Thursday, March 6, 2024

THE BROWN DAILY HER

U. to reinstate standardized test requirements for most undergraduate applicants

NaT hardy / hEraLd

The change comes after the Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions, which has been discussing potential admissions policy modifications for the past six months, issued recommendations that were publicly adopted by President Christina Paxson on Tuesday.

Paxson

maintains familial preferences, early decision

BY OWEN DAHLKAMP SCIENCE & RESEARCH AND UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

Brown university will reinstate standardized testing requirements for most applicants to the college beginning with the class of 2029, according to university administrators.

The change comes after the ad hoc committee on admissions Policies, which has been discussing potential admissions

policy modifications for the past six months, issued recommendations that President christina Paxson P’19 P’Md’20 publicly adopted on Tuesday. Paxson also accepted the committee’s suggestion that Brown continue to offer an early decision round in its application cycle and said the university would consider community input and “a range of complex questions” as it evaluates preferences for legacy applicants.

Paxson announced the changes this morning in a community-wide message. along with her decisions, the committee released an executive summary of their report that includes their recommenda-

tions and rationale. The full report was not shared due to data privacy concerns.

The committee — comprising faculty, administrators and members of the corporation, the university’s highest governing body — was formed in september in the wake of the supreme court’s decision to restrict race conscious admission policies.

Paxson charged the group with ensuring that the university was upholding its “commitments to academic excellence, equity, access and diversity” in its admission practices.

Throughout the summary, the committee continually revisited this bedrock principle, even with some contradicting

sentiments. The herald sat down for an interview with Provost Francis doyle, the co-chair of the committee, to discuss the group’s work and findings.

Reinstating standardized testing

Brown will become the third Ivy — after dartmouth and yale — to again require all first-year applicants to submit a standardized test score as part of their application, with the exception of those who are “unable to take the test” when “the International Baccalaureate or a national

SEE ADMISSIONS PAGE 3

Faculty meeting: Gift review committee, Watson to become school

BY RYAN DOHERTY, CATE LATIMER U. NEWS EDITOR, SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Faculty approves review committee for gifts, grants

Faculty approved a new standing committee to review gifts and grants for compliance with Brown’s Gift acceptance and Openness in research policies at Tuesday’s faculty meeting.

The new Gifts and Grants review committee is charged with reviewing gifts and grants that are flagged by the division of advancement or the Office of the Vice President for research for further review. The university hopes this will ensure that donations are in compliance with university policies. committee members will review donors’ professional backgrounds, including their source of wealth and any adverse media coverage.

The c ommittee will then make a recommendation to President christina Paxson P’19 P’Md’20 on whether to accept the donation. The corporation, the university’s highest governing body, has final say over whether the university will accept the donation, although the group may “delegate acceptance of some Gifts” to Paxson or other senior officers, according to the university’s Gift acceptance Policy.

Four tenured faculty members will serve on the committee, one of whom must work on the advisory committee on university resources Management and the other on the research advisory Board. No members of the committee were named at the meeting.

The university’s Provost, General counsel and Executive Vice President of

Finance and administration and will also sit on the committee.

according to the approved motion, which will go into effect July 1, the recommendations of acceptance should be aligned with the university’s Business Ethics standards and principles of academic freedom.

“The fundamental idea is that the committee is supposed to prevent gifts and grants that would further the dissemination of disinformation,” Paxson said.

J. Timmons roberts, a professor of environmental studies and sociology affiliated with scholars at Brown for climate action, presented an amendment that added a requirement for the Vice Presidents for advancement and research to submit an annual report to the GGrc and the Faculty Executive committee on the donations offered and accepted.

“When I look at this committee, it’s essentially advancement and OVPr cherry-picking a few examples and giving them to the committee without giving them any idea how representative these are,” said Brian Lander, an assistant professor of history and environment and society, in support of this aspect of the amendment.

The amendment also removed a clause that explicitly stated the recommendation should ensure “that Brown’s processes do not politicize gift and grant acceptance or use business practices as an advocacy tool.”

“We would argue that, in fact, gift and grant acceptance has forever been very political,” roberts said. Though, not all faculty members present agreed with roberts.

The amendment passed with 58% approval, and the amended motion to create the GGrc passed with 81% in favor.

In March 2023, Paxson shared findings from a working group report that suggested

the university create a committee to review gifts and grants.

currently, an ad hoc committee reviews gifts and grants that are flagged by the Office of the Vice President for research and the advancement Office, although Provost Francis doyle III said the committee has only worked on one case since January 2023.

The university reviews all donations over $1 million, those involving naming opportunities and gifts from donors not affiliated with the university.

Multiple faculty members spoke in support of the GGrc during the meeting.

when the school of Professional studies was established. The announcement comes a day after the university announced the end of Edward steinfeld’s term as Watson Institute director on June 30, with Wendy schiller to serve as interim director beginning July 1.

In 2015, the university set a goal for Watson to become a “top 5 school of its kind in the u s.” in its Operational Plan for Building Brown’s Excellence. according to doyle, a feasibility study for the school was conducted during the 2018-2019 academic year.

This fall, two task forces co-chaired by doyle and steinfeld addressed faculty comments on the January 2023 proposal to “establish a new school for International and Public affairs at Brown university,” doyle said.

U. to seek faculty, Corporation approval for 2025 IAPA school

“The idea of disinformation and knowing who the supporters are is a very complex question, but it’s really worth our attention,” roberts said. Brown aims to seek approval from faculty and the corporation in May to convert the Watson Institute for International and Public affairs into a school for international and public affairs, Provost Francis doyle said at Tuesday’s faculty meeting.

Faculty and corporation approval may take place at later meetings this semester. If approved, the university plans to launch the new school in summer 2025. The new school would be Brown’s first since 2014,

Faculty will have the opportunity to comment on the proposal for the new school at a Thursday faculty forum. Then, the academic Priorities committee will vote on the proposal, doyle said, adding that he plans on sharing the motion at the april faculty meeting.

If the corporation approves the motion this spring, doyle said that the university would use the next academic year to review funding priorities and organizations under the Watson Institute umbrella. In addition, the university would fundraise for the new school and plan for new hires, including an inaugural dean.

WEEK IN HIGHER-ED

1 Dartmouth men’s basketball team votes to unionize

Thirteen of fifteen members of the dartmouth men’s basketball team voted to join the service Employees International union in a major development for college athletics.

dartmouth argues that the students are not employees of the college and thus cannot unionize. The school also informed students that the team may be removed from the Ivy League for unionizing.

2 Liberty University fined record $14 million for safety law violations

The fines were imposed for violations of the clery act, which governs the disclosure of campus security statistics. The department of Education published a report stating that Liberty failed to properly respond to sexual violence on campus and discouraged students from reporting instances of crime.

3 Miami fraternity faces hazing allegations after video surfaces

a university of Miami fraternity, sigma alpha Epsilon, is under investigation following a leaked video depicting hazing activity. The video. which has circulated around campus, features pledges drinking large amounts of milk and vomiting.

POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN:

ADMISSIONS FROM PAGE 1

exam may be substituted.”

Transfer applicants, resumed undergraduate education applicants and prospective student veterans will still enjoy a test optional policy.

The committee cited student academic performance at Brown as a main reason for requiring the test, finding that higher test scores were correlated with higher grades at the university. Those who did not submit scores had comparable academic performance to those that submitted low scores. The findings aligned with the results of a study released earlier this year by John Friedman, the chair of Brown’s economics department and a member of the committee.

The summary adds that there are “unintended adverse outcomes of test-optional policies in the admissions process itself, potentially undermining the goal of increasing access.”

The committee acknowledged that those from well-resourced backgrounds tend to perform better on the exams, whether because of additional tutoring or other strategies. But Paxson accepted a committee suggestion to implement a “testing in context” campaign which aims to promote Brown’s policy of considering testing as one factor among many in a holistic review process.

The committee added that test scores interpreted in the context of an applicant’s background may actually benefit underrepresented students who admission officers deem to have academic potential at Brown.

“The committee was concerned that some students from less advantaged backgrounds are choosing not to submit scores under the test-optional policy, when doing so would actually increase their chances of being admitted,” the report said.

admission officers will often compare applicants’ individual standardized test scores to overall test performance at that applicant’s high school in order to contextualize their academic performance. doyle said that high schools often communicate this overall test performance to the Office of admission or report it publicly.

This decision ends the test-optional policy that Brown has practiced since the 2020-21 application cycle.

40% of applicants to Brown chose not to submit test scores during that period, according to the summary. But that proportion decreases for those enrolled: only 24% of students did not submit a score in the 2022-23 application cycle, according to a herald poll of enrolled first-year students.

Preferences for familial ties to the University will stay, for now

The committee did not reach a consensus in evaluating whether the university should end its preferences for applicants who are children of alumni or Brown staff members.

Instead, they have deferred any decisions until administrators can ask “members of the community — including faculty, staff, alumni and students — to provide input on Brown’s current practice of preferences for applicants with family connections,” according to the summary.

doyle said the committee has not determined what the outreach plan would be and that the committee will “be looking for guidance from the President on her next steps.”

But when asked how Paxson plans to conduct this outreach, senior Vice President for communications cass cliatt wrote in an email to The herald that “we have not predetermined an approach.”

Neither d oyle nor Paxson detailed concrete steps for community engagement.

conventional wisdom holds that when children attend the same college as their parents, the family is more likely to donate to the institution — though there is little research to back that claim. In weighing the advantages of legacy admissions, doyle said that effects to the donor base were a “factor” in the committee’s discussions.

he added that “students whose parents attended Brown tend to be exceptionally well-qualified, with academic records that are stronger than that of average matriculants.”

The committee also cited the tendency of legacy students to enroll at higher rates once admitted, pointing to the “sense of community and loyalty among Brown graduates” that the policy fosters.

c ommittee members did address concerns of socioeconomic disparities, writing that “removing legacy preferences could lead to somewhat more diversity in the group of admitted students.”

In another study, Friedman found that legacy admissions is the “largest factor driving the overrepresentation of high-income students” at Ivy Plus colleges, The herald previously reported.

If the university “were concerned primarily with socioeconomic diversity, it would make sense to eliminate this practice,” Paxson said in an interview with The herald earlier this month.

Brown consistently ranks among the lowest of the Ivies in the percentage of students receiving financial aid. The university also ranks 230th of 286 schools — again the lowest in the Ivy League — for the share of students receiving Pell Grants, according to a New york Times analysis.

The committee also put the recommendation in the context of the affirmative action decision, writing that some members “stressed the importance of fairness to the more recent, and more diverse, graduates whose children might benefit” given that their parents enjoyed an affirmative action admissions policy.

Past herald polls have found that the population of legacy students contains a higher proportion of white students compared to the general student body. Legacy students were also less likely to receive financial aid than their non-legacy counterparts

“The issue of admissions preferences raises complicated questions about equity and access, about merit and unearned advantage,” the report reads, adding that coming to a recommendation “requires further deliberation and reflection.”

approximately 8% of the class of 2027 are legacy students and 1-2% of all students are children of staff members.

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Early decision holds strong after considering a non-restrictive, non-binding early action admission policy, the university decided to continue offering a binding early-decision policy, as eliminating it may “place Brown at a slight disadvantage in enrolling very highly qualified students who are subsequently admitted to other institutions through regular decision,” according to the committee.

high rates of yield — or the percentage of accepted students who ultimately enroll — are often regarded as advantageous for universities hoping to confirm the composition and size of their first-year class. Early decision provides institutions with this certainty by enrolling 100% of the admitted early cohort.

Those who are accepted under early decision are contractually obligated to attend Brown, raising concerns among some critics that forcing families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to commit to one school would prevent them from comparing financial aid offers from others. The committee rebuffed these concerns for students applying to Brown, noting that applicants are given corresponding financial aid awards whether they apply in the regular or early decision cycles, and that online financial aid calculators “help students and families estimate the cost of attendance at Brown.”

They also emphasized Brown’s commitment to meeting 100% of demonstrated need and forthcoming need-blind admission for all first-year applicants.

despite this, the committee acknowledged that there are demographic discrepancies in the early and regular decision applicant pools. Early applicants are less diverse in measures of race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status, and are less likely to be first-generation or low-income students. The herald’s first year poll found similar trends among enrolled students.

When asked how they could create a diverse cohort of admitted applicants with a less diverse applicant pool, doyle said that the size of the “application pool means that we can identify a strongly diverse cohort of highly qualified students

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in a way that’s guided by our unwavering commitment to access and diversity.” using measures such as standardized test scores and academic performance at Brown, doyle said that the committee found the early decision applicant pool to be stronger than those in the regular decision review round.

What comes next?

To make prospective applicants aware of these policies, doyle said the university will undertake extensive communications efforts to educate students, their families and high school guidance counselors “about how we will use test scores in context and why it shouldn’t be intimidating that an individual might, for example, have a score that falls below the median.”

“Our admissions team is fully committed to that,” he said.

The committee completed their work using a data-driven approach that included outside input from student leaders and a ssociate Provost for Enrollment and dean of undergraduate admission Logan Powell, according to doyle.

While the questions of preference for children of alumni and staff members remained unanswered, Paxson wrote in a letter to the community that further discussion “will help inform an ultimate decision” without providing ways for stakeholders to provide this input.

she also invited students to attend a March 20 Brown university community council meeting to discuss decisions surrounding the committee’s work.

