Commencement Magazine 2021

COMMENCEMENT

BROWN UNIVERSITY 2021

ZOOMING

BY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

THROUGH

SENIOR

Acknowledging lost moments: Grief, gratitude and unusual goodbyes

YEAR

Editors’ Note Every year, The Herald’s Commencement Magazine collects the memories and reflections of the senior class. This year, that collection is inevitably shaped by the grief and loss COVID-19 has caused. Since last March, many Herald articles have sought to document the major, disparate hardships created by the pandemic — especially for people of color, U-FLi and international students. But here, we wanted to capture an irregular senior year at Brown and to also acknowledge some of the smaller losses: few inperson classes, skipped and muted traditions, time at a distance from the people we love.

Amidst all of this, we at The Herald found some comfort through Zoom calls, distanced coffee and commiseration. Thank you to the Herald staff members who kept the newspaper going under these strange and challenging circumstances, some of whom are featured in these pages.

Thank you to the seniors who shared their reflections, in columns and news interviews alike. Thank you to the Herald alums who have donated and offered support throughout this challenging year. For this beautiful magazine template we are indebted to designer Bilal Ismail Ahmed and the 129th Editorial Board, who designed their own Commencement Magazine only to never see this template used in print.

The class of 2020 never got an in-person Commencement; the class of 2021 may not get to experience the fanfare and unmitigated celebration of a typical senior year, or Senior Week, or Campus Dance — but we will walk through the Van Wickle Gates, and for that, we are grateful. This year’s Magazine pays tribute to loss, but also to the conversations and action this year has stimulated, and to great gratitude for the people and experiences we could enjoy throughout our four years here. We hope, in reading it, that these stories and reflections resonate with you as they have with us.

—This Editors’ Note was written by The Herald’s 130th editorial board: Colleen Cronin ’21, Allie Reed ’21, Sophie Culpepper ’21, Elise Ryan ’21 and Alex Smolar ’21

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COMMENCEMENT

In this issue 4 6 14 18 Editors

Colleen Cronin Allie Reed Sophie Culpepper Alex Smolar Elise Ryan

SPRING 2021

Acknowledging lost moments: Grief, gratitude and unusual goodbyes

Senior Voices The light at the end of the tunnel just got brighter: An interview with Dr. Ashish Jha Seniors in the performing arts find new purpose, inspiration despite a changed industry

Designers

Bilal Ismail Ahmed Elise Ryan

Photographer Victoria Yin

20 22

24 26

During an adapted Senior Week, Class of 2021 strives to make memories, celebrate last days on College Hill Graduates reflect on hybrid commencement From tailored canvas to Nike swooshes: diving into sports uniforms at Brown Zooming through senior year and into adulthood

Reporters Copy Editors Melanie Pincus Livia Gimenes Benjamin Pollard Claire Liu Will Kubzansky Cate Ryan Caelyn Pender

Lily Lustig Vicky Phan Michelle Yuan Tao Burga

Back Cover

Cover Art Garrett Zanin Hee Won Chung Joyce Gao Elliana Reynolds Elise Ryan

Iris Xie

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An Unexpected Commencement: The Class of 2021 Looks Back, and Forward

Acknowledging lost moments Grief, gratitude and unusual goodbyes

BY MELANIE PINCUS

Students, community members reflect on college, COVID, and moving on as seniors prepare to leave

B

efore the University made any announcement about moving to remote learning last spring, staff in the Office of Residential Life were making contingency plans. Tracy Mansour and Nick Greene, leaders in ResLife, wanted to know how many boxes it would take for students to quickly leave their residence halls, should the rapidly spreading coronavirus make such a move necessary. The answer, they determined, was 6,000.

“Tracy called one of our colleagues, Steven Lewis, and asked him two questions without any context: would it be possible for us to get 6,000 boxes delivered to the residence halls, and if so, how soon?” Greene, who is the associate director of residential operations and communications, wrote in an email to The Herald. Lewis is the Facilities and Housing Manager for ResLife.

After speaking with Mansour, the direc4

tor of residential operations, Lewis called between 10 and 15 box companies in the area. The day after Mansour’s call with Lewis — March 12, 2020 — President Christina Paxson P’19 announced the transition to remote learning. A few hours later, thousands of boxes began to be delivered to residence halls.

Some things fit neatly within the cardboard confines of those moving boxes: clothing, bedding, box fans, wall decor. As the evacuation progressed, however, it was also apparent that there was much that students could not take with them. The Class Coordinating Board had already sold tickets to its annual Gala, which was scheduled for the upcoming weekend. Members of the board took shifts handing out refunds in the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center. Student-run theater organization Production Workshop was in the middle of preparing a show that would never premiere, though its marquee is still up in front of T.F. Green Hall, and a member of the PW board noted that, more than a year later, its set remains undisturbed in the building’s Downspace.

In the months since March 2020, the pandemic has had disparate effects around the world and within the Brown community. On top of varied individual and collective losses, members of the senior class know that they will not receive a normal sendoff from the University or be able to return to some of the activities that characterized life on

campus before the pandemic. These missed and muted moments, while small relative to the profound toll of COVID-19, have shaped the shared senior year of the class of 2021.

Though many students told The Herald that they are sad to be leaving Brown in such an unusual way, most also expressed gratitude for the friendships, learning and new experiences that have accompanied their four years at Brown.

“This graduating class as a whole, just from my own experience, has missed quite a bit of just everything because of the pandemic,” said Hans Lei ’21. Still, Lei noted his appreciation for the two months he spent abroad before the pandemic sent him away, and for the connections and friendships he plans to maintain well after graduation. “Despite everything that has happened, I think these are things that I’m personally thankful for and grateful for.”

Lei is the captain of the Brown Ballroom Dance Team, a role he assumed after spending his junior year with the Brown in Washington program then abroad in the United Kingdom in spring 2020.

“It was definitely a little weird — sort of coming back to Brown, but also sort of not really coming back in that I wasn’t actually allowed to do anything normal on campus,” Lei said.

This year, the ballroom team has held classes with its coaches on Zoom, though partner dancing and competitions remain COMMENCEMENT

Garrett Zanin / Herald

impossible, and it can be challenging for students with little open space to participate.

“I am a little bit disappointed that I’m not going to have the experience I had during my sophomore year when I first joined the team,” Lei said. “But the good thing about ballroom is it’s an activity that you can continue with to a large extent after graduating.”

PW has also moved some activities to the virtual environment. Comparing PW before the pandemic to the organization’s Zoom iteration is “almost like comparing apples and oranges,” said Bella Cavicchi ’21, a member of the PW board. “It’s not exactly the same, but they have their own merits.”

For instance, moving away from a physical space led Cavicchi to ask, “What is PW outside of T.F. Green?” — the building that served as the hub for their activity.

“It really feels like … family for me, honestly,” Cavicchi said. “Being with the board and just having a weekly Zoom call and … I don’t know, just sharing time with each other is its own space.”

The loss of structure has pushed PW to make some long-discussed changes, such as creating a mission statement.

“Instead of producing art, we were talking about the kind of art we wanted to produce,” said Maaike Laanstra-Corn ’21, another board member.

Laanstra-Corn noted the strangeness of SPRING 2021

marking time since she last participated in certain activities.

“It’s a sadness that’s shared, and somehow I find comfort in that.”

“It is a really weird thing to be like, ‘The last time I produced a show was over a year ago, the last time I acted in something was over a year ago, the last time Bella and I sent an email to a cast was over a year ago,’” Laanstra-Corn said. “It’s both the big and the small, I think, all wrapped in one.”

Cavicchi and Laanstra-Corn both plan to pursue theater after graduation, and they acknowledged the difficulty of losing a year of normal theater at Brown.

“Not having the opportunity to practice the craft of theater and producing and acting on campus in addition to the loss of physical community has been a really hard blow for me, and I think countless others,” Laanstra-Corn said. But she added that be-

cause everyone feels behind, “we’re all really in it together.”

Members of other student groups described a similar sense of loss in the absence of in-person activities, and acknowledged the limitations of Zoom. Meta Austin ’21 has served as a board member in the Brown Outing Club since her sophomore fall. The BOC has not been permitted to hold in-person activities this year, Austin said, adding that the club’s Gear Room has been closed due to the pandemic, so students cannot rent equipment.

“The warm weather definitely makes me miss all of the activities I’d be doing,” Austin said. In a normal year, the BOC would be running rafting outings, other water trips and “Brown Get Outside!” — a series of events planned for Earth Day. With board members fatigued from other Zoom calls and without events to plan, Austin said attendance is lower at weekly board meetings.

“I wish I got to lead another trip,” said Austin, who, like Lei, was studying abroad last spring. “I’d say it’s the thing I’m the saddest about not getting to do. I’d rather have a Brown GO! weekend and run a couple big trips than get my walk across the stage or my last Spring Weekend or any of that.”

When Commencement does take place SEE LOST MOMENTS ON PAGE 29 5

SENIOR VOICES

Thoughts, reflections, stories and memories from 9 members of the graduating class

Ever true

Augustus Kmetz ’21

Commencement speaker semi-finalist

W

elcome, fellow graduates, parents, faculty, friends and alumni, and the person here because they thought this was a free vaccine line. I see you.

As a member of the Band — yeah, those sickos who wake you up early every Parent’s Weekend — I’ve heard a lot of Brown school songs (and occasionally remembered how to play them). Our fight song, Ever True to Brown, is fitting for our class of 2021; we have worked through some of the most trying circumstances in modern memory. I congratulate the graduates, and especially those who could not be here for commencement. We miss you.

This has been a long road, full of hard work and struggle, but that struggle does

not negate the joy we’ve felt along the way. Sure, we spent many late nights working on papers and problem sets, but we had Louis’ to look forward to after our labors. More recently, the pandemic scattered us to every corner of the globe, but we came back together on Zoom. How else would we have seen our professors’ attention-seeking toddlers or lovable pets? The celebration of our commencement is for us, but we also have a number of people to thank for their help getting us here.

First, thank you to all the healthcare workers worldwide, and on our campus, who have sacrificed so much during the pandemic. The fact that we are able to celebrate together is a testament to your hard work.

To my fellow Brunonians, thank you for touching our lives in your own profound ways. From students who provide new perspectives; to faculty who challenge us; to bus drivers and food service

workers who brighten our days, nights, and extremely early mornings; and of course, our parents for all their sacrifices and support. We would not be here today without all of your contributions.

Last but not least, to the graduates.

We did it. We persevered through a tumultuous political climate, the trials and tribulations of the Housing Lottery, and even the COVID-19 crisis. Through it all, we have endured and succeeded. And most importantly, we did it together. No person is an island, and by collaborating on projects, homework, and memes, we have kept the Brown spirit alive.

This shared spirit is at the heart of what makes us Brunonians. This same Brown ethos compelled many of us to participate in social justice causes, even during the pandemic. From Black Lives Matter to get-out-the-vote campaigns, we answered the call. Ever True.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 30

In Deo Speramus, In God We Hope Wassa Bagayoko ’21

I

Commencement speaker semi-finalist

would like to start this address with a land acknowledgment. For those unfamiliar with land acknowledgements, they are statements that recognize Indigenous peoples and their ongoing relationships with their homelands. Land acknowledgements can offer moments of reflection on both the pervasiveness of settler colonialism and the resilience of Native peoples. Today, we acknowledge that Brown University currently resides on the traditional homelands of the Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples and was built by the hard work of not only these Indigenous peoples but also of the many enslaved Africans who cultivated this land. We recognize and respect their enduring relationships to this place — past, present, and future.

When I think of Brown, I like to consider the first thing that caught my attention 6

during my high school visit: our motto. In Deo Speramus, In God We Hope. I’ve always been enchanted by this phrase. Like most Americans, I’ve grown accustomed to “In God We Trust,” which seems more definitive. Trust feels more grounding, more intractable. Hope, conditional and pliable.

For some, trust and hope are the same: an unyielding commitment to faith.

For others, hope is more fluid, appearing when circumstances and mental fortitude allow it. Hope is a complicated and deeply personal thing, and I cannot begin to define it for everyone. But I can share my perspective.

