Wednesday, October 29, 2014 by The Brown Daily Herald

THE

BROWN DAILY HERALD vol. cxlix, no. 98

since 1891

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

BUCC discusses U.’s growing deficit, sustainability goals Student Labor Alliance urges administrators to consult council before outsourcing U. jobs By MICHAELA BRAWN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

TIMOTHY MUELLER-HARDER / HERALD

At Tuesday’s Brown University Community Council meeting, President Christina Paxson announced that University reserves will be depleted in three years if the current budget deficit level persists.

The University’s deficit and progress in meeting its sustainability goals took center stage Tuesday at the Brown University Community Council’s second meeting of the semester. The Student Labor Alliance also delivered a presentation reflecting on the University’s decision to outsource mail operations, and urged administrators to solicit and consider community opinions before making similar decisions in the future. At the meeting, Ravi Pendse P’17, chief information officer and vice president for computing and

information services, spoke about the working group the University formed to examine ways to reduce the University’s budget deficit by at least $7 million. The University’s structural operating budget deficit is nearing $10 million, The Herald previously reported. The group will be looking for innovative new ways to allocate University resources more efficiently, Pendse said. “Our assets have never been higher, which is a good thing, but our operating deficit is higher than we would like it to be,” President Christina Paxson said at the meeting. “If we don’t do something within three years, our reserves will be gone.” “I am here to assure you … working together, we will be able to step up to the challenge of reducing the structural deficit,” he said. » See COUNCIL, page 3

Poll shows Raimondo, Fung tied for governor’s seat Taubman Center administers second poll in two weeks, though director says new poll not tied to backlash By ELAINA WANG STAFF WRITER

Less than a week before the Nov. 4 general election, gubernatorial candidates Democrat Gina Raimondo and Republican Allan Fung are in a statistical tie for the lead, according to a Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions poll released Tuesday. This newest poll comes just five days after the Taubman Center’s previous poll released Oct. 23, which showed Raimondo leading by 11 percentage points. Tuesday’s results indicate 38

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percent of voters surveyed expressed support for Raimondo, while 37.4 percent showed support for Fung. The poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percent, according to the Taubman press release. Volatility is normal in an election, but “this is really strange,” said Scott MacKay, a political analyst for Rhode Island Public Radio. The disparity between the two polls could be explained by the fact that 500 of the 1,129 people surveyed in the first poll were from Providence, disproportionate to the population ratios, MacKay said. Patrick Sweeney, Fung’s campaign manager, criticized the Oct. 23 poll for “oversampling” people from the

Democratic-leaning city of Providence, the Providence Journal reported. Independent candidate Robert Healey — whose support increased from 9.1 to 11.8 percent from the first poll to the second — also said the original poll was likely skewed toward Democrats. But the Taubman Center did not run the second poll in response to the backlash, said James Morone, director of the Taubman Center. Instead, it began working on the most recent poll just one hour after releasing the Oct. 23 poll because it was criticized for not originally covering the attorney general’s race, he added. The Taubman Center looked carefully at the differences in voting preferences between Providence and the rest of Rhode Island and found no systematic difference, Morone said.

The Taubman Center oversampled Providence residents in order to accurately poll for the Providence mayoral race, he added. “Providence was the perfect microcosm of Rhode Island,” Morone said. The Oct. 23 poll used a standard method for predicting likely voters — surveying people about whether they were likely voters and whether they were going to vote in the upcoming election, Morone said. The second poll’s process for predicting likely voters was more rigorous because it involved calling people who had voted in the 2012 general election and in either the 2012 primaries, the 2010 midterm elections or the 2010 primaries, Morone added. The results of the most recent poll reveal that Raimondo “is having

serious problems with her base,” Morone said. According to the Taubman Center’s cross-tabulations, half of Democrats support Raimondo, one-fourth support Fung and one-tenth support Healey. Some Democrats may not vote for Raimondo due to her support of a major pension overhaul, which was controversial and unpopular with union-affiliated voters, MacKay said. “If the election were held tomorrow, Raimondo would win by two points,” Morone predicted. The second poll also surveyed voter preference on the attorney general’s race. Results show that Democratic candidate Peter Kilmartin has a 13-point lead over Republican opponent Dawson Hodgson.

Two-fold attack: Cells play multiple roles in immunity By KATE TALERICO STAFF WRITER

The immune system may be more versatile than scientists once thought, according to a new study by Brown researchers. Scientists usually separate the immune system into two branches. Innate immunity rapidly targets a wide variety of pathogens by unleashing natural killer cells and innate cytokines — proteins that act as signals between cells. These reactions trigger adaptive immunity, which is a

inside

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

pathogen-specific response. Adaptive immunity has a slower onset the first time the immune system encounters a new pathogen, but in future instances can respond rapidly, recognizing the pathogen from previous exposures. But according to the new study, certain cells associated with adaptive immunity — CD8 T-cells — can also behave like natural killer cells. The research was published in the journal mBio earlier this month. Scientists know that many other types of T-cells can transition between innate and adaptive immunity, said Manish Butte, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford University who has done extensive work in immunology but was not involved in the study. “We’ve known this for well over a decade, but what’s new is that CD8 T cells can do that, too.”

