SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020
VOLUME CLV, ISSUE 31
UNIVERSITY NEWS
UNIVERSITY NEWS
U., RISD respond to growing coronavirus concerns U. students abroad sent home, RISD students return, international travel restricted
BY MAISIE NEWBURY SENIOR STAFF WRITER
COURTESY OF BERT KAUFMANN
RISD canceled its study abroad program in Rome, while the University canceled its “Brown in Bologna” program due to coronavirus fears. turning from Italy, The Herald previous- munity transmission of coronavirus. ly reported. The Providence Journal also Rather than suggesting quarantines, reported that the Centers for Disease both agencies recommended a social Control has confirmed one of the cases. distancing period or self-monitoring for students returning from affected Returning Students areas, according to administrators The University and RISD both re- from both institutions. Brown and ceived guidance from the CDC and the RISD have interpreted these recomRhode Island Department of Health mendations differently, corresponding regarding students returning from Italy, a country with widespread comSEE CORONAVIRUS PAGE 2
SPORTS
Zion Lewis ’20 breaks Ivy League triple jump record Track and field star wins Ivy League triple jump championship title with 44-1.25 mark BY PERI SHEININ CONTRIBUTING WRITER Zion Lewis ’20 posted a record-breaking performance last weekend at the 2020 Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Track and Field Championships at Cornell, capturing the triple jump title at 44-1.25 and setting the all-time Ivy League, school and facility mark. This result also put Lewis eighth in the NCAA rankings for the triple jump. The track and field star continued to perform at an impressive level in other events, taking fourth in both the long jump and the 60-meter race. Lewis’ stellar results earned her the honor of Most Outstanding Field Performer of the meet. Before coming to Brown, Lewis attended Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia, where she captured the 2016 Georgia State Championship in the triple jump. For her outstand-
Community mourns antiMuslim violence in India U. ‘Holi Against Hindutva’ demonstration joins 25 other institutions
BY KARLOS BAUTISTA AND ROSE HOUGLET SENIOR STAFF WRITERS The University and the Rhode Island School of Design recently unveiled new immediate and long-term policies concerning the coronavirus outbreak, according to interviews, emails and a town hall hosted by RISD administrators. The institutions offered different responses to students returning from affected countries and for students’ future international travel plans. After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention instituted a recommendation to avoid all nonessential travel to Italy, RISD canceled its “RISD in Rome” European Honors Program, Jaime Marland, senior director of public relations, wrote in an email to The Herald. The University also canceled its Italian study abroad program, Brown in Bologna, last week, The Herald previously reported. At the time of publication, Rhode Island has reported two cases of coronavirus, both from Rhode Islanders re-
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
ing performance in Ithaca, Lewis has been named The Herald’s Athlete of the Week. Herald: How did it feel when you won the triple jump event and set the Ivy League record? Lewis: I was very shocked … almost overwhelmed with emotion. A lot of times, people were confused when they saw me step on the runway because I am very short in comparison to the other athletes, so it was always said that it would be hard for me to do the triple jump. So at that moment, I was overwhelmed because I was finally able to prove to myself that I can do it. When did you start competing in track and field? I started in eighth grade — nothing too serious. I did a little bit of running; I did the hundred (meter race) and the two hundred (meter race) as well. It wasn’t until high school that I joined the track and field team … and started taking it a little more serious-
SEE AOTW PAGE 9
Thursday evening, Providence residents and University students and faculty gathered on the steps of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center to take part in the “Holi Against Hindutva” demonstrations, joining other colleges and universities that demonstrated nationwide. Holi, a widely-celebrated Hindu festival, welcomes the transition from winter to spring and acts as a thanksgiving for a good harvest. But “the festival is also associated with the oppression of certain minorities in India, such as Muslims,” said Anchita Dasgupta ’21, one of the event’s organizers. “Today we are not celebrating Holi, but mourning it. This is why instead of wearing bright colors (a custom typical of Holi) we will be dressed in black at the protest,” she added. This mourning is a response to the recent violence in Delhi, India,
in which at least 42 were killed and hundreds injured. The demonstration, “Protest Against Anti-Muslim Violence in India and the CAA” began with the lighting of candles. “It’s truly heartening to see everyone come out here,” said Rhythm Rastogi ’22. “Today we stand in solidarity with the victims and with the nationwide Holi Against Hindutva movement. Right now as we demonstrate here, there are 25 other campuses also demonstrating,” she added. Rastogi went on to discuss the “damaging anti-Muslim rhetoric” put forth by the Indian government, including the Citizenship Amendment Act, which draws a path to citizenship for religious-minority refugees from Muslim-majority countries. The act has been criticized as anti-Muslim and has been met with protests around the globe. In India, violent riots, such as the recent one in Delhi, have frequently confronted these protests. The demonstration therefore included a moment of silence for the victims in Delhi, after which Rastogi
SEE VIOLENCE PAGE 10
UNIVERSITY NEWS
EEP participants balance jobs, classes Full-time employees allowed to take U. courses, receive financial support BY JACK WALKER SENIOR STAFF WRITER Since 1999, the Employee Education Program has allowed full-time Brown employees to take college courses for degree programs or job-related development and has provided them with financial support. Programs offered include traditional classes at Brown and other institutions, distance learning and a combination of the two, according to the EEP’s web page. As of January 2020, 93 participants are currently enrolled through the EEP, Benefits Program Specialist Michele Wise wrote in an email to The Herald. This includes 26 EEP participants currently enrolled in Brown courses, 12 of whom are participating in graduate degree programs. “I signed up for it because (getting a master’s degree) was a personal goal of mine… and it was just a good benefit offered through Brown,” said Eric
A&C
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Commentary
‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ opens at Avon Cinema, depicts tragic love story Page 2
Two U. assistant professors named 2020 Sloan Research Fellows Page 9
Reed ’21: Bernie Sanders’ policies unrealistic, uncompromising Page 11
SUMMER ZHANG / HERALD
Peterson GS, the assistant director of athletic communications, who is completing his semester in the American Studies program. Throughout the past four years, Peterson has been taking one class per semester to balance his work and academic lives. “It’s challeng-
ing to find something that fits your schedule all the time,” Peterson said. The University has “been very supportive,” and individual departments are sometimes accommodating of the specific scheduling challenges
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020
FILM REVIEW
‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ depicts beautiful, heartbreaking love French historical drama feature film focuses on two women’s ill-fated love story
BY CHANIKARN KOVAVISARACH SENIOR STAFF WRITER Director Céline Sciamma explores and celebrates the tender but tragic love between two women in her fourth feature film, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” which opened at Avon Cinema last Friday, Feb. 28. Marianne, a Parisian painter, and Héloïse, a former convent girl from an aristocratic family, meet on the isolated island of Brittany in 18th century France. The pair are brought together by Héloïse’s mother, who hires Marianne to paint a portrait of her daughter to send to a Milanese nobleman. If he approves of the painting, he and Héloïse are to be married. But Héloïse has no desire to marry — indeed, she has already driven away a previous painter by refusing to pose for him. Marianne is introduced to Héloïse as a walking companion, but is told to study her new companion, painting Héloïse without her finding out. In this pretext of secrecy, an “electric tension” arises between the two, as The Guardian’s film critic Marc Kermode puts it, and the thoughtful, intense nature of Marianne’s gaze elicits equally curious stares from Héloïse. They study each other in a tentative manner. Until the guise of walking companion is cast off and Marianne’s profession is exposed, the film examines how observation can occur from two sides. While Marianne is devoted to recreating Héloïse’s likeness, studying her by day and painting from memory by night, Héloïse also watches her companion. Sciamma plays with the question of the artistic gaze: Who is the beholder? Who is beheld? When Héloïse discovers Marianne’s real identity, she allows the
CORONAVIRUS FROM PAGE 1 to their perceived needs, said Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91. Carey also chairs the University’s core crisis team. The six University students returning from Brown in Bologna are being directed to their homes to self-monitor, said Shankar Prasad, deputy provost for Global Engagement & Strategic Initiatives. According to an email from Kendall Brostuen, director of international programs and associate dean of the college, students returning from “study abroad in a country with widespread transmission … cannot return to nor visit campus at this time.” But Prasad said students are “not being guided to self-quarantine at this time.” These students may complete the semester online through the University of Bologna since there is no “academic reason to be back on campus,” Prasad said. The Dean of the College and the Office of International Programs have hosted virtual meetings with all six students to “sequence out basically the rest of their academic plan as we would with any study abroad student,” Prasad added. After also suspending their program in Italy, RISD is allowing students to
CHANIKARN KOVAVISARACH / HERALD
Director Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” opened at Avon Cinema Feb. 28. It explores themes of love, beauty and the power of memory in a tragic eighteenth-century love story between two women. artist to complete her portrait, despite having been deceived. As Marianne’s secret comes to life, we see her devotion redirected from the painting to its subject. The first half of the film, and this love story, is characterized by a lack of background music that emphasizes this silently growing love. As an audience, much of our emotional response is directed by the score of the movie. Without any music, Marianne and Héloïse’s measured interactions are especially pronounced. In an interview with IndieWire, Sciamma revealed that she purposefully crafted “a love story without music” to frustrate the viewer in the same way that the characters are frustrated by the lack of art in their isolated setting. “The movie is also talking about
the connection between love and art, and how love makes you love art,” she said. “I wanted the audience to be in the same position as the characters … so that was to put the viewer in the same physical condition and frustration regarding music, so when it occurs, it’s something.” When it starts, the music is “something” indeed. Women gather around a bonfire singing, the soon to be lovers share a brief smile and Héloïse’s dress catches on fire — evoking an unshakable sense of ephemerality and revealing the beautiful, vivacious passion that Marianne and Héloïse share. But the audience — and the couple — knows that it cannot last forever. Their love is powerful, but it is not enough. A relationship between two
young women cannot survive the patriarchal forces of 18th century French society. It’s worth remembering, after all, that the expectations of an arranged marriage are what brought the pair together in the first place. Despite this, the film is “at once unsentimental in its realistic assessment of women’s circumstances and almost utopian in its celebration of the freedom that is nonetheless available to them,” reviewer A.O. Scott wrote in the New York Times. The all-female household and the isolation of their island home might dominate the film, but Héloïse and Marianne are still encased in the larger context of a masculine society. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is a recurring motif in the film, making the devotion and loss that
characterize Sciamma’s love story all the more prominent. Throughout, Sciamma shows us a fierce but gentle affection, a love burdened with the knowledge of future separation. “It’s a lot about the present, the rise of desire, but it’s also about what’s left of a love story, what’s the memory of a love story,” Sciamma said in another interview to IndieWire. It is this knowledge of heartbreak that weighs over us that makes the end of the film particularly poignant, and Marianne’s parting words — “don’t regret, remember” — particularly powerful. Love, as “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” shows us, is about the memory as much as the occasion itself. Through Marianne and Héloïse, Sciamma celebrates love in its more subtle, fleeting forms.