Personally, I like to consider the words of educator, curator, and prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba. She believes that hope is a discipline. I find comfort in her words and the idea that hope is something we can build. It is something we must intentionally practice and nurture, for it is not a given.

So, I like to think we are the crafters of our own hope. And however, you like to think of hope, I think we can all agree that this past year has tested it.

On January 7, 2021, the first draft of this speech was due. This was the day after white supremacists stormed the United States capitol in a failed coup attempt. Like many Black women, I was not surprised, but still, I struggled to process what that moment would mean for me, for the people I love, and for this nation. We were in the midst of a deadly pandemic, a long-overdue human rights movement, and suffering through the final days of the Trump presidency, which has emboldened hatred in a way I have never seen before. If the past year has taught me anything, it is that the future can be unpredictable, and in many cases produce the scenarios we fear most.

So where do we find hope in these moments? And who do we turn to?

I am a deeply visual person, so I like to visualize each practice of hope’s discipline as a spool of thread. Remaining true to my dear alma mater and my beloved sorority Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc, each CONTINUED ON PAGE 31 COMMENCEMENT

Brick by brick Liyaan Maskati ’21

S

tanding on the threshold of graduation, the path ahead seems rife with uncertainty. In our years at Brown, we’ve spent our time building ourselves into a community that supports, challenges and encourages us. That’s a hard thing to let go of as we leave College Hill behind.

Four years ago, I had perhaps never experienced a greater sense of ending and beginning than when I moved over 8000 miles away from home, stepped onto Brown’s campus and entered an entirely new landscape. So much seemed foreign to me — right down to the perplexing use of Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. It was a turbulent mixture of partings and meetings; I catalogued legions of new names and faces even as I waved goodbye to my parents in the square of Keeney Quad. I was tense and excited and impossibly homesick all at once, so disoriented between looking back and desperately clinging to my childhood, but

also being eager to charge forward.

I can’t quite pinpoint the moment when Brown transformed from a foreign environment into a haven of sorts. It happened slowly — brick by brick, with each memory solidifying the structure, making Brown a home. Somewhere between long Ratty breakfasts that transitioned into lunch, movie nights, midnight snowball fights, 2 AM conversations about everything and nothing at all — the foundation of a strong community assembled. I remember walking back from the piano practice rooms late one rainy night. Even though the streets were fairly deserted, as I trudged back to my dorm room I felt a strong sense of security burgeoning within me. It was like a silent buzz that couldn’t be heard, only felt. And on that cold, rainy day, it made me feel warm inside.

I’ll admit that (as in most of life) my time at Brown had its ups and downs and occasional plateaus. But in retrospect, the amalgam of these experiences solidified my feeling of belonging here. I spent numerous panicked hours waiting in line to seek help at TA hours. But these were also the moments when I made

many close friends. I discovered I hated writing mathematical proofs and had no idea what I wanted to study. But being forced to take a step back and explore different fields led me to find my place in the CS department. I made spontaneous plans to go sledding on cardboard boxes, travel to Boston, and have bonfires on the beach. And while my focused, single-minded high school self would have cringed at my growing pile of homework, these moments were often when I felt I really belonged. By learning to seek help when I needed it, widen my horizons and be more spontaneous, I eventually became the architect of the safe haven around me.

But COVID-19 disrupted that haven for all of us. Packed off from studying abroad in Scotland and sent home abruptly, I was left floundering when the internship I’d worked so hard for was suddenly canceled. To my gratitude, that’s when Brown stepped in. Professors reached out to me and to peers with various opportunities — offering research positions, connecting students with companies, trying to reconstruct part of the harbor of CONTINUED ON PAGE 9

This is life as transit George Daccache ’21

I

Commencement speaker semi-finalist

did not first move into Brown during a pandemic, but I might as well have. As most of us have found ourselves during the past 14 months, in that moment in September 2017, taking my very first steps on College Hill, I was completely alone. I left Beirut at 2:00 AM and alone I remained for 5,000 miles, clutching my suitcases and backpack through the car ride, the flight, the layover interrogation, the second flight, the second interrogation – Boston’s airport security is no joke, y’all! – the subway ride, train ticket to the wrong station, two-hour walk, second train, and finally, one last stumble up College Hill.

But here, laying eyes on the stone arches and perfect grass of the Main Green for the first time, the aloneness did not matter anymore. Like many of us today after a year of restrictions and distress, I was ready then to leave the lonely trek behind and SPRING 2020

begin a newer, better time.

I’ll save you my naïve shock that time waits for nobody. However long your journey at Brown has been, Class of 2021, it is safe to say that the world in which we entered the Van Wickle Gates is unrecognizable from the one in which we will exit them. But in so many ways, that is a false comfort. I invite you to look at the pandemic of discontent, of isolation, and marginalization that has existed long before March 2020 – from protests during our own Convocation, and long before that too. The question of who gets to declare one crisis a pandemic and another irrelevant remains.

We have grappled with this before.

These have been four years of remembrance. We went from witnessing our first candle-lit protest on Wriston Quad against sexual harassment to watching the survivor’s platform Voices of Brown take off four years later with a national audience.

We cried with our friends after the Tree of Life shooting and walked out of class in a March for Our Lives. We prayed in moments of silence as Breonna Taylor, George

Floyd, and countless other African-Americans were slain, the same way we did six and seven years ago, and countless times before that. We saw these pandemics of discontent boil over and were caught between the realities beyond the Brown bubble and the safety of an elite academic degree.

The first thing I learned in my history classes was that, actually, history never repeats itself. So long as we are agents of change, we can avoid predestination.

The Class of 2021 is distinct because, in our time here, we have come to embody change. Our very purpose is a journey toward a more equitable world.

As a senior, I now understand that to expect an institution to give us the tools to thrive in and change a world that turns itself on its head in a span shorter than an undergraduate career is almost laughably unrealistic. But Brown gave us something much more valuable. At risk of sounding self-aggrandizing, it gave us our peers and CONTINUED ON PAGE 30 7

Beyond resisting, toward living as a Black alum

Jordan Allums ’21

I

n high school, I once joked that I didn’t find out I was Black until my first day of sixth grade.

That is, of course, an exaggeration; my parents and my parents’ parents are Black, and I have never dissociated myself from my identity. The kernel of truth at the core of my joke was that my Blackness, once a default state of being, became newly salient to me upon attending Prospect Sierra Middle School, a predominantly white private institution in a suburb of the San Francisco Bay Area. By the eighth grade, I was still battling social anxiety and poor self-image that resulted from being a racial minority for the first time in my life. While my personal struggles did not subside by the time I began high school at Marin Academy, another predominantly white private school in the Bay Area, feeling relatively more anchored in my circumstances enabled me to channel

my grievances into social justice efforts on campus. During my sophomore year, I became the co-president of the Black Student Union, a role in which I facilitated a number of meetings and teach-ins about key concerns amongst Black students and Black communities more broadly, including but not limited to the n-word, colorism and police brutality. My reputation as an advocate for racial justice was so well-established, in fact, that the vice president of the student body introduced me as a “social justice warrior” ahead of my Senior Speech. My high school persona might have been helped by the fact that I was the only Black girl in my graduating class, accompanied by only one other young Black man.

The momentum I gained in high school as a leader in identity-based advocacy circles did not follow me to Brown.

During my first year, I gradually familiarized myself with Black student organizations.

It wasn’t that I suddenly stopped caring about the issues or that I wanted to redefine myself outside of my race. Indeed, it would be irresponsible and immoral of

me to look away from the myriad forms of oppression that Black people contend with, namely anti-Black violence at the hands of police and average citizens alike. Rather, the biggest difference was that I didn’t feel sufficiently self-assured to pursue an active role in Brown’s BSU, a change which my high school self would’ve observed in shock and confusion. Even as an upperclassman, there have been moments when I reflected on freshman fall with regret, wondering what collective efforts I might have been able to contribute to had I found my footing in the organization sooner.

Since that first year, I have participated in a number of events hosted by Black students at Brown, such as the annual Black Appreciation Dinner, the African Students Association (Afrisa) culture show and various BSU meetings, amongst other occasions. I remember sitting at one of many decorated round tables in Sayles Hall with a handful of my elegantly dressed friends during our first Black Appreciation CONTINUED ON PAGE 31

On painful beginnings and surprising self-acceptance Krista Stapleford ’20

W

hen I first arrived on Brown’s campus the day of first-year move-in, I wasn’t all that different from any of my peers chaotically flooding the University gates.

Like many of those around me, there was a large pit in the bottom of my stomach, which lodged itself there to remind me of my fear that I would never find my place here. Like many of the people whom I met that fall, a small worry lurked in the back of my head that I was behind already because I didn’t quite know where I wanted my academic studies to lead me. But in one critical way I was — and still am — far different from nearly anyone else around me: Instead of walking onto campus, I rolled.

This reality was one that had rarely phased me before arriving here. To be sure, I’d occasionally struggled with the emotional weight of what having muscular 8

dystrophy stopped me from doing, just as I’d occasionally struggled with the shame that sometimes comes with that feeling of being different. But the confidence I had developed in the comfort and familiarity of home, a community of friends I’d had for years and platforms like speech and debate allowed me to feel like a normal individual whose everyday experiences were defined by everything but my use of a wheelchair.

When I moved away to college, these critical pieces of my identity and existence did not move with me. With these bumpers no longer there to protect me, I felt — perhaps for the first time in my life — disabled.

During the fall of my freshman year, countless little moments left me feeling like I had been vaulted out of my comfortable existence into a world that was clearly not designed for people like me. At 18 years old — with the naive, quintessential first-year feeling that at Brown, I would be more in my element than ever before — this betrayal was jarring. And it was punctuated by a feeling of self-betrayal: Was I simply so naive that I couldn’t have expected or

prepared myself for this? I asked myself this question after getting separated from groups throughout orientation when I realized the path we were taking wouldn’t work for me, and no one seemed eager to accompany me along a more inconvenient, yet accessible route. I asked myself this question as I showed up to new club meetings or interviews, only to find that stairs but no elevator awaited my arrival.

Soon, I found myself feeling uncomfortable in new spaces, meeting new people, even if I could get through the front door without a hitch. Before Brown, I had never been shy or lacked confidence in social settings. It was unnerving to feel so ashamed and out of place, unable to shake the thought that my differences had forced a space between me and my peers so large that little could overcome it.

During my stay at home that winter break, the cloud of being disabled lifted and I felt just like me again. There was CONTINUED ON PAGE 10 COMMENCEMENT

Losing spring, and finding home Sophie Culpepper ’21

B

Commencement speaker semi-finalist

efore last March, I had never seen someone open a trash can with their elbows.

For whatever reason, that is the detail I visualize when I recall my first impression of what would soon explode into the COVID-19 pandemic: this person I recognized, but barely knew, standing by the Blue Room steps, contorting his body in order to keep his hands germ-free.

I think this moment stands out to me because of the quiet foreboding of such a simple action, when everything else still looked so normal. We all have different small details that we turn back to, but I think many of us remember the packed Main Green that week, where we were all soaking up this absurdly innocent sunshine. Actually evacuating campus was, briefly, beyond imagination.

We also each have our own frenetic story of what happened next. For me, that meant scrambling to make it back to the United Kingdom before the borders closed; for others, it meant scrambling to return from studying abroad, or even accepting that going home was not an option at all. But we all remember packing boxes, and we all remember having to say goodbyes we weren’t ready for.

And on my flight home, I remember the sunlight – this time at sunset, out the airplane window, tinging the clouds pink.

I took pictures of those clouds, and if I scroll back in my phone, those photos from an airplane in March 2020 form a clear division between a before and an after in college. Before, there are happy crowds crushed together, breathing the same air in Jo’s, at the GCB. After, distance mattered.

Distance from the people we want to be closest to – in yards and meters, necessary on a walk or in a park or in the grocery store line. In miles and kilometers, measuring how far you are from a part of home, whether a

place or a person.

I made it home in March. But once I did, it wasn’t long before I was aching to be back, anxiously checking when I would be able to return. In some ways, Brown feels more like home than anywhere I’ve ever been, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that way. There’s also a before and after for me marked by coming to Brown that I can’t distill into photos on a phone screen. Before Brown, I didn’t trust my own judgement. I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere, even with my high school friends. I was hungry to belong somewhere.

