Thursday, October 26, 2017

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017

VOLUME CLII, ISSUE 94

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EPA pulls speakers from conference Scientists explain

water on ancient Mars

3D model explains how water survived frigid Martian climate billions of years ago

By JACKSON WELLS SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Though scientists have long observed signs of water on ancient Mars, they could not explain how it came to exist in the frigid climate of those times. But in a paper published in “Icarus,” scientists have recently developed a model of ancient Mars that reconciles this conflict and explains the effects of seasonal temperature variation on the climate.

There are a number of examples of evidence that indicate the presence of water on early Mars, such as lakes and valley networks, said Ashley Palumbo GS, co-lead author of the paper. There are also phyllosilicates — clay substances in the Martian surface — that required water to form, said Robin Wordsworth, assistant professor of environmental science and engineering at Harvard and colead author of the paper. Despite this, there had not been a consensus as to how liquid water could have survived in the extremely cold environment.

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Environmental Protection Agency cancelled talks by the keynote speaker and two panelists whose work provides evidence for climate change in Narragansett Bay. Many scientists have denounced the EPA’s decision.

Speakers, whose work provides evidence for climate change in Narragansett Bay, replaced

By JON DOUGLAS SENIOR STAFF WRITER

At a conference in Providence Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency cancelled talks by three scientists whose work provides evidence for the harmful effects of climate change on the Narragansett Bay.

Although the EPA helped to fund the report that the conference focused on, the agency initially offered no explanation for why it barred panelists Rose Martin and Emily Shumenchia and keynote speaker Autumn Oczkowski from presenting. The decision left the organizers of the workshop scrambling for new speakers.

The cancellation comes under an EPA that has been hesitant to address climate change. EPA chief Scott Pruitt has gone on record saying that he does not believe that human emissions are the primary driver of global

temperature changes, and many environmental researchers have expressed worries that the agency will cut funding to climate research. Additionally, the agency has removed resources for fighting climate change from its website, affecting local governments’ ability to address the issue.

Many scientists swiftly denounced the EPA’s decision following coverage from the New York Times and the Washington Post, criticizing the agency online and in a protest in Providence, which was attended by over 40 citizens » See EPA, page 2

The general acceptance among scientists was that the temperature nearly four billion years ago, when the water would have existed, must have been warm enough to cause rainfall and surface runoff, Palumbo said.

For their research, Palumbo and Wordsworth, along with Jim Head, professor of geological sciences and co-lead author of the paper, developed a model of Mars to test for the climate where water could exist while remaining within the constraints of known ancient Martian climate knowledge, Wordsworth said. They used the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique global climate model, Palumbo said. Incorporating atmospheric and surface physics, the model was able to accurately recreate climate dynamics and generate a plot of where the valley networks occur.

They also used long-term ecological data from Antarctica, which has flowing water despite its frigid terrain.

This model offered the team a window into the Mars of 3.8 billion years ago — when life was just forming on Earth — to see water on a completely different planet, Wordsworth said.

The team found that average annual temperatures could have been far below the freezing point of water, and liquid water still could have persisted in the warmest hours of » See MARS, page 3

UCS tables vote on proposed Lecturers express concern over job status must take on student activities fee increase Lecturers responsibilities outside of UFB’s proposal would raise student activities fee from $274 to $295, increase UFB budget by $138,000

By EDUARD MUÑOZ-SUÑÉ SENIOR STAFF WRITER

At Wednesday’s general body meeting, the Undergraduate Council of Students tabled voting on a proposal from the Undergraduate Finance Board that recommended that the University Resources Committee raise next year’s student activities fee by $21 per student. UCS will delay the vote until an emergency voting meeting can be held for further discussion.

All undergraduates must pay the student activities fee, which goes to UFB for allocation to fund various student clubs. For the current 201718 academic year, the fee was $274 per student, bringing UFB’s budget to $1,731,680, according to UFB’s

INSIDE

proposal. The board recommended the fee increase to $295, raising the group’s budget by $138,000.

To determine their funding, student groups are divided into three categories, all of which go through a UCS approval process. Category I groups do not receive baseline funding, while Category II groups receive a $200 baseline funding per semester and Category III groups receive the same funding and can apply for additional supplemental funding from UFB, according to the UCS website.

Supplemental funding can range between thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to a 2014 UFB release of budget allocations.

According to UFB’s constitution, the group can recommend a raise in the student activities fee to UCS, but only UCS can recommend it officially to the URC. The URC, a group made up of administrators, faculty » See UCS, page 3

academic purview, such as advising

By ROSE SHEEHAN SENIOR REPORTER

In limbo between the temporary, teaching-centric appointments of adjunct and visiting faculty and the research-focused tenure-track faculty, “lecturers at Brown feel that their role here is unique,” said Joel Revill, associate dean of the faculty and adjunct assistant professor of history. Four lecturers expressed concern with their responsibilities, job security and place within the University in interviews with The Herald.

Lecturers will “tell you that they’re undervalued, that they’re not treated well; they’re not respected,” said Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin.

“Maybe that’s true at some level … they don’t have the same status in a way.” McLaughlin added that lecturers » See LECTURER, page 2

MATTHEW BROWNSWORD / HERALD

WEATHER

THURSDAY, OC TOBER 26, 2017

ARTS & CULTURE ‘The Snowman’ failed to deliver, not just as a crime thriller, but as a movie overall

NEWS Sociologist Adam Gamoran lectures on inequality in education for English learners

COMMENTARY Krishnamurthy ’19: University reliance on donations undermines efforts for diversity, equality

COMMENTARY Friedman ’19: University’s redevelopment may not be as positive or beneficial as it seems

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MATTHEW BROWNSWORD / HERALD

» LECTURER, from page 1 “complain all the time,” because they compare their status at the University to that of tenured or tenure-track faculty rather than to the status of lecturers at Brown’s peer institutions.

