Wednesday, October 20th, 2021

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

VOLUME CLVI, ISSUE XXVIII

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UNIVERSITY NEWS

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Coalition demands U. act on BDS conditions

GLO files unfair labor practice charges

Led by Brown Democrats, 18 student groups call on Brown to address conditions

GLO alleges delayed dues deductions, underpayment, unclear communications

BY GRACE WILLIAMS STAFF WRITER A coalition of 18 student groups on campus urged the University administration to increase wages for Brown Dining Services workers and invest in hiring and new equipment, in a statement released Oct. 12. The coalition was formed in response to Herald reporting on understaffing and equipment shortages in dining facilities.

In the statement, the coalition of student organizations led by Brown Democrats wrote that “Currently, Brown Dining services staff members are enduring unacceptable working conditions that the University must immediately remedy. We commend the workers on their bravery for speaking out and reporting these conditions.”

Twelve Brown Dining Services workers previously interviewed by The Her-

BY CALEB LAZAR SENIOR STAFF WRITER

TRACY PAN / HERALD

The coalition includes 18 student groups around campus and is urging the University to increase wages and improve working conditions. ald detailed the stress, exhaustion and frustration they feel working at various dining halls. Along with understaffing and equipment issues, dining workers alleged that supervisors were insufficiently attentive to staff concerns.

George Barboza, director of Dining Programs, told The Herald that the administration is working on hiring new workers, but is facing difficulty filling vacant positions.

“This coalition understands the difficulties of reopening campus amid the

COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement said. “Brown, however, should not be a workplace that does not respect its workers nor its students by requiring food preparation from overworked employees in unsafe conditions.” The statement concludes by calling upon the University to release a response and action plan for addressing the BDS staffing shortages and lack of equipment, and for increasing the workers’

The Graduate Labor Organization, Brown’s graduate student union, filed three unfair labor practice charges against the University with the National Labor Relations Board Oct. 5.

“Brown has shown us repeatedly that they view our contract as a suggestion, and have failed to uphold even basic principles outlined in it,” Kaitlyn Hajdarovic GS, GLO vice president and chair of the grievance committee, said in an Oct. 8 GLO press release. “We’ve met multiple times with administrators over these issues and nothing has changed. Brown has left us no choice but to file these unfair labor practice charges.”

Delayed dues deductions The first charge filed by GLO concerns the University failing to collect union dues in September and instead trying to collect double dues in October, according to an Oct. 6 tweet

by GLO. According to the GLO press release, “union members authorize dues to be automatically deducted from their stipends in order to fund their union,” and the University is “required to deduct (dues) on a monthly basis by the collective bargaining agreement between the University and GLO.” GLO’s collective bargaining agreement states that dues “deductions shall be made prospectively only and no retroactive deductions shall be made.”

University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald that “the University delayed the September dues deduction until October to be certain that all student appointments were included,” given that graduate student appointments,

SEE DINING PAGE 2

SEE GLO PAGE 3

ARTS & CULTURE

UNIVERSITY NEWS

‘Succession’ cynically returns for third season

Universities see strong endowment growth

HBO series capitalizes on America’s low expectations for media tycoons

BY CECILIA BARRON SENIOR STAFF WRITER This past Sunday, the critically acclaimed HBO series “Succession” returned after two years for a third season. The show, if anything, has only increased its monopoly on current television discourse since quarantine.

Following its red-carpet premiere on Oct. 12, as if it were a blockbuster movie, “Succession”’s return was the Super Bowl for those with HBO subscriptions.

“Succession” follows the Roy family, the owners of Waystar Royco, a media conglomerate that has drawn comparisons to the real-life Rupert Murdoch and his enterprise of conservative publications. Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is the patriarch of the family, but as his health declines, his children and colleagues compete for his spot as CEO. There’s Shiv (Sarah Snook), his only daughter, as whip-smart and vulgar as her father. There’s Roman (Kieran Culkin), even more vulgar, and a bit less smart.

There’s Connor (Alan Ruck), the oldest and dumbest. And then, there’s Kendall (Jeremy Strong).

Part of the hype surrounding this coming season grew out of last season’s cliffhanger ending. Kendall holds the keys to season three, after hijacking the plot at the end of season two. Waystar Royco’s cruise line came under attack after the company was exposed for covering up sexual assaults and murders onboard. Rather than aligning with his dad like the rest of his siblings, Kendall publicly goes against him, claiming Logan was aware of the cover-ups.

This isn’t exactly a noble move. Kendall wants to be CEO like everyone else, and due to his temperament and struggles with addiction, he figures he won’t be his dad’s top choice. So he throws a hail mary, and season three begins.

Those who were left anxiously pining for the show’s infamous credit song for the past two years might be slightly disappointed by this season’s premiere. Almost every scene seemed to take place either in a plane, in a car or waiting for either vehicle. The show’s characters never stopped moving, but no one really seemed to get anywhere.

In this way, “Succession” is the 2021

SEE ‘SUCCESSION’ PAGE 3

High returns at Brown, peer institutions reflect general market trends

BY PETER SWOPE SENIOR STAFF WRITER The University’s record endowment growth for Fiscal Year 2021 — which generated a 51.5% return and brought the overall endowment to $6.9 billion — reflects endowment growth nationwide. The endowment contributed $194 million to the University’s operating budget for FY21, representing approximately 15% of the total operating

budget. Many of the University’s peer institutions experienced comparable

endowment growth.

According to Brown’s press release, investment firm Cambridge Associates reported mean returns of 35.6% and median returns of 34% achieved by other schools for FY21, The Herald previously reported. These averages place Brown among the top performers in endowment growth this year. The S&P 500, a stock index commonly used as a benchmark for U.S. stock performance, increased by 40.8%. Brown’s 51.5% returns exceeded these figures as well as the Investment Office’s internal benchmark prediction of 43.1%.

CAELYN PENDER / HERALD

institutions to the work of the Investment Office. The endowment growth “is a real testament to the Investment Office in the context of challenging market conditions over the last few calendar years,” he wrote in an email to The Herald. “While last fiscal year’s returns are terrific, what I find particularly impressive is the consistently excellent relative returns generated over the past several years.”

