THE BROWN DAILY HER ALD
$8 million in research funds slashed
BY ELISE HAULUND & CLAIRE SONG SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITORS
At least nine grants awarded to Brown researchers, totaling over $8 million, have been terminated since Trump took office, freezing studies in their tracks and leaving some participants without treatment. Affected researchers told The Herald they had to lay off some staff from their studies, marking the first reports of layoffs from projects due to recent federal funding cuts.
These grants, the most recent of which was terminated Monday, funded research related to a variety of issues, ranging from youth HIV prevention to COVID-19 testing for incarcerated people. Across these awards, over $3.5 million in funding had yet to be disbursed.
It is unclear if the National Institutes of Health grant terminations of the last 40 days since the first grant was cut are related to the Trump administration’s planned freeze of $510 million in Brown’s federal funds. The Wall Street Journal and Science reported that the funding freeze would target grants from the NIH.
When asked about whether these nine grants were part of the larger freeze, a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told The Herald that the agency “is partnering with other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of grants awarded to universities that have failed to protect students from discriminatory behavior."
As of March 31, around one percent
SEE GRANTS PAGE 7
State Dept. revokes visas for Brown, RISD students and recent graduates
BY SOPHIA WOTMAN, ANIYAH NELSON & SANAI RASHID UNIVERSITY NEWS & METRO EDITORS
At Brown, one current student, several recent graduates
At least one Brown student and a “small number” of recent graduates have had their visas revoked over the past week, according to a Thursday email from the Office of International Student and Scholar Services. This comes amid the Trump administration’s recent targeting of international students for pro-Palestine activism.
Following a similar pattern at other schools, the University did not receive notification from the relevant federal agencies about the revocations, adding that they had
“no official information to provide” about the reasoning behind the visa cancellations.
“When considering revocations, the department looks at information that arises after the visa was issued that may indicate a potential visa ineligibility under U.S. immigration laws, pose a threat to public safety or other situations where revocation is warranted,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in an email to The Herald.
Although the State Department notifies the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, it is “not generally required” to notify visa holders that their visa has been revoked, according to the spokesperson.
Students whose visas have been revoked have been notified of their status by the University, according to Univer-
BCA announces Spring Weekend
Offset, JT, Ravyn Lenae and Zack Fox to perform on April 26
BY ANN GRAY GOLPIRA & TALIA LEVINE SENIOR STAFF WRITER AND ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR
Offset, JT, Ravyn Lenae, Zack Fox and the Undertow Brass Band will perform at Spring Weekend 2025, the Brown Concert Agency announced at a midnight release party on Friday.
“I am fucking excited,” said Mahir Arora ’25 in an interview at the party.
The Herald also spoke to Ava Filiss ’25, who added that she is “so excited for Ravyn Lenae.” Paula Romero ’28 said that she understands “why people were excited for the lineup.” She added that while she only knows about “one song” per artist “all from TikTok.” Romero added that she thinks “Offset is huge,” pointing out that he was a member of the hiphop group Migos.
This year’s festival will be a one-day event on Saturday, April 26. In preparation for the event, members of the BCA spent much of the year negotiating prices and sending bids to artists.
In an interview with The Herald, BCA Co-Head Tanya Qu ’25 emphasized the agency’s attempt to incorporate student feedback into their decision-making process.
“We really wanted to take into account what we were seeing with last year’s Spring Weekend and the feedback we got,” Qu said. A poll sent to students last fall asked whether respondents would prefer a one-day festival with more prominent performers or a two-day festival with more affordable performers. After 52.8% of the 1,348 respondents
voted in favor of the former option, the BCA announced that the 2025 festival would be a one-day event with three to four artists. The one-day format of this year’s festival was a “choice rather than something we were forced to do” because of budget cuts, BCA Co-Head Vincent Moroz ’25 told The Herald. Spring Weekend was also a one-day festival in 2024, when the BCA faced budget cuts of over $250,000 from the previous year and could not afford to
Congress probes Brown, Ivies
BY ELISE HAULUND & SOPHIA WOTMAN SCIENCE & RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS
House and Senate Republicans believe that the Ivy League’s tuition and financial aid practices may violate federal antitrust laws, according to a letter sent to Brown on Tuesday and publicly released on Thursday requesting a slew of documents related to each school’s financial aid and pricing practices to be received within the next two weeks. Similar letters were sent to the other seven Ivy League colleges.
When asked by The Herald, University Spokesperson Brian Clark did not specify SEE CONGRESS PAGE 3
HHS places Brown under investigation
BY ELISE HAULUND & SOPHIA WOTMAN SCIENCE & RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS
The University is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights regarding Brown’s compliance with Title VI, according to a Thursday night email from Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 and Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of protected classes, including race, color and national origin.
The HHS originally launched an investigation in February into the Warren Alpert Medical School over Brown’s response to May 2024 pro-Palestine commencement protests, which they claimed saw antisemitic incidents. The inquiry has now been expanded to include the entire University and the time period from Oct. 7, 2023 to now, according to Carey and Guterl.
The investigation was launched in accordance with Trump’s executive order to “combat antisemitism,” which explicitly referenced university campuses. students from discriminatory behavior.”
“We are confident that our actions in response to the May 2024 protest — which occurred outside the church where the medical school ceremony was held and on an adjacent public sidewalk — were in compliance with Title VI,” the Thursday email reads.
ELLIS ROUGEOU / HERALD
KENDRA EASTON / HERALD
UNIVERSITY NEWS
FUNDING FREEZE
‘Jarring’: Students express concern over planned federal funding freeze
The Herald spoke to 14 students about their reactions to the freeze
BY ANNIKA SINGH, IAN RITTER & SOPHIA WOTMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITERS & UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR
Last Thursday evening, students across campus learned that the Trump administration plans to halt $510 million of federal funding to the University over alleged antisemitism on campus and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The planned funding freeze was confirmed by a White House official in an email to The Herald. As of around 5 p.m. Monday, the University had not yet received communication from the White House regarding the funding freeze, according to University Spokesperson Brian Clark.
The Herald spoke to 14 students about their initial reactions to the Trump administration’s actions and the University’s response thus far.
Surprised, but not shocked: The Trump administration’s planned funding freeze For some students, the possible federal funding freeze came as a surprise.
Raima Islam ’25 found the news of the freeze to be “jarring.” In the past few weeks, she had read news reports of cuts to other universities, but did not think Brown would face the same fate.
Bluse Yuan GS said he was surprised — “but not so surprised,” he added — to hear about the planned freeze.
“As a foreign student, I feel concerned about what the president will do,” Yuan said, referring to President Trump.
Given that Brown’s endowment is the smallest of any Ivy League institution, Deeya Prakash ’26 said the scale of the planned
funding freeze was “out of left field.”
“I’m very unsure about why our school specifically is targeted with this much money, knowing that it’s not as well-funded as the other universities,” she said.
While some students expressed surprise at the news, others said they anticipated the federal funding freeze. “I feel like we’re not immune to that feeling of elitism that I think the Trump administration is going after in academia,” Roshan Parikh ’24 GS said.
Amber Zhao ’27 — a current designer for post- Magazine — said she was not really surprised, calling the freeze “inevitable.”
“We have a large population of students who are really opposed to the Trump administration and what they’re doing,” Zhao said.
Some students expressed concerns that, like at Columbia, Brown’s leadership would agree to the terms set by the Trump administration in order to restore funding.
At Columbia, the Trump administration halted $400 million in federal funding in early March. In order to reopen negotiations to restore their funding, Columbia agreed to ban masks on campus, implement additional restrictions on protests and move a department out of faculty control, among other changes. All of these concessions were requested by the Trump administration.
Sebasstian Adriano ’25 hopes the University will protect “the fundamental rights of the students here,” pointing to a petition currently circulating campus.
The petition, titled “Defend Academic Freedom at Brown University,” states that the undersigned community members stand with the University “against the Trump administration’s unprecedented and politically motivated attacks on institutions of higher education in the United States.”
“We refuse to allow external political pressures to dictate what can and cannot be taught, researched or debated on our campus,” the petition reads.
Some students, like Karsen Chiminelli
’27, expressed concerns for the future of research at Brown. Chiminelli, who is involved in two labs, was unsure how the University could possibly respond to the Trump administration.
“Funding is being cut for so many undergraduates, graduate students and PhD students who are doing incredible work in terms of scientific advancement,” Hannah Chen ’27 said.
“I’m worried about our future as a research institution,” Dane Elliott ’25.5 added.
Elliott, who is a statistics concentrator, was hoping to participate in data science research in the public health field before graduating. But he no longer knows “how feasible it is for me to do research or get compensated for it,” he told The Herald.
As a member of the undocumented, first-generation college and low-income community on campus, more commonly known as U-FLi, Angel Romero ’25 said he particularly wants to know how need-based financial aid will be affected. He also hopes for open communication between students and the University administration, noting that office hours where students can ask questions about the funding freeze could be beneficial.
Gillian Foo GS said this spring is “a very, very bad time to graduate,” given the funding freezes across higher education. She added that this issue is likely going to “snowball into a backlog for the next few years.”
“It’s bleak for people trying to get into academia and people also already in academia,” Foo said. “I don’t know what’s worse, honestly.”
The University’s response — or lack thereof
Since the news broke on Thursday evening, students have yet to hear from the University administration directly.
“The federal government has not been in touch with Brown directly in regard to
what’s being reported,” Clark wrote in an email to The Herald around 5 p.m. Monday. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but at a point when we have received no direct information or indication of any kind, there’s nothing more we can share.”
Hannah Chen said she is not too worried about the University’s lack of public response, given that the news broke only a few days ago. She added that she understands the University will have to wait to hear from the White House before responding.
Deeya Prakash “can’t imagine what’s going on behind the scenes,” she told The Herald. While she said that communicating with students is likely a priority for Brown’s administration, she did not think it would necessarily be their first action item.
“If anything, I understand what kind of chaos must be ensuing,” Prakash added.
“If I were Brown, I also wouldn’t really know how to respond,” Sophia Janssens ’27 told The Herald. “While I would love for Brown to be like, ‘No, we are going to stick with our diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the way that we do things here,’ I also think that it’s an incredibly precarious thing.”
But some students want the University to provide more insight.
“I think it’s really disappointing that we haven’t heard more from the University, because $510 million is such a sizable sum that will definitely have an impact on every single
person here,” said Jessica Weissman ’28.
In the absence of a University response, “it’s hard for students to have confidence in their leadership,” Weissman added.
Roshan Parikh and Raima Islam both said that, given the significant concern among many students, they were disappointed in the lack of response from the University.
“I think a lot of students are feeling very unprotected, especially international students,” Islam said.
Amber Zhao told The Herald that she’s “looking out for (President Paxson’s) email.” Prakash expressed a similar sentiment, noting that “as soon as we understand what this means for us … I will probably feel a little bit less panicked than I am now.”
As a graduating senior, Cole Griscom ’25 feels like he has “a little less stake in the game.”
“I’m jumping ship, so I don’t really have too much to lose,” Griscom said, though he expressed curiosity at what, exactly, the federal government would target at Brown. Despite the uncertainty, some students remain hopeful.
“I’m sure everything will work out. I do have confidence in our administration,” Dane Elliot said. “This is a massive hurdle that we have to work through.”
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 7, 2025.
Inside the faculty town hall where Paxson spoke about the funding freeze
Faculty, alums, students calling on Brown to resist any Trump demands
BY CATE LATIMER & CIARA MEYER UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITORS
Amid calls from hundreds of faculty, students and alums to resist any demands from the Trump administration, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 described Columbia’s decision to comply with White House requirements to restore funding as ineffective, according to three faculty members present at a Tuesday faculty-only town hall.
After Columbia conceded to the Trump administration’s requests following threats of a $400 million funding cut — which sparked wide backlash over academic freedom on Columbia’s campus — Paxson said that if Brown faced similar threats, “we would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms.”
Paxson’s Tuesday remarks provide the first insight into her mindset since news broke of plans to freeze $510 million of Brown’s federal funding while the Trump administration reviews the University’s response to antisemitism and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on campus.
