Wednesday, November 30th, 2022

NAB builds community, fights for recognition

Student

statement

BY BISHAKHA OLI CONTRIBUTING WRITER

In February 2016, when University fac ulty members voted to rename the Fall Weekend holiday — known as Columbus Day until 2009 — to Indigenous People’s Day, members of the student organiza tion Natives at Brown witnessed their advocacy efforts coming to fruition. This name change is one of the many reforms spearheaded by NAB, which has served as a cornerstone of advocacy and com munity for Indigenous students at the University since its founding in 1989.

Ma’iingan Wolf Garvin ’25, a mem ber of the Hoocąk Nation and Bad River Ojibwe and NAB co-coordinator, char acterized the organization as more of “a community … than a club.”

NAB “provides safe spaces for In digenous students on campus to be to gether” through programming in the

form of cross-cultural activities and workshops, she said.

Historically, NAB has been centered around “building community but also really pushing the University to listen to our needs,” said Kalikoonāmaukūpuna Kalāhiki ’24, who identifies as Kanaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiian.

Kalāhiki, who is a member of NAB and serves as a co-programmer for the Native Heritage Series at the Brown Center for Students of Color, said that these needs “are very distinct and

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

What is naloxone, and where can you find it?

gency medicine and pediatrics. “If you found a person who’s dying of preventable death, you would inter vene,” which is why public access to naloxone is so important.

“Every minute really matters,” he added. “Getting naloxone to people really matters.”

unique because of our identities as Na tive and Indigenous Peoples living with in the context of settler colonialism.”

Creating a safe community for stu dents, current and future Kalāhiki said that NAB aims to cre ate a space for its members to honor their distinct identities as Native and Indigenous students from around the world while still building connections

UNIVERSITY NEWS

BY HALEY SANDLOW SENIOR STAFF WRITER

In 2020, 68,630 people in the United States died of an opioid overdose. Opi oid overdoses are “the leading cause of accidental death in Rhode Island,” according to the Rhode Island Depart ment of Health, with more than 400 people dying from a drug overdose in 2021. The opioid epidemic continues to affect the Ocean State, especially with the high prevalence of fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid, commonly added to other drugs.

Naloxone is a medicine that re verses the effects of an opioid over dose. It can be easy to administer and causes immediate opioid withdrawal, experts say.

“Opioid use disorder is a societal thing that we all need to have some claim to or some stake in,” said Geoff Capraro, associate professor of emer

An overdose occurs when opioids saturate endogenous opioid recep tors, some of which are in the part of the brain which controls breath ing. Naloxone, an opioid antagonist, knocks off the opioids binding to the receptors, reducing the opioid’s effect on the body and restoring respiratory function, said Elizabeth Samuels, as sistant professor of epidemiology and emergency medicine and consulting assistant medical director for the drug overdose prevention program at the RIDOH.

“It’s pretty much a wonder drug,” Capraro said. Naloxone can be administered through an IV, by intramuscular injection or by using a nasal spray, which is the most “user friendly,” he added. Popularly referred to as Narcan, the nasal spray doesn’t require any training for administra

BY JACK TAJMAJER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Three years after promising to dou ble its undergraduate student veteran population, the University has “nearly achieved” its goal, University Spokes person Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.

On Veterans Day in 2019, the Uni versity announced that it aimed to double the undergraduate student vet eran population, then 21 students, by 2024. The University also made veteran admissions need-blind, cut the stan dardized test score requirement and eliminated out-of-pocket admission costs for veterans.

The following Veterans Day, the University announced it had received a $20 million gift from Joseph P. Healey P’22 P’24 in part to create a permanent endowment for a scholarship dedicated to U.S. military veterans. Half of the gift was earmarked specifically for veter ans, while the other $10 million went toward a scholarship for all resumed

Recall effort for UCS pres ident will move forward

UNIVERSITY NEWS Recall election to take place next semester as internal special election

BY KATHY WANG SENIOR STAFF WRITER

A petition to initiate a recall elec tion of Undergraduate Council of Students President Ricky Zhong ’23 has met the 300 signature require ment stipulated in the UCS Code of Operations, according to Chris Vanderpool ’24, who organized the recall — meaning the election will go forward.

Before the election can take place, UCS must verify the signa tures and the petition itself, per the Code of Operations. Because there are no regular council meetings left this semester, the election will likely be held in the spring.

Vanderpool started the recall petition Sept. 30, shortly after UCS

executive board members expressed concerns to The Herald about the council’s internal proceedings and Vanderpool published a Herald oped criticizing administrative chang es within UCS.

Vanderpool said that while the first signatures were collected on the day he drafted the resolution, he almost gave up on the recall effort due to a lack of time. But on Nov. 11, an individual approached Vander pool about issues they “experienced personally with UCS” and asked to help with gathering signatures, Van derpool said.

That interaction was “pretty in strumental in helping me get over the final push” of meeting the 300 signature threshold, he said.

Validating the signatures and petition

The UCS Code of Operations states that a “recall petition must be presented by its sponsor(s) during a council meeting, at which the valid

U. on track for veteran admissions goal

undergraduate education students, The Herald previously reported.