The new testing requirement “may take some convincing for stakeholders,” doyle said, adding that he hoped to educate them on the “testing in context” philosophy.

doing so “will be harder work for the admissions committee, and they understand that,” doyle said, but added that the requirement will allow admission officers to “gain access to another instrument in the toolkit that they can use to make this holistic evaluation.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on Mach. 5, 2024.

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DoorDash partners with Farm Fresh R.I.’s Harvest Kitchen

Youth working in culinary program to receive $2,500 in gift cards

BY YAEL SARIG SENIOR STAFF WRITER

doordash, a popular food delivery company, has partnered with Farm Fresh rI’s harvest Kitchen program to increase “support to program participants outside of the culinary program hours,” according to a press release from doordash. harvest Kitchen trainees will receive $2,500 in doordash gift cards as part of doordash’s community credits program, a national initiative launched in 2021.

harvest Kitchen is a 20-week culinary job training program, where youth aged 16-19 involved with rhode Island’s department of children, youth and Families are trained by chefs in the preparation of various food products. These trainees are responsible for creating Farm Fresh’s “value-added products,” which aim to revitalize produce from local farmers.

according to John scott, a dcyF community liaison, trainees are selected from within dcyF through a multi-stage process. First, harvest Kitchen sends out a notice to dcyF workers in both the rhode Island Training school and the Office of Juvenile Probation — the two branches of dcyF’s juvenile correctional services program. Interested youth can fill out an application indicating their interest in the program, and harvest Kitchen members select applicants from that pool following an interview period.

according to sean Kontos, program director for harvest Kitchen, the program enables trainees to develop a broad range of culinary skills, which helps them secure future employment. he added that harvest Kitchen staff also try to connect trainees

Maya WadhWaNI / hEraLd

The collaboration between the Harvest Kitchen and DCYF began in 2009, rising from farmers’ desire to make use of their surplus produce and aim to support at-risk youth. Caption

with internships or jobs during and after the program, introducing trainees to the real-life experience of employment within a secure environment.

The program began in 2009, stemming both from farmers’ desire to make use of their surplus produce and dcyF’s mission to support at-risk youth. Kontos shared that when harvest Kitchen began, all of the trainees were in post-juvenile detention.

Misty delgado, dcyF chief of staff, said the idea for the program came from d ivision of youth d evelopment staff who worked at the rhode Island Training school. delgado explained that upon leaving the training school, many trainees would express a desire to start working but had limited support and were not prepared to work. Partnering with harvest Kitchen

enables trainees to develop important skills in an environment where staff “understood their background,” delgado said.

according to Kontos, food insecurity is a relatively common challenge faced by trainees. he added that, while students might not always share that they’re experiencing food insecurity, he and other staff members often pick up on subtle cues.

“If somebody’s coming in and they’re hungry immediately, or they want to take some food home with them… (There are) ways that we can glean what’s going on outside of work,” Kontos explained.

delgado said that dcyF wasn’t involved in the formation of the doordash partnership, but the department is grateful that “community partners and corporate partners are having these discussions about

our kids, because the reality is dcyF can’t do this on our own.”

“Those kids are in such a vulnerable space that they need the support immediately,” delgado said. harvest Kitchen “allows them to take their skills out into the world not just while they’re involved with us, but hopefully,” after they leave the program.

christina Kennedy, senior manager of government affairs in New England at doordash, stated in the press release that doordash is “proud to collaborate with Farm Fresh rhode Island and (hopes) that providing them with the resources and tools they need will help young people in need across rhode Island thrive.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 5, 2024.

New

state tourism campaign met with skepticism

‘Hands Off Rafah’ rally draws over 1000 attendees

Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign gathers demonstrators, delivers demands

Advocates emphasize need to engage turnout of low-income voters

BY MIKAYLA KENNEDY METRO EDITOR

On March 2, roughly 200 people gathered with the rhode Island Poor People’s campaign “to launch a 40-week effort to mobilize poor and low-wage voters in rhode Island,” and to “demand legislators take immediate action to end the crisis of death by poverty in the united states,” according to a press release by the group. The demonstration was one of over 30 that took place in state capitals across the country. at the demonstration, members of the group — which includes low-income voters, faith leaders and social justice advocates — held a funeral march downtown and carried coffins adorned with posters that featured statistics about state and national poverty levels, Indigenous loss of ancestral land, voter suppression and the impact of the climate crisis on low-income people.

“The fourth leading cause of death is poverty,” carl Jefferson, one of the chairs of the rI Poor People’s campaign, told the crowd gathered at the statehouse. he later led the group in a moment of silence to mourn those who had died and will die from poverty.

speakers at saturday’s assembly addressed issues such as immigration reform, reduced life expectancy associated with low-incomes and

the underfunding of rI schools. attendees also emphasized low-income families’ struggles to meet basic needs and the link between poverty and incarceration. speakers also advocated for the redistribution of funds from military spending to social spending programs such as affordable housing.

daisy Paz, who attended the event on behalf of the George Wiley center, told the audience to support “the legislation … in your community that (is) being proposed that will impact those of us who are poor. Besides coming here today, please also take a moment to

take action.” Many advocates also referenced the idea of ‘waking the sleeping giant’ and the voting power of engaging low-income voters.

On March 4, the campaign organized a second demonstration. about 20 members of the campaign gathered at the rhode Island state house to deliver their demands to legislators. The group left some packets in mailboxes and delivered others to office personnel. They were assisted by representative cherie cruz (d-Pawtucket) in their efforts.

The letter delivered to legislators on Monday included demands to abolish poverty,

increase the minimum wage to at least $15, expand voter rights and end voter suppression, guarantee workers’ rights and labor rights, fund healthcare for all, provide affordable and adequate housing, end gun violence, protect women’s rights, promote environmental justice, fully fund public education, create just immigration laws and end extremism.

In 2021, the National Poor People’s campaign introduced house resolution 438, which aims to “fully (address) poverty and low wages from the bottom up.” The bill is aligned with the organization’s Third reconstruction plan,

which is a detailed agenda of the organization’s demands.

Organizer Peter Nightingale shared that while the organization has not solidified its plans for voter outreach, they previously targeted low-income people through text campaigns during the 2020 and 2022 elections.

“We did a lot of texting — 30,000, 40,000 texts in the last weeks before the election — to get people out to vote and to express themselves and say what is being done is not meeting our needs,” he explained.

several advocates, including Paz, spoke about the importance of passing the Percentage of Income Payment Plan (h.B. 5809) to combat poverty. “right now, rhode Islanders of the low-income community, we’re paying almost half of our paychecks to bills,” Paz said.“under PIPP, we would be paying only 3-6%.”

according to the press release, partners of the rhode Island Poor People’s campaign include organizations such as East Bay citizens for Peace, the George Wiley center and the rhode Island homeless advocacy Project, among others.

Joe Monteiro, who has been involved with the campaign since 2018, said that unlike many advocacy organizations, the group is collaborative and does not isolate itself from other stakeholders.

“We like to think of ourselves as co-dependents … for instance, if you’re a climate justice person and you need to get the word out, then the poverty people need to step in and assist you,” he explained.

Organizer Peter Nightingale shared that while the organization has not solidified its plans for voter outreach, they previously targeted low-income people through text campaigns during the 2020 and 2022 elections.

BEYOND BROWN

RISD student petition condemns ‘anti-homeless structure,’ since removed

According to RISD, structure aimed to address safety, health concerns

BY CIARA MEYER AND SANAI RASHID SENIOR STAFF WRITERS

Two weeks ago, rhode Island school of design staff installed a metal structure over an air vent next to 2 college st., a site where an unhoused woman usually sleeps. On Feb. 22, Waverly huang, a rIsd sophomore, started a petition to have the grate removed, which amassed over 1,000 signatures. a day later, the grate was removed.

“It just appeared one day, and then we were like … ‘what the heck, why is this here?’” huang said in an interview with The herald. huang, who is secretary of rIsd’s student alliance, felt obligated to act against what, in her view, was a design choice targeting unhoused individuals.

The unhoused woman, who spoke to The herald on the condition of anonymity citing safety concerns, said she has been sleeping by 2 college st. for seven months now. according to her, a few other individuals sleep across the street. “We stayed in this spot because it was alright to be seated here,” she said, adding that the heat from the vent and the wall made the spot a warm place during the night.

after a few days of relocating farther up college street, she is back sitting and resting by the vent, following the removal of the grate.

For huang, questions remain about why the grate was installed in the first place. “If someone wants to sit near … (a) building

where there is a vent that keeps them warm, there is not a problem with doing that–especially if they are not malicious,” she said. The petition’s commenters also described the structure as an example of hostile and anti-homeless architecture.

hostile architecture is an urban design tactic that repurposes existing public structures to prohibit certain groups from using such spaces and performing certain activities including sleeping, according to The Neighborhood design center.

“While public space is intended to broadly serve the public good … hostile architecture can then be used to restrict the use of a public space based on race, age, income, and other factors deemed undesirable,” reads the

Ndc website.

according to Brenda clement, director of housingWorks rI at roger Williams university, hostile architecture uniquely affects unhoused individuals, since they are more dependent on public spaces for shelter.

“Part of the reason why (unhoused individuals) are hanging out in public spaces is that they don’t have housing, or good alternatives that provide a safe environment,” said clement. she also noted that shelters still make people “leave early in the morning.”

“People have to find ways to occupy their days, and sometimes that is in public spaces,” she added. “We have to address the housing problem, and the homelessness problem, so that hanging out in a public space, park or

down at Kennedy Plaza is not the only option for” people experiencing homelessness. according to huang, rIsd students did not receive any direct communication about the grate installation or removal.

rIsd senior director of Public relations Jamie Marland confirmed it was rIsd staff who installed and removed the grate. “We appreciate the concerns that were raised and acknowledge the importance of addressing this matter in a manner that respects the wellbeing and dignity of all individuals involved,” Marland wrote in an email to The herald.

Marland wrote that “the decision to install the grate was made due to serious health and safety risks to the community, given the

ways in which the well and surrounding area were being used.” The unhoused woman who rests in that area stated that she believed rIsd installed the grate to protect individuals, including her, from a nearby generator. rIsd did not specifically comment on what health and safety concerns they hoped to address by putting up the grate.

The woman stated that she was informed before the grate was installed, and told she could come back “in a few days.” rIsd did not respond to a specific request for confirmation about whether or not the institution informed unhoused individuals in the area about the grate installation.

The unhoused woman said that rIsd has been “wonderful” to her. “They never were a problem ever,” she said.

Last year, housingWorks rI released their 2023 housing Fact Book, which stated that the number of people experiencing homelessness in rhode Island has risen by 72% since 2019, The herald previously reported.

Included in the study, as a part of its 2023

Point-In-Time count, was “a count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January.”

The rhode Island coalition to End homelessness found from the count that 1,810 people were without housing at that time.

From her experience, the woman who stays near rIsd said that housing organizations in rhode Island have been “very nice about explaining where we can go with inclement weather.” however, having been “kicked out” from her residence during the pandemic she, like many other rhode Island residents, lacks a permanent home.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 5, 2024.

Brown Bee Coffee to open in May, following months-long community buzz

BY TOM LI METRO EDITOR

For months, residents of c ollege h ill have been buzzing with excitement over the announcement of Brown Bee coffee — a new cafe and bakery set to open at 404 Benefit s t..

Brown Bee was first announced in a pril 2023, with an opening date scheduled for November of that same year. But, supply-chain setbacks and equipment licensing delayed the opening by several months, explained owner Waleed Ghazi.

The cafe now aims to open by late May, prior to Brown’s spring 2024 commencement ceremonies, Ghazi shared in an interview with The herald.

Ghazi attributed the delays to challenges achieving the unique “cafe culture” and ambiance he envisioned for Brown Bee. “had we just opened a coffee shop, it would have been a lot easier and more streamlined,” he said. To Ghazi, the cafe should be “a place people want to go every day and spend time in.”

But Brown Bee is not just a coffee shop. “Brown Bee is a lifestyle,” Ghazi said.

Beyond offering traditional coffee beverages, such as its signature dark roast “Buzz Blend,” the cafe will also feature a full bakery and kitchen, allowing for in-house baked eats.

In particular, Ghazi hopes the new eatery will transform New England’s “croissant scene,” which he found was

“lacking compared to (its counterparts) in a sia and Europe,” he said.

The cafe also hopes to incorporate a walk-in only, limited weekend brunch menu. While the details are still not finalized, Ghazi said that it will “be an experience that’s slightly more elevated than your classic cafe breakfast.”

Ghazi also shared that Brown Bee will offer a curated clothing collection that “elevates the classic cafe merch (where) you would just find a cap and a t-shirt by the register.”

c urated as a nod to the historical district of Providence, Brown Bee will be both “modern” and “timeless,” with

the hope that “50 years from now, the space will look special in its own way,” he added. he noted that Brown Bee has collaborated with New Orleans-based lighting designers Bevolo to revamp the streetlamps outside of the cafe with gas flames. he hopes this will add character to the exterior of the building and enhance the feel of the historical district.