According to the University’s Handbook of Academic Administration, lecturers are appointed to teach courses and take on additional “academic responsibilities” but are not expected “fulfill the requirements of scholarly research” expected of tenured or tenuretrack faculty. Along with tenured or tenure-track instructors and professors, lecturers are regular faculty with voting privileges.

The 758 regular faculty that the University currently employs includes 20 lecturers, 44 senior lecturers and six distinguished senior lecturers.

The frontline troops Lecturers are the University’s “frontline troops,” coming into contact with “a larger number of undergraduates than anyone else” because of their role as teaching specialists, according to Chair of the Economics Department David Weil.

Whereas the appointment of tenured and tenure-track faculty factors their ability to “build up the research capacity of the University,” lecturer hires are made “with regard to the enrollments,” McLaughlin said.

Lecturers are expected only to teach, not conduct research — a difference reflected in their salaries, McLaughlin said. While tenured and tenure-track faculty are paid a ninemonth salary over 12 months, with the understanding that they will use the three months of summer as research time, lecturers are paid just a nine-month salary. Lecturers’ compensation is not dependent upon any research or work done over the summer, McLaughlin added.

» EPA , from page 1 and scientists. Responding to public outcry, the EPA explained its decision as an internal “miscommunication.”

Attendees of the workshop are hesitant to accept that answer. “It wasn’t bad communication; it was an example of the way they would like to handle things at the upper echelons of the EPA,” said John King, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island and chair of the Science Advisory Committee of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program.

Lecturers are also expected to meet “administrative and advising needs that aren’t necessarily best answered with tenure-track faculty,” said Patrick Heller, chair of the sociology department.

A lecturer who wished to remain anonymous for fear of professional repercussions said that when she began at the University, “almost without being told literally … the information seemed to have transferred that, yes, (advising) is expected as a lecturer.”

David Buchta, a lecturer in classics, said that because he is “paid with the expectation that (he has) this as a full-time job,” he must take on nonteaching responsibilities such as firstand second-year advising.

When Luther Spoehr, a senior lecturer in education, was first hired by the University, he was told not to worry about research and publishing, he said.

But “that has changed a little bit, so now you’re under a little more pressure to publish, even as a lecturer,” he added.

The University’s increased emphasis on research is even more evident among tenured and tenure-track faculty, who are consequently focusing less on teaching and advising, Spoehr said. “And a lot of lecturers have found themselves asked to do more in that regard because junior faculty in particular, but also senior faculty, are less available,” he added.

Because the number of regular faculty in the anonymous lecturer’s department has decreased and its “funding level … doesn’t compare very favorably with peer institutions,” tenure-track faculty in her department must focus on writing grant proposals, she said.

Her workload — formerly one course a semester —has subsequently increased.

She is now required to teach at least two courses, she said.

Spoehr said that he feels lecturers have been pressured to do more research since he began at the University.

But Buchta said he would like more time to do research, but that his teaching duties sometimes interfere with that.

Whereas professorships in the humanities generally require a two course per semester teaching load, lecturers in those disciplines are expected to teach three courses per semester, Buchta wrote in an email to The Herald.

Buchta, who has “an active research agenda” and publishes research regularly, added that this teaching load “does not offer as much time as I would like for research and writing work.”

Tom Borden, program director of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, said he was “disappointed” by the decision, adding that he had yet to receive a clear explanation.

The workshop, which was held Monday despite the cancellations, presented the results of a report on the Narragansett Bay and its watershed. The report found that joint cleanup efforts between the government, businesses and scientists have increased the environmental quality of the bay. But it also concluded that climate change could undo all of the

recent gains in coming years, King said.

“As environmentalists, we need to plan for the worst case scenario,” King said. He stressed that scientists can only do so by addressing human-induced climate change with that.

The EPA’s move also elicited criticism from some Democratic Congressmen.

“Muzzling scientists benefits no one,” wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who also spoke at the conference, in a tweet on Monday. “Science gives us headlights to see what’s coming up for us

Permanency and promotion Since lecturers are employed primarily to teach, giving them multi-year contracts rather than lifetime positions allows the University to respond to fluctuations in the popularity of courses and concentrations, McLaughlin said. If a department “explodes for a while and then draws down after 10 years,” hiring lecturers rather than “locking into tenure-track faculty” gives the University flexibility to adjust the number of faculty in that department accordingly.

Lecturers are hired on three-year contracts, while senior and distinguished senior lecturers operate on six-year contracts. Senior lecturers also receive a salary boost. When lecturers are up for contract renewal, a committee assesses their teaching and makes a recommendation, the faculty votes and the dean of the faculty reviews the final decision, Heller said. The decision to renew is based on student evaluations, course materials and in-person evaluations from committee members, he added.

Lecturers “have pretty good job security,” Heller said. “As long as they’re fulfilling the basic functions of their position, they are generally renewed at Brown.” The contract renewal process is effective because years of experience lead to an understanding of how to

engage and mentor students and use class time effectively, said Kenneth Wong, chair of the education department.

Appointment as a lecturer often results in a longer career at the University than an appointment as a tenure-track or tenured faculty member because tenure-track faculty are more likely to receive offers from other universities, Spoehr said.

When the anonymous lecturer was hired by the University, she was told that promotion to senior lecturer was almost tantamount to tenure, but a lack of permanency is inherent in the lecturer position, she said. “If they truly wanted to get rid of me … they can,” she added.

The anonymous lecturer said that she was not immediately hired as a lecturer but instead started at the University for a trial year with a one-year contract. Her recent application process to become a senior lecturer was “an ordeal,” she added.

Catherine Imbriglio, a senior lecturer in English, also said that the promotion process — in her case, from non-regular faculty member to lecturer — was “quite rocky and irregular.” She was at the University for more than six years before becoming a regular faculty member.