MASKATI — FROM PAGE 7

warm solace back in the secure shelter that was College Hill. Of course, the past year has hardly been perfect. But that solace helped me navigate this somewhat apocalyptic period, bringing me to where I am today.

It’s easy to feel ill-equipped as we step through the Van Wickle Gates and out into the real world. So much about leaving the comfortable territory of College Hill and entering a new, unfamiliar landscape is

safety the pandemic had tried to demolish.

While students certainly faced an array of unique challenges, I like to think the home we’d built for ourselves on College Hill did not crumble away. Later that summer, I flew back to campus in the midst of so much inconstancy. And when I returned, the heavy uncertainty slightly dissipated. Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, I found SPRING 2020

“College is often sold to us as the best four years of our lives. But as important as these four years have been, I never wanted them to be the best.”

And when I was lucky enough to join this community, I finally got to feel like I did. I had scoffed to myself at the idea of forced socialization at freshman orientation, yet it’s where I met two of my best friends. And I will never forget how friends from freshman year were thoughtful enough during the pandemic to make sure everyone, whether on campus or studying remotely, signed a card for each person’s birthday – how peo-

ple printed messages from remote students out and stuck them on the colorful cards.

COVID-19 took too much away. Yet some small moments from the pandemic could unexpectedly become beautiful. Wearing a mask my mom painstakingly made, even though she loathes sewing. Turning biweekly covid tests from a necessity into a pleasure with good company.

I will remember that we got these consistent tests at least twice a week, a level most people in this country – in the world – did not. I think as we leave here, while we did not have a typical experience of college, let alone a typical senior year, we have an incredible amount to pay forward wherever we all end up – whether by working to heal political divisions, fighting for the rights of other people, or making a quiet difference in the small kindnesses we can show those we love each day. The kindnesses I have already experienced here, from friends offering support and strength in moments of self-doubt, loneliness, exhaustion, failure, are what I will remember more than any assignment or class.

College is often sold to us as the best four years of our lives. But as important as these four years have been, I never wanted them to be the best. I like to believe what my dad says (not always true, but in this instance, yes): that life genuinely gets better after college, and that your thirties and forties and even fifties are times to look forward to – when you somehow learn to become more comfortable in your own adult skin. I like to think that the painful moments we have lived through at Brown, however senseless or undeserved, are preparing us for future happiness.

Still, when we are long gone from here, I will remember the flowers I saw on the walk back from those covid tests. First in summer bloom, then surrounded by autumn leaves, then snowed over, and now, cautiously emerging again. And mostly, I will remember that I never would have noticed those flowers if I had been walking alone. daunting: letting go of the networks and communities we’ve formed for ourselves; stepping out onto an unfamiliar street and not recognizing the faces we see. I’m sure the path ahead will bring homesickness and nostalgia with it. But as we prepare to venture into the future, I’m comforted in knowing that my years at Brown have given me the tools to construct new communities, new networks and eventually, build a new home.

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Changing my metric of success Celia Hack ’21

When I got into Brown, I was sitting criss-cross on my high school’s hallway floor, next to my best friend. I’d stepped away from the classroom with her to check my admission status. When I opened the page and saw I’d gotten in, my shellshocked scream was almost as much about my excitement to leave Kansas as it was my acceptance to Brown itself.

I was never someone who dreamed of moving to a big city; I remember visiting New York City when I was a kid and hating it. But my excitement to move to Brown stemmed, in large part, from a belief I hadn’t even been conscious of holding: that step one in ‘making it’ was leaving home, and the Midwest, behind. As graduation crept up on me this year, I realized step two of my subconscious success narrative looked like a post-graduate move to a city — a big one, probably far from home.

I realize that much of this internalized aspiration comes from personal experience and reflects my socioeconomic status. In high school, my parents took me to see colleges in the Northeast and Northwest.

My journalism teacher told stories about former students who had moved to work in Los Angeles and New York. I watched the older students I looked up to in high school go away for college and move to new cities — Orlando, Atlanta, Anchorage — to pursue their careers. So to me, it seemed that moving away was the way to be who

I wanted to be — the way to make something of myself.

But I also see this premise — equating leaving home with success — imbued in structural, societal and cultural norms.

Frequently, one must leave home to get the job they want or the environment they need. As a journalist, the job opportunities in New York, D.C. or L.A. outnumber those in my home state. What’s more, this premise is inherently threaded into the American dream via the tenet that one’s children should lead a better life than their parents. Home often seems like the place one ultimately grows out of and leaves.

It’s in the media I consumed growing up, too. Jo March, fleeing domesticity to pursue her writing career in New York City. Harry Potter, escaping his misfit identity to discover his true identity at boarding school.

Left and right, characters struck out on their own to explore unfamiliar territory and make a new home for themselves.

I would argue it’s even embedded in the structure of Brown and most elite universities. Unlike a state school or community college, this school is not built to foster education and opportunities for the people who call Rhode Island home (if it were here to serve the community, maybe they would pay property taxes). In the Fall of 2020, only 7 percent of undergraduates even came from Rhode Island. Instead, Brown, and this premise, beckon most of us to leave our home hours away — in Fall 2019, 76 percent of undergraduates came from outside of New England — in pursuit of a priceless college experience that costs over $60,000 a year.

It certainly beckoned me. This metric of success — leaving one’s home, often to move to a new, urban place — brought me to Brown, led me to study abroad and weighed heavily on me in the job search.

It is a metric that values one’s ability to adjust to new environments, to make new friendships, to be okay with being alone and unfamiliar. It values one’s penchant for exploration and curiosity, and the joy that comes from being able to build your own community.

But in writing this column, I realized that my desire to move away was, also, to a degree, a desire for what I saw as prestige.

Moving on meant moving up. And in all my focus on the success that comes with leaving one’s hometown for the big city, I failed to recognize the efforts of people who work tirelessly over the long term to improve our communities and to ensure they function. The people who stay in one place, one community, ensure that community’s survival.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that staying — or returning — home is a metric for success, too. It is a metric that values commitment to and investment in one’s community. It values the ability to maintain and deepen relationships. Returning, in particular, values seeing one’s community both for what it is and what it can be.

Come June 1, I’ll be moving to Wichita, Kansas, about three hours from my hometown, to report for a local newspaper. It’s a move I didn’t expect to make when I left four years ago. But this is the new metric of success I am giving more weight to as I look toward my own future.

STAPLEFORD — FROM PAGE 8

identity-acceptance that I previously would have told you I had completed long ago. The journey has not always been easy; I have not always done the best job at staying the course. I’m not at the end of the road either. Re-training your mind and re-building your identity are necessarily lonely and trying tasks. And I would be lying if I told you the pandemic has not made them lonelier or even more trying.

But inclusive spaces like The Herald with wonderful souls who’ve made feel welcomed and valued; professors who have seen something in my intellect and aspirations and who have grown into my mentors and friends; and friends who have pushed me to open myself up to the world around me despite my doubts have all carried me closer to the finish line.

Looking toward the start of college,

I eagerly anticipated four years of intellectual growth. Looking back on my four years, I am grateful it was more than I bargained for. The inclusivity of our social and physical landscapes will likely always need work — and making that happen shouldn’t only be up to people like me. But I will forever be grateful that my college experience was one that forced me to slow down and reconsider the integrity of the foundation that my sense of self and self-acceptance had been built on. And I will forever be grateful to the people and spaces at Brown that I’ve come to love over the years: You gave me the room and support to grow into this better version of myself. As we go out into the wider world, I can only hope that Brown has been that and more for those around me, too.

nothing especially accessible about my life in my hometown. But everything I did that break, from the exciting to the mundane, felt joyously effortless. The night before I was set to catch a red-eye back to Providence, my older sister and I engaged in our typical tradition of musing about life as the seasons change. At one point, I remember grasping at straws to try to explain to her the difference between my life at home and at college, only to come to the realization that my existence at Brown was far more inhibited by my mindset than by any physical or social barrier.

Reflecting back on my four years here, I’ve come to recognize that my Brown experience has largely been shaped by a painful but necessary journey toward 10

COMMENCEMENT

Letting go of the gold: Accepting the value of the invaluable Sarah Martinez ’21

T

he ageold adage states that college is where you find yourself and your people. At 18, I wished fervently to “find myself” falling in love with math, championing the resolution of some low-level environmental issue, graduating with straight A’s in my STEM and humanities courses alike, striking the perfect work-life balance and finding the time to write a short novella or work for NASA. I have, of course, accomplished none of these.

I have come to accept begrudgingly that most people do not accomplish any one of the aforementioned goals, much less the lot of them, and that I, too, am most people.

The idealized story we hear of success in a society like ours goes something like this: Against all odds, I became the very best. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps in a new land and made a name for myself: an honest, hardworking, breadwinning name to feed myself and generations of progeny. We are obsessed with individualism, encouraged from a young age to harness our intrepid Yankee ingenuity and shape a unique and competitive rise-ofthe-underdog narrative of success for ourselves as quickly as possible.

As an applicant with minimal formal college guidance beyond Naviance scattergrams and College Confidential, it felt as though there were three ways to achieve admittance to a school like Brown: to be the very best at one thing, to be the best relative to your peers at several things, or to be second-best in absolutely everything.

I was not a prodigy in any discipline; I was a teenager with no set identity, no clear wants, questionable study habits and no defined image of what life in or after college should look like.

But I had one thing going for me: fear.

An undefined fear of living a narrative that was anything but the idealized American success trope. I discovered quickly that you cannot do everything and do everything perfectly. So I did everything in my power to achieve widespread, ubiquitous, undeniable second-best standing. It was possible to have everything done — just done perfectly well rather than perfectly.

As I followed my roommate to the first SPRING 2020

freshman orientation activities and club fests of fall 2017, I became afraid again. I was convinced that that fear was excitement, because at last I could really and truly be anyone. I could discover an untapped penchant for dance, satire writing, sustainability advocacy, Mars rover design; I could be anyone because I had never before found a grounded passion to define myself. I could be anyone because, from my view, I had already been everyone and no one at once.

It can be hard to take root in an environment like Brown with only half-formed interests. We are, for better or worse, an intense, passion-driven student body. We love our niche interest groups, but never as much as those groups love their niche interests.

Academically, our very curriculum is founded on independence, flexibility and curatorship. Where else — why else — would I have taken a thousand-level political science course my freshman fall (with zero background and no prerequisites completed, mind you) and Organic Chemistry during my senior spring?

Well-seasoned by my high school attempt to cover all interest bases, and set free to steward my education, I sprawled — across academic disciplines, clubs, service organizations and free food events. I spent more time trying on versions of myself, fabricated in my mind as the Sarah Martinez most equipped to fit the classic American underdog story, than I did with myself. I was desperate to abandon my catch-all existence but had no convictions strong enough to justify either full commitment or full abandonment of any one thing. I searched for qualifiers and identities outside of myself, and doubted those that came from within. Was I Latinx enough, first-generation-student enough, womxn enough to let myself into communities I had never known? To find the words to ask for help?

The line between projection and honesty felt blurred, sinuous and riddled with impostor syndrome.

Now, caught in the final winds of a senior year devoid of lasts, I find it difficult to reflect on growth. If I have changed, I may still be too few degrees removed from the last four years to see how.

From this knee-high pedestal of hindsight, I look backwards, barely able to see above the haze of regret that plagues all

people who are caught at turning points, and wonder if what I needed was time. A gap year, maybe, or some other attempt at time spent with myself in the absence of academic and peer-driven performance.

But if I strain my eyes, search the horizon, scan the dusk that is settling over my time at Brown, I can just make out a hope that maybe this zig-zag, stop-start story was the right one — even though I never became “the best,” or even “ubiquitously second-best” and couldn’t be every version of myself forever. Our present circumstances (the ongoing global pandemic, if you will), while amplifying inequities, have also brought to light the immense value of seemingly small and imperfect achievements. But I think the last four years at Brown would have taught me the same thing, even if March 2020 had played out differently: that trade-offs, compromises, and bygones result in more than loss.