Clark wrote that, as of November, the University has 41 student veterans enrolled as undergraduates on campus — nearly double the 2019 figure.

Mac Manning, director of the Office of Military-Affiliated Students, wrote in an email to The Herald that the Univer sity will officially hit the threshold of double 2019’s student veteran popula tion in fall 2023.

“We have made incredible progress

in a very short period of time toward the goal of increasing the enrollment of student veterans on campus,” Dean of Admission Logan Powell wrote in an email to The Herald.

Powell noted that the University has “a number of initiatives underway” to continue expanding the number of enrolled student veterans. On Nov. 15, the University co-hosted an event for veterans and active soldiers across the

Brown professors, experts discuss science, accessibility of overdose drug

group criticizes U. for lack of input on land acknowledgement

Brown makes progress on 2019 promise to double student veteran population on campus

ELISE RYAN / HERALD

In 2020, the University announced its intention to create a scholarship endowment for student veterans.

DANA RICHIE/ HERALD

Kalikoonāmaukūpuna Kalāhiki ’24 said that NAB aims to create a space for its members to share their backgrounds and experiences.

U. researchers studies role of law enforcement at overdose incidents

scene’ and ensuring that all persons on scene, whether it be EMS or oth er bystanders, are safe throughout that encounter,” Macmadu told The Herald.

BY OWEN DAHLKAMP CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A new paper published in mid-October by a team of University researchers calls into question whether police presence is necessary for responding to drug overdose incidents.

Recent research suggests that the public’s fear of law enforcement pres ence is the main reason that people do not call 911 when witnessing an over dose. Last year, Providence emergency medical services were dispatched to more than 500 overdose incidents.

The new study adds to this research, finding that a minimal portion of recent drug overdose incidents in Providence required law enforcement intervention.

Alexandria Macmadu ’14 MSc ’15 PhD ’22, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology, was the lead author of the study. Along with a team of researchers and the partnership of community organization Project We ber/RENEW, she analyzed 211 incidents in which police responded to overdose calls in a Rhode Island city, which was not named to provide privacy for the individuals’ involved.

“Police broadly see themselves as being responsible for ‘securing the

The team “dug through the nar rative incident report” of each docu ment and queried words such as “com bative” or “struggled” to determine if police were needed to defuse the situation and protect others, Mac madu said. They found that only 1% of incidents involved an individual who was described as “combative” by police.

Only three instances involved ar rests; two of these instances “were extenuating circumstances in which others were in danger, including mi nors,” Macmadu explained. The final arrest was made when police found that a person on the scene had an outstand ing search warrant.

Macmadu also highlighted that “warrant searches at the scene of an overdose (are) perfectly legal at this time … but it strongly discourages people from calling for help.” Rhode Island’s Good Samaritan law also pro hibits anyone on the scene of an over dose from being arrested with charges related to drug possession.

Although police are required to carry naloxone — a drug that reverses the effects of an overdose — they often arrive on the scene last, after nalox one has been administered by another party, according to Brandon Marshall,

professor of epidemiology and mentor for this paper.

“Bystanders or other first respond ers are the most effective people pres ent at an overdose,” not police, he said. The report found a low rate of combative behavior and delayed police response times, challenging whether police response to overdose calls is truly necessary.

“In an ideal world, we should be relying on other first responders,” such as EMS and fire services, Marshall said. “Police should only be a last resort.”

Both researchers emphasized that until there is a system in which rapid response is guaranteed by EMS, po lice should continue to be dispatched to administer naloxone but return to their patrol once medical personnel arrive. Until these suggestions can be implemented, “police should really be utilized as a secondary safety net for overdoses,” Macmadu said.

This may be especially true in rural areas, Marshall said. He added that he would “love to see this kind of study replicated in other settings,” such as in suburban or rural areas. In these neighborhoods, police may respond and administer naloxone more rapidly than EMS, he said, but further research is needed.

Lisa Frueh, an author on the paper and current PhD student at Drexel Uni versity, said that they hope this research will allow “policymakers to have a real conversation about how they would

like overdose response to go.” They maintain that representatives can have more “nuanced conversations” about “the most effective ways that we can make sure that people aren’t dying of overdose, which is a preventable death.”

As for Macmadu, she believes “that the findings from this work can result

in warrant searches at the scene of an overdose being prohibited.”

With such a change, she hopes that more people will be encouraged to call for help in potential overdose situa tions. In these circumstances, she said, “minutes matter and (any) hesitation can ultimately result in a loss of life.”

tion and is easily carried in backpacks or pocketbooks.

Failing to administer naloxone fast enough is one of the main factors asso ciated with an overdose death, Samuels said. Since so many overdoses occur in public spaces, public access to naloxone is “extremely important.”

The number of community nalox one kits has risen every year in Rhode Island since 2012. Capraro co-creat ed and implemented the NaloxBox initiative in 2017 to provide public places with “box on a wall” naloxone kits. These kits are similar to auto mated external defibrillators or fire extinguishers and help make the drug available in high-incidence places, including prisons, soup kitchens, city halls and libraries.

