Wednesday, September 28th, 2022

Grad students allege removal from programs

3 campus unions ratify new labor contracts

BY NEIL MEHTA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The Graduate Labor Organization claimed that the University was forc ing three graduate students out of their programs in an Aug. 31 Instagram post and petition.

In their post, GLO reported the grad uate students were denied unpaid leave, placed under inactive status and had their dissertation canceled.

One of the three graduate stu dents regained student status Sept. 20, GLO wrote in an email to The Herald. On Sept. 19, GLO announced a Sept. 28 rally in support of the other two students.

The Herald spoke to Jeremiah Zablon GS, who regained his status, and students Clew GS and Karina Santamaria GS — who are still facing removal from their programs — about the institutional barriers they faced during their graduate study.

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Multiple University administrators declined to comment about commu nications with the three students in accordance with federal law, which pro hibits disclosure of students’ academic or financial circumstances, University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.

Jeremiah Zablon GS Zablon, a master’s student at the School of Public Health, planned to begin his second year of the program

Indy to regain funding after temporary freeze

this fall.

Due to an economic crisis in his home country Kenya, he was unable to pay his tuition, according to his GoFundMe page. As an international student, Zablon said he did not have access to internal loans from the Of fice of Financial Aid to pay his tuition, which totaled nearly $30,000.

After failing to pay his spring 2022 tuition balance, the University placed

UNIVERSITY NEWS

BY SAM LEVINE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Three staff bargaining units on cam pus — facilities, libraries and dining services — reached agreements with the University on new contracts that will extend into fall 2024, according to union representatives and Marie Williams, vice president for human resources.

Contracts for those three unions, as well as public safety, expired in the last two years. Negotiations remain ongoing between the public safety bargaining unit and the University.

The facilities, libraries and dining services unions have ratified their re spective agreements, with the dining services and libraries contracts still awaiting formal signature, Williams wrote in an email to The Herald.

Public safety contract negotiations

began in summer 2022 between the University and the Brown University Security Patrolperson’s Association, which represents the Department of Public Safety in negotiations. The contract expired in June.

Negotiations for dining, facilities and libraries — all members of the United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island — took place between the University and USAW-RI represen tatives and included union stewards for each respective bargaining unit. After concluding negotiations with the University, draft agreements of the contracts were then ratified by the members of each respective union. The final step — not yet complete for libraries and dining services — is the University and bargaining units offi cially signing the agreement.

The negotiations, which typically determine wage scales and cost of liv ing adjustments for staff, took longer than usual this year partially due to the pandemic, according to people familiar with the process.

U. names Sharon Pitt to oversee IT

BY KATY PICKENS METRO EDITOR

On Thursday, Jane Wang ’24, managing editor of the College Hill Independent, received a call from the paper’s printer. Their funding had been frozen, and Wang had no idea why.

The Indy was one of six student groups that have temporarily lost fund ing from the Student Activities Office as a result of missing a mandatory meeting sponsored by SAO: Event Planning 101.

According to Joie Steele, director of student activities, the six groups who missed the meeting but have indicated to SAO that they are active on campus will be able to regain their funding by attending a make-up session next week.

Sacha Sloan ’23.5, another manag ing editor for the Indy, said that he and the other leaders of the paper had not known in advance about the mandatory info session.

Students, faculty reflect on historic flooding in Pakistan

SAO sent communications about the meeting to the former managing editors of the paper and an incorrect general email for the organization, according to emails reviewed by The Herald. There had also been communication about the meeting sent to all students in a Sept. 13 email from the Undergraduate Council of Students and in two separate Today@Brown announcements.

There were four sessions of Event Planning 101 spread over two days that student group representatives could at tend, according to the email from UCS.

“There are a few things student or ganizations need to do to remain ac tive and have access to funding,” Steele wrote in an email to The Herald. In or der to maintain funding, groups must fill out a spring roll call, update rosters and primary contact information and ensure their financial signatories attend a separate annual training.

The final funding requirement is sending a representative to the Event Planning 101 meeting in the fall. “All groups that fulfill those requirements have access to baseline funding,” Steele wrote, adding that certain groups can

BY WILL KUBZANSKY UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

The University named Sharon Pitt as its new vice president for information technology and chief information offi cer Tuesday, according to an email sent by Sarah Latham, executive vice pres ident for finance and administration.

Pitt, who currently works in the same role at the University of Del aware, stood out in the process be cause of her leadership and expertise, Latham said in an interview with The Herald.

“She has a mix of the technological understanding required to support research, teaching, student needs and faculty needs,” Latham said. “But she also has really good leadership skills, so she can mobilize all the wonderful people who work in the IT unit to do their very best work.”

At the University of Delaware, Pitt has “grown and strengthened online learning capabilities and expanded high-performing computer capacity,”

Thousands of people attended last Saturday’s Waterfire lighting

Carney Institute researchers develop app to help track chronic pain

Latham wrote in the email. Previously, Pitt worked as chief information of ficer at Binghamton University and deputy CIO at George Mason Univer sity. She will begin at Brown on Dec. 1, according to the email.