After so many years of desperate scrabbling for structure, I find myself caught in a network of support where once there had been none. As unfortunate as those many late nights in the SciLi basement or the depths of GeoChem may have been, I never once felt a lack of gratitude for the surprise ice cream dashes that were run for me by peers old and new. As foolish as I have felt over the years, voicing and retracting and reformulating my misgivings, regrets, and frustrations — with BOLT, Safewalk, The Herald, even my concentration departments, certainly the University at large — I can never erase the courage, growth and much-needed community I gleaned from these spaces. Though I never rose through the ranks of prestige and achievement at Brown in the same way I did (or never did?) in high school, even my fresh-faced self can see now that, like all of us, I did, in fact, succeed. In the end, my success was not to be found in any singular or documentable win, but rather in the full sum of the lessons, mistakes and people that defined my undergraduate experience.

After four years at Brown, including a year and a half in pandemic isolation, I can finally admit that there is little I want more than to be enveloped by the masses, to be a speck in a crowd, to stand side by side again, to be a part of “most people.”

Perhaps I have found that only by leaving behind the quest for individualism will I ever be just that: an individual.

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Don’t wait to get vaccinated. Help prevent the spread of COVID-19 by following public health guidelines and getting the first vaccine that is available to you. healthy.brown.edu | #BrownTakesCare | #CrushCovidRI

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COMMENCEMENT

SPRING 2021

13

The light at the end of the tunnel just got

brighter.

BY CATE RYAN

Reflections on Commencement with Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the School of Public Health

I

n October 2020, The Herald launched a podcast with Ashish Jha, Dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University. At the end of our first call, Dr. Jha said: “If people stay focused, there’s a lot of good news coming in 2021.”

Specifically, he added, “we’re going to have multiple vaccines that are safe and effective.”

In the hours after the call, as the podcast’s producer, I stitched our voices together into the first episode of “The COVID Pod with Dr. Ashish Jha.” This name was a play on the word we had all started to hear around campus as groups of students formed small covid “pods” to limit potential exposure to the virus. Via 14

virtual Zoom meetings, Herald staffers and I welcomed Dr. Jha to our “pod” each week to answer questions and comment on current events.

Each new episode of the podcast inspired added optimism. On Nov. 13, we talked about early data from Pfizer that its vaccine could be 90 percent effective. Dr. Jha said: “There’s been a light at the end of the tunnel, and the light just got a whole lot brighter.”

Since then, we’ve seen Pfizer’s vaccine and others — namely, Moderna and (prior to its pause) Johnson and Johnson’s vaccines — get authorized and implemented. All Rhode Island residents over 16 years old became eligible for the vaccine on April 19 — and the same was true for adults across the country. On April 10, during the final episode of the podcast, Dr. Jha postulated what a “normal” fall could look like, given that Brown will mandate students be vaccinated upon their return to campus.

For good reason, our podcast’s archives may now mostly lie unlistened in the backlogs of Spotify.

I understand why few people would

want to seek out a commentary recorded on Oct. 16 of 2020 as we enter the summer of 2021 — but its existence alone is a time capsule, a map of what we knew when we knew it. And on those 30 minute calls with Dr. Jha, we grappled with uncertainty in real time — together, but apart.

Our faces may have been relegated to a Zoom grid and our conversation controlled by the click of the mute/ unmute button, but each week, we not only learned how to navigate the present day, but also thought about what things could be like when the pandemic came to an end.

As journalists, we learned how our questions and words could pragmatically help keep the public healthy. And as students planning for our futures, some of us aspiring doctors, we learned how to communicate complex health issues in ways that were meaningful to our own community, but also the general public.

So on April 2, I met with Dr. Jha on Zoom to discuss Commencement — but also optimism and transitions in the COVID-19 response and in life.

COMMENCEMENT

Victoria Yin / Herald Cate Ryan: You’ve talked a lot about being optimistic at times throughout the pandemic. It’s been a dark year and we’ve all been looking for that light at the end of the tunnel, but is it hard to feel optimistic sometimes?

Ashish Jha: I always remind people, every pandemic ends — there’s no such thing as a forever-going-on pandemic. Every pandemic ends; this pandemic will. And so we have to do two things: We have to keep our eye on that, and then we have to protect people and protect lives and livelihoods and wellbeing while we get there.

I’ve had this deep-seated faith in science and the scientific community to get us out of this pandemic. I remember the conversation with Dr. Fauci in August, which was my first Brown event. As we were talking through issues, he said, “We will get through this.” And I said, almost without thinking, “And we will get through this because of science.” I smiled, and he said, “Yes, because of science.”

I’ve been able to watch how the scientific community has responded. And that has kept me very confident that we were going to come to a finish line. I felt like my job was both to communicate that, but also to offer advice

SPRING 2021

about how to keep people safe until then.

Cate Ryan: Even with the optimism, what do you think were the phases of the pandemic that were most difficult for you — to wrap your head around and to provide advice and to have faith in the science? Was there ever a moment where you were worried things weren’t going to work out the way they have now?

Ashish Jha: There have been a few moments during the last 14 months where I’ve really been caught off guard. One of them was relatively early on.

Last March, my mental model was: It’s humanity versus virus. I know which side I’m on.

That felt really simple and straightforward and clean. My job as a public health scientist was to learn about the virus, think about how it’s going to spread, think about what we need to do from a policy point of view.

There was a moment last April, in conversations with people at the White House, that I realized that we could come up with the right answer. And it wasn’t gonna get done. And it wasn’t going to get done because there were people in the White House who believed that their political advantage lay in not doing the

right thing. That was the first moment my naive view of ‘it’s humanity versus the virus’ kind of burst. And I realized it’s actually not just humanity versus virWus. It’s far more complex. And in a way that was really disconcerting. And obviously, that kept coming up over and over again.

Soon thereafter, I started discovering this incredible, well-organized disinformation campaign that questioned masks, questioned restrictions, called all of this a hoax, blamed China. It made me realize this wasn’t just in response to stress that people were sharing that information — there were people out there actually trying to undermine public health.

On the upside, watching how well the scientific community came together has been really impressive. An interesting evolution in my thinking was realizing that the job of public health in the beginning was to understand the biology, the mechanism, the epidemiology, but our job by the time we got to January, February, March of this year, was to understand the sociology, the politics, the economics — as those things were far more dominant. The (epidemiology) of this virus has been known since April or May, and no longer drives what’s going on. It’s much more social

15

cohesion, it’s much more about political will, it’s much more about governance, that really drives how the pandemic is going. And I think most people don’t realize that.

Cate Ryan: How do you think students who are graduating, who are going out to do various things next year and into the future, can use the experiences that we’ve had during this pandemic — but also our experience watching experts like yourself handle it — as we move into our futures?

Ashish Jha: There’s an old saying that wars are too important to be left to the generals. And pandemics are too important to be left to the public health experts. Public health experts, like generals, have a really important role. But you don’t want to fight a war without generals, right? Like you really need them — you don’t want to fight a pandemic without public health experts. But these are society-wide events. This is not something that only affected the public health community; it affected all of us in these deeply, profoundly import-

“There’s an old saying that wars are too important to be left to the generals. And pandemics are too important to be left to the public health experts.” ant ways. And if I had one critique, one thing that I wish was different — I wish that more sectors of our society spoke up and played an active role in responding.

Certainly Brown graduating seniors, in their careers, will have lots of leadership roles. But even in the beginning, don’t sit these things out. Get involved, get engaged; you don’t have to become the expert, but what we need is an all-of-society response — we want people to feel vested in solving these problems.

Cate Ryan: I was wondering if you could talk about the transitions that you’ve had in your life, in your career up until now. This year, starting this new role at Brown during the pandemic was obviously a big transition.

16

Ashish Jha: So my kind of personal life story is that I was born in India, I came to the United States when I was 14, but I lived in Canada for a few years before that. When I showed up at college, I had this really interesting kind of identity crisis of like: Who am I? Am I an Indian kid? Am I an American? And those issues of identity are things that lots and lots of people face. Not just immigrants, though immigrants classically face them, but lots of people think about those kinds of things.

Issues of identity come in all forms, from gender identity to sexual orientation, to race, ethnicity. Different people experience them at different times. The book that helped me the most in understanding and thinking about this issue, when I was 20, was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was a book all about identity. But of a Black man growing up in the ‘40s, and ‘50s. And then kind of really, in the ‘60s became very prominent. That was transformational.

In high school, I had a teacher who told me that if I was ever going to be successful in America, I had to change my name. And I had to pick an American name because nobody could ever say the name Ashish. He was very sweet about it — he’s like, “Listen, I think you have potential, I think you could make something of yourself. But you’re never going to do it with a name like Ashish, because no one can say Ashish.”

And in that context, that moment in college was transformational and made me feel like I could, and that I had to. It wasn’t even like I could be successful with keeping my name and identity. But I had no choice. I had to be Indian, because I was Indian. And I had to be American, because I was, and it really helped me. That had this very profound effect on me — really feeling a very different sense of confidence about the kinds of choices I was willing to make, decisions I was willing to make.

I went off from college to medical school.

The other inflection point I think about is trying to decide after residency what kind of career I wanted. The best piece of career advice I got was from a mentor of mine, who said to me: “The biggest predictor of career satisfaction is not what you do. It’s who you work with.” I took it to heart.

In my entire career, I have made decisions about what to do next based on who I would get to work with, and it has always paid off.

There are a whole bunch of people here that I just thought, these feel like my people, and I want to go hang out with them. These are the people I want to be learning from. And that was probably my single biggest motivation.

I’ve loved this transition to Brown. It is totally bizarre to start a new job in the middle of a pandemic. I have not physically met 98 percent of my faculty; I see them on zoom.

That will all change over the next year. So it’s

all very, very strange. But the point is that you have no choice. I didn’t sign up to become Dean in the middle of a pandemic. But that’s what I was faced with. We’ve all got to do this.

And we have to find ways of adjusting.

Cate Ryan: What do you think has been a source of motivation for you going through this year? In particular, with COVID, but also just your career in public health as a whole?

Ashish Jha: This is kind of the oldest line in the book, but I really felt like I could help people — I really felt like I could make a difference in people’s lives. In medicine you see that very acutely and very plainly. What I found attractive about public health was the ability to have a positive impact in people’s lives who would never know that I had done anything. In medicine, you do something for your patient, you make a diagnosis, you give them a treatment.

They know you’ve helped them. The gratitude is very direct and meaningful. And it’s wonderful, I love it. Don’t get me wrong. In public health, when you do things, you have no idea who you helped, they have no idea that you did anything useful for them. There is something kind of magical, something that feels deeply meaningful about that.

This year, there were multiple times kind of early on when I thought, I gotta just stop all this media stuff, it’s not really clear to me that I’m doing any good. I started talking to friends and family and got a lot of feedback from people who felt like my being on TV, my being on the news, was a source of information and comfort and help to them. My experience, of course, Cate, is I go stand in front of a computer, I see a blank screen. I don’t even see the anchors 90 percent of the time. And so I see nothing but a blank screen, and I talk into a blank screen, and I talk for like four or five minutes. And then it ends and I go back to

“I can look back now and draw a pretty linear career path. But it’s never felt linear.

It’s always felt a

little ziggy and a little zaggy.”

doing what I was doing. And I have no idea — Did anybody see that? Was that useful to the world? I have no idea who has been helped by any of the stuff I’ve done in the past year.

COMMENCEMENT

But you know, I do your podcast. And I will get an email from a student who says that was really helpful. Great. I love that. But, I really actually like the fact that there are people out there who I don’t know, they don’t know me, but this has been helpful to them. And that feels meaningful to me.

Cate Ryan: Even having a small part in that with the podcast has been so meaningful. All of us always talk about how we feel like we’re doing something at least beneficial to the Brown community with that podcast, so thank you for that.

I also wanted to ask, when you graduated college, I mean, obviously you would not have foreseen the COVID-19 pandemic, but did you dream of having the career that you have now? Or did you never think that this would be the path you would go down?

