Wednesday, October 15, 2014

THE

BROWN DAILY HERALD vol. cxlix, no. 88

since 1891

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

Butler: Family matters not so matter-of-fact in ‘Bacchae’ Gender theorist unpacks Greek classic, kinship between ancient gods and modern mortals

By GABRIELLA REYES CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“You can’t choose your family,” the saying goes. But kin relations are inevitably defined by participants and outside sources, said philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler in a Tuesday lecture entitled “Fallible Recognition: The Politics of Kinship in the Bacchae.”

Butler, a professor of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, was greeted by an overflowing crowd at the Granoff Center for the Performing Arts. Her talk, which focused on familial relations in the ancient Greek tragedy “The Bacchae” by Euripides, was preceded by a staged reading of the play at Leeds Theater.

Butler’s talk was this year’s edition of the annual Roger B. Henkle Memorial Lecture, which is sponsored by the Department of Modern Culture and Media, the Department of English and the Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Culture and Media Studies.

Butler delved into how kinship can be defined in various historical or mythological contexts. She described kinship as a way of organizing people generationally, based on reproduction, partriarchal lineages or freely chosen relations. Kinship is often defined as a binding, stable network of relationships, but this definition » See BUTLER, page 4

After dip, study abroad participation sees uptick Women, humanities concentrators more likely to go abroad than men, STEM concentrators

By JOSEPH ZAPPA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

After several years of significant decline, the number of students studying abroad has rebounded modestly over the past two years.

From 2007-08 to 2012-13, the number students studying abroad during the academic year fell from a high of 565 to a low of 381 — ­ a 33 percent drop over five years, according to figures obtained from the Office of Institutional Research. But the number of students studying abroad climbed back to 415 last year and 282 undergraduates are abroad this fall, consistent with last fall’s number.

The downward trend from fall 2007 to spring 2013 is not Brown-specific, but

rather reflects the nationwide impact of the Great Recession, said Kendall Brostuen, associate dean and director of international programs.

He said a recession may hinder a family’s ability to pay for plane tickets or other major expenses and may leave students with less spending money, encumbering their capacity to take full advantage of their time outside the United States by preventing them from traveling, eating out or participating in local recreational activities. Several students mentioned these experiences as key elements of their time abroad.

Anna Martin ’16, who is spending the semester in Barcelona, said budgetary concerns figured into her initial considerations before her study abroad program.

But she ultimately found that a semester away from Providence would cost her no more than a semester at Brown.

In addition to financial factors, fear of missing out on Brown activities and classes, often strenuous requirements in scientific and mathematical fields and concerns over scheduling conflicts with summer internships sometimes deter students from studying abroad, Brostuen said.

A proliferation of summer alternatives to semester-long study abroad, such as international internship opportunities and undergraduate teaching and research awards, might also diminish the number of students electing to study away during a semester, Brostuen said.

Women are more likely to study abroad than men, who compose just 32 percent of the undergraduates studying abroad this year, Brostuen said. This

trend, too, goes beyond Brown, he added.

For students outside of STEM, studying abroad may pose no challenge to their academic plans and may in fact even play an integral role in fulfilling them.

Philip Heller ’16 said his coursework at St. Andrews University in Scotland this fall fills two international relations concentration requirements, adding that St. Andrews has one of the best international relations programs in Europe.

Though the academic rigor of other universities’ courses may not match the rigor at Brown, study abroad offers outof-class learning experiences that are valuable in their own way and provide a break from the structured learning environment at the University, students said.

“I was feeling burnt out … and I knew a change of pace would be good for me,” Martin said, adding that studying » See ABROAD, page 2

PC student files civil rights complaint against U. in assault case Student alleges that U. mistreated sexual assault case as ‘misconduct,’ not as Title IX civil rights violation

By MOLLY SCHULSON METRO EDITOR

A female Providence College student who accused two Brown students of sexual assault last year filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Saturday against the University for allegedly mishandling her case, the Providence Journal reported Tuesday.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will now look into whether or not the University handled the PC student’s case appropriately and complied with federal civil rights laws, wrote Wendy Murphy, the PC student’s attorney, in an email to The Herald.

The PC student alleges in her complaint that the University did not treat her inquiry as a Title IX civil rights violation, but rather as one involving “general misconduct,” the ProJo reported.

When a case is handled as generic misconduct, civil rights standards of Title IX do not apply, Murphy wrote. While federal standards mandate that plaintiffs in civil rights cases must receive equal redress for wrongs suffered regardless of race or national origin, these standards do not apply to cases treated as incidents of misconduct, Murphy wrote.

The lack of consistent standards makes violence against women harder to prove, she added.

This discrepancy leads Murphy to advise her clients to report assaults and other violent crimes “as a civil rights harm based on anything other than sex,” she wrote.

The PC student alleges that last November, two first-year Brown football players sexually assaulted her in a Brown dorm room. The student did not file a complaint with the Providence police

until February of this year.

The undergraduates were ordered to leave campus in late April, and one of them withdrew from the University before the beginning of the current school year, The Herald reported at the time.

In August, a grand jury chose to not indict the two accused football players due to a lack of evidence, so they will not face criminal charges. After the grand jury’s decision, a third Brown student, who remains on the football roster, was implicated in the case after police filings of cellphone records and emails showed the third student’s communication via text message with the two accused players.

One of the accused, a former undergrad, requested last week that the Rhode Island Superior Court seal his records.

This is not the first federal civil rights complaint that the University has received this year. Lena Sclove ’15.5, a former undergrad who reported being raped by another student last year, filed

Title IX and Clery Act complaints against the University in May, The Herald reported at the time.