“In addition to benefiting from the strong recovery in equity markets following the March 2020 pandemic-related market lows, the team’s private equity allocations delivered stellar returns, which speaks to both manager selection and rising valuations (and) a supportive environment for exits,” he added.

But Brown owes much of its endowment growth to broader market conditions, according to Ken Redd, senior director of research and policy analysis at the National Association of College and University Business Officers. “Endowment returns follow the financial markets, and as we saw, both U.S. and foreign stocks ... had huge gains” in FY21, he said. “Many endowments track indices like the S&P 500, so when those indices do well, we tend to see endowments (do) very well as

the Department of Economics, attributed Brown’s success relative to its peer

SEE GROWTH PAGE 8

Experts reflect on endowment growth Brad Gibbs ’93, MA ’18, lecturer in

University News

University News

Commentary

Arts & Culture

University launches certificate program centered on social change Page 2

Associate Dean Tunkel of Warren Alpert Medical School to resign Page 3

Gaber ’23: Our obsession with celebrity private lives is invasive, misogynistic Page 4

‘Titane’ explores the complexities of togetherness with violent, erotic scenes Page 8

TODAY

TOMORROW

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

Follow us on Instagram! @browndailyherald UNIVERSITY NEWS

Engaged Scholarship Certificate now available to students U. launches new undergraduate certificate to replace existing Engaged Scholars Program

BY NEIL MEHTA CONTRIBUTING WRITER The University launched its new Engaged Scholarship Certificate for students to declare beginning this semester, according to the website of the Swearer Center for Public Service. The certificate will replace the Swearer Center’s Engaged Scholars Program and allow students to explore a social issue of their choice through a combination of classes and community engagement.

The certificate was approved by the University in early 2021, The Herald previously reported.

It joins the existing Entrepreneurship and Data Fluency certificates, which have been available to students since fall 2020. It is now available for students to declare in their fifth or sixth semester regardless of their department, but is unavailable to double and triple concentrators.

“Previously, (the Engaged Scholars Program) was confined to just 16 concentrations,” said Program Manager of Engaged Scholarship Lindsey Co. “That was one of the biggest things when the Engaged Scholarship Program was being reviewed — how can we make this a little bit more accessible to students?”

Academic programs including the Engaged Scholars Program are reviewed by the University’s College Curriculum Council, according to Julie Plaut, director of Engaged Scholarship and assistant dean of the College. The council last reviewed the Engaged Scholars Program in 2019.

DINING FROM PAGE 1 wages.

University Spokesperson Brian Clark declined to comment on the formation of the coalition and its demands.

Matt Rauschenbach ’23, an executive board member of the Brown Democrats and contributer to the statement said that while disappointed by what he read in The Herald’s article, he was “not surprised” by its findings.

Rauschenbach, who worked in the Blue Room when he was a first-year, said anyone who has been an employee of Brown Dining Services is already aware of systemic issues.

Jada Wooten ’24, a project leader for Students for Educational Equity, one of the student group that supported the statement, agreed that the revelation of these conditions was important in holding the University accountable to its responsibility to its dining workers.

“I felt horrible that those are the conditions Brown workers are facing, but at the same time, reading it helped me piece together everything that is going on within the University,” Wooten said.

Rauschenbach and others involved with Brown Democrats wrote the statement and assembled the coalition of groups because they felt that students had a responsibility to speak up about

The CCC’s “recommendation was to shift toward a certificate,” Plaut said. “They were concerned that only certain students in certain concentrations were able to participate in the Engaged Scholarship Program.”

The Engaged Scholarship Certificate, like the program, allows students to explore a social issue in the classroom and in an experiential learning opportunity through the Swearer Cen-

Certificate is a valuable supplement to their exisiting research and coursework.

“The Engaged Scholarship Certificate was a really good way for me to figure out how I work with people in ways that benefit them,” said Engaged Scholarship Certificate student Aaron Castillo ’23. Research “is very interesting, but at the same time, you know when you study people, there’s a lot of ethical issues that

DAPHNE ZHAO / HERALD

ter. Students interested in declaring must first enroll in two courses that satisfy certificate requirements. Once declared, students must complete SOC 0310: “Theory and Practice of Engaged Scholarship,” three interdisciplinary electives, a practice-based learning experience and a program capstone, according to the University’s website.

In the first semester of this new offering, students have found that the Engaged Scholar

the conditions in dining facilities. The idea for a statement was first raised

by Brown Democrats, but Rauschenbach said he thought “that it would have more of an impact if we had more groups sign on, so we reached out to different organizations.” Rauschenbach said he told leadership of other student organizations, “If you read this and thought (that) these are not the types of conditions that workers at a multi-billion dollar endowed institution should be working in, we encourage you to sign on.”

Students for Educational Equity Co-President Zoë Fuad ’23.5 has been working with Rauschenbach and other student organizations advocating for improvements in Brown Dining Services working conditions. Her organization is “trying to build off the work that Brown Democrats have already started and work with them to see what is needed,” she said. “I think the end goal is ensuring that workers are appreciated and have student support.

We hope to see better wages, better infrastructure and better working conditions overall.”

Fuad emphasized the importance of collaboration in SEE’s advocacy efforts. “Many of the systems of oppression we are facing happen to be interlocking and overlapping. A lot of

come into play.”

Castillo hopes that the new certificate will allow more STEM concentrators to learn about “issues of gender and race within science.”

“There’s not a lot of opportunities for STEM majors to learn about this stuff unless they take a social class,” he said. “The certificate provides a really good way for STEM majors … to ask ‘how am I doing science in a way that benefits the community I’m studying or researching?’”

social justice groups at Brown tend to share a lot of common goals and interests, and I think it’s really important (that) groups are not defined by a single issue and to recognize the connection between different movements.”

Raushenbach said that he has received many questions from other students about why the demands in the statement, like improving conditions and raising wages, are so vague.

This was intentional, he said, in order to empower dining workers to lead efforts to improve conditions.

“If you read the initial article, one of the workers … said once the students get involved is when the University seems to care,” he said. “We should be uplifting the issue, and (the dining workers) should be leading the specifics.”

