Wednesday, January 22, 2020

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020

VOLUME CLV, ISSUE 1

UNIVERSITY NEWS

DPS investigates Hegeman homophobic graffiti Investigation finds over 15 instances more than two months after first complaint

BY DANIEL GOLDBERG UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR The Department of Public Safety has launched an active, ongoing hate crime investigation into more than 15 incidents of homophobic graffiti inside Hegeman Hall dormitory.

The homophobic graffiti was first seen in late November 2019, when a group of students noticed “gay room” written on the door to their suite, said a Fall 2019 Hegeman Hall resident who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. At first the students brushed it off, but as more graffiti appeared in the following weeks, “it got more and more scary and frustrating,” the Fall 2019 resident said.

After the first incident in November, students filled out a bias incident report and reported the graffiti to Hegeman Hall’s Community As-

sociates, Student Support Services and the Office of Residential Life.

While the Fall 2019 resident received some responses, he did not feel that anything was being done to stop the vandal or prevent future graffiti. It was frustrating to “report it and have nothing happen quick enough that I would feel safe,” he added. It was only when he informed the LGBTQ Center of the incidents during a Dec. 9 meeting that the Fall 2019 resident “felt heard, finally.”

During an inspection the same day, Area Coordinator Mark Wade found various homophobic messages written in the building, according to an email Wade sent to Hegeman residents. The graffiti included segregating the building’s two refrigerators between “queer” and “straight,” and writings like “don’t be a faggot!” and “if you’re gay, you can’t stay!” according to photos obtained by The Herald.

Finding the graffiti “was incredibly shocking and deeply saddening,” said a current resident of Hegeman

SEE GRAFFITI PAGE 2

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METRO

The future of ‘Whiskey Wednesdays’ New management takes over the Whiskey Republic, plans to rebrand

BY BEN GLICKMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER Local entrepreneurs Garry Williams and Frank Manfredi Jr. took over management of the Whiskey Republic, a bar on the Fox Point waterfront, on Jan. 1.

Williams said they plan a rebrand of the bar in order to attract a crowd who “may not want to go out to nightclubs, but want to enjoy the waterfront.”

The partners hope to bring more live music to the venue, attract members of the surrounding Fox Point community and change the name of the bar. Williams could not confirm what the new name would be, but did not rule out the name Fish Co., which was the name of the bar prior to 2011. The bar will close for two weeks in March for remodeling, according to Manfredi. They plan to remodel the interior and exterior of the building and refurbish the outside deck area.

Although the bar will be undergoing changes, the owners plan to preserve

BEN GLICKMAN / HERALD

The Whiskey Republic is a bar frequented by Brown students. New management plans to remodel the interior and the exterior in March. the themed nights that have made it so popular with college students.

The Whiskey Republic has been a go-to spot for local students for years with the 18-and-over night “Whiskey Wednesdays.” The Fish Co. also hosted “Brown nights” on Wednesdays before it closed in 2011.

Alice Lange ’23, who attended the Whiskey Republic three or four times

in her first semester, thought that the venue could use a change, describing the space as “run-down.”

“It looks like it needs to be redone,” she said.

Jonah Eick ’23 frequented the Whiskey Republic at the beginning of last semester. He likes “Whiskey Wednes-

SEE WHISKEY PAGE 2

METRO

UNIVERSITY NEWS

In Providence school struggles, staff support students

U. fundraising director Peter Cohen resigns

City district school looking for solutions after critical Johns Hopkins report

BY CLARA GUTMAN ARGEMÍ SENIOR STAFF WRITER This is the first in a two-part series called, “A look inside a Providence Public School” The phone rings in the main office of Gilbert Stuart Middle School.

The office is empty except for two secretaries; it’s 4 pm, and students have already gone home for the day.

One of the women takes the call.

“Good afternoon, Gilbert Stuart,” she says. “…”

“Hi, may I help you?” “…”

“Hi, may I help you?” she repeats. “…”

“There’s no one here who speaks Spanish,” the secretary says, and hangs up.

While this interaction may have been an isolated incident, it took place in a school district where six out of 10 families speak a language other than English at home, according to a 2018 investigation by the U.S. Depart-

ment of Justice. In addition, Gilbert Stuart’s student body is comprised almost entirely of students of color — 95 percent total — with 68 percent of the school’s students identifying as Hispanic. Eighty-eight percent of the West End’s residents are nonwhite, and 55 percent are Hispanic. Close to one third of the Providence Public School District students are English Language Learners.

But language barriers are just one of the challenges facing Gilbert Stuart and the PPSD. This fall, The Herald visited Gilbert Stuart Middle School twice, with each visit limited to around an hour.