Ashish Jha: I had decided I was gonna go off to medical school. I knew I wanted to do more than just practice medicine. But I didn’t know what that meant. And if you had told me that I would have a career in public health, that I’d become the dDean of pPublic hHealth — I never would have expected any of that.

Part of it is, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I can look back now and draw a pretty linear career path. But it’s never felt linear. It always felt a little ziggy and a little zaggy.

What I wanted was a career that I felt would be meaningful while I was doing it and would be meaningful when I looked back.

And, I wanted to make sure I was having fun

while I was doing it too. And that has definitely been the case.

I have loved my jobs. Mostly because I get to hang out with really smart, interesting people. And we have a good time, we like to work on really interesting problems. We try to think about how to make the world a better place. Public Health is a great lens into that.

And I think none of us would’ve wished that we were using these skills in a global pandemic — here were plenty of health issues to work on before the pandemic — but to the extent that you get to use these skills in a pandemic to help people is that much more meaningful.

“There are moments when the possibility of big change opens up. And this is one of those moments.”

Cate Ryan: My friends and I sometimes talk about how we will look back on our college years with this lens of the pandemic. How do you think that you’ll look back on this later on in life and how do you think the world will look back on this time historically, and what do you hope we will have learned?

Ashish Jha: As horrible as the pandemic has been, I am excited about the possibilities it has revealed.

Societies evolve slowly on a set of issues. But there are moments when the possibility of big change opens up. And this is one of those moments.

I am hoping that five, 10 years from now we can look back at this moment, and say as horrible as that pandemic was, we used it as a moment to pivot on a set of issues. We built a global public health infrastructure that really prioritized people’s health and well-being. We began to really deal with structural inequities

in our own country in a way that was far more serious than we’d ever done before.

There’s a set of things that have been slow, hard, where we haven’t made as much progress as we need to. And I’m hoping that we can look back at this moment and say, we finally were able to break through and make real progress. I feel very confident that we can. And that would be a really good outcome from what is otherwise pretty much an unmitigated, horrible disaster.

Cate Ryan: And then my last question, you kind of already touched on this: I was wondering what your one piece of advice for a graduating senior would be this year.

Ashish Jha: Work with great people and work on problems that are important. Work with great people because that’s how you get smarter. That’s how you get better. That’s how you reinforce your values and strengthen your values. And, you know, I am surrounded by people who have incredible integrity, and their integrity makes my integrity better. I’m surrounded by people who I believe are way smarter than I am.

That helps me be smarter and more thoughtful about things.

The second part is really important, which is there’s meaning in all sorts of work, but if you have the opportunity to work on problems that really matter in people’s lives, it’s a phenomenal privilege. I’ve said to students over the years, and I’ve thought about this myself: Probably the greatest privilege after the opportunity to work with awesome people is that I get to work on things that really make a difference in people’s lives. And I think if you have that opportunity, you should take it.

“Work with great people and work on problems that are important.

Work with great people because that’s how you get smarter. That’s how you get better.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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17

Seniors in the performing arts find new purpose, inspiration despite a changed industry

BY CLAIRE LIU

Seniors find joy in acting, music composition, theatre production

W

hile businesses have reopened across the country, many theaters, concert venues and other stages remain closed for the foreseeable future. After graduation, a group of seniors who have been creating, dancing, performing and working toward their dreams in the performing arts will head off in separate directions, having left their mark on College Hill.

The Herald spoke with six members of the senior class pursuing a form of performing arts at Brown on what they learned about their art and themselves during the pandemic and how they are looking ahead as graduation approaches.

Creating meaning in theatre for a world on pause Bella Cavicchi ’21 and some of her closest friends had been working on the show “Your Own Personal Exegesis” last spring when the University notified students that they had to leave campus due to the pan18

demic. As the production manager, she was in charge of the design of the show, the budget for the large set and publicity.

In place of opening night, the production team held a final open dress rehearsal with select friends in the audience. “It was just so wonderful to have that kind of last hurrah before we all had to go,” Cavicchi recalled.

Cavicchi worked on three to four productions each semester before the pandemic, alongside an independent concentration in literacy and performing arts. This spring, she was a stage manager for Theater Arts and Performing Studies’ Writing is Live

“You really are relying on the imagination.” festival. This year’s shows were produced in the form of audio plays. “I felt like I was stage managing a podcast,” Cavicchi said of the new format.

As an aspiring theatre educator, creating virtual theatre has spurred Cavicchi to reflect on why we make theatre and what stories we tell. On Zoom, “you don’t really have the bells and whistles that I think a lot of shows kind of can rely on … you really are relying on the imagination and (the) suspension of disbelief,” she said.

This past year has also been a “long overdue break” for the industry to address issues of inclusivity and accessibility, she said. As she heads for graduate school at the University of Cambridge to study Arts, Creativity and Education, she hopes to be an advocate for change herself.

Miranda Pla ’21.5, who studies Philosophy and Literary Arts with honors in playwriting, has found alternative ways to continue producing theatre as well. Sponsored by the musical licensing company Concord Theatricals, Pla took leave last semester to create animatic videos for her YouTube channel, which has gained over six milion total views.

The videos set the soundtracks of Broadway musicals to Pla’s original animations and editing, and help promote rising musicals during a time when “theaters have been forced to get creative with how they can still reach people,” she said. A recent animatic for the musical “Amélie” took her around 120 hours to make.

Pla arrived at the University planning on a career in law, but decided to pursue theatre after attending the Musical Forum Board’s annual mini musical festival as a first-year.

“I never realized that someone like me — like my age, my experience level — could write and make something so good,” she recalled. Now, as a member of the board, Pla has written, directed and produced her own musical entitled “For Azalea.”

“The future is such a huge question COMMENCEMENT

mark” and there is “no pipeline to become a writer or director for films,” Pla said. Still, she has found her involvement in student groups to give her an invaluable platform for hands-on learning and exposure to a talented community. Pla plans on continuing digital freelance work and developing her musical this summer before she graduates.

ment because the music itself is very empowering,” she said.

After graduating, Sezener plans on building her career in Turkey, pursuing her dual dreams as a Turkish singer/songwriter and a composer for the TV industry.

Writing a soundtrack for the future

Young actors entering the field amid the ongoing pandemic face the silence of an empty theatre. But in the act of performing alone, some have found room for reflection.

For Leonardo Tamez ’21, a Zoom play he worked on this semester sparked an emotional connection. In a show produced for the Africana Studies department, Tamez played the role of a non-binary character giving a eulogy. While trying to create a feeling of intimacy by looking into the camera, “at a point … I just kind of started crying,” he said.

As a queer person, the moment felt like “mourning and purging at the same time. It just connected in this very intimate, visceral way for me,” Tamez said.

Though he would have preferred the opportunity to perform live and play off of the energy in the room, it would have “complicated the process” and the simplicity of the scaled down play, he said. Tamez started performing after joining the Mezcla Latin Dance Troupe on campus, having not had prior access to performing arts coming from a low-income background, he said.

He plans on moving to New York to pursue theatre in the near future, and hopes to create an organization for Brown graduates to continue to perform and collaborate with one another beyond graduation, regardless of their career paths. “Performance is something that heals societies,” he said.

Marianna Scott ’21 began acting at a very young age. But she put aside performing in high school to focus on academics and has

Music has been a form of solace over the past year for Karya Sezener ’21, a sound designer, composer and singer/songwriter.

Music “transports you to a moment that you experienced or maybe even didn’t experience,” Sezener said. “As a songwriter, I’ve felt at times where if I’m unhappy with the situation that I’m in physically, I can write a song and it can transport me to another memory or another moment.”

Sezener studies music and TAPS, and has been involved on the board of Fermata, a student music collective, the TAPS’ department production group Sock & Buskin and student short film productions. With on-campus shows having a high demand for technical skills like working sound cues and lights, Sezener would sometimes find herself at a set for 12 consecutive hours doing tech.

Performing arts endeavors have looked different for her since then, but the drive to work remains. In the fall, Sezener studied remotely in Turkey, her home country, and lived with a pod of music producers. Once every week for five weeks, she and her pod produced a song in the span of one day, covering different genres each session.

Sezener’s favorite composer is Ramin Djawadi, who scored HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and “Westworld.” “Whenever I feel disempowered, listening to those tracks (is) both inspiration in terms of the music he writes, but also it’s emotional encourage-

Getting into character and into the field

concentrated in physics and philosophy at the University. After being sent home due to the pandemic last spring, Scott found that reading the works of German philosopher Martin Heidegger every day gave her the space to recognize that she wanted to fully pursue acting.

Scott began questioning the motivations behind the goals she set in college and the fear that “I wasn’t going to hit the next benchmark of success,” she said. “I really stopped chasing those external validation markers and instead started to listen to (what) actually is important to me … and I think that was what gave me the courage to pursue acting,” she said.

Since making that decision, Scott has taken part in a virtual summer acting intensive with the Atlantic Acting School and another acting intensive this semester. She plans on training intensely for the next year and continuing to investigate ideas like the philosophy of quantum mechanics through writing projects in her spare time.

Similarly, Jenny Lange ’21 has been taking independent acting lessons with a friend to prepare for her career after graduation.

Continuing to learn, despite not being in-person, has kept her feeling grounded and productive; “If anything, I’ve learned a lot more throughout quarantine,” she said.

Without all the considerations that come with working on a large production, Lange has been able to focus on building her individual skillset and will return to her home in Los Angeles after graduating to begin auditioning for film and TV. “I was very scared for a long time to (say) that I was going to do acting when I graduated because it’s so unstable,” she said.

Lange quoted a piece of advice she received: “Your job as an actor is actually to be living in that uncertainty, and to be really pursuing that goal.”

Elise Ryan / Herald

SPRING 2021

19

An Unexpected Commencement: The Class of 2021 Looks Back, and Forward

During an adapted Senior Week, Class of 2021 strives to make memories, celebrate last days on College Hill

BY LIVIA GIMINES

With the entirety of their senior year marked by COVID-19, CCB and other seniors work to create class unity, celebrate 20

A

s the late Spring dawns on College Hill, many students rush to dining halls to grab a last bite between cramming for finals and packing their semester into boxes that will only be opened in the fall.

But for most seniors, the semester does not end in a simple “goodbye for the summer.” Instead, it trails off into a series of traditional celebrations that begin immediately after finals and conclude

with the momentous opening of the Van Wickle Gates.

One of these festive traditions is Senior Week. Usually, during the period after finals and before Commencement, boisterous events including Unit Wars, Senior Scramble, Trip to a Casino, Last Meal at the Ratty and Campus Dance dominate campus as seniors rejoice in their last experiences as undergraduates at Brown.

COMMENCEMENT

Victoria Yin / Herald But with the COVID-19 pandemic still restricting social activity, these events have been transformed and adapted to comply with public health guidelines.

Like many events over the past year, Senior Week 2021 — Friday, April 23 through Friday, April 30 — had to be mostly virtual, though there are some in-person Grab-and-Go events, according to Ella Joshi ‘21, co-president of the 2021 Class Board.

Because of this shift online, CCB had to be selective about the events that they included in this year’s roster, Joshi told The Herald. Some “fan favorite” events like Campus Dance and Casino Night at Moghen Sun had to be cut because they simply could not be replicated through a screen.

Most of the events of this year’s Senior Week will be held over Zoom, with some events involving Grab-and-Gos where seniors can pick up items like Knead Donuts or cocktail supplies. Some events, such as Behind the Scenes Day, were omitted to mitigate “Zoom fatigue”, said Nick Correia ‘21, co-president of CCB 2021. The organization chose to host events like Senior Scramble and Regional Meet-ups virtually, but sought to cultivate some intimacy through the incorporation of breakout rooms.

Correia said he really hopes that the Grab-and-Gos can add an in-person experience that will make Senior Week feel like more than just a series of Zoom events. He hopes that the merch and swag will boost morale and help get seniors excited.

In addition, he hopes that events like “Last Meal at the Ratty,” while also a Graband-Go event, will provide an opportunity for seniors to celebrate safely with their pods while still enjoying a more traditional Senior Week staple.

“We know that people have been through a lot this year with COVID,” Correia said. “We’ve really, really tried to make it special for seniors.”