return to campus. But RISD officials requested that students keep a distance from others and do not attend public events, gatherings or classes “out of an abundance of caution,” Marland wrote in an email to The Herald. This voluntary social distancing period should last 14 days, and “mirrored the process for our students returning from China in early February,” said Kristin Gianelis, administrative director of health services at RISD in a town hall meeting March 4. RISD students originally returned from the European Honors Program site in Rome on Feb. 29. Following the announcement of the program’s cancellation, other students organized a petition urging administrators to mandate preventative measures, including medical inspections and a quarantine-like period for students returning from Italy. The petition was signed by at least 60 students. “It doesn’t make sense to not have a quarantine for people who are coming back from Italy, which had so many cases (of coronavirus) already,” said Maggie Guo, a senior at RISD who signed the petition. Guo had previously decided to self-quarantine for 14 days following winter break, which she spent at her home in Beijing. RISD did not contact Guo about social distancing until three
days after her return, which aligned with new CDC guidelines, she said. “I thought that it was ridiculous that the school didn’t think of having (preventative measures) in the first place.” In the social distancing periods for students returning from both China and Italy, students were asked to reside further away from RISD’s main campus and were provided food, Guo said. During her self-quarantine, Guo stayed in Charles Landing — a RISD dorm, “but way off campus” — and RISD dining services brought her food. Still, Guo expressed concern about the level of contact she experienced during herself-quarantine. “In my situation, I was also allowed to go outside without a mask on — like when the dining staff gave me food, no one had any protective measures — so that was really high risk,” Guo said. Guo was allowed to leave Charles Landing and return to her room to get bedding supplies. “That could have affected the whole building.” RISD is also providing lodging and food for students returning from Italy at a downtown Providence hotel, Guo said. RISD “students did not travel to any area in which (coronavirus) was reported and none have exhibited any symptoms,” Marland added. “RISD’s and
Brown’s programs were held in different parts of Italy, with varying levels of exposure risk.” Because different institutions have different academic calendars and cycles, Carey speculated that there is room for a difference in academic priorities. “We have been in constant communication with RISD, sharing all the information that we’ve been distributing to the Brown community and they’ve been doing the same with us,” Carey added.
icy” and “based on CDC and U.S. State Department elevated travel advisories related to (coronavirus).” On March 5, RISD “suspended all RISD-sponsored international travel, for faculty, staff and students, for the rest of the spring semester,” wrote David Proulx, RISD’s senior vice president for finance and administration, in an email to the RISD community. “RISD-sponsored domestic travel is still permitted at this time, with caution and consideration of CDC guidelines.” The University and RISD both discouraged international travel for personal reasons, warning community members of the risk of potential quarantine requirements or flight cancellations. Both schools’ administrators emphasized that they are in close contact with governmental agencies to monitor the situation. “The fact that there are some cases in Rhode Island has certainly raised anxiety levels,” Carey said. “While we’re certainly concerned about this, we also think a calm approach is warranted, and we have no evidence to think otherwise. There will likely be more cases in this country, potentially in our area as well, but a calm approach and following the medical professional guidance is going to continue to be important.”
Future Travel The University has suspended all University-sponsored travel to China, Iran, Italy and South Korea for a for-credit, non-credit or research-related program, according to the University’s coronavirus webpage. Faculty and staff are also not permitted to travel to these locations without prior authorization from the Office of the Provost. On March 4, the Office of International Programs notified students who applied to study abroad this summer that Brown’s World Cinema Program in Bologna had been canceled. The email also stated that summer study abroad in China, South Korea and Italy would be canceled, “in accordance with the University’s International Travel pol-
In This Issue
Recovery, in Fragments KAHINI MEHTA 6
Post-confidence
ANNELIESE MAIR 5
Patterns of the World
NICOLE FEGAN 4
ERIN LEE WALDEN 7
Is This Too Much?
OLIVIA HOWE 8
Helig Moder
postCover by Joanne Han
MAR 6
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VOL 25 —
ISSUE 16
FEATURE
Patterns of the World math, art, and everyday life BY NICOLE FEGAN ILLUSTRATED BY NINA YUCHI
“M
y life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern.” - Benoît B. Mandelbrot, mathematician, namesake of the Mandelbrot set, my favorite fractal. *** Some days, I wish I’d been a math major. I sincerely thought I’d end up as one, too. I was going to be a topologist, or find a way to specialize in fractals, or maybe just become a professor. Waltzing into MATH0350 (Honors Calculus) as a brighteyed, bushy-tailed freshman, I was fairly certain this was merely my first class in a long journey toward a concentration in pure mathematics. What they don’t really tell you about MATH0350—and what, frankly, they should tell you—is that if you don’t have prior experience with proofs or multivariable calculus, you are, for lack of a better word, fucked. And I? I was fucked. Within the first month, I experienced a shattering: Suddenly, everything about my future was called into question. I decided that a girl who cries happy tears about getting a C in an introductory math class—because at least I didn’t fail—couldn’t possibly
be a math major. I couldn’t continue to call myself “a math person.” So, what next? Before taking that class, I'd thought I had a good grasp on why I loved mathematics. Like most people, throughout elementary and middle school, I simply enjoyed what I was naturally best at. I wasn’t great at learning Spanish, but math classes seemed to take root in my brain. I was a lover of puzzles, I liked knowing there was a correct answer at the end of my hard work, and I found the mathematical process relatively pain-free. Listicles on websites like piday.org and topnotchteaching.com note all of these as “Reasons why math is important in life” or “Tremendous reasons to love math.” According to these sites, math is “helpful,” it’s “satisfying,” it’s “fun,” and, my personal favorite, it “helps out in the kitchen.” To be a lover of math is to be pragmatic about what skills will be useful later in life, or so some people say. As high school dawned, math began to acquire for me a deeper purpose. Life felt chaotic and I needed something to stabilize the entropy. The solution, I found, was math homework. Sitting down with a trigonometry or calculus worksheet was a completely
self-contained activity; I was (and still am) distractible, but math represented the perfect harmony of engaging and difficult, allowing me to get lost inside of it. English and history were inherently human subjects; in order to do well, you had to understand the complexity of how people and society function. Math, however, enabled me to use my entire brain without ever needing to think outside the scope of the problem at hand. Not only did my personal issues cease to exist, but so did the outside world. For a brief moment, it was just me and a formula, or me and a pattern to dissect, or me and a problem that I just couldn’t seem to solve until, finally, it clicked. Math became an escape from the real world as opposed to a worthwhile interaction with it. And I’m not talking light escapism—I’m talking a desire for an insulated world so intense that by the time I got to college, the sheer notion of “applied mathematics” seemed borderline gross to me. The only math I considered personally worthwhile was that which existed for its own sake: math for the sake of further math, without any need to apply it in realistic settings. Why take a perfect thing and make it imperfect by
Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, Women. That’s the editor’s note. Of course, I’m kidding, but women are so incredible that if there was ever to be a one-word letter from the editor, that would be it. I promise you, no other word could do it justice. Why this sudden deluge of affection for women, you ask? Aside from the fact that many of them are the lights of my life, it’s because this upcoming Sunday is International Women’s Day. I don’t want to speak on behalf of others, so I will use this space to talk about one of my favorite things about the women in my life (and maybe you’ll find that you feel the same way about your friends!). Whenever I find myself demoralized by the senseless misfortunes dealt by our almighty universe, I can always count on my female friends to fill me up with equally preposterous but beautifully positive affirmations. Am I really the baddest bitch to have ever walked this earth or the greatest literary genius to have broken down crying in the halls of the English department? Hell no. But my friends will flood me with all the reassurances they can muster until I come to my senses
4!POST–
and realize that, in a room full of powerful women, I can count myself among them. This week, post- offers a selection of essays, all written by said powerful women. In Feature, a writer invites us to explore the evolving connection she has drawn between art and math. In Narrative, one writer discusses he r shifting definition of confidence, and another writer details her mental health journey facing anxiety. And in Arts & Culture, our writers look up to Carly Rae Jepsen and Silvana Imam, musicians who have taught them how to embrace “excess” in emotion and be more in touch with their sexuality, respectively. Women, y’all. What more can I say? They truly help make this world go ’round, and as much as I appreciate having a day to celebrate them, we obviously don’t need to wait until this Sunday to tell them how much we love them. Every day is a day to wake up, walk out the door, and be completely and utterly flabbergasted by their greatness. Hyperbolic? Sure. But c’mon, you know we deserve it.