During these visits, The Herald spoke with teachers, students and the principal, and observed a class.

The interviews demonstrated one clear constant: despite working in a struggling school within a struggling school district, some committed teachers, as well as the principal, go out of their way to support students and ensure the school culture makes students feel welcome.

Many of these conversations took

place in the presence of Laura Hart, PPSD director of communications.

A failing school within a failing district Last year, in its implementation of the federal Every Student Suc-

ceeds Act, Rhode Island launched the School Star Ratings system, a standard that measures school performance based on student achievement and growth in standard-

Metro

News

Commentary

Ceremony opens on Thayer, serves loose-leaf tea in relaxing environment Page 3

U. crane joins lit buildings to blink goodnight to patients at children’s hospital Page 4

Aman ’20: U. should allow universal swipe access to increase safety Page 7

ized state-wide testing across disciplines, rating each school on a scale from one to five stars.

During the 2018-19 academic year, Gilbert Stuart Middle School received one star.

Only six percent of its students were proficient in English Language Arts, and only four percent of its students were proficient in math. Less than one in five of the school’s English Language Learners met their target growth for English proficiency.

Gilbert Stuart Middle School was identified for Comprehensive Support and Improvement under ESSA for the 2019-20 academic year, alongside ten other PPSD schools, according to Rhode Island Department of Education. With 41 schools in the district, these identified schools make up about a quarter of PPSD. While Providence schools singled out for the Comprehensive Support and Improvement program face particular hardships, they fit within a district that is struggling as a whole: PPSD’s

From 2014-18, Cohen aided acceptance of donations from Jeffrey Epstein

BY LI GOLDSTEIN AND ISABEL INADOMI UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR AND METRO EDITOR Peter Cohen, a University fundraising director who was put on leave for his involvement in accepting donations from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, has resigned from his position at the University.

Cohen, who was previously the director of development for Computer and Data Science Initiatives at the University, worked at the Media Lab as an administrator from 2014 to 2018, where he held the position of Director of Development and Strategy, The Herald previously reported.

SEE PPSD PAGE 6

SEE COHEN PAGE 2

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WHISKEY FROM PAGE 1 days,” as well as the location on the waterfront and the outdoor space.

“They structure (Wednesdays) so it’s easier for kids from Brown to come,” he said. “That makes a much better atmosphere.”

Eick and Lange both hope that “Whiskey Wednesdays” will continue under new management.

The Whiskey Republic isn’t the first time Williams and Manfredi have taken over and rebranded local venues.

The duo are partners and co-founders of the Rosendale Group, a hospitality company which has tackled three other venues in Providence: the Rosendale, the Strand Ballroom and Theatre and Studio

ment end (to) work with the team that’s already there,” Williams said.

According to Williams, all of the current employees are welcome to stay “as long as everybody is up for a change for the better.”

Williams also posted on his Facebook page that the Whiskey Republic was hiring for all positions on Jan. 13.

“We see that there’s a rebranding of this whole area with the new apartments, the walk and other buildings going up,” Williams said.

“We want to be more versatile — not just a college nightclub type of bar.”

New developments include the highend River House Apartments, which opened across the river this summer, as well as a $22-million pedestrian bridge linking Fox Point to the Jewelry District.

Lounge. The partners plan to adopt a strategy for the Whiskey Republic similar to their past ventures.

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” Manfredi said.

“We bring in people from the Rosendale Group who work on the marketing end or even the manage-

Despite recent local developments, the Fox Point neighborhood is familiar to Williams — he was hired out of high school 21 years ago to work at the Fish Co. Williams says he and Manfredi will work to “bring (the bar) back to the days when this was the place to be.”

COHEN FROM PAGE 1

was placed on administrative leave, The Herald previously reported.

“While at Brown, Mr. Cohen’s performance was deemed effective, and he was a valued member of the team,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark said. “The University wishes Mr. Cohen the best in his future endeavors.”

Cohen declined to comment on his resignation.

Though a recent investigative report from MIT found that Cohen was not in violation of institutional policies regarding controversial donations, a New Yorker spokesperson said that the magazine stood by its original story. After the article was published in September 2019, Cohen

GRAFITTI FROM PAGE 1 Hall, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. Since that time, including during winter break, more instances of homophobic graffiti were found and documented by DPS, Vice President for Campus Life Eric Estes and Associate Vice President for Campus Life Koren Bakkegard wrote in an email to Hegeman Hall residents.

