The Dartmouth 04/11/2019

VOL. CLXXVI NO. 14

SUNNY HIGH 52 LOW 27

OPINION

LEVY: DARTHEALTH PAGE 6

HILL-WELD: MOVING ON FROM MUELLER PAGE 6

AHSAN: THE PROPER RESPONSE TO A MASSACRE PAGE 7

BROWN: COFFEEHOUSES AREN’T COMMONS PAGE 7

ARTS

‘THE BLACK OUTDOORS’ COURSE EXPLORES RACE AND THE ENVIRONMENT PAGE 8 FOLLOW US ON

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THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

DDS’ increasing use of Yo-Yo Ma will be Dartmouth’s temporary employees 2019 commencement speaker criticized by union B y ANDREW CULVER The Dartmouth Staff

Dartmouth Dining Services currently employs 46 temporary workers at wages below their unionized counterparts. This practice, which has been increasing in recent years, has drawn criticism from the Service Employees Inter national Union, the largest union on Dartmouth’s campus with 477 members covering areas such as Safety and Security,

custodial staff and DDS workers.

Excluding faculty and student employees, Dartmouth currently employs 1,340 individuals on hourly wages. Of these employees, the average hourly wage sits at $22.67, with no employees currently making minimum wage.

The livable wage calculator created by Amy Glasmeier at the Massachusetts Institute SEE WAGES PAGE 3

Dartmouth professor launches menstrual health website B y LORRAINE LIU

The Dartmouth Staff

Last week, government professor Deborah Brooks and a group of Dartmouth students launched the Inter national Menstrual Health Entrepreneurship Roundup, a free website that provides resources to individual entrepreneurs and organizations that aim to address global menstrual

health problems. As a project under the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding’s Dartmouth Global Girls Forward Lab, an undergraduate research team that gives students the potential to create projects t h at h e l p fo r w a rd t h e interests of girls and women worldwide, IMHER focuses on raising awareness of global SEE WEBSITE PAGE 2

MICHAEL LIN/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Yo-Yo Ma, who has twice been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth, will be this year’s commencement speaker.

B y The Dartmouth Senior Staff World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma will deliver the main address at Dartmouth’s Class of 2019 commencement ceremony on June 9.

Ma’s prominent career has spanned over multiple decades and a variety of roles. Most notably as a cellist, he has releas ed more than 90 albums, won 19 Grammy Awards and collaborated with a variety of other notable artists. He has also served as a United Nations Messenger of Peace since 2006 and on President Barack Obama’s Committee

on the Arts and Humanities in 2009. Through Silkroad, a not-for-profit organization Ma founded in 1998, Ma has worked to increase cultural collaboration by bringing together musicians from across the world.

Ma has also twice been a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth, visiting campus in winter 2001 and spring 2018. While at Dartmouth in the spring, Ma met with students, delivered a lecture to the public in Spaulding Auditorium and headlined in a performance with The Silk Road Ensemble.

Ma’s work has earned him multiple honors, including

the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, the Avery Fischer Prize, honorary deg rees from Princeton University and Harvard University and the Fred Rogers Legacy award for his work advancing children’s education.

Dartmouth will also award honorary degrees to current senior adviser to baseball operations for the Oakland Athletics Richard “ S a n dy ” A l d e r s o n ’ 6 9 , astrophysicist and director of the National Science Foundation France Córdova, executive director and coSEE COMMENCEMENT PAGE 3

PAGE 2

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

College hires new VP to handle institution-wide projects B y BERIT SVENSON The Dartmouth Staff

Joshua Keniston, who formerly served as vice president and chief of staff to executive vice president Rick Mills, was named vice president for institutional projects on April 5. Prior to joining the Dartmouth community in January 2018, Keniston worked with the College on a number of projects as a consultant with the Huron Consulting Group.

“For about 18 months, I had the chance to work on a handful of projects here and got to know Rick Mills and folks on the Dartmouth team,” Keniston said.

“When the opportunity to work here arose, I was ready to get off the road and start working in Hanover.”

Dartmouth appealed to Keniston because of its highly competitive nature and scenic location, he said. He added that these assets afforded him unique opportunities and challenges — such as

dealing with a heating plant for subzero temperatures — that would not be present at other institutions.