With So Much Love,
Amanda Ngo Editor- in-Chief
Badass Pop Princesses 1. Avril Lavigne (not her doppelganger, Melissa) 2. Britney Spears 3. Taylor Swift 4. Hannah Montana 5. Demi Lovato 6. Selena Gomez 7. Rebecca Black (GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIIIIDAYYYYYYY) 8. The artist formerly known as Ke$ha 9. Jordin Sparks 10. Hilary Duff
adding, of all things, this vastly imperfect world back into the equation? Math alone was the world I knew, and it was the world I wanted to live in. *** During high school, I found myself creating what can best be described as math art. Restless while sitting in class, I doodled in the margins of my notes, and, time after time, these drawings ended up bearing mathematical significance. A cute little proof of the Pythagorean theorem became my drawing of choice, always occupying space in the corners of a page when my mind got bored. I learned to recreate the curves of a circle using only straight lines. I drew black and white scribbles, filling in negative space to see how the shapes changed. I couldn’t do perfect math with my hand, but the inaccuracy added to the experience. My straight lines were never quite so straight: In a way, I was making new math and new art every time I doodled. More importantly, I became immersed in writing math poems. For four summers in a row, I made it my mission to inundate my friends at writing camp with my unique adoration of math, its shapes, and the unexpected ways it crops up in our lives. I wrote love poems and elegies alike using math as my anchor, and in doing so realized that mathematics could be just as creative as poetry—interpretive, ubiquitous, and beautiful. After performing these poems onstage, my friends told me they had never loved math as much as they did then, and that they may not really get the theory of the fifth dimension, but they intuitively understood the feeling of it. Something was going on there, something I knew I needed to crack. And, by the time I had nearly failed multivariable calculus freshman fall and resolved never to take a math class again, all I was left with were the poems, the intricate doodles, and a wide-open schedule. *** As time has passed, I have moved further and further away from math in its traditional sense. In the wake of my unfortunate calculus experience, I dove headfirst into a double concentration in English and philosophy. The time I had previously spent poring over mathematical doodles was occupied by listening to new albums and watching movies that had passed me by for years. My interest in math—its problem sets, its formulas, its rules—was waning, but I continued to consider myself “a math person.” The intangible something beyond the mechanics of actually learning and doing math was what stuck with me. Whatever that something is, it has continued to govern how I view the world. I wasn’t alone in believing that there is more to math than just its logistics. Outside the realm of vague listicles, people’s reasoning behind their love for math seems significantly more nuanced than “math can save you money!” Applied math concentrator Jordan Hartzell ’21 said, “Sometimes thinking about math feels like thinking about art; you have this set of materials that you can use to build up something that exists in the world or in your head.” In a 2017 Odyssey article, Kiki Shelly Ray discusses her personal reasons for loving math. She writes, “Math is an incredible thing and is both a tool for us to explain the universe and give it a language, as well as a beautiful art form in itself.” I cracked the code when Gertrude Stein entered my life this semester in a class dedicated to her work. Stein’s work suggests she didn’t care too much for math, at least from what I can tell. She cared about the
natural world, people, and the objects we create, but I have yet to find in her work a love for shapes, numbers, or anything of the like. Yet I kept noticing mathematical concepts in her supposedly non-mathematical art. In her essay “Portraits and Repetition,” Stein critiques the concept of resemblance, positing that when we look at things, “any little movement any little expression was a resemblance.” Reading this, I recalled my doodles of tangent lines, creating the illusion of a circle but never a circle itself—merely a resemblance. In the same essay, Stein discusses the portraits she writes of other people, saying, “If they are themselves inside them what are they and what has it to do with what they do.” Stein has a way of making everything sound beautifully convoluted, but to me, her portraiture echoes the pattern-like nature of a fractal. A fractal is a geometric figure of which each individual part has the same characteristic of the whole, forming a pattern that repeats into infinity. I believe Stein’s portraits function similarly: She identifies the essence, the fundamental nature of a person, and replicates this essence in words. Her portraits are essentially composed of their subjects. Stein may not have written explicitly about math, but she was more of a mathematician than she gets credit for. Stein’s poetry evokes such a strong sense of mathematical understanding because I've realized that, for me, math is at its best when it seeks to explore the world rather than escape from it. Math is, after all, humanity’s attempt to produce a kind of perfection that the universe already creates without us. Italian mathematician Leonardo Bonacci is often credited with the “discovery” of the Fibonacci sequence, but the sequence existed in the petals of a flower and spirals of a pineapple long before Bonacci was even born. My interest in mathematical concepts like fractals stems from the notion that maybe, just maybe, math can transcend the constraints of our understandable universe. Mandelbrot once said of the fractal named after him, “The most complex object in mathematics, the Mandelbrot set…is so complex as to be uncontrollable by mankind and describable as ‘chaos.’” Yet, when I look at the Mandelbrot set, I see with my human eye not an infinity but simply a series of circles, bulbs, and coiled lines: It is, in its own right, a work of art. Just as I have found math in art, there is beauty to be found in math. If modern art has taught us anything, it’s that shapes can be considered artful, and if Gertrude Stein has taught me anything, it’s that mathematical concepts are hiding in our everyday lives and the artwork we consume. Through whichever mediums we choose, we’re all trying to make some kind of sense of everything around us—the curves of the sun, the precariousness of love, or the beauty of the particular blue at dusk. *** Perhaps, at this point in my life, it’s unfair to say I’m interested in math for its own sake anymore. These days, I learn the most about math when I read a book of Maggie Nelson’s poetry or visit the Institute of Contemporary Art. The concept of outliers makes more sense when I can visualize one yellow book in a room of blue, and perpendicular lines come alive when I picture them as two people meeting briefly, never to encounter each other again. Through art, I am discovering the intricate way our lives are made of mathematical patterns, repeating again and again into infinity.
Post-Confidence having faith in yourself BY ANNELIESE MAIR ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVIA MAYEDA
I've heard confidence described as a strength, a belief in the self that’s unwavering in the face of doubt. I've seen it as an assurance of future success, I've known it as faith in patterns and solid evidence, and I've seen it advertised as an outcome achieved by using products that sell approximations of “traditional” ideas of beauty. My shifting idea of confidence has been building alongside my academic and personal definitions of coping; it has only taken concrete form during my last semester of college. The best I have heard confidence put into words was at a confidence workshop led by Professor Barbara Tannenbaum. When my friend Erin let me know Tannenbaum was holding an open session at her home, I tagged along, curious to learn any tips for presenting or even obtaining something I'd long believed I lacked. To me, Confidence had always been, at least in a visual sense, associated with boldness. Confidence personified was outward-facing with straight posture, a firm handshake, and strong eye contact; she was prepared and unapologetic, clear-headed and driven. Confidence knew that she was qualified and didn't feel the need to prove this to peers, professors, bosses, or other adults. Confidence didn't grimace at herself in the mirror. Confidence was a badass who did not question her own statements with a hint of upward inflection. I think one of the reasons I associate confidence with the female pronoun is that I've often heard it encouraged specifically among girls—encouraged because we, as a general and infinitely diverse population, seem to lack it to varying extents. One of the reasons we seem to lack confidence is that we’re told by models, products, and standards that our human forms are not quite enough to be Desirable (to men). And one of the most Desirable qualities in a girl is confidence—but not so much that she impedes the confidence of men. Confidence is an enigmatic term whose definitions are both complementary and contrasting. This means that, whether used when giving advice or described as an asset, its meanings shift and even conflict between contexts and subjectivities. The Oxford English Dictionary juxtaposes this noun as: 1. The mental attitude of trusting in or relying on a person or thing; firm trust, reliance, faith. 2. The feeling sure or certain of a fact or issue; assurance, certitude; assured expectation. At first glance, the difference between “trust” and “certitude” seems subtle. But the leap becomes much greater when we consider how these words emphasize different parts of a process. This distinction became most apparent to me at the confidence workshop. Professor Tannenbaum leaned forward in her bright red chair and said, just slowly enough, “The only way to become confident is to fail.” My inner monologue split in two and jumped between the thought processes. On the one hand, well, yeah: If the only way to get good at something is to keep trying, and if trying something new often ensures
“Speaking of farting, apparently in morgues…” “I love that. That smells like my ancestors.” MARCH 6, 2020!5
NARRATIVE call out occasionally, prompting me to crawl blearyeyed out of my room. It seemed, in those days, the only thing I could muster up energy for was homework. My grades stayed the same, but everything else dropped off slowly: my social circle, my self-esteem, my happiness… And the whole time, that hideous neuron looked mockingly at me from my textbook. No wonder I hated biology.
