Tuesday, November 6, 2018

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018

VOLUME CLII, ISSUE 95

Danny Lyon’s artwork featured in Bell Gallery Gallery delves into its permanent collection, highlights Lyon’s career through documentaries

By SANYA DEWAN STAFF WRITER

On Thursday Nov. 1, artist Danny Lyon sat down and discussed his life, as well as his artistic interactions with politics and morality, at the List Art Center Auditorium. His talk launched the David Winton Bell Gallery’s latest exhibition, titled “The Only Thing I Saw Worth Leaving,” which showcases a collection of Lyon’s work and will run until Dec. 19.

The Bell Gallery recently made it a goal to draw the Brown community’s attention to its own permanent collection of artworks, said Allison Pappas GS. This permanent collection includes a large portion of Lyon’s work, with the current exhibition presenting over a hundred of Lyon’s photographs and four of his films. In addition, Lyon’s work — “which has a strong social and political engagement” — easily ties into activity on Brown’s campus, Pappas said.

The exhibition features photographs from four of Lyon’s most significant series, including “Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement,” “The Bikeriders,” “The Destruction of Lower Manhattan” and “Conversations with the Dead.” These four series of photographs were developed in the 1960s, when Lyon was in his twenties.

The four documentaries showcased in » See LYON, BACK

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RISD show challenges gallery structures “Criteria of Beauty,” curated by RISD seniors, creates spaces for voices of queer people of color

By DIVYA MANIAR STAFF WRITER

“Criteria of Beauty,” curated by Qualeasha Wood and Dāa Guy, seniors at the Rhode Island School of Design, showcases work representing perspectives existing “outside the boundaries of whiteness, heteronormativity and gender binaries,” according to the exhibition’s wall text. The exhibition will run Nov. 6 to 25 at the RISD Gelman Student Exhibitions Gallery. The show

features a wide array of media — including textiles, sculpture, audiovisuals and illustrations.

The exhibition is a form of “fighting all these boxes and labels, that people put (queer artists of color) in,” Wood said.

The curatorsn noted a need for queer artists of color entering a gallery space to challenge its structures. “How do we psychologically deal with the reality that this space was used to objectify and commodify us in the past?”

Guy asked, reflecting on the process of curating “Criteria of Beauty.”

The curators spoke of the tensions artists of color face in most gallery spaces. “When POC artists are put in galleries, it’s still voyeuristic,” Wood

COURTESY OF RHODE ISLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN

“Criteria of Beauty” aims to exhibit work that transcends societal boundaries relating to gender, sexuality and race. said. reclamation of the existing gallery setThis exhibition is a challenge and ting, in order to “shift its trajectory, to be something that puts us in power,” Guy said.

To this end, the exhibition created a space that values art expressing perspectives of queer people of color. “The goal of the show was to give POC artists an opportunity to define — for themselves — what their work means in a gallery setting, and in a personal setting,” Wood said. “You define your own reality. Your experiences are your own, your voice is your own,” she continued.

The exhibition prioritizes artists’ expression by giving them a space to reclaim the gallery setting by their own means. “We want to change the space, not only for everyone who walks in, but for the people (showing) in it,” Wood said. “I think a lot of people who came into the show made work for themselves.”

The show also served as a catalyst and allowed for the exchange of meaningful feedback as an “important moment” that opened the dialogue for artists concerned with conversations that extend beyond the normative boundaries of white and heteronormative MONIKA HEDMAN » See BEAUTY, page 3

Exhibition examines art world’s activism Poet Stacy Szymaszek Bell Gallery hosts “On Protest Art and Activism” with works borrowed from Whitney Museum

By DIVYA MANIAR SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Co-organized by the David Winton Bell Gallery and the Brown Arts Initiative, “On Protest Art and Activism” is a series of exhibits currently on display at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. The series “highlights the work of artists and the differing ways they

INSIDE

engage the social and political issues of their time,” wrote Ian Russell, curator of the Bell Gallery, in an email to The Herald.

The installments feature works selected from the exhibition “An Incomplete History of Protest” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Part I of the exhibit, which ran from Oct. 1 to Oct. 28, examined “how artists use histories of protest to create works in response to contemporary activism,” Russell wrote.

This first installment showcased works

by Ja’Tovia Gary, Theaster Gates,

Josephine Meckseper and Dread Scott.

The closing reception of the exhibition’s first installment took place Friday, following a discussion panel featuring Russell, University Archivist Jennifer Betts and Assistant Curators at the Whitney Museum Jennie Goldstein and Rujeko Hockley.

The conversation was concerned with constructing “a curatorial narrative around the history and impact of protest art and artistic activism,” according to the event description on the University’s website.

Both Hockley and Goldstein spoke » See PROTEST ART, page 2

discusses mundanity Writers on Writing visiting vecturer delves into beauties of habitual, everyday life

By EMILY TENG CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The lights were dimmed down with only a single spotlight cast upon Stacy Szymaszek. Other than the occasional grins and brief chuckles from the audience seats, the only sound cutting through the

air was her voice. The poet was invited to speak as a guest of the Literary Arts department’s Writers on Writing lecture series. During the one and a half hour reading, everyone listened attentively as Szymaszek read a couple of her recent poems, present excerpts from her book “A Year from Today” and discuss her creative process.

Rather than giving a conventional introduction of Szymaszek, Mónica de la Torre, a professor of Literary Arts, placed her phone close to the » See SZYMASZEK, page 3

WEATHER

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018

ARTS & CULTURE Sock and Buskin’s latest play, “Next to Normal,” addresses family drama, mental illness

ARTS & CULTURE “Gigs Underground” invites students to perform acoustic sounds in coffee shop setting

COMMENTARY Simshauser ’20: Results of midterm elections could portend future voter suppression efforts

COMMENTARY Aman ’20: Discussions of wage inequality must include complexities of gender disparities

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ARTS & CULTURE PAGE 2 • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

“Next to Normal” grapples with mental illness, grief Sock & Buskin musical offers moving performances, showcases complex relationships

By GRAYSON LEE STAFF WRITER

“Next to Normal,” running Nov 1-11 at the Stuart Theater, features a raw and moving story delivered by outstanding student actors. Sock and Buskin’s latest show revolves around a woman, Diana Goodman, who struggles with bipolar disorder and grief. The curtain opens on her, and audience members are immediately aware of the intricacies of her relationships with her family: supportive husband Dan, overachieving daughter Natalie and manipulative son Gabe.

As the musical progresses, the audience quickly realizes that Diana’s relationship with her supposedly 18-year-old son Gabe is actually a mirage — her son died when he was an infant. Throughout the play, as Diana tries to confront her own grief, her family is forced to come to terms with the problems that afflict their own lives.

The musical, directed by Addie Gorlin GS, a graduate student from the Trinity/Brown program, provided excellent performances that moved the audience, prompting tears and

» PROTEST ART, from page 1 about their curatorial choices regarding the construction and organization of the show, which were inextricable from the current geopolitical situation. “We really were making these

a standing ovation at the end of the show. Temma Schaechter ’21 and Jimmy Damore ’19.5 played Diana and Dan, respectively, and were especially exceptional performances.

Kayla Kirk ’19 as Natalie impressed with a convincing interpretation of a teenager grappling with her romantic life, mental health and family relationships. Schaechter portrayed Diana with nuance, supported by her incredible voice. Dan’s kind frustration with his wife’s illness was always evident in Damore’s performance.

The music — like the story — is powerful and uninhibited. The characters explain themselves without affectation or farce, and quick changes in perspective or emotion are matched by sudden shifts in the music, often without interludes. The soundtrack does not fade from one song to the next, and these abrupt transitions create an auditory link between the sincerity of the charactrs and the tumult of the score.