Lecturers have PhDs, meaning they could become tenured. But the University conducts national searches to fill tenure-track openings, and being in-house does not give lecturers an advantage in applying to a tenured position, said Chair of the English Department Philip Gould.

“I’d love it if there were some way for a lecturer who has taught at the University for a number of years and has a significant record of publication to petition to switch their position at the University to a tenure-track assistant professorship,” Buchta wrote.

responsibilities; they don’t have to meet the same standards for research; they don’t have to undergo a tenure review,” McLaughlin said.

Though Buchta’s “compensation is somewhat disproportionately low relative to” his education level, this is a problem shared by almost all humanities faculty members, including those with tenure, he wrote.

The anonymous lecturer said she was satisfied with her salary.

Like tenure-track professors, lecturers can also take sabbatical. They are eligible for the semester of paid leave after six years of teaching, McLaughlin said.

The anonymous lecturer said that she took a semester of sabbatical, which she spent travelling to other universities to observe courses that could help her improve her lectures. Sabbatical is “a nice way of accommodating the lecturers who care about research,” said Spoehr, who is currently taking a semester of paid leave to focus on a research project.

Salary and sabbatical Lecturer salaries are based both on their disciplines and on the compensation offered to faculty members in similar positions at peer institutions, McLaughlin said. Lecturers are paid 15 percent better than faculty with corresponding posts at peer schools and are considered for raises every year, he added.

Lecturers, senior lecturers and distinguished senior lecturers currently receive median base salaries of $72,250, $90,625 and $90,250, respectively. As of 2015, the average salary for lecturers at four-year private colleges was $62,824 .

Assistant professors, the lowest ranking tenure-track faculty at Brown, currently earn a median base salary of $95,505, while professors earn a median base salary of $174,000.

The discrepancy exists because lecturers “don’t have the same kinds of contracts; they don’t have the same

Belonging at Brown As much as any tenured or tenuretrack faculty member, lecturers are “part of the Brown family,” Weil said, adding that the University involves lecturers in curricular decisions and departmental affairs.

Heller and Wong both agreed that lecturers are active members of the communities within their respective departments. “They attend departmental meetings, they sometimes vote on departmental affairs and they contribute to a lot of curriculum issues and student programming,” Wong said.

Buchta attends department faculty meetings and participates in all votes except for those pertaining to the promotion of his senior colleagues, he wrote.

Not all lecturers feel equally included in their respective departments.

Imbriglio said that because she is not “invited into the discussion” of the future of her department, she does not feel fully integrated into the community. “I feel like I’m in the dark in some ways,” she said, adding that this is partly due to the hierarchy of regular faculty within her department.

The “very clear distinction between tenure-track and non-tenure” faculty leads her to at times “feel invisible” within her department, the anonymous lecturer said. To avoid becoming invisible, lecturers must make an active effort to “have a say” and “to show up to some of the faculty meetings even though they somehow conflict with office hours and advising,” she added.

“Things are better for non-tenure track from when I first started,” Imbriglio said, but she added that University can still take steps to improve. “Are we going to go forward or are we going to stop right where we are?”

in estuaries like Narragansett Bay in RI.” Despite the agency’s recent hesitancy to address climate change, numerous scientific reports — including the one on Narragansett Bay — have documented widespread evidence of it, pointing to rising sea levels, global temperatures, water quality and air quality. The scientific community has virtually unanimously stood behind these reports, continuing to push their results in the face of public skepticism.

Paradoxically, the agency continues to fund a number of environmental

studies across the country, including 26 watershed projects similar to the one conducted on the Narragansett Bay, King said.

The conference’s keynote speaker was replaced by Robinson Fulweiler, associate professor of biology, earth and environment at Boston University, according to the workshop’s website. Fulweiler, who studies how climate change impacts marine life, called the move an “abuse of power” by the Trump administration, the Washington Post reported.

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

» UCS, from page 1

COURTESY OF NASA

Scientists created a model of ancient Mars that shows the formation of water, which explains some geographical features of the planet.

» MARS, from page 1 the summer season, Palumbo said.

Seasonal changes could have caused the temperature to briefly increase enough to cause melting of surface ice, and the resulting water could accumulate to create the different geological features. This explanation reconciles the previous conflicts of water existing in the frozen climate without any sort of external force, such as volcanic eruptions or impact cratering, she said.

This “excellent bit of modelling” allowed the team to show there were temporal climates on an annual basis on Mars, said John Mustard, professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences.

Scientists do not have definitive knowledge of Martian temperatures from the past, Wordsworth said. What they do know, however, is constraints on the luminosity of the sun and on carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere going back in time. Using these two constraints, as well as a few other factors, scientists defined a range of possible surface temperatures and subsequently found which state of climate is the most plausible to allow for the melting of ice on Mars.

Creating a model that allows for the formation of water despite the coldness of the surface has been a longstanding challenge, Mustard said.

Prior to the study, no model had been able to recreate the continuous warm and wet climate of Mars that would explain the continuous presence of liquid

water; models could only recreate the icy climate, Palumbo said.

This led the team to test if seasonal variations would be sufficient to cause the necessary warmth. Mars is currently very cold, with temperatures far below the freezing point of water, because it has a very thin atmosphere, Palumbo said. Mars lost its atmosphere through time, though scientists are not exactly sure how much; however, there are currently projects in operation, such as the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, that are attempting to discover the atmospheric loss throughout time. By constraining the thickness of the atmosphere further, climate models can better describe the early climate.