at least a little failure, then it makes sense that getting good enough at something that you are confident in your skills requires the experience of failure. On the other hand, what the hell is confidence if it demands failure? How can we feel confident in the face of that, in the face of the pain or shame that experience can bring? I realized that these questions were contingent on definition number two: confidence as certitude, or “assured expectation,” of some “successful” outcome. But this definition alone feels at odds with my current understanding of confidence. Recently, I’ve tied the concept to resilience. This semester, someone asked me to consider the possibility of hurt in the face of trust. As I tried to express my thoughts, all my words fell into the void. It was a situation that my best friend and I describe with the caveat “and, not but.” Yes, hurt is (always) possible. No, I am not certain whether or not it will occur. Yes, it will be very painful if it does. No, I can’t anticipate the magnitude of that pain. And (not but) I am certain (by my faith in pattern and evidence) that I will recover—even further, that I will grow. (If nothing else, maybe I'll have more to write about.) In response, I caught myself on the edge of using the word “confident.” I couldn't feel confident in the situational outcome; I couldn't feel certain of the possibility or magnitude of pain. What I was certain of, though, was a more ambiguous outcome: I have faith in myself, and I will be okay. This form of confidence blends the two definitions of general assurance and trust in a further part of the process: my ability to cope with any outcome. The only way to become confident is to fail; the best way to trust yourself is to take care in those inevitable moments when things don’t work out, to nourish yourself with hope and love in the face of failure or hardship. The strongest way to build a sense of assurance is to take care, time and again, to prove that your survival is worthy of your own certainty. This Confidence embraces herself when she feels worn of hope. She abandons the notion of a “productive” day when she realizes she's reached her limit and is in need of rest. She feels the hurt—which is, admittedly, even more than she knew she couldn't expect—and cries in the kitchen while a wonderful friend hands her a top-notch homemade cookie. She is patient for hope to return so she can re-invest it in herself, in her ability to love through people and music and art. She does not feel the need to prove her qualifications because she places her faith in strength and not in an outcome. 6!POST–
Recovery, In Fragments
winning a war against yourself BY KAHINI MEHTA ILLUSTRATED BY GABY TREVIÑO
Neuron Versus Neuron I didn’t always want to be a psychology major—I only found out what a neuron was in high school. In my tenth-grade biology textbook, I found the neuron exceedingly ugly: star-shaped heads colored the pale yellow of bile, with tendrils of hair jutting out from the points and a long body protruding out from its head. This last protrusion was covered in green myelin sheaths, all the way down to branch-like neurites stretching away from the hideousness of its body. “Neurons are the building blocks of the brain,” my teacher said. At the time, I wrinkled my nose in disgust. When I first heard the word serotonin—the neurotransmitter that regulates emotion—I liked how it sounded: It sounded saccharine-sweet, and I had the world’s worst sweet tooth. Something about the syllables was enough to make me crave it. At first, I thought it was only a linguistic affair. I didn’t think it had anything to do with the fact that I struggled to get out of bed most mornings, or the fact that I could barely look anyone else in the eyes, let alone myself. I was a neurotic mess of a teenager, alternating between periods of stress and periods of moping. “Are you done hibernating?” my mother would
Learning in Traces I was in eleventh grade when I learned just how pliable my brain was—that neuroplasticity was a highly possible thing. “Think of neural pathways like a dirt trail, and neurotransmitters like cattle,” my teacher said. "The more cattle travel a path, the more they wear it out. That’s how dirt trails become dirt roads that become paved streets.” If this is true, I thought, there must be a highway somewhere in my brain linking every single thought to some sort of abyss. My psychology teacher called this abyss “learned helplessness.” “If you administer shocks to a dog in an inescapable cage, it will learn not to try escaping— even in an open cage,” she explained. This felt somewhat understandable to me. There were so many things it was just easier to give up on. Through Tinted Glass Cognitive Behavioral Therapy sounded abstract until I went through it. I was in twelfth grade when they finally diagnosed me with anxiety. They told me that the CBT would help me “think more positively.” I didn’t know about any of that, but I did know enough to understand that my friends did not see things the way I did. During our first session, the school therapist gave me a little booklet: “10 Cognitive Distortions.” I thought it was complete gibberish. All-or-nothing thinking? Black-and-white thinking? I wasn’t a computer; I didn’t think in binaries. Mental filters? How could I possibly filter out the good, if there was nothing good to filter out? Psychological magnification, though, I couldn’t deny. It was too evident, too much a part of me. I’d just spent the whole session secretly worrying about an AI’d gotten on a paper two years ago. Conditional My fifth therapist (I really went through 'em) made me draw my anxiety.
ARTS & CULTURE I drew a tornado and named him Shylock because he wanted a pound of my flesh. This made my therapist laugh, so I smiled. I was in college by then, and I’d do almost anything to make people laugh. My therapist thought I was funny, and that validated me in ways I didn’t think were possible. I had spent so much of my life trying to seek validation from people who could never quite reciprocate. My teachers didn’t care how many A's I got if I couldn’t speak up in class, I felt like I could never do anything right in my friends’ eyes, and my family… well, I’d closed myself off from them so long ago, I was sometimes surprised they even remembered what I looked like. I didn’t grow up with many friends, which I always believed was because of how much I resembled a walrus from second to eighth grade. College, I’d told myself, will be different. It wasn’t, not completely. More Than Recovery is never going to be linear, and I understand that now. When I was too little to know what it meant, someone told me, “Home has a heartbeat,” and I laughed, because I could never imagine synchronizing my heartbeats to someone else’s or draping the windows of someone else’s soul with the living, pulsing walls of my heart. But I realized—maybe I was wrong. Over the past year, I have found home in the annoyed shake of my roommate’s head as she tries (unsuccessfully) to wake me at an ungodly hour, in the smile of a friend who didn’t get home till midnight because she wanted to buy me tea when I was sick. I have found home in the smiles of the girls who live next door to me, who have taught me to believe in myself just like they did. I have called one best friend home long before he literally risked his life to carry me out of a burning building, and another before she stayed awake all night to wipe tears from my eyes. So maybe, in the end, it hasn't been about the bad days, or the bad weeks. It hasn't even been about weathering them to get to the good parts. It has been about finding home in myself upon learning that home doesn’t have to mean anything other than the knowledge that I’m going to be okay.