Recently, BWell Health Promotion has partnered with Brown EMS and two local physicians to install boxes around campus containing an AED as well as naloxone “so they’ll be easily accessible to anyone in need,” said Takyah Smith, BWell health promotion specialist and social wellbeing coordinator.

Access to naloxone is increasingly

important with the widespread occur rence of fentanyl in stimulants and “party drugs,” Capraro said. Illicit fen tanyl was introduced to the opioid drug supply in 2014, according to Samuels, and has been present in 77% of acci dental overdose deaths in Rhode Island.

BWell offers trainings for Univer sity community members on the use and administration of naloxone every semester — including multiple times this year, Smith said. Participants learn how to recognize the signs of an opi oid overdose and how to administer naloxone.

When individuals can ask questions and have an open discussion, “I feel like it definitely decreases the stigma that is currently around opioid use or drug use,” Smith said.

Training participants can also learn about the opioid crisis in the United States and within Rhode Island. During the training, they receive their own dose of naloxone and fentanyl strips, which can detect the presence of fentanyl in various drugs prior to in gestion, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. More information on these trainings can be found on BWell’s website.

ship with Service to School, a nonprofit that provides free college counseling to veterans.

Initiatives by RIDOH’s Drug Over dose Prevention Program include ef forts to increase naloxone access and distribution, support street outreach and provide harm reduction services, according to Samuels. She is current ly working on implementing hospital standards of care for the treatment

of overdose and opioid use disorder, she said.

“There’s been a lot of really amaz ing work to expand public health and medical approaches to substance use and addictions,” she added. “But we have much, much further to go.

“I think people who are … supervis

country in collaboration with Amherst College, the University of Chicago, Cor nell and Princeton. He added that the University was also “finalizing plans” to co-host a panel discussion about “student veteran admission to the Ivyplus” schools at NatCon, a prominent student veteran conference in January.

Powell credited the increase of students to “scholarships enabled by the generous gift” from Healey and the University’s decision to make veteran admissions need-blind and test-option al — as well as the University’s partner

All of these measures proved “in strumental in driving that progress over the last few years,” he wrote.

“We hear about (the scholarship initiative) when we come here because it’s a significant piece of funding,” said Jesse Maurier ’23, a former med ic in the U.S. Air Force. “A lot of us don’t come from wealthy families. … It allows us to expand our presence a little bit more.”

Manning additionally highlight ed that the University has seen an

increase in the number of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadets, cur rently standing at 39, as a result of the initiative.

“The veteran student experience has steadily improved since the an nouncement of the initiative,” Manning wrote. The OMAS “has gotten larger and has offered more programming and support.”

Maurier, who started in 2020, em phasized that veterans “definitely (have) a different experience” when they arrive on campus. “Having other veterans on campus is really important for us to be able to make that transi

tion,” he said.

“Overall, I think it’s been a real ly positive experience,” he said. “The strengthening of the community has been really important.”

Manning also wrote that the Univer sity has “streamlined several processes” for veteran applicants since the 2019 commitment, including “financial aid, admissions” and “GI Bill educational benefits.”

“It’s very interesting having an opportunity like this once you go through the military because it’s a vastly different world than what we’re accustomed to,” Maurier said. “It’s

ing a lot of people or responsible for a lot of people definitely need training on how to use and administer nalox one,” Samuels said. “It’s something we need to kind of normalize and institutionalize for how we care for each other and the communities that we’re a part of.”

just one less dam in the way of our ability to pursue education like we might have wanted to several years ago but weren’t able to.”

“Find me another program like this, and I’ll give you $500,” he joked. “It’s pretty unheard of.”

Still, Manning stressed that the Uni versity has “much more to accomplish and much more work to do in support of the military-affiliated community at Brown.”

“We will continue to make solid improvements each year,” he wrote. “I truly believe that Brown is on track to fulfill our promise.”

Law enforcement may deter people from seeking help, data shows

COURTESY OF ALEXANDRIA MACMADU

Of the 211 incidents analyzed, the study found that only 1% involved an individual who was described as “combative” by police.

NALOXONE FROM PAGE 1

RHEA RASQUINHA / HERALD

Health care management expert explains AI’s impact on medicine

Internal Medicine Residency Program at Rhode Island Hospital, according to a Today@Brown announcement.

BY JAKOBI HASKELL STAFF WRITER

The Warren Alpert Medical School’s Healthcare in America elective host ed Steven A. Wartman, an expert in managing academic health centers, for a talk on the use of artificial in telligence in medical practice titled “The Doctor and the Machine” Tues day afternoon.

Wartman, an internist and sociol ogist, is the former president and CEO of the Association of Academic Health Centers and previously served as the Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center. He also worked at Brown in his career, founding the Division of Gen eral Internal Medicine and the General

“Throughout his career, Wartman has been internationally recognized for his work that has included leadership, organization, management, strategic alignment, problem-solving and chang ing health care,” said Emilija Sagaityte ’22 MD’26, a student co-leader of the Healthcare in America elective and for mer senior editor of The Herald, in her introduction of Wartman.