By using Earth as a Mars analog, this research can help scientists expand their knowledge of Earth, Palumbo said. Since Antarctica and early Mars appear to be climactically similar, the positing of such temperature variation in frigid Martian climates could serve to help uncover more facts regarding implications of temperature variation in the coldest part of Earth. Liquid water activity still takes place in the Antarctic and some basic forms of life persist there, which has implications for possible life on Mars, she added.

Wordsworth said this project has potential for studies off of Mars in that it could help explain early developmental processes in the solar system.

It may also assist in work regarding the habitability and observation of planets further from the sun than Earth, such as exoplanets.

Letters, please! letters@browndailyherald.com

and students, recommends the annual operating and capital budget to the president.

UFB’s budget did not increase last year but has regularly increased in the last decade, said UFB Chair Yuzuka Akasaka ’18 and UFB Vice Chair Drew To ’19. In 2007, for example, UCS voted to raise the student activities fee by $54 in a voting session, The Herald previously reported.

This year’s resolution was drafted

by Akasaka, To and other members of UFB with help from the Student Activities Office.

Akasaka and To said that UFB currently operates at a $130,000 deficit due to an influx of clubs previously funded by various academic departments.

“We have had more groups from the engineering department and from various departments across Brown University join UFB’s categorizing process, and now they are up for budgeting,” To said. “However, we don’t have the necessary funds to fund all these groups and our current Category III groups.”

These include groups that “were categorized or backed by departments” and then needed funding from UFB without notice, Akasaka said.

According to the resolution, the group now has to fund seven Category II and three groups “previously funded by the Department of Engineering and service groups funded by the Swearer Center.”

When asked by a UCS general body member whether UFB’s allocation of funds to student groups is public, Akasaka responded that some parts of the budget are and others are not.

Akasaka and To said that $20 out of the $21 per student increase — or $130,000 out of the $138,000 raise — would be used to cover the existing shortage that UFB currently faces.

However, in a strong display of opposition to the recommendation, various general body members expressed the need for more information before voting to approve the recommendation.

“Without having received more time to discuss this with more students on campus, it seems like a hard decision just to make with this small student body,” said Lisa Schold ’19, the current UCS-UFB liaison. Though she is on UFB, Schold had not seen the resolution, she added.

KAITLYN LEW / HERALD

UFB student leaders presented a recommendation to increase the student activities fee by $21 in an effort to resolve UFB’s $130,000 operating deficit.

Additionally, several UCS general body members were concerned that a $21 increase would affect low-income students.

Students also asked questions about the funds that UFB pays to the Department of Public Safety, the Fire Marshall and the Computing and Information Services, among other groups. According to the resolution, UFB payed those groups $377,600 in the current year — $78,000 more than the prior year.

“I think there is a need for that to be more transparent,” Schold said, referring to this funding of administrative departments.

Category III student groups requested approximately $1.44 million in the 2016 spring budgeting process, but UFB was only able to grant $1.29 million for the 2016-17 academic year, according to the resolution.

UFB also spent $98,200 to fund programming by the Brown Center for Students of Color, LGBTQ Center and Sarah Doyle Women’s Center — even though they are not organized by student groups recognized by UCS — because the centers did “not have the funds to support these events,”

according the resolution.

“A shortage of funding means student groups cannot maintain the programming level that students have come to expect and enjoy on campus,” according to the resolution.

Though Akasaka and To urged the council to approve the recommendation, several UCS members did not feel comfortable voting on the resolution.

“I think it’s difficult for a group of — how many voting members, like 20 of us — that don’t represent the wide diversity of socio-economic status of Brown necessarily to vote on this,” said Camila Pelsinger ’20, chair of the committee on campus life.

UCS President Chelse-Amoy Steele ’18 reiterated many of the concerns that members had.

“Perhaps there needs to be a larger discussion with particular groups on campus, specifically low-income students, about how this would affect them,” Steele said.

UCS members voted to table the discussion and hold an “emergency voting meeting” in the near future.

The resolution must be approved or rejected soon to meet URC deadlines, Akasaka said.

NEWS

PAGE 4 • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Physics equations model waves moving along equator Scientists find waves in air, water mimic electron movement on certain insulators

By ELENA RENKEN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

During the weeks Professor of Physics Brad Marston was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail last year, he had ample time to contemplate the deflection of waves at the earth’s equator and the ways magnetic fields influence charged particles.

“They both have a force that acts at right angles to the motions and makes circular trajectories,” he said. “I just had a feeling that there was a closer connection.”

Recent research by Marston and collaborators draws a novel parallel between physics and climate science: Waves in water and air propagating along the equator closely mimic the behavior of topological insulators — materials that allow electrons to flow along their surfaces but not within their interiors.

One of his collaborators in Lyon, France had observed similar patterns in the atmosphere, Marston said. These “ribbons of current” resembled the movement of electrons along the edges of topological insulators, he added.

“The mathematics is basically the same.”

Some of these waves can be observed by tracking temperature changes as they migrate over the planet, said Antoine Venaille, physics researcher at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. El Niño, a pulse of warm water that moves periodically in the Pacific, illustrates this kind of progression. “It looks like the temperature anomaly cannot go into the North or into the South — it is really trapped,” Venaille added.

The waves the team examined act as a vital element of atmospheric dynamics in equatorial regions, Venaille said.

But “they were always kind of mysterious,” Marston said. Even this analysis uses simpler physics equations than Venaille originally had in mind.

“The model we use is extremely feeble,” said Pierre Delplace, another physics researcher at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. More realistic models could add complexity to better represent the reality of the movement, he added.

But there are other directions this research could take since this kind of wave movement is not confined to equatorial movements of water and air. These flowing patterns occur in many kinds of systems, according to M. Cristina Marchetti, associate director of the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute.