On the day of Wade’s inspection, University offices including the LGBTQ Center, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, ResLife, Facilities Management, Student Support Services, the Title IX office, the Office of Campus Life and DPS began working to ensure that all known incidents of graffiti in Hegeman Hall were “documented by DPS, filed with the Bias Incident Reporting protocol (and) removed by Facilities

Management,” Bakkegard wrote in an email to The Herald.

While the current Hegeman resident did not think that the University was prompt in its initial response to the incidents, as the frequency and severity of the homophobic graffiti increased, “the University really started taking it seriously,” she said. They now “seem to be very thorough” in their response, she added. The University is considering installing security cameras in the public areas of residence halls, Wade wrote in an email to Hegeman residents.

These acts “are harmful and taken very seriously,” Director of the LGBTQ Center Kelly Garrett wrote in an email to The Herald. “They not only send a message of hate to the individuals who are directly targeted, but … to members of LGBTQ+ communities as a whole,” she added. Bakkegard characterized the

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020 graffiti as “absolutely unacceptable.”

“We may think of Brown as a liberal bubble (but) it doesn’t exist outside of real-world systems of power and oppression,” the Fall 2019 resident said.

“People should be aware that this is something that has happened, and can happen in the future at Brown,” he added.

The current Hegeman resident also noted that Brown’s environment “may not be as rosy and liberal as people want to believe it is.”

Bakkegard encourages anyone with information about the graffiti in Hegeman Hall to contact DPS at (401) 8633322, or anonymously through DPS’ Silent Witness Reporting system. Students seeking support can contact the LGBTQ Center, Counseling and Psychological Services or Student Support Services.

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RELS 0095A CRN 24978 Islam from the Ground UP

Prof. Nancy Khalek

MWF 10 – 10:50 am

Friedman Hall 003

Everything you wanted to know about Islam but were too afraid to ask.

Really, It’s impossible to ignore the relevance of Islam to today’s political and cultural landscape, but it can be difficult to talk about. In “Islam from the Ground UP” we explore the basics, and then build up from that groundwork to develop a complex understanding of Islam and its relationship to politics, government, culture, geopolitical conflict, contemporary events, and historical change.

RELS 0086 Religion and Movement Politics

Prof. Inouye

Thursdays 4 – 6:30 pm

Smith-Buonanno G01

What's the difference between a social movement and a religion?

It's hard to ignore the presence of uprisings and mass organizations in contemporary politics. Can religion be a useful category for understanding these collectives and their relationship to democracy? In Religion and Movement Politics, we explore several foundational theories of religion and social movements. We then turn to the black freedom struggle and several other historical cases to see what strategies, practices, experiences, motivations, and forms of authority these theories illuminate and obscure.

LEON JIANG / HERALD

Since late November of last year, over fifteen instances of homophobic graffiti have been found in Hegeman Hall dormitory.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

3

METRO

New tea shop sources local produce and customers Students head to Ceremony Tea on Thayer to drink, share piping hot tea

BY JULIA GROSSMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER Despite the challenges of seasonal student presence on Thayer Street, the crowd of customers shows that Ceremony finds business steadily growing.

Ceremony opened on Dec. 13, right before fall finals, replacing Tealuxe.

Tealuxe cited slow seasons during University breaks as a challenge to changes on Thayer, The Herald previously reported.

“When we opened, it was right around the corner of finals, so we had a lot of students,” said Ceremony’s owner and founder Michelle Cheng.

“It’s kind of calmed down a little bit since students left for the holidays, but we are slowly gaining more customers at our base who live in the area. We’re seeing a healthy flow.”

Students make up a significant portion of Ceremony’s customers.

“Between eleven and two o’clock, there’s definitely a majority of students,” Cheng said. “We also see local customers as well. They’re slowly getting to know what we offer in terms of (the) tea ceremony and also … mocktails.”

According to Cheng, when students are present, some of the best-selling items are teas by the cup, including matcha, cold brew and nitro tea. With the afternoon and evening crowd, the tea ceremonies and mocktails are becoming increasingly popular. Ceremony’s zero-proof mocktails are served from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m., with a Happy Hour featuring discounted drinks running from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. “We definitely see a trend that’s happening within the whole sober movement, and that’s driving a whole different

kind of customer to our location,” Cheng said.

Cheng believes that it is important not to become too reliant on student business, which can cause “huge fall out … when summer break and winter break hit.” While Cheng understands that many businesses come and go on Thayer, she believes that the uniqueness of Ceremony will help the shop remain profitable in the off-season.

Ceremony specializes in authentic tea ceremonies and offers loose-leaf teas, pastries and mocktails. All of the teas are sourced by Ceremony’s sister company Leafy Green, which Cheng also owns. “We strictly work with small farms in Asia, mainly China, Taiwan and Japan,” Cheng said, adding that “we have a personal, direct relationship with all of our farmers. There’s no middleman.”