During his talk, Wartman focused on how advances in artificial intelli gence are transforming medical prac tice and doctor-patient relationships. In his discussion, Wartman cited the rising performance of machine learn ing models on pattern-matching in medical imaging, personalized medi cine and the use of big data in symp tom monitoring as some of the factors leading to a rapidly changing health care landscape.

He pointed to certain estimates which predict there could eventually

be as many as 10,000 data points on any patient. “This requires physicians to have a deeper understanding” of statistics and probability than need ed in the past, Wartman said at the event.

It’s not only important for physi cians to understand how data works, but also know how to effectively com municate conclusions from the data to their patients and patients’ families, he added.

Wartman said he believes that the increasing prevalence of AI is “an existential threat” to the role of the physician.

In his speech, he mentioned that he led a seminar at a technology confer ence on the question of whether physi cians would be replaced by AI. There, he asked the audience, consisting of those working in the tech industry, to take a vote: “How many people here think that physicians will be replaced in the next 20, 30, 40 years?” About 90% of those present said yes, he reported. Wartman pointed to the improved accuracy of

machines in recognizing patterns in X-ray studies and their ability to inter pret big data as reasons why machines might replace certain responsibilities of physicians.

Wartman also emphasized that although medical technology is transforming medical practice, phy sicians are focused on compassion and centering people, so their role with patients should remain fundamen tally the same despite the increased presence of AI.

Wartman said that people unfamil iar with AI think of the technology as similar to human thinking, but much faster. “But that’s not what machines do, even with deep learning and neu ral networks. It’s data-driven, num ber-crunching (algorithms) that’s going on with machines. It’s not the kind of human reasoning that we’re talking about,” Wartman said. “So I would de fine the physician’s role … as providing care that is valued beyond algorithms.”

Wartman concluded his talk by ad vising audience members that in order

to “preserve the patient-physician re lationship in the age of AI, physicians must serve as the compassionate hu manistic interface between patients and machines.”

Silas Monje ’21 MD’25 said his most important takeaway from the talk was hearing about all the impacts AI already has. “It’s surprising to see that (some) data scientists believe that physicians will be replaced. I don’t think it’s actu ally going to happen, but it’s interesting to hear that point of view,” Monje said.

The Healthcare in America elective, which gives medical students, Program in Liberal Medical Education students and Medical Science Masters’ students an opportunity to hear from a variety of perspectives in public health that can better inform them as members involved in the health system, Saga ityte wrote in an email to The Herald. The organizing team of the elective felt that Wartman’s experiences, including at Brown, aligned with the perspec tives that the course aimed to offer, she added.

Steven Wartman, founder of U.’s internal medicine division, outlines tech’s impacts

JAKOBI HASKELL / HERALD

At the talk, Steven A. Wartman discussed data and medicine. He pointed to certain estimates which predict there could eventually be as many as 10,000 data points on any patient. “This requires physicians to have a deeper understanding” of how data works and how to effectively communicate their findings, Wartman said.

Hit It

ByWalter Zhang

ACROSS

12001 Bible translation that focused on wordfor-word accuracy

42021 League of Legends Worlds champs

7Brown CS student leadership job

10Org. established by Nixon

13Author Grafton

14Main character on "The IT Crowd"

15Like monastic life

17Günter Grass novel about Oskar Matzerath, with "The"

19Filthy condition

20Lacking a musical key

21When doubled, Kenyan independence rebellion

22Initials of the 11th president

23Pasta sauce ingredient

25Rapper who inspired the stage name of Montero Hill

27Pair in undercover?

28Economist Amartya

29Chinese practice whose name literally means "life force cultivation"

32Like fats with only single carbon bonds

34Main character on "The IT Crowd"

37Pile

381969 Pink Floyd song whose lyrics mention Doctor Strange

42Low-lying clouds

43A long time

45___ Darya (Central Asian river)

48Collab. between NASA, JAXA, ESA and CSA

49Type of ensemble where one can find instruments inside 17-, 29- and 38-Across

53Naval initials that work with either Elizabeth or Charles in charge

55Little guy

56They can be used to reject null hypotheses

57Tip

59European country that adopted its new informal name in 2016

60Catalogue of a museum's collections, say

61Mor. neighbor in N. Africa

62Side in a debate, for short

63High degree

64He became a champion after 25 seasons of the Pokémon anime

65Sign between Cancer and Virgo

66Providence to Newport dir.

DOWN

1I will be: Sp.

2Admirer

3Snake juices

4Fumble on

5Slave, in ancient Greece

6Place where 64Across battles

7Attacks

8Fallacy that's a type of "ad hominem"

9Tempe, Ariz. univ.

10What a moray makes when it gets tangled up

11C3H8

12___ Lingus

16Lead-in to a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal

18Molecule with A, T, G and C bases

21Common magical resource in video games

24Soccer star Lionel 26Abbr. for the money in Singapore

30Radio host Flatow or Glass

31You're reminded to mind it

332000s teen drama set in Newport Beach

34Brown SPS or Yale SoM offering

35Dairyless milk source

36Like a shoe that doesn't slide

38CBS forensics franchise

39TikTok-style video that might tell you to "like" and "subscribe,” in brief

40Jefferson who goes to Washington

41Bookworm

44Brush against lovingly

45People sharing a name with Muhammad's youngest wife

46Recurring musical ideas

47Dangerous

50Our planet

51Prefix meaning "cover," like on an herbivorous dinosaur

52Fed. agency created during the Great Depression

54Longtime NBC sketch show

57What the Greek god of the wild uses to cook?