According to Mills, he first met Keniston when the former consultant was working on the restructuring of Geisel School of Medicine, as the medical school was struggling with growing deficits. Mills subsequently helped bring Keniston to Dartmouth’s campus in a more permanent role. “[Keniston] gets higher education in a way that a lot of administrators do not,” Mills said. “He has great managerial chops and can simultaneously work well within the culture — that’s incredibly valuable.”

According to Keniston, his new position as vice president for institutional projects demonstrates the evolution of his involvement with Dartmouth.

Mills said he initially hired Keniston because he needed someone to serve as the executive responsible for overseeing

the institution-wide projects that span Dartmouth Green Energy Project, the multiple disciplines.

College’s plan to improve the efficiency of “I think of its energy production [Keniston] as “I think of [Keniston] and distribution an orchestra systems and reduce c o n d u c t o r, ” as an orchestra its g reenhouse Mills said. “He’s conductor. He’s gas emissions. To not playing any accomplish this not playing any instruments, but goal, Dartmouth he’s helping to get instruments, but he’s has partnered with the right people helping to get the Goldman Sachs to in the room utilize their expertise and ensuring right people in the and resources. coordination.”

The sustainability room and ensuring As vice project focuses on coordination.” president and three elements: chief of staff to steam to hot water Mills, Keniston -RICK MILLS, EXECUTIVE conversion, a new workedtooversee biomass generation and coordinate VICE PRESIDENT facility and the projects that operation of the overlap with current generation facility. several divisions, he said. For example, Over the next 18 months, Keniston Keniston has helped to progress the will continue to work on the Dartmouth

Green Energy Project in addition to other ventures, such as the expansion of graduate student housing. Keniston said he hopes to continue the progress being made in updating the College’s facilities and infrastructure.

Ritu Kalra, a managing director and head of Goldman Sachs’ non-profit higher education, said that Keniston has a “unique role” at the College and that Dartmouth is lucky to have him. “[Keniston] truly understands what Dartmouth is trying to accomplish and has that in mind when someone suggests something to him,” she said. “If it doesn’t fit with Dartmouth’s goal, he’s really good at reshaping it until it does.”

Keniston became involved in higher education when he served as a voting member on the board of trustees at Ithaca College as an undergraduate.

After receiving his degree from Ithaca, he earned his master’s in higher education at Harvard University.

IMHER uses student assistants, collaborates with Dickey Center FROM WEBSITE PAGE 1

menstrual health and helping people in the field tackle related problems.

Brooks said she was inspired to launch this project because of her work with Grace Ningejeje, a member of the 2017 Young African Leaders Initiative who is passionate about providing high-quality, lowcost menstrual pads to people who need them in Burundi.

Brooks said that the website is helpful for small organizations that work to tackle global menstrual health problems but lack the knowledge on how to approach them. “[The student research assistants

are] like an outsourced research team for super-small organizations that don’t have on-board researchers,” Brooks said.

According to Brooks, after students conduct their own individual research, she compiles it into a database that is ultimately displayed on the website.

“There [are] a lot of pieces to IMHER,” Brooks said. “[Each student is] doing their own piece separately — often in their dorm rooms — and I’m coordinating it and putting it together.”

Jennifer West ’20, a research assistant who became involved with IMHER at the project’s inception

CORRECTIONS Correction appended (April 9, 2019): In the April 8 article, “Call rides to second place in Dartmouth-cycling hosted event,” the article misidentified Aiko Takata’s gender, and has been corrected to reflect this. The article also used results from a secondary race in the event. The online version of the article has been updated to use results from the Frat Row criterium races, which were the main races for the event.

We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.

after taking a class with Brooks, said she focused her research on studies examining the impact of access to sanitary products on girls and women.

She said she hopes that the website can provide a network for people who work on providing menstrual products to women in developing countries.

“I hope that the website will be really helpful for people who are either starting out in the project of making their own sanitary products or looking for more information or trying to connect with other people who have successfully done that,” West said. “I think this will be a great guiding tool as to how other organizations and activists have been able to successfully start their own business or non-profit organizations.”

Jennifer Peterlin ’20, another research assistant on the team, said she concentrated on finding educational resources for global menstrual health and helping with Airtable, the database utilized by the team. She said that a challenge that the team encountered when creating IMHER was finding detailed information about

organizations that provide educational resources on menstrual health.

“A lot of the time, the websites [of those organizations] aren’t specific enough,” Peterlin said. “We just physically don’t have enough information to talk about them in [complete terms] and that’s the hardest thing: It exists, but we need to look more.”