A tea ceremony is a traditional way of making tea that involves washing and steeping it multiple times for maximum flavor. Each tea — whether it be oolong, black, green or white — has its own ritual and designated tea pots, according to Cheng, and are traditionally thought of as calming and cleansing practices.

For pastries and light desserts, Ceremony has partnered with SinoBox, a Franco-Sino fusion pastry company located in Warren. The tea shop has also partnered with Ellie’s, a Parisian-inspired bakery located in Providence.

The microgreens for Ceremony’s tea-based mocktails are from a micro-farm in North Providence called Sprout Organic Farms. “It’s our mission to deliver really freshly harvested food,” said CEO and co-founder of Sprout Aaron Damus, adding that all of the greens produced by the company are organic.

“We are excited to partner with (Ceremony),” he said. “We’ve been talking and planning to work together since before their opening.” Cheng currently plans to expand the array of

microgreens that Ceremony will be using for drinks and mocktails. “There will be more things coming from us, like lemon balm … and certain types of mint,” said Damus.

In addition to their local sourcing, for Cheng, Ceremony’s defining factor is its authentic tea preparations. “A lot of people really love our concept, because … no one (here) is really serving tea this way,” said Cheng. “I’ve been drinking tea like this since I was growing up in Asia,” but “(the) tea ceremony is a very new concept, especially in Rhode Island.”

After reading about Ceremony in a local magazine, Providence resident Peggy Edwards decided to stop by for the first time.

“It sounded really interesting,” said Edwards. “I wanted to treat my friend to something different and fun, so I thought this would be a good spot.”

Edwards also commented that the tea is “delicious” and that the store is “very welcoming and wonderful on a cold day.”

Noa Mintz ’22 also enjoys everything that Ceremony has to offer. “I was here every day during finals,” said Mintz. “Because they do free refills, I would bring tea to the SciLi, and every two hours, get a break and come back, so I could get air.”

“They care about the tea,” said Mintz. “So, it’s nice to get quality while I’m right on Thayer. It’s a perfect location and it’s a happy atmosphere.”

Unlike most of Thayer’s cafes, Ceremony “is very strict with no outlet usage,” Cheng said. “When your computer dies, we really encourage you to just take a moment, take a breather and look up, talk to your friends and engage with us throughout the whole tea ceremony process for a bit.”

VICTORIA YIN AND JULIA GROSSMAN / HERALD

Ceremony tea shop opened on Thayer Street Dec. 13th. It is owned by Michelle Cheng, who also owns Leafy Green tea company.

LITERARY ARTS COURSES, SPRING 2020 For First Year Seminars: LITR 0100 workshops (Introduction to Fiction, Introduction to Poetry) and LITR 0710 seminars: spaces were filled by the Dean of the Collegeʼs office. Attend the first class to see if space has become available; the instructor will also create a wait list at the first session (not before). These courses are open to First Year undergraduate students only.

For LITR 0110 workshops (Fiction I, Poetry I. Digital Language Arts I & Screenwriting I): spaces were filled during the registration period. No wait lists are created before the first class meeting; attend the first class to see if space has become available.

For LITR 0210 (Fiction II, Poetry II), LITR 1010 (Advanced Fiction, Advanced Poetry) & LITR 0310 (Special Topics) workshops: writing samples are due in the front hallway of the Literary Arts Building, 68.5 Brown Street, between 10 am and 4 pm on Wednesday, 22 January. Most sections will accept samples through early afternoon, Friday, 24 January.

For LITR 1150/1/2 workshop/seminars: attend the first class session; bring a literary writing sample with you.

For LITR 0999, LITR 1200 & LITR 1230/1 literature course: register through Banner during the registration period; and/or attend the first class.

LITR 0310N – Machine Learning and Language Arts ~ LITR 0999 – Graphic Novels and Comic Masterworks ~ LITR 1152C – Writers-in-the-Community Training ~ LITR 1152G – Rebuilding the Book ~ LITR 1152I – Poetʼs Tour of the Essay ~ LITR 1152J – Hybrid Writing Workshop: The Long Engagement ~ LITR 1200 – Writers on Writing ~ LITR 1230V – Why Donʼt We Fall in Love? ~ LITR 1230Y – Structuring (and De-Structuring) Novels ~ LITR 1231J – Histories

For details, see https://www.brown.edu/cw or visit “courses at brown”

4

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020

UNIVERSITY NEWS

U. crane shines for families at Hasbro Children’s Hospital Tower crane, Sci Li among 40 local participants in “Good Night Lights” program

BY MAISIE NEWBURY SENIOR STAFF WRITER Each night at 8:30 p.m., the patients at Hasbro Children’s Hospital await their “magic minute” during which light displays all over Providence blink in their direction to say goodnight. The display, which lasts for five minutes every night, is a community-wide program called Good Night Lights which acknowledges patients and families at the hospital with a small gesture.