In response to Sclove’s civil rights complaints, the University released a statement that said its policy “is not to discuss individual cases or details of ongoing reviews.”

The University will “face criticism, (civil rights) complaints and relentless lawsuits until they fix their segregationist policies and explicitly treat women with the full equality they deserve,” Murphy wrote to The Herald.

The University has not yet received notice from the Department of Education about the PC student’s new complaint, wrote Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, in an email to The Herald.

While federal law prevents the University from commenting on disciplinary actions involving students, administrators will “cooperate fully if asked” by authorities, Quinn wrote.

Researchers revisit Darwin’s untested theories on invasive species

By FRANCES CHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Plants from more genetically diverse regions are more likely to become invasive species in new environments, according to a new study conducted by Dov Sax, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Jason Fridley, associate professor of biology at Syracuse University. Published Oct. 1 in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, the study is the first to

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

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inside

Researchers found that plants growing in more genetically diverse areas are more likely to be invasive.

Science & Research

explicitly test this idea at a macro level.

Eight years ago, Sax met Fridley at the Ecological Society of America Conference. They realized that they shared a similar frustration: No one had ever explicitly tested Darwin’s theories on invasive species. “Darwin wrote about these ideas more than 150 years ago and various authors had mentioned it in publication … but no one had actually tried to test (them),” Sax said.

Sax and Fridley hypothesized that species from more phylogenetically diverse regions were more likely to successfully become invasive in a new environment. Phylogenetic diversity is a measure of the number of different evolutionary lineages, Sax said. When a plant species spreads to a region where it is not native, the plant can be termed “invasive” and has the potential to cause damage to the

Commentary

Brown Institute for Brain Sciences raises more than half of $50 million goal

Brown-India Initiative student projects cover research on topics from pollution to language

Grapengenter-Rudick ’17: Citizens have a right to worry about Ebola

Makhlouf ’16: Universities are often more liberal and leftleaning in theory than in practice

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weather

Study’s results could lead to future efforts, policies to stop the spread of invasive plant species

indiginous plants, or even cause human health problems.

Since species growing in more diverse areas faced more competition, they are constantly forced to evolve. The traits they acquire over generations allow them to compete better in a new environments, he said.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers looked at various data sets on invasive plants. Since botanists generally group the world into 35 different geographic regions, the researchers used these same regions when looking at plant data, Fridley said. They pulled data from previous research on where various plant families grow and looked at the number of different plant families in each of the regions to estimate their phylogentic diversity, he said. » See SPECIES, page 2 t o d ay

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2 science & research Stein: brains, brews and big lecture halls This profile is part of a new series focused on Brown faculty and students engaged in science and research, with the purpose of highlighting and making more accessible the work being pursued at all levels across disciplines.

BY ISOBEL HECK SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITOR

John Stein PhD’95 P’13, senior lecturer in neuroscience, said it was during graduate school that he first realized he “got a kick out of teaching.” Required to teach during multiple semesters, Stein said he quickly realized he enjoyed teaching just as much as he enjoyed the research he was conducting, which was unusual compared to his peers.

Having always been fascinated by biology, Stein said as a child he would spend hours reading David Macaulay’s book series, “The Way Things Work,” and “flipping over rocks in my yard and looking for ants and grasshoppers and caterpillars.”

“It took me a while to realize that not everyone shared that interest the way I shared it,” he said, adding that his interest in science made people think his obvious career path would lead him to medical or dental school. It was not until his undergraduate years when he simultaneously took introductory courses in psychology and physiology that Stein realized he wanted to pursue the middle ground between the two fields: neuroscience.

Since receiving his Ph.D. from Brown in 1995, Stein has engaged in a range of teaching endeavors, and today, Stein’s main role at the University is as a lecturer. While Stein is well-known for teaching introductory courses such as NEUR 0010: “The Brain: An Introduction to Neuroscience” and BIOL 0200: “The Foundation of Living Systems,” he also teaches smaller seminars and a class that brings together Brown and RISD students with the purpose of creating science animations, VISA 1800T: “Communicating Science.”

With a “long-standing interest in outreach,” Stein has also spent time engaged in teaching high school students, immersing them in scientific exploration and experimentation through mobile labs with portable equipment. The mobile labs allow high school students to take part in predesigned experiments, Stein said. In one experiment, students analyze their own DNA. “It’s yourself … it’s real personalized,” he said.

At the end of each school year, the program holds a symposium at Brown where students present their work and listen to a keynote speaker and panels of graduate and undergraduate students.

Though the project is running out of its initial funding and is on a “shoestring budget,” the program has continued with limited resources, Stein said, and is working around the funding issues.

Stein said he has learned that “presenting difficult concepts from different points of view” is crucial to effective teaching. Tailoring his teaching to the large range of learning styles and

academic backgrounds at Brown is a challenge, Stein said, adding that testing knowledge well is even more diffcult.

Stein said if professors want to test concepts effectively, it is essential they feel desperate to test not only “encyclopedic knowledge” but students’ abilities “to understand the process and the concepts so that if they go out and they want to learn more about it, they can pick up the facts and put them into a story on their own.”

In Stein’s office hangs a large quilt of student-designed t-shirts celebrating each semester of NEUR 0010. There’s an “energy” coming from the students, Stein said, and the t-shirt was a “natural result” of that. “Everyone’s quick to shoot down large courses. … We like to emphasize what’s right about large lecture courses,” Stein said. “You have a very diverse group of students, from very different backgrounds, who now outside of the classroom have something to talk about outside the dorm and the food — now they have a course.”