After hearing about this application

COURTESY OF NASA

Researchers recently found that electron movements on topological insulators are similar to waves in water and air near the equator, like in the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the equatorial region of the Pacific Ocean. of condensed matter physics to climate science, Marchetti began using the same type of equations to model movements of strikingly different scales in the biological realm, from bacteria moving along the curved surfaces of internal organs to the flocking of birds and fish. “There are similar phenomena that occur in large crowds,” she added.

Similar wave patterns may even be

present on other planets or bodies in space, Venaille said. “There remains some mystery to be explained.”

Looking toward a future of climate change, such modeling could shed light on ways the earth will continue to develop. “A lot of attention is paid to how much the average temperature of the earth is going to increase, but what we really need to know is how regional climates are going to change,”

Marston said.

Physics is well poised to inform climate science — the most interdisciplinary of the sciences, according to Marston. Numerous disciplines are woven into the complexity of the environment, ranging from geology and chemistry to math and physics.

“I like the interplay of the richness and chaos and order and disorder,” Marston said.

Gamoran discusses inequality in English language education

JASMINE RUIZ / HERALD

Adam Gamoran spoke about the indecision about best practices for providing adequate educational opportunities for English language learners.

Specialist says she saw English language learners taken out of classroom, inhibiting their education

By MELANIE PINCUS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The percentage of English language learners in American public schools has increased in all but 15 states since 2004. When the 2014 school year began, at least 10 percent of K-12 students in nine states were English language learners, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The programs available to these students vary widely,

said sociologist Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation. Gamoran lectured on Oct. 25 as part of the Department of Education’s Speaker Series.

English language instructors vary widely in their strategies, Gamoran told The Herald. “There may be different approaches taken within the same state, within the same school district and even within the same school.”

The William T. Grant Foundation

investigates both solutions to inequality in youth educational outcomes and how to better use research to influence policy, Gamoran said. His lecture described the Foundation’s goals and grant programs, using English language learning as a case study for the type of inequality the Foundation aims to reduce.

Recent increases in anti-immigrant rhetoric and crime make research dedicated to immigrant youth all the more pressing, Gamoran said.

“It has become even more urgent to find educational approaches that reduce inequality (and) help to lower the barriers faced by our immigrant and language

minority students,” he added.

In the lecture, Gamoran discussed how tracking — dividing students into groups based on their ability levels — especially harms English language learners. These students tend to miss out on academic content more than their English proficient peers in schools that use tracking, he said.

“I’m not an expert in (the) education of English learners, but I am an expert on the use of tracking in education,” Gamoran said. “What I’ve found by interacting with researchers in the English language learner area is that there are a lot of shared issues,” he added.

English Language Learning Specialist Sara Gramley said she worked in K-12 education before coming to Brown. In this context, English language learners were often taken out of classes — a practice that inhibited learning.

“It really affected them emotionally so that they weren’t able to connect as well with their peers,” Gramley said.

Chair of the Education Department Kenneth Wong said Gamoran brings an application-driven perspective to the department’s lecture series.

“We want our students to appreciate research and use knowledge to inform their practice,” Wong said.

The department is working to increase program attendance, Wong added. They are hoping for students across disciplines to share their perspectives and experience.

“It’s also good to have this kind of broader engagement so that our students in the education program will also learn from other students and faculty.”

Soyoon Kim ’19 said taking classes with professors at the University who have relationships with guest speakers expands connections among students and scholars.

“I really appreciate the network that is created between the scholarship within the field of education studies,” Kim said.

Lecturing on college campuses can also help encourage more research, Gamoran said. While many researchers have examined the causes and consequences of inequality, fewer have identified productive responses to it.

“One of my main goals when I give talks like this at universities around the country is to convince sociologists, psychologists, economists (and) political scientists that they need to turn their attention to the challenge of responding to inequality,” Gamoran said.

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017 • PAGE 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

menu

h e r e a n d t h ay e r

SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS

Pizza: Barbeque Bam Bam, Pepperoni JOSIAH’S

BLUE ROOM

Chicken Pot Pie Bowl, Mushroom Swiss Burger

Focaccia Sandwich, Chicken Tikka Masala

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Siena Roasted Couscous, Peas with Mushrooms, Falafel Burger, Cheese Pizza

Pork Chop Suey, Roasted Vegetable Melange, Pretzel Rolls, Veggie Pizza

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

Sweet Potato Hash with Spinach, Spanish Style Rice, Corn Tortilla Chips

Fresh Broccoli, Tequila Lime Chicken, Cheese Souffle, Coconut Ginger Rice

sudoku

JASMINE RUIZ / HERALD

Students who have been patiently waiting for the leaves on the trees to fall may have to wait another month as an October with unseasonably high temperatures has extended the temperate summer weather.

Q U O T E O F T H E D AY

“Among the challenges that we face in serving English learners is a lot of indecision about what the best crossword

approach is.

”

— Adam Gamoran, president of the William T. Grant Foundation

See gamoran on page 4.

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Halloween Blood Drive 11:00 P.M. Nelson Fitness Center, Lobby

Free Speech on Campus: violence or defense?

12:00 P.M. Salomon, 202

Brown Meditation Community Sit 4:00 P.M. Manning Chapel

Careers in Medicine Series 5:30 P.M. Career Lab

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NYC Bus Trip 7:00 A.M. List Art Building

Cognition Seminar Series 3:00 P.M. Metcalf Research Bldg, 305

Piano Workshop 4:00 P.M. Grant Recital Hall

Brown Wind Symphony Concert 8:00 P.M. Grant Recital Hall

COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

P IA M I L E A F- PAT E L

comic A Horse of Any Other Name | Zachary Silberberg

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COMMENTARY THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017 • PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

The Kochs are here ANUJ KRISHNAMURTHY opinions editor In the past few years, Brown has taken several commendable — if also carefully choreographed ­ — steps to enhance its socioeconomic and racial diversity. In early 2016, President Christina Paxson P’19 unveiled the Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, which expanded the LGBTQ Center, created the First-Generation College and Low-Income Student Center and hired a dean tasked with diversity issues in the Graduate School. On Apr. 14, Brown announced that low-income students would not have to pay application fees. And this September, the University launched Brown Promise, a $120 million initiative intended to eliminate loans from undergraduate financial aid packages. Beneath this sleek, well-publicized campaign, however, lies a more nefarious reality: Brown continues to rely on donations from individuals with a vested interest in sustaining the systemic failings that make deprivation and inequality possible in the first place.

