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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

VOLUME CLVII, ISSUE 15

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Paxson speaks about Russia-Ukraine war At faculty meeting, U. announces aid for displaced Ukrainian scholars

University loosens masking restrictions Masks now optional for vaccinated people while performing, during athletics

BY ALEX NADIRASHVILI UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR President Christina Paxson P’19 spoke on the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the March 1 faculty meeting, detailing how the University is taking a “personalized” approach to supporting its students. “These are truly harrowing experiences for affected members of our community, and it’s hard to imagine how people can focus on being a student, ROSLYN CORIZ / HERALD being a good employee,” Paxson said. Paxson said the Office of the Provost is in contact with the Scholars at Risk “We reach out to individuals from af- Network and other resources. fected areas and make sure they’re okay and offer support.” scholars,” and the Office of the Provost The Division of Campus Life and the According to Paxson, the University is in contact with the Scholars at Risk Global Brown Center for International currently has 10 students who are known Network and other resources “to learn Students are also “looking into developto be from Ukraine, but she encouraged how we can help students and scholars ing opportunities for Ukrainian students faculty members to reach out if they from Ukraine.” this summer in case they can’t safely “know of students or colleagues who The University has previously worked return home,” Paxson said. are having a difficult time.” with the Scholars at Risk Network to The University is also a member of Paxson also explained that the potentially bring displaced Afghan multiple other higher education groups, University plans to continue being “a scholars to Brown, The Herald previsafe haven for displaced students and ously reported. SEE UKRAINE PAGE 6

BY HALEY SANDLOW SENIOR STAFF WRITER The University announced new loosened masking restrictions in certain settings for individuals who are up to date with COVID-19 vaccines in a community-wide email Wednesday from Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 MA’06. Individuals who have “received all recommended COVID-19 vaccines, including any booster dose(s) when eligible,” are considered “up to date” on COVID-19 vaccines, Carey wrote. According to the email, the modified masking regulations allow fully-vaccinated lecturers to remove their masks while speaking at events sponsored by academic or administrative departments and

student organizations. Previously, fully-vaccinated instructors could remove their masks throughout the duration of a class. Students and audience members must continue to wear masks throughout the duration of instruction or other presentations. The new policy also allows fully-vaccinated community members to remove their masks while performing in theater productions, dance and music performances and a cappella concerts, Carey wrote. Performers may remove their masks during rehearsals as well. The loosened restrictions also include modifications to masking during indoor athletic and recreation activities. Vaccinated individuals may remove their masks when engaging in “varsity athletic practice and competition, club and intramural athletic competition” and during the “use of indoor athletic facilities such as the Nelson Fitness Center,” Carey wrote. The email cited “improving pub-

SEE MASKING PAGE 8

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Faculty postpone vote on establishing PPE Center

U. endowment crosses tax threshold

Corporation updates, Task Force on Child Care also discussed at March faculty meeting BY ALEX NADIRASHVILI UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR Members of the University’s faculty and administration opted to delay a vote on establishing a proposed Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the March 1 faculty meeting. The vote will instead be held at the May 3 faculty meeting. The vote on establishing the proposed center has already been delayed, after previously being scheduled for the February faculty meeting, The Herald previously reported. Govind Menon PhD’01, professor of applied mathematics, opened the meeting on behalf of the Faculty Executive Committee and outlined the committee’s proposed timeline for future consideration of the establishment of the PPE Center on campus. Faculty members have expressed

concern with voting on the establishment of the center before the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management decides on a proposal altering the University’s gift policy, The Herald previously reported. The proposal was submitted by Scholars at Brown for Climate Action and aims for the University to “avoid business with groups … that support climate disinformation and support obstruction,” J. Timmons Roberts, professor of environmental and society and sociology, said at the February faculty meeting. The Office of the President has received ACURM’s report, which will be posted with a feedback form on ACURM’s website today, Menon said. This posting will be open for public comment until March 15. Paxson will also issue a communication about ACURM’s recommendation through Today@Brown, Menon added. The FEC will hold a Faculty Commons to facilitate discussion of the ACURM recommendations March 18 at noon. There will be space for further discussion of the recommendations

SEE PPE PAGE 5

Brown must pay taxes on investments after 51.5% endowment returns in FY21 BY MIZUKI KAI SENIOR STAFF WRITER Due to the 51.5% returns on Brown’s endowment in fiscal year

2021, Brown now has joined a handful of universities that pay taxes on their endowments, according to Bloomberg. With its recent growth, Brown joins universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Stanford in qualifying for paying taxes on its endowment. The endowment tax, the specifics of which were finalized in 2020, was created under Section 4968 of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in December 2017. The legislation “imposes a 1.4%

tax on net investment income at private colleges and universities with at least 500 tuition-paying students and assets of $500,000 per student,” according to a statement on behalf of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, an organization advocating for the financial interests of higher education institutions, provided to The Herald by Ken Redd, senior director for research

SEE ENDOWMENT PAGE 10

DANA RICHIE / HERALD

Under tax rules finalized in 2020, universities with more than 500 paying students and $500,000 in assets per student must pay a 1.4% tax on net investment income.

S&R

Metro

Commentary

U. researchers find asteroid has iron shell, rocky interior Page 3

2022 Research Seed Awards recipients were announced last month Page 9

Businesses on Westminster St. discuss pandemic struggles Page 10

Sender ’25: PVD should revitalize downtown, not Kennedy Plaza Page 11

TODAY TOMORROW

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RAPHAEL LI ’24 DESIGN CHIEF

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

ARTS & CULTURE

‘Don’t Look Up’: Just look away from this heavy-handed satire Oscar-nominated political satire one of most excruciating watches of 2021 BY FINN KIRKPATRICK SENIOR STAFF WRITER When making a movie, “why” is a question that should be asked constantly. Why are the characters doing what they are doing? Why should this movie be made? Why should the audience care? The whys of “Don’t Look Up” are all over the place. Even for satire, every character’s motivations and responses to the events of the film are so far-fetched and stilted that it makes no sense why anyone is doing anything at all. This movie is supposedly an allegory for the impending doom of the climate crisis, but it is presented with an unnecessarily preachy tone and a complete lack of subtlety. As a result, “Don’t Look Up” fails to fulfill its answer to the question of “why”: It fails at making any sort of thought-provoking commentary on the current state of political discourse. Instead, the movie comes off as an avenue for director Adam McKay to boast his moral superiority and supposed brilliance to all the plebeian viewers who don’t quite have such a righteous view of this planet we call Earth. “Don’t Look Up” follows two astronomers, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), who discover a massive

comet hurtling toward Earth with extinction-level implications. They try to warn the president (Meryl Streep) and her son who serves as chief of staff (Jonah Hill), but immediately get scoffed at. They then embark on a global media tour trying to spread the word of humanity’s impending doom. It’s pretty obvious that the comet in this film represents climate change. Its dismissal by the White House and eventually the national media symbolizes the collective underplaying and denial of the existential threat of climate change. This is an important issue — maybe the most important of our time — which is why it is so disappointing that it was handled with the subtlety of singing karaoke while intoxicated. On top of the two astronomers, two morning show hosts, Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) and Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry), are central characters in the film as the primary media outlet depicted. In Dr. Mindy and Dibiasky’s first appearance on the show, the hosts downplay the severity of the situation by trying to make the story more digestible for audiences. This results in Dibiasky yelling and storming off the set. This scene is one of the best examples of the many times throughout this film when the social commentary is so detached from reality that it becomes infuriating to watch. The issue with McKay’s allegory is that the immediate emergency of an approaching comet would so obviously be treated differently than the slowly-worsening

COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Much of the film’s social commentary feels detached from reality and painfully on the nose. consequences of climate change. Satire should have a kernel of truth in its own world. This fundamental difference between the impending disaster in the movie and its real-life counterpart make it so that every time one of these statements is made, the audience gets bashed over the head by a very broad, shallow political claim without any substance in the film to back it up. The morning show hosts are so absurd in their negligence that the film goes beyond highlighting a specific aspect of the modern media in delivering its message. Another main aspect of the film comes with tech magnate Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), who realizes there are precious metals on the comet and tries to retrieve these metals for his personal financial gain. In case the commentary isn’t clear, every one of these

moments is dialed up to eleven. The movie depicts billionaires as bad and greedy and nothing more, once again demonstrating a pertinent social issue completely bulldozed by a broad stroke with no nuance. To add to this, Rylance’s performance is flat-out terrible. He’s uncomfortable to watch on screen, not in a purposeful way, but in a manner that makes you wonder if he even cared. In fact, most of the performances are on a similar level. A screenplay that has no depth and is completely over the top is going to yield performances with those very same characteristics. Despite gathering a troupe of some of the greatest actors alive, McKay reduced them to cartoon characters hammering away at one poorly developed point for nearly two and a half hours. This film is clearly trying to get au-

diences to think and maybe even change their minds in the end. But in practice, the exact opposite occurs. Since the message of this film lacks any refinement, it waters down important issues to a one sentence blurb: Climate change is bad, and so are the people denying it. This is true, and hopefully everyone knows that. But we certainly don’t need someone making a movie to prove a point that condescends to the viewer at any chance it can get. Someone who disagrees with McKay’s message going in will disagree with it far more going out because the movie makes no attempt to actually reckon with any of the issues presented. It seems that McKay, one of the primary shapers of the comedic canon of the 2000s, is now on track to define the shallow, self-righteous political satire of the 2020s. In the end, “Don’t Look Up” is much like the Instagram story of a recently politically-emboldened middle schooler who has yet to learn the ways of effective activism or political nuance, but still wholeheartedly believes their repost of some widely-accepted take will monumentally shift the cultural conversation. In the case of the middle schooler, their actions should not be examined too carefully under a microscope because they have time to grow and learn. McKay should not be granted the same forgiveness — he is 53 years old and has had plenty of time to see the world. He should have learned to make something a whole lot deeper.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

University researchers uncover makeup of asteroid Psyche Researchers propose that Psyche consists of iron shell, other rocky components BY MEENA PANDIT CONTRIBUTING WRITER Researchers from Brown and Purdue University have discovered that the asteroid known as Psyche is likely composed of less metallic iron than scientists originally presumed, and that it may include other hidden rocky components. NASA is planning a mission to visit Psyche in 2026. Lead author of the study Fiona Nichols-Fleming GS was inspired to study Psyche because there are several “big questions” regarding Psyche to address “before (NASA) actually gets there and gets to do all these great observations.” Psyche is an M-type asteroid, part of a group of asteroids with highly reflective surfaces that indicate a metal-rich composition, Nichols-Fleming said. However, in recent years, scientists have discovered that Psyche is only half as dense as expected for a supposed giant mass of iron. If the asteroid’s composition was mostly iron, Psyche would have to be about 52% empty space, according to the new density measurements. Nichols-Fleming and Alex Evans, co-author of the study assistant professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, decided to examine the likelihood that the iron body asteroid could maintain the required 52% porosity to match this density. The team found that “it is not possible for it to be maintained.”

As Nichols-Fleming explained, an initial asteroid at its starting temperature is conductively cooling, or radiating heat out of its surface. If it is warm enough, material can become malleable and pore space can be removed during this process. “Imagine leaving butter out on your counter that is still solid, poking a hole in it and then pressing on it a little bit. If it’s warm enough, you can kind of close that hole back up,” Nichols-Fleming said. With this concept in mind, Nichols-Fleming devised a computer model that would determine the critical temperature at which Psyche’s 52% porosity could be maintained. Her study revealed that Psyche would have had to cool to about 800 Kelvin before gaining the high porosity required to match the observed low densities of metal-rich asteroids. This temperature is “really quite cold for something like the interior of an asteroid,” Nichols-Fleming said. “Porosity-adding events occurred early on in the solar system evolution, but at that point in time, Psyche in its initial state would have just been too warm and would not have been able to hold onto that porosity.” This data shows that Psyche’s low density cannot be due to empty space alone. In this study, Nichols-Fleming suggests that it is instead due to a “hidden rocky component.” The researchers hypothesized ferro volcanism as a potential explanation for why Psyche would have a metal-rich surface without an entirely metal-rich body. “You could have a body that was a two-layer structure, … a more rocky mantle and then an iron core,” Nichols-Fleming explained. Under the right conditions, the iron

COURTESY OF FIONA NICHOLS-FLEMING

This graph indicates final bulk porosities, or empty space, in a model of the Psyche asteroid with initially uniform temperatures and porosity. The model was created to study the amount of pure iron in the asteroid. core could erupt metal onto the surface, she added. Professor Emeritus of Geological Sciences Peter Schultz proposed a different mechanism by which Psyche acquired its metallic surface. In his previous experiments, Schultz has investigated what happens when asteroids are impacted at high speeds. Contrary to previous theories that projectile material would be blown away, he found that it could plaster itself onto the surface of the celestial body it hits. “Psyche could have started, as people have suggested, (as) an iron core, but then it could have collected its own (rocky) shell through repeated impacts,” Schultz said. According to his theory, Psyche could have then undergone a “giant impact” that dug into its metal core and redistributed that metal across the surface.

The bright metal surfaces of M-type asteroids are “either because of ferro volcanism or a result of impacts that may be exposing a metallic core or a more metallic rich subsurface,” Schultz said. Regardless of which model holds true, “this is how science works,” Schultz said. “You have multiple models that you’re trying to create, and these models help focus the questions that you’re going to ask when you start examining the body.” With only one model, scientists could get blindsided and ask the wrong questions. Having more than one theory is critically important, “especially for a mission like Psyche because Psyche is turning out to be one strange beast,” he added. Studying Psyche and other M-type asteroids can provide information about

the early solar system. “An asteroid is one piece of the evolution of the solar system puzzle. How exactly it fits in, we don’t know yet,” Evans said. “If for some reason Psyche is very highly porous pure iron, I think that either you have perhaps a very unlikely series of events or perhaps we need to reconsider our understanding of the timing of events as they happened very early on in the solar system.” Acquiring more information about these asteroids will provide researchers with insight into the formation of the solar system, and ultimately, the origin of life, Nichols-Fleming said. The NASA mission to Psyche will launch on Aug. 1. With the enigma of Psyche on the cusp of being revealed, “you better hold onto your bootstraps,” Schultz said. “This will be a very exciting mission.”

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Pembroke Center hosts discussion on evolution of pride flag Panelists discuss flag’s history, presentday implications for LGBTQIA+ community

BY KAITLYN TORRES UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR On Wednesday, the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women held a virtual panel discussion titled “Over the Rainbow: (Re)Considering the Pride Flag(s).” The event was hosted by the Center’s LGBTQIA+ Thinking initiative which, according to its website, is “devoted to the active production of knowledge generated from and about sexual minorities.” The event was led by Lynne Joyrich, director of the LGBTQIA+ Thinking initiative and professor of modern culture and media, and included four panelists: Liz Collins, a multimedia artist; Michelle Millar Fisher, curator of contemporary decorative arts at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; Alex Verman Green, writer and law student; and Ivan Ramos, assistant professor of theater arts and performance studies. The purpose of the discussion, according to the event page, was to explore the evolution of the pride flag from a symbol of gay pride to its current symolization of “a broader, global LGBTQIA+ coalition.” The discussion began with opening remarks by Leela Gandhi, director of the Pembroke Center, and Joyrich. In reference to the name of the event, Joyrich asked, “Are we now over the rainbow in the sense that we are beyond” pride flags, or does the flag still promise new possibilities for the LGBTQIA+ community? Fisher kicked off the event with her presentation, “Collecting Pride Flags.”