Wooten added that the statement can be a launching board for other student activism around this issue. In the past, she said, the biggest changes on campus — such as adding air conditioning to the Ratty ­— resulted from student activism.

“I don’t want the University to placate students and think that we are going away,” Rauschenbach said, “because we’re not.”

Swearer Center Peer Advisor Ishani Mehta ’22 is hopeful that the new certificate will encourage engineering concentrators to participate in engaged scholarship. Many of these students are not able to pursue a second concentration because of their course requirements but can satisfy the certificate’s requirements.

“The certificate would definitely be more in depth and involved (than the Engaged Scholars Program), so in that way, I’m excited for engineers,” Mehta said. “Having a certificate option … will up the class requirements relative to the Engaged Scholars Program as it exists now, but the tradeoff will be deeper engagement and critical thought.”

Some students view the single concentration requirement as “a limitation on access,” Plaut said. “We’re doing our best to emphasize … that the certificate is just one option” to practice engaged scholarship.

Double and triple concentrators have other options to participate in engaged scholarship at Brown, including the Swearer Center’s Community-Based Learning and Research Fellowship and classes like SOC 0310, according to Co. The latter has recently been made available to all class years.

The new certificate is more systematic than the former Engaged Scholars Program, according to Engaged Scholarship Peer Advisor Alexa Ara ’22.

“The old program can often feel a little bit disjointed, which also means more freedom, so you have a give-and-take situation,” Ara said.

“But the new certificate is very much aligned with the idea that you’re going to come out of this with new skills and new goals. This is going to be a chance to work in that interdisciplinary mode that Brown really does promote.”

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3

‘SUCCESSION’ FROM PAGE 1 version of “West Wing.” Despite the deserved acclaim of both shows, they share the common feature of characters who seem to require an inordinate amount of walking. Similar in its sense of rapid movement, quick monologues and complicated power dynamics, Jesse Armstrong, the creator of “Succession,” seems to pick at the scab Aaron Sorkin was trying to heal with the sweeter, kinder, patriotic “West Wing.” The dutiful officials of the “West Wing” era have, like many officials in the Obama era, traded in their White House passes for board positions at Waystar Royco. The Monopoly Man has overthrown the president; ATN, the Fox News-like Royco network, controls the press secretary; the stock market replaces public opinion polls.

Americans don’t want to see the government try to fix anything anymore.

In “House of Cards,” people get killed more than problems get solved. “Designated Survivor” is predicated on the government’s explosion. “Scandal” was more about soothing the President’s woes than the nation’s. In “Succession,” the political stakes are just as high — Waystar Royco, like Murdoch’s News Corp, has enormous control over the economy and national attitude — but there’s no presumed morality. We know the Roys have no interest in serving the public good. They’re blameless in a way presidents are not.

That is why “Succession” can be fun-

GLO FROM PAGE 1 or type of employment, fluctuated due to shopping period and public health restrictions caused uncertainty about the enrollment status of many international graduate students for the fall semester.

Clark added that “the Graduate School met with union leadership in September to review and discuss this approach; the union expressed no concerns with delaying the deduction until October, and in fact the delay modeled one requested directly by the union in prior semesters.”

Third-party payments GLO’s second charge accuses the University of making unilateral changes to working conditions that result in lower and less frequent pay for remote workers.

“Some grads got approval to work remotely for the fall semester because of COVID, and after getting their approval, were told if they didn’t reside in one of 12 states, they couldn’t be paid,” Hajdarovic said.

To remedy the situation, Brown is paying remote graduate workers in states where the University is not authorized to conduct business through a third-party service, Clark wrote.

GLO maintains that this policy is a violation of their collective bargaining agreement, which states that “no changes to wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment” not already recognized by the CBA “will be made except by mutual agreement of the University and the union pursuant to collective bargaining.”

Additionally, GLO’s Oct. 8 press release stated that “grads have received significantly late pay, in some cases as little as $620 for the entire month of September, as a result of the University switching them to a third-party payroll service.”

In Fiscal Year 2021, the minimum graduate worker pay was $32,305 for the year, breaking down to $2,692.08 per month, according to Hajdarovic.

Clark wrote that the University no-

COURTESY OF MACALL B. POLAY/HBO

The Primetime Emmy Award winning comedy-drama “Succession” was renewed for a third season, which premiered on HBO October 17. ny. The characters are decidedly more vile, more suspect, more murderous than most characters in any White House series. But because we did in some way elect them — Logan earned his money through media companies that successfully captured national attention — and because they have no official duty to the public, we can love to hate them.

“This is the full Baskin Robbins,” Logan says in an apparent non sequitur during the premiere, “thirty-one flavors of fuck right there.” It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to. He’s no Jed Bartlet. He’s a billionaire on his way to Sarajevo to escape possible extradition.

He can do whatever he wants.

We can laugh as the Roys divide the country, upset the economy and kill some people to prove themselves to

their father. While Bartlet’s major fault was failing to tell the nation that he had multiple sclerosis, Kendall leaves a young man to die after they crash a car while driving high on ketamine. Shiv unethically silences a sexual assault victim of the cruise scandal. Logan, in addition to creating the comically evil-sounding Waystar Royco, seems to genuinely hate some of his kids. But Bartlet, in 2000, was the one seen as unforgivable. He was censured by Congress, subject to investigations, distrusted by the public.

Twenty years later, the Roys know they don’t have to ask for our forgiveness. We no longer expect apologies.

tified GLO of this policy in July, adding that at the time GLO expressed no concerns. Clark also noted that Brown is paying the fewer than 10 graduate students in this position with no change in compensation.

employees, as “the University has removed tuition-paying master’s grads from GLO’s bargaining unit, paying them at approximately half the rate of PhD grads for the same work.”

According to the CBA, the bargaining unit only includes master’s students who are “appointed Teaching Assistants, Research Assistants and Proctors.”

Additionally, GLO and the University have been in arbitration over payments to help cover pandemic-related

Union membership rights The third charge claims that the University failed to communicate with graduate students in the bargaining unit about their right to join GLO. The charge argues that the University has not been clear with graduate students that graduate work is covered by the union, Hajdarovic wrote in an email to The Herald. This has caused confusion among graduate students about the protections to which they are entitled and led to the University hiring students “who have not paid dues or fair share fees, undermining (GLO’s) contract,” Hajdarovic added.