Stein pursues molecular biology outside of the classroom as well — through brewing his own beer. But he said he usually doesn’t bring his beer to Brown because he prefers not to “put people on the spot” to say what they think. Saying to students, “Turn in your final, have some beer! That wouldn’t work too well,” he added, laughing.

Stein said he also enjoys outdoor activities and is involved with a local boyscout troop, though his own children are now too old to be scouts.

» ABROAD, from page 1 in Barcelona has offered her the opportunity to “live the day-to-day of a Spanish student.”

“Most of what I have learned has definitely come from outside school,” said Jenna Davis ’16, who is studying in Cape Town, South Africa this semester.

“Cab drivers love to talk to you about race, money, their favorite food … and

» SPECIES, from page 1 The ecologists then examined cases that had the potential for invasions to occur, and analyzed how plant diversity impacted the invasions.

One example was when the Suez Canal was built, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and thus allowing plant life from both areas to mix together.

“The Red Sea was very phylogenetically diverse, while the Mediterranean was not,” Sax said, adding that species of plants more frequently moved from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean than vice versa.

Looking at invasive species from different continents also supported their hypothesis.

“Eastern Asia has the highest phylogenetic diversity in the world, whereas Europe has low phylogenetic diversity,” Fridley said. While one out of four plants from Asia become invasive, only one out of every 10 from Europe follow suit, he said.

The results of the study are a “great tool for thinking about the control and

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

more,” Davis added.

Most students who study abroad return happy with their experience, Brostuen said, adding that a semester abroad will stick out when students look back on their undergraduate experiences.

“I am already looking forward to coming back to South Africa to live for a while,” Davis said, adding that Cape Town has become her “favorite place in the world.”

prevention of invasions,” Fridley said.

They can be used to regulate species that are introduced into a new area by helping to predict how big of a risk any given species will be, he said.

This information is important for countries with plant invasion problems, such as Autralia and New Zealand, and could affect their policies to prevent invasive species, Sax added.

“It’s a really important paper,” said Laura Meyerson, associate professor of natural resources science at the University of Rhode Island, who was not involved in the study. Previously, there had only been species-specific studies that did not always hold true more generally, she said.

Sax and Fridley took a larger-scale approach “by looking at large data sets and trying to pick out patterns.”

Their research “unifies a lot of the hypotheses out there, and helps us understand the patterns that we see,” she said.

With this study complete, Fridley said he hopes to further his work on invasive species. His current research seeks to understand what specific traits of invasive species make them so successful in infiltrating new environments.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

This Week in Higher Ed

BY MICHAEL DUBIN, UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

No referee off the field for FSU football players A New York Times investigation published Friday revealed a pattern of action by Tallahassee, Fla. police designed to protect Florida State University football players accused of crimes.

The most prominent of the cases involves star quarterback Jameis Winston, last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, who was accused of rape in January 2013. The Times found that the police investigation was sloppy and often nonexistent, resulting in insufficient evidence to prosecute Winston.

But the Times’ recent evaluation of police records, court documents and interviews with witnesses demonstrated that Winston’s was not an isolated case. A suspect’s status as a member of the football team is frequently mentioned in police reports and has occasionally played a part in helping players sidestep arrest, the Times reported. In other cases, investigations have proceeded at a glacial pace or been cut short.

Many Tallahassee police officers are major Seminoles fans, and dozens serve as security guards and coordinate traffic at home games, the Times reported.

Michael DeLeo, who became Tallahassee’s chief of police last December, said in a statement, “I take seriously the responsibility entrusted to us to keep (the city’s college students) safe and also hold them accountable for their actions,” the Times reported. When officers make mistakes, “we immediately investigate and hold them accountable,” he said.

Harvard CS course may travel to New Haven Harvard’s popular introductory computer science course, widely known as CS50, may be offered at Yale next fall, the Harvard Crimson reported last Wednesday.

Yale is weighing a proposal to offer a version of CS50 that would combine Harvard course instructor David Malan’s filmed lectures, which would be streamed live, with a Yale instructor and teaching assistants who would grade assignments, hold office hours and run sections, Joan Feigenbaum, head of Yale’s computer science department, told the Crimson. Both schools’ faculties must still approve the proposal.

James Aspnes, director of undergraduate studies for Yale’s computer science department, told the Crimson that Yale has struggled recently to bolster its introductory computer science offerings because of limited resources.

But Harvard has had no such problem. The Crimson reported last month on the enormous popularity of CS50, which has 848 Harvard students enrolled this semester. During the 2012-13 school year, approximately 160,000 others took the massive open online course through HarvardX. The course has a staff of more than 100, including videographers and a production team.

If approved, the cross-campus course would mark a major inroad for digital learning in the Ivy League. It would “allow us to combine the great things about online instruction and the great things about person-to-person, face-to-face on-campus instruction,” Feigenbaum said.

university news 3 BIBS fundraising propels faculty hiring forward Brown Institute for Brain Sciences has long-term plan to create 14 new faculty positions

By KATE TALERICO CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Brown Institute for Brain Sciences has surpassed the halfway mark of its $50 million fundraising goal outlined in 2012 as part of a plan authorized by then-Provost Mark Schlissel. BIBS has hired four new faculty members and has plans to recruit two more over the coming year — one within the Department of Psychiatry and the other a senior level molecular neurobiologist to be housed in the Department of Neuroscience, said John Davenport, associate director of BIBS. Researcher recruiting When a faculty position opens in BIBS, the board must decide for which area and department within the wider University they want to recruit the person for, as well. “We come to an agreement with the department that they’ll be willing to host that person as if they were a normal member of their department,” Davenport said. Though funding for these faculty members comes through BIBS, departments provide lab and office spaces, he added.