KAITLYN TORRES / HERALD

At a panel Wednesday, the LGBTQIA+ Thinking initiative explored the evolution of the pride flag. The discussion began with opening remarks from event leader Lynne Joyrick, director of the LGBTQIA+ Thinking initiative. She discussed the Museum of Modern Art’s acquisition of the original pride flag, created by Gilbert Baker in 1978, as part of the museum’s modern contemporary design collection. The collection brought in symbols and icons of the time, including the pride flag. The museum hung the flag June 26, 2015, the day the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Fisher said. Referencing a photo from the day, she said that “it was one of the moments actually working as a museum curator that it felt as if you could do something that was useful in the world.” Fisher also wrote a children’s book published by MoMA centered on the design of the pride flag, she added. We “wanted to create something that would be a … longer-lasting part of this conversation around the design,” Fisher said. After Fisher’s presentation, Green discussed their article on the pride flag’s recent redesign and its evolving nature, which was featured in The Atlantic last

year. The article discussed the fact that Intersex Equality UK debuted a new design of the flag last year which included the intersex symbol. “I had the opportunity to talk to several individuals who had their own complicated relationships with the pride flag,” they said. Green expressed “critiques of visibility” in relation to Pride. They referenced how several companies change their logos to the flag during Pride Month as a form of inclusion. Green added that while some may be quick to view this behavior as evidence that these companies “don’t care about gay people,” that sentiment ignores the larger issue of exploitation by corporations, specifically in the Global South. “To limit our analysis of the authenticity or inauthenticity of certain gestures … inadvertently reifies the idea of an LGBTQ community that exists independently to its relationship to capitalism,” they said. “We risk invisibilizing the invisible hand of the market

by framing the problem only in terms of what these brands can do” for the LGBTQ+ community, they added. After Green’s remarks, Collins discussed her performance art installation project called Knitting Nation. Founded in 2005, the first phase of the project was the knitting of an American flag in 2005 at Governor’s Island. Collins read an excerpt about her project from Catherine Lord’s book “Art and Queer Culture,” which said that Collins “deploys knitting machine site-specific installation, performance and a small army of collaborators to manufacture comments on the interaction of humans and machines.” Phase four of her project focused on the reproduction of a pride flag. She employed the Providence community — including students at RISD, where she was previously a faculty member — and created a flag at Waterplace Park in Providence. “The Knitting Nation project was extremely generative for me,” Collins

said, adding that she has now completed fifteen iterations of the project. The final presenter was Ramos, who played a scene from a Pride event in the “Sex and the City” reboot “And Just Like That.” The clip shows Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) dodging her son and his girlfriend at an event where her nonbinary partner, Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez), is speaking, as she had not yet come out to her family as queer. “I couldn’t help but feel held by the fact that whenever I find myself surrounded by such a cheery spirit of Pride and its flags, I often feel like running away in horror,” Ramos said. Diaz “allowed us to recognize the narcissist part of us that wants to embrace the possibility of being proud and boisterous, free from shame,” he said. The next LGBTQIA+ Thinking event is a screening of experimental shorts titled “Queer Spaces and Places” in the Granoff Center March 21 at 5 p.m.

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PPE FROM PAGE 1 and PPE proposal at the April 5 faculty meeting, Menon said. Roberts encouraged all faculty members to “carefully look” at ACURM’s report at yesterday’s meeting. “Brown could become a leader in this area by leading an effort to create a clearing house or protocol … to screen donors and business partners,” Roberts added. “Large nonprofits and universities will be very interested in this. We could make a huge difference on a number of issues that are really fundamental to our values.” Menon advised the faculty to “preserve the spirit of robust debate and due process that lie at the foundation of our governance system” as considerations continue. The meeting also featured the President’s Report, in which Paxson announced that Mukesh Jain’s tenure as the dean of medicine and biological sciences began March 1. Tejal Desai PhD’94 will begin her tenure as dean

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS of engineering starting Sept. 1. Paxson added that the University’s internal search for a new dean of faculty is coming to a close. The President’s Report also summarized the February Corporation meeting, where the Corporation approved a 2.85% undergraduate tuition increase, a salary pool for faculty and staff of 4.25% and an employee appreciation bonus, The Herald previously reported. The Corporation also accepted gifts of about $140 million, including a $10 million gift to directly support the Brown-Tougaloo Partnership. Five million dollars of the gift will be held in the Tougaloo College endowment to support scholarships of present Tougaloo students, while the other half will support Tougaloo students when they come to Brown as special students, graduate students and medical students, according to Paxson. Paxson also addressed the University’s new financial projects, including expansions of the University’s research activity, academic innovations that

build on the Open Curriculum, building the residential experience, reimagining the CareerLAB and consolidating financial gains. Speaking on the recent decision to extend the BrownTogether Campaign goal by $1 billion, Paxson highlighted shifts in the aims of the campaign, including a new focus on providing additional financial aid to veterans and international students. Paxson also commented on the Federal Trade Commission and Rhode Island Attorney General’s recent rejection of the proposed merger between Lifespan and Care New England, and the two health systems’ decision to withdraw their merger application. “We want this to be a region where everybody can access really great medical care … Between the med school and the School of Public Health, we have the opportunity to really make that happen,” Paxson said. “We’re going to continue that work..” Menon spoke further on the formation of a joint Task Force on Child Care

JULIA GROSSMAN / HERALD

The meeting also featured a report from Paxson and a moment of silence for the passing of two faculty members. organized by the FEC and the Office of the Provost. The task force is charged with assessing pre-K child care for faculty, staff and graduate students, according to Menon. The task force will be co-chaired by Dave Sobel, professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, Lisa Di Carlo MA’97 PhD’01, lecturer in sociology, and Elizabeth Doherty,

deputy provost for academic affairs. The group is expected to submit an initial report to the FEC and the Office of the Provost by the end of spring 2022. The meeting also featured moments of silence for the passing of John Coleman, professor emeritus of biology, and Andrew Holowinsky, associate professor emeritus of molecular biology, cell biology and biochemistry.

ARTS & CULTURE

Jude Sandy ’05 MFA’09 discusses path to directing ‘Gem of the Ocean’ Sandy decided to pursue career in fine arts while studying at University BY LAURA DAVID ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR In his latest directorial endeavor, Jude Sandy ’05 MFA’09 is helming Providence-based Trinity Repertory Company’s production of August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean.” The play is the first of ten in Wilson’s “American Century Cycle,” a series of plays each detailing the African American experience during a different decade of the 20th century. The production will run from Feb. 24 to March 27 at Trinity, The Herald previously reported. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, Sandy moved to the United States at 20 and came to the University through the Resumed Undergraduate Education program. While he began his studies intending to concentrate in philosophy, he said that he was quickly drawn to the Africana Studies and Theater Arts and Performance Studies departments. He added that, though he grew up around the arts, he only realized performance could be a career upon his arrival at the University. Sandy said that part of what prepared him for a career in performance is “that the culture in Trinidad and Tobago is really rich — it’s very much based in song and music,” Sandy said. “That was something that I was involved in as a young person but not ever with the thought that the performing arts could be a profession. It was just kind of one of the things that people did as part of their lives.” He’s now based in Philadelphia and works as both a director and teacher at various institutions, he said. After taking a class in modern dance with Julie Strandberg, distinguished senior lecturer in TAPS, Sandy’s mind was made up — he wanted to pursue fine arts, he said. “It really just kind of took my life over in a way that I hadn’t dared to think about before,” Sandy said. Starting with dance, he eventually moved into theater, drawn specifically to the way in which the medium combined the physicality of dance with the ex-

pressiveness of human voice, he added. Strandberg eventually became Sandy’s mentor, and her impact deeply informed the rest of his life and career, he said. “Jude and I are still colleagues. When he’s in town, he comes over. We’re in constant contact,” Strandberg said. “I feel like he’s always been in my life … I just remember the instant connection and seeing the artist that he was, and I just gravitated” to that. Despite not being a trained dancer before entering her class, Sandy had a “physical intelligence” and “bodily awareness” that allowed him to take to the craft quickly, Strandberg said. “He definitely had an ability to communicate through his body really early on.” Sandy attributed to Strandberg his appreciation for not only the craft, but also the art community. “As soon as you learn, you teach. As soon as you acquire a skill or expertise, it’s your responsibility to share that knowledge and expertise with other people,” Sandy said. This commitment to artistry as a means of community building, he added, was ultimately one that stuck with him beyond his days as an undergraduate. After finishing his undergraduate degree, Sandy moved to New York City to begin his career in theater. Though he had some “significant successes” there as a performer, he returned to Providence to continue his theater journey with Trinity Repertory Company as a member of the Brown/Trinity MFA program. “My life in New York City made it harder to feel like I was experiencing the kind of community that I did as a student at Brown,” Sandy said. He “chose to become a company member at Trinity Rep because it is a community, and it is a group of people who are invested in one another’s development and greatest fulfillment as artists.” Trinity Rep was founded in the 1960s and has received a number of accolades, including a Tony Award in 1981, according to its website. The joint MFA program was developed with the University to bring talent to the Rhode Island area, Sandy said. “Trinity Rep happens to be one of the few regional theaters left that still has a resonant company,” Sandy said. “The regional theater movement was founded on this idea that these companies have resident companies of actors, directors and designers who would work together over time to develop their own