The CBA states that the University and GLO must notify covered graduate student employees of the existence of the agreement upon hiring and also provide information about union membership and payroll deduction.

Clark wrote that “Brown has invested significant time to communicating with bargaining unit members their requirement to pay union dues or fair share fees” including having Grad School leaders connect with students who have not complied with paying dues to have them coordinate with the union on how they would like to pay their dues.

Beyond the charges NLRB lawyers are in the process of collecting evidence before they decide whether to pursue the charges, according to Hajdarovic. Possible next steps include either returning to the grievance process laid out in the CBA or scheduling a full hearing.

Beyond these three charges, GLO is also in talks with the University over other alleged contract violations.

The press release states that GLO is pending arbitration over the status of tuition-paying master’s graduate

their payments, Hajdarovic said.

“Brown said the payment was going out to around 1,600 people, and when we contacted the University, it had only gone out to 1,450,” she said. “That’s a huge discrepancy.”

Hajdarovic said that GLO initially tried to resolve the issue informally through talks with Associate Dean for Administration and Operations Ethan Bernstein. When those didn’t yield results, GLO filed a formal grievance.

Since then, GLO announced on Sept.

tributed to the University’s continuing efforts to identify all students who were not sent the payments. “The payment was disbursed on July 30 to those eligible and active graduate students, and we are working closely with GLO to disburse the payment to any graduate student who was eligible but graduated or left the University before that pay date,” he wrote.

“We look forward to continuing our efforts to engage in good faith with union leadership on issues of impor-

VICTORIA YIN / HERALD

GLO charged Brown with failure to collect union dues, introducing changes that result in less pay for remote workers and failure to communicate with graduate students about their right to join the union. expenses not being sent to all covered graduate employees.

Hajdarovic said that in GLO’s annual wage reopener negotiations this year, GLO and the University reached an agreement to send out $750 payments on July 30 to all graduate workers to help address rising costs of living and pandemic-related expenses.

Yet while the agreement stated that the payment would be distributed to the roughly 1,600 graduate employees who worked during the spring semester, GLO received reports of graduate students who had graduated after the semester — many of whom continue to work for the University — and who did not receive

28 on Twitter that “through the grievance process, grad workers who were denied their $750 COVID payment will be paid the money they are owed.”

Hajdarovic said that these payments are expected to be sent out on Oct. 30.

In addition, Hajdarovic said, the University was supposed to send GLO a list of all 150 students who did not receive their $750 payments. But as of Oct. 13, the University had a list of just 60 names. If the University does not send a full list or send payments to all 150 students, Hajdarovic added, GLO may seek further arbitration.

In an email to The Herald, Bernstein said that the discrepancy can be at-

tance to graduate students,” Clark added.

Overall, Ramamurthy said in GLO’s press release that the union is committed to ensuring that the University fairly compensates graduate employees.

“The grad workers running our union at Brown are tired of the University undermining workplace democracy,” Ramamurthy said. “The University has taken every opportunity to do things the hard way with GLO, but we won’t die by a thousand cuts. Every adversity that we face from admin makes it more clear to grads: We have a union and that’s why Brown must respect our worker power.”

4

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

ARTS & CULTURE

“Titane,” absurdist violence and human vulnerability Winner of the Palme d’Or shocks yet invites food for thought

BY IRENE CHOU ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR “Titane” begins with young Alexia (Adèle Guigue) glowering at her father, making engine revving noises and kicking the back of the driver’s seat with an inexplicable hatred. Her father finally snaps and whips around to discipline the child, losing control of the vehicle in the process. Without a seatbelt on, the girl flies forward, smashing her head against the windowpane with a bloody splat.

Fortunately, both father and daughter survive the car crash. Planting a kiss on the window of the car that may have shielded her from certain death, Alexia leaves the hospital. Her body is now repaired with the titular titanium plate surgically inserted around her skull.

Fast forward to present day, Alexia (now played by Agathe Rousselle) is a lanky, forbidding beauty in her early thirties, strip-dancing at car shows.

When a fanboy chases after her and forces a kiss, she unflinchingly drives a metal shank, doubling as a hairpin, into his ear. Pushing away the foaming corpse in disgust, Alexia re-enters the car shop to wash off his residual puke.

When she hears a mysterious banging on the locker room door, Alexia leaves, naked, to find her Cadillac parked empty just outside. She then slips into the back-seat to indulge her sexual desires for the golden, flame-painted muscle car she has long

danced atop of — soon becoming pregnant with the Cadillac’s child.

It is perhaps easier to think of the film as a relentless series of visual assaults dished out to the audience: making them squirm in their chairs, cringe at grisly moments and stare in disbelief at the visceral dream-like scenes unfolding before them — Alexia’s rapturous episode with the Cadillac being one of the most obscene yet captivating sequences of “Titane.” Still, to only note the bewildering sensationalism consisting of body horror, car sex and slapstick killing sprees does not do “Titane” justice.

Winner of the Palme d’Or, the prestigious top award at the Cannes Film Festival, “Titane” is director Julia Ducournau’s second film. Her directorial debut “Raw” was another shudder-inducing body horror film delving into cannibalism and sex, but it was also a bildungsroman exploring the gradual acceptance of an ever-evolving self.

“Raw” serves as a daring, horrifyingly fascinating exploration of what makes one human. “Titane” continues Ducournau’s ambitious quest to combine absurdist violence and horror with the nuances of human failings and togetherness.

After the film’s first half of slasher sequences and pulsating eroticism, “Titane” turns sharply into the less abrasive realm of father-son melodrama.

Alexia, after unfortunately leaving one would-be-victim alive, is on the run.

Seeing the image of a missing child, Adrien, she decidedly breaks her nose, binds her breasts and turns herself in at a police station disguised as the lost son. She is picked up by Adrien’s father,

COURTESY OF EF NEON

Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or-winning “Titane” is her second film after her directorial debut “Raw,” another body horror film. The film includes togetherness and failure while also incorporating violence and horror.