58"Sister, Sister" stars ___ and Tamera Mowry

59Aron Trask's brother in "East of Eden"

CALENDAR

TODAY’S EVENTS

Pem West Pet Fest! 12 p.m. Andrews Commons Study Lounge

Anti-Racist Paradoxes in Peruvi an Social Policy 12 p.m. Watson Institute, First floor

TOMORROW’S EVENTS

Biomedical Engineering Seminar: Sean Lawler 11 a.m. Barus and Holley Room 190

Jocelyn Bell — Reimagining with in-movement conflict 12 p.m.

Stephen Robert ’62 Hall

Improvisation Workshop with Marcus Miller 4 p.m. Barus and Holley Room 723/724

Pies and Puzzles! 6 p.m.

Sarah Doyle Women’s Center, 26 Benevolent St.

A Reading with Judith Keller 1 p.m. 190 Hope St.

Performance by Marcus Miller with Ashis Vyas 4 p.m.

Engineering Research Center

UFB listens to student organizations’ requests for funding

VISIONS among clubs in attendance

BY INDIGO MUDBHARY STAFF WRITER

The Undergraduate Finance Board met Tuesday evening to hear funding requests from various student orga nizations. Student organizations that applied were told that they would find out if their funding requests were ap proved later that evening.

The first student organization to present was the Brown College Dem ocrats, represented by club president Cecilia Marrinan ’24. According to the club’s website, Brown Dems aims to “ensure that we are serving our stu dent body and the wider community of Providence and Rhode Island with the work that we do.”

The club is requesting funding to send students to canvas for Sen. Ra phael Warnock in Georgia, Marrinan said. “Even if (Warnock) is projected to win, … it’s never set in stone,” Marrinan said. “It’s a really good experience for people to get involved in an election that’s outside of Rhode Island.”

The Democratic Party of Georgia, which Marrinan has been in contact with since September, plans to com pletely cover the cost of airfare and accommodation for the estimated 30 students attending, Marrinan said.

But food and other transportation costs will not be covered by the po litical organization, Marrinan said. Because the Brown Dems cannot rent cars as they are under the age of 25, they will have to take Ubers, Marrinan added.

UFB Vice Chair Arjun Krishna Chopra ’25 said that UFB regularly pays for Ubers for a number of student groups that travel.

The second student organization to present was the Chinese Students Association, represented by treasurer Sudy Qin ’25. According to the CSA website, the organization “seeks to celebrate and embrace Chinese culture at Brown, embodying both internation al and domestic strata of our diverse community.”

This group will host its annual Lunar New Year banquet in February and due to UFB’s new directive for a fee-free campus, the club is requesting financial assistance, Qin said. If UFB covered the cost of the banquet, the organization would not have to charge for attendance — which has been $10 in previous years, Qin added.

Qin said that the event is open to both CSA members and non-members, as the Lunar New Year is “something that’s celebrated by a lot of East Asian cultures.” According to Qin, they will be hosting 240 people at the banquet apart from the CSA e-board and per formers.

The requested funding would cover the cost of food and red envelopes, Qin said. “Because it’s the year of the rabbit, we’re planning on putting together red envelopes with white rabbit candy.”

The event will cost a bit more than previous years, Qin said, due to the number of attendees and catering prices increasing.

The third group to present was Dou las@Brown, a “BIPOC-centered repro

ductive justice organization,” according to Leona Hariharan ’23, co-president of the club. The group was represented by Hariharan and Bintou Diarra ’23, communications director of the orga nization.

In order to train doulas, the club works with national reproductive health organization Mama Glow, Hariharan said. According to Hariharan, the group will be hosting an expedition for doulas in May, and they have invited a few representatives from Doulas@Brown to present at the expo. “Up until now, (Mama Glow) has provided all of our doula training free of charge … so we’re hoping to raise money to be able to go support their work for all that they’ve done for us.”

The group will be sending five repre sentatives to the expo, Hariharan said.

Diarra described the expo as “a full day of programming (that) gives people exposure to the world of birth work outside of this academic setting.”

The fourth group to present was the TF Green Advisory Board, represented by Julien Deculus ’25. The group is in

charge of overseeing the two rehearsal rooms in TF Green that are available to students, said Deculus.

The music equipment in one of the rooms is in a state of disrepair, with a destroyed upright piano, a broken soundboard and only one microphone available. Additionally, the room is filled with trash and in a general state of disrepair, Deculus said.

“The rooms have been abused and abandoned,” Deculus added.

Deculus also requested funding for door locks so the equipment will be protected from theft and damage. According to Deculus, if taken care of properly, the requested equipment could last 10 to 15 years.

The fifth group to present was the Sustainability Food Initiative, a group that has been revived after disbanding five years ago, according to Sanyu Ra jakumar ’24, who represented the club at the meeting.