aesthetic and really speak for the culture of the place they’re set in.” It was also while studying for his graduate degree that Sandy met Curt Columbus, the program’s artistic director who invited Sandy to direct “Gem of the Ocean.” “I’ve had the great pleasure to have known Jude Sandy during my entire tenure at Trinity,” Columbus wrote in an email to The Herald. “He was my student in my first year of teaching at Brown/Trinity, and our artistic partnership has endured ever since.” During his time at Trinity, Sandy moved around the organization and occupied numerous roles, first as an MFA acting student and later as a fulltime professional company member. He said he was drawn especially to choreographing. By the time he decided to make the move to directing, Sandy had already choreographed six shows at Trinity. The experience gave him access to the world of theater production, so he felt equipped with the skills needed to meet the demands of directing, he said. It was through multiple conversations with Columbus that Sandy decided to make the shift, Sandy said. Sandy had his directorial debut at Connecticut College, bringing to the stage “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884–1915,” which was written by fellow University alum Jackie Sibblies Drury MFA’10. From there, he returned to Trinity, where he directed two more productions — including Wilson’s “Radio Golf,” the chronological finale of the “American Century Cycle.” Now, he is following “Radio Golf” with “Gem of the Ocean.” Working in Providence again, Sandy said that he has found the community that drew him to Trinity in the first place. The play features a cast of seven, almost all of whom have had previous experience with the company. One member has even worked with the group for over 40 years, he added. Trinity “provides for its company a relationship with these artists, who they get to see grow and develop over the years,” Sandy said. The benefits of Trinity’s tightknit atmosphere extend beyond just providing camaraderie for the artists,

COURTESY OF JUDE SANDY

“Gem of the Ocean” is one of ten plays in Wilson’s “American Century Cycle” series. Sandy added. In producing “Gem of the Ocean,” he said those strong bonds proved necessary to successfully perform the play itself — especially for a company of actors that has spent much of the last two years off the stage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In putting on the play, Trinity has had to adopt a number of rigid protocols, including stringent masking and COVID-19 monitoring, Sandy said. He noted that both the crew and the actors have had to get used to the rigors of the theater once again. “Every decision takes a lot more thinking and problem solving in order to make a production work,” he said. “It’s exhausting.” Sandy explained that his actors are working to fulfill the “great demand” of Wilson’s play. “Anyone who has done his work will say to you that it’s one of the greatest challenges that, as an actor, you can ever take on,” Sandy said. “Actors working on August Wilson eventually compare him to Shakespeare because that is the magnitude of both the poetry and the depth of the humanity that finds union in his work.” But the play is worth the exhaustion and struggle, Sandy said. Set in Pittsburg at the turn of the 20th century, “Gem of the Ocean” follows a community in the city’s Hill District, particularly its protagonist, Citizen Barlow, who arrives from Alabama in search of a new life, The Herald previously reported. Barlow is then sent on a journey of spiritual awakening that forces him to reckon with himself and the history of his people. The entire show takes place in his host Aunt Ester’s living room. The play grapples with the tensions of its age, Sandy said — particularly that of the Great Migration and the political

strife that came with it. It was precisely because of that tension that Sandy and the team at Trinity felt the play was perfectly timed for audiences in the current moment. “We’re in the midst of a great transition in America right now,” Sandy said. “We’re still very much grappling with the unrest that comes out of seeing the experiences that African Americans have been living that have remained invisible for a long time.” “I also hope that people will take away an appreciation for how important it is for every one of us — whatever our background is — to have a deep sense of our own history, our own heritage, our own place in the world,” Sandy added. If there’s anybody who can rise to the challenge of fulfilling such a goal, Strandberg said, it’s Sandy. Sandy’s aptitude for other disciplines, including philosophy, has allowed him to bring an additional level of depth to his art, particularly in taking on “Gem of the Ocean,” Strandberg said. The play demands a level of complexity from both those attempting to bring it to life and the audience members who arrive to see it, she added. “You’re not turning your back on philosophy because you’re dancing,” Strandberg said. “You’re just using dance rather than the written word … All those philosophical thoughts, those (are) things that dancers are dealing with.” “Wilson is telling an American story through a certain lens, and I think Jude has the complexity muscle to be able to do that while honoring the individual characters,” she added. “Everybody watching this should not think this is about somebody else … If you’re really true to Black artists, they’re going to be telling you a universal story.”

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Essential workers describe working through snow day Dining halls remained open while admin offices, classrooms closed

open on Friday, Barboza wrote. During the Jan. 29 blizzard, only the Ratty and the V-Dub remained open. The Brown Faculty Club and the School of Engineering Cafe were both closed Friday in order to “reallocate staff to further support the units that were open,” Barboza wrote. All Brown Dining Services staff are

considered “essential employees,” according to Barboza. Therefore, workers are “required” to come in during “inclement weather,” Barboza wrote. He also wrote that if employees are unable to safely come in for work, Dining Services instructs them to be in touch with their supervisor “in the same way they would for illness, family matters

or other circumstances.” According to the union’s collective bargaining agreement, Dining Services employees are required to work during inclement weather regardless of whether or not University offices are closed but receive “compensable time off in an amount equal to the number of hours worked during the

closing.” According to the contract, union workers also receive “compensatory pay” — either time-and-a-half or double time — for each hour that they worked during the storm. Accommodations “on or near campus” are provided for workers to stay overnight in bad weather if they choose, but the University does not require them to stay, Barboza wrote. Most of the shifts on Friday were of normal length, Barboza noted, but some staff had to work extended hours due to scheduled overtime that was not necessarily related to the storm. Nanyeli Rosa, who works in food prep at Andrews, said she drove to work and that “it wasn’t that bad to come.” She also confirmed Barboza’s statement that workers were not forced to come for shifts and Dining Services could call in replacements who were normally scheduled for other days if conditions proved unsafe. Aris Adames, another Andrews employee in food prep, also drove to work on Friday. While she said the roads were icy, her biggest challenge was “finding parking.” The city of Providence instituted a parking ban on city streets from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. on Friday. Neither Rosa nor Adames are union members, so they did not receive any additional payment or time off, they said.

recent graduates on other types of visas from being deported. Paxson also responded to recent calls by Congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, for the deportation of Russian university students, stating that “Brown would be strongly opposed to the deportation of any of our students.” “We are a global university. We believe in the power of education and scholarship to bring people and

nations together,” Paxson said. “The investments we make in students and in scholarship are long-term investments in the peaceful future that we all hope for.” Paxson also addressed community criticisms of the letter that she released Sunday, co-authored by Provost Richard Locke P’18 and Vice President for Campus Life Eric Estes, detailing the University’s support of its community during this time.

Paxson said that some community members felt the letter should’ve contained a “full-throated condemnation of the Russian nation” and criticized the University for not issuing statements in the past regarding other global conflicts. “Our general approach as an institution is actually to avoid making public statements of outrage or condemnation in response to events that occur around the world unless they are

specifically relevant to members of our community,” Paxson said. “We are, however, very vocal on policy issues, like (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) or immigration matters, that are vitally important to members of our community,” Paxson added, referencing her previous expression of support for students benefiting from the DACA program. “We also communicate about actions that we’re taking to address issues of concern.”