In a previous study, other researchers had seen that CD8 T-cells produce more of the protein STAT4 after encountering an infection. This makes them more like natural killer cells, which have high STAT4 and thus are more sensitive to innate cytokines, proteins that act as signals between cells, said Christine Biron, lead author of the study and professor of medical science and molecular microbiology and immunology. “We wanted to know: Do CD8 T cells maintain that characteristic when they become memory CD8 T-cells?” Biron said. In their research, scientists exposed mice to a strain of a virus and then extracted their T-cells to examine how they interacted with various cytokines. While not all the T-cells adapted to the virus, the ones that had were much more » See IMMUNE, page 2

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COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Certain immune cells, previously thought to function in a slower defense mechanism, may also play a role in rapidly fighting new pathogens.

Science & Research

Rotenberg ’17: Obama’s recent immigration proposals are too harsh

Stand Up for Grad Students: Mark Schlissel’s moves at UMich reflect problems of time at Brown

Students and faculty discuss the benefits and drawbacks of A.B. and Sc.B. degrees

Study links smoking during pregnancy to children’s reduced ability to cope with stress

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

McCleary: Exploring galaxies far, far away

This profile is part of a 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

Astrophysics has a “one-two punch” — it’s beautiful and it also lends itself to some of the deepest questions about the world, said Jacqueline McCleary GS. McCleary, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in astrophysics, knew she wanted to study the subject “from the get-go.” “I liked looking up at the night’s sky,” McCleary said, adding that she always wondered what the sky was made of, as a child. Her parents supported her curiosity from an early age. During high school, her parents drove her once a month to model rocket launches at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center outside of Washington, D.C., where she was able to talk to astrophysicists.

McCleary went on to work at the center during the summers after her first and second undergraduate years. “Up until that point, I had still sort of been on the outside of research, looking at pretty things, knowing that they exist, reading descriptions, but not really knowing how we arrived at that knowledge.” She added that she immediately fell in love with the research world. The experience led McCleary to pursue research as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics during subsequent summers. But all of that work “is totally unrelated to the work I do now,” McCleary said. It wasn’t until the spring of her senior year that she became interested in the subfield of cosmology — her current line of work, McCleary said. While taking an introductory course in cosmology during her senior year of college with astrophysicist Scott Dodelson, McCleary said she was so put off by some of the current theories in cosmology that she sent an email to Dodelson calling them “a steaming pile of BS.” She said she thought the concept of dark matter had been invented to explain aspects of the universe that scientists did not yet understand. Dodelson called her, McCleary

said, and described in depth the evidence showing the existence of dark matter and the reasons why astrophysicists think 95 percent of the universe’s mass energy is “dark.” That phone call “was a transformative experience for me,” McCleary said, adding that it inspired her to pursue cosmology research. The composition of the universe is the “most fundamental” question, McCleary said, and it is the question on which cosmology research is centered. McCleary specifically researches “dark matter substructure in galaxy clusters.” “Galaxies tend to be social animals, and they tend to hang out in very large assemblies called clusters,” McCleary said. These clusters are so large that they “bend space-time,” and when light travels through the clusters, it bends too. When looking at a single galaxy, the bending effect is very small, but by looking at the distortions across a large number of galaxies, McCleary and other researchers can map the masses and locations of these clusters. “We know that most of the matter from clusters of galaxies is dark,” McCleary said. This means that in studying these clusters, researchers are largely studying dark matter, she added. McClearly said her work aims to test the theory that dark matter

» IMMUNE, from page 1 sensitive to cytokines. To determine whether it was STAT4 that increased the T-cell’s responsiveness, scientists examined mice that were genetically engineered to cease production of STAT4 proteins. They then exposed the mice to the virus twice, and saw that while both mice did increase CD8 T-cell levels after an initial infection, only the mice with STAT4 were able to produce an innate response when they were exposed to the virus for a second time. In another experiment, scientists tested how mice with and without exposure to the first virus would react when exposed to a new virus. The mice who had been exposed to the first virus showed a faster immune response to the novel pathogen, which included an increase in cytokine production by the memory CD8 T-cells. “This shows the immune system is very flexible in responding to different infections,” said co-author Margarite Tarrio GS, who studies pathobiology. “The immune system is using a limited number of genes to fight a possibly infinite number of different microbes,” Biron said. The results of the study may “help with vaccine protocols to give the best defense,” she added. Vaccines trigger the body to produce antibodies, which may help prevent and slow down an infection and can be optimized to induce the body to create a large amount of antibodies.