Ghazi also described his plans for other renovation projects, such as transforming vintage mail sorters into a coffee register and repurposing centuries-old chimney bricks for exterior and interior decor.

But not all projects have run smooth-

ly, Ghazi explained. a t more than 200 years old, the building occupied by Brown Bee was built using post-and-beam construction — a form of architecture that requires many supportive posts. This ran contrary to Ghazi’s vision of an open layout, requiring the team to “redo the entire structure of the building.”

But a background in real estate and construction allowed Ghazi to “navigate through the construction part of Brown Bee a lot more stress-free than a new owner … renting a space,” he explained. Ghazi’s real-estate company, Ghazi Property Group, owns Brown Bee’s building. a s a result he “felt that (his) ideas came

to fruition a lot more.”

In fact, Ghazi first conceived of Brown Bee in 2022, after his company first purchased the property and started to receive offers from local businesses seeking to rent the space. “That led me to think that … maybe this is my sign to get into the food industry,” Ghazi said. Brown Bee will join a multitude of local businesses serving coffee to the college hill and Fox Point communities.

autumn Qiu ’25, who frequents c eremony and s tarbucks for their specialty drinks and productive atmospheres, looks forward to having another cafe around. “I like to study in coffee shops,” she wrote in an email to The herald. “The sound of people’s conversation is like white noise for me and I can really focus.”

Qiu first came across Brown Bee on the way to Trader Joe’s and plans to visit when it opens. she is looking forward to “cozy study spaces” and “good music.” she also hopes that Brown Bee will offer higher quality drinks than the “over-extracted” coffee she has found at some other cafes in Providence.

For Gaby c hoi ’26, a frequenter of c offee Exchange on Wickenden s treet, price is one of the main factors when deciding where to get her caffeine buzz. “ c offee is so overpriced almost everywhere now,” she wrote in a message to The herald.

“I’m looking forward to seeing (Brown Bee’s) interior design and workspaces,” Moonhee Kim ’26 wrote in a message to The h erald. “I think coffee shops say so much about a city’s character, and I hope Brown Bee adds to the authenticity of Providence.”

According to an unhoused woman who usually sleeps on College Street, RISD communicated to her that the grate was being installed, and said she could come back “in a few days.”

New artisan cafe to offer unique coffee blend, refined baked goods, merch

First announced in April 2023, Brown Bee now aims to open by late May, prior to Brown’s spring 2024 commencement ceremonies.

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Men’s basketball clinches Ivy Madness berth for first time in program history

Bears defeat Dartmouth with career-high 39 points from Kimo Ferrari ’24

BY COOPER HERMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

history was made in two ways on saturday night at the Pizzitola s ports c enter, as men’s basketball (11-17, 7-6 Ivy) hosted d artmouth (5-21, 1-12 Ivy) for Brown’s senior night match-up.

For the first time in program history, the Bears clinched a spot in Ivy Madness, the annual conference tournament that awards its winner with an automatic bid to the Ncaa d ivision 1 tournament. and Kimo Ferrari ’24, who led the way with a dazzling 39-point performance, broke a program record with ten three-pointers made.

“I’ve never had 39, so it was a crazy feeling out there. I felt like Kino Lilly (Jr. ’25). I felt like Mike Martin in 2002,” Ferrari joked.

Before tipoff, a ceremony honored the team’s three seniors, Felix Kloman ’24, Malachi Ndur ’24 and Ferrari, who quickly stole the show.

despite the offensive-powered ending to saturday’s contest, the game began as a defensive battle with both teams struggling to find offensive rhythm, committing turnovers and missing open looks.

Ndur eventually rekindled the Bears’ offense when he knocked down a three from the top of the key and completed a nifty transition layup off a sweet dime from Lilly Jr.

The Bears found additional offensive impulse from Ferrari, who was sizzling beyond the arc, draining three-pointer after three-pointer. Ferrari’s offensive efforts were accompanied by Lilly Jr., who recorded a career-high eight assists, nav-

MEN’S BASKETBALL

igating around screens and dishing swift passes to his teammates in open space.

Lilly Jr. also made tremendous contributions defensively, plucking seven steals — tied for the second-most in program history and the most since 2008.

The Bears were also assisted on defense by Nana Owusu-a nane ’25, who swam around the paint, grabbing any rebound in sight, poking steals and eliminating Big Green’s hopes of second-chance buckets.

Owusu-a nane finished the day with 13 points, eight assists and eight rebounds.

Following a solid first-half showing, Brown held a 41-30 lead over d artmouth.

The Bears came out of halftime firing on all cylinders, forcing d artmouth turnovers, running smooth offensive sets

and knocking down open shots — which helped Bruno mount a 51-33 lead with 15:46 left.

But just as the Bears seemed to pull away, the Big Green remained determined, putting pressure on Bruno to hold the lead. With unwavering defensive aggression and great shooting, d artmouth cut Brown’s lead to just 8 points with 9:44 left, testing the Bears’ resilience.

Thankfully, Ferrari entered “the zone,” sinking nearly every shot he took. The Bears gave Ferrari the keys to the offense, letting him shoot nearly every possession — a wise decision considering the fact that Ferrari shot an unbelievable 87.5% from the field and 83.3% from three-point range.

a fter Ferrari began to catch fire, d artmouth adjusted, sending defenders Ferrari’s way as soon as he emerged past half court. But to the Big Green’s dismay, Ferrari was nowhere nears his last lap, draining threes in transition, from the corner and off the dribble. There was simply no slowing him down — as Ferrari finished with 39 points, the sixth most in a single game in Brown history and tied for the most points scored in the Pizzitola s ports c enter by a Brown student-athlete. Ferrari also finished with ten threes on saturday, the most in program history. With every additional three Ferrari nailed, the Pizzitola s ports c enter got even louder, exploding with excitement as Ferrari extended the Brown lead and

Bears prevail over Harvard in electric overtime classic at the Pizz

Bruno now maintains sole possession of playoff spot in Ivy standings

BY LINUS LAWRENCE SPORTS EDITOR

Fans packed the Pizzitola sports center Friday night to watch men’s basketball face off against harvard in one of Brown sports’ most pivotal — and highly-anticipated — games of the season. What those in attendance experienced was an emotional rollercoaster of electric extremes, with the Bears dramatically seizing, surrendering and eventually reclaiming momentum in an instant classic played before a thunderous audience.

The Bears and crimson entered the evening tied for the fourth and final spot in the Ivy Madness tournament. With just three games apiece remaining in the regular season, whichever team emerged on top would secure a clear and controllable path to the playoffs, while the loser would be faced with the likelihood of elimination.

The Bears ran with their recent go-to starters: Kino Lilly Jr. ’25, Nana Owusu-anane ’25, Kalu anya ’26, alexander Lesburt Jr. ’26 and Lyndel Erold ’25. In Lilly Jr. and Owusu-anane, the Bears possess two of the league’s top three scorers, with Lilly Jr. leading the pack on the back of his stellar three-point shooting. In anya, the Bears sport the reigning Ivy League Player of the Week. By the end of the night, all five had

broke records. “I thought I was in the zone when Kino hit me on that transition three,” Ferrari said. d uring his post-game interview for E sPN+, Ferrari was showered with gatorade by his teammates as chants of “Kimo, Kimo” rang throughout the Pizz.

“This place is really special. I’m just very grateful that, four years ago, c oach Martin gave me this chance to try and make the most out of it,” said Ferrari. “We’re not done yet though,” he added. s aturday’s win was a symbolic achievement for this Brown team which, despite a challenging start to the season, seems to have truly turned the corner, winning their last five games in a row. “Our players, to their credit, really owned what they all think they can do better,” said head coach Mike Martin ’04. “I love the accountability, I love the ownership and I love the connectivity of our group right now.”

But before heading to New york city to embark on the Ivy Madness journey, the Bears have a final regular season game against yale (20-8, 11-2 Ivy). The Bears have already set their eyes on next week’s rematch against the Bulldogs, Martin said.

“It’s an opportunity for us to finish above .500 in league play,” he added. “It’s an opportunity for us to play against a team that beat us in our building in the first game of the year. a nd our process will never change.”

The Bears will fight for redemption against the Bulldogs and tune-up for the postseason at the Payne Whitney Gymnasium in New h aven at noon on s aturday. The game will be televised on E s PN+.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 3, 2024.

At the sound of the final buzzer,

recorded a signature moment with the lights at their brightest. It didn’t take long for the Pizz to get loud. Within one minute of tipoff, the stands — led in spirit by a section of students in all-white Bruno gear — had already been sent into a frenzy by an errant crimson pass and a Lilly Jr. triple to open scoring.

The energy didn’t let up. Within the first

ten minutes, Brown defended their court in dominant fashion, taking a 14-4 lead while boasting six blocks and three steals — as well as all manner of slick shots and suffocating stops.

The team was firing on all cylinders, with Owusu-anane dominating the paint offensively, anya dishing out harsh rejections on defense, aaron cooley ’24 playing cool as ever and captain Malachi Ndur ’24 appearing in the right

places at the right time as the Bears expanded their lead to 22-8.

The crimson put together an 11-6 run to end the half, but the game remained firmly in Brown’s hands as they took a 28-19 lead into halftime.

The Bears powered on when play resumed — hitting four shots from beyond the arc (two from Ndur, one from Lesburt Jr. and one from

Erold) in just over five minutes. Owusu-anane, meanwhile, sizzled like a sparkplug, racking up three rebounds, two steals, a dunk and a pair of free throws in a six-minute span, all the while roaring to himself, his fellow Bears and his home crowd.

Kimo Ferrari ’24 led the Bears with historic 39-point, 10-three performance.

students stormed onto the court to celebrate with the players.

BEARS FROM PAGE 6

Maintaining a 50-33 advantage with 11:15 left on the clock, the Bears appeared poised to take a clean win in the critical contest.

But just when all seemed to be coming up Bruno, the crimson slowly began to creep back. after Kimo Ferrari ’24 and Owusu-anane each barely missed open three-point attempts, the Bears’ offense began to stagnate as harvard’s seized its opportunity. harvard was already riding a 12-6 run when Ferrari committed a foul on a successful three-point attempt, leading to a four-point play and cutting the lead to 56-49. Lilly Jr., who had gone scoreless while being relentlessly double-teamed by harvard in the second-half, got two back on free-throw attempts, but harvard had already caught momentum.

The crimson surged, utterly stunning the Bears and their home spectators with a devastating 12-0 run. after leading the entire game — at one point by as much as 17 points — the Bears suddenly found themselves behind three with eighteen seconds on the clock.

The crimson called a timeout. Everyone in the arena knew to whose hands the Bears hoped to deliver the basketball: Lilly Jr., the league’s leading scorer and the player with the fourth-most triples in program history. Ferrari, pestered by the harvard defense, took the ball up the court, passing it to Owusu-anane as the clock struck twelve.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Bears’ head coach Mike Martin later walked through the nail-biting play moment-by-moment: “harvard did a good job of not letting us speed up into our set, so we didn’t get into it as fast as maybe we would have liked to.”

Owusu-anane took a few dribbles with purpose, appearing as if he may attempt a two-pointer to put the Bears within one in the hopes of another quick possession, but the crimson put multiple players between him and the basket.

“The first option if they messed up the coverage was to get Nana a quick layup, but then obviously two (players) went with him,” Martin continued.

Owusu-anane then pivoted, spinning around to find Lilly standing just behind the arc to the left of the basket. as Lilly motioned to shoot, harvard’s Justice ajogbor, a 6’10” defensive death sentence, came barreling towards him.

“Nana made a great pass, but then (Lilly Jr.’s) got 6’10” closing out on him,” Martin said. “Plays that lead to contested step-back jumpers with (6’10”) guys on him probably aren’t great plays.”

But when Lilly Jr., after a quick fake, sent the ball soaring over ajogbor’s outstretched left hand, it somehow found its way through the netting of the hoop. Of his 227 career three-pointers prior to that moment, zero were bigger than this one.

“We just have really good players who can make that play look a little better,” Martin concluded.

according to Lilly Jr. following the game: “Nana came out of the time-out and said ‘I’m throwing it back regardless.’”

standing on the brink of a heart-wrenching blown lead and near-certain playoff elimination, Lilly Jr.’s three pushed the Bears back into a tie with just 5.8 seconds left on the clock. after strong defense by cooley to prevent the crimson from getting a shot off prior to the buzzer, the showdown was headed to overtime.

after a harvard three opened the five-minute overtime period, the ever-expanding plot thickened when Lesburt Jr. got unintentionally fouled to the face, going down hard and slamming the court in frustration.

“I couldn’t see for probably two minutes,” Lesburt said following the game.

Lesburt missed his first throw, made the second, and was then removed from the game with his status unclear.

Tangled in the tension of the impending buzzer, the two teams traded stylish buckets, with Lilly Jr. fast-breaking across the court for a layup and ajogbor responding with a deafening dunk.

The Bears suffered a critical blown opportunity when, after anya recovered the rebound from a missed Ferrari three-point attempt, Erold failed to make the open shot in the paint.

With exactly one minute left, the Bears

now found themselves trailing — this time by a score of 66-64 — when a familiar figure emerged onto the court.

coach put me back in, and he always tells me, ‘If that shot’s open, hunt that shot. It’s gonna be there, and take it when it’s there,’” Lesburt said of his return.