Is This Too Much? embracing excess with carly rae jepsen BY ERIN LEE WALDEN ILLUSTRATED BY CAROLINE DAI
It’s hot. The kind of hot that plasters clothes to your body and makes it uncomfortable just to be awake. If today were a normal day, I would nap until night brought cooler temperatures, but I have somewhere to be in a few hours, so I pass the time swiping ice cubes across my forehead and fanning myself with a small stack of scrap paper. I’ve traveled to Philadelphia in the middle of July to see a Carly Rae Jepsen concert. Though the humidity is intolerable and the portable AC unit in my partner’s bedroom doesn’t work too well, I know it will be worth it. We’re listening to Jepsen’s most recent album, Dedicated, and waiting for dusk to fall. As we pick out what we’re going to wear, my partner questions whether the pink mesh top from Ariana Grande’s collection at H&M is too much, but
we ultimately decide that it isn’t. We head to the venue early, hoping to get spots close to the stage. When we get there, I notice that I’m wearing the same t-shirt as the girl in front of me. I want to say something but realize I don’t need to. We’ve already made eye contact, which is enough for us to communicate a mutual hello, we have something in common. It is packed—standing room only in a balcony section. Everyone in the audience is smiling and dancing to the music pouring from the speakers as we wait. It’s definitely not going to be one of those concerts where people stand around and act like they’re at an art gallery. We’re all pushed up against each other, and, though the AC is blasting, I’m sweating and feeling uneasy. I pull at my shirt, trying to keep it from sticking so tightly to my skin. Soon, the lights dim and Carly emerges wearing a purple vinyl dress. Everyone screams. I was first introduced to Jepsen the way most people were: through hearing "Call Me Maybe" on a loop for most of 2012. I wasn’t reintroduced to her until last year, a few months before Dedicated came out. I was excited to find three albums and an EP waiting for me, and even more excited to find that I loved all of it. Her music is catchy and enveloping. The more I listen, the more I appreciate its power to carry me through all of the highs and lows of crushing on someone in the course of just a single song. It is music that embraces emotion, giving you permission to feel things the way Jepsen does. For me, and probably for many others in her fanbase, this permission is a welcome break from a society that is often quick to condemn genuine emotion. Sometimes it’s hard to give in to and accept what you’re feeling, especially if you’re feeling something that you’ve been told is wrong and meant to be pushed aside. But Jepsen doesn’t care about these expectations; she lives a life abundant with feeling and desire. Her songs, with lyrics like “...dream about me/ And all that we could do with this emotion,” “I want to cut to the feeling,” and “When I feel it, then I feel it too much,” are invitations to relish in emotion, regardless of whether it’s good, bad, or “too much.” There is a long history of labeling people who embrace emotion as “too much.” This critique of emotion acts as though it were possible—and bad—for one to be too open, too gullible, too sad, too happy, too naive, too quick to express emotion, or too slow to get over them. These insults paint emotional excess as unnecessary and childish, condemning how one copes with and enjoys feeling. The pejorative “too much” targets more than excess emotion, it is also levied at those whom society deems too ugly, fat, mouthy, old, sexual, or prudish, among other things. In these cases, the slight “you’re too much” targets physical appearance to equate excess with the grotesque. In the past, Freud pathologized feminine excess as hysteria (something he called “characteristically feminine”) and this stigma continues today. There is, however, a
move toward reclaiming excess—psychoanalysts like Juliet Mitchell have written about the “demand for the right to be hysterical.” Jepsen’s willing embrace of emotion, particularly of “too much” emotion, is another way to reclaim and rethink the excessive. Being “too much” is a common motif in pop music, one that is especially prominent in lyrics written by women. Jepsen embraces this excess in both the quantity and content of her lyrics. Almost all of her songs focus on some kind of romantic endeavor and every single song on Dedicated is directed at a “you.” Yet all of this desire often culminates in feeling like nothing has happened. Instrumentally, her songs build up to a breaking point, into something that sounds revelatory, while the lyrics remain fixated on craving and trying to reach a subject. As a listener, I find myself asking, So now what, did something happen next? And before I can even begin to process what I’ve just heard, the next song begins and she is again singing about wanting. Her existence in what the poet Hanif Abdurraqib calls “the Kingdom of Desire” demonstrates an abundant and lasting hunger that spans multiple albums. Her lyrics are excessive in a way that historically (and currently) might be described as “characteristically feminine” and “obsessive” because she focuses so strongly on emotion. One of my favorite songs from Dedicated is “Too Much” (no surprise here). From the instrumentals that build up just to drop out, to its repetition of the phrase “too much” 24 times in just over three minutes, this song can certainly be viewed as excessive. Toward the end of the song, Jepsen asks, “Is this too much?” But this is a rhetorical question. She doesn’t care about the answer because she has already embraced being too much— the question is whether or not you are ready to join her. “Be careful,” she warns—if you’re not prepared to “do anything to get to the rush,” you’re not ready for me. It is almost a taunt, as if she is asking us to come closer, daring us to feel with her. And with all the joy and beauty in her music, why would we decline this invitation? As someone who has been called “too much” as an insult, who has felt like a burden for any number of reasons, I have found a space in Jepsen’s music where I am allowed to be more than. Leaving that concert in July and entering the cooled air of a summer night, I saw people headed in all directions. Some were heading home, some to parties, some to eat, and some just to sit outside the venue, as if to catch their breath and hold on to that moment for as long as they could. Some screamed to their friends, ears still clouded from the noise inside, and others just rested their heads silently on another’s shoulder or their own palm. We had all just exited a place where we were free to be ourselves, and were even celebrated for it. We watched and danced and sang and cried as loudly and as extravagantly as we could while Jepsen reminded us all that yes, we are too much—and isn’t it wonderful?
MARCH 6, 2020!7
ARTS&CULTURE
Helig Moder
on silvana imam, sweden's holy mother of rap BY OLIVIA HOWE ILLUSTRATED BY IRIS XIE
I probably would have stopped studying Swedish if it wasn't for Silvana Imam. The only reasons I began taking Swedish in the first place were that the guy I dated during my senior year spoke it, and that I wanted to teach myself a language that wasn’t offered at school. My efforts to have secret conversations with my boyfriend in the hallway improved, but our relationship did not. When it ended in the middle of college rejection season, I was derailed. But I seized my crumpled ego and dragged it after me on my pursuit of Swedish fluency. He had left; Swedish remained. As a lifelong language learner, I knew that music was supposed to be the key to fluency. Because singers use language at a rate comparable to regular speech, the listener becomes accustomed to speech patterns that improve their own pronunciation and comprehension. Blindly, I searched “Swedish music,” but a few seconds into the suggested folk songs, boredom was causing my brain to ooze out of my ears. I needed something powerful to stabilize my wavering innards, and I decided there must be one cure: rap. If the Scandinavians were as gory as popular culture made them out to be, they must have music aggressive enough to launch me back into reality. And then I found her. Under the Wikipedia list of Swedish rappers (the only way I found music preSpotify), there was a tiny subcategory of women. The moment I saw her name, something unlocked inside me. Silvana Imam. The video for her hit “Zon” showed Silvana dressed as a devil, hovering behind a woman and sneering with seduction and malice. I clicked and was immediately greeted by thundering electronic dissonance. All of my twisted fears and pains rattled out of my chest and fell to the floor. For the remaining months of senior year, Silvana drove with me to school, finally allowing me to experience the rush of the bass at maximum. She spat at me while I did my homework, got changed for dance class, and cooked dinner. And when I finally got tired of the anger—and was accepted into Brown after I had braced myself, with no small help from her, for cold rejection—I was ready to explore Silvana’s other sides. What I love most about Silvana is not that she is angry—Swedish rappers aren't the only ones who offer that. It’s what she is angry about: racism, xenophobia, patriarchy, capitalism, homophobia. From her earliest songs, she scathingly calls out Swedish neo-Nazis, praises and laments her father’s home country of
Syria, and proclaims her love for women as loudly as she can. Silvana hits, hits again, and doesn’t apologize. When I found her, Silvana was offering me emotional armor as I screeched toward the end of high school, terrified and confused, through humiliating moments like my first attempt to sing solo in front of my peers or my scramble to make last-minute friends to patch my loneliness. When I walked through the hallways or down dark streets, I muttered the lyrics to “Sett Henne” (“Seen Her”), in which Silvana raps to an anonymous woman about how she supports her whether she’s seen her angry, ballin’, crying, naive, or clubbing. The words pushed me forward, encouraging me to be as unflinching as I knew Silvana would be. And when I arrived in Providence and first explored downtown at night, shrinking away from any person— especially any man—who glanced my way, I continued this practice. The adrenaline that surged from Silvana’s lyrics into my stride came from more than just the message: It came from the language itself. No one could understand the furious foreign words even when I stumbled over them, and this realization made me cackle in the streets—which only helped to repel strangers. But, beyond these moments, the Swedish I was learning from Silvana was offering me more than superficial self-confidence. After obsessively reading and singing along with her lyrics, I discovered that I could understand Swedish news articles and poems. I tried talking to myself in Swedish and realized that I could express much more sophisticated phrases than I had ever learned from my high school boyfriend (with whom my vocabulary was mostly limited to “sweetheart” and “want to go to the museum this weekend?”). This realization motivated me to drop into Ann Weinstein’s Swedish class one damp afternoon during my second week at Brown. I plunged blindly into a room with eight other people—each of whom had their reasons for caring about Swedish—and though I couldn’t articulate why, it was essential for me to stay in that bright living room where Ann held class and connect to the language that had made me a woman. In the midst of “adjusting” to my first year at Brown, I spent many hours studying, musicless and untethered, surrounded by blank faces. At first, I asked people if they had heard of Silvana, but I quickly gave up. None of my passionate speeches about how she had changed my life compelled any of my new friends to listen to her music. Eventually, I searched for new music and let my dedication to Silvana trail off to sporadic minutes when I needed a boost. That was until sophomore year, when Silvana returned to remind me once again of who I am. It began when she dropped “4h” (“Four Hours”). The title refers to the amount of time Silvana and her girlfriend have together, and Silvana is quite clear that EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amanda Ngo FEATURE Managing Editor Liza Edwards-Levin
“FaceTiming every night helps to bridge this gap, but until Elon Musk invents phones that can replicate hugs (which, if you ask me, should be of higher priority than getting to Mars), it’s just not the same.” -Cathy Campo, “campo girls vs. gilmore girls” 3.8.19
“The urge to read your life like a novel is no novel impulse—in fact, we’ve been writing our lives into books for millennia.” -Emily Yang, “narrativizing the self” 3.9.18
Section Editors Alice Bai Erin Walden Staff Writers Gaya Gupta Anna Harvey NARRATIVE Managing Editor Nicole Fegan Section Editors Michelle Liu Minako Ogita
they will be taking advantage of this time to have sex… because her girlfriend is hot. Simple enough premise when a man tells the story, but layered when the rapper is a woman. I smirked to myself as I sang to it in my parents’ kitchen, where I could tell them as much as I wanted about my love for Silvana without worrying that they would disapprove of my music taste—or my sexuality. The more I listened with delight, the more I wondered whether I had missed something in my life. I’d known since kindergarten that I liked girls, but I let myself assume that I also liked guys because it was expected of me as a female. It hadn’t occurred to me until college—and Silvana—that I could let go of those expectations and figure out what my head was actually telling me. When I listened to Silvana’s autobiographical song “Hon Va” (“She Was”), I felt the wrenching pain of her father’s rejection of her sexuality. When Silvana rhapsodized about staring at her girlfriend in her dress on “Jag dör för dig” (“I’ll die for you”) and screamed “Tack gud jag är homo!” (“Thank god I’m a homo”) on “För Evigt” (“For Eternity”), she was really saying that she saw me. Not just as a woman, but as a gay woman. And it wasn’t just that Silvana was yelling at me to love my angry, scared, gay self. She was also teaching me to take pride in my politics and my womanhood. With “Fri” (“Free”), she lets loose her gratitude for being an immigrant to parents from Syria and Lithuania, an identity from which she derives her strength and inspiration. This theme carries into “Simone” (the name of her baby niece, whose Swedish babbling features in the song—one of her softest), which celebrates Simone’s nationalities and Silvana’s love for Simone’s mother. But the pearl of Silvana’s work so far is “Vikken Då” (“Which One”), in which she tears apart patriarchy for suppressing female art and agency. In each of these songs, she reminds those listening to her, especially other women, that they have a place at the table and they need to take up the whole chair. Silvana designed “Vikken Då” to be shouted in dark streets, muttered under one’s breath, slammed seismically through car speakers. So I do. Loudly, och med kärlek.
Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Jordan Hartzell Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Kahini Mehta ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Griffin Plaag Section Editors Olivia Howe Maddy McGrath Staff Writers Rob Capron David Kleinman Julian Towers
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Caitlin McCartney
SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Paola Solano
Section Editor Christina Vasquez
Editors Cecilia Barron Tessa Devoe
Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto COPY Copy Chief Moe Sattar Copy Editors Kyoko Leaman Aditi Marshan Emma Schneider
Want to be involved? Email: amanda_ngo@brown.edu!
8!POST–
HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Gaby Treviño LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
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SCIENCE & RESEARCH
Two U. assistant professors receive $75,000 grant for up-in-coming research Ou Chen, Emilia Huerta-Sanchez named Sloan Fellows in sciences BY TYLER JACOBSON STAFF WRITER Two University assistant professors received one of the most prestigious awards for an early-career researcher in science, mathematics or economics when they were named 2020 Sloan Research Fellows last month. As part of the fellowship, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ou Chen and Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Emilia Huerta-Sanchez will each receive an unrestricted $75,000 grant to advance their research over a two-year period. They are two of 126 researchers who received the award this year. “The hope is that every year, … we’re able to push forward the careers of 126 really bright, promising young scientists, mathematicians and economists, and in doing that, help advance those fields more generally,” said President of the Sloan Foundation Adam Falk. “By helping people in this point in their careers, … we could really have an impact that could last for decades.” “I feel so honored to receive this award,” Chen said. The fellowship funding lasts “for only two years, but … you’re going to be named a Sloan Research Fellow for the rest of your career.” “It was a very happy reaction,” Huerta-Sanchez said. “Every time you get an award, obviously it feels nice. It feels like all the hard work that you’ve done is being recognized.” Chen’s research focuses on the study and development of nanocrystals and nanomaterials. “There’s a lot of fantastic properties that can be generated when you bring a material size down to the nanoscale” and change its physical, chemical and optical properties, Chen said. These prop-
AOTW FROM PAGE 1 ly. I actually grew up as a competitive gymnast and stopped (gymnastics) in ninth grade and switched over to track. Did you find that your improvement in high school was linked to specific coaches? I practiced with my high school team and I also practiced with an outside team called (Revolutionary Sprint Speed). I had an outside coach … we had a really strong bond, and we still do to this day. He was a really amazing influence in my life. Were there any specific obstacles within your sport that you overcame to reach this point? There are always ups and downs. I think that for me, especially, I had to learn the feeling of failure and defeat in order to motivate me to achieve the feeling of success. Do you have any specific role mod-
COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY
Assistant Professor of Chemistry Ou Chen and Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Emilia Huerta-Sanchez will each receive a $75,000 grant to advance their research over a two-year period. They are two of 126 recipients of the Sloan Research Fellowship this year. erties cannot be observed in a larger scale. One of Chen’s main areas of research involves quantum dots — semiconductive materials with enhanced optical properties that are used in digital screens for better color saturation and quality. Chen’s proposal for the fellowship revolved around the macroscopic applications of nanomaterials. He is developing ways to precisely control the position and orientation of nanocrystals and “link them back to macroscale functional materials” for everyday use, including solar cells, digital displays and biomedical devices. Huerta-Sanchez’s research focuses on the genetic evolution of humans and the development of regional adaptations. She was always interested in the intersection of mathematics and biology, but she further became interested in stochastic, or random, processes and genetics as a postdoctoral student in 2009. At that time, scientists were newly able to sequence entire genomes for cheaper than ever before, she explained. Huerta-Sanchez began analyzing this new data, where she was interested in questions related to human evolution. Specifically, she looked into the genetic basis of the adaptations in Tibetans living in high altitudes that allow them to carry more ox-
ygen in their blood without having to produce more hemoglobin, the protein responsible for delivering oxygen throughout the body. Recently, Huerta-Sanchez has focused on whether genetic variations in ancient populations were beneficial or deleterious to their survival, as well as the genetic impacts of population mixing and the relationships between ancient and present-day populations. She uses this understanding to make “better inferences about the genetic basis of human disease” that disproportionately affect different populations. To be eligible for the Sloan Research Fellowship, applicants must be untenured faculty at a post-secondary institution in the United States or Canada, Falk said. They also must have a teaching role at the institution and must be actively conducting research in one of eight categories, including physics, computer science and neuroscience. Committees of experts in each of the categories select the recipients of the fellowship. “We’d like them to identify the most promising people in their fields. That’s going to mean one thing in economics and something else in mathematics, but what we’re really looking for them to identify (are) the people … who they think will have a re-
els or professional athletes who have inspired you? I don’t know about a specific professional athlete, but I do have role models. Definitely my mother … for driving me to track practices in high school and being my emotional support system. And of course, my coaches, specifically (Assistant Coach for Jumps and Multis) Ken Hunt. He has been very inspirational and always has the right thing to say. Before I took that last jump (over the weekend), he looked at me and was like, “This is your last jump, we are either going to go to Nationals or you’re going to die trying.” I took that with me and stepped on the runway and went for the jump.
competitive with myself in the sense that if I jump one mark or ever run one mark, I want to go back there and beat that mark.
Did you have any specific goals for your track and field career at Brown? Not necessarily, I am not someone who sets super specific goals for myself. I like to focus on the competitive aspect of it, really going out there and just trying my best. And I think I’m
ally great impact during the entirety of their careers,” Falk said. In the history of the award, 50 Sloan Research Fellows have been awarded a Nobel Prize, including three last year, Falk added. The fellowship is very competitive, Falk said. In 2020, 1,182 people applied for the Sloan Fellowship, wrote Nate Williams, communications manager at the Sloan Foundation, in an email to The Herald. Chen and Huerta-Sanchez join 67 other Brown University faculty who have won the award since 1955, the year the fellowship was founded, including four professors who won the award last year, The Herald previously reported. Chen plans to use the grant to support his students and further his research. “This is an unrestricted fund, so I can really use this money to do something more high-risk, to explore something that might fail,” Chen said. But if this grant does lead to a new opportunity, “that seed could generate a huge impact or (could) open up more interesting follow-up research (in) a new direction.” Huerta-Sanchez hasn’t given too much thought to what she will use the grant for. “It definitely facilitates new lines of inquiry, or I can use it on what I would consid-
er risky projects” with the chance for high reward, she said. “I think it’s going to lead to very exciting work.” Colleagues held high praise for the award recipients. Huerta-Sanchez’s “work is an exciting mix of questions on human evolution, high throughput genomics and sophisticated computational analyses,” wrote Chair of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Professor of Natural History and Biology David Rand in an email to The Herald. “Her work provides a look back in time at the genetic and evolutionary events that have contributed to the emergence of modern humans. We are thrilled that Emilia has received this prestigious award and (excited) and fortunate to have her doing this new work at Brown.” Shouheng Sun, professor of chemistry and engineering, wrote a recommendation letter for Chen for the fellowship. “From his independent research accomplishments, creativity and contribution to the nanomaterials field, I am convinced that he is on the track of becoming a leader in” this field, Sun wrote in an email to The Herald. “I congratulate Professor Chen for receiving this prestigious fellowship and am looking forward to reading more great news from his research endeavors at Brown.”
Are there any routines that you do before competition? It really depends, but I like to listen to music. I might listen to some pump-up songs or a motivational speech. I also like to meditate and visualize myself — not necessarily a specific number or mark but what I would like to execute in a race or a jump. Do you have any post-college plans or aspirations? I will be working in finance … I am a political science major so this is kind of a new realm for me. I have done an internship (in finance) already, and it was challenging because it is outside of my general domain and field of study. I am going to be in New York. This article has been edited for length and clarity.
CALLIE RABINOVITZ / HERALD
Lewis leaped to eighth in the NCAA rankings and won the triple jump in the 2020 Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Championships.