The set design is inspired, versatile and added to the show both symbolically and emotionally. The white twostory house made of almost transparent material allowed the lighting to determine the tone of the stage. When emotions run high, the entire set is enveloped in red or purple light, and the transparency of the walls gave the audience glimpses into secret actions of characters. Built as a circular

decisions as the world was unfolding all around us,” Goldstein said.

Decisions regarding what was to be included in the original exhibition were informed by the dramatically evolving political mood. “We were working on it in the context of a

COURTESY OF MARK TUREK

Sock and Buskin’s latest show, “Next to Normal,” focuses on a woman facing grief and living with bipolar disorder. The show, directed by Addie Gorlin GS, will run at the Stuart Theater until Nov. 11. platform, the set periodically moves to signal shifts in temporality in the play. Several times during the show, the set rotates continuously during a song to highlight passion or confusion as some characters stand on the stable part of the stage while others are caught up in the spiraling circle.

On Friday evening after the performance, Leon J. Hilton, assistant professor of theatre arts and

performance studies, facilitated a discussion with Rendueles Villalba, clinical associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Alpert Medical School, and Linda Welsh, a psychologist at counseling and psychological services. The discussion focused on the depiction of mental illness in the show and in theater generally. Villalba and Welsh clarified some aspects of the show,

explaining subtleties of bipolar disorder and grief. Villalba appreciated the three-dimensional perspective of the lead character. He had previously worried that she might end up being portrayed as a “caricature of the DSM manual,” he said. Both Villalba and Welsh noted the ways that theater can allow for the de-stigmatization of topics generally considered difficult to discuss, such as mental illness.

newly inaugurated president,” Hockley added.

There are also limits to what can be captured and represented in an exhibition, from a curatorial perspective.

For instance, Goldstein highlighted that in the Whitney exhibition, “one omission that became very glaring to me … was that we do not have works in the collection that address the disability rights movement,” she said.

These omissions often stem from the complications of acquisitions and the changing priorities people hold when viewing and collecting works, according to Hockley. “The ways in which our own collecting instincts, strategies and desires shifted over time is also something we have to contend with,” Hockley said. She expanded on the idea that evolving sensibilities

throughout time accorded varying levels of artistic visibility to different social justice movements. “There are so many ways things come into collections. … It is not neutral, and it is complicated,” she continued.

The gaps she noted in the Whitney’s exhibition were further recognized by the public. “We heard a lot from people — about what we were doing wrong (and) … what they thought we were maybe getting right,” Goldstein said.

“We need that. Because — of course — we have blind spots,” she added.

The Whitney exhibition’s title acknowledges its own limits. “The incompleteness of the title is a kind of caveat for us. We realize we don’t have everything. We can’t tell every story,” Goldstein said.

Part II of “Protest Art and

Activism,” is now showing at the Bell Gallery and will run until Dec. 19.

This second installation of the series “examines the ongoing impact of women artists within the feminist movements of the last four decades,” Russell wrote. It will feature “works

by Hermine Freed, Guerrilla Girls, Suzanne Lacy, Howardena Pindell and Martha Rosler,” he added.

This exhibit is part of an ongoing effort to increase engagement with artistic works and issues relevant to students. “Our hope is that this will be the first of many projects in the coming years where the David Winton Bell Gallery will be working with the Brown Arts Initiative to present the work of artists who engage issues that resonate with (Brown’s) curriculum and campus life,” Russell wrote.

SEMI-NEW SPRING 2019 COURSE PHILOSOPHY 2160P: PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, AND POLITICS IN GEORGE ORWELL’S NOVELS Felicia Nimue Ackerman Monday, 3:00-5:30

LILLY NGUYGEN / HERALD

Part I of “On Protest Art and Activism” ran from Oct.1 to Oct. 23. Part II — considering the influence of women artists — will run until December 19.

You may be familiar with Animal Farm and 1984, but did you know that George Orwell wrote four other novels? These other four novels are much less well known nowadays than they should be. This seminar will consider all six and will discuss not only the usual points about totalitarianism and governmental lying but also Orwell’s wide-ranging, fascinating, and debatable views about people, language, and self-deception (such as, “If you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself”). In order to include students with varied backgrounds and interests, this seminar has no prerequisites. If you would like more information about the seminar, please telephone me at 863-3240, email Felicia_Ackerman@brown.edu or come to my office at 212 Corliss Brackett. Never go home the same way as you went out.

Issue

In This Holly Zheng 4

4

Miranda Grundy

Caroline Ribet

2

Thoughts in the Clouds

In the Wake of Kavanaugh

My Code is Bigger than Your Code Josh Wartel 5

He was a Skater Boy James Feinberg 6

He's So High

postCover by Stephanie Wu

NOV 2

VOL 23 —

ISSUE 8

FEATURE

My Code Is Bigger than Your Code Tales of a History Major Lost in the CIT

By Caroline Ribet

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Illustrated by Monika Hedman ef overheard_at_the_CIT(): quote1 = “Even people who study English go to the career fair.” quote2 = “I haven’t read things in a long

time.” quote3 = "Yeah, I mean, she's getting that amount. And so I negotiated to try and get it too, but the recruiter isn't budging. I think they pay women more upon entry because they cost more to find." return quote1, quote2, quote3

I have never felt more out of place than when I showed up for the Brown University computer science (CS) teaching assistant (TA) camp that the department holds in August just before classes begin. This semester, I’m TAing CSCI0030: Introduction to Computation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, so I’ve been hanging around the Center for Information and Technology (CIT) a little more than a humanities concentrator might otherwise.

From what I saw, TA camp partly serves as an opportunity for CS concentrators to one-up each

other. The internship alums compared amenities: whether their summer employer provided organic Californian farm-to-table lunches or a gym or a decked-out bus between Silicon Valley and South San Francisco. They talked about big salaries, fancy apartments, and return offers. They chatted about whether they worked on software engineering or user interfaces. “My code,” they seemed to say, “is bigger than your code.”

This is definitely true in my case—their code is bigger. Even though I’ve taken a few CS classes, I’m a history concentrator, and I feel like

Letter from the Editor Before our next issue comes out,

Reasons to Vote

vids for you to watch if you need to rev up

the general election will have come and

for these tasks—if some dude can climb a

gone. Narrative this week implores you to

mountain without rope, you can mail in

reflect, remember the events of this past

your absentee ballot!

local happenings either—do as our Feature writer has this week and probe the culture of your department or other spaces on campus; make your voice heard. A&C can recommend some peppy, inspirational

2. Free sticker 3. Use a Midterm to distract from midterm studying

year, and vote to support the changes you want to see. Don’t be complacent about

1. Save democracy

Welcome to November,

Jennifer

editor-in-chief of post-

4. Answer some questions with no wrong answer 5. Because Taylor Swift told you to 6. Voting is hot 7. Someone actually asked for your opinion 8. Public approval—brag about it on Twitter 9. Keep the existential dread at bay 10. It’s pretty easy

2!post–

an impostor every time I set foot in the CIT. The entire department is shrouded in mystique and reputation. The concentrators use acronyms like “API” and English-sounding words like library or object or clean that I think I understand but really don’t in the context of programming. The students complain publicly about how time-consuming their work is, referencing their 40-hour-per-week “algos” class. They call their professors by their first names and refer to each other by their computer logins.

At least in some circles, the department has a stereotype of attracting really hardworking and intelligent students who accomplish almost unthinkable feats. One CS concentrator I spoke with described the culture as “very competitive,” attributing it “to the nature of CS itself. It’s very cut and dry if you understand something or you don’t, and it’s very evident in coding interviews and classes with strict collaboration policies. There’s that culture around the industry and the academics here that promotes the feeling of helplessness.” I spoke to another student who associates the department with “a culture of always having to work without a break” and a “glorification” of people who work longer, later nights.