Immediately dished the ball while standing behind the arc, Lesburt got his open shot, took it and didn’t miss. Just like Lilly Jr. before him, Lesburt had now dug the Bears out of the hole.

as the crowd erupted, Lesburt and his teammates began to partake in a celebration befitting the moment: holding their hand over one side of their face as he had done in pain on the hardwood floor minutes earlier.

“It just kind of came naturally,” Lesburt said of the celebration. “I kept holding my eye after I got poked, so after I hit the shot it just felt natural…”

after Lesburt rewrote the frustration of his minor injury, he was promptly subbed out for Erold, who — having missed the wide open jumper — now got his chance for redemption.

Erold was up to the task, promptly delivering a block of harvard’s leading scorer Malik Mack, securing the second-chance rebound, and was intentionally fouled. draining both free throws, he put the Bears up 69-66.

The crimson attempted two heart-stopping threes on their next possession, but neither were good, with Ferrari being eventually fouled by ajogbol, driving the latter out of the game.

Women’s basketball loses chance at Ivy Madness

Arnolie erupts for 25 points in 75-66 victory against Cornell

BY LYDELL DYER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

as their playoff hopes hung in the air, the women’s basketball team (15-11, 6-7 Ivy) entered the Pizzitola sports center for their saturday afternoon matchup against cornell (7-18, 1-12 Ivy).

The Bears needed to defeat cornell — and hope for a Penn loss — to have any chance at making the upcoming Ivy Madness tournament.

With the postseason on the line, clutch performances by Grace arnolie ’26 and Mya Murray ’24 helped Bruno secure a 75-66 victory over the Big red. yet even as the team won their contest, they lost out on the playoffs, as Penn (15-11, 7-6 Ivy) claimed the fourth and final spot in the tournament after upsetting harvard (15-11, 8-5 Ivy) 69-67.

“We can’t control what other teams do,” arnolie said while Penn battled it out with harvard. “But we can control how we play.”

The Bears came out firing, converting the opening tipoff into an Isabella Mauricio ’25 bucket just five seconds into the game. But a quick nine-point burst by cornell extinguished Brown’s blazing start, and the Big red overwhelmed the Bears 11-5 halfway through the first quarter. a timely three by arnolie helped contain the onslaught of red, and Bruno managed to escape the first down 17-13.

as play resumed, the Bears blossomed, going on a 7-0 run to kick off the quarter. Brown attacked with clinical precision, spearing into the paint and drawing either fouls or points in the process.

“Our team did a good job drawing fouls and getting to the free throw line,” head coach Monique LeBlanc wrote in a message to The herald. That “reflects our goal to play strong.”

On the defensive end, alyssa Moreland ’26 put on her best bouncer impression, and Murray’s 6’2’’ frame grew into a wall the Big

red could not overcome. The dominant duo combined for 18 rebounds, two blocks and two steals over the course of the contest.

“I knew it was going to be a physical game,” Murray said. “That’s what the big emphasis was going in. It was about matching their physicality and then exceeding it” on both sides of the ball.

as the final two minutes of the half drew to a close, both teams were pitted in a tight contest, going shot for shot with each other. But following a key defensive stand, arnolie found a hole in cornell’s defense and took an open three to claim a 31-27 advantage. seconds later, she doubled down, stealing the ball and scoring on the offensive glass to force a cornell timeout. On the backdrop of her 16-point first-half performance, the Bears entered the locker room leading 36-31. during halftime, “my coaches let me know that they thought I could get downhill a lot more off the drive,” arnolie said. “They thought I could attack (cornell’s) defense off the dribble … and once I started doing that, it started opening up my three-point shot as well.”

That’s exactly what arnolie did, erupting the Bears’ offense at the next whistle. Kyla Jones ’24’s play in transition, arnolie’s precision in the paint and Olivia young ’27’s nothing-but-net three-point shooting catapulted the Bears’ advantage to 50-35 in the first four minutes of the half.

What had started out as a quiet afternoon in the wake of a loss turned into a raging rink of excited cheers and explosive plays. Energy pulsed through the Pizz as arnolie delivered a 25-point performance, tying her career-high. an impossible rebound by Moreland as she lay on her back capped off the electric quarter, and the crowd burst from their seats with the Bears ahead 58-44.

Two minutes into the fourth, a Mauricio free throw secured Brown’s largest lead of the day, 64-46. But just when the game seemed almost over, cornell went on a fourth-quarter surge. With only one minute left, the Big red clawed their way back to a slim six-point deficit.

“We knew that today was a really important game,” Murray said. “We had to come in ready to go.”

Ferrari’s free throws were both good.

With seconds left on the clock, Mack mustered an impressive layup, but the fight had already finished. When Ferrari inbounded the ball and clutched it, Bruno had prevailed.

What happened next could only be described as collective, cathartic mayhem: Brown students poured out of the rafters and stormed onto the court to celebrate with the players, chanting and cheering for the unforgettable win that all but clinched men’s basketball its first-ever appearance in the Ivy Madness playoff tournament.

“I thought it was a great team win,” Erold said. “Everybody was just diving on the floor, doing whatever we needed. We knew how important this game was.”

The Bears’ will next take on dartmouth saturday evening in their senior day match-up before heading to New haven for the regular season finale next weekend. should they advance, they’d play in the Ivy Tournament hosted by columbia and beginning March 16.

When asked just what kind of position Friday’s win positions them in to earn a playoff berth, Erold was quick to respond: “a great one.”

coach Martin remained measured. “We’ve got two more games. I know for sure if we win those two games that then we’ll be playing in New york city.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 2, 2023.

BASKETBALL 10 BY THE NUMBERS

Men’s basketball won 89-67 against Dartmouth Saturday, and senior Kimo Ferrari set a program record with 10 threepointers made.

01

Following wins against Harvard and Dartmouth, men’s basketball advances to Ivy Madness for the 1st time in program history.

09

While cornell prayed for a late upset, Brown chewed the clock. With the ball in her hands, young watched the seconds tick, hitting a demonstrative three-pointer as the shot clock expired to put the game away. With only thirty seconds left, cornell couldn’t come back, and the Bears took a resounding 75-66 victory.

But winning was not enough for the Bears to reach Ivy Madness, as Penn bested harvard and punched their ticket to New york.

“all we can do is focus on the next game,” arnolie said. “No matter what, we’re going to try and finish the season off strong.”

The Bears are set to take on yale at home next saturday at 3 p.m.

“Winning saturday after the disappointment of getting bounced from Ivy Madness would be a testament to our team’s character and toughness,” LeBlanc said. “Our team continues to move on an upward trajectory and we intend to keep that going in the future.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 3, 2024.

Women’s basketball defeated Cornell by nine points last Saturday with a final score of 75-66.

SCORES RECAP

WOMEN’S

The Bears needed to defeat Cornell — and hope for a Penn loss — to have a chance at making the upcoming Ivy Madness tournament.

post-

Letter from the Editor

Dear Readers,

One of my New Year’s Resolutions for this year was to be more present—to appreciate each and every moment, conversation, experience. Considering how shocked I was to learn that it’s already March, it’s safe to say that there is still progress to be made. Despite my best efforts to both stay on top of my workload and have quality downtime, I find myself defaulting to blocked-out calendars and long to-do lists, as though comforted by this vicious cycle of productivity: fill free time with work → have more free time… that can be filled with more work. As I’ve failed to make time to do the things I enjoy, I’ve been dwelling on a quote by Annie Dillard where she says, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” One “busy” week turns into two, then three, where I lose sight of the simple pleasures that ground me: the coffee and Sylvia Plath poems in the mornings, the crosswords in the afternoons, the episodes of Modern Family in the evening. While I love the structure that schedules provide, I can’t help but feel guilty about making calendar entries for free time.

This week in post-, our writers are feeling contemplative as well. In Feature, our writer reflects on queer love, community, and voyeurism in the archives. Meanwhile in Narrative, our writers have weather on their mind. Rain and snow alike, our writers talk about how their perspectives have shifted as they’ve acclimated to life in New England. In A&C, one writer talks about using emails as a love language for her friends. Another A&C writer discusses parodying the patriarchy and the prominence of queer leads in film. In Lifestyle, one writer shares the notes they’d leave for themself if they had amnesia, while another writer meditates on the art of slow living. And, as always, a crossword with idioms aplenty to round out your read.

I must confess, dearest Readers, I have yet to perfect the balance between productivity and presence since this realization. But in acknowledging this unhealthy habit that many of us find hard to kick, I truly believe I’m one step closer to being more mindful. Instead of filling in every gap in my day, I intend on simply letting them be. Maybe I’ll go on a walk by the river, or host an Oscars watch party for my friends. Who knows? That’s the beauty of it. The only thing I do know is that my time reading post- every week is always time well spent, and yours should be too.

Here and now,

Narrative Managing Editor

Lynn

The

Audrey

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“I gave up hating for Lent.”

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“I knew his stories wouldn’t leave me for a while, and I wondered if there was any part of our lives that he’d hold onto and remember, too, once in a while, as a part of the exchanges that happen when lives collide briefly in an ever-shifting world.”

Damian Wasilewicz, “Hostel-Hoppers” 3.17.23

“Forget being jaded, edgy, or cool. Irony is overrated and cynicism is toxic. Instead, keep up the attitude that good will always triumph over evil.”

Malena Colon, “Optimism, Hedonism, and Hair” 3.18.22

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"That's___!" (Distressed parent's rebuke)

C-3PO or R2-D2

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Want to be involved?

Email: joseph_maffa@brown.edu!

Guan ’27: We must remain vigilant against hate amid polarizing campus activism

On Feb. 17, members of pro-Palestinian campus groups at harvard reportedly began circulating a cartoon on social media channels depicting boxer Muhammad ali and former Egyptian President Gamal abdel Nasser being hung by a golden chain held by a hand displaying a star of david and dollar sign.

harvard administrators swiftly condemned the organizations for perpetuating antisemitism. The groups issued official apologies soon after, but many scoffed at the apologies, furious that such blatant antisemitism could “slip” by leaders of those groups. The organizations also quickly became fodder for satire writers at the harvard crimson, who mocked their apologies for being tone-deaf and ignorant.

Beyond the backlash, the root of the issue appears to be that leadership at these organizations failed to understand the cartoon’s antisemitic nature and allowed it to be posted. I see this failure as a symptom of a much larger problem: that a polarized and activist-oriented environment has blinded us to hatred.

I do not mean to criticize activism itself, but rather the fierce, often activist-endorsed rhetoric that too carelessly equates disagreement with hate. The Ivy League has become known for polarizing campus politics in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, but the seeming inability to recognize antisemitism by such organizations is still cause for alarm. some may see the harvard cartoon as nothing more than an innocent mistake, but I respectfully disagree. This failure

did not occur in a vacuum but was rather the culmination of rampant polarization and complete disregard for those on opposing sides.

Though harvard’s recent events were isolated to its campus, I believe it is once again time for us to reflect on not just our commitment to freedom of expression but also the consequences of our rhetoric.

“

tion as fundamentally hateful, implicitly justifying any hateful sentiments against them.

This is not to say that we are incapable of condemning hateful incidents; the campus community issued widespread condemnation of hate after an unknown intruder left an antisemitic note in an apart-

We would not have seen the most progressive and transformative changes in global history if it were not for those who stood up for their ideals. But I wish to remind my peers that the righteousness of a cause cannot excuse hatred against others.

“

I also believe the same warning signs are present on college hill. chants supporting the yemeni houthis, for example, demonstrate that our rhetoric has not only inflamed tensions but also painted the opposi-

Hudes ’27: Navalny’s

ment shared by two Jewish students. What disheartens me is that after issuing our condemnations and reaffirming our support, we have continuously failed to reflect on our role in allowing these acts to take place.

Perhaps we are desensitized to criticism nowadays

in light of torrential accusations by commentators, but we must carefully examine the repercussions of our rhetoric. as Brown students, we play an outsized role in activist culture by virtue of the media attention we draw, as evidenced by activists at countless other universities who have followed our lead. We have real influence, and we must use it to properly and fully condemn all forms of hate, regardless of political opinion. as leaders in these historic times, we must ask ourselves frankly: To what extent are our words responsible for the increase of hate on college campuses?

activism is a quintessential part of Brown, and I greatly admire our commitment to the issues dear to us. We would not have seen the most progressive and transformative changes in global history if it were not for those who stood up for their ideals. But I wish to remind my peers that the righteousness of a cause cannot excuse hatred against others. If history will not kindly judge those who stood idly by during a genocide, neither will it kindly judge those who promoted hate.

Lucas Guan ’27 can be reached at lucas_guan@brown. edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@ browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com

precarious death was met by silence on college campuses — it must be broken

While it seems that activism on college campuses has been at an all-time high, the death of alexsei Navalny has not incited the outrage from students that it warrants. Whether this is rooted in an exhaustion of foreign geopolitical care or a disregard for the russian opposition movement is irrelevant. No matter the cause of the unsettling quiet, college campuses must break the silence with an uproar, demanding the house to act swiftly and vote in favor of sending foreign aid to ukraine.