SPRING 2021

In a normal year, CCB usually plans monthly senior nights, according to Max Dekle ’21.5, the public relations officer for the 2021 Class Board.

These in-person, class-wide events typically attract between 100 and 200 people, Dekle said. Virtual events this year, which included a cocktail mixing night, have struggled to hit 50 attendees. It has also been more difficult for Dekle to feel immersed in the Brown community this semester as compared to previous years.

“We know that people have been through a lot this year with COVID. We’ve really, really tried to make it special for seniors.”

“I would go to a lot of random talks on campus, I would snag free Kabob & Curry at lunch, I would crash these faculty talks, whereas I find this semester with everything being virtual I’m doing that a lot less,” Dekle said. “This year I’m more focused on just passing my classes and just being healthy.”

Joshi added that CCB tried to mix up activities to include seniors that are remote and won’t be able to attend graduation.

“I think we all have come together and really have thought about events we want to see and things that we’re genuinely excited about,” Joshi said.

Beyond the inclusion of COVID-safe activities, this year’s Senior Week differs from past iterations in one major detail: It is completely free for all seniors, whether living on-campus or off-campus.

Alongside the health and safety considerations for this year’s Senior Week, Joshi explained that CCB was conscious of the financial difficulties the pandemic has posed to many students and their families.

They were able to remove Senior Week costs for students thanks to the lower cost of this year’s restricted activities, as well as additional funding from the Undergraduate Finance Board and the President’s Office.

In past years, because of the scale of the many, large in-person events, Senior CCB had a big budget — ranging from $128,777.55 to $139,003.57 — and had to finance this budget with some student payments. Usually, seniors would have to purchase packages in order to attend certain events. Although financial aid was available, in past years it only covered up to 50 percent off packages.

For Joshi, organizing Senior Week has been especially rewarding since she has participated in CCB since her freshman year.

Though the planning was difficult, Joshi said she hopes that seniors show up and get the most out of this year’s Senior Week activities.

“I guess I just really want them to feel like a little bit of joy,” she said, “a little bit of positivity.”

— Additional reporting from Melanie Pincus

21

Victoria Yin and Elise Ryan / Herald

An Unexpected Commencement: The Class of 2021 Looks Back, and Forward

Graduates reflect on hybrid Commencement

Class of 2021 expresses mixed reactions toward University plan, looks forward to in-person elements

BY BENJAMIN POLLARD AND CAELYN PENDER

G

raduating seniors in the class of 2021 will conclude their time at Brown with a hybrid Commencement May 2, capping off over a year of virtual classes, social distancing and navigating a global pandemic.

In order to comply with Rhode Island’s 1,000 person limit on gatherings, the University will host Commencement in two separate, back-to-back ceremonies, according to an April 8 email sent to students in the class of 2021 and 2021.5.

Graduating students were able to choose whether to register for the ceremony at 10:00 a.m. or 2:30 p.m.

Families and other guests will have to attend the ceremonies remotely, the University announced in January.

“Many of the things we are dealing 22

with are not ideal,” said Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 MA’06. “We would prefer to have the whole class together, but we think this is a good option in the additional benefit of including the ’21.5s.

We’re very pleased to be able to do that.”

The Herald spoke with six graduating seniors about what a hybrid Commencement means to them, and about how COVID-19 has affected their senior year.

Graduating during a pandemic Because the class of 2020 was never able to celebrate their graduation in-person, Margaret Thoren ’21 is “really excited that we do have an opportunity to do some sort of in-person celebration,” she said. “I’m glad they were kind of able to

give us something … instead of letting everything go virtual.”

Kaitlyn Cook ’21 said she is “very proud” of the University for ensuring that seniors get a graduation this year. “It’s going to be so special” to “get to experience something with the Brown community again,” she said. “I’m very much looking forward to it.”

Cook said she hopes that the University will celebrate the classes of 2020 and 2021 more formally once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

Reet Agrawal ’21.5, who will be participating in the graduation ceremony despite having one more semester left at the University, also expressed gratitude that “there is still some form of in-person ceremony this year.”

It is a “big deal” that students forCOMMENCEMENT

mally graduating in the fall semester, like herself, are included in the ceremony, Agrawal said, especially because it wasn’t until recently that the University announced that midyear students could attend graduation.

Eram Mallick ’21 said she feels like the current plan for Commencement is “the best compromise” given the circumstances, especially since other colleges such as Columbia University are not hosting

“The electricity and the excitement in the air isn’t as pronounced as it probably usually is in previous years in which there were people out and about.

Regardless, we’re graduating, and that’s enough for me.” in-person graduation this year.

“I feel very lucky to be able to walk in person because I really do think that this is a momentous occasion for me and my family,” she said. “I feel really badly for the class of 2020, who had to miss out on walking the stage.”

Nidhi Bhaskar ’21, on the other hand, is “not too thrilled” with the University’s plans for Commencement.

“They’ve cobbled together this very makeshift graduation, and a lot of graduation is spending time with family and friends,” she said. “I appreciate that they made this effort to make it have the semblance of normalcy, but I would have preferred they delay it and have a proper graduation later.”

Nidhi Bhaskar’s mother, Shobha Bhaskar, wrote in an email to The Herald that she is similarly disappointed that she will not be able to attend the event. “Nidhi SPRING 2021

is our only child, and we were looking forward to a traditional graduation ceremony which is a major milestone in life,” Shobha Bhaskar wrote. “But we understand the constraints given the current public health situation and we have come to terms with it.”

Shobha Bhaskhar is still grateful that the class of 2021 will still be able to attend Commencement in-person and participate in traditions such as “the iconic walk through the Van Wickle gates,” she wrote.

Mallick also feels that, because of COVID-19 guidelines, the general feelings and expectations around graduation week on campus are different. Reminiscing and celebrating with friends must take place on a smaller scale, she added.

“The electricity and the excitement in the air isn’t as pronounced as it probably usually is in previous years in which there were people out and about,” Mallick said.

“Regardless, we’re graduating, and that’s enough for me.”

Celebrating Commencement creatively Seniors — and their families — have come up with creative ways to celebrate Commencement while still abiding by public health guidelines put in place by the University.

Cook is looking forward to “safely celebrating” graduation with the friends that live with her off-campus, including hosting outdoor brunch and other activities after the ceremony. There will “definitely (be) mimosas” she said, laughing while assuring that her friends are all 21 or older.

“It’s going to be hard to not have our whole family there to celebrate with us,” Cook acknowledged. Her father will be watching her graduate virtually from California. “He’s really sad that he won’t be able to celebrate graduation with me because it’s his last daughter graduating college and he’s very proud of that fact,” she said. “I wish that he could be here to watch me.”

Sumera Subzwari ’21, from Miami, expressed similar shared sadness. “My family feels pretty bad that after all of these years, after going through a lot of … both happy and difficult experiences … they won’t be able to celebrate with me in person.”

Still, some parts of having to attend Commencement virtually have turned out to be a “silver lining” for Thoren’s family, she said, as both she and her twin sister who attends Duke University will graduate on the same day.

“That would be a bit of a tricky situation,” she said. Now, her family will watch

both ceremonies remotely from their home in Washington, D.C. Despite being unable to watch the ceremony from Brown’s campus, Bhaskar’s parents said they “will make the best of our time together and look forward to a lovely celebratory dinner — with champagne of course!”

To celebrate with her friends and other members of the class of 2021, Bhaskar also organized a “Senior Scavenger Hunt”, which is open to all seniors through a Facebook group. With more than 30 pods currently enrolled, the scavenger hunt consists of a series of challenges that seniors can compete in with their pods and then upload pictures to the Facebook groups. The pod with the most challenges completed will get brunch delivered to their door.

With challenges ranging from “recreate your favorite dining hall food,” to “do your own naked donut run,” and “find the best rooftop view in Providence,” Bhaskar hopes that the scavenger hunt can create unity and help seniors create memories.

Bhaskar said that she created the scavenger hunt as a shared bucket list for the class of 2021 — something that would bring the class together while helping seniors make the most of their last weeks at Brown.

“Senior year especially, it’s all about making memories, especially with the community you’ve created at Brown,” Bhaskar said. The scavenger hunt is “not a replacement, but kind of a supplement.”

While Mallick and her parents are disappointed that her family will not be able to attend Commencement in-person, she plans on still making the most of her last few weeks on campus with her friends.

When she returns home, she will have a small celebration.

“I’ll be with my friends that are essentially my family away from home,” Mallick said. “I regret that those two circles cannot meet in Providence … but I’m confident that the class of 2021 will will be able to return to the Brown campus once COVID guidelines are lifted.”

Despite planning activities with friends for graduation, the event will be bittersweet for Agrawal: She wishes her parents who live in India could be in the audience as she receives her diploma.

Her family had been looking forward to graduation since she started college, as none of them have graduated from college in the United States.

It’s “the best that we could have right now and that’s great, but at the same time … the loss is still kind of irrecoverable,” Agrawal said.

—Additional reporting from Livia Gimenes 23

From tailored canvas to Nike swooshes: diving into sports uniforms at Brown

BY WILL KUBZANSKY

Today, Brown’s sports uniforms are produced by Nike and distributed by BSN Sports

T

he Ivy League, technically, is a Division I conference.

In most ways, though, it’s hard to compare the University to a Power Five conference school. Games typically air on ESPN’s streaming service instead of on cable. Admission is free to every game for students. And despite the best efforts of some students, “Brown State” has never quite caught on.

But aesthetics are perhaps one of the most obvious similarities between Brown and the athletic heavyweights we see in March Madness and the College Football Playoffs. The visual identity maintains cohesion: It’s hard to enter a dining hall or a library and not encounter an athlete in a team-issued parka or hoody emblazoned with an Ivy B and a Nike swoosh. And the uniforms, as a function of the school’s history and status in a Division I athletics conference, have a consistency, a story and an intricate process behind them.

White pants, black belts and the University Boat Club The history of the University’s athletic uniforms, according to sports historian Peter Mackie ’59, begins with the ill-fated crew race between Brown, Harvard and Yale in 1859.

Despite coming in third place of three, the crew team — not yet a team, but instead titled the University Boat Club — looked sharp, according to Mackie: longsleeve blue shirts trimmed with white, black-blazed skull caps with the inscription 24

of “Atalanta,” and black belts emblazoned with the letters “UBC.” The next significant development came in 1878: The 15-man football team, off to play its first ever game at Amherst College, was short on cash. After scraping together $50 — the equivalent of roughly $1,300 today — an enterprising equipment manager went to a downtown tailor to put the uniforms together. $50, as it turned out, wasn’t enough for the canvas uniforms; the manager left his watch and chain as collateral. The Bears, not even yet known as the Bears, also lost

“In the 1940s, football went for gold pants.

That was a disaster.” that game.

By 1900, the University did have a mascot, and had started to adopt the obvious color choice. Football, Mackie said, employed “dark brown” uniforms “almost bordering on black.” In 1914, the University added numbers to the back of uniforms for the first time when Bruno played Cornell at the Polo Grounds. (The helmets at that point, Mackie pointed out, were leather almost without any padding.)

“In the 1940s, (football) went to gold pants,” Mackie added. “That was a disaster.”

It was also unusual. “In the 1930s and 1940s, a lot of the uniforms were flat-out dull,” Mackie said. “But they weren’t trying to knock your socks off.”

The University also earned a reputation for patching up its uniforms to save money: Varsity teams would hand down their uniforms to the freshman teams, and

fall sports would hand their uniforms off to spring sports. Money for sports, Mackie explained, was tight.

“If you signed out three pairs of white socks and t-shirts,” Mackie said, “you had damn better well have returned them.”

Ever true to (Seal) Brown By the 1950s, some standardization had set in, according to Mackie. Most uniforms used the official shade of brown — “seal brown” — as well as cardinal red and white in their uniforms.

For women’s teams, split off at the time in Pembroke College, club-varsity teams used what looked like “phys-ed” uniforms before Pembroke merged with the University in 1971.