Adrian De Leon speaks on American colonialism in the Philippines

UNIVERSITY NEWS DPS union negotiations are still underway after beginning in summer

Logistical mishap caused account suspensions for six student organizations

“I’ve spent much of my career in support of teaching and learning technologies, and I’m very excited to bring my unique perspective to

New VP for IT, chief information officer joins Brown from University of Delaware

GLO says University denied 3 students unpaid leave, cancelled dissertations

DANA RICHIE / HERALD

Clew GS requested unpaid family leave to care for their sister, but had the request denied by the University.

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY New Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer Sharon Pitt will oversee most IT systems and services.

U. students, faculty respond to historic flooding in Pakistan

five days later, the entire country was suffering.”

BY ISHITAA GUPTA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

After weeks of unprecedented mon soon rains that have left one-third of the country severely flooded, the Pa kistani government declared a state of emergency on Aug. 26. The flooding has claimed the lives of almost 1,600 people and affected at least another 33 million.

In addition to damaging structures such homes, railways and roads, as well as livestock and crops, the floods have exposed thousands of Pakistanis to waterborne diseases that may result in a health crisis, CNN reported. The country is also facing massive food shortages, with 70% of staple crops destroyed.

Mahin Ashfaq ’24 — who went to high school in Karachi, Pakistan, the largest city in the country — remem bers witnessing the monsoon season in Pakistan every year. “A lot of the city’s low-lying areas get flooded, and it (al ways) wreaks havoc,” she said. “What was different this year was the scale at which it happened.”

Muhammad Omar Afzaal GS, a Paki stani PhD candidate in political science, was in Karachi when the flooding began.

Afzaal traveled to Pakistan in the summer before the monsoon rains started. “Toward the end of July and early August, the situation just crashed in the entire country. … I think it was the sheer pace of it that was alarming,” he said. “Four or

There have been “pretty severe floods in Pakistan in the past, includ ing back in 2010,” said Adam Levine, professor of emergency medicine and health services, policy and practice and director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies. “But the amount of rain that was experi enced and size of the area that was affected (this year) … was certainly unprecedented.”

Officials within the Pakistani gov ernment and United Nations Secre tary General António Guterres have pointed out the role of climate change in contributing to extreme weather conditions.

“The difficulty is that many of the countries that are most at risk from the effects of climate change by virtue of their geographical location … are also countries that happen to be ei ther low-income or middle-income,” Levine said.

Ashfaq and Afzaal also pointed out that it is the low-lying rural and farming areas in Pakistan that bore the major brunt of damage from the floods.

Both low- and middle-income coun tries, as well as the rural areas within those countries, suffer from a combi nation of “high vulnerability and low resilience” to natural disasters, which leads to more drastic consequences, Levine said. He added that this vulnera bility can also be a result of the political structures in place to mitigate disasters.

Andrew Foster, professor of eco nomics and director of the Social Sci ence Research Institute, said that polit ical instability in Pakistan has led to the mismanagement of the current crisis.

“A stable government is generally

better at making plans and implement ing things than governments in transi tion,” Foster said, citing the departure of Prime Minister Imran Khan in April as a factor contributing to government instability.

Levine pointed toward Bangladesh’s handling of the 2020 tropical cyclone as an example of preventative disaster management. “Bangladesh had set up

evacuation systems where people re ceived text message notifications in ad vance. They used mosques which have loudspeakers … to announce evacuation orders and set up evacuation centers on higher ground,” he said. “When a government is more dysfunctional, … it means all of these activities are not able to happen.”

Despite anticipating heavier rainfall,

Haadi Iqbal ’24, another Pakistani stu dent, mentioned that the country has been generally unprepared for flood ing disasters. “What you end up seeing in a country like Pakistan is housing projects not being developed, (a lack of conducting) environmental studies … (and) not creating proper drains and channels for water to go,” Iqbal said.

As the aftermath of the flood in Pakistan unfolds, Levine believes it’s important to consider the disaster’s impact in both the short and long term. “We often think of disasters as very short term events, but that’s be cause the media only tends to cover them for a few weeks,” he said. “The reality is that all major disasters last for years, if not decades,” and affect a country’s development and standard of living.

In addition to short-term aid, Fos ter emphasized the need for long-term capital investments in Pakistan by “ma jor banks, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and bilateral agree ments.”

For people who aren’t able to help on the ground, like much of the Brown community, “the best thing to do is find reliable places to donate,” Ashfaq said.

“What’s happening right now is clearly (a result of) climate change, and Pakistan contributes very little to global climate change,” Iqbal said. “It shows how much responsibility all of us have to reduce our emissions and be environmentally sustainable.”

Iqbal and the Pakistani Students Association are also planning a fund raiser for those affected by the floods in the coming weeks and hope to gain the Brown community’s support. “One dollar,” he said, “goes very far in a coun try like Pakistan.”

Monsoon rains flooded one-third of country, have lead to food shortages

COURTESY OF ALI HYDER JUNEJO / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

The Pakistani government declared a state of emergency on Aug. 26 in response to the ongoing monsoon rains and widespread flooding.

METRO

Saturday’s WaterFire honors over 70 Rhode Island educators

people entrusted with the next gen eration, with passing on both knowl edge and expertise to allow democracy to work with an informed electorate. WaterFire has always felt that this is a critical element of making the com munity stronger.”