Navalny represented hope for an alternative to Putin’s presidency. his work in political activism included anti-corruption advocacy and civil rights protections. however, in 2017, as he grew in popularity and threatened Putin’s dominance, he was barred from the 2018 russian presidential election. his death represents the crushing of hope for an interjection of democracy in russian politics and a change of the current regime.

Navalny’s “sudden death syndrome” on Feb. 16 in prison inspired a moment of dissent in russia. Thousands poured from the church in which his funeral service was held, Navalny’s followers making an impressive showing despite Kremlin threats of arrest. as it is apparent that Putin is responsible for Navalny’s precarious death, the dictator has marked a new low in his ruthless pursuit of power.

The unity shown at Navalny’s funeral has also appeared in the us with vigils and a memorial outside of the russian consulate. yet, despite the global

reckoning of Putin’s transgression, college campuses remain complacent in their indifference. Even as speaker of the house Mike Johnson sets to derail the senate-passed aid for ukraine, students across the

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border deal. The border provisions that were included at the request of republicans were rejected following loaded attacks from Trump that claimed the provisions were lackluster.

bill to move to the house floor for a vote. Johnson’s mind was not swayed by Putin’s commitment to authoritarianism in his killing of Navalny nor by pleas made by senate Majority Leader chuck schumer.

Since Congress won’t take Navalny’s death as a testament to Putin’s disregard for democracy, we must hear the cry of Putin’s opposition and apply legislative pressure. This pressure can start with a sentiment on college campuses.

country can’t seem to muster a moment of lament, nonetheless alarm.

Three days before aleksei Navalny died, the senate passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid bill that included $60 billion to support ukraine’s resistance to russia’s invasion. This came a week after republicans blocked a similar bill that included a bipartisan

republicans are delaying the deliverance of aid to ukraine, putting their political agendas above the imperative of ukraine’s resistance to the russian invasion. It is clear that Trump used his influence to kill the bill to leave room for him to campaign on the issue in the coming months. and now, Johnson has shown no intention of allowing the senate-passed

The political motives of republicans, which are currently delaying american aid, could be lethal and lead to ukraine’s defeat. Putin’s tyranny and Johnson’s malfeasance must qualify as an issue worthy of the attention of college campuses, yet it seems many have simply moved on from ukraine’s plight.

since congress won’t take Navalny’s death as a testament to Putin’s disregard for democracy, we must hear the cry of Putin’s opposition and apply pressure on congress to act swiftly. This pressure can start on college campuses. If students are reinvigorated by Navalny’s martyrdom, we can inspire a national attitude that will not stand for congress’s waffling and that demands geopolitical repercussions for Putin go beyond Biden’s sanctions.

college campuses must hear the echoes of Navalny’s cry and embody his dedication to democracy. If there ever has been a time to care about ukraine, that time is now.

Paul Hudes ’27 can be reached at paul_hudes@brown. edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@ browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.

Letter: Institutional “neutrality” is not the answer

To the Editor:

The recent op-ed by Tas rahman ’26 calls for Brown and other universities in the united states to adopt policies of institutional neutrality rather than take principled stances on moral issues. There is no word to describe this position other than cowardly. universities are critical sites of knowledge production in our society, and to argue that these institutions should remain silent on the pressing moral issues of our time — such as an ongoing genocide — is to argue that knowledge is somehow neutral. This ignores the fact that academic discourses are the context from which conditions of violence arise — a context which is undeniably shaped in significant part by universities. This op-ed essentially argues for a world in which our institutions of power and influence hide behind shields of “neutrality” (a false notion, as to be “neutral” in the face of oppression is to side with the oppressor) rather than acting as forces moving us towards a world characterized by justice. such cowardice has no place in the future I imagine when I close my eyes.

sincerely,

Garrett Brand ’26

Aizenberg ’26: Brown should implement lottery-based admissions

at the Olympics, each track event starts with nearly 50 competitors in “heats,” where a certain relative time is required to reach the next round. The field is slowly whittled down until about 10 advance to the final.

Imagine if, at the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Olympic committee changes this straightforward process to include factors other than race times. runners who excel at non-track sports, have the most interesting bio on the Olympic website, or whose countries give the most money to the Olympic committee would receive a generous time adjustment. Most people would agree that this rule change would be ridiculous and comical.

yet college admissions function similarly to this alternative universe Olympics. admissions committees consider what I believe to be unfair and extraneous factors. colleges like Brown should switch to a new admissions system: one where students must meet a minimum high school GPa and standardized testing requirement to apply. applicants would then be entered into a lottery, where a certain number would be randomly selected for admittance.

college admissions at selective universities are broken, as illustrated by a recent, highly publicized study. using a previously unavailable data set, researchers found that students from families in the top 1% (with a yearly income greater than or equal to $611,000) of the income ladder are twice as likely to attend an Ivy Plus university compared to middle-income students with similar saT or acT scores. This favoritism, according to the study, is a result of three main factors: legacy admissions, increased weighting of extracurriculars and the recruitment of student athletes.

The natural conclusion here is that admissions committees at top universities should not consider — or at least greatly deprioritize — the aforementioned admission considerations. Lega-

cy admissions are, at best, a way to foster community, but are often just a tool for universities to bring in more alumni donations. schools like Brown have multi-billion dollar endowments large enough to forgo the financial boost associated with legacy admissions (which may be a myth anyway).

Extracurriculars are similarly misunderstood. They certainly showcase students’ abilities outside of school and ensure that admitted students are interesting and well-rounded people. still, schools do not need to select for this, as high-achieving students nearly always have impressive abilities outside of school — weighting for extracurricu-

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with particularly unusual circumstances. Both are some of the best measures we currently have in predicting future academic and professional success. standardized test scores are far less biased when it comes to socioeconomic status or race when compared to other admissions criteria. They are also surprisingly hard to meaningfully improve on. high school GPa is similarly robust and also captures qualities, such as persistence and grit, that are not necessarily exhibited in a three-hour standardized test.

In some sense, admissions at Brown are already a lottery. The school receives far more applicants than it can

College admissions should strive to be as objective and fair as Olympic running events.

lars can force these students to overextend themselves.

surprisingly, athlete recruitment is also misconceived. recruiting athletes is perceived as a way to admit more disadvantaged students, but it actually does the opposite at elite universities.

In reality, most high-level sports are expensive: Many sports, like fencing or equestrian, are largely inaccessible to lower-income high schoolers.

an admissions lottery would not consider any of these factors that favor wealthy (and usually white) applicants. Instead, it would focus on the most predictive, merit-based factors: standardized test scores and high school GPa , with occasional exceptions for students

“

ever hope to admit, and the admission committee must find razor-thin (and, I would argue, imaginary) distinctions between applicants. No matter how hard they try, it is impossible for these committees to truly be objective and not influenced by incidental factors. One study even found that committees favor academic achievements on cloudy days and non-academic ones on sunny days.

With this all said, here is how the Brown admissions lottery could work: all applicants who score at or above a 33 on the acT or a 1470 on the saT — which, according to college Board, are Brown’s minimum standardized testing requirements — and have a GPa in

the top tenth of their graduating high school class will be admitted into a lottery. The school will then randomly select about 1,700 of these applicants to attend the next year (though, as I have previously argued, the acceptance rate should be higher). This lottery may be impossible in practice, but Brown could certainly experiment with it for a year or perhaps only use it for regular decision applicants. The school could then assess the lottery’s efficacy and adjust it for factors it may miss, similar to how the medical resident matching system has evolved over the decades. For example, they could add in weighting to ensure that Brown still enrolls a diverse class — though the lottery system would likely already better accommodate this than the current admissions system, even without adjustments.

college admissions should strive to be as objective and fair as Olympic running events. Just as spectators would not be compelled to watch only the wealthiest runners advance to the finals, no student should be granted admission because their parents could afford to provide them with additional opportunities that currently improve admission chances. The solution is an admissions lottery based on high school GPa and standardized testing scores. These metrics are not perfect, but are still the fairest available predictors of academic and professional success. If Brown implements this system, only academically deserving applicants will be able to cross the finish line onto college hill.

Ben Aizenberg can be reached at benjamin_aizenberg@brown.edu. Please send responses to this op-ed to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@ browndailyherald.com.

Letter: Response to “Why we walked out of Jonathan Greenblatt’s talk”

To the Editor:

I am very disappointed with the latest op-ed written by jonath ’24 and rosenzweig ’24. The authors are uninformed as to what Jonathan Greenblatt actually said. If they had stuck around for more than four minutes, they would know that he discussed far-right racism and antisemitism at length, giving the topic the attention it deserves. unlike the authors, he also engaged in dialogue about the clearly problematic incidents that have taken place on college hill (like the “specific violent threats” sent to hillel just 11 days before the talk and sJP chapters’ use of hamas paragliders in their advertising materials). In walking out, the authors displayed an unwillingness to engage in any discussion of campus antisemitism so long as one of the discussants says something they disagree with.

The authors are also uninformed

as to the sources they use. In discussing the old “land without people for a people without land” quote, they linked an interesting JsTOr article — one they clearly haven’t read, because the author, adam Garfinkle, discusses how anti-Zionist polemicists “have used the phrase in their efforts to discredit Zionism as an insensitive, racist and exclusivist movement,” and explains why “most of these polemicists have ever so slightly, but significantly, misquoted the phrase.” according to the authors’ own source, this phrase “did not mean, then or afterwards, what anti-Zionist polemicists imply that it did.” Interestingly, this quote has little to do with the content of Greenblatt’s talk. Instead of engaging with Greenblatt’s reasoning, the authors re-hashed the same points they and other anti-Zionists have made in all their other op-eds. The authors could have avoided this mistake if they spent their op-ed discussing the things

Greenblatt actually said instead of turning him into a Zionist strawman.

Moreover, even if Garfinkle is wrong, most modern Zionists (like me) do not see Palestine as “a land without people.” Many Zionists believe in a two-state solution — one in which both Jews and Palestinians can forge their own futures and participate in the international community as equals. Many oppose Israel’s government and policies while supporting Israel’s right to exist. These flag-waving Israelis are likely the ones who will make a real difference, as they will vote in the next Israeli elections.

The authors’ thoughts on the terminology surrounding Zionism and anti-Zionism are worth a brief discussion. They disagree with Greenblatt’s definition of Zionism as self-determination for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland. This is a definition

to which I (and many other Zionists) subscribe. Zionism does not in itself demand that self-determination be withheld from Palestinians. To many Zionists, it simply means that Israel should exist in some form. If the authors of this op-ed spent more time engaging with Zionists and less time demonizing them, perhaps they would understand that we are a community characterized by diverse opinions surrounding what Israel should look like and how it should act. We disagree with one another over many issues, including some of Greenblatt’s sketchier points. But I will always maintain that the issue of Israel and Palestine is not an “us or them” situation, and I remain willing to listen to views dissimilar from my own. can the authors say the same?

Theodore horowitz ’24

ARTS & CULTURE

Which Live Action Oscar Shorts are worth the watch?

Range of themes, whirlwind of emotions in five short films

BY ROSE FARMAN-FARMA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Watching five films in a row may not be a typical choice for the every-day theater-goer, especially when they are all going for Oscar-worthy emotional impact. But while this year’s selection of academy award-nominated live action shorts was certainly grave, the collection is worth the watch.

For the past two weeks, Providence’s avon c inema has been screening the Oscar short film contenders, featuring entries from d enmark to Quebec, that offer insightful vignettes of contemporary cinema.

‘The After’

Immediately establishing the collection’s tragic tone was Misan harriman’s “The after.” The film didn’t shy away from extremes, at one moment depicting the death of the protagonist’s entire family, then documenting his subsequent downwar d spiral in his personal, social and work life — definitely not a light-hearted start. While h ariman’s film achieved a vigorous portrayal of grief’s unbearable struggles and ended with a motivational message of self recovery, its storyline felt hyperbolically dramatic, detracting from its sinceri -

REVIEW

ty . Oftentimes, the film came across as mawkish rather than moving. sometimes, with such limited screen time, less is more. audience member dorrit corwin ’24 found the film “shockingly bad.”

‘Red, White and Blue’

But the collection’s second contender, “red, White and Blue,” was incredibly touching. after allowing the audience less than a minute to process the intensity of “The after,” the avon screened Nazrin choudhury’s powerful

social critique on poverty and abortion in the united states. The short skillfully succeeded in being both political and personal, didactically portraying the difficulties of a working class single mother and the levels of mountain-moving required to get an abortion in the south, especially now. c houdhury also had the whole theater gasping at an appalling twist that made the film’s feminist commentary even more poignant. “red, White and Blue” ended with a beautifully empowering tone, stressing the power of female solidarity and the contagiousness

of compassion as we are shown how far one gesture of kindness can travel.

‘Knight of Fortune’

some humor was finally introduced into the line-up by Lasse Lyskjær Noer’s short “Knight of Fortune.” despite being set in a morgue, the film still managed to be the most lighthearted of the first three. With its creative storyline and phenomenal acting, the danish short was delicately comedic and harrowing. Noer’s portrayal of multiple strangers coming together while visiting their dead loved ones left the audience touched by the unifying power of grief.

‘Invincible’

The screening’s fourth film, “Invincible,” followed the last 48 hours of teenager Marc’s life as he navigates the world in and out of juvenile detention. Told in a clever cyclical style, the film provided a striking commentary on freedom, punishment and resistance as Marc narrates his feelings of “swimming against the current” and “screaming in a world that doesn’t listen.”