One major aspect of computer science at Brown that contributes to the department’s largerthan-life reputation of competition is the intensity of tech recruiting culture. Early each fall, tech companies come to Brown to entice computer scientists with applications for internships and entry-level positions. CS concentrators compete for jobs at Google and Twitter and Facebook and the next Silicon Valley startup that’s going to matter. It’s brutal—applicants experience many rounds of difficult technical interviews where they battle it out for the best-paying, most prestigious internships.

From my limited understanding of this highly stressful process, it is in the students’ best interests to boast knowledge of as many languages, algorithms, and ways of approaching problems as possible—just as I declare on my resume that I have, uh, working proficiency in Excel. Is the competitive spirit within the walls of the CIT a way to cope with the culture of incredibly high-pressure interviews?

One CS concentrator I talked to, an alum of Twitter’s internship program, pointed out that “people use what internship someone got as a measure of their ability in CS.” Someone eavesdropping nearby nodded vigorously.

“Perceived competition and seeing internships as a limited resource does [sic] lead to forms of competitive behavior,” the eavesdropper chimed in.

But the Twitter alum also pointed out that, before interviews, “I’ll prep with friends who have the same interview, and we share strategies. There’s a lot of spots, so me getting a spot has no impact on if someone else gets a job.” This conversation showed me that some of the competitive culture belongs more to the department’s grand stature than the students themselves, who are totally reliant on working together.

Secretly, and despite its scary reputation, I actually love the CIT. In the building’s drab, poorlydecorated, and oddly-shaped ground floor foyer, there is often a spirit of positivity and collaboration.

Even though the students have to readjust their eyes to natural light when they leave the CIT after countless hours of coding, programming can be really fun. In my experience, the dopamine rush of having something work after days of designing, redesigning, and debugging is unparalleled by other schoolwork. Plus, you get to build functional programs that do all kinds of cool things—a breath of fresh air from my norm of slaving over a research paper on a niche topic that will only ever be read carefully by my mom and skimmed once by a professor.

Even though the students have to readjust their eyes to natural light when they leave the CIT after countless hours of coding, programming can be really fun. In my experience, the dopamine rush of having something work after days of designing, redesigning, and debugging is unparalleled by other schoolwork.

The CS department gets its reputation of a cultish, insular community at least in part from all of the bonding that occurs over the late nights of problems, stolen food from tech events, and time-consuming projects in rooms that lack both sunlight and any sense of work-life balance. Even in the notoriously long lines for TA hours, people seem to be having fun working on their projects and chatting. There’s good spirit and humor even in the little aspects of CS, like how the department computers have hidden jokes: If you mistype a common terminal command, an animation of a train runs across your screen.

In the CS classes that allow collaboration (some courses are notorious for their very strict no-collaboration policies), students eagerly team up to approach problems. If you observe the thirdfloor atrium, you’ll see students drawing diagrams on whiteboards for each other or huddling over laptops. I asked one of my fellow TAs what she thought about the department. “It’s fun,” she said immediately. “I like how everyone works together.”

Undergraduate students, professors, and graduate

“Chicken is the goat.”

“He really pulled off his Sriracha costume.”

students enjoy mutual intellectual respect and approach computational problems with the kind of collaborative creativity any department should strive for. That everyone is on a first-name basis only serves to reinforce this level playing field. Furthermore, the community is bolstered by the fact that the department needs undergraduate TAs to run its classes. Peers teach peers, so the entire university's teaching hierarchy is flipped on its head within the walls of the CIT. In my experience, it is much less intimidating to approach a TA than it is to attend a professor’s office hours—the stakes feel lower. Other students know just how frustrating the process of designing, writing, and debugging code can be. TAs get it.

Partaking in this community, even in a peripheral way, has been wonderful for me as a person straddling the insider/outsider line of computer science. The CS Department is so different from the History Department (my real home), and yet, there are striking similarities between the two. For example, history is equally easy to make fun of. We all have the image of the theory-loving, turtleneck-wearing undergraduate who quotes pretentious philosophers unprompted in discussion sections. In my first history classes at Brown, those people intimidated me out of speaking in class. Now, I wonder if I’ve become one of them (because after all, I really do love European intellectual history, and I’m completely convinced that Walter Benjamin’s theoretical texts apply to every situation). Tribalism is everywhere—people like groups because it feels good to be an insider somewhere, whether that be in the History or the Computer Science Department.

The archival research I do for history and the programming I do for computer science also have a lot in common. They are both time-consuming, allconsuming, completely solitary activities where I have to concentrate for long periods of time. The rush I feel finding an amazing quotation in a stack of old documents is similar to how I feel when my code finally compiles and my computer’s terminal stops printing error messages.

In the non-concentrator CS class I am TAing, sometimes I get the feeling that students who are more than capable of learning all of the concepts feel that programming is so foreign that they will not be able to understand the logical frameworks behind what we are teaching. That’s how I felt during my first few months in the CIT. But one freshman I talked to who is taking one of the introductory classes summed it up nicely: “I think that in the CS department, you can get very lost, and you can get really behind. It’s also very easy to get help. But I feel that’s the case with all of college. You have to do your share of getting help.”

My advice to you, humanities concentrators: Don’t get scared by people talking about allnighters and learning six coding languages in classes that are supposed to be akin to a full-time job. Take a CS class. Once your code compiles for the first time, you’ll understand what makes it all worth it.

“My body now only knows hunger at 2 a.m.”

“Flowers are really erotic.”

November 2, 2018'3

NARRATIVE

In the Wake of Kavanaugh

Speaking Up about Sexual Assault

A

By Miranda Grundy Image from public domain

s a woman in America, the past weeks have been heavy and tiring. Some days, it feels like our own government, supposedly based in ideals of equality and opportunity for all, repeatedly tells specific groups of people that their basic rights, self-worth, and even survival do not matter.

Governmental policies have shown blatant, even forceful disregard for citizens, especially in their policing of women’s bodies. However, to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, a man accused on multiple accounts of sexual assault, to the Supreme Court, the highest and most influential of all decisionmaking platforms, crosses a new line.

Surprise was not my first reaction to the confirmation. Disgust? Disillusionment? Yes. But surprise? No. This gut-punch feeling is nothing new to marginalized groups of Americans.

However, this one did hit me harder than most.

As a female college student determined to earn an education and reach my goals, it makes my skin crawl to think that any student should have to deal with the burden of sexual assault, only to be ignored in a very public manner when trying to speak their truth later in life.

Last fall, I came to Brown University as a transfer student from a school I won’t name. I quickly realized that my old school wasn’t right for me. Among other factors like closed-minded people and those with conservative beliefs, sexual assault and rape culture were my biggest motivators for leaving. That’s a truth I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to admit to myself, never mind articulate aloud.

Coming to Brown was an opportunity for a new start that I’m forever grateful for.

I’ve witnessed firsthand and through the perspectives of my friends what sexual assault can do to a college student, especially one trying to adjust to what feels like a new and overwhelming world. It’s easy to get lost. You’re out one night, and everyone’s drinking. You, maybe a little too much to compensate for the way your knees are shaking and your hands are sweating from nerves.

Degrading song lyrics blaring through the speakers overwhelm you, but you try not to show it. You came out with some friends, or people you guess you would call friends after knowing them for three weeks, but you didn’t think they’d leave you alone here... You look around. Where’d they go?

Where are the few familiar faces in this massive

4!post–

crowd?

Then, someone taps your shoulder, a guy.

Cute. Friendly. He offers you a drink and a dance.

You accept because maybe it’ll help you relax. But from that point on, your recollection gets fuzzier.

Maybe you stayed at that party longer. Maybe your friends watched you leave with him. Maybe you just sat in his room, watched a movie, ate some food.

Maybe. You hope. But as you wake up the next day, confused about how you even made it back to your room and whose t-shirt you’re wearing, something deep inside you says it was much more.

As soon as alcohol enters the equation, some college kids seem to think they’re invincible.