The group will be hosting Kimberly Anderson, founder of Plant City, to give a lecture and host an open forum Q&A to “expose students to basic ideas of

food sustainability and more impor tantly about entrepreneurship (and) advocacy in this space,” Rajakumar said.

The estimated attendance for this event is approximately 60 to 70, and it will be hosted in collaboration with the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship, according to Rajakumar. The club is requesting funding for the catering that will be provided at this event, Rajaku mar said.

The final group to present was VISIONS Magazine. According to the group’s website, VISIONS is “a stu dent-run literary and visual arts pub lication that highlights the voices of Brown and RISD’s Asian, Asian Amer ican and Pacific Islander communities. We are committed to being an open forum for AAPIA student artists and makers to freely express their unique identities.”

The group is requesting funding so it can physically print 100 copies of the 48th edition magazine, according to Emily Tom ’24, the treasurer of VI SIONS, who represented the group at the UFB meeting.

Brown Dems, CSA, Doulas@Brown,

INDIGO MUDBHARY / HERALD

Student organizations that applied for funding from the Undergraduate Finance Board were told that they would find out if their funding request was approved later that evening, after the UFB meeting Tuesday night.

one another. This can sometimes be difficult due to the diverse range of cultures that fall under the umbrel la term of “Native,” but by allowing members to share their backgrounds and experiences, Kalāhiki added that NAB has created a welcoming home and community for students.

“Being Indigenous is more a rela tionship, specifically our community’s relationship to the land that we come from,” they said. “Being Indigenous in extricably means having a relationship to our land, so we’re able to find com munity and a shared collective identity because the things that the land teaches us are very similar.”

“People do a really good job of talking from their own experience and clarifying what their positionality is,” Wolf Garvin added. “We always in troduce ourselves at the beginning of NAB meetings by asking ‘Who are your people?’ and ‘Where do you feel your ancestral roots are?’ because we are all just curious and want to learn more.”

endawnis Spears, who works as the tribal community member in residence at the Native American Indigenous Studies Initiative, said that she com mends NAB members on their efforts to plan initiatives for future generations of Native and Indigenous students, even if such efforts do not directly impact current students.

It’s important “to lay that ground work right now for future Indigenous students,” she said.

Relationship with the University Kalāhiki, who previously served as a coordinator for NAB, said that they decided to step away from the orga nization’s leadership due to burnout. “I have taken on a lot of the (work) of trying to get the administration to hear our needs and to respect what we are saying and take us seriously,” Kalāhiki said. “Yet, it often falls on deaf ears.” Kalāhiki referenced the University’s

official land acknowledgement, which was formally established in May 2022, as an example of the University’s hypocrisy in its treatment of Indigenous students.

The land acknowledgment was de veloped by the Land Acknowledgement Working Group as part of the Universi ty’s five commitments to understand ing its relationships with Indigenous communities, The Herald previously reported. The statement aims to “rec ognize, honor and create a meaningful acknowledgment of the Narragansett Indian Tribe and their connection to the land on College Hill,” according to the University’s website.

NAB co-coordinator Abigail Al derman ’24, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation, said that while a small number of Native and Indige nous students may have played a part in developing the report, a majority of the Indigenous student community “watched (the report) happen with no input whatsoever.”

University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald that “every member of the Brown com munity who wished to engage in the development of the land acknowledg ment statement had the opportunity to provide input and perspective.”

Kalāhiki said that they feel that the land acknowledgment is “very performative because the University continues to be extractive of the local community and unsupportive of the Native student population on campus.”

The LAWG, formed in March 2021, was composed of University students, faculty and administration, including members of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, Clark wrote. After working to un derstand the relationship between the University, local Indigenous Peoples and the land that Brown sits on, the group made recommendations to the University, which were shared with the Narragansett Indian Tribe, other Indigenous Peoples in the region and the Brown community in February 2022, he added.

In May 2022, “following an extended

opportunity for feedback and input” over the spring semester, President Christina Paxson P’19 responded to the recommendations and outlined a set of institutional commitments, including establishing a formal University land acknowledgment, Clark wrote.

Wolf Garvin credits fellow NAB member Sherenté Harris ’23, a mem ber of the Narragansett Indian Tribe who served on the working group, with taking on the brunt of the work en gineering the land acknowledgment while receiving “no compensation from Brown.”

“Brown is on Narragansett land, so it was important that they had Nar ragansett people weighing in on” the statement, Wolf Garvin said. “But they placed so much of that work on Sher enté with no acknowledgement of it.”

In a response to a request for comment from the LAWG’s co-chairs — Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, executive vice president for planning and policy, and Rae Gould, associate director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies initiative — Clark wrote that this was untrue and the LAWG’s faculty, staff and student members “collectively developed the land acknowledgement and all of the content contained in the recommendations document.”

Harris wrote in a message to The Herald that they were “appreciative and grateful” to the University for forming the LAWG, as well as the working group for their partnership. At the same time, Harris thanked NAB and Decoloniza tion at Brown for making the group’s work possible by advocating for the University to create factual land ac knowledgments.