Vincent (Vincent Lindon), the austere, muscled leader of a fire-brigade, who breaks down at the unexpected reunion.

Ducournau then boldly dances with the multifaceted notions of the individual, giving Alexia and Vincent unexpected character depth. Taking on the role of Adrien, Alexia is no longer the alluring stonecold killer, but the clumsy-looking, effeminate outlier in the hyper-masculine throng of sculpted firemen led by Vincent.

Now impregnated by the Cadillac, Alexia also struggles to accept the drastic changes throughout her body — enlarging breasts leaking dark streaks of petrol in the shower, the incessant itch-itch-itch on the underside of a bulging stomach. There is no sense of control as she fights tenaciously against a physical transformation.

Through the determined, riotous struggles against her own body, Alexia’s cold-blooded facade seems to melt away, revealing a vunerable woman inexperienced with pregnancy. Often wordlessly, Rousselle portrays the distinctively female apprehension of a changing pregnant body, the vague dreams of seeing her baby birthed and the urge for a sense of belonging.

Despite her sexual impulses for the cold, hard and metallic, Alexia wants more than just an unfeeling vehicle.

She yearns for the warmth of a human embrace, something she finally stumbles upon through the paternal Vincent.

And the aging Vincent, his straining muscles perpetually pulled taut, similarly struggles against a body beyond his control. Pumping his aging frame with steroids, he releases a frustrated

cry as he fails to complete the physical training he was able to do in his prime.

Beyond the severe, haughty figure leading a crew of adonis-esque firefighters, Vincent hides a tender softness. His fragility manifests as he tries awkwardly to make “Adrien” more comfortable in their childhood bedroom and has his newfound son inject the steroids for him.

In “Titane,” Ducournau contemplates the doubles of life — cruelty blended with tenderness, eroticism and repulsion and the unbounded fluidity of gender’s male/female dichotomy. It is a film worth watching, and a film certainly worth thinking about long after one’s bewildering viewing experience.

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CA L E N DA R

COVID -19 AT BROWN LAST 7 DAYS*

OCTOBER S

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Completed Tests

People Tested

F

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8,660

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Positivity Rates

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8

9 SINCE AUGUST 24, 2020*

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18

19

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24/31

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Completed Tests

People Tested

557,060

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Total Cases

Prevalence

805

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*AS OF OCT. 17

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

5

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Associate Dean for Medical Education Allan Tunkel to step down Tunkel’s legacy includes developing medical school curriculum, student mentorship

BY GRACE HOLLEB CONTRIBUTING WRITER Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education Allan Tunkel will step down from his position May 22, 2022 after eight years at the University, according to an email announcement made

by Dean of Medicine and Biological Sciences Jack Elias.

During his time as dean, Tunkel worked to advise students as well as to develop the medical school curriculum and residency matching process.

Tunkel will continue to teach as a professor of medicine and medical science and work as a physician at the Alpert Medical School. In addition, he plans to continue clinical research with infectious disease at Rhode Island Hospital.

The University will conduct a nationwide search to find Tunkel’s replacement. “I just want to refocus my life around different priorities right now,” he said. Tunkel remarried last month and said he looks forward to spending more time with his wife and children.

During his tenure, Tunkel worked to implement the “Primary Care Population Medicine Program,” which was

developed from a grant that the Med School received shortly before his arrival in July 2013. The initiative became an opportunity for a cohort of students to not only get their MD, but also a brand new Masters of Science degree in population medicine.

He helped to develop “the opioid curriculum” for medical students, allowing students to receive a certificate to prescribe medication for opioid addiction.

In addition to these initiatives, Tunkel engaged with the National Board of Medical Examiners to change the “United States Medical Licensing Exam” from a numerical grading system to a pass-fail system.

Tunkel hopes the next senior associate dean will continue to build on many of the accomplishments from his tenure as well as focusing on combating racism in medicine, which he emphasized as the most critical issue in medical education moving forward.

“Doing more in those areas is going to be critical to the education and training of our future doctors.”

Tunkel believes that the work of many others was instrumental to implementing all the initiatives of his tenure. Without others’ tireless work, such a significant improvement in the education of Brown’s medical students would not have been possible, according to Tunkel.

Hired one month after Tunkel in 2013, Elias said he has watched Tunkel care tremendously for students and

academics as well as medicine.

“He has spent the last eight years of his life showing the world that he is proud of ­— and provides the best possible education to — Brown medical students,” Elias said.

Elias has enjoyed watching Tunkel work with medical students on the match process, a system where residency candidates and residency programs are connected through an algorithm.

Sometimes, unlucky students are not paired with a match. One of Tunkel’s responsibilities was working to find a residency program for those unmatched students.

Tunkel finds happiness in the successes of all his students and wants each one to succeed, Elias said.“He takes such pride in getting the students the matches that are going to allow them to do what they want to do.” Elias said.

Singrid Young ’13 MD ’20, who worked with Tunkel on the Student Health Council, characterized Tunkel as one of the dearest mentors she has ever had. For Young, Tunkel was the perfect role model. She said he is beyond kind and compassionate and “practices what he preaches.”

“I felt like he knew me from the beginning, learned my interest and then sort of fostered that growth to empower me to approach my passions,” Young said. “He is so humble and so frank and authentic. I try to embody all of the values that he lives on a day-to-day basis.”

In the field of medicine where she

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Tunkel played a chief role in developing the medical school curriculum and will continue to teach, work as a physician and conduct research. feels like hiding vulnerabilities and keeping a straight face is the norm, Young said Tunkel taught her to be her authentic self.

“He has taught me to be kind to

myself and kind to other people, but really, (to) listen to my own emotions,” Young said.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

6

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Students, faculty react to return to in-person midterms Students express difficulty towards readjusting to in-class midterms

BY ALEX NADIRASHVILI SENIOR STAFF WRITER Lucy Lebowitz ’24 sat at her dorm room desk, absent-mindedly scrolling through a Quizlet set for her upcoming BIO0530: “Principles of Immunology” midterm exam.