Some faculty at Brown were granted anonymity to discuss the contents of a meeting only open to faculty members.
Over 290 people attended the town
The faculty in attendance told The Herald that the University will be hosting a webinar with guidance for international community members in the coming weeks.
Several attendees reported that senior administrators also emphasized the importance of continuing research and rebuilding public trust in science.
hall, which was led by a panel of senior administrators. University officials emphasized their dedication to supporting academic freedom and abiding by the law.
But 10 attendees said the administrators were vague when discussing whether or not Brown would comply with potential federal demands.
As of Tuesday evening, Brown has not received official communication from the White House regarding the freeze, according to University Spokesperson Brian Clark.
A White House official first confirmed the planned freeze to The Herald five days ago.
At the meeting, faculty members debated whether the University should take a more public stance on the Trump administration’s actions, several attendees noted.
Administrators also expressed support for international community members, faculty interviewed by The Herald said. While several audience members urged international faculty to secure legal representation before traveling abroad, attendees said the University was less specific in its guidance.
Over 600 faculty and alums signed an open letter to senior Brown administrators and the Corporation — Brown’s highest governing body — calling on the University to protect academic freedom and “mobilize its endowment” in the face of the funding threat.
In the petition, which was obtained by The Herald, signatories wrote they “fully support” Paxson’s recent statements on upholding academic freedom and University values in light of the Trump administration’s recent actions.
The faculty and alums said they “will stand together with our administration in defending these values in the face of intimidation and attack.” Quoting Brown’s founding charter, the signatories said they remain committed to enjoying “full, free, absolute and uninterrupted liberty of conscience.”
The purpose of the petition “was to try and get as many Brown employees, students and alumni to support President Paxson in standing up against federal government attacks,” Brian Lander, an associate professor of history and one of the petition’s leaders, wrote in an email to The Herald.
“We also wanted to emphasize that ‘emergency measures taken in times of
crisis tend to become permanent’ so that the administration thinks long-term about any changes it makes,” he added, quoting the petition.
While the open letter was not directly addressed at the faculty town hall, “the administration seems to be maintaining the kind of policy that the petition advocates for,” Lander wrote.
Last Thursday, a group of students created a petition in solidarity with Brown “against the Trump administration’s unprecedented and politically motivated attacks on institutions of higher education in the United States.”
John Bellaire ’25 and Julian Cronin ’25 were two of the students involved in crafting the petition. In an interview with the Herald, Cronin said he hopes the statement will show that the University community will support Brown’s leadership and stand with Paxson’s administration.
The petition has received 113 signatures from students, alumni and community members as of Tuesday night. Cronin said they plan to send the petition to Paxson after they garner more signatures.
If wealthy and prestigious institutions concede to the Trump administration, it has ripple effects on universities and researchers across the country, Bellaire said in an interview with the Herald. “Institutions like Brown have more of a responsibility to stand up because of the privilege that we have.”
Ifadayo Engel-Halfkenny ’27 signed Cronin and Bellaire’s petition, as well as
another petition titled “BROWN: DO NOT COMPLY.”
Engel-Halfkenny said he was motivated to sign the two petitions because “what’s happening to immigrants and noncitizen college students in general across the country and college students in general is exactly what forced my great grandmother to go into hiding in the Netherlands in 1942.” He said there is a general feeling of fear among his friends on campus about the potential impact of federal actions at Brown.
“There needs to be something more than just an empty promise” from Brown’s administration, Engel-Halfkenny said. While Cronin and Bellaire expressed confidence in Paxson, Engel-Halfkenny said he couldn’t be “hands off” and trust that Brown’s administration will stand up to the White House.
“It’s important for us to come together as students who are committed to this place to show that we won’t let (the administration) capitulate in the same way that other universities have,” Engel-Halfkenny added.
Cronin noted the importance of complying with the law, but he distinguished this from complying with “coercive attacks” from the federal government, which he believes could set a negative precedent moving forward. “If you let them take one dollar today, they are going to come back and take two tomorrow and three the next day.”
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 9, 2025.
KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD
As of around 5 p.m. Monday, the University had not yet received communication from the White House regarding the funding freeze, according to University Spokesperson Brian Clark.
COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY
As of Tuesday evening, Brown has not received official communication from the White House regarding the funding freeze.
FACULTY MEETING
whether the University would produce the documents requested by the letter. “Brown has and continues to make decisions on tuition and financial aid independently as part of our commitment to making sure that no student’s family socioeconomic circumstances prevent them from accessing the benefits of a Brown education,” Clark wrote. “We will detail this approach in our response to the committees’ request.”
This is the latest attack by the GOP on elite higher education institutions, following threats of funding cuts and a raised tax on endowments. Over the past year and a half, Congressional panels have been host to combative hearings with Ivy League presidents, some of whom subsequently resigned.
The letter requests the University provide an array of documents from 2019 to the present, including internal communications “between or among employees or representatives” of the University regarding tuition rates, legacy admissions, needaware admissions, financial aid policies and early decision practices.
The requests also include turning
HHS FROM PAGE 1
This latest move comes as the Trump administration plans to freeze $510 million in federal funding to Brown, citing alleged antisemitism on campus and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a White House official told The Herald.
HHS will be collecting information and conducting interviews with community members over the coming weeks, Carey and Guterl wrote.
An HHS spokesperson previously told The Herald that the agency “is partnering with other federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of grants awarded to universities that have failed to protect students from discriminatory behavior.”
“HHS strongly condemns antisemitic harassment against Jewish students on college campuses,” they added.
over documents and communications “referring or relating to the Council of Ivy League Presidents’ Committee on Financial Aid and Committee on Admissions.”
In their letter, GOP legislators also requested that Brown provide documents and communications between employees or representatives of the University and employees or representatives of the College Board, the Common Application, U.S. News and World Report and the executive branch of the U.S. government.
The stated deadline for these documents is April 22.
The University did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The letter was signed by the Republican chairs of the House Judiciary Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee, among others.
“We are particularly concerned that Ivy League member institutions appear to collectively raise tuition prices while engaging in price discrimination by offering selective financial aid packages to maximize profit,” the letter reads, adding that Ivies create “an umbrella effect for all colleges and universities to justify higher tuition costs than they could otherwise charge in a competitive market.”
“The University continues to act in good faith as a partner against antisemitism, for which we are grateful,” Daniel Solomon ‘26, chair of the Student Organizing Committee on Antisemitism, wrote in an email to The Herald. “The administration has acknowledged that antisemitism persists on Brown’s campus and has been proactively working to combat it.”
In a faculty town hall on Tuesday, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 criticized Columbia’s compliance with the Trump administration’s requests following a $400 million funding cut.
At the town hall, University officials highlighted their commitment to academic freedom and abiding to the law, but 10 attendees said administrators were vague about whether or not Brown would comply with potential federal demands.
Paxson articulated the University’s com-
UNIVERSITY NEWS
The letter was signed by the Republican chairs of the House Judiciary Committee and Senate
among others.
The lawmakers alleged that Ivy League institutions appear to be in violation of antitrust laws laid out in the Sherman Antitrust Act.
“Are universities lining their pockets&violating antitrust laws at the expense of students/parents???” reads Grassley’s X post.
Brown settled a class-action lawsuit for $19.5 million in January 2024 which made
Following the letter’s release, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) who is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was “launching a bicameral investigation” into “potential Ivy League collusion.”
mitment to protecting academic freedom and the “spirit of free inquiry” in a March 20 letter to the campus community. If the University faced actions that hindered its academic and operational capabilities, Paxson wrote, Brown “would be compelled to vigorously exercise our legal rights to defend these freedoms,”
Since late February, at least nine grants to Brown researchers from the National Institutes of Health, totalling over $8 million, have been terminated. It is unclear if these cuts are included in the forthcoming $510 million freeze of Brown’s federal funds.
The planned funding cuts would target NIH grants, The Wall Street Journal and Science reported.
In response to questions about the NIH grant cuts, an HHS spokesperson wrote to The Herald that they “will not tolerate taxpayer-funded institutions that fail to
uphold their duty to safeguard students from harassment.”
But funding threats are not the only federal action that has rocked Brown’s campus in recent days.
Over the past week, at least one Brown student and a “small number” of recent graduates have had their visas revoked, according to an email Thursday afternoon from the Office of International Student and Scholar Services. The University did not receive direct communication from relevant federal agencies about these revocations, and did not share additional information about the rationale of the cancellations.
A petition, titled “Defend Academic Freedom at Brown University,” has recently been circulated among students, faculty and community members, with the signatories saying they stand with the University “against the Trump administration’s
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similar claims of price-fixing and antitrust violations. The University maintains no wrongdoing.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 10, 2025.
unprecedented and politically motivated attacks on institutions of higher education in the United States.”
A letter sent to Brown on Tuesday and publicly released Thursday from Congressional Republicans alleged that tuition and financial aid practices in the Ivy League may be in violation of federal antitrust laws. The letter, which was sent in similar iterations to the other seven Ivy League universities, requested that Brown provide documents relating to financial aid and pricing practices, with a deadline of April 22.
University Spokesperson Brian Clark did not specify whether the University would produce the documents requested by the letter when asked by The Herald.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 10, 2025.
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Judiciary Committee,
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sity Spokesperson Brian Clark. “We are committed to supporting members of the Brown community within the law and work directly with impacted students, faculty or staff members as needed,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.
The email appears to have been sent to current international students and “scholars,” as well as recent alumni on Optional Practical Training status.
The recently graduated students impacted by the revocations are on post-completion OPT status, according to the OISSS email. OPT authorizes F-1 student visa holders to work in the U.S. within their major area of study for up to one year after the completion of their studies. Students who earned a degree within the STEM field are eligible to apply for a two-year extension of this authorization, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
OISSS advisors are continuing to check the status of student visas several times per day, according to the email.
The OISSS shared that students can also check their visa status in their OISSS Gateway Portal and recent alumni on OPT can use their Student and Exchange Visitor Program portal to view their status and make changes to their records.
Within two hours of the notification from OISSS, the State Department posted a videographic on Instagram including messages that read “your visa is expired,” “your visa is revoked” and “you have to leave.”
“U.S. visa screening does not stop after a visa is issued,” the post reads.
“We continuously check visa holders to ensure they follow all U.S. laws and
LAWSUIT
immigration rules – and we will revoke their visas and deport them if they don’t.”
The revocations come on the heels of the deportation of Assistant Professor of Medicine Rasha Alawieh to Lebanon, despite her holding a valid H-1B visa, which followed Alawieh’s attendance at Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral, according to the DHS.
The Trump administration also plans to cut $510 million of federal funding from Brown, citing alleged antisemitism on campus and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a White House official told The Herald.
These revocations follow similar moves impacting student visas at universities across the country. Columbia, Harvard and Stanford University also saw visa revocations. In remarks made on March 27, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department has already revoked 300 or more student visas.
At RISD, one current student
On Monday evening, Rhode Island School of Design President Crystal Williams told the RISD community that one international student’s visa was revoked.
Williams, writing in an all-campus email, did not disclose the name of the student and said the school had “not been told the reason for the terminated status.”
International students make up 33% of RISD undergraduates enrolled this academic year, according to the college’s website.
“Amid the current landscape of rapidly changing immigration policies, RISD’s Office of International Students and Scholar Affairs routinely reviews the internal and government records of our international students,” Williams wrote in the email. “Unfortunately, today we
learned of one student whose international status was marked ‘terminated,’ a formal designation that reflects the revocation of a student’s visa status in the U.S.”
“Such a revocation of one’s student status is rare, personally and professionally impactful, and especially heartbreaking,” Williams wrote.
In March, the Assistant Professor of Medicine Rasha Alawieh — who held a valid H-1B visa — was deported to Lebanon, despite a federal judge’s order, The Herald previously reported. The deportation came after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents found “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah figures on Alawieh’s cell phone, according to the Department of Justice.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security also recently detained Rümey -
sa Öztürk, a graduate student at Tufts University who signed onto an op-ed published in the Tufts Daily last year regarding divestment efforts on campus.