Peterlin added that communication with team members and advising from Brooks were crucial in addressing the challenges that come up in the project.

“Brooks is obviously our advisor throughout all of this, but she gave us the freedom to do our research,” she said. “We weren’t held down to where we could be researching or what type of products we could be finding — it was kind of in our own hands to decide how much work and how much research [we wanted] to [do].”

The website currently features content that describes menstrual health, the debates regarding the issue, a database that gathers information on menstrual health

products; research studies; and a blog that allows the general public to read about global menstrual health.

Brooks said creating more posts for the blog is one of the team’s future plans for IMHER. Brooks acknowledged that measuring IMHER’s success would be difficult, as simply tracking page views does not provide an accurate estimate of the website’s impact.

However, she mentioned that she is confident in the value of IMHER after personally reaching out to entrepreneurs in the field and seeing the work that the IMHER researchers have done.

“The website is helping individuals, small organizations and entrepreneurs connect with one another and do their work more efficiently, and they are in turn, helping many, many girls and women menstruators in their own community,” Brooks said. “And then our own students are learning how to do research — learning how to think outside of the box with reference to research. So there are a lot of people winning from this.”

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

PAGE 3

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

Six people, including NSF director, will receive honorary degrees FROM COMMENCEMENT PAGE 1

founder of the Inter national Refugee Assistance project Rebecca Heller ’05, environmental attorney Hilary Tompkins ’90 and architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, who were responsible for the recent renovation of the Hood Museum of Art.

Alderson served as the general manager for the Athletics from 1983 to 1997. Under Alderson’s tenure, the Athletics won the World Series in 1989. After stints in the Major League Baseball’s commissioner’s office and as the chief executive officer for the San Diego Padres, he was named the general manager of the New York Mets following the

2010 baseball season. Under his leadership, the team reached the 2015 World Series.

A history major during his time at the College, Alderson was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and Dragon senior society.

Córdova, who has served as NSF director since March 2014, was the 11th president of Purdue

DDS sees temp employees as beneficial FROM WAGES PAGE 1

of Technology estimates a livable wage for a full-time hourly employee in New Hampshire at $12.29 an hour.

According to statistics provided by Scot Bemis, the College’s chief human resource officer, Dartmouth is currently employing 17 people below this livable threshold. This means that a small subset — only around 1.3 percent — of Dartmouth’s employees are being paid below estimates for a livable wage in the area.

Chris Peck, president of the Local 560 branch of the SEIU, which operates on campus, said that unionized Dartmouth employees are “well compensated.” Salaries for SEIU member employees in Dartmouth’s dining areas start at $16.67 an hour with a guaranteed two dollar raise after two years of employment.

Peck attributes these wages to years of contract negotiating through the SEIU. However, Peck also noted that “as time goes on, everybody gets fancy about how they avoid the contract.”

For example, Peck cited Dartmouth’s use of temporary employees as the latest example of this.

DDS currently employs 184 nonstudent employees in addition to its 46 additional temporary employees, a number which frequently changes.

These temporary employees do not work during winter or spring breaks, finals week, nor do they during the summer term or receive benefits from the College like regular employees do. Temporary

employees are hired both through agencies and on an individual basis, according to DDS director Jon Plodzik.

While Dartmouth’s contract with the SEIU allows for the use of temporary employees, there are constant battles between the College and the union as to how many temporary and full-time employees the College employs, Peck said.

He added that Dartmouth’s use of temporary employees has been increasing in recent years.

Plodzik said he viewed the C o l l e g e ’s u s e o f t e m p o r a r y employees as beneficial to both DDS and employees. DDS has a significant need for temporary employees to fill gaps left by sick or otherwise absent employees in addition to other critical roles which may not constitute full time jobs, he said.

Administrative human resources services manager Kelly Mousley agreed, saying that temporary employees also benefit from flexible, yet consistent, work schedules.

“The temporary employees really enjoy being on campus,” she said.

Additionally, Plodzik said the use of temporary employees is a “nice pipeline” that allows workers to get a feel for the job and for DDS to get to know employees before hiring them full-time.

While the use of temporary employees may have certain benefits for workers, the temporary employees’ pay is substantially lower than their unionized co-workers’.

Pe c k s a i d t h at t e m p o r a r y employees are often paid around $13 an hour, about $3.67 below the

union rate and about 71 cents above the estimate for a livable wage in New Hampshire.