After several hours, she decided the “studying-in-isolation method” was not working, so she moved into her suite’s common space for a change of scenery. But once again, she found herself struggling to study. Lebowitz finally migrated to one of the study spaces in the Andrew’s Commons, a final attempt to work through problems with other classmates. And yet, Lebowitz proceeded to her midterm the next day filled with anxiety.

“I’m just not the student I used to be before the pandemic,” Lebowitz said. “It’s really hard for me to get back into the swing of things, it’s like I don’t know how to study anymore.”

For the first time in a year and a half, the University is returning to in-person exams, whether it be project presentations, essays or written tests.

“It’s going to be interesting having to go back to that memorization studying and the repetitive studying,” Béatrice Duchastel De Montrouge ’23 said.“Maybe it’ll be useful, maybe not.”

Students aren’t the only ones struggling with re-adjusting back to in-person exams. For Brenda Rubenstein, professor of chemistry, in-person exams mean a return to more logistically challenging grading methods.

“It’s totally more difficult in person. The choice to switch back is not because we want to be cruel to stu-

dents — we’re also cruel to ourselves,” Rubenstein said. “We have to make copies of 400 exams, … make different versions. … The (teaching assistants) have to be grading exams on paper, which is less efficient than Gradescope. … It’s not efficient at all, but for me, the pedagogical value outweighs these things.”

Aisling Dugan, lecturer in molecular microbiology and immunology, emphasized the value of in-person exams.

“I think that having a piece of paper and pen is the gold standard of the learning process, to be able to communicate what you understand, ” Dugan said. “There’s just like a little bit of alchemy that happens in the (physical) classroom.”

Rubenstein also emphasized the importance of ensuring all students receive a fair chance at exams, enabled by the relatively leveled playing field of in-person testing.

“Certain students have networks where … people will give them the answers, and other students don’t,” Rubenstein said. “That’s really unfair.”

For some students, the switch to in-person exams was too sudden after several semesters of online learning.

“I won’t have any in-person written exams until my (economics) final, which will be 40% of my grade,” said Adam Dieck ’24. “That’s not gonna be a party … there is definitely going to be some difficulty transitioning back into (in-person) exams. I’m almost upset there’s no midterm to help start the adjustment process.”

Many professors, however, are not entirely abandoning the online practices adopted during the pandemic.

“When the exams come back to me, I scan them and use Gradescope to give students an electronic version of their exams, which may be more useful for them,” Dugan said.

Jonathan Fine, lecturer in German studies, emphasized the benefits of

Canvas when it comes to day-to-day exercises. “I have set up some grammar exercises that Canvas can actually grade. So it does help me sometimes substantially,” Fine said.

In certain courses, including PHP1510: “Principles of Biostatistics and Data Analysis,” another class Lebowitz is in, professors decided to continue online practices in order to accommodate students who are attending their courses remotely.

“For both of my courses, we have a remote section for students that cannot be on campus. … Hence, I wanted all of the students in the course to have the same experience for the tests,” Lorenzo De Stefani, lecturer in computer science, wrote in an email to The Herald. “This was (also) in consideration of the work of my TAs. … they are students first and foremost.

As such, they are themselves going through a re-adjustment to life on campus and I want them to enjoy it.”

For some students, such as Susan Tang ’23, midterm formats have gone largely unchanged. “I’m still just writ-

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ing an essay in my dorm,” Tang said.

Karen Hu ’24, came down with a cold during the week of her MATH 0350: “Honors Calculus” midterm.

Worried about how her classmates would feel about her coughing and sneezing during the exam, she reached out to her professor.

The professor responded that it “would be alright if I needed to step out of the exam at any moment,” Hu explained. “I especially emphasized that I had gotten a negative COVID test so she said me going in for the test was alright.”

Many of the professors who spoke to The Herald have had to accommodate students, both with illnesses and not, who are cautious of attending class in-person.

“If students cannot take the exam on the date it is given because of illness or other acceptable reasons, a make-up exam will be arranged,” wrote Richard Arenberg, visiting professor of the practice of political science, in an email to The Herald.

“Personally, as a freshman who

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took a gap year, I’m struggling a lot with the workload,” Mira Rudensky ’25 said. “My professors and TAs have been incredibly supportive. … they have been great about meeting when I encounter a problem.”

Rubenstein’s course offered one-on-one tutoring with TAs. Both Rubenstein and Dugan have also lowered the weight of their courses’ exams in their students’ final grades.

“A lot of us, as faculty, have been having conversations … about these issues for months now. We’re very well aware of the stresses that students have and we care deeply about them,” Rubenstein said. “We’re trying to do our best, for the most part, to figure out ways to reduce that stress but also to get students used to the way exams are done.”

“These two years during the pandemic have been difficult for us all,” Arenberg wrote. “I have been deeply impressed by the resilience, good spirit and dedication to their work which Brown students have exhibited throughout.”

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

7

Gaber ’23: Obsession with celebrities’ personal lives is a flaw in our culture

BY YASMEEN GABER STAFF COLUMNIST

Federico Fellini’s 1960 classic film “La Dolce Vita” — which coined the term “paparazzi” — offered one of the first critiques of the banal absurdity of popular interest in celebrities’ personal lives. In the film, Anita Ekberg plays a Swedish actress not unlike herself. In one scene, international journalists grill her with questions ranging in topic from what she thinks of French New Wave cinema to whether or not she likes to date Italian men.

Some 60 years later, that invasive culture persists. Swaths of “everyday people” read sources ranging from The Daily Mail to People Magazine to stay current on who their favorite musician is dating, whether their favorite athlete really did cheat with the nanny or what their favorite actress spreads on her toast in the morning. This culture is so entrenched that few seem to wonder why any of this information is important or even relevant. However, this paradigm of celebrity news fosters a strange obsession with the rich and famous, promotes misogynistic standards in the media and enables a bizarre and unnecessary invasion of celebrity privacy to satisfy reader consumption.

After all, why should it matter which celebrity is dating whom? Whether or not I like Ben Affleck’s films, his marriage to one Jennifer or another couldn’t possibly affect my daily life.

Yet it is covered simply because consumers happily consume news on the rich and famous.