In her email, Williams wrote that ISSA contacted the student directly to possibly aid in finding legal resources and “to the extent possible, support the student throughout this difficult moment.”
“All of the information we have to share can be found in President Williams’s communication to the RISD community,” RISD Spokesperson Jaime Marland wrote in an email to The Herald.
These articles originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 10, 2025 and April 7, 2025, respectively.
RI Attorney General, 20 others sue to block Trump from dismantling three federal entities
Plaintiffs argue the Trump administration violated the Constitution
BY AVANI GHOSH METRO EDITOR
On Friday, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and 20 other attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration “to stop the dismantling of three federal agencies” that support public libraries, museums, workers and small businesses, according to a press release from Neronha’s office.
Trump issued an executive order on March 14 to reduce the function and personnel of seven federal government entities that “the President has determined are unnecessary.” These organizations include the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business Development Agency and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service — the three entities addressed in the suit.
Within seven days of issuing the order, entity heads were required to submit a report to the Office of Management and Budget “confirming full compliance.” But for at least the IMLS, MBDA and FMCS, “‘full compliance’ has meant gutting every one of their operations — statutorily mandated or not,” the plaintiffs argued in the suit.
According to the attorneys general, the three agencies have significantly reduced their staff and terminated grant solicitation and administration since Trump issued the order. The FMCS has also terminated “several of its core pro -
grams, including its mediation program for public sector entities,” according to the suit.
“All three agencies empower everyday people in this country to access their full potential, whether it be through knowledge, workers’ rights or small business
support,” Neronha said in the press release. “By unlawfully attacking these agencies, they are attempting to stifle the American Dream.”
In the lawsuit, the attorneys general said Trump’s executive order violates the Administrative Procedure Act as it
compelled “seven agencies to abandon all of their discretionary programs without engaging in a shred of reasoned analysis.”
The plaintiffs further argued that the order violates the Constitution’s separation of powers.
“Trump is leading a campaign to
dismantle vast swaths of the federal government,” the plaintiffs said in the suit. But “he cannot override the congressional enactments that authorize federal agencies, appropriate funds for them to administer and define how they must operate.”
In 2024, the IMLS allocated nearly $1.5 million to Rhode Island’s Office of Library and Information Services, according to Neronha’s press release. IMLS grants support a variety of services in Rhode Island, including 42 of the state’s public libraries, statewide literacy programs and “services for veterans and differently abled individuals,” the suit reads.
“Rhode Island does not have the budgetary resources or flexibility to make up for the lost funding, and these services will suffer without it,” the plaintiffs claimed in the suit.
Last week, Neronha also joined coalitions of attorneys general in filing two additional lawsuits against the Trump administration. On April 3, 19 attorneys general sued to block Trump’s executive order imposing restrictions on voting in state and federal elections. On April 4, 16 attorneys general filed a lawsuit to block alleged disruptions in grant funding issued by the National Institutes of Health.
The White House, IMLS, MBDA, FMCS and R.I. OLIS did not respond to The Herald’s request for comment. Neronha’s office also did not respond to The Herald’s request for additional comment.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 6, 2025.
BEN KANG / HERALD
In remarks on March 27, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department had already revoked 300 or more student visas.
JESSE BENITEZ / HERALD
President Trump issued an executive order on March 14 to reduce the function and personnel of seven federal government entities deemed unnecessary by the administration.
KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD OISSS advisors are continuing to check the status of student visas several times per day, according to the email.
TRANSPORTATION
Do Brown students ride RIPTA?
Since 2007, Brown students, staff, faculty have been able to ride for free
BY PAVANI DURBHAKULA SENIOR STAFF WRITER
When the University first partnered with the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s University Pass Program in 2004, Brown students, staff and faculty were able to ride RIPTA buses throughout the state at half-price. In 2007, the policy was updated so that the Brown community could ride RIPTA free of charge — just by swiping their Brown ID.
Today, eight other Rhode Island colleges and universities also participate in the U-PASS program, which, at Brown, “ensures that all students, faculty and staff have access to reliable public transportation without concern over cost,” said Carleia Lighty, the University’s director of transportation and Brown Card Services.
U-PASS benefits vary from school to school, with some — like Johnson and Wales University — offering discounted rates to certain students.
In the 2024 academic year, members of the Brown community took over 230,000 RIPTA rides, according to Lighty. Of these riders, 54% were students, 29% were staff and 17% were faculty members.
Each college or university in the U-PASS program pays RIPTA in accordance with the amount of their students and faculty who ride RIPTA each year, according to Sara Furbush, a RIPTA spokesperson. She added that Brown pays approximately $313,000 annually for RIPTA rides that University students, faculty and staff take.
Brown’s contribution accounted for around 45% of the more than $690,000 in total collections received by the U-PASS program in the 2024 fiscal year, Furbush
PARKS
added. Total collections from the U-PASS program amount to about 0.5% of RIPTA’s total annual budget, according to Furbush.
“While the cost of participation has increased over time, the University continues to support the program to ensure students, faculty and staff have access to public transit,” Lighty wrote.
Besides during the COVID-19 pandemic, Brown has generally had the largest overall RIPTA ridership numbers across participating colleges and universities in the state. But ridership among the Brown and RISD communities have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, RIPTA data shows.
According to data from The Herald’s
fall 2023 poll, 11.5% of students take RIPTA a few times a month, 21.7% ride it a few times a semester and 29.2% have never used it.
“U-PASS has allowed me the freedom to go where I want and need to in a financially economical way,” said Kalie Minor ’27, adding that she typically rides RIPTA every two to three weeks. Minor has used RIPTA to reach the Roger Williams Zoo and other locations in Providence, and even across state lines to the Target in Seekonk, Massachusetts.
R.I. resident Benjamin Rozea ’27 said he takes RIPTA every other week, largely to travel from campus to home.
“I use the RIPTA anywhere between twice to five times a month,” said Paul
Hyman ’27. He uses RIPTA for grocery shopping and occasional trips to further destinations, like Barrington.
All three students agreed that Brown should continue funding the U-PASS program.
For Minor, the U-PASS program represents part of Brown’s effort to recognize that not all students come from a wealthy background. When considering other transit options like rideshares or rental cars, Minor said that “RIPTA is the choice I have made ten times to one, and that is because it is free.”
According to The Herald’s fall 2023 poll data, 11% of respondents receiving grants covering all costs indicated that they took RIPTA weekly, versus the 6%
of students receiving no financial aid and the 7% of students receiving grants covering some costs who reported the same.
“The U-PASS program is an imperative link between the university community — already economically, geographically and socially isolated — and the larger Providence community,” Rozea added.
Lighty said the U-PASS program also “plays a crucial role in supporting campus accessibility and sustainability initiatives by reducing reliance on personal vehicles and promoting green commuting options.”
But some students complain that RIPTA is frequently delayed, and bus schedules are unreliable.
“I’ve had many scenarios where a bus I’ve been waiting on will pass me at my stop or will be over 15 minutes late,” Hyman said, adding that they’d be more inclined to use RIPTA “if the buses were more timely and frequent.”
“We’re actively looking at ways to enhance frequency and reliability across the system,” Furbush said, pointing to recent initiatives such as schedule adjustments, tracking technology and programs to fill service gaps.
RIPTA is currently facing a $32.6 million budget deficit for fiscal year 2026, The Herald previously reported. If the deficit cannot be closed, riders can expect a 25% reduction in fixed-route services, Furbush wrote, adding that the agency will also have to re-evaluate fare prices. She did not say whether Brown and its affiliation with RIPTA would specifically be impacted if these changes occurred.
If RIPTA services near campus were to be reduced, Rozea said that it “will impact the capacity for Brown students to get off campus and around the state.”
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 7, 2025.
India Point Park to be spruced up with new waterfront plaza
Park renovations aim to improve accessibility, update infrastructure
BY ALLYSON CHEN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
With spring in the air, India Point Park is beginning to bloom with the park entering the second phase of a three-part “site improvement.” The renovations focus on “improving accessibility, upgrading infrastructure and revitalizing key gathering spaces,” Samara Pinto, the city deputy press secretary, wrote in an email to The Herald.
The 18-acre public green space on Providence’s East Side stretches along the harbor and Seekonk River. The improvements include adding seating, lighting and landscaping along the waterfront promenade to transform walkways into a new waterfront plaza, Pinto wrote.
Winding through the park are 1.5 miles of trails for pedestrians, bikers and scenery lovers. The park’s pathways are “being resurfaced to improve walkability,” she added.
The plaza, directly bordering the river close to India Street, will open to the public before the end of April, according to Pinto.
The design process began in 2019 but faced delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Megan Gardner, the landscape architect and project manager of the renovations.
The construction follows Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines, a national rating system that strives to create sustainable, accessible waterfronts, Pinto wrote.
The construction team used permeable concrete pavers, a type of paving that helps prevent puddles from forming after rain to ensure the sidewalks have a level and consistent surface, Gardner wrote. The team also installed wheelchair-accessible picnic tables and added concrete pads with benches to create dedicated spaces for wheelchair users, she added.
For the new picnic tables, benches and lawn areas, Gardner chose materials that “could withstand marine conditions, provide durability and require minimal maintenance.” She also prioritized community input in selecting materials, she said.
The team also worked to replace invasive tree species with native species that were suitable for the marine edge, according to Gardner.
Lana Yang-Maccini ’26 is excited about the renovations, writing in a message to The Herald that “although it’s
nice to have a park like that now, there’s not a ton there in terms of paths or other things to do.”
“I think it’ll be cool to see how it expands and changes with new renovations,” she said.
To fund the project, the city took a “strategic and coordinated approach,” relying on a combination of federal stimulus funds and local bonds, Pinto wrote.
The next and final phase will focus on “expanding green spaces” by addressing any remaining accessibility issues within park amenities, Pinto wrote.
Gardner is especially excited about constructing “four swing benches with an open view of the bay.” Pinto envisions the renovated plaza as “a vibrant hub for community events, recreation and leisure.”
The new plaza will include picnic tables, benches and lawn areas.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 8, 2025.
KAITLYN STANTON / HERALD
LIANO VALENZUELA / HERALD
LOCAL
LACROSSE
Women’s lacrosse steamrolls Columbia 19-5 on Senior Day
Led by senior players, the win brings Bears to 3-1 in Ivy play
BY GUS BAILEY SENIOR STAFF WRITER
On Saturday, No. 17 women’s lacrosse (8-3, 3-1 Ivy) delivered a decisive Senior Day win against Columbia (4-8, 0-4 Ivy). Buoyed by standout performances from a number of seniors, Brown dominated the game 19-5 in front of a packed home crowd.
The win marked the Bears’ third consecutive victory in Ivy League play, solidifying their position as a top contender in the conference.
Commenting on the exceptional performance of her fellow seniors, Greta Criqui ’25 sees the season as an enduring legacy for the team.
“This class has grown in countless ways over the course of our careers,” she wrote in an email to The Herald. “We have grown as leaders, people and players, and we have set a standard of excellence that will leave a lasting impact on Brown Women’s Lacrosse.”
Brown controlled the game from the opening face-off, as Leah Caputo ’25 and Annie Burton ’25 combined to claim an early 2-0 lead. As the quarter continued, the teams traded goals before Criqui netted her first one of the afternoon, pushing Bruno’s lead to 4-1.
The second quarter was more of the same. Brown exploded for seven goals, including two from Maddie Joyce ’25, who led all players with four goals, and another from Criqui. Of those seven goals, Burton assisted on three of them.
Burton’s six assists brought her season
SPORTS
total to 40, surpassing the 38 she amassed in 2024. Those 40 assists rank second alltime for a single season in program history, and her 87 career assists also rank second.
Burton trails only Lauren Becker ’87 in both categories.
Riley Peterson ’28 added two goals before halftime, and the Bears took a commanding 11-3 advantage into the break.
The third quarter began with goals from Kiki Tormey ’26 and Joyce as Bruno’s lead ballooned to 10. After Columbia’s fourth goal of the afternoon cut the deficit back to single digits, Criqui and Peterson each scored less than a minute apart, giving them both hat tricks for the day.