“Untitled (Lamp/Bear)” — the heavily meme-ified “sculpture” on Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle — is perhaps the most glaring instance of Brown’s solicitation of morally questionable donors: The multi-story monstrosity was lent to the University by Steven Cohen P’08 P’16, a trustee of the Corporation whose hedge fund in 2013 reached a $1.2 billion settlement with the federal government for insider trading violations. But Co-

hen and his idiosyncrasies — like his inexplicable enthusiasm for crappy art and donations to 2016 presidential candidate and Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie — are relatively innocuous compared to the University’s other financial entanglements.

Most troublingly, the Koch brothers — Charles and David Koch, founders of Koch Industries, who have a combined net worth in excess of $100 billion — have weaseled their way onto campus, influencing scholarship in a way that compromises Brown’s values and undermines its commitments to equality and access. We should all be afraid: The Kochs are here, eager to wield Brown and universities across

of Political Science John Tomasi, the Charles G. Koch Prize — which comes with $5,000 — “for significant contributions to advancing liberty.” Greenpeace reports that Brown as a whole received $828,356 in funding from the foundation between 2005 and 2013 — which puts Brown in the top 20 colleges and universities receiving Koch funding, far above its peer institutions.

To be sure, the Koch brothers’ funding is not unconditional; it has directly molded Brown’s scholarly output. Just consider the 2010 Journal of Finance article, “Big Bad Banks? The Winners and Losers from Bank Deregulation in the United States” — written by three researchers, including Ross

generally concluded that gutting regulations engendered prosperity.

I’m not going to argue that these researchers used substandard methods — their findings were published in peer-reviewed forums, after all — or that banking deregulation is necessarily a bad thing. But the conflict of interest inherent to the Kochs’ sponsorship of research affirming libertarian ideals makes it extremely difficult to trust that research. And placing the ideological priorities of wealthy donors ahead of academic objectivity cheapens the value of scholarship conducted at Brown. As part of their broader political project, the Kochs have used their vast fortune to push for free mar-

As Brown seeks to attract low-income applicants and enhance the experience of minority students, it must also reckon with the fact that it simultaneously receives large sums from the Kochs — staunch proponents of policies that make life much harder for those applicants and students.

America as pseudointellectual cudgels in their libertarian crusade.

The most conspicuous product of the Koch brothers’ influence on campus is the Political Theory Project — a project that promises to cultivate constructive debate “about the most pressing political problems of our day,” according to its website. According to Jane Mayer’s 2016 book “Dark Money,” which chronicles the metastasis of the Kochs’ political network, the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation gave the PTP $147,154 in 2009. A year later, the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies awarded the PTP’s founding and current director, Professor

Levine, then a professor of economics at Brown, and Alexey Levkov MA’06 PhD’10 — which asserted that banking deregulation bolstered “the relative wage rates and working hours of unskilled workers.” Or consider the 2011 paper “Racial Discrimination and Competition,” in which Levine, Levkov, and Yona Rubinstein, then an assistant professor of economics at Brown, concluded that “competition (among banks) boosted blacks’ relative residual wages within the banking industry and bank-dependent industries.” Both research projects were funded by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, and — surprise! — both

kets, lower taxes, fewer regulations and cuts to social programs — policies that will certainly benefit Koch Industries, but will severely hurt the majority of Americans who rely on public services and entitlements. If the University really wants to make a difference for lowincome and minority students, it ought to re-evaluate its dubious partnerships with anti-government ideologues and stop supporting billionaire-backed agendas that hurt those students.

Of course, the Koch brothers’ coercive patronage isn’t just limited to Brown; it’s a national contagion. The Charles Koch Charitable Foundation funds hundreds of colleges — includ-

ing most of the Ivy League, liberal arts colleges and state flagships — sometimes to transformative effect. It’s easy to think that America’s universities — putative bastions of enlightened inquiry, devoted to the pursuit of veracity and virtue — are immune to the appeal of cash and power. Yet, as the Koch brothers’ covert infiltration of the American campus demonstrates, even high-minded universities are susceptible to that appeal. And I understand why: Running a college, with thousands of students to educate, facilities to maintain and faculty to pay, is not a cheap endeavor. Administrators are right to seek out new pools of donors, who can bolster the funds allocated to financial aid and, in turn, make the University more affordable. But they still retain the responsibility to ensure that these donations do not subvert scholarship, impinge on academic freedom or contribute to corrosive political trends. As Brown seeks to attract low-income applicants and enhance the experience of minority students, it must also reckon with the fact that it simultaneously receives large sums from the Kochs — staunch proponents of policies that make life much harder for those applicants and students.

Unfortunately, these ill-gotten gains — in their inducement of politicallymotivated scholarship — satisfy only short-term budgetary concerns and do a long-term disservice to the purpose and potential of the modern university.

Anuj Krishnamurthy ’19 can be reached interviewing for a summer internship at Koch Industries or at anuj_krishnamurthy@brown.