With colors all but predetermined, much of the change revolved around the logos used on the jerseys. These days, the most consistent feature of a uniform is an arched “Brown’’ wordmark, though the University makes four major logos available to its teams, down significantly from the options previously available, which at one point decades ago even included the University’s academic crest.

Today, each team changes its uniforms in a four-year rotation, said Joe Austin, the University’s head equipment manager, ensuring that almost every athlete sees at least one new uniform in their University careers. That leaves room for change and innovation, he explained.

Teams can choose between a pre-designed template, a “semi-custom” design that allows more flexibility with logos and colors and the rare “full custom run,” Austin added. The uniforms are produced by Nike and distributed by BSN Sports, an athletics supply company based out of Massachusetts.

The process typically starts with the coaches, who will either make the choice themselves or engage their team in designing the uniform, sometimes picking one athlete from each class year to have a say in the selection. The process, interim head COMMENCEMENT

of athletics Colin Sullivan said, usually takes a matter of weeks.

Women’s soccer, which is in the process of designing new uniforms for next season, is relying on its coaches to lead the process, according to co-captains Malina Yago ‘22 and Cameron Brown ‘21.

The pair expressed their trust in head coach Kia McNeill and her coaching staff to choose a great new look.

“She has a lot of pride in Brown,” Yago said.

“I definitely think it’s exciting any time you get something new,” Brown added. “Brand new uniforms … a brand-new mindset.”

The University typically sticks to brown and white colors — with the option for a dark gray coloring for some sports where uniforms might not come in seal brown or where a third jersey is used, such as in baseball and softball. But women’s soccer, without a brown uniform, is in fact an outlier among other teams that sport all-brown uniforms.

“There’s not many programs that embrace (those colors),” Sullivan said. “It’s not that popular of a color.”

“We try to explain to our athletes and some coaches as well, that Brown is our name, Brown is who we are,” Austin said.

“We can stand apart that way.”

Alternate uniforms with unexpected color combinations — like those commonly employed by the University of Oregon or Northwestern University — are also typically out of the question due to budget constraints, Sullivan said. Still, combining a home bottom with an away top (or vice-versa) can create a third or fourth uniform option where only two may have existed before.

“I just don’t know what color (of an alternate uniform) would be,” Brown said — though Yago suggested a red and black kit in the unlikely hypothetical.

The University, though, has made a few exceptions over the years: At one point, women’s basketball wore pink jerseys,

Courtesy of Brown Athletics funded by a donor for breast cancer awareness. And in 2015, the athletics department issued throwback uniforms for football, field hockey, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s lacrosse and softball to celebrate the University’s 250th birthday.

Most of the throwback uniforms incorporated gothic fonts modeled off of the 1970s basketball teams, while the football team’s striped shoulders were an homage to the 1976 Ivy League champions.

Putting it together The logistics and costs behind outfitting every varsity athlete are complex, Austin said. It’s not just the uniforms: Athletes receive additional gear including sweatshirts, sweatpants, parkas, helmets, G-suits or riding boots, depending on the sport. Most uniforms cost the athletics department between $80 to $125, though specialty items cost more — not to mention the practice gear that some teams also require.

Before arriving at Brown, recruits provide measurements to the University, and most coaches allow athletes to pick their own number. If an athlete misjudges their

size, the athletics department can send out the uniforms for alterations.

When athletes actually wear the uniforms, an intense logistical effort goes into keeping them clean: Laundry bins in every locker room go to washers and dryers in every athletic facility. The uniforms then typically return to the locker room the day before competitions — though some teams are issued their uniforms to pack in their own suitcases as they travel to games.

And unless a redesign takes place or the garment sees damage, athletes will typically keep their own uniforms for all four years.

Austin said that he pays less attention to the design of the uniform than the “rips, tears and stains” that take place over a jersey’s lifetime.

“If I watch sports at home, I’m looking more at the sidelines and equipment than the actual play,” Austin added. “Is there enough stretch in the fabric to fit a 300-pound lineman or for a volleyball player to get a good stretch as she’s diving on the floor for a ball?”

Still, Brown said, the actual look of the uniforms — like her team’s all-white kit — can be a source of pride when taking the field for the first time in a season. “It fills you up,” she said.

And while Sullivan said he tends to defer to a “clean” uniform look, Mackie pointed out a difference between this era of University athletics as opposed to every era before. Fans, he noted, might pay as much attention to what an athlete is wearing as to how the athlete is playing.

“People have been more interested in the product on the field than in the color of the uniforms,” Mackie said. “But we live in a much more visual era now, it’s what knocks your socks off.”

“If colorful uniforms would get more kids in the seats at the games, I’d say go for it,” he added.

Courtesy of Brown Athletics SPRING 2021

25

Zooming

An Unexpected Commencement: The Class of 2021 Looks Back, and Forward

through senior year and into adulthood

BY BENJAMIN POLLARD AND CAELYN PENDER

Class of 2021 expresses mixed reactions toward University plan, looks forward to in-person elements

T

he class of 2021 spent its entire last year at Brown under COVID-19 restrictions: last memories made socializing in pods of no more than five people; senior seminars held in large lecture halls masked up or over Zoom; first jobs to start from childhood bedrooms, remotely.

For many seniors, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the shape of their college experience, and for all, it has reshaped the world they will enter after they graduate.

The Herald spoke with six members of the class of 2021 to talk about their unusual last year on College Hill and what their plans are for a life after Brown and at the tail end of a pandemic.

Reflecting on a changed senior year Reet Agrawal ’21.5 decided to take leave in 26

the fall and feels that many of her friendships have been affected by COVID-19. She says her friend group this year has largely been shaped by the people she has been living with and those that made an effort to stay in touch with her when she was back home in India while on leave last semester.

The year overall has been a time of reflection for Nidhi Bhaskar ’21. “It’s really given me a good look at how resilient my friends and family around me have been,” she said. “It was just a very difficult time to be a senior, but I feel like people are making the most of it in a certain way.”

Despite having an unexpected senior year, Margaret Thoren ’21, who has been studying from Providence, has appreciated going on runs through the city and seeing students gather on the Main Green during her last months of school. It reminds her that “a lot of us are on campus together even though it doesn’t always seem like that.”

She has been unable to gather normally with close friends, many of whom were studying abroad during the last “normal” semester, but plans on visiting them when travel is safer. “It’s been a very, very long time (since) all of us (have been) together in a normal setting,” she said.

“If I could go back to freshman year and know that I would have a much more limited … college experience than I was anticipating, that definitely would have been

something I would have liked to know,” Thoren added. She’s “definitely grateful for the year that I’ve had, even though it was really not what I was expecting.”

Thoren will celebrate with her roommates and pod-mates after Commencement before spending the summer at home with family.

Completing college in the middle of a pandemic has been very difficult for Sumera Subzwari ’21’s mental health, she said.

As a student with a disability, many of the pandemic measures such as isolating and lack of contact had “exacerbated a lot of (existing) mental health issues.” Looking back at her college experience, she said it is hard to separate her last 1.5 years at Brown during COVID from her time before the pandemic.

“I don’t feel like Brown could have done a much better job, but I still feel that my last semester was very disappointing,” Kaitlyn Cook ’21 said, adding that she left for a month because she felt that Brown was not “prioritizing mental health as well as they should have.”

“I felt that the best thing for me to do to graduate from Brown without breaking the guidelines was to actually leave Brown,” Cook added. “And that was, of course, really sad because I love Brown so much.”

In a recent email to The Herald, Dean of the College Rashid Zia encouraged students to utilize existing mental health COMMENCEMENT

Victoria Yin / Herald resources, including CAPS, Student Support Services, deans in Campus Life and academic advising deans.

“We are heartened by the support that faculty, staff and students across our community have extended to one another this semester and throughout the past year,” Zia wrote. “It speaks to the strength and values of our community that so many have asked what they can do to help one another.”

Cook said it has been hard to see her

“The world in which we’ll be graduating … is markedly different than the one in which we entered Brown four years ago.” friends at Brown during the pandemic, especially during the winter when socially distanced outdoor activity was more difficult due to the weather. She said if she had known what her senior year would be like, she and her friends might have considered taking leave and returning when restrictions SPRING 2020

were lifted.

Cook also mentioned that it has been difficult as a water polo player to not have a senior season. “I had planned on playing water polo all four years of college,” she said.

“I’ve been training my whole young adult life to play in college and I didn’t get that opportunity to finish that up.”

Despite missing a senior athletic season, Cook has enjoyed experiencing Brown without her athletic commitments. With her added time, she has taken on four separate internships, founded a campus club and gotten involved with a sustainable fashion startup with other students. She has also spent more time outside and in the Providence community, going on walks with new friends and exploring the city, she said.

Despite the challenges COVID-19 has brought, Agrawal has found silver linings in her friendships that have weathered the pandemic. “A lot of what I have going on right now makes me very happy, especially the people I’m living with.”

Looking ahead Bhaskar will return home to St. Louis, Missouri, over the summer to complete a remote internship with the San Francisco Department of Public Health before beginning a graduate program in Oxford, England, in the fall.

“It’s very bittersweet because obviously this isn’t how I pictured it ending” Bhaskar added. “I feel super nostalgic for my time at Brown.”

Thoren is looking forward to moving to New York City to start a job at J.P. Morgan

within the next few months and connecting with acquaintances and the city’s large Brown alumni network. She also hopes she will be able to travel back to Brown with friends in the future to attend a Campus Dance or other event she did not get to experience because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cook will also be moving to New York, where she is excited to start a job as a sustainability analyst for EnergyWatch, a software company that helps organizations analyze their sustainability metrics. “It will be absolutely wonderful to move to a place where just everything is happening,” she said.

For her final semester, Agrawal is looking forward to potentially studying abroad, something she said would probably not have happened if it weren’t for COVID. After formally graduating next semester, Agrawal said she will be glad to have “more control over (her) weekends and weekdays” without having schoolwork to worry about.

Not having to worry about homework is an aspect of post-graduate life Subzwari eagerly anticipates. In her added free time, she is looking forward to reading books for fun and playing the piano. She is planning on taking a gap year in the Northeast before applying to medical school.

Regardless of their specific plans and paths, Eram Mallick ’21 thinks the class of 2021 will be uniquely prepared for whatever challenges they will face.

“The world in which we’ll be graduating … is markedly different than the one in which we entered Brown four years ago,” Mallick said. “That’s an awesome opportunity for the graduates of 2021 to really rise to the occasion and be leaders in their own right.”

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COMMENCEMENT

LOST MOMENTS — FROM PAGE 5 in early May, seniors who are in Providence will walk through the Van Wickle Gates. Beyond this procession, the event will differ significantly from the University’s typical festivities, and students will not have the same opportunities to say goodbye.

“I feel like I am very much a positive person and so I feel so bleak saying this, but I am just sad. I feel like I’m going to graduate and be a little sad that this is the way Brown is ending,” Cavicchi said. “I understand I am so privileged to have this opportunity still, and I don’t want to discount anything or do this comparison at all, it’s just ... I was dreaming of a different year. I don’t know what to make of that, necessarily.”

While Laanstra-Corn said she feels ready to leave Brown, she misses what was before the pandemic and what could have been.

“Talking about it with friends makes it easier, (as does) focusing on the little things that make a day really good, like a great professor, or a really good dinner you make with your friends, or a weekly PW board meeting where we maybe don’t talk about anything but we see each other on Zoom,” Laanstra-Corn said. “Because there’s so little else, those things carry so much weight.”

For Cavicchi and Laanstra-Corn, conversations with each other and Finch Collins ’21, another senior on PW, have helped them cope this year.

“It’s a sadness that’s shared, and somehow I find comfort in that,” Cavicchi said.

“It’s a shared grief and yet we’re still finding ways to hold what’s most important, which I think is each other.”

Cynthia Bo Huen Ng ‘21 has found that conversations with her family, with whom she spent more time while living in Hong Kong from May 2020 through January 2021, have provided helpful perspective.

SPRING 2021

“When they look back on college, they tell me about what they value in college, which is friendships, the connections, the people you meet,” Ng said.

“Senior year to me has been about the consolidation of friendships, and in a way I think COVID has really forced us to consolidate friendships.”