BY EMMA MADGIC SENIOR STAFF WRITER

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, WaterFire is back in fullforce. Last Saturday’s lighting, which was attended by between 30,000 and 50,000 people, celebrated local educa tors and was supported by the Rhode Island Department of Education.

“WaterFire’s mission is to build community through art,” said Barnaby Evans ’75, executive artistic director at WaterFire. Figuring “out how one can acknowledge, interact with and thank people in the community for what they do — that’s absolutely core to Water Fire’s mission.”

In order to honor Rhode Island educators, Saturday’s WaterFire fea tured a public reception for the state’s teachers, partners and administrators.

Current and former teachers delivered speeches at the reception, attended by over 500 people. Over 70 teachers were recognized for their work at an awards ceremony.

To further honor Rhode Island educators, the event was the only one of the season to feature light ing ceremonies at both ends of the installation, said Peter Mello, man aging director and co-chief executive of WaterFire. Typically, the lighting ceremony begins at Waterplace Park by the Providence Place Mall, but last weekend, the installation was also simultaneously lit at Memorial Park down the river.

“Teachers are a critical component of any community and we don’t publicly thank them,” Evans said. “But these are

WaterFire has recognized Rhode Is land educators for over a decade, Evans said. When all WaterFire lightings were canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, the organization provided a modified online celebration for educators and brought a lighted torch to the home of RIDE’s Rhode Island Teacher of the Year as a symbolic gesture, according to Evans.

This is the first season in which WaterFire is back in its full capacity, Mello said. In 2020 and 2021, WaterFire was put on pause for 20 months due to COVID-19. When the ceremonies began again in September 2021, Water Fire took several COVID precautions to decrease crowding, including limiting food and arts vendors.

But Saturday’s lighting drew thou sands of people, Mello said, and includ ed several local food vendors and more than a dozen artists and maker stalls.

Kelly Yan ’24 decided on a whim to go to last weekend’s WaterFire. “The weather was still pretty nice (at 9 p.m.), and I just wanted to take a walk,” Yan said. “And then I remembered WaterFire was happening.”

Yan noticed that there were many more vendors, decorations and festiv ities this year than last.

“The whole ambiance was very peaceful and wholesome,” Yan added.

“We were excited to see so many people there,” Evans said. “But the larger purpose of WaterFire is about building community, and we do that not just by creating art … but also by reaching out to recognize all sorts of different people in the community who are doing important work.”

30,000 to 50,000 visitors attend first fullcapacity lighting event since pandemic began

COCO HUANG / HERALD

Saturday’s event honored Rhode Island teachers and drew thousands of visitors. “Waterfire’s mission is to build community through art,” said Barnaby Evans, executive artistic director at Waterfire.

New contracts and ongoing nego tiations

Negotiations between the Univer sity and the facilities bargaining team concluded in February. The union has ratified the new agreement, signed retroactively from the contract’s ex piration on Oct. 13, 2021 through Oct. 12, 2024.

The dining services bargaining team finished negotiations with the Universi ty in April. The new agreement has been ratified by the union and will be signed for the period between the previous contract’s expiration on Nov. 1, 2021 and Oct. 31, 2024.

Dining services employees will re ceive a “responsible” raise in the new contract, said Rabbit Hoffinger, a union steward familiar with the contract who did not participate in this round of ne gotiations.

“A significant focus of (the facilities and dining services) negotiations was to update outdated agreement language and processes, along with employment terms and conditions,” Williams wrote. In the dining services contract, posi tions were also added at several dining halls and a “wide range” of part-time positions were elevated to full-time, according to Williams.

Hoffinger said the contract stipulat ed that the University hire new cooks and food service workers, positions that the University is in the process of filling. Last fall, Brown Dining Services employees described understaffing in dining halls, The Herald previously reported.

Hoffinger praised the negotiating team’s work, noting that the contract received an “almost unanimous” vote by union membership.

Negotiations with the libraries bar gaining team wrapped in April, and the new agreement has been ratified by the union and will be signed for the period of Oct. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2024, Williams wrote.

The libraries and dining services negotiating teams have reviewed the final language in their respective agree ments and are now ready to set a date for the formal signing of the contracts, said Amy Cardone, business agent for USAW-RI.

Both public safety officials and the University had little comment on the ongoing public safety union negoti ations.

“We are actively negotiating in good

faith now and look forward to continu ing to work productively and collegially to a mutually beneficial agreement,” Williams wrote.

Karen Burks, president of the union, said that negotiations are still in their early stages. She declined to comment further due to their ongoing nature.

Longer negotiations and contractual changes

In this most recent bargaining round, facilities, libraries and dining services negotiations went on much longer than they have in the past, a product of a more “belabored” negotia tion process as well as challenges creat ed by COVID-19, said Karen McAninch, former business agent for USAW-RI who served as the chief negotiator for all three contracts.

The bargaining units typically ne gotiate over a few key issues, such as pay and health benefits, but “this time, in all three (contracts), there was a lot of minutia that we had to deal with,” McAninch said.

When asked about the length of

negotiations, Williams wrote that the University believes they should “take the time needed” for both sides to come to an agreement.

According to Williams, some meet ings had to be conducted over Zoom, and there was “limited time” available to meet in-person. Hoffinger agreed, citing pandemic safety precautions as the main reason for the unusually long negotiations. The most recent round of dining services negotiations lasted six to seven months, twice as long as they normally take, Hoffinger said.