clusters grow larger over time rather than starting big and fragmenting. Dark matter clusters are like cake batter, McCleary said. At first, they are very lumpy, but over time they become smooth. In her research, McCleary examines galaxy clusters at various distances from Earth. Because light takes a long time to travel, light emitted from clusters farther from Earth is older than that from closer clusters. If dark matter does indeed grow larger over time, closer galaxy clusters should be smoother than ones farther away. Through examining photographs of galaxies, McCleary looks “at light to see whether it supports this paradigm,” she said. McCleary uses a telescope located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in La Serena, Chile, to acquire the super clear images she needs to conduct her work. She visits Chile about twice a year, spending about 20 hours traveling each way. Last week, McCleary visited the telescope to take photographs of nearby galaxy clusters. “It is a difficult process because the weather has to be beyond perfect, so if the weather isn’t perfect, you can fly as far as you want, but you have to wait for the sky conditions to be right. This time, “they were right,” McCleary said with a smile. “It was awesome.” “If this innate-like response of CD8 T-cells is functionally important for an effective and rapid immune response, then perhaps vaccines should be developed that promote the development of memory CD8 T-cells capable of functioning in an innate-like manner,” wrote Yoji Shimizu, the director of the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Minnesota at Twin Cities, in an email to The Herald. “The identification of STAT4 as an important protein involved in this response is also significant, as this finding provides an intracellular target and marker that we can use to identify these cells and maybe manipulate the function of other memory T-cells,” Shimizu wrote. He added that he is interested in figuring out whether human CD8 T-cells behave the same way the mouse CD8 T cells that the researchers studied. “We also know now that there are lots of different types of memory CD8 T-cells, and it will be fascinating to see what specific types of memory CD8 T-cells have this innate-like property,” Shimizu wrote. “Our study suggests that vaccines, in general, can help lead to a pool of cells that might actually be helpful to fight off completely different viruses and new antigens,” Tarrio said. Biron said she plans to study vaccinations and determine their effect on the balance of CD8 T- and natural killercells. “We have to more finely define innate immunity versus specific immunity,” she added.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

This Week in Higher Ed BY KIKI BARNES, UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

UNC academic fraud scandal increased students’ athletic eligibility, report reveals Administrators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a report Oct. 22 that revealed new information about a twodecade-long academic fraud scheme involving the university’s varsity athletes. Student-athletes took fake classes in which they received high grades, raising their grade point averages above the 2.0 benchmark mandated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, multiple news outlets reported. The scandal originally came to light in 2009, and the university has conducted numerous investigations. Last week’s report — conducted by a federal prosecutor on behalf of UNC — revealed that the fraud was much more widespread than previously believed. Deborah Crowder, a former administrator in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, and Julius Nyang’oro, former chair of the department, ran a “shadow curriculum” aimed at helping struggling students boost their grades, the New York Times reported. Between 1993 and 2011, when Crowder retired, more than 3,100 students enrolled in nonexistent classes in the African studies department. Nyang’oro became the professor who was supposedly teaching many of these courses when he became department chair, the Times reported. The classes, referred to as “paper classes,” only required students to submit one paper over the course of the entire semester. The papers were graded to help students maintain the necessary GPA for NCAA eligiblity. More than 47 percent of the students in these courses were athletes. For 329 students, the report said, “the grade they received in a paper class provided the GPA boost that either kept or pushed their GPA. above the 2.0 level for a semester,” the Times reported. Most of the athletes played on the university’s football or basketball teams. According to the report, the first semester during which “paper classes” were not offered, fall 2009, sported the lowest GPA for the football team in over a decade.

Professor suspended for ‘sighing,’ ‘negative vibes’ will return to university A professor at the University of Warwick in England will likely be cleared of all charges after serving a nine-month suspension for giving off “negative vibes” among other accusations, the Telegraph reported Oct. 24. The university banned Thomas Docherty, professor of English and comparative literature, from campus in January after compiling a case against him for “making ironic comments,” “projecting negative body language,” “inappropriate sighing” and “negative vibes,” the Telegraph reported. Docherty was also accused of undermining the authority of the former head of English at Warwick, Catherine Bates, who stepped down from her position earlier this year. Doherty was banned from being on campus, serving as a reference for students, advising doctoral students and having any contact with undergraduates during his suspension, the Telegraph reported. According to an Oct. 24 Facebook post on a page created by students upset by Docherty’s suspension, the professor was “deeply moved” by student support, the Telegraph reported.