The French canadian short was an audience favorite. It was “just a really beautiful, personal story,” said Brown student asa Turok ’24, who came to watch the shorts for Visual arts associate Professor ramell ross’s class “VIsa 1900: Other Lives of Time.” he added that ross was nominated for an Oscar himself in 2019.

c oco Kanders ’27, another Brown student, agreed that the film was “really emotive and intimate. It had literally ev-

eryone sobbing,” she said.

‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar’

Lastly, Wes anderson swooped in with “The Wonderful story of henry sugar,” providing some light-hearted relief after two hours of relentless polemical tragedies. This fun adaptation of roald dahl’s short story chronicled the life of wealthy aristocrat henry sugar on a quest to “see without his eyes.” It was playfully distinctive, with theatrical sets, anderson’s typical bright aesthetic and repeated fourth-wall-breaking as every line was narrated in the third person.

corwin said that it was “her favorite” and that the director’s “style is actually better suited to a short film,” as it was less overwhelming than watching a feature of his. “It felt like the perfect story within a story — in a condensed way, that I liked.”

Kanders agreed with anderson’s being her favorite film of the night. It was “as though I’d just watched a short story,” she said.

With its unrealistic and quirky mood, the film was by far the most enjoyable watch, but placed in comparison with the four other heavy entries, the short lacked profundity.

With the Oscars scheduled for sunday, March 10, judges will have to choose between comedy and social critique in deciding which short deserves the award. This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 4, 2024.

‘Dune: Part Two’ expands on prequel with epic action, intense emotion

Powerful acting, deliberate storytelling set film apart

BY GABRIELLA WRIGHTEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

usually, when audiences visit movie theaters, they know what to expect. Major studios tend to predict what the american public wants, resulting in most released films fitting a certain formula for decades at a time. Of course, there are exceptions. “dune: Part Two” is one that stands out from its action film counterparts.

The prequel to “ d une: Part Two,” d irector d enis Villeneuve’s 2021 film “dune,” builds the world of Paul atreides (Timothée chalamet), son of duke Leto atreides (Oscar Isaac) and his concubine Lady Jessica (rebecca Ferguson). house atreides — one of many “Great houses” in the film’s futuristic universe — takes over the desert planet arrakis only to be subsequently massacred by the Imperial troops and house harkonnen, the film’s main villains.

“d une: Part Two” begins where its prequel left off. after the destruction of house atreides, Paul and Lady Jessica join the Fremen, the indigenous population of arrakis. The reason for their integration with the tribe is twofold. The pair is still being hunted by the violent and explosive house harkonnen, all while the Bene-Gesserit — a group of all-powerful women who advise the empire and its planets — are planting seeds that Paul is the Lisan al-Gaib or Mahdi, an overpowered, foreseeing messiah of Fremen mythology.

Villeneuve masters the push and pull between these two plot points. Over the film’s near three-hour runtime, frantic and brutal rabban harkonnen (dave Bautista), believing Paul to be dead, begins to hunt for the Mahdi (who, unbeknownst to him, is also Paul). This rivalry between the

houses brings out some great performanc-

including

of using every minute wisely is something Villeneuve has mastered over the course of his career. stellar

costume design and visual effects fully immerse audiences into arrakis, yet the film never feels overloaded. There’s no need to over-explain or emphasize: The film’s action, emotion and performances speak for themselves.

Thematically, “dune: Part Two” excels in its warnings of fanaticism. Frank herbert’s original novel was a self-proclaimed warning against charismatic leaders. Paul can technically see the future, but ultimately, he is just a man. The “dune” novel lends itself to interiority, and as a result, is at times saturated with Paul’s guilt over the war he is about to wage. Villeneuve’s sequel simply turns this portrayal outward. at every sign, Fremen leader stilgar (Javier Bardem) insists Paul is the Lisan al-Gaib. The timing is intentionally comedic: Every time Paul does anything — really, anything — the camera turns to stilgar, sitting silently in awe before yelling “Lisan al-Gaib!” While the move is funny at first, the film builds up to its climactic moments and Villeneuve makes good on herbert’s original warning.

Even with a strong moral backbone, many films of such scale get lost in their epic battles, but Zendaya’s chani brings the action back down to Earth. In the most important moments of the film, a fierce look and a tearful quiver show all of what chani wants to say. Zendaya’s silent performance, similar in excellence to Butler’s outlandish one, emphasizes the film’s best features. as enormous ships and sandworms glide past, the film’s focus remains on the relationships and heart behind its fantasy.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 4, 2024.

es,

stellan skarsgård as Baron harkonnen and Léa seydoux as Margot Fenring. But austin Butler outshines them all as Feyd-rautha harkonnen, nephew of Baron harkonnen and heir to the harkonnen throne. completely hairless and clad

in stark black armor, Butler’s Feyd-rautha is terrifying, to put it lightly. While Butler’s screen time is limited, every single second was carefully crafted. This practice

Stellar costume design and visual effects fully immerse audiences into Arrakis, yet the film never feels overloaded. There’s no need to over-explain or emphasize: The film’s action, emotion and performances speak for themselves.

‘Proof’ exhibition surveys Barbara T. Smith’s life, evolution as artist

Traveling exhibition

showcases Smith’s expansive portfolio

BY CAMPBELL LOI SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The Brown a rts Institute welcomed “Proof,” a touring exhibition showcasing the work of california-based multimedia performance artist Barbara T. smith, to The david Winton Bell Gallery at the List art center on Feb. 22.

The exhibition, which first debuted at the Institute of contemporary art in Los angeles, features several of smith’s most significant performance works, according to the gallery’s exhibition guide. Each performance is represented through a variety of mediums, including collections of photographs, prints and sculptures, as well as various letters, notebooks and other relics.

smith’s expansive portfolio spans over 60 years, and includes more than 160 performances. Through radical, interdisciplinary acts, smith sought to investigate the intersection of what she defines as “real life and performance,” as stated in Ica L a’s exhibition guide. her work explores themes of gender, sexuality, science, technology, death and aging, and was known for its subversion of expectations and boundaries in these subject areas — especially during the time in which they were created.

Barbara is “someone who was very ahead of her time, working in really intensive art-tech collaborations at a time when that wasn’t happening often in the art world, and especially less often for women artists,” said Thea Quiray Tagle, associate curator of the Bell Gallery and of the Brown arts Institute and the receiving curator of the exhibit.

Quiray Tagle was tasked with transforming the exhibition to fit not only the Bell Gallery space, but also the broader cultural context of the university and the East coast — a job, she said, took a lot of time and research.

The biggest challenge was fitting such a large survey exhibition into a smaller gallery space, Quiray Tagle said. several

performances had to be either reduced or cut out completely in order to accommodate the size of the exhibition, and walls were constructed to allow for more space

to display the artwork.

The gallery was also arranged chronologically, allowing visitors to explore the progression of smith’s career. Visitors

daNa rIchIE / hEraLd

shared that they enjoyed getting to see how smith’s work changed over time as they walked through the exhibit.

“It was really cool to see how her work

has evolved and compounded,” said Esha Karayi ’24, who visited the exhibit with a friend. “It kind of takes you through her life and evolution as an artist … It’s a really fun exhibit.”

Karayi added that it was especially interesting to see the changes in technology over time — most notably how smith’s early work utilized Xerox machines while some of her latest photographs were taken on high-definition scanners. she also appreciated smith’s growth both as an artist and an individual, as the artist developed confidence in her sexuality and spirituality.

“Barbara’s life and the kind of work that she made really pushes against a lot of expectations of women artists and performance artists, at the time and even today,” Quiray Tagle said. she hopes that visitors to the exhibition — which will stay open in the Bell Gallery until June 2 — will bring more recognition to smith’s incredible body of work.

“Barbara is now in her 90s, but she hasn’t quite gotten the kinds of attention that other women performance artists have had, even from her same generation,” Quiray Tagle said. “That was really exciting for us at The Bell.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 5, 2024.

Providence French and Francophone Film Festival screening at Avon

BY AYANA AHUJA

CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Providence French and Francphone Film Festival, commonly abbreviated as the PFFFF, opened Thursday evening with the Oscar-nominated “a natomy of a Fall” aWt Thayer street’s avon cinema. Organized by the u niversity’s d epartment of French and Francophone studies, the festival is set to screen 13 French-language films until March 7.

Founded in 1995, PFFFF is directed by Laura Odello, a visiting associate professor of French and Francophone studies and Italian studies. What used to be a small-scale ciné-club has since evolved into a film festival that remains a staple of the Providence art scene.

alongside a festival committee, Odello considered dozens of films with the goal of sharing French and Francophone cinema with university members and the broader Providence community.

s he emphasized the festival’s commitment to diversity by showcasing not only French cinema, but also films from various Francophone regions, particularly from West a frican countries including cameroon, senegal and Guinea. Viewers can “listen to an area that’s larger and broader than France itself,” Odello said.

“It’s called the Providence French and Francophone Film Festival, (but) in fact,

the most important words are Providence and Francophone. These two elements really, really matter to me.”

a nnie Wiart, a member of the selection committee and senior lecturer in French and Francophone studies, echoed Odello’s sentiments regarding diversity and noted that eight of the 13 films featured in this year’s lineup are directed by women.

s creenings include multiple documentaries, children’s films, films about couples and films exploring motherhood.

“I think that the themes did emerge rather than us looking for a movie on something specific,” Wiart said. “a s we were selecting movies, more and more the festival made sense as an entity.”

Festival assistant anaïs shen ’24 said she is looking forward to sharing her passion for French cinema with the u niversity and Providence communities. she noted that all the screenings will have English subtitles, allowing viewers who don’t know French or have a personal connection with Francophone countries to engage with and consume French-language cinema.

“It’s important for us at this moment to be in collaboration with Providence in a very large way,” Odello said. “This is the moment when Brown university opens its door to the larger community. I would say Providence, I would say rhode Island, but I would also say New England.”

PFFFF’s opening reception this past Thursday provided attendees with an opportunity to discuss their anticipation

for the festival and its selections. Many festival-goers expressed their excitement about the unique cinematic offerings, especially “Orlando, My Political Biography,” which is not being shown elsewhere in the u s . at this time.

Virginia Krause, the chair of the department of French and Francophone studies and a member of the festival’s selection committee, emphasized the festival’s role in providing access to films that may not otherwise be available to american audiences. With all screenings taking place at the avon cinema this year, Krause underscored the festival’s evolution into a genuine cinematic experience.

“The films that are being shown are on the edge and are pushing boundaries,” Krause said. “It’s not a happy, feel-good festival — it’s much more intense, but there are also really fun films that are included.”

screening tickets are available on the PFFFF website until the festival ends.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 3, 2024.

Smith’s work explores themes of gender, sexuality, science, technology, death and aging, and was known for its subversion of expectations and boundaries.

PFFFF organizers aim to expand definition of French cinema

aura OdELLO

Screenings include multiple documentaries, children’s films, films about couples and films exploring motherhood.

Brown researchers discuss marijuana’s proposed move to Schedule III

Researchers hope to better understand effects of marijuana

BY JAANU RAMESH SENIOR STAFF WRITER

driving down route 195 to Providence, you’re sure to notice banners and billboards advertising marijuana and places to find it. This ubiquity is rare for a drug considered by the u s drug Enforcement administration to have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

On aug. 29, 2023, the u s department of health and human services published a recommendation for the dEa to reclassify marijuana from a schedule I to a schedule III drug. In exploring the social implications of this proposed change, The herald interviewed scientists from Brown on their research and what it may look like in years to come.

Though cannabis contains over 500 known chemical compounds, two psychoactive chemicals are especially well-researched: cannabidiol, or cBd, and tetrahydrocannabinol, or Thc, which gives marijuana its euphorigenic qualities.

In 2018, the Farm Bill’s definition of “hemp” paved the way for legalizing medical marijuana and adult use across the united states. according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, only three states have no legalized form of marijuana today.

cannabis is widely used, with 44% of young adults aged 19 to 30 reporting using the drug recently. april 20 on college hill is “sort of like a super Bowl for stoners,” The herald previously reported.

daily marijuana use also reached an all-time high in 2022 among americans, according to a 2023 report by the National Institute on drug abuse.

But cannabis remains classified as a sched-

AFTER BROWN

ule I drug under the controlled substances act, rendering it and all derived products illegal at the federal level. This classification is shared by highly abused substances including heroin, Lsd and MdMa schedule III drugs are defined as “drugs with a moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence,” such as anabolic steroids and testosterone, according to the u s drug Enforcement administration.

The Food and drug administration’s support of the proposed change hinges on marijuana’s acceptable medical use.

Lauren Micalizzi, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown’s center for alcohol and addiction studies, explores the effects of prenatal cannabis exposure on expecting mothers and their fetuses. In a series of emails to The herald, Micalizzi expressed cautious optimism about reduced administrative research barriers that the proposed change might entail, citing fewer obstacles in studying schedule III drugs as opposed to schedule I.

since the use of cannabis while pregnant can lead to legal ramifications for users, “pregnant people may be less likely to seek prenatal care or to disclose their substance use to

healthcare providers due to fear of judgment or legal repercussions,” wrote Micalizzi, adding that they “may also experience stigma and judgment from family members, friends and healthcare providers.”