“The work of raising Narragansett visibility on and around Brown’s cam pus is my life’s work,” they added. Harris “chose to take on this activism work for my people (and) am incredibly grateful for the guidance and collaboration of my tribe, the Narragansett, through our chief Anthony Dean Stanton and our Medicine Man John Brown.”

Reinstating House of Ninnuog

The University’s land acknowl edgment commitments also includ ed establishing a residential program house for Indigenous students during the 2022-23 academic year. This se mester, NAB members succeeded in establishing an on-campus program house, House of Ninnuog, which means “house of the people” in Narragansett, according to Wolf Garvin.

Kalāhiki said that they felt the Uni versity was taking credit for the work NAB members had put in to establish the program house “after months of back and forth” with the Office of Res idential Life.

“Everything that we have here as Native students is a result of Native and Indigenous students being so passion ate about their community that they have forged these paths” themselves, Wolf Garvin added.

House of Ninnuog was previously disbanded due to a low member count as a result of COVID-19. Kalāhiki and Wolf Garvin initiated the process of its reinstatement in fall 2021 but “were told ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ or ‘maybe next year’ ” by ResLife, Wolf Garvin said.

To gain an on-campus space as a program house and maintain access to a program house-exclusive lounge, li brary and kitchen, ResLife requires that program houses maintain a minimum of 15 in-house members, according to the University’s website.

Although NAB could not meet this requirement, members argued that “holding the cultural house of a his torically underrepresented group to the same standards as other non-cultural houses such as Greek life (by requiring 15 minimum members) was a little bit irresponsible,” Wolf Garvin said.

ResLife did not respond to several requests for comment from The Herald.

According to Kalāhiki, the House of Ninnuog allows Native and Indigenous students at Brown a “space for us to live in the ways that make the most sense for us and that directly undermine the

systems of power that we exist within.”

Collaboration with the Native Amer ican Indigenous Studies Initiative

Wolf Garvin said that NAB mem bers have found support with NAISI, a cross-disciplinary initiative made up of staff, students and faculty that aims to facilitate education on the cultural traditions, political histories and mod ern knowledge of Native American and Indigenous Peoples, according to the University’s website.

“When I say ‘the institution’ and when I say ‘Brown as a university,’ I honestly don’t really count the folks who are in NAISI as part of that,” she said. “I commend (NAISI) for the sup port that they’re able to offer us.”

Spears, who serves as a liaison be tween the Initiative and the Native American and Indigenous student community on campus, said that NAI SI aims to ensure that Native students thrive on campus.

“I am here as a resource for (stu dents) when they have specific ques tions or if there’s a specific scenario they want to hash out,” Spears said. “NAB members have their own kind of power structure and they bring me in when necessary. If I’m not needed, then that’s at their discretion.”

“They’re a very vibrant and vo cal group,” she added. “They’re very grounded in cultures of activism and they are really good at enacting sur vivance on campus.”

Kalāhiki hopes that the Univer sity will establish similar support networks for Indigenous students in the future and build open lines of communication that allow Indige nous students space to express their unique needs.

Alderman said that she hopes NAB will “continue to be a strong group that is really passionate about what we do … (and will continue to) fight for our sov ereignty and to decolonize this space and do our best in this very inherently colonial institution.”

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Corrections:

Bahl ’24: What we really should learn from Elizabeth Holmes

Less than two weeks ago, we saw the end of a seven-year-long saga of fraud and white-col lar crime — entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes was at last sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in her health care tech nology startup, Theranos.

Holmes founded Theranos, a company which claimed to create a cheaper and less invasive process of testing blood for medi cal purposes after dropping out of Stanford University in 2004. The reveal of Theranos’s false promise — the technology did not work — began with a 2015 Wall Street Journal in vestigation and concluded with Holmes’s conviction.

Many may view the fact that Holmes was convicted as a victory. The consequences for Holmes’s actions could serve as proof that corporate greed will not be tolerated in to day’s world. Others are just satisfied with the message that not even a supposedly indom itable Silicon Valley startup is above the law. These interpretations attempt to find mean ing in what happened to Holmes, but her sen tencing doesn’t mark any kind of watershed moment for the criminal justice system or the tech world. Rather, it illustrates the failings of the society that Holmes tried to succeed in and the likelihood that those failings will persist.

The idea that Holmes’s sentencing will change the culture of Silicon Valley is mis guided. She is not the first tech founder to be guilty of fraud, and she is unlikely to be the last.

Social and financial factors combine to incentivize tech founders to overhype their products for seed money. When they have sellable ideas, Silicon Valley startups dom inate most venture capitalists’ investment portfolios. VC funding isn’t just widespread — it has become a form of social currency. The knowledge that so much money and clout is

a product that had no precedent or basis, yet we hail visionaries such as Isaac Newton for taking a leap of faith on a less-than-prov en idea. It would seem that we are okay with these types of gambles so long as they are successful. If your vision doesn’t fully pan out, society has no sympathy. Holmes cer tainly crossed a line by lying about results

Elizabeth Holmes’s situation has evoked par ticular glee from the public. I question if any one really appreciates how destructive that media circus has been.