Criqui’s goal brought her to 99 career goals, just one shy of triple digits. As she
approaches such an impressive milestone, Criqui reflected on her college career.
“Over my time at Brown, I have grown not only as a player, but also as a person,” she added. “My time here has taught me lessons in leadership, teamwork, navigating challenges, overcomingwome adversity and more.”
Criqui also credited the new coaching
staff, led by Head Coach Katrina Dowd, for the team’s excellent season thus far. “Getting a new coaching staff has had a positive impact on this program and has elevated our ability to compete with topranked teams,” she wrote.
Early in the fourth quarter, Caputo assisted Burton, bringing the score to 16-4. The assist marked Caputo’s 100th career point. At the next timeout, her teammates mobbed her in celebration.
“Reaching 100 points means a lot to me as it’s my fifth and final year at Brown,” Caputo wrote. “This one has especially been so exciting because of the group we have.”
“After losing some really impactful players last year, we’ve grown a lot and have had a lot of players stepping up as of recently,” she continued. “I think the milestone is a testament to that and how supportive my teammates are, whether that be hitting me with a feed or giving me a good cut to hit.”
For Caputo, who fought through a torn meniscus in 2024, the approaching end to her Brown lacrosse career is “bittersweet,” but the “chance to make history and get into the Ivy tournament is very exciting,” she noted.
Given the team’s recent performance, hopes for the tournament are exceptionally high. After the decisive win over Columbia, the Bears sit in second place in the Ivy League behind only No. 3 Princeton.
The Bears look to continue their strong play on Tuesday, when they visit Bryant in their final non-conference game of the season. They will return to Ivy play on Saturday, facing off against Dartmouth at 1 p.m.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 7 , 2025.
Brown finishes sixth, Maya Davis ’25 named Specialist of the Year at 2025 GEC Championships
Davis qualified for NCAA Regionals, where she tied for 18th overall
BY COOPER HERMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
On March 22, Brown gymnastics competed in the annual Gymnastics East Conference Championships. The Bears scored 192.875 points, landing sixth place in a contest that was decided by immensely narrow margins — fourth through sixth place finishers all scored within one-tenth of a point of each other.
The Bears’ effort on Saturday was spearheaded by Maya Davis ’25 — a current Herald staff writer — who showcased her versatility by winning First Team All-GEC Championship on both bars and floor. An all-around event gymnast, Davis secured a National Qualifying Score of 9.865, the highest in the GEC.
“My D1 career has been anything but linear, so reaching this pinnacle as a senior — especially after injuries where I wasn’t sure I’d be able to continue my sport — means everything,” Davis wrote in an email to The Herald.
After her stellar performance on Saturday, Davis was awarded GEC Specialist of the Year. In late March, she was announced as a qualifier for NCAA Regionals. She was the only Bear and one of just three gymnasts from the GEC to qualify for the event.
Last Thursday, Davis traveled to Salt Lake City to compete in NCAA Regionals.
Davis concluded her decorated career on College Hill with a solid floor routine that earned a score of 9.825, tying for 18th overall. Davis’s impressive performance in Utah capped off an incredible year where she led the team with seven individual victories, including four on floor and three on bars.
While Davis was the star of the GEC
Championships, she was not the only Bear who thrived. Julia Bedell ’25 — who in 2024 set a school record on floor with a winning score of 9.950 at the GEC Championships — also impressed, posting a 9.800 on floor that landed her second-team honors.
For Bedell, she secured second-team honors when she was able to “just go out
there and enjoy myself,” she wrote in a statement to The Herald.
“By the end of the season I took the pressure off and genuinely let myself soak in every moment,” Bedell wrote. “My support system and allowing myself to have fun led to one of my proudest routines this season.”
In addition to Davis and Bedell’s star-studded performances, high scores on floor from Lindsey Yang ’27 and Avery Walters ’28 helped Brown land a 48.875 score on floor — outscoring every team but Cornell.
After floor, the Bears moved to the vault, where Sophia Dewar ’26, Bedell, Umi El Mammann ’26 and Gabby Mautner ’28 took charge, helping the team post a 48.350 score.
Next, Bruno competed on bars. Led by Davis and Liza Marcus ’26 — whose 9.825 and 9.750 scores tied for third and eighth place overall, respectively — the Bears’ earned a score of 48.00. Saturday’s competition concluded with beam performances that granted Bruno a score of 47.650.
While the squad did not finish atop the GEC rankings, the gymnasts enjoyed the season because of their team environment.
“The people were my favorite thing about this year’s team,” Bedell wrote. “The team culture was absolutely amazing and I couldn’t have been happier to have been a part of creating that.”
“I’m deeply grateful for these past four years on the team, training and competing alongside such supportive, talented, and driven women,” Davis wrote. “To pursue both athletic and academic excellence in the Ivy League has been an extraordinary opportunity.”
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 6, 2025.
COURTESY OF KATIE BILLMAN VIA BROWN ATHLETICS
Maya Davis ’25, who posted a National Qualifying Score of 9.865 that ranks No. 1 in the GEC,
Specialist of the Year.
ANNA LUECHT / HERALD
The Bears look to continue their strong play on Tuesday, when they visit Bryant in their final non-conference game of the season.
GRANTS FROM PAGE 1
of existing research grants at Brown had been cut, Provost Francis Doyle and Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 wrote in a community-wide letter.
They wrote that grants targeted “seems to include considerations of gender, race or diversity, equity and inclusion,” adding that the funding came from agencies including the NIH, NASA and the State Department.
Three years ago, Ethan Moitra, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School, was awarded over $2.3 million from the NIH to study the mental health of LGBTQ+ individuals following the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, which began in September 2022, enrolled 240 participants and was set to end in late August.
But on Feb. 28, Moitra received an email that the grant had been terminated, as it “no longer effectuates agency priorities” because it studies “transgender issues.”
These terminations come after an executive order from the White House that recognizes “two sexes, male and female,” and defines sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.”
According to Moitra, the University plans to appeal the termination.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed against HHS to block grant terminations, including by the Rhode Island Attorney General, The Herald previously reported.
Federal officials have touted billions of dollars saved by grant cuts. But research funds are provided and spent in -
PHYSICS
crementally. Terminating grants while research is ongoing makes the funds spent on incomplete research a “sunk cost” since the findings never see the light of day, Moitra and other researchers noted.
Chair of Epidemiology at Brown’s School of Public Health Katie Biello, who studies HIV prevention, has experienced NIH funding cuts first-hand. Biello wrote in an email to The Herald she had spent all but $90,000 of her $632,000 award, but after her grant was cut, the research remains incomplete.
“The time and money commitment (over $550,000) was effectively wasted,” she wrote.
Moitra was in the final stretch of studying how short-term counseling could be a “starting point” for decreasing anxiety and depression in LGBTQ+ individuals after the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said LGBTQ+ people “are just disproportionately impacted by a lot of different health outcomes like mental health,” said Moitra’s co-principal investigator Philip Chan, a physician and associate professor of medicine and behavioral and social sciences.
The project recruited 240 LGBTQ+ identifying community members with symptoms of anxiety and depression to be part of the study, with half receiving “treatment as usual” and the other half receiving two sessions of counseling intervention focused on enhancing mindfulness, acceptance and social connection. Participants were contacted periodically for follow-up check-ins after the intervention.
When Moitra received the letter informing him that his grant had been terminated, about 180 of the 240 study participants had already completed all of
their data collection, but about 60 members were still active in the study. Now, the entire study has been put on pause.
As of April 4, Moitra has not yet informed study participants of the project’s pause. He explained that he fears that these funding cuts send a broader harmful message to LGBTQ+ individuals in the country.
“The (Trump) administration is essentially trying to erase a population,” Chan said. “That’s obviously very, very, very concerning.”
The White House did not immediately respond to The Herald’s request for comment.
The funding cuts have impacted research staff, as well. Chan noted that he has “had to give notice to a couple people” they would be laid off, adding that “if we receive more grant cuts, then we’ll have to be giving more people notice.”
Biello also said that she also had to let go of some of her research staff, and is currently working with Human Resources to “help find them new positions within the School (of Public Health) when possible.”
“Having to tell them that we can no longer support them has been heartbreaking,” she wrote.
This was not the only one of Chan’s studies that was cut.
Chan worked alongside Professor of Medicine and Behavioral and Social Sciences Amy Nunn as co-PIs on a NIH-funded study that researched pre-exposure prophylaxis, a medication that is highly effective in reducing HIV transmission. On March 20, the researchers were notified via email that the funding for this project was terminated.
The email said the research was based
on “amorphous equity objectives” that are “antithetical to the scientific inquiry.” It further stated that such studies “are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics.” Nunn and Chan’s study primarily focused on Black and Hispanic men who have sex with men.
Nunn noted that Black and Hispanic men who have sex with men have a nearly 50% and 20% chance of contracting HIV during their lifetimes, respectively. For white men who have sex with men, this statistic decreases to around 0.7%, making it important to study these communities, Nunn said.
“This is not just the DEI word salad,” she said. “This is bringing services to people who need them the most.”
The study had been undergoing clinical trials in Mississippi, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C., with around 25 participants enrolled, Nunn said. The care of patients has since been “abruptly terminated,” she added.
Biello had been preparing to pilot a study that aimed to improve adherence to an HIV medication regimen through group-based intervention efforts. The study, based in Brazil, planned to enroll 72 adolescents who identify as a gay or bisexual man or transgender woman.
But, on March 21, the funding for this project was slashed, effectively pausing all activity.
Another one of Biello’s studies was part of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network, the only multi-center research network that studies adolescents and young adults. The “entire network was terminated” following funding cuts, Biello wrote in an email to The Herald.
None of the study’s participants will continue to receive care from the network. Prior to the cancellation, participant enrollment had been underway for six months.
When she received notice of the terminations, she wrote, “my first reaction was to sob.”
“To read the words that my research is ‘antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life or reduce illness’ — that was cutting,” she wrote, referencing the notification email.
All four affected researchers said these cuts will run deeper than just their individual studies.
“Squashing studies, especially ones that were so far along like mine, undermines our ability to share scientific insights,” Moitra said. It “undermines, ultimately, our scientific innovations.”
For Biello, the potential $510 million funding freeze would add to the “detrimental” effects on research at Brown, but believes that researchers can “withstand these baseless attacks.”
Looking forward, Chan emphasized that he felt the “overall University leadership is doing the best they can.” He added that he believes the University should “consider some ways to support and maintain LGBTQ research.”
“NIH funding really shouldn’t be seen (as) an expense—it’s an investment,” Biello wrote. “It is an economic investment and it’s a health investment.”
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 10 , 2025.
Researchers flock to Prince Lab wind tunnel to study flight of bats, birds
Professors Sharon Swartz, Kenneth Breuer study animal flight
BY ELIZABETH ROSENBAUM STAFF WRITER
For the past 25 years, Professor of Engineering and Biology Sharon Swartz and Professor of Engineering Kenneth Breuer ’82 P’14 P’16 have been fascinated by animal flight. The two professors have collaborated on research involving the flight of bats using Brown’s Animal Flight and Aeromechanics Wind Tunnel, a testing facility that allows researchers to study wild-caught birds and bats.
The “three-dimensional pattern of (wing) movement” has been a key point of study in understanding how bats are able to fly, Swartz said. But to understand this movement, Swartz and Breuer needed an advanced way to investigate the animals.
After Swartz and Breuer received a grant from the National Science Foundation in 2017, Breuer and a colleague at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed an updated wind tunnel that was ultimately installed two years later. The tunnel is housed in the Prince Engineering Laboratory in Barus and Holley.
In his research, Breuer has used various methods to understand bat flight, ranging from studying bats in the field to using robots that “mimic aspects of flapping flight” in a wind tunnel, he said. In 2017, Breuer even helped design a bat-inspired robot for search and rescue missions, The Herald previously reported.
The wind tunnel is a “fantastic re-
source” for this research, Breuer said. According to Swartz, it can “act like a treadmill for a flying animal,” allowing researchers to record dozens to hundreds of wing beats.