BY EMILY FAULHABER SENIOR STAFF WRITER Although students were granted a day of canceled and virtual classes last Friday due to a snowstorm, normal operations continued for some University workers. Only eight staff members missed work due to the weather, according to an email to The Herald from Vice President of Dining Programs George Barboza, and the rest of the University’s dining employees continued work as usual. The snow began overnight leading into Friday and continued to fall into the evening. About 3.4 inches of snow accumulated throughout the day. In an email written to University students by Executive Vice President of Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, the University discouraged “non-essential travel” as “heavy snowfall, high winds and ice” posed a “serious risk.” While the COVID-19 test pick up sites and University administrative offices were closed, the Sharpe Refectory, Verney-Woolley Dining Hall, Andrews Commons and Josiah’s all remained

UKRAINE FROM PAGE 1 including the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities, that have “called for the secretary of homeland security and the secretary of state to issue temporary protected status and special student relief for Ukrainian nationals residing and studying in the U.S.,” Paxson said. This would prevent students from losing their F-1 visa status and protect

JED FOX / HERALD

The Sharpe Refectory, Verney-Woolley Dining Hall, Andrews Commons and Josiah’s remained open amid the extreme weather last Friday.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

101st

FEAT URING

Gina M. Raimondo U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Growth, Innovation and Equity: Ensuring American Global Competitiveness in the 21st Century

Tuesday, March 15, 2022 | 5 p.m. Tickets Required For more information, please visit brown.edu/ogden This event is free and open to the public. Exact location provided with registration. Brown or government-issued ID required. Backpacks, large bags and laptops are not allowed.

To request special services, accommodations or assistance for this event, please contact Event Strategy and Management at universityevents@brown.edu or 401-863-3100.

Attendees must comply with all University COVID-19 policies and protocols in place at the time of the event.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

ARTS & CULTURE

‘Nightmare Alley’ captivates in fatalistic telling of human folly Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-nominated noir remake explores dark carnival corners BY IRENE CHOU ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR “People fool themselves.” It is this chilling truth that overshadows the fatalistic trajectories of fallible characters in Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-nominated melodrama, “Nightmare Alley,” a remake of the classic 1947 noir based on William Lindsay Gresham’s novel of the same name. Bradley Cooper plays the main character, Stanton Carlisle, a man haunted by a past as dark and despicable as the film’s traveling carnivals, in which both humans and animals are abused and exploited to the delight of carnival audiences. It is then no surprise that this is also where Stan chooses to lay low for the time being at the start of the film. Still, it may only be through the glimpses of violence shown early on that audiences are made dimly aware of Stan’s calculating ruthlessness. To the tawdry crew of carnival performers, hired and overseen by the more brazenly cold-blooded Clem (Willem Dafoe), Stan is charming and personable. He changes his demeanor effortlessly to match the seedy environment, utilizing the hospitality of married mind-read-

MASKING FROM PAGE 1 lic health conditions on campus and very high compliance rates with regard to the COVID-19 vaccination booster requirement” as reasons for the modifications to masking restrictions. The University’s up-to-date mask-wearing requirements can be found on Brown’s Campus Activity Status page. The change comes at a time when the University is feeling “really good”

ing duo Zeena (Toni Collette) and Pete (David Strathairn). Joining the couple for homely meals and banter, Stan is quickly drawn to their mentalism act, a masterfully crafted performance that once launched the husband and wife on tours across Europe. Pete eventually reveals, on one dreary night, the secret behind the pair’s bygone success — divination tricks actually relying on secret verbal codes and hand gestures between the assistant and psychic. Pete also teaches Stan the nuances of mentalism and clairvoyance. People too often think themselves difficult to read. Yet people’s eagerness to be read, somewhat similar to a reader’s willing suspension of disbelief while perusing a novel, is palpable once the act is underway. All one needs to do is to be attentive to the details that belie one’s identity, the breadcrumbs of the past littered across one’s appearance, ranging from an uneven gait to jewelry, clothing and other trinkets. Stan’s fascination with the craft of mind-reading brings to the forefront the film’s central question of seeing and being seen. Del Toro’s darkly sumptuous scenes, more often practical set pieces than computer-generated ones, are meticulously speckled with the motif of a watchful eye. As Stan takes on the persona of a burdened mentalist after leaving the carnival, his confidence in his skill and wit turns into self-destructive hubris.

about public health trends of positive COVID-19 cases reported on campus, Carey told The Herald. According to the most recent campus COVID-19 update, 88 students and six employees reported positive COVID-19 cases from Feb. 17 to 23, a decline in cases for the second week in a row from a high of 361 in mid-February. At this point in the semester, many in-person events are taking place, Carey said, including performances this

COURTESY OF KERRY HAYES VIA 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

“Nightmare Alley” stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Willem Dafoe and was directed by Guillermo del Toro. Standing center-stage in high-end nightclubs and wearing a silk bandana — featuring an image of the single premonitory eye — that ironically obscures his vision, Stan seems to read the unseen. In time, this supposed omniscience feeds into his desires for more fame, more profits. It becomes all too clear that Stan is blind to the fact that he is being watched, read and dissected. With the entrance of Cate Blanchett’s Dr. Lilith Ritter, an amoral psychiatrist with a network of influential clientele, Stan’s life gradually spins out of control. “You don’t fool people, Stan,” Lilith hisses into his ear, “they fool themselves.” Caught carrying out a grifting act with everything to lose, he fails spectacularly. The psychic thus betrays his own prideful folly, catalyzed

weekend — which the University was “mindful” of when making changes to masking requirements. The modification to masking requirements is particularly important for students involved in performing arts, and exercising unmasked “makes for a much more enjoyable fitness experience,” Carey said. “We think these are important changes to make now, and they’re supported by (the trends) we’re seeing on campus.”

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

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RYAN RHEW / HERALD

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dark fairy tale. Nonetheless, the choice to extend the film’s runtime half an hour longer than the original remains dubious. There is more storytelling, making it a more comprehensive adaptation of the novel. But characters beside Stan lack authenticity as individuals, especially Lilith. Blanchett’s stellar performance may initially dazzle and captivate, but, stretched over some 40 minutes, audiences may start to wonder as to why she is the way she is. The unknown of her past shows a missed opportunity to clarify the motives behind her interactions with Stan. A truly compelling villainess requires a shrouded backstory with a little more flesh on its bones. Otherwise, her wanton destruction becomes arbitrary.

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by lust and an insatiable greed. The film ends with a brilliantly cynical and cyclical note, ultimately returning Stan to his starting point as a penniless nobody, desperate to hunker down as a dilapidated carnie along the train tracks. As a crime thriller, “Nightmare Alley” burns slowly. Reminiscent of del Toro’s other recent films such as 2017’s “The Shape of Water,” there is a sense of impending doom. Characters are so obsessively bent on abstract desires and ambitions that they lose their moral compass and a grounded sense of self, careening toward a disaster audiences await with bated breath. It is mesmerizing to watch, especially in a del Toro film, which unerringly fascinates through dedicated world-building dashed with the ethereal element of a

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

2022 OVPR Seed Awards fund research by University faculty Awards fund high-risk, high-reward projects to help get subsequent federal funding BY ANNA KIM SENIOR STAFF WRITER The recipients of the 2022 Office of the Vice President for Research Seed Awards were announced last month. These funds are designed to help “faculty be more competitive for external grants, from federal funding agencies or foundations,” Vice President for Research Jill Pipher wrote in an email to The Herald. The process of applying for funding from outside organizations like the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health is competitive and requires scientists to include preliminary data, established collaborations with other researchers or other progress towards their goals in their applications, Pipher wrote. “These Seed awards are designed to help faculty address all these points, by paying for supplies or computing, supporting graduate students or postdocs who are working on the project or (funding) essential travel for field work.” Analysis by the Research Strategy and Development Office in the OVPR shows that “on average, $1 of Seed award catalyzed $14 in external funding to Brown,” Pipher said. There are two categories of awards, Category 1 and Category 2. Category 1 awards offer up to $50,000 for a project led by a single principle investigator, while Category 2 awards offer up to $100,000 for proposals led by a group of two or more PIs from distinctly different disciplines. Earmarking the larger awards for “these new team-oriented approaches to big research problems” allows Seed awards to “catalyze new collaborations, especially cross-disciplinary collaborations that are really challenging to get started,” Pipher wrote. Any faculty member who conducts research through Brown is eligible to receive a Research Seed Fund, according to the 2022 OVPR Seed Guidelines. About 25% of submitted proposals get funded, Pipher wrote. “Winning projects must meet all the qualifications: impact, ability to complete in an appropriate time frame, likelihood of enhancing the means of attracting external funding and for the larger grants, the generation of new cross-disciplinary collaborations.” The proposals are reviewed by “faculty peers whose advice is an essential component in the final decision,” she added. The Seed awards are divided into four subject areas: physical sciences, which included 10 recipients in 2022; life and medical sciences, which included seven; life, medical and physical sciences, which included two; and public health, which included two. The Herald spoke with award recipients from each category of subject area about their research and how this new funding will impact it.

surface using a high-powered laser,” he wrote in an email to The Herald. This type of process is already used to identify chemical substances called analytes in a technique called mass spectrometry. “We think that the use of a water surface instead of what is called a solid ‘matrix’ to hold the target analyte molecules may improve several issues over the current technique,” such as analyte compatibility, Ault wrote. He hopes to use the Seed funding to generate preliminary data to “strengthen the case for future proposals,” he wrote.