Most of the $50 million that BIBS is in the process of fundraising will go toward hiring faculty, he said, adding that the “ultimate goal for all hires is that we have endowed professorships that support these positions and startup funds to get their labs going.”

“The people that we’re trying to recruit are also being recruited by other extremely good places. We’re competing often with much bigger research universities,” Davenport said, adding that making competitive offers is “an important part of the puzzle.”

“Mark Schlissel made a huge impact by really recognizing what it takes to recruit good people,” he added.

Ebola researchers at Yale choose not to sequester themselves Two Yale public health students who recently returned to campus from researching Ebola in Liberia have decided not to isolate themselves, the Yale Daily News reported Monday.

The students were engineering a computer system that would map Ebola’s transmission and never directly encountered the virus, wrote Yale School of Public Health Dean Paul Cleary in a pair of emails to public health students.

The researchers had originally offered to remain at home for three weeks — the virus’s incubation period — primarily in order to mitigate public fear, the Yale Daily News reported. But after consulting with several physicians, epidemiologists, administrators and people at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the students changed their minds.

They will still adhere to the CDC’s recommendations for preventing the virus’s spread, Cleary wrote, adding that the odds of any Yale community members getting infected are slim.

@the_herald

Since 2012, BIBS has filled four of the seven new positions ­­— Wilson Truccolo and Alexander Jaworski joined the Department of Neuroscience, Kevin Bath joined the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, and David Borton joined the School of Engineering, all as assistant professors.

New spaces A second phase of the institute’s plan, which will be defined further in a meeting later this semester, will create long-term goals for BIBS and include the hiring of fourteen additional faculty members, Davenport said.

The seven Phase One positions were meant to be filled in accordance with the “existing space in the existing buildings in the existing departments,” said Davenport, but the second phase will likely not have these limitations, he added.

Davenport said he envisions that staff not only will conduct research within their own departments, but that BIBS might have its own building where faculty from many different backgrounds can collaborate together on brain science on a daily basis.

BIBS first explored this idea a year and a half ago when the University was developing a new space for engineering.

At the time, the University considered developing a building, or series of buildings, to house BIBS in addition to engineering, due to the close ties between the fields.

Now that plans for the new Engineering building has been sketched out, Davenport said he hopes to “rekindle a conversation about a brain science space.”

Davenport said BIBS still needs to work out details with the University, hospitals and potentially the state.

While no exact figures have been presented for Phase Two, BIBS is having an ongoing discussion with the University about realistic goals. Other brain science institutes around the country undertaking similar projects have set their fundraising goals in the range of several hundred million dollars, Davenport said.

While the people that BIBS recruits

and the quality of their research is in line with top brain science institutes, Davenport said he thinks Brown lacks the name recognition. He added that, when people think about brain science institutions, MIT, Stanford and Johns Hopkins may be the first to come to mind, all of which place in the U.S. News and World Report top ten ranking for neuroscience graduate programs.

Understanding the human brain is one of the pillars of President Christina Paxson’s Strategic Plan, and details about this pillar will be announced as part of Paxson’s to-be-announced financing campaign, Davenport said.

Diane Lipscombe, a professor of neuroscience who will take over as interim director of BIBS in January, said one of her main goals this year is to bring in “funding additive to what is already gone” in order to make sure that the junior faculty have the resources to complete research. This responsibility is shared both by BIBS and their departments, she said.

“We have great people here … who are going to be funded, but they’re in an environment right now that is more than competitive, it’s just brutal,” Lipscombe said. “The top 10 percent of grants get funded. Ninety percent of people who put in a request don’t get funded, and that’s a selective group. We constantly are thinking about that.”

Davenport said that throughout the expansion, undergraduate involvement remains a key goal of the institute. BIBS partners with the University’s Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award program to fund between four and six students’ summer work in brain science labs, he said.

The faculty members hired through BIBS will also be teaching new, specialized courses within their departments.

Additionally, current BIBS projects may push faculty out of their comfort zones and into new lines of research they don’t specialize in, Davenport said, providing undergraduates the chance to pursue cross-departmental interests.

4 university news

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

» BUTLER, from page 1 is defied by the relationships themselves, Butler said. The concept, she added, is haunted by “the possibility of faltering or fading.”

Butler said kinship is defined by recognition by its participants and society as a whole. In their dependence on acknowledgment, kin relations are fragile, as “recognition falters often,” she said.

While the primary subject of the talk was Euripides’s “Bacchae,” Butler also connected her lecture to her three great passions: queer theory, feminism and ethics. She pushed back against the feminist interpretation of the play that maintains that the Greek god Dionysus is a liberating force, noting that while the women of Thebes are freed from the dominion of their husbands and can indulge their sexual lust, they still have to obey Dionysus.

Contemporary perceptions of kinship are often rooted in heterosexual

relationships, Butler said, but she added that shifting societal norms can create a space for the recognition of queer kinship.

Butler raised questions regarding categorical definitions and ethical dilemmas posed by the types of kinship networks featured in the play. Is order reestablished by limiting people to specific categories? Or “does order depend on traversals of gender, human, and animal?” For example, in the play, Agave, Pentheus’s mother, grieves at the mistaken murder of her son. But characters in the play do not seem to care as much about deaths outside of certain kinship networks, Butler said.