Anything goes. It’s all in good fun. He hopes. She hopes… But when she wakes up in the morning, she hurts. She looks at herself in the mirror and feels that the reflection staring back at her is unrecognizable.

The experience and events leading up to my sexual assault robbed me of autonomy. My actions were not of my own volition, but the trauma is now mine—my reality to live with. The impacts of it will never leave me; the hurt doesn’t go away and hide even when I try to have a loving relationship with someone who really cares about me, and it rears its ugly head at the most inconvenient times. In many ways, it’s robbed me of the ability to see a positive future for myself, in which I’m truly loved and feel like I have a purpose. Trust is something that will never come easily to me again, and this severely hurts the people I care about most. Sometimes it feels like I’ll always carry this guilt, heavy and impossible for anyone else to understand.

It’s so easy to feel helpless, especially as a college student just trying to gain social and academic footing. The process of turning to authorities or campus resources can be scary and emotionally draining, but it’s important not to let social stigma keep one from healing however one must.

There is no guarantee that justice or speaking out will make things feel okay or end your cycle of self-doubt, but it’s bold to be brave enough to try. As Dr. Christine Ford demonstrated, you never know who it could help.

America has told its people, its sexual assault victims and survivors, and anyone who’s been threatened by the power dynamics that make such assaults possible, that his word, his life, is more important than hers. Even though it hurts like a blow to the face, we can’t let it silence us. The dialogue and resources around sexual assault must be made more accessible. I’ve gone too long without the words to speak about such a thing, without a space to feel comfortable sharing it. Maybe we can’t change the final say that stands this time, but I, for one, know that I won’t stop talking until I’m heard.

Thoughts in the Clouds Retrieving Memories from Airports

By Holly Zheng Illustrated by Molly Young

A

irports make me feel a whirlwind of emotions.

After flying around thirty flights within the past four years, mostly between my home city, Beijing, and my boarding high school near Boston, I have come to recognize airports as places for reflection.

Since I traveled alone on most of these trips, I hatched my thoughts while sitting at boarding gates, my little free time combining with an underlying sense of loneliness. As I sat by the large windows, many things crossed my mind: the place that I was leaving and might never return to, the people I should call before boarding, the destination.

After hours of unfinished dreams on the flight, however, I left most of these thoughts in the clouds. They disappeared along with the pain in my eardrums as soon as the jet touched the ground again. A few of these thoughts, nevertheless, remained a little longer. They trickled like drops of nostalgia and inspiration that sometimes still unexpectedly flow through me.

Guatemala City to Boston Someone from the group suggested that we play Mafia, but the idea quickly dissolved as most of us were too sleepy. Waiting for our 5 a.m. flight, I would have been tired, too, had the bathroom in my hotel room not magically had hot water that morning— allowing me to take a revitalizing shower.

That was my first hot shower in two weeks, during which I was on a service trip in Guatemala with a group of students from my high school.

Before spending our final day touring Guatemala City, we worked with a local organization in the city of Antigua to support local social workers. Every day I interviewed locals who lived in houses made out of steel pieces. I listened, with curiosity and mediocre Spanish fluency, to their stories.

Sitting next to the boarding gate, I found that my mind was still operating in Spanish, but I knew that as soon as I stepped onto the plane, the crew members’ English would immediately transport me back to an American mindset. The comfortable hot shower from that morning was the first step in this process. By the time the blue strip of the customs form arrived in my hands during the flight, the world that confronted and challenged me here in Antigua was thousands of miles away. My heart grew heavier.

Looking through the window, I saw that the dark night was about to break into dawn. I promised myself that someday I would be able to articulate the reason behind my reluctance to leave this place.

Until then, I would keep this world somewhere safe within myself.

Boston to Beijing I had already texted my parents to ensure them that I was boarding the plane, and I had scrolled through every new post on Instagram—my preboarding social media check was complete.

Just the day before, I was at a conference in Boston. After attending this conference for three years, I had begun to see many regular faces that I could match with the names on their name tags. I got to chat with some of them during lunch breaks, but our conversations never went beyond small talk.

I knew, though, that each person at this conference had fascinating interests or talents that were unseen

ARTS&CULTURE II, and learn to smoke cigarettes, Stevie thinks he can be just as cool as his brother. But then Stevie realizes that all the neighborhood boys have moved on to the another fad: skateboarding.

It’s been over 20 years since the mid-1990s, which is more than enough time for nostalgia to set in. Last year, we got Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, a coming-of-age film that basked in Dave Matthews Band songs and 2002 Sacramento. No one attracts teenage viewers like Netflix, whose Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Riverdale are both revivals of shows that premiered in 1996 and 1997.

In other words, Jonah Hill knows that borrowing from the not-so-distant past is a low-risk strategy.

When his youthful protagonists sprinkle their conversations with Simpsons references (“You look like fucking Mr. Burns”), wear D.A.R.E. shirts, and the slurs that society has since banished, older viewers will engage in instant fact-checking.

For those born after the mid-1990s, however, the moment unfolds for the first time.

during the five days that we spent together.

On my way to the airport, I decided to friend some of them on social media and write a message to remind them of who I was.

The boarding line I stood in progressed slowly, so I decided to check my Messenger app one last time.

One new message: “Hey! Are you flying back home soon?” Her profile picture reminded me of the laughs we shared over turkey sandwiches at the conference.

I was about to get my boarding pass checked and would inevitably leave some of my memories of this year’s conference behind at the Boston airport, but I now had this chance to start forming connections with the people I'd met. I thought this could be the start of conversations where I shared a bit about my life and hopefully caught a glimpse into theirs, too. I breathed heavily, quickly typing something before I had to turn on airplane mode: “Yep! I’m actually boarding the plane right now.

Talk to you when I get there?”

Beijing to Boston A little girl was taking a nap on the seat next to me, the rise and fall of her chest reflecting the slow pace of time. Our flight had been delayed, and the time of departure remained as “until further notice” on the screen near the boarding gate. Because of this delay, I was definitely going to miss my bus from the Boston airport to Providence.

I stopped staring at the screen and looked around the crowd to distract myself. Many people who flew overseas in late August were students with a new school year ahead of them. The various college names printed on their sweatshirts already transported me to the new life that I was about to embark on. I would be flying the same Beijingto-Boston flight that I took during my high school years—only this time, I wouldn’t know what awaited.

After landing in Boston, I would be heading south on Highway I-95 instead of north.

One of the things I was looking forward to after landing was meeting her again, the girl I met at the conference in our junior year of high school. When responding to her on Messenger at the Boston airport that year, I didn’t imagine that we would someday end up being classmates at the same university. She texted me the other day that she was leaving home for move-in today, too. I hoped her travels had been smoother than mine.

I looked at the boarding gate that had become so

familiar to me. As much as I wanted to be used to the overwhelming feelings that came with traveling, I wasn’t. I was still learning how to center myself, but I had come to believe that, no matter how nostalgic, unprepared, or anxious I felt every time I stood in front of any airport boarding gate, life had its own way of surprising me. The uncertainties about the future that brewed inside me while traveling would dissipate once I embarked on my new journeys after landing. The knots of feeling would stay with the clouds, leaving only optimistic traces that might revisit me in the future.

He was a Skater Boy At the movies: Mid90s

by Josh Wartel Illustrated By Lauren Marin

I

t could have been us, if we had been a halfgeneration older. In the first scene of the Jonah Hill-directed film, Mid90s, 13-year-old Stevie breaks into his brother Ian’s room. With his stack of issues of The Source, his collection of Air Jordans, his long shelves of CDs organized alphabetically, and the Wu-Tang poster on his wall, Ian is Stevie’s closest approximation of cool. If he can just listen to the right bands, get really good at Street Fighter

And when [Scottie] grows up, he will learn that skateboarding trends fade, but history, it’s never over.