Physical Sciences Jesse Ault, assistant professor of

Life and Medical Sciences Alexander Jaworski, associate professor of brain science, and Ahmed Abdelfattah, assistant professor of brain science, are 2022 Seed awardees for their life and medical sciences project, which studies how “neurons are steered to their targets during embryonic development,” Jaworski said. During development, neural circuits “need to find each other and connect with the right partners,” Jaworski said. Currently, researchers know that there are molecular cues for the developing axons, or nerve fibers, to instruct them “where to go and where to form connections.” Axons are parts of nerve cells used to transmit electrical signals to other neurons. But one poorly-understood area is what is actually happening in the “developing axon to then translate these signals into a change in the direction that the axon extends into,” Jaworski said. Previously, Abdelfattah’s lab developed sensors that allowed researchers to monitor and detect action potentials, or “huge fluctuations in membrane potential,” that occur during neuron signaling. Jaworski and Abdelfattah will use this new Seed funding to make sensors sensitive enough to detect local changes that are much smaller in amplitude than action potentials, Abdelfattah said. Those sensors will allow them to test whether guidance molecules trigger changes in neuron membrane potential in order to control neuronal wiring. Understanding how “the brain wires itself in the first place under normal circumstances … might help you understand the etiology of neurodevelopmental diseases,” Jaworski said. The Seed award is a “really great mechanism for a project like this one, because it is very exploratory … There is some basis to our hypothesis, but it’s not developed enough to compete for serious external funding,” he added. Karla Kaun, associate professor of neuroscience, also received a 2022 Seed award for her life and medical sciences project on developing a “new Drosophila, or fruit fly, model to be able to understand the mechanisms of how opiates affect the brain,” she said. Though “people have traditionally thought that flies don’t have opioid receptors,” Kaun said, she found that when she gave opiates to flies, they showed “some pretty pronounced behavioral responses.” This finding suggested that flies could be used as an animal model to study opioid use disorder research. “This is really high-risk, cutting edge research,” Kaun said, since no one has studied opioid receptors in flies yet.

engineering, won a Seed award in the physical science category for his project that focuses on “developing a technique for ablating molecules from a water

So far, preliminary research in her lab has been promising, showing that when flies are injured and left for seven days, “they’re more sensitive to the effects of

ROSLYN CORIZ / HERALD

The OVPR Seed Awards fund high-risk, high-reward projects so that they can acquire the preliminary data and collaborations necessary to secure federal funding later on. fentanyl,” a type of opioid, Kaun said. “Seed funding is really fantastic because it allows us to sort of take these risks that we wouldn’t be able to take using federal funding,” she added. Life, Medical and Physical Sciences Gang Xiao, professor of physics and engineering, and Jerome Sanes, professor of neuroscience, received a 2022 Seed award for their life, medical and physical sciences project that seeks to optimize magnetoencephalography, a process that monitors brain health. Currently, most of the commercially available MEG devices operate at very low temperatures, Xiao said. These technologies have to “operate in liquid helium, which (is) four degrees Kelvin,” Sanes added. Use of liquid helium is very expensive. Because the magnetic brain waves detected by this device are thousands of times weaker than magnetic signals coming from earth’s magnetic field, these devices have to operate in a magnetically shielded room to prevent outside signals from interfering. “The whole setup costs about $5 million,” Sanes said. Xiao and Sanes will use the Seed funds to develop a device “that would work at ambient temperatures” and would be “low cost and … untethered from any constraints,” such as having to be used in a magnetically shielded room, Sanes said. Xiao has developed prototypes that work at room temperature and have “onboard electronics right next to the sensor that cancel out the earth’s magnetic field.” These prototypes are already sensitive down to a nanoTesla, but Xiao hopes to use the Seed award to increase the sensitivity by three magnitudes to a picoTesla. Another advantage of Xiao’s technology is that “you can print these (MEG devices) and then you can mold them into the shape that you want,” Sanes said. “The production cost can go way down and they could be, perhaps, even individuated for each person’s different shape.” “This is primarily a very high-risk project with potentially huge rewards,” Xiao said. “The OVPR Seed funding really encourages professors to take risks.” Kimani Toussaint, professor of engineering, also received a life, medical and physical sciences Seed award for his project on optimizing pulse oximetry technology. Pulse oximetry uses “light to estimate the amount of oxygen in your blood,” Toussaint said. “There is an inherent bias in the

way the technology operates, and it produces a lot of false negative readings for people with darker skin,” tattoos or wrinkles, he said. “It could be that you actually are suffering from a lack of oxygen,” but the “melanin in skin is absorbing the light” of the pulse oximeter, causing the oximeter to calculate a falsely-high oxygen level. False negative readings may be dangerous, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. To create more accurate oximeters, Toussaint will use Seed funding to study ways to reduce the confounding effect of skin pigment and texture on these devices. Public Health Hamish Fraser, associate professor of medical science, received Seed funding for his public health project about “the use of diagnostic apps for patients, which are often called symptom checkers, that have really become very popular and widely used over the last five to 10 years,” Fraser said. Though “tens of millions of people in the U.S. use these apps every year,” this type of technology has “fallen into a kind of gap in regulation,” he said. “We don’t really know if they’re effective, safe, how useful they are and also, critically, whether this type of tool works with different groups of patients.” This research builds on an earlier study Fraser did with his colleagues about a symptom checker app from a company called AIDA Healthcare, Fraser said. The study looked at “how accurate the diagnosis was, how appropriate the advice on urgency would be for that particular patient’s condition” and how usable the app was, he added. In a collaboration with Brown Medicine and Ross Hilliard, assistant professor of medicine and clinician educator at the University, Fraser will build on the results of the previous study by looking at the app’s use in a larger set of patients in primary care. With the first part of his Seed funding, Fraser will finish the work of this primary care study by matching app feedback to patient diagnoses. Stroke, Fraser said, is a critical disease to treat, especially in emergency departments. Though there are now treatments for stroke, “the problem is you have a very short time window” to treat the condition, he added. With the second part of his Seed

bilities of symptom checkers in detecting the disease. Stroke symptoms vary widely, so “a symptom checker is actually a pretty good tool for that, because strange combinations of symptoms are just the kind of thing that a computer is good at picking up,” he said. Carolina Hass-Koffler, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior and behavioral and social sciences, also received a Seed award for her public health project on the usage of MDMA, a psychoactive drug, for improving psychotherapy among patients with a comorbidity of alcohol use disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. MDMA allows individuals who enter psychotherapy to “go through a mental process where they can try to mitigate distressing trauma-related symptoms,” Hass-Koffler said. MDMA is particularly relevant for veterans, who often avoid psychiatric settings, she said. With MDMA, the researchers hope to create an environment that is “disentangled by painful emotion” so veterans are “able to talk about their traumatic experiences.” In a previous study, Hass-Koffler saw that MDMA allowed patients the ability to “dissociate from the body … see himself outside his body and actually develop a sense of empathy for this person,” she said. Several of her patients who had used psychedelics such as MDMA recreationally also reported feeling the urge to get help for themselves after dissociating and looking at themselves from an outsider perspective. Two clinical psychologists, Erica Eaton, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior and behavioral and social sciences, and Christy Capone, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior, started this project after watching veterans with PTSD in their clinic begin to self-medicate, using alcohol to the point of developing AUD. This dual diagnosis created a need for “additional treatment that was outside the kinds of tools a clinical psychologist has,” so they reached out to Hass-Koffler, a pharmacologist and neuroscientist. Her Seed award will go toward a new clinical trial to “demonstrate the safety and tolerability of the administration of MDMA in this particular population,” and measure physiological responses to MDMA, Hass-Koffler said. “It takes a village to do good,” Hass-

funding, Fraser will use machine learning to analyze the symptom data of patients presenting with stroke in an effort to improve the diagnostic capa-

Koffler said. “This really shows that collaboration and supporting each other” can help “make a dent in this very bad situation.”