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020
ENROLL FROM PAGE 1 participants face. According to Wise, the EEP originally offered only job-related courses. Expansions throughout the years have broadened the kinds of courses provided to cater to participants’ preferred learning methods. These changes were made in response to the needs of students and after surveying peer institutions’ offerings, Wise wrote. To be eligible to participate in the EEP, employees must have worked for six months and spend at least 67 percent of the time at the University. Eligible participants can qualify for degrees or certifications. Additionally,
courses must be offered at accredited “institutions that belong to one of six accrediting agencies in order (for employees) to be eligible for reimbursement,” Wise wrote. Currently, almost 10 percent of the full-time employee population participate in the EEP. “It’s an investment for Brown in terms of having a well-educated workforce and being able to provide tuition assistance to Brown employees,” Wise wrote. “I’ve been managing and administering the EEP for over 20 years. I have tremendous admiration for EEP participants who are juggling full-time jobs while pursuing degrees or taking courses, as well as managing families and life outside of Brown.”
MAISIE NEWBURY / HERALD
The demonstration, “Protest Against Anti-Muslim Violence in India and the CAA” began with the lighting of candles.
VIOLENCE FROM PAGE 1 invited the attendees of the protest to “share their stories and a few words of love and hope.” Associate Professor of History Vazira F-Y Zamindar and Assistant Professor of Anthropology Bhrigupati Singh spoke at the protest, emphasizing the long-term impact of the Muslim-Hindu partition in India and its global relevance. “I think I inherited this generational trauma of partition,” Zamindar said. “I wanted to ask all of us to think about ways (in) which we need to begin unlearning partition.” She went on to discuss how partition impacts India today. “We cannot live together. … It makes the Muslim difference an incommensurate difference.” This difference, she added, “invokes violent hostility,” such as that seen recently in Delhi. “On my way here my daughter asked me what the purpose of this protest was. ... How can we help when we are here, and they are in India?” Singh said. “But in the winter when I went back to Delhi, (I saw) how much it matters. One of the first things they told me was, ‘Oh people do care. There’s a protest all the
way in Boston!’” he added. “It’s really important for universities in the United States to show solidarity with India because Indian media outlets pay a lot of attention to how the government is perceived internationally,” said Aryan Srivastava ’22, another organizer of the event. “Every protest matters,” Singh added. “I was born in 1947, the year India got its independence,” said Nashad Siddiqui, an attendee of the protest, speaking to India’s history. “Back then, Hindus, Muslims, all people — we were all united because we were so happy to have thrown the British out of the country. We never had any kind of hostility against each other,” she added. “This is such a surprise to me that this kind of thing is happening in India. … It tears my heart apart because I loved my country, India, and I love my country, the United States, for giving me the freedom of speech and safety that was once (but is no longer) possible for me in India.” Others followed Siddiqui, telling stories, reading poems and offering their perspectives and condolences. “I have been very critical of this government since it came to power,” said
Kushagra Agarwal ’22, an international student from India. “I used to be the person to share three posts against this government on my social media every day.” But recently, Agarwal explained that he has been doing this less. “The reason behind that is the reign of terror that this government has instituted. They are taking away (the citizenship) of journalists who are critical of them. … They are doing everything in their power to ensure that there is no opposition.” Agarwal added that he had a ritual of “cleansing his social media” before returning home. “I was scared of being stopped at the airport and being denied entry into my own nation. I was scared of my citizenship being taken away.” He went on to acknowledge his relative privilege as a “Hindu Indian citizen who is studying abroad in the United States.” Yet he is “still fearful to post something on social media. … I can’t even imagine the courage it takes to go out and protest in the streets in India,” he added. “So if you have the courage, … please talk to the people around you and post on social media. If there is any way to go against fascism, it is by creating a larger movement.”
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FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY
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Reed ’21: The Case Against Bernie Sanders, Part 2 government capped interest rates. And what happened? Exactly what you’d expect. Studies show the cap decreased the number of loans made by 19 percent and caused an estimated 9.7 percent of all borrowers to no longer be able to get loans. The group hardest hit was those with poor credit, namely young and low-income people. But my main point is not that the policy won’t work. My point is that Sanders hasn’t bothered to consider the negative externalities that
the federal code. For comparison, this part of the column is over 1,300 words. In fairness though, if we include the bills on which Sanders was the primary sponsor, the total increases by four bills — two of which named post offices in Vermont. But let’s say you agree with Sanders on the issues. You like, as I know many do, that he is unafraid to demand what he thinks is right and accept nothing less. There is still one good reason not to vote for him. And that is this: A vote for
their tired Lucy and the football routine to see how many Democrats they can trick, once again, into suspending their disbelief and buying into the idea that, in a nation of 72 percent Republican and Independent voters, and in a Democratic party where a majority identify as either conservative or moderate, the most electable candidate is the most left-wing, radical Democrat we can find. In actuality, those polls are historically very poor predictors this far away from the general
at great political cost, to find the silver lining in communist regimes like Fidel Castro’s Cuba and the Soviet Union. But it’s not just the way Sanders looks at the world around us, it’s what he’s proposing here at home. Sanders’ policy proposals exhibit, too, the same disregard for the onthe-ground realities, political or otherwise, of the nation in which he wants to implement them. His policies are, on one hand, authoritarian and, on the other, unrealistic — bordering on the juvenile. Most people are aware of Sanders’ hallmark proposals, like nationalizing the health insurance industry (and kicking 217 million Americans off their private plans). It’s unsurprising, coming from someone who once said, “I favor the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries” — the last being a category of industry broad enough to scare the hell out of anyone who adheres to a political philosophy this side of communism. But some of Sanders’ lesser known policies may actually be more helpful in understanding his philosophy. Sanders wants the federal government to guarantee everyone a job (replete with paid vacations) and a home; get into the personal banking industry by charging 31,000 post offices around the country to provide basic banking services; legalize recreational marijuana nationwide by executive order on his first day in office (questionable given state laws criminalizing marijuana); force every company with an annual revenue over $100 million to be owned by at least 20 percent of its employees; and finally, put a cap on credit card
come from having an economy subject to government fiat. Interest rates too high? Cap them. People unemployed? Not to worry, the government will guarantee you a job. Perhaps he’s just telling people what he thinks they want to hear. Either way, what you’re left with is either a childish approach to policy or a cynical approach to politics. Unfortunately, when we look at Sanders’
Bernie in the primary is a vote for Trump in the general. Trump would destroy Bernie. Don’t be fooled. Bernie has not yet withstood the kind of scrutiny he’ll be subjected to in the general. Trump will have no qualms about painting Bernie as a closet communist. He will bash Sanders relentlessly for his praise of Fidel Castro (kiss Florida and her 29 electoral votes goodbye).
record as a member of Congress, the picture doesn’t change. His unwillingness to compromise has made him one of the least productive senators in recent memory. With Sanders, it’s everything or nothing, and since, in Washington, one
He will harp on quotes like “When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out
election, and without seeing the effect Trump’s scorched-earth attacks will have on Bernie’s support, they’re mostly useless. But there are some things we can look to for guidance: actual elections. In the 2018 midterm elections, Justice Democrats — a left-wing political action committee founded after the 2016 election — endorsed 78 candidates who espoused the ideology of Bernie Sanders (Medicare for All, Green New Deal, Abolish ICE). Of those 78, 7 won their primaries. And of those 7, only one won their race — which happened to be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). So, in a Democratic wave year in which Republicans lost 41 seats in the House, these Sanders-esque candidates didn’t even get on the scoreboard. Something tells me Sanders will have a similarly difficult time winning over disaffected, moderate Republicans. Don’t get me wrong, I get where Bernie is coming from. Bernie is speaking to people who feel the whole system has to change, people who feel dispossessed and unable to get ahead in the only nation in the world that has a dream named after it. But Bernie is the wrong man with the wrong revolution at the wrong time. His style may be appealing to some, but after four years of Donald Trump, do we really want to elect someone who just this week said, “This campaign is about asking one fundamental question: Which side are you on?” The corporations or the people? That’s not exactly the type of question that someone asks when trying to unify the country.
and consumer loans interest rates and ATM fees. The last proposal, I think, is helpful in understanding Sanders as a candidate and a politician. It is emblematic of what I call Sanders’ sophomoric socialism. Capping credit card interest rates sounds like a solid democratic-socialist policy on paper — but unfortunately, it seems that “on paper” is where it ends for Sanders. His website says this would protect ordinary Americans from credit card companies, or “modern day loan sharks,” as he calls them. Only, this policy has actually been tried before. Some years ago, the Chilean
rarely gets everything, Sanders has almost always gotten nothing. In his nearly 30 years as a congressman and senator, Sanders introduced 397 bills. He passed three. In 1991, he passed two bills: One declared March 4, 1991 as “Vermont Bicentennial Day”; the other called for the preservation of the Taconic Mountains. Then, in 2014, he ended his 23-year legislative drought with a bill that replaced the words “men” and “widows” with gender-neutral words in a veterans statute. In total, these three bills account for 840 words of
of a car.” And he will make no bones about unearthing previously forgotten essays in which Bernie has said, for example, a lack of female orgasms causes cervical and other cancers, that children too often have an “old bitch of a teacher” and that “the revolution comes when … a girl pushes aside all that her mother has ‘taught’ her and accepts her boyfriends (sic) love.” But what about the polls that say Bernie leads Trump nationally and in several swing states? Indeed, those polls are the key piece of evidence for the far-lefties who, every four years, trot out
BY ANDREW REED ’21 STAFF COLUMNIST In the first part of this two-part series, I argued that Bernie Sanders’ devotion to the cause of socialism has blinded him to the human cost of regimes that have implemented the kinds of policies he favors. He has bent over backwards,
“Bernie is speaking to people who feel the whole system has to change, people who feel dispossessed and unable to get ahead in the only nation in the world that has a dream named after it. But Bernie is the wrong man with the wrong revolution at the wrong time.”