As it is, companies with female founders reap an embarrassingly low portion of capital for startups. Holmes was one of the few wom en to buck that trend, becoming the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire and founding a company once valued at $10 bil lion. Holmes’s heavily publicized trial has like ly reinforced an implicit bias against female founders — a bias which may well prompt fu ture female founders to exaggerate their own achievements when the time comes to attract investors.

within reach can rouse greed in many young entrepreneurs.

But Holmes never cashed out and sold her stocks in the company. This begs the ques tion: If not greed, what drives someone like Elizabeth Holmes to commit fraud? Holmes wanted to be seen as a visionary — which is not a crime — but she failed to understand the dangers of society’s concept of a vision ary. We’ve criminalized Holmes for backing

and their reliability, but the process of get ting there may not have been as purposeful as many people believe. I doubt that Holmes will be the last one to err in this way.

The media, however, presents Elizabeth Holmes as one of a kind. Even before her fall from grace, coverage of Holmes’s story was constant. Since then, she’s only become more of a public sensation, inspiring documen taries and award-winning television shows.

These dynamics can create criminals like Holmes. None of this is to say that she is not guilty or that her sentence was too harsh. How ever, thinking of her as a singularly twisted per son is all too convenient. Holmes’s sentencing does not represent a culmination of societal justice. Holmes was certainly a misguided in dividual, but she emerged out of a flawed capi talist system that enabled and encouraged her eventual fraud. If we take any lesson from Eliz abeth Holmes, it should be that we need to fight to change this kind of culture.

Anika Bahl ’24 can be reached at anika_ bahl@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyher ald.com and other op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.

“Holmes was certainly a misguided individual, but she emerged out of a flawed capitalist system that enabled and encouraged her eventual fraud.”

ity of the sponsorship procedure shall be determined by a simple majority vote of the council.”

According to UCS Elections Co-di rector Joon Nam ’23, “validity of the sponsorship procedure” refers to both the validity of signatures gathered and the petition itself.

Vanderpool hoped to present the signatures quickly and have UCS hold the recall election before next semes ter, “when people … still have (the issue) in their minds,” he said.

In a Nov. 19 email sent to UCS, which was shared with The Herald, Vanderpool requested to present the signatures at the council’s e-board meeting the following day.

But Vanderpool was unable to present the signatures at that meet ing since there was not a quorum — the minimum number of members needed to be at the meeting to make proceedings valid — present. He said that he was told the Nov. 20 meeting would be this semester’s last e-board meeting — meaning that he has to wait until next semester to validate the signatures and the petition.

According to Zhong, UCS planned all their meetings at the beginning of the semester and Nov. 20 was sched uled to be the last e-board meeting because of conflicts on subsequent Sundays, when the group meets. Nov. 27 was Thanksgiving weekend, Dec. 4 is scheduled to be a UCS e-board dinner and Dec. 11 is during reading period.

Vanderpool expressed concerns that some students who signed the petition are graduating this semester, making their signatures invalid come the spring.

According to Elections Co-director Eli Sporn ’24, he and Nam suggested conducting a pre-verification of the signatures. While the validity of the petition has to be determined by the entire e-board, validating signatures is “more of a concrete, time-consum ing process” that can be done before the first UCS e-board meeting next semester, Nam wrote in an email to The Herald.

But Zhong said that Vanderpool refused to share signatures with UCS when Nam and Sporn offered to pre-verify them.

“This means that we will be validating both the signatures and the petition (as part of the entire sponsorship process) during the first UCS e-board meeting next semes ter where we reach a quorum,” Nam wrote.

“I wouldn’t give them the signa tures” without being involved in the process, Vanderpool wrote in a mes sage to The Herald. “This is because I’d like to protect the identities of those who signed to the extent that’s possible,” he added.

Internal special election to elect new president

The UCS Code of Operations states that “if a majority votes to recall the officer or member, then a vacancy shall be declared in that position and a special election held.”

According to Vanderpool, UCS has held all its special elections internally this year, including the election of its current chair of campus life and chair of equity and inclusion, “which means … that UCS (themselves) would get to choose who their next president would be,” he said.

But the code of operations’ sec

tion on special elections does not indicate they should be held inter nally, Vanderpool wrote in a message to The Herald. He pointed to article XII.6 of the UCS Constitution, which states, “All undergraduates have the right to vote in all elections for the council. This right shall not be re voked.”

The clause is “meant more of an anti-discrimination clause than any thing else,” Zhong said. “If a position is supposed to be openly elected, then

you cannot discriminate based (on) race or class or gender,” he added.

Zhong said that in previous years, many UCS elections were conducted internally or without participation of the entire student body, including the filling of the UCS vice president position in 2019 after the previous vice president resigned. He added that UFB has done the same, including the filling of the UFB vice chair role in 2021 and electing an at-large rep resentative in 2022.

BREAKFAST TIME!

STRAUS / HERALD

The code of operations also does not specify who can run for this spe cial election, according to Vander pool. “It concerns me that they can just re-elect (Zhong) to the position,” he said.

According to Zhong, the election would be like all other special elec tions, where “anybody is welcome to apply (and) interview for the posi tion.” He added that though he would be technically allowed to run again for president, he “probably wouldn’t.”

SIMONE

VICTORIA YIN / HERALD