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

METRO

Downtown businesses detail experiences during pandemic White Electric Coffee, Sin, Civil discuss ups and downs amid COVID-19 BY YAEL SARIG CONTRIBUTING WRITER Nearly two years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with public health conditions still changing, businesses on Westminster Street in downtown Providence have persevered, in part because of rallying support for local shops, owners say. Even when Rhode Island had the highest COVID-19 infection rate in the country, stores found ways to adapt, remain open and stay afloat under the most trying of circumstances, owners said. For those businesses that survived the past two years, Westminster’s hustle and bustle is more than just a welcome sight — it is their lifeline. The Herald spoke with three different downtown businesses about their experiences during the pandemic. White Electric Coffee During the pandemic, White Electric Coffee transformed to a worker-owned cooperative. Chloe Chassaing, worker-owner at White Electric Coffee and founding member of the Collaborative Union of Providence Service-Workers, as well as overseer of all cafe operations, said the pandemic was the major catalyst for the shop’s changes. After requests they made for changes to the workplace were not met, Chassaing and the rest of the staff formed a union. CUPS, the independent union, was initially recognized by White Electric’s owner. Soon after, the owner of the shop told the workers he was selling White Electric. Chassaing said that she and her coworkers decided to undertake the large task of “finding loans, doing community fundraising (and) negotiating with the prior owner” to convert White Electric Coffee into a worker-owned co-op. They officially reopened under the new format on May 1, 2021. Despite this victory, Chassaing said, the pandemic still threatened the cafe’s prospects. “Like other food service establishments, we’ve definitely experienced ups and downs during COVID due to the

ENDOWMENT FROM PAGE 1 and policy analysis at NACUBO. In October, The Herald reported that the University endowment grew to $6.9 billion — increasing $2.4 billion from investment gains and $120 million from donations. “With the exceptional performance of the endowment by the close of FY2021, Brown moved above the threshold for the excise tax for the first

combination of stay-at-home orders, uncertainty, remote learning and work and our own caution and decision to delay reopening our indoor dining,” Chassaing said. But takeout orders had always formed a large portion of White Electric’s business, which Chassaing said helped keep the shop afloat during the pandemic. She said she also sees unique benefits to being a co-op situated in the pandemic. “Because all of our decisions are made collectively and our finances are transparent to everyone who works with us, we can discuss and adapt as needed and in a way where we all feel comfortable,” Chassaing said. Health and safety for the staff has presented challenges, she added. Some staff have contracted COVID-19, but with quarantining and testing, White Electric has managed to mitigate the spread of the virus within the cafe itself, according to Chassaing. Transitioning from the traditional ownership model to being a worker-owned shop during a pandemic was difficult but rewarding, Chassaing said. “I’m hoping that we can be a success story, not just for our own sake, but to contribute to the community and serve as an example to others that alternative workplace structures are possible,” Chassaing said. “There’s no reason why food service has to be exploitative and top-down. There’s no reason why most jobs can’t be more rewarding and sustainable and truly cooperative.”

KATY PICKENS / HERALD

Several businesses had to adapt their methods of serving customers during the pandemic. For example, Sin adopted online ordering and hired a new delivery person to facilitate local dessert drop-off.

Sin Tucked away on Westminster Street, Sin bakery is partly removed from downtown. Its devil-tailed logo gives a hint about what kinds of baked goods you can find in the shop, including decadent “Sinnamon” rolls, cupcakes of all flavors and the store’s specialty: its whole cakes. The bakery was opened by owner Jennifer Luxmoore in 2007, and was initially run out of a warehouse, she said. From its humble beginnings, Sin has grown to a storefront bakery complete with a dessert bar and custom cake shop. But its growing success changed with COVID-19, Luxmoore said. “I had to lay almost everybody off at the beginning (of the pandemic) and then slowly bring them back,” Luxmoore said. When COVID-19 cases began rising

in Rhode Island, Sin was forced to drastically alter its open hours, in addition to reducing its staff. The bar and custom cake shop have remained closed to the public, but Luxmoore hopes to reopen them in April of this year. “I kept a skeleton staff — just me and one other person,” Luxmoore said. “It was crazy, but we kept getting orders for ‘Can I send my son some cupcakes, because I’m not going to be able to see him?’ ‘Can I send my daughter a sixinch cake, because her wedding was supposed to be this week?’ ” Luxmoore credits her business’s survival to the influx of orders since COVID-19 arrived, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic. Sin’s also changed its business model — in addition to transitioning to online ordering, Luxmoore hired a delivery person to facilitate local dessert drop-off and even began shipping select desserts nationwide. Luxmoore said living through COVID-19 as a small business owner has meant experiencing never-ending stress. She said she has faced obstacles along the way — just recently, a string of employees fell ill with the Omicron variant. Particularly in the early pandemic, she worried constantly, not only for the survival of the bakery, but also for the wellbeing of her employees. Luxmoore said she was forced to make difficult decisions “knowing that you’re laying off all these people, and that they are relying on you for their survival — their living.” With easing pandemic restrictions in Rhode Island, Luxmoore said she is

expecting store patronage to return to some semblance of what it looked like in 2019. Luxmoore expects that it will take time for the perception of Sin as a place for social gathering to return. Sin shifted how customers interacted with the bakery during the pandemic, from a place for sitting with a cup of coffee to a grab-and-go stop to get in and out of as quickly as possible. She noted that she’s recently begun to see the tides turning, with more customers sitting in the cafe for longer stays. While local support of the business was instrumental in its survival, Luxmoore emphasized that the store would have had to close if not for the loans and grants made available to small businesses. Small orders kept the store running in the early days of the pandemic, but Sin “survived on the (Payback Protection Program) loan,” Luxmoore said. “Any free money that came up, I applied for,” Luxmoore said. “I didn’t get everything. But if it was there, I applied for it. We would not be in business today if we didn’t get financial help.”

time,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald. “Based on year-end FY21 numbers, we stood at approximately $796,000 in total investments per student.” The statement from NACUBO said that “the net investment income tax levied on certain private universities is unprecedented in that it taxes charitable resources,” and “it diminishes funds available and intended by donors for financial aid, research, academic support, public service and innova-

tion.” Brad Gibbs ’93 MA’18, a lecturer in the Department of Economics, said that the endowment is “like the University savings account” and “interest and returns from that account, which are called the draw, fund a proportion of the University’s ongoing budget.” Gibbs said that the tax most likely won’t impact Brown’s investment decisions in the future. “The team has very clear views in terms of the way they think about

capital allocation — they need to focus on delivering absolute returns,” Gibbs said. “At this juncture, the tax isn’t within their control and it’s not something that they can manage around, so I suspect that it would be steady as they go.” “The people who manage the endowment are stewards of Brown’s future,” Gibbs said. “They always have to find the right balance between being prudent about the size of the draw and ensuring that the endowment contin-