This has led to a lack of scientific evidence for marijuana’s use during pregnancy due to decreased “health-seeking behaviors,” according to Micalizzi. “Fear of negative consequences associated with the disclosure of cannabis use, such as the experience of stigma and mandated reporting, are barriers to conducting this research in pregnant populations.”

“Moving to a schedule III … has the strong potential to reduce stigma associated with the use of cannabis, which is good,” Micalizzi wrote.

But Micalizzi emphasized that even though the proposed category change can increase pregnant people’s confidence in discussing their use of cannabis with their physicians, providers are required to make reports to rhode Island’s department of children, youth and Families if they’re involved in the care of infants affected by drug exposure.

“Punitive policies can reduce health-seeking behaviors, negatively impact the health of the birthing person and child and result in a

widening of racial and ethnic disparities in dcyF reporting,” she added.

rachel Gunn, an assistant professor in the department of Behavioral and social sciences, also pointed to the potentially positive research implications if marijuana is rescheduled.

“The cannabis retail market is taking off, and we need to be able to study the variety of modalities and products individuals are currently using with less restriction,” she wrote in a series of emails to The herald.

Gunn began to examine cannabis use when studying alcohol use among college students, observing “the prevalence and impact of other substance use among those who drank heavily.”

Gunn has observed mixed evidence on the effects of combining alcohol and marijuana. “In treatment populations, there has been a recent increase in patient populations reporting that cannabis is an effective ‘substitute’ for drinking,” she wrote, adding that she is interested in continuing to study these effects under potential drug rescheduling.

Like effects of combining alcohol and marijuana, many cannabis-related questions have nuanced answers and require further research, according to Gunn. For example, conditions like psychosis also have an association with marijuana, she wrote.

While “cannabis use is associated with worsening depression over time,” Gunn wrote, “patients are increasingly reporting cannabis (as) helpful for several mental health symptoms, including depression and anxiety, especially in the morning.” despite some extreme cases illustrating stark dangers, more research is needed to better understand the apparent two-sided effects of marijuana, she added. according to Gunn, expanded research is among the “clear benefits” of moving marijuana to schedule III.

But the history of the drug’s classification is complex, said Zoe Brown, project coordinator in the Micalizzi Lab in the center for alcohol and addiction studies.

In an email to The herald, Brown noted that the scheduling of cannabis has long been debated. after cannabis was classified schedule I under the Nixon administration, “commissions argued for reclassification and decriminalization” as early as 1972. “But the presidential administration refuted these claims,” she wrote.

according to Brown, the law surrounding marijuana’s classification could affect social determinants of health, including race and economic status. “historically, the criminalization of cannabis use has disproportionately affected minority communities — an outcome that continues to this day even as policies have changed,” she wrote.

Micalizzi agrees that rescheduling would not eliminate all challenges of studying marijuana in marginalized populations, and expressed her concerns with existing policies for mandated reporting. “rescheduling cannabis can reduce barriers to scientific research, but the legal complexities to studying cannabis in pregnancy would likely remain,” she wrote.

When asked if rescheduling may lead to more people using marijuana, Brown was pragmatic. “already, cannabis is the most widely used federally illegal substance in the u s.,” she wrote. “I personally do not foresee a reduction in this trend anytime soon.”

“This is why it is so incredibly important to research cannabis,” she added. “Especially as legalization continues across the u s., so that public health and policy officials can make the most informed decisions and provide guidance to the public.”

Brown’s Fulbright scholars study maternal health, biomedical signaling systems

BY ELISE HAULUND CONTRIBUTING WRITER

With the Fulbright award’s emphasis on cultural exchange and impact, many Fulbright scholars decide to teach English or pursue work in the humanities. But the scholarship has also created opportunities for Brown alums to conduct sTEM research abroad.

“Brown has seen much success in Fulbright proposals for sTEM-related research,” assistant dean for Fellowships Joel simundich wrote in a comment to The herald. “Their work builds bridges between researchers in the us and abroad, uniting research aims, linking laboratories and developing global perspectives for tackling the most pressing research questions in sTEM today.”

The herald spoke with two Brown alums who are currently Fulbright scholars conducting research in sTEM fields.

darci Johnson ’22 MPh’23: social determinants of health and pregnancy outcomes in a socialized medicine society in Oslo, Norway. after completing both her undergraduate and master’s theses on maternal health, darci Johnson ’22 MPh’23 now studies the impact of social determinants — which the World health Organization defines as “non-medical factors that influence health outcomes” — of health on pregnancy outcomes in Oslo, Norway. she employs mixed methods, analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data from health records, interviews and focus groups.

according to Johnson, Norway has “sig-

nificantly better maternal health than the us does” — one of the reasons she was drawn to complete her Fulbright there. But she has found that differences in pregnancy care and outcome still exist across various social determinants of health, such as education level, income and immigration status.

Johnson initially aimed to discover what she could learn in Norway to bring back to the us, but her research has developed into exploring how Norway can implement policies to improve barriers to care.

Johnson chose 11 adverse pregnancy outcomes — including postpartum bleeding and perinatal depression — and used the Norwegian registry data sets to obtain detailed patient information about pregnancy and birth, which she then linked to demographic factors.

according to Johnson, the ease by which researchers can access data is “really unique to Norway and the rest of the Nordic countries” — one reason why she chose to pursue this research on a Fulbright.

“That’s been incredibly interesting to see,” Johnson said. “There are some factors like income, education or immigrant status that matter more than others, but across the board, with each increasing level of education or income, you’re less likely to have any of those 11 health outcomes.”

The qualitative branch of Johnson’s study has three components: focus groups with Norwegian postpartum mothers who partook in a postpartum homecare visit program, interviews with mothers not originally from Norway and meetings with multicultural doulas in Norway.

Johnson has mostly completed the quantitative arm of her study, with the qualitative research still in progress. Through her interviews, she has found that the international mothers — whom she contacted via a Facebook group — have “a lot to say” about their pregnancy and birth experiences.

“It’s been mixed, depending on where people are from,” Johnson said. “They’re expressing that some things are better here,

but also there are things that they’re used to in their home country.”

“a lot of people have turned to social media — to this Facebook group — to ask questions … that they feel as if they should be able to ask a health care provider and they are not really given the time to do that,” she added.

Overall, Johnson said she has gleaned key information from her interviews about “what patients think is important in terms of their pregnancy care,” which she hopes to bring back to the u s. and “implement wherever (she goes) next.” Post-Fulbright, Johnson plans to move to Washington to work in the federal government on public health policy. still, she hopes to leave an impact on Norway.

“Pregnancy care is important worldwide, and particularly with this focus on the social determinants of health, this is something that’s important in every single country across the world,” she added.

dylan Ines ’23: Probing for pathophysiology in Vienna, austria

Before pursuing a medical degree, dylan Ines ’23 is researching neuropeptides and developing molecular tools for diagnostic and therapeutic interventions at the university of Vienna’s Institute of Biological chemistry.

Ines also has a two-pronged project: creating probes to understand the oxytocin and vasopressin signaling systems in humans and studying dynorphins, which are endogenous opioid peptides that have pain relief effects.

“My goal was to develop tools to understand these signaling systems involved in human health, and then also develop drugs for these signaling systems and the diseases that they implicate,” Ines said.

The objects of Ines’s research — signal-

ing systems and dynorphins — have “super widespread” applications to the medical field, as oxytocin and vasopressin are chemical messengers involved in many physiological processes, including breast cancer, pain management and psychiatric issues. according to Ines, by creating artificial probes that bind to the receptors of the signaling systems, scientists can visualize how they work.

“The fundamental goal is to help understand the signaling pathways that are involved in disease so that maybe other researchers can then use that understanding to develop more effective medications, and also understand the way disease works more fundamentally,” Ines said.

he tailored his Fulbright experience in two ways: first, he wanted to pivot to more life-sciences-based research, as his undergraduate work mainly focused on nanochemistry.

“I chose this lab in particular because I’m currently applying to med school, so it’s highly relevant to the medical field and it’s a great experience for me to gain a lot of skills that I think will be useful during my medical education and hopefully thereafter,” Ines said.

second, Ines wanted to take advantage of Fulbright’s abroad experience by spending time in a German-speaking environment after being raised bilingually with a German mother.

“It’s been just a cool experience to meet people in a different context while retaining the universality of research processes and methodologies,” Ines said. “The main factor for me was that I could pursue research that would have a meaningful impact on the scientific community, and hopefully medical practice one day, while also engaging in this cultural exchange that defines Fulbright as an institution.”

Current scholars halfway through 2023–24 Fulbright projects

Darci Johnson ’22 MPH’23 and Dylan Ines ’23 are conducting research in Norway and Austria, respectively.

Critical Review discusses student survey participation decline, next steps

Survey decline tied to COVID-19, minimum response requirement

BY KATE ROWBERRY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Imagine this: shopping period is ending soon. after an hours-long search for another course to add to your schedule, you seem to have found the one. But how will you know whether it’s the best course for you?

Like other Brown students, you may turn to the critical review: a student-run organization that produces course reviews based on data compiled and summarized from surveys sent to students about courses offered at Brown, according to their website. But, declining student participation in the organization’s surveys “has made it difficult for us to continue our work,” Elli clerides ’24, critical review executive board member, wrote in an email to The herald.

Writers compose reviews when a course’s survey has received responses from at least three students, according to critical review data shared with The herald. The reviews are then subject to three rounds of editing, “during which they are checked for accuracy and objectivity,” according to the organization’s website.

Based on data from the critical review, the organization only received enough student responses to review “a maximum of 154 courses” offered in fall 2023. In fall 2020, the organization received responses to provide evaluations for 252 courses. according to clerides, the critical review experienced a significant decline in student participation in their survey after the cOVId-19 pandemic.

In fall 2023, 287 instructors, from a list of 1,289 graduate and undergraduate courses provided to the organization by the registrar, opted into administering the review’s surveys, according to the organization’s data.

Professors have the option to opt in to administer the surveys to their students at the end of the semester, according to the website. critical review staff told The herald that professors are supplied with a unique link they can choose to forward to their students.

co-editor-in-chief Zoey Grant ’24 said she fears a “self-fulfilling cycle”: When students do not fill out the surveys, it disincentivizes professors from administering them in the future because of the lack of responses.

ryan Peng ’25, a current editor at the publication, said the surveys are distributed “at a really unfortunate time” — at the end

ON-CAMPUS

of the semester when students have finals and “might not write that much because they have a lot of things going on.”

Nicole Gonzalez Van cleve, a professor of sociology who began teaching at Brown in 2019, hasn’t opted in to share the surveys with her students because she “honestly didn’t know much about it,” she told The herald. she added that she “would love to learn more” about the publication.

“If the critical review can talk to more new faculty, that would be wonderful,” Gonzalez Van cleve said, adding that faculty who began at Brown right before cOVId-19 “didn’t have enough time to learn all the rules of engagement and why the critical review was so important to students and maybe even faculty.”

“The critical review does reach out to new professors (and) new classes to try to get their participation,” Peng said. “But again, it’s an opt-in system.”

Gonzalez Van cleve also noted — as does the critical review website’s FaQ — that student biases regarding gender, race and other factors can lead to lower ratings in course evaluations. The review’s website links to a cambridge university Press 2019 research paper which found that female and persons of color instructors “receive lower scores on ordinal student evaluations” than white male instructors.

according to the review’s website, “the critical review constantly strives to write unbiased and accurate reviews.”

“I think that one thing that students really want is for us to give the raw feedback,” said Eric cho ’26, a member of the critical review’s executive board. But the review “aggregates all the feedback in such a way that it can be interpreted by anyone” and to “filter the bias,” he said.

he explained that student surveys are anonymized for critical review writers, who are trained to maintain a consistent writing style.

Gonzalez Van cleve suggested that the

critical review reassure professors that the publication protects student privacy and clarify the difference between their surveys and university-administered course feedback surveys. Brown’s course feedback surveys are administered on canvas and are separate from the critical review’s course evaluations.

In order to offer reviews to students, the critical review “must meet certain conditions as part of our agreement with Brown,” which includes following the optin system, according to their website’s FaQ.

For Professor of Biology sohini ramachandran, who has provided her BIOL 0495: “statistical analysis of Biological data” and BIOL 1465: “human Population Genomics” classes with the chance to fill out the critical review’s surveys, the publication helps students to make informed decisions about courses, she said.

ramachandran has also found the critical review useful as an instructor, specifically because their reviews “have offered me feedback on how I construct assessments and exams,” and “given me a little more insight into the different backgrounds of students who might consider taking my course.”

additionally, a new critical review website is being developed, shum shared. The new website will likely maintain the design elements of the current website and incorporate “fun, more interactive features” such as search filters and relevant course recommendations, she added.

Grant said the critical review is also reconsidering some of its questions and working on outreach. “We really want to emphasize to students, ‘hey, we’re a student-run organization. We need you (and your feedback), or you won’t be able to have this resource eventually,’” she said.

Grant partly attributes the critical review’s declining student response rates to the fact that students might not recognize that their reviews “can change things about courses or help other students,” she said. critical review co-editor-in-chief Jasmine shum ’24 outlined ongoing efforts “to enliven the spirit of the critical review,” including polling the undergraduate student body about what randomly distributed prizes they might want each semester after filling out the surveys.