Recently, the tallest structure on College Hill — the 200-foot tower crane installed at the construction site of the new Performing Arts Center — has been illuminated with bright multicolored LED lights, which blink in the direction of the hospital every night. The tower crane joins a list of over 40 participants in the Good Night Lights program, according to program founder and Hasbro Children’s Hospital resident cartoonist Steve Brosnihan. Current participants in the program include the Biltmore Hotel, the Omni Hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn, the Sciences Library and the Providence Police Department.

Brosnihan began the Good Night Lights program on a small scale in May 2010. “The idea came out of an interaction with a patient — a teen boy who was being discharged the follow-

ing day. There was a good chance we would never see each other again,” he recalled. To bid the patient goodbye, Brosnihan planned that, as he rode his bike away from the hospital, he would turn back to flash his bike light in the boy’s direction. He realized that the small gesture could be expanded into a larger effort to “raise the spirits of hospitalized children,” he said. Since then, Brosnihan has approached local businesses and organizations, asking them to place lights in their windows as part of the program.

“My own work has proven that if a kid has something to look forward to, they tend to be more susceptible to treatment,” he said. “It really is that simple. The project works because it makes kids happy.”

By placing string lights on its tower crane, the University’s latest contribution to the program has added a pop of color to College Hill. Upon the crane’s appearance in Fall 2019, Brosnihan felt inspired: the crane already had some lights on it. “Why not make them blink?” he asked.

Brosnihan spoke with a member of Shawmut Design and Construction, which oversees the PAC construction, about installing additional lights on the tower crane. Though there were white lights already installed on the crane for visibility purposes, Shawmut Design and Construction worked with Michael Guglielmo Jr, vice president for facilities management and executive vice president of finance and administration, to place LED lights on the crane that

would blink in the direction of Hasbro.

The project to install additional lights on the tower crane was funded entirely by the University, Guglielmo said.

The illuminated tower crane has already brought joy to the patients and families at the hospital, Brosnihan said.

Each night, as kids gather around the hospital windows for the “magic minute,” they look up at the crane’s blinking display and shout out its colors, Brosnihan said. “Kids love looking at (the crane), so do families. They can’t believe that big giant thing gets busy for their sake,” he added.

The illumination of the tower crane isn’t the first time the University has participated in the Good Night Lights program. The University began its involvement in early 2016 after Brosnihan contacted University Facilities Management about shining a light from an upper floor of the Sci Li, The Herald previously reported. The project began simply — with a security guard flashing a handheld signal from one of the upper windows of the library. “The people who I initially contacted took the ball and ran with it,” Brosnihan said, recalling that one night he was pleasantly surprised to see the two floodlights shining from the roof of the Sci Li. At the end of the magic minute, the patients at Hasbro respond to the blinking lights in the nighttime sky by shining their own lights back as a thank you.

“As soon as the signal is received, we see lights flashing in the hospital window in return,” said University Librarian Harriette Hemmasi. She described the

The John F. Kennedy Jr. Initiative for Documentary Film and Social Progress

LEON JIANG / HERALD

As part of the Good Night Lights program, the crane light displays help brighten the nights of patients at the Hasbro Children’s Hospital. event as “a small way of connecting and letting the children know we’re thinking of them … (and) that they’re not alone.”

Because Good Night Lights has no funding of its own, most of the light displays around the city are independently funded by local businesses and organizations, Brosnihan said. The program is “strictly volunteer” and participants are responsible for purchasing the equipment. Once in a while, if a business is unable or unwilling to provide their own lights, Brosnihan has constructed his own light kit that he will donate to the participant free of charge.

Given its perch on College Hill, the University has been a very important participant in the program, Brosnihan said. “I look forward to more participation from student groups.” Last year, the women’s lacrosse team created a display in the Sci Li, flashing hand-held signals and creating shapes in the library windows, Brosnihan said.

The beauty of the program is that it is a “community effort,” Brosnihan said.

“Part of the success of it comes from the fact that it is so easy … People just have to blink a light for a couple minutes — anything as small as a flashlight or as big as the fixtures on the crane.”