Temporary employment agencies are often paid $20 an hour for temporary employees with only $13 of this money making it to the employee, Peck said. He said that Dartmouth is paying six dollars an hour to an outside company to manage their employees.

“Of course they want to kept their costs down,” he said. “I guess some people would call it good business.”

Peck added that, as a college with a $5.5 billion endowment, Dartmouth has a duty to be a responsible employer and pay all of its employees a fair and livable wage.

A d d i t i o n a l l y, t e m p o r a r y employees, without the protection of a union contract, can be terminated at any time. If they go on to become full-time employees, they must go through the 90-day probation period for all new employees, even if they have been working for DDS as a temporary employee for up to six months, Peck said.

SEIU membership among D a r t m o u t h ’s e m p l oye e s h a s decreased by around 40 members over the last decade, according to Peck. This decrease comes as the College has expanded and opened new facilities, possibly the result of the increased use of temporary workers to meet new staffing needs.

Overall, Peck said that Dartmouth is “pretty fair” when it comes to compensating employees, but that this fairness is a result of long-term union work.

“We keep them fair,” he said.

University. From 1993 to 1996, Córdova was the youngest person and first woman to be NASA’s chief scientist, and in 1996, she was a recipient of NASA’s highest honor: The NASA Distinguished Service Medal.

Heller, a government major at Dartmouth, started a project called Harvest for the Hungry — which addressed food security issues in the Upper Valley — during her time at the College and was one of six students nationwide to win the Campus Compact Howard R. Swearer Student Humanitarian Award. She was the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in

2018.

A fellow government major, Tompkins served as the solicitor for the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2009 to 2017 after serving as counsel to New Mexico governor Bill Richardson (D) for five years.

Tsien and Williams are a husband-and-wife duo who began working together in 1977 and cofounded their firm in 1986. In 2013, President Barack Obama awarded both of them the National Medal of Arts. The duo began work on the $50 million renovation and expansion of the Hood in 2016, and the doors opened to the public this January.

PAGE 4

DARTMOUTHEVENTS

THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS

THE ROBOTS AMONG US

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

NEELUFAR RAJA ’21

TODAY 4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Seminar: “Delocalized Quantum Clocks and Relativistic Time Dilation,” sponsored by the Department of Physics, Wilder Hall, Room 115.

4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Poetry: “Cleopatra Mathis Poetry & Prose Reading series: Yiyun Li,” sponsored by the Department of English and the Leslie Center for the Humanities, Sanborn Library.

5:00 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.

Lecture: “The Evolving U.S. Supreme Court,” Lee Epstein, sponsored by the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, Rockefeller Center, Room 003.

7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Film: “Ghostbusters,” sponsored by the Hopkins Center for Arts, Loew Auditorium.

TOMORROW

12:00 p.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Meditation: “Free Lunch Time Mindfulness Meditation,” sponsored by the Student Wellness Center, Robinson Hall, Room 322.

1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Symposium: “Touch Your Words: Teaching Indigenous Languages through Making,” sponsored by College Library, Haldeman Hall, Room 41.

6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Exhibit: “Art after Dark,” sponosred by the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum.

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THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

PAGE 5

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

Panel discusses reproductive healthcare, effects of 2016 election B y SUNNY DRESCHER The Dartmouth Staff

On Tuesday, Dartmouth Planned Parenthood Generation Action hosted a panel discussion about reproductive healthcare and policy in New Hampshire and nationally.

Drawing around 70 attendees, the panel featured director of family planning at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Amy Paris and director of advocacy and organizing for the Planned Parenthood New Hampshire Action Fund Kayla Montgomery.

The discussion was moderated by former PPGA president Io Jones ’19.

New Hampshire state senator Martha Hennessy ’76 (D-Hanover) was also slotted to speak on the panel, but inclement weather prevented her from doing so.

“I love that so many people came out to talk about reproductive health care,” PPGA internal affairs president Caroline Casey ’21 said. “I was really excited by both the turnout and the thoughtful questions people asked the panelists.”

The panelists discussed a range of issues relating to reproductive health, including how to encourage otherwise uninterested people to care about reproductive healthcare and how their work has changed since the 2016 election. Paris discussed the clinical side of reproductive health care, while Montgomery primarily spoke about advocacy and policy work being done in the state and throughout the country.