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on Feb. 29, 2024.

Journalists discuss identity, objectivity at first-ever Inclusive Journalism Conference

woman,” she told The herald.

BY JULIANNA CHANG UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

On Friday afternoon, about 30 students and community members gathered in the Petteruti Lounge for the department of English’s first-ever Inclusive Journalism conference. Organized by Nell Lake, a lecturer in English non-fiction writing, the three-and-a-half-hour event featured a roundtable discussion with a diverse panel of journalists followed by workshops on inclusive coverage and reporting.

Lake hoped that the conference would emphasize how “journalism is critical to society, democracy and social justice,” she told conference attendees before the roundtable discussion.

Lake, who has taught multiple journalism courses at Brown since joining the university faculty in 2022, has long wanted to “offer a curriculum that would address issues of social inclusion and equity” in reporting, she said in an interview with The herald.

The conference gave Lake the opportunity to bring these discussions to campus “through the perspectives and experiences of people in marginalized positions, not just through the things I assigned (in class) as a white, cisgender

Boston Globe climate reporter Ivy scott ’21.5 moderated the two-hour discussion, which included EsPN features writer Katie Barnes and Vox policy correspondent abdallah Fayyad. It also featured dalila Paul, who is a national editor at capital B News, and Phillip Martin, a senior investigative reporter for the GBh News center for Investigative reporting.

Panelists began the event by discussing the role of identity in journalism. Barnes, a nonbinary journalist who covers policies affecting transgender athletes, told conference attendees that identity-based perspectives “shape everything that we do when it comes to journalism.”

scott added that her experiences as a Black woman have previously allowed her to “touch on topics and ask questions” that she wouldn’t have otherwise been able to.

“Our backgrounds are not something that we put away and check at the door when we come to work,” she said. “These are things that really need to come with us sometimes.”

When asked about the role of objectivity in journalism, most panelists agreed that fairness — not just objectivity — is key when covering marginalized communities and controversial topics.

“Objectivity means something different to almost every journalist, every newsroom,” Fayyad told the attendees. “Oftentimes, it’s

confused with neutrality, but being objective doesn’t mean being neutral.”

“If I’m missing the perspective of anyone around the topics that I report on, then my story is incomplete, and it’s not doing the service to the public that I wanted it to do,” Barnes said. “It’s less about being objective, and more about fairly representing the discourse as it is happening.”

Martin and Paul emphasized the power

of newsroom higher-ups in determining what events and perspectives are covered by the publication — what Martin called “agenda-setting.”

“Early on, most of my bosses were white men and white women who had never been to a Black neighborhood, so they had no experience with” different types of people, Paul said. “how are you really objective if you’re making a decision based on ignorance?”

Toward the end of the discussion, audience members were given the opportunity to ask questions to the panelists. When asked whether the panelists had ever felt that they were the “wrong” reporter to cover a particular issue or event, Fayyad told the attendees that “there is no ‘wrong reporter’ for a story.”

“The only way you’re the ‘wrong reporter’ is if you’re a bad reporter,” he said. “your background matters in how it informs your approach, but ultimately, it’s your humanity and your humility” that matter most.

after the roundtable discussion, students had the opportunity to attend one of five different workshops, each led by one of the panelists on topics ranging from inclusive reporting and audio journalism to opinion pieces and scene writing.

Paul hopes that sharing her perspectives and personal experiences with attendees will positively impact younger journalists, she said in an interview with The herald. Overall, Paul found the conference “affirming.”

Gabriella Lui ’26 appreciated the diversity of the panel. The panelists “come from all different walks of life, from all different points in their career, and they all have a very specific niche,” she said. “That offered a lot of perspective.”

This article originally appeared online at browndailyherald.com on March 3, 2024.

Panelists hailed from Capital B, ESPN, Vox, Boston Globe

The roundtable discussion “brought a lot of the issues that students grapple with in classes down to earth,” Nell Lake said.

Need-blind admissions at Brown: A History

A look through 40 years of Herald archives

BY TALIA LEVINE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Earlier this year, the university announced that it would transition to need-blind admissions for international students starting with the class of 2029, becoming the eighth university in the united states to adopt the policy. The university has practiced need-blind admissions for domestic applicants since 2003.

One day before this announcement, Brown settled an antitrust lawsuit for $19.5 million that alleged Brown colluded with institutions in the 568 Presidents Group — a consortium of colleges that maintain need-blind admission policies — to set financial aid calculation methodologies that “artificially inflated net prices of attendance,” according to previous herald coverage. The group disbanded in November 2022.

The plaintiffs also claimed that the universities involved in the lawsuit were not adhering to the federal regulations surrounding need-blind admissions due to the preferential treatment given to the children of donors.

In a press release, university spokesperson Brian clark said: “We vehemently believe that the claims had no merit, but given the time and financial resources required to take this case to trial, we determined that our resources are better spent resolving this matter.”

But Brown’s definition of need-blind admissions may not impede a student’s financial situation from being taken into consideration during their application review, The herald previously reported.

The university uses need-blind admissions to ensure that applicants’ “ability to pay for their education will not be a determining factor in the admission decision.” This is different from need-aware admissions, the school’s official policy for domestic applicants until 2003 and the policy for international applicants until next year.

during the Brown’s need-aware admissions period, 90-95% of applications were reviewed under a need-blind paradigm, but the rest could be rejected solely if they demonstrated financial need.

The herald reviewed its archives to build a timeline of notable events in the history of need-blind admissions.

1980s: Need-blind admissions emerges starting in 1983, need-blind admissions became more contested. In april 1983, director of admissions and Financial aid alan Maynard ’47 shared that the university received more applications requesting financial aid than in previous years. at this point, most of the other Ivy League universities had need-blind admissions in place.

Maynard shared that at Brown, “admissions is only aid-conscious when it comes down to the wire … the majority of the class is chosen on a need-blind basis.”

Then- d ean of the c ollege h arriet sheridan estimated at a meeting of the advisory committee on university Planning that a need-blind policy would cost Brown $128,000 a year — around $400,000 in today’s money. This differed from Maynard’s claim that need-blind policies would cost the university twice that sum. Nonetheless, sheridan’s estimation caused acuP member Kent Greenfield ’84 to propose a $100,000 addition to the financial aid

budget every year for five years to sustain need-blind admissions.

In early 1984, the committee on admissions and Financial aid of the corporation, the university’s highest governing body, announced the creation of a subcommittee to explore need-blind admissions. But a former member of the caFa , ann arthur ’85, said that students’ lack of enthusiasm for financial aid was a reason the university did not prioritize need-blind admissions in the budget.

The following semester, undergraduate council of students president Beth Grossman ’85 listed need-blind admissions as a ucs priority. as a result, a referendum calling on Brown to introduce need-blind admissions was passed a few months later.

In the spring of 1985, The herald reported that approximately 80 students staged a sit-in outside of the admissions office to protest the “quality of campus life for Latinos” and demanded the consideration of need-blind admissions.

at the beginning of the 1988-89 school year, then-university President Vartan Gregorian said of need-blind admissions that he didn’t “know all the details of that yet. But if Brown cannot afford (it) ... Brown has to get new resources.”

Then-d irector of Financial aid shirley Wright shared that at least 30% of students were on financial aid.

according to Wright, while most private universities outside of the Ivy League at the time were need-blind, they did guarantee aid to admitted students as Brown did.

In accepting students to the class of 1993, the university experienced a “$4 million financial blunder” wherein too many students who needed financial aid were admitted. Former d ean of admissions and Financial aid Eric Widmer offered to resign. But Gregorian refused Widmer’s offer and reaffirmed that students would still receive the financial aid packages they had been offered.

Early 1990s: Student activism addresses need-blind

Gregorian’s spring 1990 letter explained how “Brown simply could not afford to pursue a need-blind policy until at least the year 2003.”

In October, leading up to a corporation meeting, the group students on Financial aid and the coalition for NeedBlind a dmissions launched a four-day “‘creative’ series of events” during which students carried life-sized cardboard cutouts of people featuring facts about needblind admissions around campus.

The groups also hosted a teach-in and distributed green ribbons for students to wear to indicate support for need-blind admissions. On the Main Green, 130 chairs were set up to symbolize the 10% of the class that were rejected as a result of needaware admissions. The four days ended with students distributing leaflets and a petition with the hopes of garnering support from alums.

The following week, during Family Weekend, the groups placed a large sign of the dollar symbol covering the Van Wickle gates to “visually show people that the Gates were a symbol of elitism” and how the university rejected students due to their financial status. They were instructed to remove the sign by the dean of student Life.

On april 22, 1992, need-blind activists seized university hall. In one of Brown’s most notable protests, over 250 students involved in students for aid and Minority admissions were arrested for their takeover of the building.

In a recent interview with The herald, Meredith Kolodner ’92, then-saMa spokesperson, said students did not anticipate being arrested. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have taken over that building, which had way too many entrances and all the doors pushed inward,” she said.

The group didn’t initially plan for the 200-plus person occupation. a group of approximately 60 students “decided to do a sit-in in front of the admissions office … and then we were going to leave,” Kolodner said.

But soon, she recalled, “people started pouring in” through the doors and windows, “and it became a building takeover.”

“all of a sudden, there were hundreds of people in there, and we had to decide whether or not we were going to try to hold the building or leave because they were telling us to leave. We decided that because there was so much support that

tion in November 1997 urging all schools to adopt need-blind admissions.

The resolution was brought forward by two students from Brown — the only Ivy League school that still did not have need-blind admissions.

This resolution also coincided with the end of Gregorian’s term as president and a unanimous ucs vote in favor of need-blind admissions.

In spring 1998, ucs reportedly announced a new fundraising campaign: Brown s tudents for Financial a id. By March 4, 1998, they were nearly halfway to their goal of $10,000 to provide financial aid to one student for one year. Brown’s new president, Gordon Gee, and four corporation members, promised to match the money raised. any excess funds would be used to create an endowment for financial aid.

we should try to take it from a sit-in to a building takeover,” Kolodner said. “Brown police were not that excited about us sleeping overnight in the building, so they gave us one last warning.”

Once the warning was issued, Kolodner described how students voted whether to stay and risk arrest or leave. The majority chose to stay. The university then arrested 253 students and escorted them out of the building in pairs, past cheering students.

Protestors were ultimately ordered to pay a fine to the university.

Mid-1990s: NACAC, petitions, water usage

In mid-October 1993, Brown voted against the National association of college admission counselors’ new standards of partnership which would require all member schools — including Brown — to be strictly need-blind.

In an interview with The herald at the time, c leve Latham, then-president of Nacac, said “I don’t think that there are as many people in the country who agree with Brown’s stance as they may think.”

The u niversity again claimed that while it supported need-blind admissions, it could not afford it.

In November, the c ampus a ffairs committee of ucs circulated a petition for need-blind admissions that was signed by over 1,000 people on its first day of circulation.

Early in 1994, a student who was arrested in the 1992 sit-in created the coalition for aid utilizing student Environmentalism and proposed a plan to Gregorian to cut down on water usage in order to free up $1 million to dedicate to financial aid. The plan was ultimately rejected by Brown.

In the spring, Widmer resigned. he told The herald that the 1992 takeover was “one of the most awful experiences I ever had to go through.”

Late-1990s: The Corporation addresses need-blind admissions

after multiple years of a lapse in notable protest for need-blind admissions, the Ivy council — an organization founded in 1990 that connects leaders of Ivy League student governments — passed a resolu-

d uring the 1999 October meeting, the corporation focused more on needblind admissions than in previous years. One event organized by Brown students for Financial aid, called Incorporation carnival, consisted of dozens of students standing outside the corporation meeting, shaking coffee cans filled with change and chanting “need-blind now.” as the corporation walked across the Main Green, while most corporation members ignored the protestors, a few placed donations into the cans, The herald reported.

The 2000s:

The new century marked Brown’s first female president, s heila Blumstein, who replaced Gordon Gee after his brief tenure as president. In s eptember, the committee formed by Gee in 1999 — the a lper c ommittee on Financial a id — presented its report to Blumstein. s he, in turn, promised to present her plan to achieve need-blind admissions to the c orporation.

The corporation agreed in their October meeting that need-blind admissions needed to be introduced within the next one to five years. But, at that time, no formal decisions were made.

Fall 2001 marked the start of former President ruth simmons’s term. In an interview with The herald at the time, she claimed that she wanted to address issues surrounding financial aid within her first year.

In september, The herald reported that Brown was excluded from the 568 Presidents Group, the consortium that eventually caused litigation against the university.

It was created following congress’s 1994 enactment of section 568 of the “Improving america’s schools act.” To be a member of the group and collaborate on financial aid calculations, schools were required to have need-blind admissions policies under this law.

In december, simmons detailed her plan to bring a need-blind policy to the corporation at the February meeting. at the meeting, Brown committed to being need-blind for domestic applicants starting with the class of 2007.

The herald reported that the corporation approved the $1.3 million needed to make need-blind admission a reality. student activist leaders published a letter of support in The herald claiming that the corporation’s actions indicated a willingness by the university “to create a diverse and excellent academic community.”