With the spat of recent headlines devoted to the billionaire space race, people have begun to question to what degree the press should focus on the activities of the wealthy. But, as unnecessary as this news attention may be, it is nowhere near as frivolous as coverage of “fan theories,” like rumors about Chris Evans and Sele-

na Gomez’s potential relationship. The fact that fan theories regarding celebrity relationships can incite real news coverage, rather than simple tabloid speculation, is further evidence that the cult of celebrity gossip has become legitimized in our society.

Celebrity gossip speculation might seem innocuous were it not for its reinforcement of

abdomen, middle-aged celebrities are presumed to be pregnant and have to either confirm or deny these rumors in order to banish them. Any woman who has grown above a size two will have to answer for her weight gain — not to mention plus-size women, whose media scrutiny reaches another level. By putting female celebrities’ appearances and romantic lives un-

“The fact that ‘fan theories’ regarding celebrity relationships can incite real news coverage, rather than simple tabloid speculation, is further evidence that that the cult of celebrity gossip has become legitimized in our society.”

misogynistic standards in the media. A classic example is the ongoing attention paid to Taylor Swift’s dating life. Though the coverage itself does not stem uniquely from the fact that she is a woman, the way that the media has scrutinized her certainly suggests a sexist bent. For publicly dating multiple men, she is called a “maneater” and subjected to forensically detailed rundowns on each of her break-ups and which former boyfriends had nice things to say about her. Beyond relationships, the media viciously dissects the appearances of famous women. One pernicious example of this phenomenon is the tabloid subgenre of celebrity pregnancy rumors. For wearing loose-fitting

der a microscope, gossip reporting validates and propagates misogyny beyond tabloid pages.

Our collective curiosity about the home lives of our favorite celebrities also leads us to accept breaches of privacy that we would otherwise balk at. This is not to say that rich and famous celebrities are downtrodden victims whom we must strive to protect, but we seem to be more willing to invade their personal space than that of our friends. In 2015, California passed a law to ban drone photography on private property as a response to celebrity outrage over invasions of privacy. But, as recently as 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle filed and won a lawsuit against a celebrity photo agency for their

clothing or for having a less than pancake-flat

illegal drone use. This episode proves that while

California’s 2015 law can be useful, it hasn’t addressed the root cause of intrusive celebrity photography: the insatiable curiosity of readers. When paparazzi photograph celebrities’ children, they cross another boundary. In 2014, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard launched an effort to hold mainstream news outlets accountable for running paparazzi photos of young children. Such an effort hasn’t stopped gossip outlets from getting their shots of underaged subjects, but it is a start in decommodifying celebrities and their personal lives, especially when it comes to kids who have no say in the matter. Finally, privacy invasion can have fatal consequences — look no further than the tragic case of Princess Diana, whose 1997 death was at least partially attributed to paparazzi that swarmed her car on that fateful night in Paris.

The right to privacy should be a universal principle, regardless of celebrity status. When we don’t respect boundaries around celebrities’ personal lives in the media, our collective psyche can fall victim to uncontrollable obsession.

Celebrity fan theories are all fun and games until they have tangible consequences for the real people behind the media personas and for the social order that we create. Ultimately, buttressed as it is by a highly profitable industry, it’s unlikely that celebrity gossip will decline in popularity any time soon. But that shouldn’t stop us from being skeptical of the content that we consume as “popular culture,” nor from considering how on Earth Bennifer should find relevance in our daily lives.

Yasmeen Gaber ’23 can be reached at yasmeen_gaber@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

8

SCIENCE AND RESEARCH

Engineering faculty awarded $6.5M grant from Office of Naval Research Five professors receive funding for undersea vehicle, platform research

BY ANNA KIM SENIOR STAFF WRITER The Office of Naval Research awarded $6.5 million of grant funding in September to faculty researchers at the Brown School of Engineering, who will focus on undersea vehicle and platform research in collaboration with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport.

The funding, which will last three years, will go towards principal investigators and Professors of Engineering Yuri Bazilevs, Kenny Breuer and Pradeep Guduru. Assistant Professors of Engineering Daniel Harris and Vikas Srivastava will serve as the area leads and co-investigators for this project.

The research team will work to provide “general research knowledge and technology,” which the Navy will “apply ... to specific vehicle designs,” Bazilevs said.

Instead of focusing on a specific vehicle or platform, the team will “work on a new class of structural materials that can then be used on submarines, manned or unmanned, to mitigate extreme events like blasts” with the overall goal of improving safety and resistance, he said.

One environment that the team aims to explore with these new vehicle designs and materials is cold waters. “The Arctic is becoming very important for the U.S. Navy, and so we

well. The financial market conditions were very strong and very positive, and endowments, like all investors, have benefited from that.”

Generally, about half of endowment assets are in stocks and bonds, while the rest are in “alternative strategies” such as commodities, private equity, hedge funds or other asset classes. “When the stock market does well, those other assets tend to do even better,” Redd said. “What you’re seeing is that half of endowments’ assets (are) doing even better than the traditional (stocks and bonds), so you do see some institutions reporting numbers (that are) better than the stock market and are better than some other institutions as well.”

In Gibbs’ view, Brown’s returns can be credited to a combination of its own successes and broader market trends.

“While the market backdrop was certainly supportive, Brown’s outperformance versus internal and external benchmarks speaks to making good decisions,” he wrote. “It is also important to note that Brown’s investment professionals, in addition to focusing on returns, are focused on managing risk and have to think carefully about portfolio concentration and correlation.”

Redd argued that this year’s endowment growth was a function of strong market performance above all else.

“Many institutions (and) endowments did really well. Across the board, universities, just like all investors, are benefiting from really, really strong financial markets, both on the public side and on the private or alternative side,” he said.

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

The team of researchers from the Brown School of Engineering will use the $6.5 million in grant funding to investigate structural materials that can be used to improve safety and resistance on Navy submarines in the context of conditions and environments such as cold waters. need to understand if these materials are any good, or if we need to come up with some other solutions when the temperatures go lower than expected,” Bazilevs said.

Bazilevs will lead an area of this research focused on predictive modeling of structures to study the impact of undersea conditions on the vehicles.

Additionally, Bazilevs will collaborate with Harris to explore computational simulations of objects that provide propulsion along the interface between air and water, according to Harris.