What this country needs more than ever is someone with realistic plans for the future, someone thoughtful who will consider all the ramifications of his policies rather than dogmatically follow some half-baked, utopian philosophy. Bernie may be a lot of things, but he’s not that. Andrew Reed ’21 can be reached at andrew_reed@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
How the Houston Rockets improved by getting smaller BY GEORGE KLEIN ’20 SPORTS COLUMNIST Four weeks ago, the Houston Rockets decided to alter their roster dramatically after underperforming for most of this NBA season. They traded starting center Clint Capela to the Atlanta Hawks as part of a four-team trade, ultimately receiving forward Robert Covington in exchange. The move signaled the Rockets’ choice to play “small ball,” starting no one taller than 6-foot-7. At the time, many questioned Houston for the decision. After all, Capela had been a mainstay in the Rockets’ starting lineup for several seasons, and though the team had won two games playing small ball after Capela suffered a heel injury, it was widely assumed that the Rockets would need the center long-term. Houston disagreed — and so far, the Rockets have been proven correct. Since Capela’s injury, Houston has amassed an impressive 10-3 record, gaining ground on the top teams in the Western Conference. So why has this unconventional strategy paid off to such a great extent? The absence of Capela has unlocked guard Russell Westbrook. With Capela hanging around the paint in Houston’s half-court offense, West-
brook did not have enough room to operate on his drives and struggled to find success. He looked hesitant and was settling for too many three-pointers, which was certainly not ideal since he was shooting 25.3 percent on longrange attempts. Now, without Capela, the Rockets have more room when going to the basket — Westbrook often needs to beat just one defender to get a layup. Since the All-Star break, the point guard is averaging 30.6 points, 7.4 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game on 55.7 percent shooting, finally regaining his form. The insertion of the newly acquired Covington into the lineup has paid dividends too, giving the Rockets yet another three-point shooter. While Capela excelled at dunking lob passes from James Harden and playing in the pick-androll, he could not handle the ball or shoot from outside, allowing other teams with talented paint defenders to shut him down. But now, everyone on the floor for Houston is dangerous from behind the perimeter, which means every opposing player must cover the maximum amount of ground on defense. Over their last 13 games — since they went small — the Rockets rank second in the NBA in offensive rating with a 116.6 mark, up from their overall season number of 113.9. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ball, the team’s defense has not declined after the loss of
Capela. While the Rockets may not be tall, they are certainly stout on the defensive end. Between P.J. Tucker (playing center despite being 6-foot-5), Harden and Covington, Houston has plenty of players who fight against post-up attempts and get in the way of drives. In an overtime win against the Boston Celtics last Saturday, the Rockets made life difficult for Boston’s offense. Jayson Tatum shot just 9-27 from the floor, while Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart combined for an 18-45 mark. Boston could not get to the bucket with regularity, as they were stymied by the Rockets’ notable upper body strength. While Capela might appear to be far more imposing in the paint than Houston’s current players, the trend is clear — the Rockets rank fifteenth in the league with a 109.6 defensive rating over the entire regular season but rank ninth with a 109.8 defensive rating over their past thirteen games without Capela. Houston has been able to neutralize the loss of Capela on the defensive end. The roster has also stepped up to rebound at rates far better than anticipated. Covington, playing power forward, is averaging 8.4 rebounds per game since joining the Rockets. Tucker has enjoyed big performances on the glass — he collected 13 rebounds (six of them offensive boards) in Houston’s one-point win
over the Celtics. Thanks to the efforts of Houston’s undersized frontcourt and the rebounding abilities of guards Westbrook and Harden, the Rockets have kept close enough pace with opponents in rebounding to secure victories. Of course, the playoffs will ultimately determine the success of this small ball experiment, and the Rockets will have to face some of the premier big men in the league. The Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets especially pose problems for Houston moving forward. How can the Rockets defend stars like Anthony Davis and Nikola Jokic near the basket? Davis and Jokic have no trouble in using their strong frames to out-muscle opposing players who are far bigger than Houston’s current players guarding the paint. The Rockets have already shown that they can think outside the box, but they will have to up the ante again in April and May to reach the Finals. While playing small has certainly helped Houston improve during the regular season, the Rockets will have to prove this unusual method works when it matters most. George Klein ’20 can be reached at george_klein@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Opinions pieces published in The Herald — which include columns, op-eds , letters to the editor and editorials — are written independently of news coverage.
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2020
UNIVERSITY NEWS
SAT boost for low-income students could improve economic diversity U. Economics Professor Friedman co-authors paper on campus income segregation BY WILL KUBZANSKY SENIOR STAFF WRITER A new paper authored by a team of wellknown economists, including University Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs John Friedman, suggests that to improve economic diversity on college campuses, it may be time to give low-income students a boost. Friedman and his peers aimed to understand why in earlier research they found that “children from low-income families were much less likely to attend selective schools than children from high-income families,” he told The Herald. The paper also notes the “missing middle” class on campus: While plenty of middle-class students score highly on the SAT, a slimmer proportion make it to selective or “Ivy-plus” schools. The study concludes that universities could increase socioeconomic diversity in higher education if they admitted the same percentage of students from the lowest income bracket as the percentage of students who come from a higher income bracket and score 160 points higher on the SAT, and awarded similar but smaller bonuses for students from middle income levels. Currently, schools face two problems, Friedman said. Students from the highest income bracket who score well on the
SAT are admitted disproportionately over lower-income students who received the same score, according to the paper. But even if schools admitted a proportional number of qualified students from each income bracket, higher-income students would still be overrepresented on selective campuses. “There are more high-income students with high test scores than there
“We tried to understand, ‘how large is 160 points?’” Friedman said. He and his peers also questioned whether or not there was a precedent for giving any student a boost of that “magnitude” in current admissions proceedings. Friedman argued that schools have long given out a similar boost, but to different groups. Previous studies have shown that the 160-point boost is roughly
applicants. “Admissions officers were buddy-buddy with college counselors at private high schools for decades,” she said. “The amount of time that was invested in those relationships needs to shift to those (high school) counsel-
are low-income students” with similarly high test scores, Friedman said. If colleges — especially schools like Brown — want to match the economic demographics of their campus to the entire college-going population, Friedman said, they need to put in the extra effort. “Ivy-plus schools are picking from the very top of the academic preparation distribution,” Friedman said. “There just aren’t that many students from low-income families in that part of the distribution.” The paper attributes the discrepancy in the scores of low- and higher-income students to “disparities in schools, neighborhoods and other environmental factors.” To close this gap, the paper makes a simple suggestion: If low-income students attended schools at the rate that higher-income students with SAT scores roughly 160 points higher do, the proportion of low-income students on selective campuses would match the percentage of low-income students who attend college. A change like this would mean that the “student population at Brown would look the same as the population at (the University of Rhode Island), as at (Community College of Rhode Island),” campuses which are economically more diverse than the University, Friedman said.
equivalent to the boost received by favored groups in the college admissions process, Friedman explained. These groups include underrepresented minorities, recruited athletes and legacy students. Making campuses economically representative of the college-going population could have a “meaningful impact on upward mobility” in the United States, he said. “We find this type of thing would close about a quarter of the intergenerational mobility gaps as a whole for college students,” he added. Independent college counselor Sara Harberson said that the challenge with admitting a more economically diverse cohort of students doesn’t stem from the selection process. “It’s a recruitment issue. You need to have these low- and middle-income students in the applicant pool to be able to admit them,” she said. To get those students into the pool, Harberson said college admissions officers need to focus less on private high schools and well-performing public suburban high schools and more on the schools and neighborhoods where there is a higher concentration of low-income
ors who are really desperate for information and education about what Ivy-plus institutions expect.” Harberson added that the data the paper relied upon was from the early 1980s, and the 160-point “legacy boost” may not actually be equivalent to the advantages legacy students currently receive in the process today. Rather, she believes that the boost is most likely lower than what previous research has implied. “Being a legacy applicant is not what it used to be,” she said. “I don’t believe 160 points is the edge at this point in 2020. I think an admissions office will have a big target on their back if they do that on a regular basis.” Dana Goldstein ’06, a national correspondent who covers education for the New York Times, wrote about the paper in February. Goldstein said that while schools may be taking too many “safe bets” and “not taking risks” in the admissions process, implementation of what the paper suggests could present a challenge.
SUMMER ZHANG / HERALD
“You have to get people to apply to Ivy-plus schools that aren’t already applying. Then you have to offer them financial aid, or someone has to foot the bill,” she said. “All of this requires money and policy commitments.” Goldstein also said that some experts she has spoken to said they felt the paper was “too speculative” — and that more information on the costs and the tradeoffs would have added value to the paper. But Friedman made clear that the paper doesn’t suggest specifically implementing a boost for low-income students as policy. Instead, Friedman said, schools need to look at their own demographics to find appropriate solutions. “We do not propose a specific plan on how to get there,” he said. “But knowing how far away your destination is is a useful point in figuring out how you want to get there.”