New effort sheds light on low-income student college attendance rates Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s charity organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and several other nonprofit groups announced Tuesday that they will begin a new effort to boost the rates of low-income high school students who attend college, the Times reported. The initiative will involve the hiring of 130 full-time college counselors and over 4,000 college students as part-time advisers for low-income students, aiming to provide the same services that students at wealthier schools receive. The student advisers will use video chat and phone calls, among other tools, to guide high school students through the college application process and serve as a “support network,” the Times reported. Today just one-third of high-performing students from low-income households in America attend higher education institutions with high graduation rates. The coalition aims to increase this rate to 50 percent within five years, the Times reported. “If we really believe that America is the world’s greatest meritocracy — and I do — then we can’t sit back and tolerate a situation where so many talented young people who have the grades to get into top colleges are not going to them,” Bloomberg wrote in an email to the Times. On Monday, the group sent 24,000 students from low-income backgrounds with strong academic records emails, saying they would perform well at good colleges, the Times reported. Many eligible students will receive waivers for college application fees.

university news 3 » COUNCIL, from page 1 Chris Powell, assistant vice president for Sustainable Energy and Environmental Initiatives then reported on the University’s sustainability progress over the last several years. Powell reported that since 2007 the University has brought green house gas emissions from existing buildings down by 26.6 percent, meaning the University is ahead of schedule in reaching its goal of reducing green house gases by 42 percent below 2007 levels by 2020. The University has invested about $23 million to make the necessary environmental changes, Powell said. As a result, the University has seen rewarding outcomes, with the Building for Environmental Research and Teaching and the Miller and Metcalf residence halls achieving gold LEED level certification. Powell also discussed the progress

the Sustainability Strategic Planning and Advisory Committee has made since its establishment in 2012. In moving forward, “We really want to make it a collaborative effort for the university,” Powell said. SSPAC has been working with student groups and faculty to formulate objectives beyond its original greenhouse gas reduction goals. Toward the end of the meeting, the Student Labor Alliance gave a presentation on the outsourcing of jobs at Brown, focusing on the University’s decision to outsource mail services operations to Ricoh USA. Liliana Sampedro ’18 and Cameron Johnson ’17 spoke on behalf of the organization, proposing that future decisions that may involve outsourcing University jobs “be brought before the BUCC” so that the community can offer feedback and the University can more fully consider additional staffing options

and how to best deal with worker displacement. Beppie Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration, responded to the presentation by explaining that all displaced mailroom workers were given the opportunity to apply for other University jobs. Though some workers retired or took severance, several workers applied successfully to other University positions. and others were hired by Ricoh USA. Meeting attendees examined the BUCC’s role as an advisory group and largely agreed that important community issues, like the Mail Services decision, should be brought before them in the future. Paxson suggested that increased BUCC involvement in such issues would make the meetings more meaningful and relevant to the Brown community, a sentiment that several other BUCC members echoed.

4 science & research » SMOKING, from page 8 A proper stress response system is especially important for children of mothers who smoke during pregnancy because these women are more likely to be younger, less educated and have less developed parenting skills, Stroud said. “A combination of a baby who can’t cope with stress combined with a mom who might be causing stress is not a good one,” she said. Many of the health problems caused by smoking during pregnancy are best treated though social and not medicinal interventions, Stroud said, adding that this line of biological research can improve health outcomes if used to change policies. For example, mothers could be provided with additional educational opportunities to learn about the effects of smoking on their babies. The neurobehavioral exam used in the study was sometimes administered

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in the subjects’ homes, according to the paper. Though the study stated that the researchers conducting the neurobehavioral exam did not know whether the mothers smoked or not, Yolton said that it would be easy to tell if the mother smoked by the smell of the home, which may have influenced the study’s results. The researchers plan to move forward with several new research projects to elucidate the mechanism and causes of the altered stress response, Stroud said. One study will focus on the role DNA methylation, since previous work suggests that methylation may silence genes that normally play a role in the response. The researchers also plan to conduct a longitudinal study, following babies of smoking and non-smoking mothers for six months after birth to determine the length of time for which differences in their stress responses persist.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

» DEGREE, from page 8 or even required by employers, Bahar said. While Brown’s Sc.B. engineering programs are accredited, the A.B. is not. “You have to give up something if you want the extra flexibility” of an A.B., she said. “Often times, a student who gets a bachelor of arts in engineering is someone who wants to get that experience in technical problem-solving but then apply it to other areas,” such as consulting, science education or industrial design, Bahar said. For those interested in careers that involve multiple fields, pursuing interdisciplinary coursework may be more beneficial than going deeper into one subject through an Sc.B. In computer graphics, for example, “It might be just as valuable for you to have that one extra course in art as it is to have the one extra course in computer science,

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or maybe more valuable,” Krishnamurthi said. A balance to be struck Multiple students navigating the different degree options said in deciding between degrees, it is critical to get others’ input. Talk to professors and older students, advised Mikala Murad ’16, an Sc.B. concentrator in psychology. Students must find a balance between depth and exploration, professors said. “Don’t think about the future all the time,” said Tullis. “Think about what you’re learning now” and enjoy all that Brown has to offer, she said. “I’m a strong believer in Brown’s liberal arts education.” Professors said they stand by all of Brown’s degrees. “We don’t think any of our degrees are somehow weak degrees or sort of an embarrassment, because if we did, we would fix them,” Krishnamurthi said.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

t h e g r e at p u m p k i n

SATELLITE DINING JOSIAH’S Gourmet Tacos BLUE ROOM Mediterranean Pockets Soups: Hearty Country Vegetable, Tomato Florentine, Baked Potato Soup ANDREWS COMMONS Pizza: Honey Boo Boo, Mushroom Madness, Thai BBQ Chicken

DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH

DINNER

Sundried Tomato Calzone, Spiced Chicken Wings, BBQ Corn, BBQ Chicken Sandwich

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Ragout, Broccoli Rabe, Chicken Pot Pie, Baked Sweet Potatoes

VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH

DINNER

Shaved Steak Sandwich, Falafel, Malibu Blend Vegetables, Mediterranean Eggplant Saute

Fiery Beef, Spinach Stuffed Squash, Mixed Mesclun with Honey Dijon, Fried Rice

sudoku

ZEIN KHLEIF / HERALD

Qing Lee GS and Shuchen Zheng GS pose with two of the 125 pumpkins that were hidden throughout the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center Tuesday night for the Student Activities Office’s “Great Pumpkin Hunt.”

comics Class Notes | Philip Trammel ’15

crossword

Mind Grapes | Willa Tracy ’17

calendar TODAY 5:30 P.M. OPPORTUNITIES FOR HEALTH CARE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

David Ebersman ’91, former CFO of Facebook and entrepreneur-in-residence at the University, will present this lecture on health care. Building for Environmental Research and Teaching, Carmichael Auditorium

TOMORROW 1 P.M. ARTIST TALK

Viginia-based visual artist and media maker Lydia Moyer will talk about her life and work. Granoff Center for the Arts, Kooper Production Studio 3 7 P.M. BROWN DEMOCRATS PRESENT: AN EVENING WITH MICHAEL DUKAKIS

7 P.M. SOME SPATIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF SOUND WAVES

Composer Alvin Lucier will present the colloquium and cellist Laura Cetilia will perform. Barus and Holley 190

The Brown Dems hosts this conversation with former Governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis. Dukakis will discuss his past experiences working in government. Smith-Buonanno 106 9 P.M. ‘THE SHINING’

7:30 P.M. HAMLET PREVIEW

Preview the Trinity Repertory Company’s performance of the classic tragedy “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Pell Chafee Performance Street, 87 Empire St.

Brown University Film Forum presents this classic horror movie, directed by Stanley Cooper, in celebration of Halloween. Smith-Buonanno 106

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

Immigration reform: not just a liberal issue GRAHAM ROTENBERG opinions columnist

On Oct. 3, President Obama reaffirmed his position to act unilaterally on the issue of immigration reform, announcing that he would issue executive orders over the next few months. As much as these orders may bother conservative Republicans, Obama’s position makes significant investments in greater border security. According to a March New York Times article, the administration’s plan is to “cover 900 miles or 45 percent of the border by 2016 with a dense array of agents.” The other 55 percent will be covered with “persistent surveillance,” consisting of drones. These exorbitant measures are not only unnecessary, but insulting. The concept of America rests upon immigration. Though that immigration did lead to the persecution and genocide of many indigenous peoples in North America, foundationally it is a North American ethos to accept immigrants. Therefore, the stringent restrictions that exist in the current immigration system create the environment the Puritans were trying to flee. They are inherently exclusive. What is even more frightening is the opposition on the right. As someone who generally leans conservative, I find that their opposition

seems like ideological hypocrisy. It is a fascinating paradigm that the staunchest defenders of “freedom” are the biggest critics of the immigration bill. For instance, Sen. Ted Cruz, R -T.X., a whole-hearted critic and opponent of immigration reform, responded to Sen. John McCain’s, R-A.Z., description of him as a “wacko bird” by saying: “If standing for liberty and standing for the Constitution make you a wacko bird, then you can count me a very proud wacko bird.” Thus, Cruz self-identifies

of opportunity and freedom? The answer is that they are not. The Republican Party’s defense of greater border security is based on the belief that people should enter the country through legal immigration means. The 2012 party platform states that “in an age of terrorism, drug cartels, human trafficking and criminal gangs, the presence of millions of unidentified workers poses grave risks to the safety and sovereignty of the United States.” This platform may sound reasonable, but it is not.

There is an imperative for the United States to pass comprehensive immigration reform that does not impinge on the liberty of immigrants.

as “standing for liberty.” Is not the freedom of movement one of the purest forms of freedom? To me, this is a clear example of the ideological hypocrisy that plagues the Republican Party. Many of its members, especially Cruz, are self-described defenders of freedom, yet on the issue of immigration, they do not believe in freedom at all. But how are any of the current immigrants different from our relatives who came to North America in pursuit