True to the spirit of skateboarding, Mid90s is mostly a hang-out film. The plot, however, proceeds on two tracks around the baby-faced Stevie (Sunny Suljic). On one hand, Stevie has his home life split between violent disagreements with Ian (Lucas Hedges) and his caring, but oftabsent single mother (Katherine Waterson). On another hand, Stevie’s days are spent with a group of teenage boys he befriends in the film’s opening.

The group’s base is the local skate shop and their leader is the affable and extremely talented Ray, who gifts Stevie a new skateboard. The remaining crew members include the braggart, Rueben, the hard-partier, Fuckshit (named for his reaction to sick tricks), and the aspiring documentarian, Fourth Grade (named for his assumed stupidity).

Together, they skate through abandoned parking lots, the tops of buildings, and two-way turn lanes.

No one seems to go school, but given the weather of Los Angeles, it might just be summer.

Barely uttering a word in the first few scenes, Scottie eventually grows into his role with the skating crew. After a long evening spent mastering a kickflip, he wins the group’s respect when he tries a jump that ends in disaster. Blood gushing from his forehead, Scottie doesn’t cry. “I’m alright, I’m alright,” he tells his increasingly concerned friends. At a house party, one of the few scenes where the skaters mix with girls, Scottie hooks up with an older teen, Estee. Hill takes advantage of the tight frame (he shoots the film in the boxlike Academy ratio) to show Estee and Scottie’s faces merging until they are indistinguishable.

When they move apart after the kiss, Scottie’s first, backlight saturates the screen.

This is just one of the impressive touches that shows Hill has been paying attention since his acting career began 15 years ago, with his stoner classic, Superbad. Claiming Spike Jonze’s music videos and Larry Clark’s anarchic Kids as influences, Hill mostly lets the unknown cast of Mid90s improvise. Na-Kel Smith as Ray, the dreamer of the group (“We used to have all dreams.

Now it’s sad.”) is the standout find. Hill also strikes a nice balance between the spare piano score November 2, 2018'5

ARTS&CULTURE composed by Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross and the soundtrack (highlighted by the Pixies and the booming intro of Omega’s "Gyonghaju Iany").

Even with its brief 85-minute runtime, Mid90s finds itself running on fumes by the end. The unexplained traumas that keep Stevie’s brother Ian friendless and angry lurk beneath the surface.

But while the film’s tensions often boil over with frightening intensity, they don’t build toward any subjectivity or thematic significance. Although she shouts from time to time, Stevie’s mom is never enough of a force to threaten Stevie or his skating crew. This paper-tin family plot may be Hill’s way of showing how skateboarding is Stevie’s “real” family or community. But Mid90s’ skater boys are mostly just skater boys; they hang out, they flee from the police, and then they run it all back the next day. It isn’t the stuff of legend.

What is so special about the mid-1990s? The youthfulness of Scottie begins to look less like a deliberate choice and more like an excuse for Hill to escape responsibility for the past. No, Hill doesn’t have to include legislative battles of the Clinton Administration, or even the aftermath of the Rodney King riots, which transformed Los Angeles. But Mid90s does need to justify the relationship between its present-day release and its title.

The philosopher Stanley Cavell once defined nostalgia as “an inability to open the past to the future.” If Jonah Hill ultimately falls victim to nostalgia in his directing debut, it is because he worries about remembering the past more than imagining the future. Scottie won’t stay a kid forever. And when he grows up, he will learn that skateboarding trends fade, but history, it’s never over.

He's So High

At the movies: Free Solo

By James Feinberg illustrated by Halle Krieger

T

he first time Alex Honnold set out, without ropes or harnesses (what climbers call a “free solo”), to climb the sheer granite face of El Capitan, a 3,000foot rock formation in Yosemite Valley, it was four in the morning on a fall day in 2016. Directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi were there too, filming a documentary about Honnold. We see Chin struggle for an inspirational soundbite as he watches Honnold begin his ascent, an attempt at perhaps the most difficult athletic feat in human history. After a moment, Chin says, “Let’s hope it’s a low-gravity day.”

Yikes.

That stark scene, the beginning of a climb Honnold eventually abandons (he “just wasn’t feeling it” that day), serves as a microcosm of the rest of this stunning, perceptive documentary about the now thirty-three-year-old climbing superstar.

Throughout, his girlfriend, Sanni McCandless, his childhood idol-turned-trainer, Tommy Caldwell, and the filmmakers themselves, his longtime friends, alternate between terrified bafflement and total confidence as Honnold recedes behind a wall of single-mindedness and what he calls “warrior spirit.”

(The film offers a possible clinical explanation, when a trip to an MRI machine proves his fear center is almost totally inactive). Sanni, especially, continually tries to reach him, and he continually retreats. Her desperation is well-founded as the threat of tragedy is ever-present in this story. Caldwell matter-of-factly informs Honnold that all who have dedicated their life to free soloing is now dead. During Honnold’s

“Regardless of whether you believe in spirits, nude dance parties, or chicken sacrifice, the Biltmore is an undeniably intriguing part of Providence lore.”

Anna Harvey, Dead Time

second try at El Cap, Sanni tearfully confides that “it’s really hard to understand why he wants this.” Ditto.

Though his semi-unfeeling reticence frustrates his friends, Honnold is a fascinating and even closeto-likeable figure. Chin compares him to Dr. Spock, but he reminded me of Mark Zuckerberg by way of the Addams Family. Mocking his previous girlfriends’ concern for his safety, he lisps, “We really care about you,” then scoffs, “No, you don’t. If I perish (he actually says “perish”), you’ll find somebody else.”

Maybe so, but nobody like Alex Honnold—with his mop of dark hair, jet-black eyes and what looks to be an eighteen-pack, the climber could pass for Kylo Ren with a carabiner. In other words, he's made for the movies.

And this is a great one. Free Solo manages to have its cake and eat it too in almost every respect; it’s a fair, complete, clear-eyed portrait of a man who in his circles has inspired a kind of messianic obsession, but it’s also a diagram of a sport-cum-death-wish and a near-impossible climb. The pieces fall into place perfectly. It’s the kind of structurally ambitious reallife story that lures feature producers to the door. Its intimacy is balanced with some of the most sweeping, heart-in-your-mouth visuals on this side of the Mission: Impossible franchise. (Honnold, for what it’s worth, does his own stunts without even being a Scientologist.)

But the film’s greatest strength is that it interrogates its very existence. A cameraman worries that the crew will dislodge a rock and send Honnold free-falling to his death. Talking with another of his idols, the free soloer Peter Croft, Honnold swallows hard when Croft tells him it’s alright to make the climb, as long as you’re doing it “for the right reasons.”

Cue a pointed look at the camera crew. Like Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s 2016 documentary Weiner, Free Solo eviscerates high-minded rhetoric about flies on walls. When that “wall” is a precipitous monolith twice the height of the Empire State Building, objectivity kind of falls away.

But Honnold doesn’t—in spring 2017, with remarkable speed and nary a hiccup, he completes a three-hour-and-fifty-six minute ascent (he’s since set three further speed records on El Cap with equipment, and made it up in an hour and fifty-eight minutes this June). In the movie’s final scenes, it’s his staggering, unshakeable professionalism that comes through, perhaps even more than his athleticism.

After the climb, he heads down to do some pull-ups in his van. No use losing daylight.

Perhaps the most piercing insight of Free Solo is its refusal to pretend achievements change achievers; the next hurdle is always more enticing than the last one was satisfying. In the final scene of the film, Honnold reflects smilingly that his actions may inspire “some kid” to find the bigger, more terrifying mountain to climb. But whoever it is, it won’t be him, right? “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe.” Cut to Sanni, halfway between shock and dismay. What next?