Butler’s hour-long speech was followed by a half-hour question-andanswer session in which audience members pointed out connections between the subject matter and contemporary life, bringing the topics of social media and friendship as well as the interplay between race and kinship systems into the discussion.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

Outdoor Adventures

menu SATELLITE DINING JOSIAH’S Hummus Plate BLUE ROOM Mediterranean Pockets Soups: Hearty Country Vegetable, Tomato Florentine, Baked Potato ANDREWS COMMONS Po’ Boy Sandwiches

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Popcorn Chicken, Vegan Nuggets, Fresh Whole Green Beans, Cauliflower Florets

Red Thai Chicken, Crispy Thai Tofu with Lime, South Pacific Coconut Rice

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

Italian Sausage and Pepper Sandwich, Vegetarian Spinach Strudel, Wax Beans

Chopped Sirloin with Mushroom Sauce, Pastito, Butternut Squash and Leek Risotto

sudoku

crossword

ELI WHITE / HERALD

The Brown Outing Club took a canoe trip to Bog Lake near the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Twenty members went on the trip, which took place over fall weekend.

comic

Mind Grapes | Willa Tracy ’17

calendar TODAY

TOMORROW

5:30 P.M. CLASSICS LECTURE: SETH SCHEIN

12 P.M. BROWN BAG CONCERT

Seth Schein, professor emeritus of comparative literature at the University of California at Davis, presents a lecture examining a cognitive approach to Greek meter and the interpretation of the Iliad 24.1. Rhode Island Hall 108

Student violinists, pianists and vocalists will provide the entertainment for this free, bring-your-own lunch performance, as part of Daniel Pearl World Music Days.

Sayles Auditorium

6 P.M. RACE, ACCOUNTABILITY, ALLYSHIP AT BROWN

2:30 P.M. A READING BY FICTION WRITER LUCY CORIN

A panel of faculty members and administrators will lead a discussion on issues of privilege and racial justice on campus. List 120

Short story author and novelist Lucy Corin, a writer described as “transportive” by the Los Angeles Review of Books, will read excerpts from her works. McCormack Family Theater

6:30 P.M. MEDEAS

The Department of Italian Studies hosts a screening of MEDEAS, a film that centers on families living in rural areas and their interaction with harsh landscapes. Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, Martinos Auditorium

8:15 P.M. BROWN UNHEARD OPEN MIC NIGHT

Student musicians of all genres, storytellers, poets and comedians are welcome to participate in this open mic night. Faunce Underground

6 commentary EDITORIAL

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

Q U O T E O F T H E D AY

The benefits of a required first-year writing seminar The University’s Statement on Liberal Learning at Brown lauds the open curriculum as one that “ensures you great freedom in directing the course of your education …(in order) to chart the broadest possible intellectual journey.”

The following is a paradigm most Brown students are familiar with: One must use the open curriculum as a way to explore individual interests without letting such interests monopolize the entirety of an education. But perhaps less well-known than Brown’s open curriculum is the writing requirement.

The same statement of liberal learning claims that “your ability to speak and write clearly will help you succeed in your college coursework and in your life after Brown.” While the “ability to speak and write” is indeed a noble goal, it is one that Brown’s curriculum could undoubtedly promote more effectively.

To satisfy the writing requirement, students must complete one approved writing course in the first half of their college education and either complete another approved course or demonstrate that they have worked on their writing in a different course in the second half of their college education. This requirement can be met through “WRIT” courses ­— a loosely defined category of courses that strive to provide writing feedback ­­— , Writing Fellows courses, or any English, comparative literature, or literary arts course. But as many students know, there is hardly continuity across these writing “designated” courses. To put quite bluntly, the system in place is not standardized enough to ensure students leave Brown with a high-level of writing proficiency.

In his New York Times column entitled “What Should Colleges Teach,” renowned literary theorist Stanley Fish states, “As I learned more about the world of composition studies, I came to the conclusion that unless writing courses focus exclusively on writing, they are a sham.” Fish’s rhetoric is perhaps unfairly harsh, but his idea is salient: Academic language is an extremely difficult trade to master. Asking college students to master such a trade without a course specifically and exclusively dedicated to doing so will inevitably create a great divide between those students who have had the advantage of learning the mechanisms of academic writing before college and those who have not.

Boston College, Harvard, Vassar College and Wellesley College are among the many higher education institutions that require first-year students to enroll in a writing seminar focused primarily on the art of composition in an academic environment. Should Brown adopt this method, students would hold the leisure to dedicate an entire class-worth of time to improving and nuancing their writing abilities. Learning to express complex ideas in clear and concise rhetoric is a luxury that many outside of the academic world do not have and one that Brown students must take advantage of during their time in college.

The question then remains: Why has the University not done anything to facilitate change or address this issue? The reality is that we, as members of the University, must relinquish our fear of abandoning the hallmark of Brown — our open curriculum — so that we can begin to honestly engage with and improve our collective education.

“This research is the result of my anthropological hangout.”

—Bhawani Buswala GS

See brown-india initiative on page 8.

CORRECTION An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“Alternative to Common App sees surge in use,” Oct. 14) stated that Aba Blankson, director of communications for the Common App, said the Common App’s “customers” said the pricing structure was not meeting their needs. In fact, she said the Common App’s “members” said the pricing structure was not meeting their needs. The Herald regrets the error.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: Natasha Bluth ’15, Alexander Kaplan ’15, Katherine Pollock ’16 and James Rattner ’15. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

Ebola in the United States: Should We Worry?

MEGAN GRAPENGETERRIDNICK opinions columnist

Right now it seems most of the country is suffering from hypochondria — Americans have an unwarranted fear that they are infected with a disease. The arrival of Ebola in the United States has people clearing their throats and rushing to emergency rooms claiming near death. Is this an overreaction?