Underpinning the platform’s viewpoint on immigration is the belief that undocumented immigrants are inherently involved in illegal and morally questionable decisions. This viewpoint is empirically false. According to ThinkProgress, a progressive media source, native-born Americans are more likely to commit crimes than immigrants. According to ThinkProgress, “First-generation immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than second-generation and native-born, non-His-

panic whites.” Therefore, it is my belief that underpinning the Republicans’ viewpoint on immigration is a fallacious belief that Hispanic immigrants are more likely to be involved in criminal acts than their white, “American” peers. Therefore, the sentiment, raised time and time again, stems from xenophobia more than actual consistent policy. This is exemplified by the emphasis on “border security” in relation to Mexico instead of Canada. For instance, former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Andrew Thomas, who lost in the primary, emphasized in a campaign video that he “stood up to the gay lobby” and “stopped illegal immigration.” Offensively, Thomas flashed an image of the flag of Mexico with a large red line crossed through it. Illegal immigration is only strongly targeted in relation to one bordering country. Is that illegal immigration more morally reprehensible? There is an imperative for the United States to pass comprehensive immigration reform that does not impinge on the liberty of immigrants. Additionally, it is important that the political right is ideologically consistent on the issue of immigration. It should embrace free-market principles of choice and decentralized, individualistic decision-making.

Feel free to contact Graham Rotenberg ’17 at graham_rotenberg@brown.edu.

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

“It wasn’t clear to me what (the Sc.B.) got you other than some sort of macho cred.” — Michael Greenberg ’07

See degree on page 8

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

To UMich students, concerning Mark Schlissel STAND UP FOR GRAD STUDENTS guest columnists

Over the past six months, we have seen a rising tide of challenges to higher education’s commitment to money over ideas. Across the country, members of the higher ed community are challenging the priorities set by the contemporary marketdriven university through antiracist actions, mobilization against Title IX violations, labor organizing, local crackdowns on university tax evasion and convocation protests. What principles guide the U.S. university? Whom does the U.S. university serve? Can it be reclaimed as an engine for a deeper and more broadly conceived public good? Stand Up for Grad Students, Brown’s on-campus advocacy group for graduate students, joins this growing chorus, calling on universities to renew their commitment to free inquiry in teaching and research, the broader public interest and the social and material well-being of members of their communities. We at SUGS stand in solidarity with students at the University of Michigan Student Union who have critiqued the policies and perspectives of their new president and Brown’s former provost, Mark Schlissel P’15. In the 10 years since the National Labor Relations Board’s 2004 Brown University decision, which excluded graduate students at private universities from organizing in labor unions, we have experienced the dramatic cost of privatization and corporatization: the growing disposability and devaluation of Brown’s community members. Brown is one of many universities at the epicenter of the debate over the institutionalized neglect and hostility students face in pursuing redress of sexual violence on campus. Over the summer, the University fired nine members of its mail operations staff and contracted

out its mail operations to a private corporation despite student and staff protests. Last spring, graduate students publicly protested the denial of funding and health care to advanced students in good standing, just as they were finishing their degrees and entering the job market. International students whose visas are tied to funding and active enrollment felt this disastrous decision even more acutely. Last but not least, Schlissel opened his tenure at Michigan by condemning Brown undergraduates, graduate students and Providence community members whoprotested former New York City Po-

most in need of the essential freedoms of dissent and critical engagement. University administrators’ appeals to “academic freedom” and “civil discourse” hide the chilling effect these tactics have on true civil engagement and free inquiry on campuses across the country. Michigan’s student union has already argued that administrators only want academic freedom and civil discourse on their own terms. University presidents are calling for a very narrow and one-way definition of freedom and civility: People in positions of power get stages and microphones. Everyone else must

in extremely challenging times, and you’re experiencing what the whole world’s experiencing. … When you say, ‘I can’t live with uncertainty’ — well, guess what? You’re going to live with uncertainty your whole life.” We committed to higher education fully aware of the profession’s “challenges” and “uncertainties.” However, we do not perceive the “challenge” of our times to be the unavoidable product of circumstances beyond our control, but rather a set of priorities that can be changed. In fact, as provost, Schlissel was the primary architect and enforcer of what he introduced to graduate students in a 2011 meeting as “the

Protest stands at the heart of free speech and inquiry. Positioning protest as a dangerous threat to free speech is a clear attack on the least powerful members of the higher ed community — those most in need of the essential freedoms of dissent and critical engagement.

lice Commissioner Ray Kelly’s lecture on campus one year ago today. Students spoke out against Kelly’s unconstitutional “stop-and-frisk” policies and raised larger challenges to institutional racism in the United States. Administrators, who considered taking punitive actions against involved students, censored these protests. In a recent response to an investigative task force’s report on the Ray Kelly protest, President Christina Paxson argued that University policies “protect the right to protest as a form of expression, as long as protest does not interfere with the rights of others to benefit from the free exchange of ideas.” SUGS believes that protest and free speech are not at odds with each other. Rather, protest stands at the heart of free speech and inquiry. Positioning protest as a dangerous threat to free speech is a clear attack on the least powerful members of the higher ed community — those

listen patiently and quietly. The architects of institutionalized racism, mass incarceration and permanent war, by this logic, not only are entitled to speak but also should be listened to with respect. But students, whose research and teaching preserve the value, integrity and indeed fundamental mission of the university, are not equally empowered to speak and be heard. In this hostile institutional climate, it’s important we speak up. SUGS hopes to offer students at the University of Michigan, and particularly its graduate students, a window into our experience with Schlissel’s brand of “civil discourse.” Brown’s graduate students pushed Schlissel and other administrators to speak to the growing precarity and pressures associated with student defunding. When presented with questions about the University’s funding protocols at an emergency meeting last spring to discuss funding concerns, Schlissel said, “We live