Paris said that her work as an obstetrician-gynecologist made her feel like she provides care “inside a fortress” — meaning that she and her colleagues try to provide the best care possible for their patients under legislative constraints. She also noted that she witnessed an influx of women who wanted birth control — specifically intrauterine devices — following President Donald Trump’s election due to a rising concern that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed. According to Paris, the passage of the ACA had mandated insurance coverage of birth control with no co-pay, and the repeal of this legislation would have likely rescinded that coverage. “[Losing access to affordable birth

control] was a real threat, and frankly, it still is,” Paris said.

She added that low-income women are most vulnerable to “attacks” on access to reproductive health care, such as defunding policies taken against access to contraceptives, STI testing or abortions.

Montgomery said that Trump’s election has made the fight for reproductive health care more “combative,” and that abortion has become even more of a “wedge issue” dividing people.

With respect to abortion access in New Hampshire, Montgomery said that there is “pretty good” access at the moment, in part because the state is not consistently controlled by predominantly Republican or Democratic lawmakers. However, even though both chambers in the New Hampshire legislature are currently controlled by Democrats — which Montgomery said takes some pressure off of her responsibility to testify against bills that may be harmful to reproductive health — she added that the current composition of the legislature does not preclude the state from passing abortion restrictions in the future.

Paris said that reproductive health care needs to stop being framed as “just a women’s issue,” noting that women are more than half of the population. She also said that stereotypes of women who undergo an abortion can be harmful.

“These women are often mothers, taking care of their families, who have to make difficult decisions for both wanted and unwanted pregnancies,” Paris said, adding that ignoring these women’s stories can be dehumanizing.

Montgomery also emphasized the importance of sharing and listening to women’s stories and noted that it can be hard to find women willing to share their abortion stories. She added that most women think about the consequences of getting pregnant for nearly their entire lives, while this is not a concern that many men consider regularly.

Owen Ritz ’21 attended the event with a friend and said that hearing about how relevant reproductive health is to women’s everyday lives opened his eyes to how important these issues are.

“It’s such a constant force in someone’s life,” Ritz said. “As a man,

PETER CHARALAMBOUS/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Around 70 people attended the discussion, which was hosted by Dartmouth Planned Parenthood Generation Action.

that’s something that I’ve never really thought about, but hearing how it plays a role in everyday life I think is the most powerful way to convey the importance of this issue.”

Hannah Marr ’20 came to the panel at the invitation of a friend and said that she was eager to learn more about work being done around issues of reproductive health.

“It was really valuable to hear from two similar perspectives that don’t

always look at issues in the exact same way,” Marr said. “I hadn’t thought about [issues of reproductive health] from both of these viewpoints or how [these viewpoints] interact.”

Casey noted that events like this and club meetings often attract an audience that is already generally supportive of reproductive health care, and she added that big group settings like the panel event are not conducive to reaching others who do not already support

reproductive rights.

“The way the conversation changes — how people change their minds — is through conversations with close friends,” Casey said. “My hope is that people who are involved in PPGA or who come to our events have the tools and information they need to really further the discussion and to speak up when they hear things that they think reflect a view that’s unsupportive of reproductive healthcare.”

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THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST GABRIELLE LEVY ’22

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST TEDDY HILL-WELD ’20

DartHealth

Moving on from Mueller

Campus culture fosters a strange mix of healthy and toxic behaviors.

Campus outsider use many stereotypes to describe Dartmouth students. Posts on collegematching website Unigo portray Dartmouth as a fraternity-dominated, beer-drinking party school, but also as a place where students are laid back, outdoorsy and active. I find these Dartmouth stereotypes contradictory — on one hand, students are known for extreme partying, and on the other, they are seen as healthy and physically active. The truth is that both stereotypes are largely valid.

The College’s culture places focus on the performative components of a healthy lifestyle.

The gym is almost always jam-packed. On warmer days, everyone seems to be out on a run. And then there is the graduation requirement of three physical education credits, which compels students to engage in physical activity like spin class or a weekly ski lesson at the Dartmouth Skiway.

