combat scene and registering the fear as harmless in subsequent viewings. Van ’t Wout calls this process “a deeper learning of extinction” of the fear. For the participants with PTSD, the VR helps with the “contextual experience of their trauma,” allowing their brain to learn that the stimuli that was life-threatening before is not in new context.

But, most promising is the research’s findings that PTSD symptoms for veterans with the disorder continued to decrease a month after the treatment, van ’t Wout said, “because they’re more likely to do things ... (that) they’ve tried to avoid because they’re scared.”

One veteran who participated thanked her for allowing him to go on a vacation for the first time in a decade.

Van ’t Wout is continuing to develop this research and hopes that these non-invasive brain stimulation techniques can become valuable additions to existing treatment for PTSD.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

8