Yes, sniffling and writing one’s will is entirely an overreaction. At this point, it is rather unlikely that these scattered criers have actually contracted the virus because, to our knowledge, the disease has been contained well in the states. But I believe this so-called overreaction may be justified. Americans may indeed have the right to be paranoid when one considers how the virus intruded its way into our previously healthy country and when one thinks about who may or may not be culpable. The channels that allowed the disease into the country in the first place may be the same ones that allow it to spread.

The Liberian man who is responsible for bringing the dreaded disease to Dallas, Texas, Thomas Dun-

can, did not make it all the way here by fault of airport security or American customs. He and his virus got here because he lied.

By perfectly warranted precaution, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control performed a routine screening at the airport in Monrovia. Duncan was cleared with a normal temperature, but was also asked “on a form whether he had been exposed to anyone with Ebola in the past 21 days,” the New York Times re-

ing he apparently physically carried a woman dying of Ebola just days earlier.

Does this make him a criminal?

Or is he just a human who was eager to get to America where he could be with his son?

The city of Dallas is debating whether or not to press charges, which is a valid consideration. From a criminal standpoint, this one man in his thoughtlessness managed to endanger an entire country.

contaminate others — with a mere plastic bag of antibiotics. At his visit, health workers asked him about his medical history. They “had access to the information that he had arrived from Liberia but failed to act on it,” the Times reported.

Beyond blaming the carrier of the disease and the hospital workers who could have prevented its extension, people are also pointing fingers at airport staff. Still, focusing on airport policies is not worthwhile as

The Liberian man who is responsible for bringing the dreaded disease to Dallas, Texas, Thomas Duncan, did not make it all the way here by fault of airport security or American customs. He and his virus got here because he lied. ported. This requirement, imposed by airport authorities concerned about aiding the spread of the virus, should be completely adequate.

Further investigation would be overbearing and highly challenging, and thus should not be necessary — so long as travelers are honest.

Mr. Duncan was not. According to the Liberia Airport Authority, he answered “no” to this portion of the questionnaire, a blatant lie consider-

If Duncan is to be classified as a criminal and take the blame, then one also has to consider other possible offenders in this case, because they do exist.

The manifestation of this disease in the United States can also be attributed to the careless health workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. After Duncan’s first visit to the emergency room, nurses and doctors sent him home — to further

doing so cannot adequately counter individual carelessness.

There are no further measures the African and U.S. airports can take besides checking for fevers and other symptoms of the disease.

Duncan would not be compelled to lie any less at one airport rather than another, and the Ebola incubation period is 21 days anyway. It is still possible to carry the disease unknowingly and pass a health check-

point.

To avoid this possibility, some are calling for a ban on American travel to certain countries in West Africa, but President Obama said this would restrict aid flights, making such a strategy counterproductive. Additionally, such a ban would be ineffective unless it were overly extensive. Many infected travelers may be flying through other countries and continents, but banning those flights as well is simply not doable.

If further attempts to curb the spread of this disease cannot come from airport health checkpoints, then how can the spread of the disease be stopped? Ebola can be contained only through diligence and consideration for others. The lack thereof from those in proximity to the disease will make it that much harder to stop the epidemic.

Americans have every right to be paranoid even though the spread of the disease is supposedly unlikely.

If such irresponsibility becomes a trend, who is to say that the whole U.S. population cannot contract Ebola?

Megan Grapengeter-Rudnick ’17 can be reached at megan_grapengeter-rudnick@ brown.edu.

Liberalism and its discontents PETER MAKHLOUF opinions columnist

This past week, a video entitled “Harvard students think U.S. is a bigger threat to world peace than ISIS” was posted. The video featured several students on Harvard’s campus being interviewed by “Campus Reform,” a conservative watchdog group that claims to “expose bias and abuse on the nation’s college campuses” — liberal bias and abuse, that is.

Immediately after the video was posted, there was a backlash from conservative news sources, such as Fox News, that fervently lamented the lack of patriotism in college youth. In one Fox segment, political commentator Andrea Tantaros expressed her belief that “kids nowadays are increasingly hearing anti-American sentiments in schools.”

There is an increasing push from conservative groups in America to counter what they believe to be some sort of liberal conspiracy on college campuses. They seem to imply that political criticism should be stifled for the sake of national unity. Choosing nationalism over rationalism is not a permissible methodology in any department, field or profession, and certainly not in the halls of academia.

This argument — that criticism is “unpatriotic” — does not deserve much attention due to its absurdity. Rather, this logic begs the following question: Why does right-wing ideology shy away from critical examination?

This avoidance stems from conscious choice and necessity. It is not accidental that conservatives hope to shy away from rigorous discussion and put forth conspiratorial arguments instead. When any critical lens is

applied to the ideology of right-wing parties, their ideals fall apart under the scrutiny. Perhaps it is time for the right to consider that its lack of support in the halls of academia has more to do with the racism, elitism and cronyism that many students and academics alike see in its ideology and less to do with academia itself.

Further, one must question the entire premise on which these conservative outlets and college watchdog sites are working from: Elite institutions are not only liberal but are force-feeding liberal values down the throats of their students.

Perpetuating this belief, Herald columnist Graham Rotenberg ’17 (“Ordinary conversations in disguise” Sep. 26) recently cited the statistic that 96 percent of Ivy League profes-

of students?

There is a belief that Ivy League institutions are top-tier in terms of intellectual rigor, which lends this particular demographic’s choice added connotative weight. Of course, this is highly upsetting to those on the right, as the 96 percent statistic implies that the Republican point of view holds no weight in an environment of careful scrutiny and critique.