A 2018 survey from the Office of Institutional Research reports that Dartmouth students are generally healthy. Survey respondents reported getting seven hours of sleep a night on average and engaging in moderate-intensity cardiovascular activity for at least 30 minutes for three days out of the week. Fifty percent of respondents also reported consuming three or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

But among students who report being healthy and active, many also partake in extremely unhealthy behaviors related to alcohol. In the same survey, 50 percent of respondents reported engaging in high-risk drinking, defined as five or more drinks in one sitting, in the past two weeks. This self-reported data is concordant with other surveys. According to the Student Wellness Center’s most recent annual report, there were 183 medical encounters related to alcohol intoxication

in which students received care at Dick’s House or at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center from July 2017 to June 2018.

Moreover, in May 2018 that 8.5 percent of 1,549 students surveyed by College Pulse reported having eight to nine drinks on a typical night out. In the same survey, 20.6 percent of the students surveyed reported “blacking out” at least one to two times in the last two weeks.

Upon entering college, we tend to believe that we are invincible and that we can do anything. Early on in our time at Dartmouth, we adopt an “anything is possible” mindset: We are premed students and theater majors, we win track meets on the weekend and ace engineering exams the following Monday.

We observe those around us pull off the incredible juggling act that is the embodiment of the ultimate Dartmouth “work hard, play hard” mentality, and we believe that we can too.

And for the most part, we can. We spend hours in Baker-Berry Library to get the GPAs we want, and we make time for Dartmouth traditions like Green Key and other social events. Yet we may forget about the long-term consequences of overdrinking, such as liver disease, nerve damage and high blood pressure. We live in a world of denial in which we believe that these health risks don’t apply to us.

They do.

This is not just another article proclaiming that alcohol abuse is wrong or that Dartmouth students should stop drinking. Rather, I suggest we Dartmouth students change our mindsets. We can no longer use healthy behaviors to justify our unhealthy relationship with alcohol. We should step down from our world of frat fantasy and remind ourselves of the harm our behaviors do to our overall health.

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Democrats must move on from the Russia investigation.

On March 22, special counsel Robert Since Mueller submitted his report, the Mueller delivered his report on the two-year president has made false claims about the long investigation into Russian involvement dangers of wind power, pushed to resume in the 2016 election. Many separations of families Democrats have spent the at the southern border “Democrats aren’t previous two years on the and designated Iran’s edge of their seats, hoping wrong to question Islamic Revolutionary Mueller’s report would whether Barr held Guard Corps a terrorist allege that the Donald organization. And his Trump campaign colluded back details that c a b i n e t m e m b e r s a re with Russia to influence could have hurt the not doing much better. the 2016 election. Two Secretary of education president’s standing. days after Mueller Betsy DeVos oversaw a submitted his re port, But even if Democrats near-complete halt of attorney general William have grounds to federal student loan relief Barr submitted a four-page for defrauded students, summary of the report to pursue a full release of and treasury secretary Congress — a decision the report, they dwell Steve Mnuchin defended that many Democrats his choice not to press the decried as indicative of a on the issue at their Internal Revenue Service lack of transparency and own peril.” to release Trump’s tax oversight. Given Barr’s returns before Congress. public skepticism of the On April 9, Barr investigation, Democrats asserted that he would aren’t wrong to question whether Barr make the full Mueller report available to held back details that could have hurt the the public, or at least to Congress, within President’s standing. But a week. But it would not even if Democrats have serve the Democrats’ grounds to pursue a full “The Democrats need interests to spend another release of the report, they a big tent in 2020, month digging through dwell on the issue at their hundreds of pages of and unlike divisive own peril. documents. After all, the Donald Trump did investigations into Democratic primary still not win because of direct collusion with Russia, lacks a clear frontrunner, collusion with Russia. and more candidates seem Instead, he capitalized opposition to Trump’s ready to join the race. o n l a t e n t p r e j u d i c e policies can serve as a Democrats lack a wellamong American voters defined base, with the far unifying factor.”

— the same sentiment left splitting away from t h at Ru s s i a n h a c k e r s establishment voters. The exploited by spreading Democrats need a big misinfor mation during tent in 2020, and unlike the election. For instance, divisive investig ations consider the Russianinto alleged collusion linked WikiLeaks dump of with Russia, opposition to the Democratic National Trump’s policies can serve Committee emails; it as a unifying factor. proved effective because it reaffir med Another full-scale effort to undermine people’s distrust of Hillary Clinton. To focus Trump’s legitimacy with claims of collusion on Russia is a distraction. Entirely separate with Russia won’t unite the party. Instead of from the Russia investigation, the President’s doubling down focus on Russia, Democrats chaotic games have kept Democrats — and should instead take each of Trump’s bad often Republicans — on their toes as trade decisions at face value. Even without Russian wars, a border wall, obtuse cabinet members collusion, Trump’s policy blunders display and innumerable Twitter rants emanate out gross ineptitude and invite Democratic of the White House. opposition.