Focusing on gratitude has also been important for Ng. Since last summer, Ng has started meditating more and focused on inward reflection.

“I thankfully really have been able to meditate more (and) intentionally take time out of my day to do that, and again that is I think a privilege as students who are perhaps not working and have more time,” Ng said. “With that intentionality comes, thankfully, the ability to be able to be grateful.”

Lei, too, said it is important to think about the past year in context.

“We are definitely in a pretty privileged position of being able to go to Brown University and ... most of us being able to travel across the country and be able to at least physically be in Providence,” Lei said. “Appreciating how others have been affected by all of this,” through volunteering or staying informed, “ I think is also something that we also have to do,” he added.

Thinking about what you can do for someone else can be a useful way to cope with negative feelings, according to Senior Associate Dean and Director of Student Support Services Timothy Shiner. Student Support Services often works as a “sounding board,” helping students identify resources and providing assistance on a non-clinical level, Shiner said.

“It’s sort of counterintuitive and certainly you have to have balance, you have to take time for yourself and reflect on things,” Shiner said. “Ironically, one of the things that can make you feel better is to turn to someone else and acknowledge that this hasn’t impacted us all in the

same way.”

Shiner also encouraged perspective, noting that most students still have many milestone moments ahead of them, though he said that having perspective would have also been difficult for him as a 22-year-old.

“To feel a loss now is real, but to try to keep it in perspective is, I think, a good thing,” Shiner said. “Reflecting on the things that we can be grateful for I think can be a really powerful exercise as well.”

In March 2020, Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson, the Chaplain of the University, wrote an op-ed in The Herald encouraging the Brown community to turn to the University’s “Alma Mater” amidst the loss of COVID-19. She has seen quite a few classes of Brown seniors graduate, but expressed steadfast faith in the class of 2021, despite and because of the pandemic.

“If I trust a single class in my whole 31 years at Brown to do it right, it’s your class,” she said. “I really, really think your leadership of the other undergraduates and your ability to keep your focus on your work and on your friendships in the face of this is a part of how we’re all going to heal.”

Asked to reflect on how seniors might maintain their connections to the Brown community, in the context of her column, Cooper Nelson returned to the Alma Mater. Though the song is “almost unsingable,” Cooper Nelson points to one line in particular, which references “sorrows as transient as April’s brief showers.”

“I hope in time the transience of these sorrows will be more apparent than being dominant in your experience,” Cooper Nelson said. “The song of Brown — however you would think of that — is kind of going with you.”

— Melanie Pincus ‘21 has written an article in all four Commencement Magazines throughout her time at Brown.

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KMETZ — FROM PAGE 6 Because of a typo in the University’s acceptance letter four years ago, we began our journey as “memebers” of the Class of 2021. But along the way, we became true Brunonians. Through hard work and play, together, we formed a shared community of lifelong friends and people we haven’t spoken to since Orientation. We’re all still a part of the same community, and each other’s Brown journey.

Last spring, our shared journey hit a huge hole in the road. I wish I could have written about something different.

But I don’t think COVID-19 gave us that choice. I remember getting the email that Thursday morning in March of our junior spring, telling us that we would be evacuating Brown. I was stunned. I was going home, leaving my friends behind. So, like any well-adjusted adult, I threw my bed against the door, punched it in frustration, and then went out to play frisbee with my roommates on the Watson lawn.

You know, “healthy coping mechanisms” and whatnot. We quickly packed up our things in our Barbour triple and said our DACCACHE — FROM PAGE 7 our professors, who taught us the power of walking through an institution that was built upon gatekeeping and realizing that we can dismantle that system. That we can honor our heritages collectively in the face of a structure that seeks to reduce it to cheap talk. That sometimes doing so isn’t steeped in late nights, fancy words, and bombast, but rather in selfcare, community care and most of all, forgiveness. That we can take the fruits of the ivory tower and smuggle them to the places they are kept from. Like the many trips I ended up taking between Beirut and Providence, each time on the heels of a crisis, this is life as transit. We have embraced the art of life as journey.

The only thing constant on College Hill has been change.

It has taken me time to understand what this means. In large part, it means our families, chosen or otherwise, whom I want to extend my loudest thanks to.

To my mom, la emme, bhebbik, and to all the mixed-status families here who dared to dream of a better life for their children, even though you may not be here to see your child graduate, I see you. We promise to continue the transit to a better life.

To whichever places you find solace in, in my case as a Lebanese-American to the South West Asian Northern African Heritage Series and the first-generation community in particular, thank you for passing the baton so courageously. The 30

goodbyes.

That was when our Ever True challenge began: maintaining the Brown community even when we could not see each other in person. We were asked to show resilience, and we did. Each and every student here today, virtually or in person, has demonstrated resilience and strength. Some international students woke up at 3 a.m. to attend class. Those of us returning to campus had to navigate the uncertainty of housing. Some of us handled difficult home situations, or took care of our loved ones, or fought to take care of ourselves. In doing so, we have shown resilience through a situation no one was ready for.

One way the Oxford Dictionary defines resilience is “the ability of a substance to return to its original shape after it has been bent, stretched, or pressed.” Our community was bent and stretched all over the world, and while we could not ever truly return to our original shape, through video calls, Blueno Bears Admirers posts, Among Us, Minecraft, Snackpass and vast quantities of memes, as well as a splash of alcohol, we preserved our community. Ever True.

When we evacuated campus in March, straight into a global lockdown, everything moved too quickly to process at the time. The situation was overwhelming and heart-breaking. Only later, after returning home, could I fully process what I had left behind. I found that what I missed most were the little moments of joy that made Brown my home. I missed waking up to “Caution: Bus is Turning,” admiring our beloved Blueno, playing pick-up ping pong at midnight or visiting the axolotl in the SciLi. And of course, the people. Brown is special because of the students who attend it and the faculty and staff whose work makes it their second home. Each and every one of us has contributed a special spark to Brown that has changed this campus community for the better.

The tireless advocates fighting for student wellbeing, student leaders making everyone feel included, arts groups reminding us of our shared humanity, student-athletes pushing themselves to represent Brown in sports and professors challenging us to grow: Everyone has played a part in making Brown feel like home. Our shared community is our strength. Ever True.

fact that, when I first stepped onto campus, both of these communities were still fighting for recognition shows how far we’ve come. Family like this, like the one I found at Brown, was why I no longer felt

demic, but if you take nothing else away from this, let it be that we shouldn’t wait for a virus to combat the isolation and injustice that goes on in our communities.

Racism, systemic oppression, disinformation – we should not wait for these issues to boil over to care about them. We are tutors and mentors, laborers and academics, artists and activists, and most of all, future forebearers of the baton, and we are uniquely positioned to make a difference. So speak out about knowledge, its distribution, and its implications, even if your audience starts out as just your best friend at Jo’s over late-night mozzarella sticks. Practice radical compassion, especially when you least want to. Hold each other responsible to create the same spaces we yearn for so deeply, and search for what Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez called the “means to render our lives believable,” to matter to the other through your work.

It has been an indescribable honor and privilege to have learned alongside you. Unfortunately, we’ve become so good at living our lives in transit that our detour here must end. You are all the reason I will remember my time at Brown with a lump in my throat for years to come, and I am thankful beyond words.

Now, let us transform our degrees from illegible pieces of paper into agents of change, humbly and wisely.

Congratulations to the Class of 2021!

“If you take nothing else away from this, let it be that we shouldn’t wait for a virus to combat the isolation and injustice that goes on in our communities.” alone after my mammoth trip across the world.

This is also not an oration on the pan-

COMMENCEMENT

BAGAYOKO — FROM PAGE 6 spool is wrapped in an infinite coil of red string. And each time I witness or experience a display of seemingly impossible hope, that spool begins to unwind.

I would like to share a few instances that have given me hope in my time at Brown: I first found hope in the activism of the Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples, who after centuries of oppression, still found the strength to demonstrate at my convocation four years ago, and radically transformed my understanding of Brown’s and this nation’s history. That was the first spool.

I find hope in my classmates who deferred or interrupted their studies to work for political campaigns and empower voters whose voices are too often excluded. I so deeply admire my fellow Brunonians who organize at a local level and sacrifice their time and labour to fight seemingly impossible challenges. The ones who spend countless hours in the Rhode Island state house lobbying with representatives and waiting until the early hours of the morning to testify for a bill. Those moments alone could weave a small piece of cloth.

I find hope in the legacy of student activism at this University, which is often led by Black women, trans, and non-binary students, who have put themselves at the forefront of necessary change.

I find hope in my fellow first-generation college students, pioneers I so deeply admire and who I am honored to call my friends. They push me to strive for excellence in all that I do.

The result of these instances and countless others is an invisible and intricate web that reaches beyond a single ALLUMS — FROM PAGE 8 Dinner, looking on in admiration and joy as members of the class of 2018 embraced each other on stage. I remember standing at the back of Alumnae Hall before the culture show in 2018, taking photos of myself in the red dress I wore and sending them to my family group chat. Outside of formal events, I remember the times I watched enviously as my Black female friends styled their own hair into box braids, twists and faux locs while I, lacking their talent, would have to pay over $100 to a stylist for the same service. More generally, I fondly remember the camaraderie I have shared with Black students regardless of whether or not I personally knew them.

My main takeaway from these experiences as a Black student at Brown can be summarized in the subject of a book titled “The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture” authored by SPRING 2021

moment of despair. It is an expansive quilt of fortitude and dedication and something that I like to fall back on in

“Over the last four years I owed it to myself to simply exist as a Black person, not in constant opposition or in response to racism. The aforementioned opportunities I’ve had to be in community with Black students allowed me to do just that. ” moments where hope feels impossible.

Many of the actors in these cases have Kevin Quashie, a Professor of English here at Brown. Quashie laments the neglect of Black humanity which can be perpetuated by an unequivocal focus on challenging racism — “as if black people have no inner life, as if their being only conjures up a social narrative of racism and the resistance of racism, violence and the triumph over violence.” This sentiment prompted me to reflect on my particular journey at Brown from a new perspective. In hindsight, my uncomfortable and sometimes outright painful middle and high school experiences created the need for me to turn inward and dedicate my college years to nurturing and healing myself as a person.

I could not be an effective advocate for social justice if my sense of self was still injured by negative beliefs that I had internalized about my personality, my talents, my physical appearance and my overall potential. Thus, over the last four years I owed it to myself to simply exist as a Black

shown discipline and courage far beyond what has ever been asked of me. Only a few of these instances produced the results that were desired at the time, and honestly, the pioneers of these actions may not be around to see the fruits of their labor.

So how do they find it within themselves to hope for a future they may never see?

It is rumored that the motto printed on U.S. currency, “In God We Trust,” comes from Brown’s own motto. These two institutions, the United States government and Brown University, are ones I will always be tied to. We are told that our institutions, many of which were crafted to exclude marginalized people, should be our beacons of hope, progress and liberation. They are our future. But if there is anything I have learned in my time at Brown, it is that our institutions will never be our saviors nor our liberators. They will inevitably fail to completely accommodate us.

Four years in Providence, Rhode Island has taught me that it is not our institutions, but our relationships and our care for one another that has and will continue to endure. It is those connections, our threads of hope, that will guide us through times of unrest, oppression, and fear.

After a year like 2020, it is easy to wonder where we can possibly find hope.

But since reflecting on my four years at Brown, it is almost impossible for me to escape hope’s presence. Hope is a discipline, yes, but it is not one we have to build alone.

Congratulations to the Class of 2021.

I sincerely wish my fellow graduates will move forward and find their own sources of inspiration — and in moments of uncertainty, lean back on their threads of hope. person, not in constant opposition or in response to racism. The aforementioned opportunities I’ve had to be in community with Black students allowed me to do just that.

Beyond the work that Black organizations undertake to enact change within the Brown community, perhaps the most significant impression that the Black student population has left on me is the capacity and permission to actively enjoy my Blackness for my own sake, not as a political act. My hope is that Black graduates and current students will embrace what I have learned from Professor Quashie, Black students at Brown and other role models: that you deserve to prioritize your peace, joy and well-being above the powers that be which insist you spend your life doing nothing but resisting.

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Iris Xie / Herald