Cardone acknowledged that the pandemic prolonged negotiations and said that many union members were “frustrated” with their duration. In the next round of negotiations, the union hopes to complete negotiations “in a (more) timely manner,” she said, instead of letting them “drag on for months and months.”

In all three of the ratified contracts, the University wanted to restrict the use of past practice — or generally accept ed policies by the employer — during grievance procedures, McAninch said.

CALENDAR

The use of past practice can prevent an employer from removing an implicit benefit for employees not specified in a contract.

McAninch recently retired from her role representing University unions af ter finishing this round of negotiations for the three union-affiliated units, she said. McAninch served as the business agent at USAW-RI since 2003 and has served as a University union represen tative for over 40 years in a variety of roles.

After negotiation on the issue in all three contracts, the University agreed to compromise on a revised definition of past practice, borrowed from the Prov idence Teachers Union contract. The definition requires past practices to be clear, “unequivocal” and “in existence for a substantial period of time.”

“We were fine with the way things stood before, but (the new past prac tice definition) doesn’t harm us in any significant way that I am aware of,” McAninch said.

USAW-RI also successfully added new language to all three contracts

related to pandemic-related changes in job descriptions, such as allowing employees to appeal University desig nations of their jobs as either hybrid or remote, McAninch said.

Additionally, in the dining services and facilities contracts, the University attempted to change the wording sur rounding what plans it could choose as employer-provided health insurance, but was unsuccessful, McAninch said.

When asked about the proposed changes to health care plans, Williams declined to respond “out of respect for the importance of working through spe cific points directly with union leaders and not through the news media,” she wrote.

“The University and the unions believe in and accept the collective bargaining process as the means for working together to reach mutually agreeable terms,” Williams wrote. “A shared commitment to working togeth er collegially has ensured productive negotiations for many years, and that has continued to prove true in our bar gaining efforts in recent semesters.”

TODAY’S EVENTS

Brown’s BIG Career Fair 11 a.m. Olney-Margolies Athletic Center

TM Krishna — Art & ActivismMeaning and Purpose 4 p.m. Watson Institute

TOMORROW’S EVENTS

Watson Cafecito: Hispanic Heri tage Month Student Mixer 12 p.m. Watson Institute

CLACS Fall Gathering for Under graduate Students 12 p.m. 59 Charlesfield Street

IFL: Cambridge Analytica Four Years Later 5:30 p.m. Pembroke Hall

Dr. Jean Shim Yun Lecture in Asian American Studies 5:30 p.m. Pembroke Hall

Accelerating Math Learning for Every Student 2 p.m. 169 Angell Street

Solidarity: Imagining Social Justice Art Exhibit 4 p.m. CSREA

DANA RICHIE / HERALD

According to Rabbit Hoffinger, a union steward for dining services, the new contract gave dining services employees a “responsible” raise. The contract also stipulated that the University hire new cooks and food service workers, after reports of understaffing last fall.

U. researchers work with developers to build pain-monitoring app

BY HALEY SANDLOW SENIOR STAFF WRITER

When you come back from an injury or surgery, you have a few options: rest ing the area, avoiding movements that cause pain or taking certain medications to ease discomfort. But what happens when you’re in pain for months — even years — after the area has healed?

Researchers at Brown’s Carney Institute for Brain Science developed SOMA, an app that allows users to track and monitor pain to better understand chronic pain and eventually help create intervention tactics.

The team aims to build a plat form that immediately helps patients and researches better treatments, said Frederike Petzschner, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior and director of the Car ney Brainstorm Program. “Because, right now, chronic pain is very hard to treat.”

The team behind SOMA plans to release the app in late October, ac cording to Petzschner. It will include daily and nightly check-ins for users, which will ask them about their mood, their activities from the day, how pain interfered with their day and if they took any intervention measures such as medication.

An additional screen will eventually show users trends across past weeks and months, aggregating their per sonal data on the frequency that they experienced pain and how the pain has affected their mood and activities, Petzschner added.

The second release of the app, scheduled for 2023, will focus on in tervention measures, Petzschner said. It will provide patients with cognitive-be havioral approaches to treat pain that are informed by many existing thera pies, such as breathing and attention al exercises. The second release aims to educate people about pain and the warning signs for it.

The team hopes to build new in terventions based on user data col lected following the first release of

the app. Those interventions may combine various therapies in a more personalized approach to pain re duction.

Acute pain vs. chronic pain

One reason neuroscientists are in terested in studying pain is because of the elusive mechanism of chronic pain.

There are entirely different brain areas involved in acute pain, which may occur after an injury or surgery, com pared to chronic pain, which lasts at least three to six months after the tissue has healed. According to Petzschner, certain forms of chronic pain may be a form of “learned pain,” where the brain has learned a fear response over a continuous period of time, even in the absence of tissue damage once an injury has healed.

In other words, while acute pain may be thought of as a warning of existing or potential tissue damage, chronic pain may emerge from the continued aversion to certain movements that previously triggered pain during the original tissue damage.

“That gives us a hint that there are top-down processes that can cause pain, even if there’s no signal coming from

the body,” Petzschner said.