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

PAGE 7

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST SAJID AHSAN ’20

STAFF COLUMNIST MATTHEW BROWN ’19

The Proper Response to a Massacre

Coffeehouses Aren’t Commons

In the wake of last month’s horrific massacre draw any connection between the Trump in Christchurch, New Zealand, all of the administration’s stance on Muslims and “the usual media phrases and buzzwords that have actions of a maniac.” They do not think it is grown so familiar and tired were put back particularly relevant to reflect on their own into circulation. First came the expressions of network’s coverage during the past two decades, shock and sorrow, peppered with words like headlined in recent years by Tucker Carlson’s “unimaginable” that have not been applicable inflammatory warnings about hordes of protofor a long time. Then came the discussion of terrorists swarming into Western countries. the responsibilities of the Just a week prior, Fox News was forced to suspend news media, wherein a Jeanine Pirro, despite the number of very serious- “A cavalcade of sounding people have the right-wing pundits ire of the President, when same conversation about she questioned whether and media figures not showing the video of Muslim congresswoman the shooting for what seems decided that the Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was like the 30th time. loyal to the United States or response correct to The media’s responses to to “Sharia law.” Earlier this most mass shootings seem an attack was to avoid week, a man was arrested to be the same every time. talking about why it for making death threats But somewhere along the against the congresswoman happened.” way, as the news cycle was because of her Muslim going through its customary faith, voicing claims of her motions, a curious thing supposed disloyalty to her happened. A cavalcade of right-wing pundits country in a call to her office. and media figures decided that the correct To accept these arguments as claims in good response to an attack was to avoid talking about faith is to credulously believe that radicalization why it happened. Conservative talking head happens in a vacuum, totally disconnected Ben Shapiro took to Twitter to claim that it was from a culture of fear, suspicion and outright important not only to avoid sharing the shooter’s hatred towards Muslims that politicians and name but also the manifesto he left behind pundits like Shapiro have promoted since detailing his motivations the “war on terror” began.

— a document in which “This sort of violence It requires one to believe the description of the that a political movement “Muslim threat” to white is the inevitable couched in racist appeals, wester n culture and endpoint of an that called for a ban on identity bears more than Muslims entering the country, ideology, the seeds a passing resemblance to that demanded a registry of some of the far right’s of which can be Muslim citizens could not rhetoric. This is of course seen throughout have have galvanized white the same Ben Shapiro supremacists to commit acts who tweeted that Arabs the American media of violence. “like to bomb crap and landscape.”

Politicans and pundits live in open sewage” and make self-serving arguments claimed that the majority and would rather wash their of the roughly 1.5 billion Muslims on Earth hands of the whole affair than reflect on their held dangerous radical views. Shapiro seems own complicity in making the world a more inclined to ignore the parallels between his dangerous place for Muslims. This is not to words and the shooter’s manifesto. say that these political and media figures are Fox and Friends, meanwhile, jumped from personally responsible for these deaths; one offering perfunctory condolences to defending man held the gun in his hands, and the crime the real victims of the day — the U.S. President itself is his alone. However, this sort of violence and supporters of his anti-Muslim policies. is the inevitable endpoint of an ideology, the Although the shooter’s manifesto refers to seeds of which can be seen throughout the the President as a “symbol of renewed white American media landscape. To ignore that fact identity and common purpose,” Fox’s hosts is an abdication of responsibility that crosses insisted that it would be “insane” to try to the line into malicious negligence.