new time frame” for graduate study. When challenged on the diversity of requirements and methodologies across the humanities and social sciences, Schlissel expressed an impatient disregard for the pursuit of knowledge and “academic freedom.” “I am unsympathetic to the argument that some programs need more time. We are here to teach you how to learn, not give you endless time to work on ideas. Your programs should change their models for knowledge production to fit the new time frame,” he said at a 2013 Graduate Student Council meeting Graduate students pointed out that Schlissel’s new five-year time frame made funding increasingly uncertain for students in disciplines that rarely award dissertations within five years. But Schlissel saw this as a problem with those programs’ “models for knowledge production” and not with the economic constraints he chose to impose on them. When the predictable funding crisis

A N G E L IA WA N G

came to a head last year, he not-socivilly told us at last spring’s emergency meeting that changing the policy was impossible because “the world just doesn’t work that way,” and dismissed our proposal — that the Graduate School deliver funding packages that match standard timeto-completion rates in higher education — as naive. In these challenging times, the challenge we must confront is reminding high-level administrators that students, teachers and workers produce the real value that makes higher education a spiritually rich community dedicated to free inquiry and expression. We ask graduate students at the University of Michigan to join us in reminding Mark Schlissel about a central lesson of liberal thought: Academic freedom isn’t clean and quiet, and civil discourse isn’t polite and restrained. Not all great ideas with public value are profitable. When it comes to racism, sexism, labor exploitation, appropriation of public resources and overall devaluation of the people who work, teach and research for the classroom, there can’t and won’t be consensus. Whether or not it is considered “civil,” academic freedom means that people won’t always agree with administrators, major donors and powerful invited guests. Administrators might not even agree with each other. And civic participation means that, whether or not it supports the university’s corporate brand, people will sometimes hear us disagreeing. We join those at Michigan who have disagreed with their administration, and we pledge solidarity with their work of reclaiming institutions of higher learning for teachers, learners and workers.

Stand Up for Grad Students (SUGS) is an on-campus advocacy group working to advance the rights of all grad student workers at Brown. SUGS can be reached at standupforgrads@gmail.com and brownsugs.com.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2014

THE

BROWN DAILY HERALD science & research One concentration, two degrees: Choosing between the A.B. and Sc.B.

Several concentrations at Brown offer both an A.B. and an Sc.B. degree option. In these disciplines, concentrators from the past five graduating classes have shown a slight preference for the Sc.B., but the proportion of students choosing each degree varies by concentration. 100 percent 80

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A.B. and Sc.B. degrees split STEM concentrators over breadth versus depth Sc.B. has garnered majority of recent grads in dualoption concentrations, but profs laud ability to choose By SUSANNAH HOWE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

As registration for spring semester courses approaches and students plan their academic futures, those in some concentrations face an additional choice: A.B. or Sc.B.? Those interested in studying applied mathematics, astronomy, astrophysics, biology, chemistry, cognitive science, computer science, engineering, environmental studies or science, geological sciences, mathematics, physics or psychology have both degree options available to them. Within these concentrations, the science degree choice has proven slightly more popular, with 56.3 percent of graduates in the last five years selecting Sc.B. tracks within them. Decision The most obvious difference between the A.B. and Sc.B. degree is the number of courses required: Sc.B.s require up to twice as many courses as A.B.s, and students must often complete independent research or a senior thesis project. “The Sc.B. is a more serious involvement in the subject,” said Richard Schwartz, professor of mathematics and mathematics concentration adviser. “The A.B. is a lighter involvement in the subject and is more compatible with doing other things.”

The A.B. degree offers more flexibility, which can be appealing to doubleconcentrators and students who want to study abroad, said Richard Bungiro PhD’99, senior lecturer in molecular microbiology and immunology and a biology concentration adviser. While it is not unheard of to double-concentrate while pursuing an Sc.B., it is more difficult and requires careful planning, multiple professors said, adding that doing so may require completing a fifth year. The lighter load of the A.B. also provides students who add a concentration in their sophomore or junior year a more manageable way to fulfill concentration requirements, several professors said. The A.B.’s flexibility can actually allow students to pursue one area in greater depth. For example, in computer science, some students choose to pursue the A.B. degree in order to work on research, publish papers or simply focus on studying one area of computer science, rather than fulfilling the broader requirements of the Sc.B., said Professor of Computer Science Shriram Krishnamurthi. But some students choose Sc.B. degrees precisely because of the more extensive requirements. “If you want to do research, you kind of have to know all the upper-level chem material,” said MinJung Han ’16, who is pursuing an Sc.B. in chemistry. “If I’m