Chronic pain may also be partial ly linked to degeneration, such as in the back, knees and hips. According to Petzschner, over 50% of people over 30 experience disk degeneration in the back, yet only some experience chronic pain — perhaps a result of the brain mis interpreting or overreacting to signals coming from the body.

A multidisciplinary project

A team of scientists, clinicians, soft ware engineers and designers started working on the project in February 2021.

The project embodies the tension between science and good user design, said Bradford Roarr, lead research soft ware engineer at Brown’s Center for Computation and Visualization and lead software engineer for SOMA.

One challenge of the app is trying to temper the needs of research to fa cilitate the user experience and making compromises to reduce bias in user re sponse, he added.

Initially, users were prompted to use a slider to indicate their pain on a range with a smiling face, neutral face and frowning face, Roarr said. The researchers brought up concerns

that users would be primed to asso ciate their pain with a smiling face, so, instead, the team replaced the faces with an orb of light that grows bigger or smaller depending on how much pain a user has — a more “value neutral” tool which still gives users visual feedback.

“It’s not very technically different (from) building another app,” Roarr said. “What makes this app exciting is the domain that it’s in — the fact that this is an application that aims to serve a population of people who are suffering. I think it’s a really cool, noble thing to do.”

Anonymized data from the app will be used for research to improve the prevention and treatment of chronic pain, said Petzschner. Some users may also track and log their pain in the app as a part of data collection for specific scientific studies outside of the SOMA project itself.

Petzschner said the team prioritizes user privacy — for users who do not want to participate in a specific research study, the app asks only for emails with out any other identifying information. Data is stored on secure Brown servers to protect user privacy.

The app also allows other research

ers access to the existing anonymous data upon request. “The idea is not just to do this for us — there’s too much knowledge to be gained,” Petzschner said. She emphasized how users will “directly profit” from using the app, as researchers will be able to use data from a broad audience for further re search.

During the first few months, Louis Rakovich, who graduated this year from RISD’s MFA program in design, worked with the team as a volunteer to design the visual aspects of the app — such as branding, layout and the logo — and to provide a visual framework for the app that could be expanded later in its development.

“It’s an unexpected combination of disciplines,” Rakovich said, but “really, it’s a combination that makes a lot of sense.”

“Ultimately, design and visual communication is all about percep tion,” Rakovich said. “How do we make sense of our world? How do we navigate our environment? How do we perceive the world around us? And to a large extent, that’s also what SOMA is about — just the power of the brain to affect our physical sense

Brown to advance progress in those areas,” Pitt said in a University state ment. “I’ll work responsively and col laboratively with Brown faculty, staff and students to support the differ ent disciplines, which have distinct computation, networking and security needs, while advancing the strategic directions of the University and en suring robust and reliable systems everywhere.”

Administrators began a nation wide search for the position in Jan uary after Bill Thirsk, who served as chief digital officer and chief infor mation officer from 2019 to 2022, announced his decision to step

down. Research- and teaching-ori ented faculty, staff and students all played a role in the search process, offering feedback on the position’s description and conducting anon ymous interviews with finalists to bring different perspectives to the process, Latham said.

John Spadaro, currently serving as interim chief digital and information officer, will resume his position as dep uty chief information officer after Pitt joins, according to the email. While the name of the position has changed to “better reflect the totality of the role and align” with other colleges’ fram ing of the job, the job’s responsibilities have not, Latham wrote in an email to The Herald.

Pitt will oversee most IT systems and services “that support teaching and learning,” as well as tech support for research and business operations and the budget and staff in the Office of Information Technology, according to the email. She will also work with the University Library to support its research computing.

Additionally, Pitt will join the University as it plans projects that rely on “cutting-edge” technology, such as a new integrated life sciences building for biology, medicine, brain science, public health and other dis ciplines, according to the University’s statement.

“There’s very little that technology doesn’t touch at a university,” Pitt said

in the statement. “A technology leader must create an environment where the community can utilize all of the tech nology tools in the most effective ways to serve the institution.”

The University’s IT team must be “flexible and innovative” — while mak ing sure its “core systems stay strong,” Latham said in the interview, noting the continued need to strengthen cyberse curity while supporting the University’s research computing and data storage needs in the cloud.

Pitt “is very well aware of our goals in advancing our learning systems for students, and … (expanding) research that requires really strong partner ship,” Latham said. She’ll “listen first and then mobilize our units,” Latham

added.

As a leader, Pitt will maintain a focus on “institutional equity and di versity,” she noted in the statement. At the University of Delaware, Pitt’s IT team created a program for women in IT and offered support for Delaware’s Girls Who Code program, according to the statement.

“One of things that really attracted me to Brown was its broad commit ment to diversity, equity and belong ing and the fact that Brown actually has assessment criteria and metrics around DEI for every department at the University,” Pitt said in the statement. “I’ve embraced DEI as a leader and will passionately continue to embrace DEI at Brown.”

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Zablon under inactive status over the summer, he said.

Zablon said he considered tak ing academic leave, but this process would threaten his student visa. He also considered transferring to a master of public health program at another university, but he could not get letters of recommendation or documentation from the University because of his past due balances.

“I feel like I have not been support ed,” he said. “I’ve sacrificed so much to come to Brown. It took me five years to save what I used (for tuition) in the past semester.”