“If you don’t have a wind tunnel, the animal flies at exactly the speed that it wants to fly,” Swartz said. By contrast, “in a wind tunnel, the animal will fly at the speed that you ask it to fly, because the wind speed is where you set it.”
When handling live animals, the researchers use the utmost care.
“We have to follow very, very strict guidelines,” Breuer said, noting that researchers must ensure that the animals “are not in any pain or duress during the tests.”
When it comes to understanding animal flight, using robots is often simpler than live bats. PhD student Ronan Gissler GS has been studying “stability and flapping flight” and conducting research in the Swartz and Breuer labs using these robots, he told The Herald.
These robots are “not quite as complex” as real animals and can’t move their wings in as many ways, Gissler said. This increased simplicity allows him to “systematically vary the parameters of the robot” to obtain clearer results, he explained.
In their work together, Swartz and Breuer advanced their understanding of the role of membranes in bats’ wings. These membranes are analogous to muscles in the face, according to Breuer. The experiment included using botox to inhibit the use of those muscles in order to better understand their function.
“Eventually we were able to show that
those muscles in the skin of the wing actually turn on and off with every wing beat,” Swartz said. “We think that they changed the stiffness of the skin, and that would lead to an influence on wing shape.”
Following this experiment, Swartz has continued to research bats, but now spends more time in the field and lab instead of the wind tunnel. She is currently focused on understanding the purpose of sensing hairs on a bat’s body. These hairs keep track of how the muscle moves — stretching and contracting — and communicates that information to the spinal cord, according to Swartz.
“How do (bats) perceive the environment? How does the bat know whether the muscle is relaxed or contracted?” Swartz asked.
“I think the little hairs help the bat do that,” she added.
Breuer will continue to use the wind tunnel in his research, but is shifting his focus to the study of bird flight. In this research, he is using both live birds and robots — like in his work with bats — to focus on the energetic flow between birds in group flight.
“We measure how much energy it takes for them to fly and what kinds of interactions they have when they fly together,” Breuer explained.
In fact, Breuer and Gissler have already made some discoveries.
“We proved that birds are actually consuming less energy, (and) metabolic cost is going down by being in that group,” Gissler said.
But due to recent changes in government regulations and research funding, both Swartz and Breuer are still uncertain what grants they will receive. The two rely on these grants to continue their studies with live animals.
“It’s a mess,” Swartz said.
Despite the funding uncertainty, Breuer still finds that “watching the animals fly is always a joy.”
“These are amazing creatures,” Breuer said. “They’re amazing machines, so it’s just beautiful to watch … You just develop an appreciation for watching nature and the beauty of evolution.”
COURTESY OF NICHOLE SOBECKI VIA SHARON SWARTZ
Professor of Engineering Kenneth Breuer ’82 P’14 P’16 designed the multi-million dollar wind tunnel after receiving a grant in 2017.
Trump, summer plans and campus housing: The Herald’s 2025 Spring Poll SPRING POLL
The Herald polled 1,145 students on the most pressing issues
BY CIARA MEYER AND MAYA KELLY POLL COORDINATORS
With President Trump entering his third month in office and the University adjusting to new federal action, The Herald polled 1,145 undergraduates about their opinions on the nation’s — and College Hill’s — most pressing issues.
The Herald’s spring poll was conducted between March 18 and 20, prior to reports that the Trump administration plans to review $510 million of the University’s federal funding due to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and allegations of antisemitism.
Here are five key takeaways from The Herald’s spring poll. Access and explore all the data on The Herald’s interactive data dashboard.
Over 90% of students disapprove of President Trump
A vast majority of students disapproved of Trump, with more than 75% of students reporting that they strongly disapproved of the president. Just 2.3% of students reported that they approved or strongly approved of Trump.
This aligns with students’ broader political perspectives — over 75% of respondents identified as liberal or very liberal, with under 7% saying they were conservative or very conservative. The Herald’s fall poll previously found that under 5% of Brown students planned to cast their ballots for Trump in the 2024 election.
Liberal students cited democracy, immigration and issues with federal funding and federal agency restructuring as primary factors influencing their opinion of the administration. Conservative student’s top issues were foreign policy, immigration and the economy. Overall, immigration, democracy and funding cuts ranked as the top three issues influencing students’ perspectives on the White House.
Just days before the poll was conducted, the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement affected the Brown community directly. On March 14, assistant professor of medicine and doctor Rasha Alawieh was deported against a federal judge’s orders despite holding a valid H-1B visa. Alawieh allegedly had “sympathetic photos” of Hezbollah leaders on her phone and attended the funeral of the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Last week, Brown became the fifth Ivy League university to face threats of funding cuts. As of Wednesday,
the University had not yet heard from the White House regarding the planned funding freeze. Ahead of the poll, Columbia was the only Ivy League institution that had already faced cuts to federal funding. Penn had $175 million frozen on the second day of The Herald’s poll.
On March 31, over a week after the poll was conducted, Provost Francis Doyle and Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey ’91 shared a community-wide letter saying that one percent of existing research grants at Brown had been cut.
Less than 20% of students approved of Brown’s response to Trump
A majority of students reported that they neither approved nor disapproved of Brown’s response to new Trump administration policies. But despite this neutrality, more students reported disapproval than approval.
Seniors were the most likely to approve of Brown’s response. Black students were the most likely to disapprove of Brown’s response.
At a March 17 protest responding to Alawieh’s deportation, several members of the Brown community criticized what they considered an insufficient response by Brown to increased risks of deportation.
In Carey and Doyle’s March 31 letter, they wrote that campus law enforcement would not respond to requests for immigration status information unless under subpoena.
In a March 20 letter, sent out on the last day of The Herald’s poll, Paxson reaffirmed the University’s commitment to freedom of expression, supporting international community members and following the law.
About 25% of students have accepted paid internships for this summer
Students studying the physical sciences are most likely to have accepted a paid summer internship, at one-third. Students studying the social sciences and life sciences fall just under that figure, with 23.5% sand 20.2% reporting that they have accepted paid internships, respectively.
MAX ROBINSON / HERALD
From March 18 to 20, The Herald polled 1,145 undergraduates on campus' most pressing issues.
KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD
SPRING POLL
About 25% of students have accepted paid internships for this summer Students studying the physical sciences are most likely to have accepted a paid summer internship, at one-third. Students studying the social sciences and life sciences fall just under that figure, with 23.5% and 20.2% reporting that they have accepted paid internships, respectively. One-third of respondents said they were still looking for an internship in midMarch. These numbers were highest for students
studying arts and humanities.
Male respondents were also more likely to have accepted a summer internship at 28%, compared to 22% of female students.
These numbers come at a time when many students are uncertain about how funding cuts will affect their future research and summer plans. The Herald previously reported that recent cuts to federal hiring have made some students nervous about current and future job prospects.
President Paxson’s approval has remained steady from the fall Paxson’s approval ratings have stayed relatively steady since last semester, following peak disapproval in spring 2024. First years, as well as male and straight students
were the most likely to approve of Paxson. Arts and humanities students were among the most likely to disapprove.
About 40% of students neither approve nor disapprove of Paxson. Just under 40% said they disapprove
or strongly disapprove.
Last spring, Paxson’s disapproval rating hit an alltime high of 59%. Amid growing pro-Palestinian activism and calls for the University to divest from companies associated with Israel, multiple student groups spoke
Less than 25% of students approve of Residential Life Weeks before the annual housing lottery, The Herald found that less than a quarter of students approve of the Office of Residential Life. First years were more likely to approve of the department compared to their older counterparts.
out against the University president. In October, the University’s Corporation voted against a divestment proposal considering companies affiliated with Israel. Paxson’s approval ratings still haven’t recovered since a high in spring 2018.
Editor’s Note: The Herald’s semesterly poll was conducted between March 18 and March 20, 2025. All responses were analyzed and weighted by class year using R Version 4.4.1. Polls were conducted at three locations around campus: Wriston Quadrangle, Sciences Quadrangle and the Main Green. The poll was analyzed by Ciara Meyer, Maya Kelly, Caleb Ellenberg, Ian Ritter, Annika Singh, Emily Bao and Sanai Rashid. It received 1,145 responses.
MAX ROBINSON / HERALD
MAX ROBINSON / HERALD
KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD
KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD
OPINIONS
Ahmed ’27: Brown’s universal need-blind policy won’t reach Asia
At Brown, the dream of diversity has in many ways been realized. The University’s student body boasts an incredible range of cultures, nationalities and socioeconomic backgrounds. Its needblind policy for domestic students has ensured that financial constraints do not prevent talented individuals from attending the University. Last year, Brown extended this vision beyond the United States, and the incoming class of 2029 is the first to reap its benefits. Though there is reason to celebrate the University’s well-intentioned policy, for many international students coming from Asia, this strategy might not solve the problem. To truly open the doors to low-income students in Asia, Brown must consider applicants’ financial background
Prior to the policy-change, an international applicant’s ability to pay tuition was a factor in admissions decisions, leading to disparities in financial aid between domestic and international students. Unsurprisingly, those who could afford Brown’s $90,000 annual tuition often came from the wealthiest segments of their countries. In fact, 60% of international students in Brown’s class of 2027 did not receive financial aid.
Most students come from Asia, namely China, India and Korea, which are all countries that have lower national incomes than the U.S. In India, for instance, the net national income per year is $1,907. For a family to afford even partial tuition, along with the many additional costs of studying abroad, wealth is a prerequisite. As a result, international students from these regions represent their country’s elite, creating a lack of socioeconomic diversity.
The goal of Brown’s universal need-blind policy is to open doors for low-income international
students. Significant structural barriers dictating educational access in Asia, however, are preventing the policy from achieving its vision. Financial aid alone is ill-equipped to solve the problem.
There is a father in India, living more than 600 miles from his family, foregoing meals to afford a tutor for his children. There is a mother in China who sacrificed a third of her income to enroll her child in an educational enrichment program
China, parents fear that their children won’t be able to compete with the opportunities hoarded by rich families. In South Korea, students’ academic achievement has been linked to socioeconomic status, with top schools clustered in affluent neighborhoods. This forces many South Korean families to invest in expensive private tutoring, despite its cost.
But even private tutoring is stratified. One par-
apply to universities like Brown. A student with access to tens of thousands of dollars of private coaching, English lessons and admissions counseling can put together a far stronger application than a more disadvantaged peer. With the immense wealth gap in Asian countries like India, true meritocracy cannot be measured in college admissions. Ultimately, it will be the wealthy of Asia who are able to afford a competitive application.
With the immense wealth gap in Asian countries like India, true meritocracy cannot be measured in college admissions. Ultimately, it will be the wealthy of Asia who are able to afford a competitive application.
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so he wouldn’t fall behind. These stories reflect a troubling reality across Asian countries: Access to quality education in much of Asia is segregated by socioeconomic status. Whether or not Brown considers income in admissions, the advantages bought by Asia’s rich make competition inherently uneven.
Public education in many parts of Asia is underdeveloped, leaving gaps that parents fill with private, expensive supplementary education. In
ent in China paid about $90,000 to a single agent who specializes in college admission. South Koreans spent about $20 billion on private tutoring in 2023 alone. Even the middle class in India, who can afford private schools, opt to pay for additional private tutors. While some low-income families in these countries manage to scrape together money for tutoring, keeping pace with the expenditures of wealthier peers is nearly impossible.
The gap is solidified when it comes time to
Ironically, the solution to this problem may be to move away from need-blind admissions. If Brown seeks economic diversity among its international students, it must actively consider applicants’ financial background. Beyond tuition, the University should also acknowledge the hidden costs of being a foreigner: travel, visas and other immigration expenses that further disadvantage low-income applicants.
The universal need-blind policy is by no means a bad idea. The approach might have the intended impact in other regions of the world like South America or Europe, where economic structures more closely resemble those of the U.S. But in Asia, where a majority of our international students come from, wealth determines access to quality education long before college applications begin. If Brown ignores financial status, it will only perpetuate the systemic walls keeping economically underprivileged Asian students out of our campus.