A hollow gem in the Jewelry District ANDREW FRIEDMAN staff columnist Brown featured prominently in Rhode Island real estate news this past week, as it announced the opening of South Street Landing, a new, mixeduse commercial and retail redevelopment of the derelict South Street Power Plant in Providence’s Jewelry District. The $220 million project took six years to build and has already been called “an academic and economic powerhouse” by the University, which plans to move more than 400 staff members from 11 administrative departments to their new offices down the hill starting this Friday. This news comes just three weeks after President Christina Paxson P’19 and Gov. Gina Raimondo announced the ground-breaking of the Wexford Innovation Center, a building that will eventually house Brown’s School of Professional Studies. The Wexford Innovation Center’s ground-breaking likely catalyzed yet another development two weeks later: River House, a 174-unit luxury apartment community that will abut Brown’s buildings in the Jewelry District.

Just as Amazon’s search for a second headquarters has mayors across the country salivating, Brown’s move into Providence’s real estate market has Raimondo singing praises of Brown’s vision. “A few key projects like (Wexford) will be catalytic in moving the state forward to the 21st-century economy,” she said at the groundbreaking. She also claimed that Brown’s partner-

ship will spur the state’s economy and bring in scientific and technological innovators. Likewise many Rhode Islanders see these developments as a much-needed move to reinvigorate Providence’s economy. Though Rhode Island seems to view Brown as its beacon of economic hope, Brown’s real estate developments are not as beneficial as they seem.

First, the entire initiative stinks of gentrification. High-value tenants like Brown will be sure to increase the property values of surrounding lots. How ironic that Brown, rather than a forprofit company or private equity firm, is leading the charge. You don’t have to conduct a survey

Street Landing won’t pay property taxes. It’s true that the University agreed to make annual payments of $4 million to the city for 11 years in 2012. However, if Brown actually paid the commercial property real estate tax on all of its Providence properties like other companies, it would generate about $38 million in tax revenue annually, according to the Tax Foundation. That equates to a $34 million annual discrepancy between Brown’s payments and the payments that would be received from a for-profit institution, which isn’t exactly spare change for a relatively small city like Providence. The Lincoln Center for Land Policy also claims that these types of

Though Rhode Island seems to view Brown as its beacon of economic hope, Brown’s real estate developments are not as beneficial as they seem. to realize that most Brown students dislike the idea of gentrification in general. But perhaps it’s not that ironic if you see this as yet another decision by the Brown administration that unapologetically diverges from the collective social viewpoint of the student body.

Second, Brown’s expansion into the Jewelry District will not yield the type of wide-reaching financial benefits that Rhode Islanders seem to expect. Brown is exempt from paying the commercial property real estate tax because of its designation as a nonprofit institution, meaning that Brown-owned properties like the South

voluntary payments, also known as payments in lieu of taxes, are “often haphazard, secretive and calculated in an ad hoc manner.” Furthermore, Brown could very well renegotiate to a much lower price point in 2033 if it desires. By that time, the University could own more buildings in the Jewelry District for which they will be paying a tax discount. If city officials somehow think they’re getting a good deal out of this, they’re fooling themselves.

It is also worth considering that this development frenzy is occurring at an unusually favorable time for Providence and Rhode Island’s

budget. Mayor Jorge Elorza announced that the city is expecting to report a year-end operating surplus of over $10 million, while Gov. Gina Raimondo reported a state budget surplus of $63.9 million this year. Rhode Island residents might be falsely attributing some of the state’s fiscal success to the University, a major part of the Providence economy — but this credit is misplaced.

And besides, the state’s fiscal status isn’t as positive as headlines might indicate — the surplus conceals the massive cuts to critical agencies like the Department of Children, Youth and Families, with more unspecified cuts to come. This is worth noting, as Brown’s esteemed reputation as a Rhode Island economic engine will wear off as soon as the state and local budgets catch another unlucky break.

This isn’t to say that Brown’s development is absolutely and entirely bad: I am sure that the University’s majority stake in South Street Landing — 136,000 of the building’s 265,000 square feet will be leased by Brown — will encourage other businesses and employers to move into the mixed-use development, which will stimulate wider economic growth. But I will say that the hype around the project, and future Brownsponsored projects, is concerning. Brown’s redevelopment initiative looks good, but I believe that the University’s contributions to the public good have been — and continue to be — overvalued.

Andrew Friedman ’19 can be reached at andrew_friedman@brown.edu.

ARTS & CULTURE THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2017

‘The Snowman’ entrances viewers with sheer awfulness Film based off best-selling novel features Norwegian detective investigating murder case

By ZACHARY BARNES STAFF WRITER

Great cinema is partially defined by how it responds to the moment in which it’s made — think “The Best Years of Our Lives” and postwar America, “Bonnie and Clyde” and ‘60s counterculture, “Do the Right Thing” and post-Civil Rights racism.

Well, folks, get ready for the zeitgeist’s newest captor. From cartoonishly evil politicians to sublimely vapid Instagram poets to everything in between, we’re living in the age of hopeless self-parody, and “The Snowman” is here to ensure we don’t forget it.

A symphony of bad decisions, “The Snowman,” directed by the respected Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson and based on Jo Nesbo’s bestselling novel, purports to tell the story of a Norwegian detective working a serial killer case. But its narrative strands are so jumbled and clumsily executed that it seems altogether presumptuous to claim that this movie is really about anything, save for the perversely fascinating question of how a team of talented individuals could produce such a whopping misfire. Alfredson claims that he ran out of production time and wasn’t able to film about 15 percent of the screenplay. As it turns out, that’s not a great way to make a movie. Who knew?

The detective at the center of the film is the ignominiously-named Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender),

who by every hilariously obvious indication is a “Troubled Man.” When we first see him, he’s holding an empty bottle of vodka, has a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and bears the facial expression of someone who has been in battle since the Trojan War. At the office — Oslo Police headquarters — his boss tells him that he needs to shape up. “I’m dealing with it,” Harry responds.

Harry soon gets an anonymous letter in the mail, which has a cryptic message and a sketch of a snowman in place of a signature. When he later goes to a missing woman’s house and sees an eerily similar snowman built outside, he begins to connect the dots.