As part of another aspect of the project, Breuer and Harris aim to “learn

something from nature to design better engineering structures,” Harris said. For example, they will look to examples in biology for inspiration on the mechanics of swimming and flying.

“We’re looking at things like diving birds and how they successfully survive very high altitude impacts with the air-water interface,” he added.

Another area of the study, in which Guduru, Bazilevs and Srivastava are involved, will seek to determine means of improving vehicle movement in water and their ability to withstand extreme conditions, according to a University press release on the award.

Beyond the scope of the current

project, Harris is optimistic that this funding will foster a “strong connection” between the Navy and its Rhode Island facilities, “which is quite unique and exciting to be a part of,” he added.

The engineering department hopes that “this is the first of many such awards going forward,” Dean of Engineering Lawrence Larson said. “We have a tremendous amount of great science that we can apply to some of the toughest problems that these funding agencies give us.”

“One of the things that we’re especially proud of is that this was a real team effort” by multiple faculty members to put together the grant propos-

al, Larson added. “It’s a great example of how people in engineering really work together to solve some of these big problems.”

“We’re hoping to train a next generation of scientists and engineers that are able to work on Navy problems, but again, can go beyond that ... for the benefit of the U.S. and beyond,” Bazilevs said.

This award is a “vote of confidence in Brown’s world-leading mechanics program,” Larson said, and is a statement that “when the government wants to do the most cutting edge research, they come to Brown.”

Peer insitutions report strong FY21 numbers Harvard experienced returns of 33.6%, bringing the total value of its endowment to $53.2 billion, according to Harvard’s financial report for FY21.

Harvard’s endowment contributed over $2 billion towards its operating budget, comprising 39%. According to the report, Harvard targets a payout rate between 5 and 5.5%, representing the amount of the endowment that is withdrawn and directed toward the operating budget.

Its FY21 rate was 5.2%.

“Fiscal Year 2021 was an extraordinary year,” wrote Harvard Management Company CEO Narv Narvekar in the financial report. “Public and private markets both continued their strong performance, which allowed the endowment to not only increase its distribution to the University, but also continue to grow during this critical time when pandemic-related financial pressures challenge all of higher education.”

MIT saw earnings even greater than those of Brown: its returns of 55.5% brought its endowment to $27.4 billion, according to a statement. The $851 million of the endowment designated for university operations represent about 30% of its total operating budget. In response to the growth, MIT will increase its endowment payout rate by 30% beginning fiscal year 2023, according to the statement.

“We have strived to craft a carefully calibrated approach,” MIT’s Executive Vice President and Treasurer Glen Shor said of the investment strategy in the statement. “The steps we are taking

balance today’s needs for meaningful investment in the Institute, while taking care to preserve our endowment for future generations of learners.”

Cornell’s endowment now sits at $10 billion after seeing returns of 41.9%, according to a Cornell news release. Though the release does not offer exact figures on the amount of money paid out of the endowment in FY21 or what percentage of the operating budget is made up of payouts, the annual payout rate is roughly 5%.

This amount is below the New York state law maximum threshold of a 7% payout rate, as the release notes.

Cornell’s news release also cited a recent overhaul of investment and money management strategies as a reason for their sizable returns.

“We’re beginning to very clearly see the fruits of those efforts,” said Cornell Chief Investment Officer Kenneth Miranda in the release. “We’ve got a lot more flexibility, we’ve gotten our cost structure down, controlled unfunded commitments and revamped our manager lineup. The portfolio is in a good place.”

Yale reported endowment growth of 40.2%, bringing its total endowment to $42.3 billion, according to a press release. Yale paid out $1.5 billion, which amounted to 35% of Yale’s operating budget in FY21, according to the statement. An exact payout rate for FY21 was not specified, but Yale targets an annual payout rate of 5.25%, per the statement.

Yale’s Chief Investment Officer Matt Mendelsohn emphasized a forward-looking approach to endowment management in the press release. “It

was an extraordinary year for the endowment, which will benefit the Yale community now and for generations to come,” he said. “While we are pleased with this gain, we define success over longer periods of time, measured by our ability to provide stable and growing support to the university so that it can carry out its mission.”

All five institutions have comparable payout rates, but because of the significantly larger endowments of Harvard, MIT, Cornell and Yale, these payouts make up a larger percentage of their respective operating budgets. According to Gibbs and Redd, Brown’s sizable returns derive from a combination of Brown’s well-chosen investments and the same market growth that propelled university endowment gains across the board. “Based on the numbers I’ve seen, there are only a small handful of schools such as MIT that have done better” than Brown, Gibbs wrote.

the University will consider reducing its payout so as to enable Brown to benefit from future compounding,” he added. “It is really important to understand that the endowment is not a checking account, but a savings account ... appreciation (and preservation) of capital will continue to pay future dividends in terms of supporting the University’s aims.” In other words, Gibbs expects Brown to remove less money from the endowment annually in the future so that more money remains to reinvest.

Redd explained that since he views this year’s remarkable endowment growth as anomalous, he does not expect universities to substantially alter their investment strategies in future years. “Endowments are long term investment vehicles; they’re not designed to react to one really good year (or) one really bad year,” he said.

“We’ve seen endowments remain relatively stable, even during the worst of the COVID crisis.”

During the 2008-2009 recession, universities largely did not change their investment management strategy despite losses ranging from 30 to 40%. “This year, many are up by that much ... and the reaction (has been to) stay the course (and) not make radical changes in investment policy,” he added. “Because endowments have more dollars to spend, I think you’ll see schools spend more dollars. Rates (of payout) will probably remain relatively stable, but there’s just more dollars to be spent off of that (payout) percentage.”

Long-term future of Brown’s endowment Regardless of the long-term trajectory of Brown’s endowment, the University will continue to benefit from this year’s growth, according to Gibbs. “As a result of the success of the ongoing capital campaign and the performance of the endowment, Brown is able to invest across a broad array of strategic initiatives and ensure the institution’s ability to fulfill its mission over the long term as well as weather future downturns,” he wrote.

“In addition to supporting Brown’s annual budget and broader strategic aims, I would expect that, over time,