Thus, there is a need to invert the logic on its head and insidiously insinuate that the dearth of conservative support in Ivy League universities is some form of liberal collusion.

As I have insisted, the high standards and careful methodology inherent in intellectually elite universities are what shapes political sentiment. That is, it is the form of rigorous scrutiny and not any specific content which results

On our campus, the only figure more prevalent than the bitter conservative is the lip-service liberal.

sors who donated to a political campaign donated to the Democratic Party. Of course, this pattern of contribution is not part of some agreed-upon crusade. It hardly needs to be said that the Brown faculty is not convening in a back room to overthrow the Republican ballot. Each of our professors is a bright individual with an illustrious track record who make political judgements independently.

Another overwhelming oversight embedded in this statistic is the chosen sample. If 96 percent of non-Ivy-League professors made similar contributions, would it still be as significant? What if the statistic cited 96 percent

in a prevalence of left-leaning top-tier universities.

Now, remaining true to this conviction of being critical across the board, one must ask an important question: Are the liberal universities as liberal as we believe them to be? I am going to posit that there are some failures in the Ivy League’s brand of liberalism — namely, that the campus is left-leaning in thought but not in practice.

With the manifold opportunities for present enrichment, immediate action and future platforms that Brown students possess, the jaded lack of involvement with the causes that

supposedly matter to Brown students is disappointing. On our campus, the only figure more prevalent than the bitter conservative is the lip-service liberal.

Brown students are capable of unprecedented levels of doublethink. Why are our students maintaining such lofty ideals, while pining to become the next investment bankers, corporate lawyers and hedge-fund managers? Goldman Sachs info sessions are standing-room-only while the anti-war movement is non-existent. And, if supposedly 96 percent of our professors are so liberal, then why — as Professor of English William Keach has testified to before — is it so difficult to get them to an anti-war meeting? It would appear that the chasm between appearing left-leaning and acting in such a manner is not a problem limited to the student body. Liberal universities have an affectation problem: They understand the United States’ propensity for terror but, at times, utilize it as a trendy fad rather than as a base for sincere action.

While I consider myself lucky to be part of such a progressive environment at Brown, I often feel that it is the same periphery of students who are active in all of the social justice work ranging from the Divest Coal Campaign to the Student Labor Alliance. Yet it is certainly more than a small periphery of students who speak of bold liberal ideology. Looking forward, the progressive Brown campus must recognize that our biggest obstacle in affecting social change is not conspiracy theories or mocking news articles but our own indifference, our own resignation to the idea that the problems we understand are simply not our task to change.

Peter Makhlouf ’16 can be reached at peter_makhlouf@brown.edu.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014

THE

BROWN DAILY HERALD

science & research

Summer projects wade through water pollution, teaching Brown-India Initiative presentations touch upon contemporary issues in India

By JASON NADBOY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Recycled rainwater and gender divides in education took center stage Sept.

26 and Oct. 10 as the Brown-India Initiative undergraduate and graduate fellows gave presentations on their summer projects. The panels were held in the McKinney Conference Room at the Watson Institute for International Studies.

The Brown-India Initiative awarded $92,000 to students and faculty to conduct research in India this summer and to “participate as active members of the India Initiative seminars” throughout the year, according to the initiative’s website.

Seven undergraduates, six graduate students and two faculty members received fellowships sponsored by the initiative, according to its website.

“Our goal is to give our students

a systematic, intellectual exposure to India,” said Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Brown-India Initiative and professor of international studies and political science, adding that in many cases, the students also had the opportunity to gain important insights into Indian culture.

Given that the United States and India are interlocked through trade and investment, fostering a warm relationship between the two large

countries is beneficial for both parties, said Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna, India’s former minister of external affairs, at the inauguration of the BrownIndia Initiative, The Herald previously reported. The Initiative’s goals are to explore India’s history and current political and social climate, as well as strengthen the partnership between India and the United States, he said.

Founded in fall 2012, the Brown-India Initiative is run through the Watson

Institute for International Studies.

The Brown-India Initiative’s mission is to create dialogue and research surrounding contemporary India, and examine these issues by melding information from a broad spectrum of disciplines. Undergraduates who received fellowships this year are pursuing concentrations in disciplines including international relations, history, mathematical economics and civil engineering.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Questions of Education

Steven Brownstone ’16, a former Herald contributing writer, said he spent the summer focusing on the “less tangible aspects of education” at middle schools in India, examining issues ranging from differences in gender roles to dropout rates. Working for the Aser Center in New Delhi, India, Brownstone interviewed students and analyzed statistical data as part of an ongoing project that seeks to improve the country’s educational programs.

The results of the research to which he contributed showed that tutoring seems to be highly effective when it comes to learning, he said, while private schools are less effective.

Brownstone also spoke about dropout rates among students.

Boys who drop out say they’re looking for work, but in reality a lot of them are spending their time hanging out with friends and watching television, he said. But girls drop out of school to help take care of their families, he added.

When he talked to teachers in India, he also noticed surprising gender biases. When asked about their best students, many teachers responded that “girls are really the smartest and best workers,” he said.

While interviewing students, Brownstone noticed that it was hard to maintain privacy. “One person surrounded by 20 of their closest friends” does not lead to ideal questionnaire-taking situations, he said.

But Brownstone added that his presence was often so distracting to the surrounding children that they did not pay attention to the student taking the survey. This alleviated some of the peer pressure students may have otherwise felt that would have affected their answers, he said.

It was also hard to study more isolated communities in India because the surveyors who were conducting the interviews do not want to spend the night in the village, and transportation between the villages and cities was limited, he said.