Unfortunately, neither he nor anyone else ever really finishes connecting the dots, thanks to a bunch of extraneous plot points that crop up all over the place. The main distraction is recently-transferred police detective and Harry’s de facto partner Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), who is obsessed with a case from nine years ago involving the alleged suicide of police detective Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer). In a series of disorienting flashbacks, we see Rafto working on a case that bears some resemblance to Harry’s.

Back in the present, Harry and Katrine find another victim, this time a woman lying headless in her chicken coop. When Harry discovers the woman’s head placed on top of a snowman, his worst fears are realized. Ours, on the other hand, are not. Even when topped with a human head, there’s something distinctly untroubling about the appearance of snowmen — an unfortunate fact, given that the film is filled with portentous close-ups of them.

The two detectives follow various

confusing leads in their pursuit of the killer. One suspect is Dr. Vetlesen, whom the detective seems to find suspicious chiefly because he is a man with painted toenails. Vetlesen also has a connection to the smoothtalking, pervy mayor of Oslo, Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons), who in turn has some kind of connection with Gert Rafto. Needless to say, the film’s gestures toward conspiracy fall flat.

Surprising to no one who has ever seen a detective movie, the investigation takes Harry’s attention away from his family. Though Harry is currently single, his ex-girlfriend’s son looks to him as a father figure.

The film illustrates Harry’s struggle to balance work and family with a groaning heavy-handedness, such as when Harry leaves town to follow a lead and forgets the father-son school camping trip he had promised to go on. And the portrayal of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg), is as dramatically inert as everything else in the film.

Fassbender, who delivered one of the best performances in a studio movie this year as an android in “Alien: Covenant,” delivers in “The Snowman” one of the year’s worst. He’s a walking mound of complicated detective cliches, and even his attempts at humor make you want to turn away from the screen just to spare him the humiliation.

Alfredson’s direction is similarly dreadful. Though not having the full screenplay to work with certainly didn’t help, that which does make it into the film doesn’t exactly leave you wanting more. The editing is a mess, the camera work uninspired and the few instances of computer graphics genuinely terrible. He also inserts

‘Beach Rats’ makes the mundane riveting DANIEL WAYLAND arts & culture critic “Beach Rats” is a stirring mood piece and a fine addition to director Eliza Hittman’s burgeoning body of works. The film’s rhythmic cycles sculpt its somber core — Hittman constructs a hazy atmospheric world simply by following her protagonist, Frankie, as he performs a series of daily rituals on loop. Such commitment to audiovisual aesthetics often comes at the expense of a thoughtfully articulated plot, and the film suffers when it tries to tell its story through action and dialogue. But then, “Beach Rats” does not seem overly concerned with positioning its protagonist as a linear storytelling subject. Rather, the film builds its form around mood to focus the viewer’s attention inward and away from plot. It moves toward more tender and difficult questions surrounding Frankie, an overly masculine and closeted young man living in Brooklyn, and how he understands his own position in the world.

The plot is simple enough. Frankie and his wife beater-wearing crew

aimlessly loiter around the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn, committing petty crimes, chasing girls and doing drugs. Frankie eventually gets himself a girlfriend, but he secretly spends his nights perusing gay chat rooms, which occasionally lead to clandestine sexual encounters with older men. Frankie lacks an outlet to address a sexuality that confuses him: Between his entourage and a home tainted by his dead father, he quickly begins to suffocate from the interiority inflicted upon him by his environment. The film ends as it began, with Frankie staring out at fireworks over the Coney Island pier and pondering his entrapment.

It is what happens between those moments of plot production that matters, though. “Beach Rats” is paced by a pulsing, dark energy. Hittman sets much of the film at night, and the pier’s neon lighting provides a trippy and buzzing backdrop for the action. Hittman and cinematographer Helene Louvart consistently focus the film’s gaze upon male bodies, primarily in states of undress.

At times the camera feels voyeuristic, catching stolen glimpses of anatomy from late night chat room sessions. More often, though, the film’s gaze unashamedly lingers on the bodies of its subjects. It’s

a refreshing means of undercutting the traditionally heteronormative and patriarchal cinematic gaze.

Even the mundane becomes erotic.

Fire hydrants, boxing bags and even a crucifix torment Frankie. You are meant to feel his sexual angst. He often repeats, “I don’t really know what I like.” The rules and codes of Frankie’s world make resolving his self-doubt all the more difficult.

Drug use and misdemeanor crimes are accepted as casual practice, the price of having fun. Frankie’s encounters with older men, on the other hand, feel illicit — they often meet in deserted parking lots and sneak off to secluded wooded areas before engaging in sexual intercourse.

Near the end of the movie, Frankie tells his friends that he uses gay chat rooms to score weed. Without revealing too much, this semi-confession leads to a moment in which Frankie is forced to pretend to his friends, who see him as straight, that he is gay. His entrapment becomes layered — he becomes a closeted man, performing straightness, performing gayness. “Beach Rats” succeeds because it rarely requires plot to make you understand how suffocating those moments feel.

“Beach Rats” concludes its run at Avon Cinema today.

COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

While “The Snowman,” staring Michael Fassbender, tried to deliver a thrilling detective story with a complex plot, it turned out to be a mess. endless hysterical curiosities, from Harry solemnly eating ice cream on a bus to a very deliberate shot of a symmetrically sliced sausage to an old Norwegian man inexplicably wearing a pair of Beats headphones.

It’s moments like these that make “The Snowman” ascend, or perhaps

descend, to a plane of utterly entrancing awfulness. It might be the worst film of the year, and yet it’s also, somehow, a must-see. Why bother with just another good film, when you could sit down and dig into this freshly half-baked meal of delicious failure?

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