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ARTS & CULTURE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Sonic Youth celebrates 30th anniversary of ‘Daydream Nation’ American rock band releases unseen footage to honor influential 1988 alternative album

By KATHERINE OK STAFF WRITER

The only way to step forward is to look back — in this case, Sonic Youth, comprising Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo, commemorate their fifth studio album Daydream Nation’s 30th anniversary, reaffirming their influence and reign over underground, alternative music.

Populated with both cultish and casual fans, music unapologetically divides itself into many scenes and genres that jockey themselves with certain words, feelings and vibes. Indie, shoegaze, art punk and college rock are all associated with particular individuals, albums and aesthetics, but what Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation did for the 1988 scene of underground music unified and defined the alternative for those pushing for a teenage riot.

Daydream Nation characterized the Reagan Era’s disgust at suburban ennui.

The opening track, which is arguably one of Sonic Youth’s most recognizable and pop-friendly songs, “Teen Age Riot,” describes an alternative universe where J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. is president of the United States. Gordon unravels a soliloquy-like entrance, where she hypnotically repeats “spirit desire / face me / spirit desire / don’t displace me / spirit desire, we will fall,” referencing the Stooges’ album “We Will Fall.” Moore interjects with a guitar riff, and the infamous melody of the song

» SZYMASZEK, from page 1 microphone to let the audience hear a recording of herself talking about Szymaszek’s work on her way to breakfast.

She chose to start the reading this way in an effort to get a “point across that what (Szymaszek) is doing is radical,” de la Torre said. Integrating the sights she sees during her walk, de la Torre introduced Szymaszek in the recording as an author who not only engages

» BEAUTY, from page 1 standards of artistic expression, Guy said. “We’re often not offered the critique — or the help we deserve — in this community of artists.”

The impact of the exhibition extended to younger artists who identify as queer people of color and are looking for similar spaces for their art and expression, Wood said.

It was important “for sophomores and first-years to see that you can create these spaces for yourself, to get the feedback and critique you deserve,” Guy said.

As such, the call for works put out by Guy and Wood took a nontraditional approach that allowed artists to create freely. The artists were given the show’s statement, Wood explained, and were asked to “submit whatever (they) think fits our statement, and (to) show us the

begins. It’s a re-establishment of youth aesthetic — it noisily and catchily rallies indie teens and college-aged postteens all over the world to unite under J Mascis. The music video is enough to charm any precocious teenager lazing in their living room; it thumbs through a rolodex of counterculturist icons: Patti Smith, Sun Ra, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, Tom Waits and of course, J Mascis himself.

But Daydream Nation isn’t necessarily the first or only album that established what alternative could look like — the late 80s did have The Smiths, Dinosaur Jr. and Joy Division. The album doesn’t just establish or call for an image with the specific purpose of doing so. Within the easy, indifferent air of Gordon’s stream-of-consciousness recitation of “spirits” and Moore’s casual lyrics, Sonic Youth constructs the vague, supposed airs of teenage riot. The band’s fifth album sneakily weaves together simultaneous phantasmagorias of teenage avant-gardism and adolescent fundamentals with the ease of throwing on a sleazebag teen’s outfit.

To look back on Daydream Nation 30 years later, it’s important to reflect on the process through which it was made.

Sonic Youth traditionally wrote songs beginning with melody and chord ideas led by Moore, but the band decided to write songs for this album by starting with long improvisational sessions that were eventually developed into songs.

This process is certainly traceable when listening to the album; the audience is hypnotized by the wandering, swirling guitar riffs on tracks like “The Sprawl.”

“Providence” features a sampling of a Providence payphone, and “Hey Joe” references Joni Mitchell. “Eric’s Trip”

with the audience, but also expands the definition of poetry.

Szymaszek, a poet and arts administrator of the Poetry Project, read her presentation on line breaks, which gave insight into her writing process. Among the many aspects of her writing, she touched upon the absence of punctuation in her poetry unless used for rare emphasis.

She further discussed the unconventional square shape of her book “A Year

work (they’re) excited about, that (they) care about,” she said.

Nadia Wolff ’21 RISD ’21 showed two pieces at the exhibition, including one entitled “Linoleum Flowers, Tools for Queer Coding,” near the entrance of the gallery. Wolff explained that the piece is concerned with “queer representation … and how that is in conflict with traditional ideas of feminine presentation.”

Wolff attempted to “possess … the identity-specific notions of beauty, of belonging, of home” in both pieces, they said.

The exhibition is an “act of healing,” Wood said. “Your experience is valuable. I think a lot of people struggle with believing that,” Guy added. “The moment you start to believe that, is the moment you find out how powerful your voice is.”

COURTESY OF STIG NYGAARD

Sonic Youth’s fifth album ‘Daydream Nation’ featured songs initially developed during improvisational sessions. concerns Eric Emerson’s acid trip from Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls — in short, the album is stuffed with references and influences from the most alternative art, or what is seen as such.

Daydream Nation’s sound is evasive and endless — it starts nowhere, begins everywhere, ends nowhere and finishes everywhere. It does so through its long, Neu!-esque instrumentals and using all four sides of the vinyl pressing. But the album also perfects its sound through experimental, improvised jams showcased on tracks like “Cross the Breeze” and “Trilogy.” Despite the album’s popaccessibility, Daydream Nation saunters in its ability to blend aggressive, teenage

angst with casual, but almost existential sounds. Acts like Beck, My Bloody Valentine, Pavement and Nirvana can all trace a chunk of their roots to Sonic Youth and this album.

This year, Sonic Youth plans to screen unreleased footage and showcase live recordings at “30 Years of Daydream Nation,” which is coming to a number of major cities this November.

Some, like the Nov. 19 event in Brooklyn, New York, feature speakers like Sonic Youth’s very own Ranaldo and photographer Michael Lavine.

What does it say about us — that we’re still “looking for the stormy weather?” Daydream Nation’s

relevance, even after 30 years, pushes us to acknowledge the album’s landmark influence on American counterculture.

The mise-en-scene of Sonic Youth’s sheets of sound defines the bounds of guitar playing, and the album’s flaming subversiveness shines even today.

Daydream Nation oscillates between dreamy mysticism and epic, sprawling riffs. This characterizes the so-called teenage riot that Sonic Youth so perfectly captures; it’s the unconventional, aggressive sonic force doubled with relaxed energy. Daydream Nation translates the murky, exciting evasiveness of youth — it celebrates the scruffy, pimply side of life.

from Today.” This format was the result of an unwillingness to compromise the structure of her poems to be more compatible with commercial publication.

After her reading, there was a brief Q&A session for the audience to satisfy its curiosity on Szymaszek’s writing. When asked about the frequent religious references in her poetry, she answered that she “really wanted to be Catholic” but “always felt rejected” by religious institutions. Rather, she felt

“like poetry was a calling for (her),” she explained, adding that she had always liked the symbolism and “drama” that religion entails.

The performance left many readers with long-lasting impressions and thoughtful reflections. Akua Afari ’22, who is also a student of the LITR 0710: “Writers on Writing” first-year seminar, said that “it was quite interesting how she aestheticized mundane things.”

Because the subject of Szymaszek’s

poetry takes root in everyday life, it allows the audience “to see the beauty of it,” Afari said, and to further appreciate “how much is put into creating art,” she added.

“What she brings to poetry is a really beautiful, generous, capacious approach that makes us focus not as much on the finished result of writing a poem. It’s not about individual poems and what they accomplish, but about the practice of poetry as a lived thing,” de la Torre said.

COMMENTARY PAGE 4 • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Don’t let the University erase student activism To the Editor: As members of the Brown Student Labor Alliance, we are writing to respond to the letter to the editor published by The Herald Oct. 30 by Barbara Chernow, executive vice president for finance and administration. In this letter, Chernow downplayed the role of student and worker activism in the University’s recent commitment to address dangerous working conditions in the Sharpe Refectory.