going to take all that anyway, I might as well get an Sc.B.” What you make of it Among some students, there is a perception that the Sc.B. is “more impressive and more rigorous,” said Sarah Taylor, an instructional coordinator and science learning specialist at the Science Center. After the health and human biology concentration became exclusively an A.B. program in 2013, enrollment dropped, perhaps due to student perceptions that an A.B. was inferior, Taylor said. Bungiro said some students he works with are attracted to the Sc.B. because they are “enamored of titles and names,” and that he advises these students to consider whether pursuing the Sc.B. would actually be beneficial to their future work. Michael Greenberg ’07, who graduated with two A.B. degrees — one in computer science and one in Egyptology — said he initially planned to pursue an Sc.B. in computer science. “I sort of assumed I would get the harder one,” he said. But his opinion changed: “I remember sitting down and looking at the actual requirements and being like, ‘This is ridiculous. I just don’t care enough.’ And it wasn’t clear to me what (the Sc.B.) got you other than some sort of macho cred.” Across a variety of departments, students and professors repeatedly voiced the idea that the name of the degree itself matters far less than the

work students pursue as undergraduates. The effort a student puts into doing research and forming relationships with faculty members is ultimately just as important as which degree is pursued, said Bungiro. “In the end, I don’t think it’s a predictor of one’s success, it’s just a part of the larger picture.” In fact, many colleges, including top liberal arts schools and several Ivies, do not even offer a separate Sc.B. degree in concentrations outside of engineering. Out of the gates Students planning to apply to graduate programs in the sciences often select the Sc.B. degree option, which may be the smart choice, many professors said. Engineering graduate schools, for example, strongly prefer an Sc.B., said Iris Bahar, professor of engineering and chair of the engineering concentration committee. This is also true of math, Schwartz said. Though it is possible for A.B. students to go to graduate school, it is significantly harder to get into top programs, he added. But for many concentrations, an Sc.B. proves advantageous only because of the courses and research it requires, rather than the name of the degree itself. Krishnamurthi, who also acts as the director for graduate studies in the Department of Computer Science, said he pays more attention to applicants’ courses, recommendations and research experience than to the degree

they received. “I can’t tell that it’s made a difference in anything,” Greenberg said of his A.B. “I got accepted to my top PhD school and went there and now I’m a post-doc, and nobody ever asked any questions.” The A.B. degree is “not a detriment. It’s not a second-rate degree,” said Professor of Geological Sciences Jan Tullis. Regardless of whether students are pursuing an A.B. or Sc.B. degree, Tullis said she always encourages concentrators to do research. “That’s how you find out whether you actually love doing science, or whether you just love reading about it,” she said. No matter what the student ends up doing, that experience is beneficial, she said. Professor of Physics Robert Pelcovits, a concentration adviser, said he encourages physics A.B. students who are interested in going to graduate school to do what he terms an “A.B. plus,” which includes additional upper-level courses and, ideally, a senior thesis. The situation is generally similar in the job market, said multiple professors across disciplines. Though an Sc.B. degree can help, it is only one of many factors considered. The one major exception is engineering, due to the importance of having one’s degree accredited by ABET — an independent organization that reviews the quality of colleges’ engineering programs. An accredited degree is often very important » See DEGREE, page 4

Prenatal smoking reduces infants’ stress-coping ability, study finds Low levels of stress hormone can lead to inadequate external response, development By ANDREW JONES SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Smoking during pregnancy can render newborn babies less able to produce a physiological response necessary to cope with daily stressors, according to a new study by Brown researchers. The research team, made up of psychiatrists and behavioral scientists from Alpert Medical School and Miriam Hospital, compared 53 newborns whose mothers had smoked during pregnancy and 47 who had not, according to the study. They found that newborns of mothers who had smoked exhibited

decreased stress responses compared to control subjects with non-smoking mothers. The study was published in the current edition of the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology. The team measured the babies’ stress responses by sampling their levels of cortisol, a hormone that is released in response to stress, said Laura Stroud, lead author of the paper and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior. The stress response is first modulated in the brain’s hypothalamus, which releases signals that travel through the rest of the body, Stroud said. In the study, the researchers administered a neurobehavioral exam to the babies, which was intended to raise the babies’ cortisol levels, according to the paper. They found that babies of mothers who had smoked during their

pregnancies showed weaker spikes in cortisol levels. Though a lower stress response may sound like a beneficial mutation, it can actually be detrimental to a baby’s development, Stroud said. Humans need to be able to raise their stress levels daily in order to adequately respond to external stressors, she added. The process by which changes occur in fetuses exposed to toxins is still somewhat unclear, but this study’s use of a repeated behavioral assessment is a step in the right direction, said Kimberly Yolton, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati, adding that the methods were “innovative.” “The study adds another layer of evidence to the huge pile of evidence that we already have that a mother’s smoking is bad for the fetus,” Yolton added. » See SMOKING, page 4

SAM KASE / HERALD

Mothers who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to be younger and more inexperienced, making a stress reponse in their children crucial.