Zablon, who worked in health care before coming to Brown, said he wanted to pursue a master’s to help alleviate the public health is sues he witnessed in Kenya. “Having a degree with Brown … can help me write grants (and) do research, which can make a difference in (my) com munity,” he said.

After GLO’s Instagram post publi cized Zablon’s status, Brown students and peers raised $6,220 from 120 do nors through GoFundMe as of Tuesday evening. Zablon said he was able to use the funds from the fundraiser and other sources of financial support to pay his remaining balance from the spring semester, allowing him to enroll in fall classes.

In a Sept. 20 Instagram post, GLO wrote that Zablon enrolled in fall class es and is no longer at risk of losing his student visa. Zablon also received with held payment for work he completed during the half of the summer while inactive, according to GLO represen tatives.

“No other person should (have) to go through this,” Zablon said.

Clew GS

Clew, a master’s student in the joint Masters of Fine Arts program between Brown and Trinity Reper tory Company, originally planned to begin their final year this fall. Toward the end of the spring 2022 semester, they said they received an offer to join a theater production in New York through the first few months of the fall semester.

“I was excited because I had been involved during an earlier reading of the work,” Clew said. “And, importantly, this is the first role that I have ever received to play a queer Asian character, which is huge for me.”

Clew added that the production “would pay more (over) a span of two and a half months than I would get on my student stipend for an entire se mester at Brown-Trinity.”

In an email to The Herald, Ethan Bernstein, executive dean of admin istration and finance at the Gradu ate School, wrote that MFA students holding a teaching assistant, research assistant or proctorship position are paid the base stipend rate of $15,904.50 per semester. Clew said that the position they were offered in the production came with a salary of $30,000 for two-and-a-half months

of work.

Clew said directors and actors like themself are sometimes permitted to pursue external work opportunities while in the MFA program, “so I was hopeful that the program would work with me to accommodate this opportu nity,” they said. The Brown-Trinity MFA program website notes that “profes sional leaves are not typically approved for these programs.”

During a Zoom meeting with Angela Brazil, director of MFA programs, Clew learned that their request for unpaid professional leave during the produc tion was denied.

Brazil wrote in an email to The Her ald that she is “not able to comment on a student’s academic or personal circumstances.”

Shortly after, Clew learned their sister was diagnosed with cancer and required emergency surgery. Clew is their sister’s only immediate family member.

Clew said they spent the ensuing two months reaching out to multiple University administrators in their ef fort to attain family leave in a series of emails reviewed by The Herald.

In June, Clew requested unpaid fam ily leave to care for their sister. In an email to Maria Suarez, associate dean of student support at the Graduate School, Clew noted that the Graduate School’s policy on family leave covers a “spouse, domestic partner, child or parent” but not siblings, adding that the policy “does not take into account nontraditional family structures like mine.”

On July 14, Suarez wrote in an email to Clew that the Graduate School denied their request for leave and reiterated the family leave policy.

Clew sent an email July 17 to two University administrators ask ing for assistance in being approved for family leave. In the email, Clew explained their situation and asked whether Brown could “recognize that for many of its queer, BIPOC, trans and orphaned students, … systems of support, family and chosen family are different.”

The email was redirected to Thomas Lewis, interim dean of the Graduate School. On Aug. 8, Clew received a letter via email from Lew is upholding the leave denial. In an Aug. 26 email to the University, Clew wrote that they would not return for the fall semester despite their leave request being denied in order to take care of themself and their family, and that they hope to be welcomed back in the spring.

In an Aug. 29 follow-up email to Clew, Lewis wrote that Clew’s previous plans to participate in the New York theater production during the fall se mester were “incompatible” with their request for family leave.

Bernstein wrote that the Graduate School offers several types of leave. “Individual program structures vary and may not always accommodate every leave type. These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis with the goal of providing the student the best possible academic outcome.”

Bernstein wrote that the University cannot disclose information about the personal, financial or academic circum stances of students because it “would violate not only federal law, but our commitment to protecting the privacy of our students.”

Lewis did not respond to a second request for comment after forward ing the initial request to Bernstein. Suarez reiterated part of Bernstein’s statement in an email to The Herald, writing that the University cannot provide information about specific students.

“I need to work in order to pay my bills and take care of my family, … whether it’s an opportunity that we already know (the University) isn’t pleased with or it’s me working at Star bucks,” Clew said. The program “doesn’t pay us a lot to begin with, and my sister is going through chemotherapy and not working.”

In a Sept. 8 letter sent to Clew by Brazil, they were told that “opting out of the fall semester without an approved leave of absence will trigger a withdraw al from the program.”

“I don’t think that asking for a se mester of unpaid leave is asking for the world,” Clew said. “I think it’s quite a rational request.”

Karina Santamaria GS

Santamaria, who began her seventh year in the SPH doctoral program ear lier this year, said she faced challenges completing her program in 2019, during which she experienced “an avalanche of personal stressors.”

After communicating her situa tion to the University, Santamaria said she received status letters from administration which she said con veyed doubts about her taking the program seriously.

Santamaria said she received an extension of three months to com plete her dissertation proposal. She successfully defended her proposal in January 2019, passing with revisions and a second deadline in May 2019 to implement them.