BROWN UNIVERSITY CONTEMPLATIVE STUDIES COURSES! SPRING 2020

COUP 53 SCREENING AND PANEL DISCUSSION

COST 0032 ~ Music and Meditation ~ S. Reddy ~ TTh, 9 - 10:20 am COST 0037 ~ Sensing the Sacred ~ F. Moore-Gerety ~ TTh, 1 - 2:20 pm COST 0100 ~ Intro to Contemplative Studies ~ H. Roth ~ W, 3 - 5:30 pm ~ MedLab, MWF, 9 - 9:50 am COST 0525 ~ History and Practice of Yoga ~ F. Moore-Gerety ~ T, 4 - 6:30 pm COST 1020 ~ Cognitive Neuroscience of Meditation ~ S. Lazar ~ T, 4 - 6:30 pm

The 2019 film depicts the combined efforts of the United Kingdom

Tuesday

and the United States to overthrow the democratically elected

January 28, 2020

government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh.

6:00 pm

The panel discussion will include commentary and Q&A on

MARTINOS AUDITORIUM

the making of the film, historical perspective, and the current

GRANOFF CENTER

situation with Iran.

154 ANGELL STREET

PA N E L I S T S

Taghi Amirani, director Walter Murch, co-writer and editor

I N C O L L A B O R AT I O N W I T H T H E

Stephen Kinzer, Watson Institute senior fellow

Brown Arts Initiative

COST 1700A ~ History, Philosophy & Practice of Rinzai Zen ~ M. Matsubara ~3 - 5:30 pm ~ MedLab, Sat, 10 am - 12 pm COST 1705A ~ Principles & Practices of Contemplative Studies ~ H. Roth ~ TBA COST 1885 ~ Measuring Mindfulness ~ J. Brewer ~ 9 - 11:30 am Questions? Please contact Anne_Heyrman-Hart@Brown.edu www.contemplativestudies.org

Campus Shop and Technology Center 244 Thayer St. Providence, RI 02912 401-863-3168 or 800-695-2050

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The Technology Center on the lower floor of the Campus Shop showcases the latest products from Apple® and Lenovo®.

We offer academic pricing on Apple® products.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

PPSD FROM PAGE 1 widespread, systematic underperformance made national news last year.

In June, the release of a highly critical report from Johns Hopkins University, chronicling dangerous facilities, ineffective bureaucratic structures, broken school culture and low expectations for student performance, set in motion an unprecedented Nov. 1 takeover of the district by the state’s education department, RIDE. But the report also outlined one positive constant: the devotion of some principals and teachers who, despite working within a failing system, went “above and beyond” to help students.

“Teachers reported in several schools that the very hardships they faced in their teaching work had prompted them to work more intensely with their colleagues — including after hours — for the sake of children,” the review team wrote.

At Gilbert Stuart Middle School, some teachers and administrators embody this mindset.

How to teach a five-paragraph essay to sixth graders On Thursday afternoons at 12:45 pm, the period right after lunch break,

Gilbert Stuart Middle School’s Elisabeth Snead teaches history to a sixth grade class.

When students enter Miss Snead’s basement classroom, they rush to grab the comfortable chairs. They sit in groups of four or five and listen as the teacher paces the classroom and explains the assignment.

The room’s walls are heavily laden with fairy lights, posters, maps, inspirational messages and memes. Though it is December, one table is still covered with Halloween-themed wrapping paper. “Mermaids have more fun,” reads one poster on the wall. “Squirrel underpants,” reads another. Near the words “We are global citizens,” a Dr. Seuss sign tells students to “think left and think right and think low and think high.”

Today, students are working on constructing one paragraph for a five-paragraph essay that will explain how rivers were important in the development of ancient civilizations.

Snead’s approach to teaching the five-paragraph essay focuses on building one paragraph at a time. Each paragraph is broken into its constituent sentences, according to the RACE strategy: Restate the question, Answer the question, Cite text evidence, Explain what

it means. Students write the sentence corresponding to each letter into its appropriate box on a RACE worksheet.

They must later rewrite the information on their worksheets in the format of a five-paragraph essay.

After the RIDE data for Gilbert Stuart’s dismal performance in English Language Arts was published at the end

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020

Snead asks the class to look for the “C” in RACE. “Does anybody see on page 30 the words ‘river’ or ‘civilization’?”

Students scan their pages, looking for quotes. One student raises his hand. His quote talks about the river, but Snead points out that it doesn’t tell you why the river is important: “But that was a good try. Who found some-

CLARA GUTMAN ARGEMÍ / HERALD

of the 2018-19 academic year, teachers began implementing the RACE strategy across subjects, including history and English.

thing that told what the river provides?”