Shayyan Ahmed ’27 can be reached at shayyan_ ahmed@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Barrozo ’26: Brown must make intentional architectural choices
In 2023, Brown opened its long-anticipated Lindemann Performing Arts Center. Though it was touted as “state-of-the-art,” the Lindemann has largely disappointed students, becoming a frequent target of criticism. This reaction points to a deeper issue: Some of Brown’s modern architectural choices reflect an administration that misunderstands what successful collegiate architecture demands. When buildings neglect function, accessibility or historical awareness, they fail not only in form but in purpose. While criticism comes easily, the more compelling question is: What exactly is missing from the structures we complain about, and what defines successful architecture? When we think of well-built structures, especially within the collegiate setting, we think of spaces that support and invite those who use them every day. In order to abide by the needs of its frequent visitors — students and staff — buildings must be at once visually compelling, intuitive to navigate, inclusive in use and flexible in purpose. The right combination of aesthetic appeal and proper function is difficult but achievable.
The Lindemann’s most obvious shortcoming is its failure to serve the people it was built for. While the structure’s visual appeal is debatable, its lack of functionality and accessibility is almost certain. The building’s futuristic design comes at a serious cost. Its ridge-like metal exterior and the dramatic second floor — suspended as if floating — lifts the lobby above ground. As a result, the building becomes
accessible mainly via a narrow stairway that leads to a bottlenecked entrance, which is nearly impossible to navigate during crowded events. Additionally, the building elicits frequent complaints from students about lack of availability and opportunities to engage with the performance space.
In contrast, the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts — completed in 2011 and located directly across from the Lindemann — shows how
As Brown continues to build and develop, it must adopt a clearer architectural vision — one more preoccupied with student use and historical awareness “
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OKIMOTO AND MAYA WADHWANI AND BEN KANG / HERALD
BOMI
modern architecture can succeed when function and form are aligned. While the Lindemann promises a pioneering vision, Granoff delivers it. Designed by the same firm behind the High Line and the Shed in New York City, Granoff features a staggered glass facade and similarly exposed interiors. But within, it presents a fluid, open space that is genuinely inviting and porous. Glass is used intelligently, allowing for openness within the interior while maintaining a much-needed sense of separation.
Additionally, many of Brown’s architectural decisions show a disregard for the historic and material context of the campus. To build the Lindemann in its designated spot, the Sharpe House, home to the History Department, had to be literally uprooted and relocated in 2018. The brick and limestone building, erected in neoclassical style, was quickly relegated to a corner. This relocation is a symbolic attempt to “move” history out of the way for modern ambitions.
This tension between the historic architectural landscape and modern compliments is not new. In the ’60s and ’70s, the University opened the List Art Building, the Sciences Library, New Pembroke and Graduate Center — four buildings that indicated a
decisive shift toward brutalist architecture. These structures share a defining characteristic that seems at odds with the nature of Brown students: They are bleak and uninviting. Together, the buildings introduce an overwhelming expanse of concrete to College Hill — a harsh and austere material that disregards the surrounding warm, historic architectural fabric.
As Brown continues to build and develop, it must adopt a clearer architectural vision — one more preoccupied with student use and historical awareness. That means inviting student and staff input from the beginning, thus ensuring transparency in architectural commissions. Architectural choices are critical to our lived experience at Brown, so we should have a say. Perhaps, before commissioning the next addition to campus, Brown should first ask what makes architecture successful on College Hill.
Julia Barrozo ’26 can be reached at julia_barrozo_do_amaral@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Editorial: Trump’s attack on international students’ free speech is an attack on American values
Although the Editorial Page Board is divided on the issue of divestment of Brown’s endowment from companies affiliated with Israel, we agree on this: Detaining a student for writing an op-ed is a grave violation of free speech and due process. It is antithetical to the values of a democratic society. It is unconstitutional. And it is happening now.
On March 25, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was detained by the Department of Homeland Security outside her Somerville apartment. Her student visa was revoked due to vague and unsupported allegations that she “engaged in activities in support of” Hamas. Currently, the only basis for these allegations seems to be an op-ed Ozturk co-authored, calling on Tufts to divest from Israel. The op-ed does not mention Hamas a single time, yet this alone was enough for her to be
detained.
This is not immigration enforcement. This is political repression.
Ozturk’s case is part of a broader escalation by the Trump administration to silence dissent on college campuses through fear and state power. From defunding universities to intimidating faculty, and now to deporting students for constitutionally protected speech, the message is clear: Dissent is disloyalty, and disloyalty has consequences.
We commend Tufts for defending Ozturk and demanding her release. As the Tufts’ president, Sunil Kumar, made clear in a public statement, she is in good academic standing and should be allowed to continue her studies. However, this moment demands more than individual acts of support. It demands a full-throated defense of the principle that no
This is about what kind of university and what kind of country we want to be. Free speech should not be a partisan issue. It is a foundational one. “ “
one should be detained — let alone deported — for exercising their right to free speech.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed suit on Ozturk’s behalf, has rightly argued that her detention is unconstitutional. The U.S. Constitution protects not only citizens but all persons within its borders — including those on student visas. The First Amendment broadly guarantees freedom of speech without regard to immigration status, and the Fifth Amendment protects against the deprivation of liberty without due process of law.
Courts have consistently upheld that visa holders, like Ozturk, are entitled to these fundamental rights. The notion that expressing a peaceful political opinion could justify arbitrary detention and deportation runs counter to both legal precedent and the values this country claims to uphold.
The chilling effect is already here. Faculty members are choosing silence over nuance. Administrators are caught between moral clarity and institutional preservation. And international students now face the terrifying prospect that any political expression could put them at risk.
Miller ’70: What if Brown just says no?
Brown is just the latest major university to be threatened with the loss of federal funds by the Trump administration. But while the White House has not yet formally frozen Brown’s federal funding nor presented the University with a list of demands as conditions of restoring that funding, we can be certain that such a list will come and that it will likely resemble the demands presented to Columbia, Harvard and other universities. This will likely be partially justified under the pretense of protecting Jewish students from antisemitism.
There are at least two possible courses of action Brown might take in response. One is to submit to each demand in the fervent hope that the current masters of the federal purse will agree that the University has been sufficiently compliant. If this is done, the hope is that the tap would open and money would flow again to support our researchers, their laborato-
“
ries and their staff and students. However, this money would now come with the understanding that the current federal government has established its right to control each and every aspect of University policy according to its political whims.
But there is another course: Brown could just say no.
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But
This is not just about Ozturk. This is about what kind of university and what kind of country we want to be. Free speech should not be a partisan issue. It is a foundational one. The erosion of that right, especially under the pressure of federal coercion, must be met with resistance. Academic and journalistic freedom are not luxuries. They are cornerstones of intellectual inquiry. Without them, our institutions lose their purpose and our democracy loses its depth.
This is a defining moment. If we fail to defend the rights of those we may not agree with, we risk surrendering the rights we all rely on.
The war on free expression is no longer hypothetical. It is here.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board, and its views are separate from those of The Herald’s newsroom and the 135th Editorial Board, which leads the paper. This editorial was written by the editorial page board’s members, Meher Sandhu ’25.5, Ben Aizenberg ’26, Tas Rahman ’26, Paul Hudes ’27, Evan Tao ’27 and Ethan Canfield ’28.
there is another course: Brown could just say no.
The programs through which agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have funded research at American universities were established by Congress as a matter of law. The peer review systems by which research grants are allocated are also matters of law, and the role of the executive branch is to administer these systems. Constitutional law experts have argued that it is illegal to withdraw federal funds without first following strict procedural guidelines to evaluate any misbehavior on the part of the recipient. But, these scholars argue, the federal government threatened to withdraw funds from Columbia even though no court or federal agency has found that Columbia did anything wrong — and Columbia caved to their requests. If a similar case is to occur at Brown, complying with the Trump administration’s demands would be ceding to the executive branch a power that it does not have.
If not us, then who? Who will stand up and decry the unlawful tactic that holds scientific research hostage for political purposes, seeks to rob American universities of their independence and crush dissent and independent thought?
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The most shameful aspect of this attack on Brown is the way it has been cloaked in the pretense of fighting back against antisemitism. Brown has a long history of peaceful protest, and student actions in response to both the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and the Israel-Hamas war were very much in the spirit of this tradition. As Forward, an independent Jewish newspaper, pointed out, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Brown last spring “was not plagued by the antisemitism, violence or arrests that have dominated headlines about schools including Columbia and the University of California (at) Los Angeles.” The University demonstrated leadership in supporting Jewish students and community members. Brown has further been praised for the peaceful and constructive way in which it brought the encampment to an end by allowing students to make their case directly to Brown’s governing Corporation.
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As someone whose research was supported by federal funding for more than two decades, I fully understand what is at stake. The abrupt cancellation of grant support would devastate our research efforts, not to mention the financial hardship it would place on our graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and research staff. Therefore, the temptation to give in to the Trump administration’s potential demands is understandable. But I feel compelled to suggest: If not us, then who? Who will stand up and decry the unlawful tactic that holds scientific research hostage for political purposes, seeks to rob American universities of their independence and crush dissent and independent thought? Why shouldn’t Brown be confident in its legal position, take a stand against the Trump administration’s constitutional overreach and urge other universities to join us in halting this outrageous grab for power on the part of the executive branch of our government?
Kenneth Miller ’70 is an emeritus professor of biology. He can be reached at kenneth_miller@brown. edu. Please send responses to this op-ed to letters@ browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.
KAIA YALAMANCHILI / HERALD
ARTS & CULTURE
SPRING WEEKEND FROM PAGE 1
bring artists to campus across two days.
The BCA’s fall poll also gave organizers insight into “the artists and type of music” that the student body would enjoy at this year’s festival, Qu said.
Moroz said the poll results were largely as they “expected,” noting that over 900 participants selected pop music in their top three preferred genres. Yabeke Zike ’25, one of the BCA coheads, said this year’s data helped the
EVENT
agency “frame who we reached out to.”
In the past, the BCA has struggled to balance catering to campus-wide preferences and “choosing an artist (the BCA is) really excited about,” Moroz said.
There are “very slim chances that you can appease 8,000 people on campus,” Zike said. But the BCA is “all really excited about the names we have coming.”
Ahead of last year’s festival, the organization faced backlash over the art-
ist lineup and release poster, with some community members complaining to SAO that the poster was “explicitly antisemitic.”
In a statement released by the BCA at the time, the agency rejected “the notion that the lineup or poster contains antisemitic sentiments in any way” and said that it condemns “all forms of racism and identity-based harassment that have arisen in response to our lineup and poster.”
In the BCA’s fall poll, many students
expressed differing and often contradictory opinions, Qu said. According to Qu, while some students want to see an artist this year who performs primarily in a language other than English, others noted that they “didn’t understand any of the words” sung by Elyanna, one of last year’s performers who sings primarily in Arabic. Some students critiqued the “overrepresentation” of hiphop in last year’s festival, while others argued that the performers were “too chill” to headline the festival.
These opposing views posed a challenge for the BCA, which hoped to appease the diverse music tastes on campus. Despite receiving over 1,300 responses on the poll, the BCA “really wanted to listen to people” when organizing this year’s festival, Qu said. But “at the end of the day, it’s a concert for students, by students,” Zike said. “Expect to have a good time and be prepared to have fun — that’s what it’s all about.”
Residual Noise uses sonic and spatial art to create unique, immersive experience
Latest event in IGNITE Series was part of weekend-long festival
BY AYANA AHUJA SENIOR STAFF WRITER
For many concertgoers, attending a performance is much more than an auditory experience. Accompanying the music, traditional concerts are often complemented with on-stage theatrics, choreography and lighting, among other visual components. But this weekend’s Spatial Audio Concert challenges these conventional elements, instead opting to focus on the power of sonic and spatial art.
This past weekend, Residual Noise, the latest in the Brown Art Institute’s IGNITE Series — an initiative that displays innovative artworks by community members on and off College Hill — hosted a three-day festival that featured several events, a few of which were spatial audio concerts. The Herald attended and reviewed Saturday’s performance featuring seven distinct pieces.