While continuing to face person al stressors, Santamaria submitted her proposal three days after the revision deadline in May 2019, she said. In response, she was informed that she was terminated from the program.

Santamaria said the termination notice she received stated that she had not submitted a dissertation despite her submission previously passing with revisions.

“There was just such a discrepan cy, and to me it was really shocking,” she added. “That’s why I (decided) to appeal this.”

Santamaria appealed her termi nation the following week and had to disclose “very painful” personal cir cumstances to the Graduate School’s administration as part of the process, she said.

Santamaria was reinstated fol lowing her appeal, but was placed on an indefinite warning status, she said. The status resulted in the withdrawal of $12,000 in fellowship

funding and left her ineligible for most grant funding, she said. In order to continue her research that fall, Santamaria said she had to rely on micro-grants from her department, which she explained wouldn’t arrive until January and February of the following semester.

The warning status took away “all of my resources to complete this study,” Santamaria said.

In an email to The Herald, Bern stein wrote that the Graduate School offers doctoral students five years of guaranteed financial support, writing that the University “believe(s) it to be the strongest guaranteed funding package available to graduate students of any institution.” Santamaria began her sixth year in the doctoral program last year.

“Each year, doctoral students re ceive progress letters and are advised closely to ensure satisfactory academic progress,” he wrote. “The Graduate School Handbook includes detailed information regarding academic stand ing. There are various resources avail able to help students who encounter academic difficulties and/or who need to continue their study beyond year five.”

But due to her warning status, Santamaria said she was left without funding to complete her dissertation.

“From 2019 to 2020, there was no money,” Santamaria said. “During the pandemic in 2021, I was able to launch the study. My budget was $5,000 in two micro-grants of $2,500.”

Santamaria collected data for her dissertation from January through May of 2021. In early May, the dissertation committee “pushed me to collect more data,” Santamaria said, adding that they “acknowledged it was expensive.”

The additional data “was not part of my budget, but I agreed to it anyway,” she said.

As she was working on data col lection, Santamaria said she was of fered a summer teaching assistantship position, leading her to pause her full-time job search. But a few weeks later, she said she was told that her program was no longer sponsoring the TA position.

“That sent me into a frenzy,” San tamaria said. “I had to go into offices and say, ‘I don’t have any money for rent or food next month. Can you help me while I do something fast to earn money?’”

In order to pay bills, Santamaria began driving for Uber and Lyft full time. Without enough research fund ing, she said she was no longer able to afford more data collection and began submitting job applications until she found stable employment as a grant writer outside the University in late 2021.

“From June to November, that was my life,” she said.

After learning about her circum stances, Santamaria said the committee agreed to let her continue with the data she had already collected, giving her a dissertation defense deadline of late June 2022.

“Everyone agreed to be flexible,”

realizing that “this is a tight deadline,” Santamaria said, noting that she was also working “excessive hours in this new job.”

But throughout early 2022, “that flexibility just went away,” Santam aria said.

She explained that she was assigned a number of deadlines earlier this year which were not discussed in her pri or meetings, including having “three complete drafts” of her dissertation by June 1.

After not submitting her disserta tion by June 8, Santamaria’s disserta tion defense was canceled, despite her data being analyzed and the majority of her submission being complete, she said.

Members of Santamaria’s com mittee could not be reached for com ment. Christopher Kahler, chair of the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, declined to direct requests for comment to the committee, cit ing federal regulations and university policy to protect student information and records.

GLO leadership told The Herald that Santamaria’s committee had the ability to better handle her case.

Internal deadlines for doctoral programs “are set as guidelines to make sure that you do progress under a reasonable timeline, but ultimately they’re completely discretionary,” ex plained GLO Vice President Alessandro Moghrabi GS.

Santamaria’s committee “had every ability to respond compassionately, and they chose not to,” added GLO President Sherena Razek GS.

According to GLO Secretary Julia Huggins GS, there are a number of rea sons why administrators or faculty may want graduate students to leave their programs, including “bloat in depart ments, because there are larger cohorts than departments may assume there would be.”

Santamaria said she contacted her employer to request a week off to finish her last paper. In response, her em ployer advised her to resign “as soon as possible” instead.

“What am I going to do?” Santam aria said. “I had to resign.”

Bernstein wrote that the Univer sity “has multiple mechanisms and processes in place to ensure that pol icies and deadlines are administered equitably. These include work ‘on the front end’ to develop strong policies and practices as well as multiple over sight and appeal mechanisms to re view instances in which students have concerns.”

But Santamaria said her experience is reflective of the University’s lack of readiness for low-income students.

“I came here as a low-income, first-generation, 45-year-old stu dent,” Santamaria said. “I’ve been here for a very long time and have invested a lot and have given up a lot to be here.”

“There’s a lot of recruitment of diversity” at Brown, she added. “But there’s not enough of a plan to deal with what comes with that diversity. The answer cannot just be, ‘Get out.’”

USC professor Adrian De Leon discusses US colonialism in Philippines

BY PETER SWOPE SPORTS EDITOR

The Department of History kicked off its “Diversifying Epistemologies” series Tuesday with a talk titled “Hinterland Histories: Retelling U.S. Empire and Philippine Migration from the Bundok” led by Adrian De Leon, assistant profes sor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

De Leon, who is also a host for PBS Digital Studios and the Center for Asian American Media, has been featured in publications such as The Los Angeles Times, National Geographic and The Washington Post, according to the event description.