In a table cluster at the front of the room, the one nearest the teacher’s desk, four girls put their heads together.

“Rachael, dude,” one of the girls urges her friend to jump in.

Rachael raises her hand, and reads a quote about how the rivers in China brought fresh fertile topsoil to the land.

“And we know that fresh fertile topsoil equals…?” Snead asks the class.

“Farming!” several voices answer.

After a few minutes gathering and jotting down relevant quotes from the textbook, students start speaking in hushed voices, and the classroom volume slowly increases.

“I need more space. I’m not gonna be able to write that here,” says one of the girls in the cluster at the front of the room.

She’s not the only one struggling with this. “Listen, you’re trying to write five sentences in a section where you only need one sentence,” Snead tells another student with the same problem.

“And that’s why you’re getting frustrated. That one sentence is enough, and then you move on. You understand what I’m saying?”

By the end of the period, the student from the front cluster exclaims, “Yes, I have enough space!”

Pick up a copy of tomorrow’s paper to read the second part of “A look inside Providence Public Schools.”

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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2020

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

7

The war on drugs ignores history and reality ADAM SHEPARDSON ’22 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR The liberal sentiment of the Enlightenment, one lauding the value of individual autonomy and choice, has underpinned the American experiment. Thomas Jefferson described blind adherence to the law as “the tyrant’s will,” while endorsing the right of Americans to engage in “their own pursuits of industry and improvement.” The ever-eloquent Frederick Douglass viewed this philosophy as one comprised of “saving principles” which the American people should “stand by… in all places, against all foes and at whatever cost,” even if the men who initially created them were plagued with “hypocrisy” and gross imperfections.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that the freedom Douglass praised with such adoration never quite stuck in the minds of American politicians — as the authoritarian bent of our criminal justice system and the widely embraced war on drugs demonstrate. Even in 2020, mainstream voices on the left and right have both taken socially conservative stances on activities like vaping and marijuana use, while advocacy for decriminalization of stronger drugs is still widely considered taboo. Those who seek to ban either category of substances wrongly assume that the government is entitled to some rightful mandate over the bodies of the citizenry. Both Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, for example, have convinced themselves that the people must be saved from vaping. Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden clings to the mythology of arguments against marijuana as if they were gospel, further solidifying his role as one of the core architects of modern drug laws. Keep in mind that the negative consequences of drug bans are so obvious that even Trump appears

to understand them, and if today’s blossoming prohibitionists do as well, they simply don’t care so long as they can rally a sufficiently large horde of boomers to storm the polls in November.

Nevertheless, I think that young Americans are capable of a more nuanced approach.

As we enter into a new election year, let us not

framework for peacefully settling transactional disputes; some scholars argue that this caused the United States homicide rate to nearly double between 1920 and 1933. This rate then began to fall immediately after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. With respect to the public health toll of the alcohol ban, illicit bulk manufacturing also resulted in a greater poten-

stripping away freedoms from peaceful people who have had no evidence of a violent history on their record.

I would like to leave my fellow students with a bit of a plea: when next contemplating how the government can be used to solve a problem, be more thorough in examining what consequences could result from your imagined law.

forget the catastrophe that was the Eighteenth Amendment. In 1920, anti-alcohol propagan-

cy of the product, and American deaths from alcohol poisoning quadrupled a mere five years into prohibition. These results show that prohibition in the 1920s was an unequivocal failure.

Today our government continues its egregious policy of policing American drug use. Half of the federal prison population in 2015 comprised drug offenders alone. These are citizens who will be forced to live out the remainder of their lives with a felony record simply because they consumed or possessed a substance that happened to frighten lawmakers decades ago. This system is needlessly punitive, and our drug laws harbor severe economic consequences for those who become its victims: few employers are willing to hire ex-offenders, about 1,000 students are denied financial aid every year due to criminal drug records and U.S. taxpayers foot a bill of over $51 billion annually in order to fund the drug war.

Bias in application of the law makes this situation even more detestable, as Black and Hispanic Americans are significantly more likely than whites to be incarcerated (and to receive harsher sentences) for drug offenses despite similar rates of substance abuse across these populations. Given that individuals with felony records do not automatically have their voting rights restored in eleven states, the criminalization of drug use will continue to perpetuate mass disenfranchisement of minorities, in addition to preventing such Americans from serving on juries. It should be noted that a felony conviction also prevents someone from exercising their right to own firearms, and racial disparities in drug sentencing are thus unduly

After all, that law will be administered by people who are not saints, characterized by their own biases, prejudices and fanciful interpretations of your words that may all combine to produce something which violates your original intentions. Our national drug policy is a perfect example of how wishful thinking can ruin lives.