In the Lindemann Performing Arts Center’s Ambisonic Cube, otherwise known as its Main Hall, the Spatial Audio Concert’s astounding ambisonic formation is specifically designed for audio
REVIEW
presentation. Utilizing state-of-the-art technology that is unique to Brown’s campus, 43 speakers adorn the walls, ceiling and floor.
In “LAKE BLACK TOWN,” artist JayVe Montgomery created a sound collage using field recordings from four historically Black towns that were drowned to create recreational lakes. Through the deep listening to plant, water and earth sound, Montgomery reflected on silenced histories and resilience of those lost communities. The fusion of story, history and source material alongside the soothing sounds contributed to a powerful listening experience.
Brian House MA’16 PhD’18 presented a piece titled “Everyday Infrasound
in an Uncertain World,” which turned 12 hours of low-frequency “infrasound” into an audible track using specialized macrophones. House brings typically imperceptible sounds from nature to the human ear. Some sounds were technologically produced while others relied on real-world audio.
Next up was “Tremologies” by Jake Sokolov-Gonzalez GS and Professor of Comparative Literature and the Humanities Peter Szendy. The piece blended a spoken voice with shifting sound zones, where audio continuously changed around the listener. The spoken voice added a layer of humanity to an otherwise very technical, robotic environment.
“Atrana,” by Chair of Visual Art Ed
Osborn, captured the eerie atmosphere of a violent windstorm from inside a fragile motel. Osborn blended raw environmental recordings with electronic processing to build a haunting, immersive soundscape. The noises were startling at times, with some reminiscent of a dog’s loud bark. Compared to the meditative environment the other pieces created, Osborn’s piece focused the concertgoers with its energy.
Femi Shonuga-Fleming used ambisonics and spatial audio to craft abstract sonic worlds rooted in Afrofuturism and ancestral memory. The piece, “Information Retrieval and the Cybernetics of Afrofuturism,” invited deep listening as a ritual, honoring both future possibilities and Indigenous groundings.
In “an index of frictions” by Isaac Barzso GS, sounds constantly evolve, clash and transform into abstract forms that seem to carry echoes of their origins. Barzo’s piece felt incredibly unique, introducing listeners to sounds they may not have heard before or cannot place.
“Untitled” by kite/wing — Robbie Wing and Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta) — is an experimental work focused on how people pay attention to sound, pulling the listener’s focus in and out of different textures. “Untitled” felt like experiencing an in-person Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, more commonly known as ASMR, as the artists moved around the space with numerous bells.
For those unfamiliar with sound as an art form, some pieces felt a bit impenetrable, especially as they stretched on with little narrative or structure. The density and pace sometimes made the work feel more catered to insiders in the field than to general audiences.
That said, for those in the audio field, Residual Noise was incredibly innovative. Even for someone unfamiliar with the technical aspects, it offered a rare chance to feel sound, not just hear it.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 7, 2025.
In ‘Melancholy Play,’ Something on The Green presents trials of love, almonds
Written by Sarah Ruhl
’97 MFA’01, the play is an ode to absurdity
BY ANN GRAY GOLPIRA SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Whether mourning the tragic fact that a human cannot be a nose or having an epiphany during a rowdy game of “Duck, Duck, Goose,” student theater group Something on The Green’s “Melancholy Play” has a bit of absurdity for everyone.
Written by Sarah Ruhl ’97 MFA’01, the show was presented this past weekend in the Fishman Studio at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. The show follows a variety of satirical characters as they grapple with love, melancholy and almonds.
The playbill included a note from director Zoe Redlich ’25 urging audience members to “indulge in a bit of melancholia on a rainy afternoon,” as well as a special thanks to the Rhode Island School of Design’s “almond printer” — both of which set the scene for the evening.
The play, which the playbill states Ruhl wrote during her time at Brown, opens with four propositions in defense of melancholy. A singular cellist (Elvin Choi ’25) served as the musical accompaniment. The story soon introduced Lorenzo The Unfeeling (Zane Elinson ’28), an orphan found on the steps of a candy store in an
“unspecified European country.” Once Lorenzo grows up, he works as a psychiatrist and meets the dramatically melancholic Tilly (Lane Bynum, a RISD sophomore), a bank worker with whom he quickly and hysterically falls in love.
Even in the opening scene, “Melancholy Play” establishes a poetic, yet comedic tone. The dialogue weaves in and out of both vivid language — with Tilly criticizing the “bells in (people’s) teeth that ring when they smile” — and absurd
moments of comedy, such as Lorenzo smelling Tilly’s hair and mourning, “if only my entire being were one big nose.”
The entire cast of the show ultimately falls in love with Tilly’s sad, poetic outlook on life, including Frank the suit maker (Brodie Gross ’28), Frances the hairdresser (Amelia Clark ’28) and Joan the nurse (Julie Chung ’26).
Even during her haircut with Frances, Tilly imagines all the secrets that have been confessed during every haircut
ever, later refusing to look in the mirror as she “would hate for it to be over.” After getting dangerously close to each other’s faces for an uncomfortable length of time, they ultimately end up bonding over their shared love for that time of the afternoon.
Meanwhile, the mixture of poetic melancholy and wild satire continues as Tilly navigates her relationship with Frank, who saves her tears in a vial after wringing out his handkerchief. The writing pokes fun at the world’s love for Tilly, with her
exclaiming that “I don’t get in trouble with policemen when I cry” and “I go to therapy and my therapist falls in love with me. I have to be careful.”
The show takes yet another wild turn as Tilly suddenly becomes ecstatic, breaking out into song and telling her friends that “life really does have moments of transcended beauty” during a game of “Duck, Duck, Goose.”
Her sudden shift in demeanor and abandonment of melancholy lead Frank, Lorenzo, Joan and Frances to lose interest in her.
“I don’t feel sexually aroused at this junction,” Frank tells her after learning of her newfound joy.
Overcome by sadness from Tilly’s transition to gaiety, Frances then turns into an almond, and the characters spend the rest of the show trying to transform her back.
Towards the very end, the cello player steals the show after stopping his music, breaking the fourth wall and meekly saying “hi” to the characters on stage.
SOTG’s “Melancholy Play” takes audience members through a farcical and wildly comedic evening, leaving viewers entertained — and a little bit melancholic that it ended.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 6, 2025.
BOMI OKIMOTO / HERALD
Overcome by sadness from Tilly’s transition to gaiety, Francis then turns into an almond, and the characters spend the rest of the show trying to transform her back.
COURTESY OF NICK DENTAMARO
“Untitled” felt like experiencing in-person ASMR, as the artists moved around the space with numerous bells and textures.
REVIEW
‘A Minecraft Movie’ has something for everyone
The film stays loyal to its namesake game, delivering accurate, vivid visuals
BY GABRIELLA WRIGHTEN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
In the last year, perhaps even the last few years, no movie has had as wide of a target audience as “A Minecraft Movie.” When Mojang first released the game in 2011, the age range of players was almost unheard of for a video game other than Super Mario. First graders and 30-year-olds alike were building houses out of trees and mining for diamonds in their own virtual realms. Today, there are college kids still trying to defeat the Ender Dragon, just like they were in elementary school. And every one of these groups who make up the video game’s audience, are now going to the theater in droves to see Minecraft come to life.
It’s incredibly difficult for a movie to appeal to such a wide demographic of people at once, and director Jared Hess seems to know it. The film opens with Steve (Jack Black), abandoning his life on Earth in favor of the Overworld, the cube-based Minecraft world gamers have come to love. Steve swiftly learns how to
Director Jared Hess’s commitment to building the Minecraft experience, both visually and in the story, is undeniably impressive.
build and manipulate the terrain before getting imprisoned by Malgosha (voiced by Rachel House), the ruler of the Nether. Before long, four more humans — with distinct enough personalities to resemble a Gen Alpha Breakfast Club — enter the Overworld. And with them, they bring the Orb of Dominance, Malgosha’s true desire. These plot points, along with the few brief scenes that take place on Earth, are the only aspects of the film written for anyone above the age of 14. In a smart directorial move, Hess fully commits to quips and gimmicky characters that adults might
find grating but kids will surely enjoy. Hess stays loyal to the game throughout the film, throwing in as many creatures and references as possible in the movie’s short 100-minute-long runtime. The film has all the Minecraft basics — including creepers, zombies, villagers and rapid day-to-night cycles, just to name a few. Even the most novice Minecraft players would have encountered these in the game. But Hess throws in a few references — like chicken and spider jockeys, evading an Enderman’s gaze and breaking a fall with a water bucket — for the more
eager, dedicated fans. On top of that, the visuals are detailed and stunning. Every location in the film, from the village to the Nether, looks incredibly similar to its counterpart within the game. It’s true that the meme-riddled dialogue pushes the limits of what might be enjoyable for an older audience, but even if you can’t find enjoyment in what’s spoken, Hess’s commitment to recreating the Minecraft experience, both visually and in the story, is undeniably impressive.
Outside of world-building, Black is the highlight of “A Minecraft Movie.”
Spring has sprung for these new pop releases
Pop music lovers are entering spring with releases from all of their favorites
BY ALYSSIA OUHOCINE SENIOR STAFF WRITER
March was a fruitful month for pop music fans, who heard new songs from the likes of Chappell Roan, Ariana Grande and Gracie Abrams. These releases signal both new beginning and closing chapters for the various pop icons’ highly successful eras.
‘The Giver’ by Chappell Roan
The Midwest Princess’s new single was officially released on March 13, but was already heard by a wide audience in early November, when Roan previewed the song in a live performance as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live. The performance garnered much attention for its fusion of country elements and queer romance. Fans awaited — albeit impatiently — for an official release of the song as Roan teased snippets of it along with a dance on her social media.
Upon its release, listeners were met with a studio version that retained the same lively elements that made Roan’s performance on SNL so memorable. With a high-energy fiddle and an exuberant bridge, Roan leans heavily into the country elements that were influential in her upbringing in Missouri.
“I’m not trying to convince a country crowd that they should listen to my music by baiting them with a country song,” Roan shared in an interview with the “Country Heat Weekly” podcast. “That’s not what I feel like I’m doing. I just think a lesbian country song is really funny. So, I wrote that.”
The track derives its power from clever lyrics like “Ain’t no country boy quitter, I get the job done,” which infuse the country sound with Roan’s proud lesbian identity.
While many fans expressed disappointment over the missing ad-lib bridge from the song’s SNL debut, they can expect fun surprise bridges from Roan in future performances. With a bona fide entry into the country music space — the track topped the Billboard “Hot Country Songs” chart — the jaunty sound and cheeky lyrics of “The Giver” signal an exciting new era for Roan and her fans.
‘eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead’ by Ariana Grande March was a decisive month for artists establishing bookends to their discography: On March 28, Grande released “eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead,” an extended version of her 2024 album that debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart last March. Alongside the deluxe version, Grande also released the short film “brighter days ahead,” directed by herself and collaborator Christian Breslauer. Despite being the end of the “eternal sunshine” era, the additional songs reveal another layer of emotional depth to the already-rich original album.
“twilight zone” dives headfirst into the hazy, dream-like atmosphere of the original album with a twinkling opening and muted
dance-pop sound. The song furthers the complications explored in “i wish i hated you” from the original album. Lyrics like “Why do I still protect you? / Pretend these songs aren’t about you” in “twilight zone” point to the dissonance Grande finds herself caught in — one of mourning and forgetting. This gray space continues within “warm,” which finds Grande torn between her independence and the uncertainty of love. The song’s seamless production and upbeat sound conceals the loneliness of its lyrics. This captures the new direction of Grande’s music: Her emotional turmoil is intimately featured on songs that, on the surface, appear as shallow dance tracks.