Student Revolts

As communist ideology rose in West Bengal, India, during in the 1970s, many students began to leave school and join the communist movement — a moment of student activism that captivated Emilio Leanza ’15, a contributing writer for Post- Magazine.

While student activism in America and Europe is greatly covered in the history books, this activism in India receives little attention from scholars, Leanza said.

“What I find missing from books on student protests is: Who are the Naxalites?” he said. An assortment of communist guerilla groups that sprang up in the late 1960s in India, the Naxalites attracted students who wanted to radically change the government, Leanza said.

“From the beginning it wasn’t about seizure of land but about a movement to seize state power,” that drove the students to activism, he said.

To learn more about this movement, Leanza interviewed activists and other people associated with the movement. He also dug through historical records to string together the narratives he uncovered through his research into a cohesive history.

Many of the one-time student activists whom Leanza interviewed had a family member who was involved in Marxism, he said. “A lot of these students were being inspired by conversation with people next door to them,” he added.

Leanza said that through speaking with family members of some former activists, he discovered that, during the protests, there was a lot of “state oppression” and the police were given the “freedom to execute activists.”

‘Rainwater for Humanity’

Preserving the Past

Anar Parikh GS, who studies anthropology, explored urban heritage preservation projects that seek to bridge the gap between the old and the new in the Indian city of Ahmedabad. The city hopes to be recognized by the United Nations as a world heritage city, Parikh said.

Ahmedabad is divided into an old city and a new city. The old city used to be the center of life in Ahmedabad until the 20th century, but “since the mid to late 20th century, there has been a mass exodus ... to the new city,” she said.

Residents want to cultivate a coherent narrative for the city, Parikh said. “Ahmedabad is very interested in preservation,” she said, noting that the Times of India maintains a regular beat in its local edition that explores the city’s heritage preservation efforts.

One project the city is undertaking is a daily heritage walk sponsored by the government. The walk aims to put less emphasis on the bigger, tourist sites and focus more on the city’s less wellknown sites, she added.

In Kerla, India, there is a lot of polluted water.

To address this problem, Daniella Flores ’15 and Samuel Lee ’15 founded their own NGO — Rainwater for Humanity — that seeks to provide technology to collect rainwater that can be used as a viable alternative to the polluted water, Flores said.

Flores and Lee partnered with an Indian-based NGO because it is hard for foreigners to start an NGO in India, Lee said.

The organization “finances tanks for (water) storage,” Lee said, adding that the government sets up the piping infrastructure to provide clean water.

“Unfortunately, more often than not, they don’t have water coming through them,” he said.

Politicians also use the promise of providing more water as a way to get more votes but do not always fulfill these promises, he said.

“We want to complement the government,” Lee said, adding that Rainwater for Humanity wants to work in concert with local organizations to best help citizens.

Flores’s interest in clean water delivery stem from her personal experience with water scarcity during her childhood in Cuba, according to her biography on Rainwater for Humanity’s website.

Flores and Lee will continue working on issues pertaining to rainwater collection throughout the school year.

Legacy of Partition

“When you see the words 1947 and South Asia, what do you think of?” asked Ria Mirchandani ’15 during her presentation.

Mirchandani’s question aimed to bring to mind the mass exodus that occurred during the partition of India when the British left and India, Pakistan and Bangladesh split into three separate countries.

Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh fled to India, while Muslims in India escaped to Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Mirchandani and Rijuta Mehta GS each examined the impact of the partition on individuals and communities — Mirchandani through oral history and Parikh through photography.

Mirchandani interviewed partition survivors from an ethnic group native to Pakistan’s Sindh province that includes both Muslims and Hindus. She uploaded these interviews onto a website to create a public record of their experiences.

In addition to an academic interest in the area, Mirchandani has a personal connection to the region, as her grandparents are Sindhis who fled to India after the partition, Mirchandani said.

As she travelled throughout India and interviewed members of Sindhi communities, Mirchandani said she noticed that in some places hatred was being “inherited by future generations.”

Mehta, a student in Modern Culture and Media, analyzed photographs taken before and after the partition of India in a work she titled “The Partition Photography Project.”

Mehta examined a wide array of photos. “If I found images that were visually similar, I organized them together.”

Through her studies, she noticed how photography played a part in the movement of people at the time as authorities used photographs to identify people.

The photographs could also provide evidence that could either support or counter accepted historical records, she said.

Many of the photographs she analyzed contained captions that counter the photo’s contents, she said, citing as an example a photo of a Mosque after an altercation between armed Indian police and Muslim fighters bearing weapons. The caption noted that the fighters were firing from within the mosque, but in the photo, the mosque clearly remains intact without any hole or damage from a fire fight.

Another photo showed police tossing out people’s belongings as trash, but the caption read that the police were properly storing them.

Hurling Insults The upper class in India frequently degrades the lower class purely by mispronouncing their names, said Bhawani Buswala GS, who studies anthropology.

Buswala’s research in India revolves around this phenomenon.

He conducted his studies first-hand by living in communities and talking to locals. “This research is the result of my anthropological hangout there,” he said.

Buswala said people may change names by adding syllables but that sometimes this can change a name to have a more degrading meaning, he added, such as mutating a name to mean “begging.”

“Sometimes the names are changed to have no meaning,” he added.

“It’s not just a mispronunciation of a name, it has a negative purpose.”

Not all name misponounatiations are insults, he noted. When an older person speaks to a younger person, sometimes the elder uses a different name out of affection, not insult. But when people from different classes communicate with each other, then changing the name becomes an insult, he said.