Civil Unlike many downtown stores, Civil, a skateboard shop, saw business boom during the pandemic. With people encouraged to isolate and gyms closed worldwide, demand for outdoor exercise that required little to no specialized equipment increased, according to keyholder Kenny Borge. Borge said customers come to Civil for anything and everything skateboard

related. Julien Mauss, a staff member at Civil, said that foot traffic has been consistently high since an initial business surge in April 2020. “People started skating more because you can do it on your own,” Mauss said. “The skate community has grown a lot, and more people have been gravitating towards skateboarding,” Borge said. At the beginning of the pandemic, “I noticed a surge in online sales and in-person sales as well.” He said that the surge has continued to present. Borge said increased desire to be outdoors and among other people explains the rise in popularity of skating that Civil has witnessed. Despite the rise in business during the pandemic, Civil didn’t remain unscathed by COVID-19, Borge said. Staff shortages became problematic at times, according to Borge, and temporary closures due to staff COVID-19 exposure, while infrequent, did hinder business. “We had to close last year because there’s not really that many staff who work here,” Borge said. He added that Civil was taking extra precautions to keep staff and customers safe, and the shop had to close at times when staff had gotten exposed or got sick. Nonetheless, Civil found a way to work around the staff shortages. Borge said since the store was able to hire more staff, it was able to remain open even while workers took the necessary time off to self-isolate.

ues to grow in order to serve future generations.” According to a University press release from October, the increase in the endowment reflects a pattern of growth in recent years. The average annualized returns for the University endowment were 24.1% for the last three years and 12.9% for the last ten. “It’s really an extraordinary performance that the investment office has been able to generate,” Gibbs said.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

Sender ’25: Redesign downtown Providence, not Kennedy Plaza Since its construction in the 1800s as Exchange Place, Kennedy Plaza has been a location of constant change in the heart of Providence. Over time, many different iterations of the transportation center have graced the city, from a horse-drawn carriage hub to a parking mecca. Each time the plaza has been redone, the changes have reflected the larger trends in the nation. But the latest proposed shift for Kennedy Plaza, a $140 million plan to make the hub a cultural center, ignores recent trends and, if executed, will not generate the downtown vitality the city wants or needs. Instead of investing millions in a misguided attempt to make Kennedy Plaza into a destination for suburbanites, Providence would be wise to shelve this plan and focus its time and effort on bringing local businesses back to downtown, and in doing so, revitalize the neighborhood far more than any iteration of Kennedy Plaza could. Mayor Jorge Elorza recently stated that the ultimate goal of the proposed project is to turn Kennedy Plaza into the “center of our city culturally” by de-emphasizing transit and elevating other visitor-friendly infrastructure. Specifically, Kennedy Plaza would be dramatically redesigned with a new ice rink, a large shaded area intended to host performances and farmers’ markets and, most importantly, the closure of Washington Street to connect Burnside Park and Kennedy Plaza into one contiguous space. This change would displace many of the bus stops currently at the plaza and significantly reduce its importance as RIPTA’s statewide transit hub. Ultimately, this plan will not have the intended effect Providence planners are hoping for, and on top of that, will harm the residents who rely on Kennedy Plaza for transit. What those responsible for this plan fail to recognize is that drawing visitors is not as simple as developing destination parkspace. Rather, experts in urban planning say it is a complex mission that requires investments in local streetscapes and businesses, as well as destinations. If downtown Providence does not have these features, the desired influx of people will not materialize no matter how nice the new Kennedy Plaza is. Downtown Providence used to be home to bustling streets lined with local stores that attracted many to the urban heart of the city every day. Unfortunately, the ravages of suburbanization and the construction of highway-oriented malls took a toll on Providence, and by the 1970s, the once-vibrant downtown had largely

emptied out. This shift had a devastating impact on the area, turning it primarily into a destination for commuters, rather than one for shoppers, tourists and pedestrians. As downtown revitalization gained steam toward the end of the 20th century, Providence made some efforts to restore downtown vibrancy, but they weren’t enough, as most streets remain unap-

build storefronts but does not encourage the retrofitting of existing buildings. From a developer’s or landlord’s standpoint, this incentive is plainly insufficient, with new buildings receiving at most a 30% height bonus if they dedicate 76% to 100% of their ground floor to active use, which includes spaces open to the public such as retail businesses or cultural venues. A height

“Downtown must be revitalized and become the beating heart of Providence, once again drawing people from across the city.”

pealing to this day. There is perhaps one major exception to this unhappy trend. Westminster Street, a pleasant, retail-oriented strip, stands out among streets in downtown Providence as the only one dedicated to storefronts and the pedestrian traffic which sustains them. From the 1960s to 1986, it was closed to vehicular traffic. Westminster is lined with a vast multitude of local businesses, including restaurants, local bookstores and other shops, all along brick-paved streets shaded by trees. It is no wonder Westminster Street is promoted by the Rhode Island and Providence tourism offices while other prominent streets downtown are noticeably left out. Thus, a destination street does not need splash pads or skate parks, both of which are included in the proposal to redesign Kennedy Plaza, to draw visitors: It simply needs to play host to a walkable retail environment. Providence has a number of policy options to bring storefronts back to downtown and revitalize the neighborhood far more effectively than any version of Kennedy Plaza could. One of the easiest and most effective solutions would be to simply change local zoning laws to encourage instead of disincentivize groundfloor retail. Currently, Providence zoning law incentivizes new buildings in downtown to

bonus allows developers to add height to buildings and thus increase the number of units and their profits. Existing buildings receive no bonuses. Without new buildings being built, the current incentive structure does not increase the density of storefronts in downtown. For one, the rate of new construction in the area is extremely minimal, with only one building under construction and just four more having received approval, according to the Providence Department of Planning and Development. Of these, only one is in the heart of downtown, the rest being to the south toward the Jewelry District. This means the actual growth of downtown retail space is practically nonexistent since the retail incentive policy only applies to new construction. At the same time, Providence is also incentivizing the construction of infrastructure in downtown that is contrary to the mission of making the area pedestrian- and retail-friendly. The zoning law allows for developers to add height by adding parking spaces, which makes downtown even more car-centric. Instead of dropping $140 million on a new Kennedy Plaza redesign, Providence should instead invest in a new incentive zoning policy. If the city were to adopt a new zoning ordinance that incorporated tax incentives, encouraged

retail more strongly and prioritized the redevelopment of aging and outdated buildings, it would see many more storefronts in downtown as developers would have far more reason — and financial ability — to change their existing ground-floor footprint to accommodate businesses. Of course, having more storefronts only addresses one part of the challenge of revitalization — another is addressed by having more walkable streets. For a city on a budget, this could include simple fixes such as adding trees and streetlights to sidewalks. More comprehensive, long-term improvements could focus on the “permeability” of the street, or the connectedness of the street to the buildings that line it. The more connected storefronts are to the street, the more welcoming the street feels, and the more likely people are to frequent the streets, studies show. Street permeability can be increased in a number of ways, and Westminster Street provides a clear example of how this can be done. Basic changes, like adding large windows, give pedestrians visual access to the interiors of stores, while awnings and other facade features could make businesses more inviting and increase the likelihood of people frequenting them. Zoning laws could be rewritten to require that ground-floor spaces be built to certain standards of permeability by demanding street-facing windows or moving loading docks to side streets. Downtown must be revitalized and become the beating heart of Providence, once again drawing people from across the city to enjoy what it has to offer. However, a new Kennedy Plaza would do little to advance this goal while simultaneously angering some residents. Fortunately, downtown can be the center Providence wants it to be without an unnecessary overhaul of Kennedy Plaza, but to make it so, the city must prioritize storefronts and walkability. In doing so, Providence can elevate Kennedy Plaza by elevating downtown, making it the starting point for many trips into and out of a newly revitalized neighborhood.

Gabe Sender ’25 can be reached at gabriel_ sender@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald. com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2022

The Lemley Family Leadership

Scan for more information

lecture series

Causality in Data Science F E AT U R I N G

2021 Nobel Prize in Economics Winner Guido Imbens ’91 Ph.D. The Applied Econometrics Professor and Professor of Economics, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Econometrics focuses on drawing credible causal inferences through observational studies. Learn about the history of these methods and hear recent examples, with a particular focus on the “credibility revolution” in economics. Wednesday, March 2, 2022 | 5 p.m. Salomon Center for Teaching, De Ciccio Family Auditorium A conversation moderated by Provost Richard M. Locke, Schreiber Family Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, will follow the talk.

Registration required Reception to follow. For more information, please visit lemley-lecture.brown.edu. Closed captioning will be provided. To request additional accommodations or assistance for this event, please contact Event Strategy and Management at universityevents@brown.edu. Attendees must comply with all University COVID-19 policies and protocols in place at the time of the event.