“dandelion” reflects Grande’s vocal prowess. The song’s soundscape is detached, allowing her voice to control the forefront of the track. The sensuous lyrics lend themselves to Grande’s masterful vospring relecal range, with an impressive enunciation that has not historically been present in her discography. “past life” is unabashed and empowering, a breath of fresh air among Grande’s repetitive ruminations. The lyric “Always wondered what would happen if I let you lose me / Always wondered what would happen if I let myself need more” captures a central element of
There is no other actor, now or ever, who could have played the role of Steve with as much dedication, force and energy as Black. Considering the original Steve has no personality whatsoever, the task of embodying him onscreen seems almost impossible. But Black brings a default skin — essentially just clothes — to life in a way that makes audiences remember how they felt playing Minecraft. His performance is undoubtedly current, full of one-liners, weird songs and superhero-esque action, but it evokes a bit of nostalgia too. Strangely enough, watching Black wholeheartedly sing about chicken is out of this world, in all senses of the phrase. All of this seems rather dramatic for a movie about building houses with cubes of dirt and sheep’s wool. Because Minecraft is a fun game, everyone was expecting a fun movie, and that’s largely what it is. But the film also is a trojan horse for a supposedly dying art form: Out of all the content that has come out this year, this movie is the only one that sparks the desire to dream, to have fun and to live. “A Minecraft Movie” asks us to create. Whoever you are, wherever you are, creativity is what makes us human.
This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on April 7, 2025.
“eternal sunshine,” with Grande narrating the transformation she experienced after finally putting herself first.
The new collection of songs on “eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead” ends with “Hampstead,” a wintry piano ballad in which Grande curiously addresses the end of a relationship. A line like “Threw away my reputation, but saved us more heartache” reveals an interesting dynamic that arises in “eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead”: Her acknowledgement of a failed relationship cannot be extricated from her observations on the role of critics in her life. “Hampstead,” like the changes made to the extended version of “intro (end of the world) [extended],” strikes at the heart of “eternal sunshine” through its exploration of the changes Grande needed to undergo to remain true to herself.
Do the additional tracks on “eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead” truly point to brighter days ahead for the artist?
In truth, Grande’s future outlook clings tightly to the painful experiences that have shaped the new person she has become. While it is not a cheerful conclusion to the era, it is certainly a mature one, made more personal through her trademark vocals and deployment of various sonic inspirations.
‘Death Wish (Live from The O2 Arena)’ by Gracie Abrams
The March pop releases concluded on March 31 with Abrams’s “Death Wish (Live from The O2 Arena),” an official live recording of the song from when it was performed — for the first and only time — on March 6 as part of her “The Secret of Us” tour.
There is something collective about “Death Wish.” Many listeners can relate to its haunting lyrics, which feel especially intimate when sung alongside the lonesome piano. The chorus is familiar: Lines like “And you ask me to dance if there’s someone around / You don’t look the same when I look at you now” showcase Abrams’s masterful songwriting skills. Her verbosity is not insular, but instead speaks to the widely shared feelings of isolation and manipulation in love.
It’s an interesting choice for Abrams to release a live version of the song, rather than a studio recording. This decision, however, is in line with Abrams’s past successes: After releasing “I Love You, I’m Sorry” in 2024, the live version of the song made its way onto the release of “The Secret of Us (Deluxe)” later that year after her creative liberties took the internet by storm. After opening for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” Abrams has proven herself to be a dynamic performer: Her live recordings capture an unpolished side to her vocal abilities, which only heighten the intimate nature of her songwriting.
Pop music certainly had a winning month in March — a continuation of a trend that shows no signs of stopping. Roan, Grande and Abrams have proven themselves deserving of the fame they’ve acquired, regardless of the respective controversies they’ve faced over the years. Their new releases usher in what is shaping up to be a very rich season for pop music fans. This
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The releases signal both a new beginning and closing chapter for highly successful eras of the pop icons.
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Letter from the Editor
Dear Readers,
Today I went to the ERC, one of my favorite places to work. I didn’t text anyone that I was going to be there, I didn’t check any of my friends’ locations, I just showed up. One of the biggest joys at Brown is being in such close proximity to the people I love—getting to run into them serendipitously. Walking into the Ratty as a sophomore and recognizing three tables of friends. Stopping a friend on the sidewalk to hear about their spring break. Catching a friend on a picnic blanket on the Main Green. The ERC is one of the absolute best places to maximize these run-ins. Today, as I sat with my laptop open at the ERC, I barely glanced at it, people watching instead, running into friends upon friends.
Our writers, too, are looking for meaning and order in serendipitous places. In Feature, Michelle explores our need for symmetry and order in our homes and bodies, in
our lives. In Narrative, Nina reflects on the natural order of the food chain and life cycle, a reckoning brought on by the loss of her cat. In A&C, Ozzy reassures the main character of the movie *Dìdi* that things do get better, despite the difficulties of being 13. Ellie, too, is searching for meaning and order, looking toward Japanese principles for building a contented life. In Lifestyle, Gabi reflects on restlessness and not being able to drift as easily toward sleep as she once could. In post-pourri, Rchin ponders where creativity lives in the face of AI art. Finally, don’t forget Lily’s basketball-themed crossword, you may shoot a 3-pointer!
The serendipity I find at the ERC is how I feel about post- too: getting to open the prod sheet and recognizing our writers’ and illustrators’ names, knowing this week will have a sentimental piece by Katherine or a colorful collage by Angelina. In the face of graduating, I can already feel the familiarity fading. The odds are good that if I walk into the ERC a year from now, I won’t recognize anyone. The tables of laughing, barely-working underclassmen won’t include a seat pulled up for me. Some Wednesday night soon, I’ll refresh the post- website to a sea of articles by unfamiliar authors, not knowing who favors an em dash and which author prefers semicolons. I know one day, the distance will hurt, but now, I’m so grateful for the magic of these spaces—the ERC, the cramped office at 88 Benevolent Street, the Main Green—that I just feel lucky to be one of the names and faces who has cycled through. With a few weeks left in the semester, I’m feeling generous enough to be so excited for the next set of people who get to sip on a vanilla matcha, who get to laugh themselves silly over a top 10.
Klara Davison-Schmich
Feature Managing Editor
“Your life is one long defamation campaign against yourself.”
“Two sides of the same coin? You’re a dollar bill, she’s probably like a penny.”
slam dunk
by Lily Coffman
“Because a secret is meant to be shared. Once it is shared it is no longer a secret, but something slightly different, something slightly better. It is the nakedness before skinny dipping. It is connective tissue. It is an invitation. It is telling someone, I want to know you, and I want to be known by you.”
— Emily Tom, “Secrets”
“Perhaps it is because the people who are leaving are the people who make Rhode Island feel like a home for me. Maybe the root of my envy is fear of the impending changes in my life as a result of their impending changes. Truthfully and selfishly, my next phase feels neither bright nor fresh without them here.”
— Samira Lakhiani, “Out of Bloom”
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5. Tabithas
6. Taboo
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8. Tabithas at Brown (TAB)
9. Tabbouleh
10. Incognito
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UNIVERSITY NEWS
As University Chaplain, Cooper Nelson created dozens of initiatives
BY ZARINA HAMILTON SENIOR STAFF WRITER
After 35 years, Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson, the University’s chaplain, will retire at the end of this academic year.
Throughout her time as chaplain, Cooper Nelson sought to support students, faculty and staff through leading community-based religious and spiritual initiatives, engaging in personal conversations and fostering a welcoming environment.
“Reverend Cooper Nelson embodies the soul of the University,” Daniel Solomon ’26 said. “I know that she will be greatly missed, but the impression that she’s left on our community is set in stone.”
On her arrival at Brown in 1990, Cooper Nelson was the first female chaplain in the Ivy League. She previously held several leadership positions at Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke College and Vassar College, she said in an interview with The Herald.
In her first few years on College Hill, Cooper Nelson said she solicited student feedback to determine how she could best serve the campus community. In a time of “dot matrix printers and hand-printed data,” Cooper Nelson led a survey of over 1,500 students, asking them what they expected from a University chaplain, she said.
Through the surveys, she found that the Brown community’s religious diversity wasn’t
represented in the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life at the time.
She then recommended the University hire additional Associate Chaplains to better represent the diverse array of religious practices within the campus community, and ensured that each student religious group had an appropriate faculty advisor.
Cooper Nelson noted that her duties extended to issues beyond religion, given that she was “responsible for the care of the University community.”
“There’s been a move to think of chaplaincy work as very narrowly religious,” she said. “It actually never has been.”
After trying out careers in medicine, law and finally, education, Cooper Nelson saw her role as chaplain as a means to “spill over in every direction” and immerse herself in different aspects of the campus community, on and off College Hill. Over the course of her tenure, she has traveled to other universities, such as Harvard, Emory University and Stanford University, to support their own chaplains.
“My job at Brown is almost without boundaries, and I love that,” she added. “I will never say anything other than I was so incredibly lucky to have done my work.”
Throughout the three and a half decades Cooper Nelson has spent in Providence, she often hosted students at her home for interfaith Thursday Night Suppers, where she gave attendees the opportunity to gather together and hear from a range of speakers of various religious backgrounds.
“Thursday supper was a way to extend, quite literally, hospitality,” she said. “You got a meal. You got a conversation.”
On Mondays, Cooper Nelson can be found on the fourth floor of Page-Robinson Hall leading Brown’s Bereavement Group, which helps support students who are experiencing grief, Anna Ryu ’25 explained.
“She really helped me feel a sense of belonging and safety in that particular space,” Ryu said. “She is so incredibly consistent in the way that she is present.”
Cooper Nelson also helped spearhead the Religious Literacy Project, which is a student-run, non-credit course offered to students, staff and faculty of any religion. She explained that the course offers a more accessible way for students to gain a broad overview of world religions.
While Cooper Nelson has received a myriad of awards for her work in chaplaincy, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Chaplains and Spiritual Life in Higher Education, students and faculty shared that her true impact can be measured by how she has engaged with the community around her.
William Loughridge ’26 was introduced to Cooper Nelson through TNS his freshman year and was “instantly captured by her whole vibe,” he said.
“If there’s anything happening that you need help with, she can always figure it out,” he added. “She’s always been someone you can go to with anything.”
Inspired by his experiences with Cooper Nelson, Loughridge now works in the OCRL as an Interfaith Student Coordinator. “There's not a lot of things that I do at Brown that haven’t in some way been influenced by Reverend Janet,” he said.
Gary Wessel, a professor of biology and a longtime friend of Cooper Nelson, shared that he often sees Cooper Nelson making her way to her office. Each time he sees her, she’s chatting with a different student, faculty or staff member, he said.
“It must have taken her hours to walk the four blocks from her house to her office,” he said. “But in those four hours, she probably had the most amazing conversations.”
Other students connect with Cooper Nelson through her office hours. “It’s almost impossible to walk away from office hours with Reverend Cooper Nelson not feeling renewed in your purpose and in your conviction,” Solomon said.
Throughout her time at the University, Cooper Nelson also served as an academic advisor to students and helped them “figure out how to get their heart and their head to go together,” a job she said she absolutely loved.
“She connects her very bright and deep administrative knowledge with that genuine, individual care that she has for everyone,” Ryu explained. “That makes her one of the best advisors.”
In addition to her time spent on College Hill, Cooper Nelson is a clinical faculty member at the Warren Alpert Medical School and a board member of the Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island Ethics Committee.
At Warren Alpert, she teaches a course focusing on the personal and practical aspects of practicing medicine, as she aims to help students channel “their love of clinical care and their hope to better people’s lives.”
When she isn’t chatting with students across campus or downtown at Warren Alpert,
you can often find Cooper Nelson writing various invocations, poems and prayers for University ceremonies.
She explained that she aims for each piece to have a personal meaning for every listener and she regards her written works as some of her most prideful accomplishments.
“I really feel like our words matter,” she said. “I want to evoke whatever is holy for you.”
Cooper Nelson will continue writing and preaching in her retirement and has a plethora of other plans to keep her busy — continuing to strengthen the Tougaloo College exchange program, teaching at Warren Alpert and preparing her new home in Tiverton to host student retreats.
“I’m not very good at sitting around eating bonbons,” she said. “I like bonbons, but I’m eager to stay engaged.”
While Cooper Nelson might be leaving College Hill behind, she still wants to support the campus community.
“I know this time feels very uneasy and dangerous,” she said. “It’s essential that we take care of each other and that we keep our eyes on the care of others.”
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