Though a process to upgrade the Ratty may have begun in fall of 2015, there were not adequate measures to address overheating in the interim summers. In 2017, Summer@Brown resident advisors, including many students of color, began a campaign to obtain air conditioning in the Ratty after communications with workers. It was only in August of 2017, after weeks of student and worker mobilization, that the administration took the first material steps to remedy overheating, including installing temporary cooling towers.

Throughout the 2017-18 academic year, the SLA continued this work as no permanent plans had been proposed by the administration to the University community.

Through the accounts of employees at the Ratty, it became clear that issues of overheating had existed, and had remained unremedied by the administration, for decades. It took

almost a year of student pressure for Chernow to make plans to renovate the Ratty public in the pages of The Herald. Without increased visibility and pressure, it’s doubtful that these public statements would have been released.

Chernow’s Oct. 30 letter is the latest incarnation of the decadeslong pattern of the University erasing student activism by absorbing it into the discourse of existing institutional change. Major advances in the University, including the development of the Open Curriculum, greater enrollment of black students and the acknowledgement of Indigenous People’s Day, were all the results of tireless student organizing.

Chernow wrote that “the administration, Brown’s dining workers and advocates from the SLA share the same goal — a healthy and safe work environment for all employees.” The SLA urges the Brown community to evaluate the University’s actions before accepting this statement.

Aligning student struggle with the University’s intentions erases the essential role that activists have played in propelling change throughout the history of Brown. The University will not make students’ and workers’ lives more liveable of its own accord.

Evan Lehmann ’19, Noa Machover ’19.5 Lucas Smolcic Larson ’19

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COMMENTARY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018 • PAGE 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

The fantasy of voter fraud, the reality of voter suppression DEREK SIMSHAUSER STAFF COLUMNIST

When polls for the midterm elections close tomorrow, the significance of the results will be placed within the parameters of national politics. “Will the House accelerate the Russia investigations?” “Has the Republican hold on the Senate come to an end?”

“Can Democrats halt the Trump agenda?” These are, of course, vital issues. But fixing the scope of coverage to the national level restricts the importance of statewide elections to the states themselves, failing to capture the broader implications of local races. In the Kansas gubernatorial race, between Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Democratic State Sen. Laura Kelly, the electoral consequences extend far beyond the state’s budget or control of the redistricting process in 2020. If Kobach, for whom FiveThirtyEight currently projects a 59 percent chance of winning, takes home the governorship, the most basic right — the ability to vote in elections — will be at risk in Kansas.

Kobach’s political career began in 1999, when he won a seat on the city council of Overland Park, Kansas. He burnished his conservative reputation from there; as chairman of the Kansas GOP between 2007 and 2009, he instituted a “loyalty committee” to punish Republican candidates that had the nerve to assist Democratic candidates in any capacity. He captured public attention with fiery rhetoric in

speeches, such as when he compared Planned Parenthood to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. And he hosted a conservative talk radio show until January 2016, introducing himself before each broadcast as the “the A.C.L.U.’s worst nightmare.”

But above all, Kobach is an immigration hawk, with fearful and racially-motivated views of widespread voter fraud that inform his extremely restrictive voting laws. As secretary of state, Kobach implemented a proofof-citizenship law in 2013 that drew immediate scrutiny from civil liberties groups. This new requirement applied only to voters registering after

However, Kobach’s restrictive voter laws are not merely born out of a motivation to preserve partisan influence. His obsession with voter fraud is indelibly linked to maintaining a white electoral majority. In 2014, Kobach agreed with a caller to his radio show that a further increase in immigration from countries in Central America would result in the “ethnic cleansing” of white Americans. Under Kobach, the only polling center in majority-Hispanic Dodge City was moved outside of city limits. And he was an early supporter of President Trump, fixated by the president’s hardline stance against immigration.

try.” As governor, Kobach would surely continue the expansion of voter ID laws that has characterized his tenure as secretary of state, thus bolstering the Republican hold on the alreadyconservative state.

Luckily — at least for those who favor basic civil rights — Kobach’s opponent has garnered substantial support from both parties. Laura Kelly, the assistant minority leader in the Kansas Senate, has run a pragmatic campaign against her ideologue opponent. In a state that Trump won by 20 percentage points, and in which Republicans currently hold a 32-8 seat advantage in the state senate,

In an electoral cycle that has seen attempted voter suppression by multiple GOP candidates across the nation, the results in Kansas will portend the fate of voting rights at large.

2013, a population that is far younger and more ethnically diverse than Kansas as a whole — and almost certainly more likely to vote for Democratic candidates. The ACLU attested that the new law prevented “tens of thousands of Kansans from registering to vote” — one in seven new registrants.

While Kobach views these laws as a necessary countermeasure to pervasive voter fraud, organizations like the ACLU argue that the law’s true purpose is to halt demographic shifts in the electorate by suppressing the vote of young people and people of color.

Indeed, voter ID laws that make it harder for new voters to register favor the status quo; in Kansas, that means Republican control in every branch of government.

When Trump asserted — with zero evidence — that he would have won the popular vote, “if (not for) the millions of people who voted illegally,” Kobach was there to agree. “I think the president-elect is absolutely correct,” Kobach trumpeted, “when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular-vote margin.”

In August, with an endorsement from Trump, Kobach won a primary challenge against incumbent Jeff Colyer, running from the right of the sitting governor. In a race that saw over 300,000 votes cast, Kobach won by the narrowest of margins — just 110 votes. On the campaign trail, Kobach has made voting rights a platform issue — he maintains that he wants Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship law to become a “model for the coun-

Kelly does not affix her campaign to common tenets of national Democrats. Instead, she focuses on Kobach’s support of tax cuts under former Gov. Sam Brownback, which devastated the state’s budget to the tune of a $600 million deficit.

Her rhetoric similarly paints her as a nonpartisan public worker.

“Kansans are a lot like me,” she says.

“They’re common-sense, they’re very pragmatic and they’re extraordinarily moderate.” Rather than lambaste Kobach for his draconian voting reforms, she expends her political energy on finding ways to fund education and health care in the wake of enormous mismanagement. Her strategy has worked; former Republican Gov. Bill Graves came out in support of Kelly, and 40 percent of Republicans

in the state legislature refused to respond when asked whether they support Kobach.

And while the Sunflower State has a generations-long tradition of supporting Republican candidates in national politics — they have not elected a Democratic senator since 1930 — their gubernatorial preferences are far more cyclical. Three of the last six governors have been Democrats, and the most recent polling in Kansas has Kelly ahead by two points.

In an electoral cycle that has seen attempted voter suppression by multiple GOP candidates across the nation, the results in Kansas will portend the fate of voting rights at large.

Kobach wants the power to create “the absolute best legal framework” for sweeping voter ID laws, hoping to set a precedent for the rest of the country to follow. In Georgia, Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp has preemptively begun investigating the Georgia Democratic Party for voter fraud, setting the stage for a flood of restrictive laws should he win. And in North Dakota, the state’s Supreme Court recently upheld a new ID law that prevented 70,000 people from voting in 2012. Indeed, in Kansas and in states throughout the country, the right to vote is on Tuesday’s ballot.

Derek Simshauser ’20 voted today; hopefully you did as well!

He can be reached at derek_ simshauser@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald. com and op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.

It’s time to rethink the wage gap REBECCA AMAN STAFF COLUMNIST If I had 80 cents for every time I saw an infographic with a drawing of a partial dollar bill proclaiming, “Women earn 80 cents for every dollar a man makes!” I would be decently rich. And if I earned a dollar for every time I saw a snarky comment on Facebook arguing that “the wage gap is a myth” because women work fewer hours and choose lower-paying professions, I’d have at least a thousand dollars.

Arguing over this statistic is missing the point, though; we’re stuck in an endless debate over the existence of a wage gap without considering the true root causes or finding solutions. In order to have a productive debate about wage inequality, it’s time we move past the “cents for every dollar” statistics and toward more nuanced explanations and descriptions of gender-based pay disparity.