Even though I don’t personally seek to glorify drug use, goals of preventing overdoses or improving public health mean nothing when the proposed “solutions” involve damning people to eternal poverty and ripping them away from their kids to waste away in a jail cell.

So long as you do not harm the body or property of another human being, the government should be provided no authority to revoke your rights or control what lifestyle you wish to pursue. Certainly, we cannot redirect our disdain for the negative consequences of drug addiction toward restricting the use of products like vapes and pot (i.e. comparatively benign alternatives to more dangerous substances), and ignorantly expect that creating new classes of people to incarcerate will somehow establish a utopian America. Drug legalization is the way of the future, and as such, addiction should be met with compassion rather than the destruction of hope and human dignity.

“Our national drug policy is a perfect example of how wishful thinking can ruin lives.”

dists made similar claims to today’s drug crusaders: These voices feared that the presence of drugs inherently raised crime rates, deteriorated the health of the American public and tore apart families. However, we know that prohibition itself causes these phenomena, for the principles of supply and demand do not magically vanish just because the State has decided that they should. If people want to purchase a good and cannot obtain it from a legal vendor, a black market forms to serve that purpose.

While prohibition did reduce American alcohol consumption by 30 percent, this outcome was actually damaging to the moral vision of the prohibitionists. Those who were deterred from consuming alcohol simply moved on to harder substances like opium and cocaine to offset the newly prohibitive cost of their former drug of choice. Efficacy aside, black markets lack a

Adam Shepardson ’22 can be reached at adam_shepardson@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

Locked doors don’t keep us safe REBECCA AMAN ’20 STAFF COLUMNIST How many times have you waited in the bitter cold for a friend to let you into their dorm? And of those times, how often did a kind stranger let you into the building, holding the door open as they swiped themselves in?

How many times have you walked up to Stephen Robert ’62 Hall (“New Watson”) after 8 p.m. and found the beautiful new study space inaccessible, with the door locked? Maybe you awkwardly knock on the glass wall, hoping someone will let you in. Or maybe you get lucky, and another student has propped the door open with a chair.

These locked doors are not merely inconvenient: They make our campus less secure. In order to make students’ lives easier and improve campus security, the University should expand student swipe card access to all dorms and academic buildings which are locked after hours.

The idea that locked doors can make us unsafe may seem counterintuitive. But the fact of the matter is that in my experience, if you wait long enough, it isn’t hard to get into most

locked buildings on campus. Because I’ve been on the wrong side of a locked door many times, I always open the door for people who look like students, and other students will return the favor. In fact, despite the Department of Public Safety’s warnings, I don’t think anyone has ever declined to hold a locked door open for me. So locked doors have not prevented me from entering a building; they have simply slowed me down.

But if students were able to swipe into each others’ dorms and academic buildings, it is likely that students would no longer hold doors so liberally. If I saw someone waiting outside a dorm, I would no longer assume they were a student here, and I’d be significantly more hesitant to let them in.

Furthermore, increased swipe access could aid University security investigations. If a student does swipe into someone else’s dorm to break a rule or cause harm, the University would then have a record that they entered the building. By decreasing door-holding, increased swipe access would likely give the University a fuller picture of who entered the building.

Other schools have made expanded swipe access work. For example, Dartmouth allows students to access each other’s dorms from 8

a.m. to 9 p.m.. While this policy is unusual, it has strong support from the student body, as evidenced by the backlash when the school tried to take open access away. In the fall of 2019, Dartmouth’s administration restricted

“These locked doors are not merely inconvenient: They make our campus less secure.” access to dorms as a safety measure in response to a series of racial bias incidents in October 2018, which included vandalism in dorms. But students pushed back immediately, arguing that restricting swipe access wouldn’t solve the safety problem. While Dartmouth’s Student Assembly had issued a request asking for increased security after the racial bias incidents, they re-

jected the dorm access change. In fact, Student Assembly President Luke Cuomo maintained that the policy could have unintended consequences that might reduce safety. According to the Dartmouth, 94 percent of students surveyed opposed the policy change. At a school where students are used to open access, the idea of locked doors didn’t make students feel more safe. Ultimately, student body pressure convinced Dartmouth to reverse course and restore universal access during daytime hours.

Brown should follow Dartmouth’s example. Expanded access does not mean students need 24/7 access to every building. But students should be able to swipe into their friends’ dorms during daytime hours and students should also have swipe access to popular study spaces, like the new Watson building.

At this school, known for its Open Curriculum, it’s time we have a more open campus as well.

Rebecca Aman ’20 can be reached at rebecca_aman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

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