Naoko Shibusawa, associate profes sor of history and American studies, in troduced De Leon and the event series, which she said “seeks to foreground the relationship between the use cas es of systemic racism and knowledge formation.”

“We intend for the series … to in terrogate the kinds of questions we asked the past and to consider how the different modalities and ethics of research and scholarship are profoundly intertwined,” she added.

The theme for this year’s series is Indigenous epistemologies, Shibusa wa said. “In order to imagine a better future, or even a future on this planet Earth, … studying and being influenced by Indigenous epistemologies in partic ular is necessary and crucial,” she said.

De Leon said he studies the Philip pines “without reducing it to an Amer ican colony, without reducing it to just the Philippines (and) without reducing it to the purview of elites.”

Instead, De Leon aims to distinguish between Indigeneity and Nativeness and rethink the Asian diaspora, Asian migration and global Asia from a settler colonial critique and Indigenous studies perspective.

A majority of De Leon’s work has focused on Luzon, a northern island of the Philippines. Luzon has been central to the “process of racial formations as well as migrant labor and the rise of American capitalism,” he said.

“I want to think about what it means

to rewrite a history of this thing we call Filipino America from the hinterlands, from the ‘Bundok,’ ” which led to the American expression, “the boondocks,” De Leon said.

The word “Bundok” gained prom inence during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars, he said. Upon the encounter of American geno cidal imperialism in the Philippines and consequent Philippine insurgence, the “bundok” “became a place of an (imag ery) of wildness … (and) of insurgency

as well as aspirational counterinsurgen cy at capital resources,” De Leon added.

De Leon critiqued existing histo riographies of Filipino history, arguing that there are two historiographies of “U.S.-Philippine colonial relations based on space. We have the histo riography of the highlands and the lowlands,” he said. He added that such historiographies are built on a past of U.S. occupation.

De Leon concluded his presentation with a question-and-answer session.

In response to a question from Rick Baldoz, associate professor of American studies, De Leon said that his work aims to “delineate Nativeness and Indigene ity,” noting that “all Indigenous peoples are Native, but not every Native person is Indigenous.”

He also addressed the idea of ar chives as broad bases of historical knowledge: “I like the use of the term archive versus colonial knowledge be cause it forces us to think in a really material way.”

FROM PAGE 1

submit requests for additional funding through the Undergraduate Finance Board.

Steele wrote that the meeting covers the basics about SAO, risk management, event hosting and other policies for student groups.

She explained that in previous years, missing the meeting meant that a club would have been “fully deactivated,” but this year it just resulted in a freeze of the organization’s funding.

Sloan said that it was unsettling and confusing to be informed about the club’s funding status for the first time from their printer rather than a University representative.

“The central part of our operations is our funding and the print issues that we produce,” he said. “We have nowhere near the same amount of reach online. We distribute throughout Providence.”

“Our newspaper is for the broader Providence community, not just for Brown University students,” Sloan added.

Sloan, Wang and Corinne Leong ’24 — the Indy’s third managing editor — reached out to SAO to ask about how they could restore the funding. Initially, Steele responded that the paper would not be able to regain its funding this semester, according to emails reviewed

by The Herald.

Sloan then reached out to several campus representatives, including Pres ident Christina Paxson P’19, in an at tempt to override the decision. Paxson deferred to campus life professionals

on the matter, emails show.

On Sunday, the managing editors of the Indy posted on their Substack about their funding freeze, asking readers to become paid subscribers to their newsletter. They also asked

for donations through a GoFundMe to crowdsource the money needed to print for the remainder of the se mester.

SAO financial policy allows for fundraising only from club alums or

parents of current or former members. Organizations are eligible to apply to fundraise after five years and meeting various other criteria.

“After realizing that the GoFundMe may have gone against SAO policies, we promptly deleted it, returning all the money to the donors,” Sloan wrote in a message to The Herald. The GoFundMe had accumulated $5,320 in donations before being taken down.

“When it comes to the Substack, we are going to email each donor and ask them if they would like their money back or to donate it to the stipend fund,” Sloan added.

Upon learning about the opportu nity to attend a make-up meeting and regain their funding, the Indy’s editors were relieved.

“Ultimately, our goal is not to be punitive, but we are balancing holding groups accountable for the require ments of maintaining their active status while also wanting to give as many opportunities as possible to help groups access the information they need,” Steele wrote, explaining why SAO decided to have a makeup session.

“It’s important for groups to know though, that it is their responsibility to provide us with the most up to date contact information so they are aware of any requirements or training,” she added.

Talk was first of history department’s ‘Diversifying Epistemology’ series

PETER SWOPE / HERALD

Associate Professor of History and American Studies Naoko Shibusawa said the series aims to “interrogate the kinds of questions we asked the past and to consider how the different modalities and ethics of research and scholarship are profoundly intertwined.”

BEN GLICKMAN / HERALD

In order to maintain funding from the Student Activities Office, groups must fill out a spring roll call, update rosters and primary contact information and ensure their financial signatories attend a training.