To clarify, these “cents on the dollar” statistics are average full-time year-round wages for men and women. And yes, it is true, much of the gap between men and women (without accounting for race) can be explained by factors such as occupation and position within a given company. For example, when researchers looked at employees doing the same job for the same employer in 25 developed countries, factors other than gender explained most of the wage gap. (That is, controlling for a variety of attributes such as occupation and experience, women earn 98 cents for every dollar men earn.) In the United States,

according to research conducted by Glassdoor, women earn 94.6 cents for every dollar earned by men. While getting paid less to do the exact same work is blatantly unfair, this outright discrimination in pay for men and women in similar positions accounts for only a small portion of wage disparities.

The purpose of wage gap statistics is to bring attention to the problem of wage disparities in a concise way, but using the wage gap as proof of inequality is problematic. Firstly, as I’ve established, these statistics are misleading; without

equal work based on sex, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which extends the amount of time women have to file a complaint. Furthermore, some legislators have pushed for the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would add procedural protections to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (though it has failed to pass Congress three times, most recently in 2014). Some states and municipalities have begun to prohibit employers from asking potential employees about previous pay, as this may reinforce past inequalities. These legislative fixes, aimed to ensure equal pay for equal work,

In order to have a productive debate about wage inequality, it’s time we move past the “cents for every dollar” statistics and toward more nuanced explanations and descriptions of gender-based pay disparity. context, they imply that women are paid significantly less than men to perform the same jobs.

Even when political actors use misleading statistics, or even flat-out lies, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Secondly, and more importantly, focusing on the wage gap leads us only to partial solutions, as statistics like “women earn 80 cents for every dollar men make” suggest that forcing employers to pay women equally will solve gender wage inequality. In the United States, many have focused on legislative fixes, such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibits unequal pay for

are important, but only address a small portion of wage inequality.

Rather than only focusing on equal pay for equal work, it’s time to address the unexplained portion of the wage gap. Why don’t men and women do the same types of jobs, and why are male-dominated jobs higher-paying than female-dominated jobs? Why are women less likely to be promoted? These questions are more complicated and much harder to address, but are essential to solving gendered wage inequalities.

The largest factor is likely occupation: One study by Cornell researchers attributed 51 per-

cent of the wage gap to occupational pay differences. Occupations dominated by women tend to have lower status and pay. For example, primary school teachers in high-income countries earn 81 percent of the average salary for jobs requiring a college degree. Moreover, when men enter occupations previously dominated by women, like computer programming, wages rise, but when women enter fields dominated by men, like biology, wages tend to fall. Childcare is also a large factor, as women are more likely to do the lion’s share of child-rearing and the opportunity for a critical first promotion often coincides with the time at which families begin to have children.

Data from Britain and the United States show that in both countries, women’s pay falls behind men’s at the age when women typically have their first child.

Going forward, policymakers must go beyond legislation focused simply on equal pay and enact laws that help women overcome systemic obstacles as they seek fair pay. But when we attempt to communicate gender inequality in terms of cents on the dollar, all this nuance is lost. Gender inequality is real and we must find more nuanced and productive ways to talk about inequality to move toward the most effective solutions.

Rebecca Aman ’20 can be reached at rebecca_aman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.

ARTS & CULTURE THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018

Acoustic performances brighten the Underground Six student performers brought raw vocals to first event in new series “Underground Thursdays”

By ELISE RYAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Last Thursday night, the Underground brimmed with guitar chords and raw vocals as students performed acoustically at Gigs Underground, hosted by the Student Activities Office and Brown University Class Coordinating Board.

The event kicked off the Student Activities Office’s new monthly “Underground Thursdays” performance-based series.

Student performers Marijke Perry ’22, Paul Abrams ’21, Belu-Olisa Sarkissian ’21, Felipe Félix Méndez ’22, Cameron McKie ’19 and Emilia Halvorsen ’19 took to the stage — a cleared space at the back of the room fitted with a mic stand and a stool — to present their diverse acoustic sounds, including original compositions and covers.

Emilia Halvorsen ’19 performed in the final slot of the event, which initially gave her reason to expect a smaller audience, she said. She found the contrary to be true — the Underground still bustled with audience members, some wandering in from the adjacent Young Arcade, pool cues still in hand.

Halvorsen played a selection of her original songs — including some that she hopes to feature on an EP that would be released this fall. One such song focused on changing relationships and autumn, a theme she explored because she sees this season as “a time for transformation — for seeing things differently as you see the leaves changing around you,” she said. Halvorsen also sang a cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest

Moon,” another ode to the fall season and fitting with the venue’s apple ciderladen vibes.

The event came as a continuation of last month’s Gigs on the Grass, a day-long festival featuring student performers. In the three years Gigs on the Grass has been running, this is the first time the event has been extended to a night of acoustic performances.

While Gigs on the Grass featured mostly bands and groups, Gigs Underground was distinguished by highlighting solo performances.

“We had over 60 auditions” for Gigs on the Grass, said Melissa Lee ’20, community outreach officer of Class Coordinating Board 2020. “We wanted to be able to (showcase) those musicians who obviously work very hard and are very, very talented,” she added. As such, Lee collaborated with the Student Activities Office to create an outlet to accommodate acoustic, coffee-house sounds.

These student musicians, along with a few additions, were invited to perform at Gigs Underground, which

offered the smaller, more intimate setting their sound required, said Megan Evonsion ’20, a Campus Programmer at the Student Activities Office.

Evonsion and Halvorsen commented that the event was one of few on campus that catered specifically to individual, acoustic performers.

“I feel like it is really strange that Brown doesn’t have a regular open mic for people,” Halverson said, noting that groups and ensembles are generally given more opportunities to perform on campus.

“It is really cool to be able to see who else is out there doing similar things — there are so many people with hidden talents here,” Halvorsen added.

She emphasized the importance of a “space to try things out and (learn) what goes well in front of an audience, because there is no other way to learn that besides performing.”

“We’re hoping that (Gigs Underground) will encourage people, especially other students and their classmates, to see all the wonderful talents that students have,” Evonsion said.

LEON JIANG / HERALD

“Gigs Undergound,” a continuation of last month’s festival, “Gigs on the Grass,” featured student performances with acoustic, coffee-house sounds.

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

The Bell Gallery hosted a new exhibition showcasing works spanning the career of photographer and documentarian Danny Lyon.

» LYON, from page 1

MARLIS FLINN / HERALD

the exhibition space were all crafted at a later stage in Lyon’s career.

Lyon often focuses on the themes of empathy and freedom in his artwork. “Driven by concern for the marginalized and disenfranchised, Lyon has chronicled civil rights protests as the first official photographer for the (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee),” said Jo-Ann Conklin, the director of the Bell Gallery.

“He was making photographs of things that were not photographed by anyone else when he first started,” Pappas added.

Lyon is distinguished as an artist by his ability to connect with the subjects in his work and to show them as real people through their own words and actions. “His particular vision, his approach is unique. Part of the reasons the photographs are so strong is that you get a sense through them of his connection to people,” Pappas said. She highlighted the photographs

taken within an American prison as epitomizing his ability to cut through the boundaries of different backgrounds and to simply connect with people for who they are. This artistic faculty renders Lyon’s work “incredibly malleable,” Pappas said. “That is quite powerful,” and differentiates Lyon’s work from that of others, she added.

Though Lyon focused on photography for the majority of the 1960s, he moved toward the medium of documentary later in his life. Seemingly about nothing and everything simultaneously, his documentaries can be described as “environmental portraits,” Pappas said. The films “show you who these people are,” she added.

“They attempt to flesh things out in a different way than the photographs.”

In Lyon’s talk, he discussed how he found himself and his art growing as his artistic maturity developed. “I had thought of myself as a journalist, but I was functioning like an artist,” Lyon said.