The coffee shop is a privileged space. Since black men being arrested at a Starbucks went coffee was exported from Ethiopia to Mecca viral, the limits of the coffee shop as a commons and Medina in the 10th century, coffeehouses were put on display for the entire country to have been a staple of cosmopolitan life around see. The evident racism in the arrest was met the world. People have used coffeehouses with wide public discussion, yet comparatively as local meeting places, cornerstones of an little attention was given to the fact that it interconnected and reflective neighborhood. seemed suspicious for someone in a Starbucks But when I look at the energy of a modern to not order something. Implicit in the outrage coffee shop, I’m not was not only the exhaustion struck by the beauty of “But when I look at the that black life cannot exist what it is — instead, in any space in America, I notice the tragedy energy of a modern but also the assumption that of what it isn’t. The coffee shop, I’m not Starbucks is a public space. energy and discourse on struck by the beauty of To be clear, it is not. display in coffeehouses Public libraries, by contrast, is reminiscent of the what it is — instead, I are places free to enter, commons: Spaces where notice the tragedy of where no one is expected people may exist and to provide compensation convene as a right, not what it isn’t.” for their presence. It is no as a service. surprise, then, that in many To save American cities around the country, society, we must first save the commons. In public libraries have become occupied by the the United States, there has been a concerted, homeless. In a country that polices the park decades-long effort to privatize and cordon off benches, they have nowhere else to go. the commons: public lands being exploited for Where they remain intact, the commons private oil and gas development; a decline of are often segregated along racial and citizen engagement in local politics and media; socioeconomic lines. While parks on the Upper a persistent policing of poor and minority East Side of Manhattan in New York City are communities, while whiter and more affluent generally maintained and rightfully accessible communities increasingly to the entire community, opt for gates and guards. several blocks to the north, Investment in public “Only now ... do many children and teenagers are projects — such as Americans realize how policed in the parks of playgrounds, community Harlem and the Bronx on the centers, public sports much of the commons mere suspicion of criminal f i e l d s , s c h o o l s a n d has been lost to and activity. “Gang databases,” libraries — has declined in cities including Chicago, monetized by private precipitously over the New York, Los Angeles and years. Only now, as these hands.”

Seattle, have been used institutions desperately to police common spaces fight to finance their and profile individuals in ex i s t e n c e, d o m a ny common spaces.

Americans realize how much of the commons Freedom of association and free movement has been lost to private hands. are frequently denied to citizens simply The dangers of lacking commons are because of the color of their skin or the manifold. Civic engagement begins with neighborhood in which they live. For the communal awareness, a prerequisite that good of all, shared space should not become becomes far more difficult to achieve without a luxury item for the affluent to enjoy in public spaces. Robust public institutions also secluded environments. often provide better and more accessible The threat of a lacking commons is likely services to the public than market substitutes. to only increase in the coming years. The Communal prosperity and social justice are coffeeshop is an echo of the commons, but not things that should be left to the public space a replacement. As social creatures, humans will and funded accordingly with their importance suffer if they do not engage with one another. in society.

The country must rekindle its public life or On April 15, 2018, when a video of two risk communal death.

The Christchurch shooting was fueled by Islamophobia.

The U.S. needs a public revitalization, lest it risk communal death.

PAGE 8

THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019

‘The Black Outdoors’ course explores race and the environment B y Mia nelson

“For these people who have been historically compared to animals in all these violent ways, why would This spring, English and creative they ever write about them? It’s just writing professor Joshua Bennett is a question that haunted me in grad teaching ENGL 53.29/AAAS 35.50, school,” Bennett said.

“Introduction to African American After reading the works of Environmental Thought: The Black African American authors “who Outdoors.” Bennett said that his wrote beautifully about animals and work as a poet and a professor of beautifully about trees and the sea the class both relate to his interest and dirt and the sky,” Bennett was in preservation and spreading taken aback “because part of what awareness. His that meant was course seeks to racism was “According to Bennett, that bring light to the not totalizing vast artistic and the class seeks to it can not ecological life of the address this essential destroy your African American imagination or literary canon as question: ‘How have the way you well as their lived these people that relate to the experiences in the world,” he said have been historically outdoors. Bennett For those of has a fascination denigrated in us who are not with b l a c k relationship to the taking his class literature and this quarter, I poetics, especially environment they suggest reading i n re l at i o n t o were made to work, his collection environmental and of poems, how did they reclaim animality studies.

“The Sobbing According to that, how have black School,” Bennett, the class people reclaimed the for which he seeks to address won the 2015 these essential earth and animal life, National Poetry questions: “How and how are they in Series and was have these named a finalist people that have solidarity with animal for an NAACP been historically life and plant life and Image Award. d e n i g r a t e d i n the dirt?’”

The book is relationship to this a reminder environment they o f p o e t r y ’s were made to work, how did they importance for all people, not just reclaim that, how have black people writers. reclaimed the earth and animal life, “[Poetry] gets us down to the core and how are they in solidarity with of not just what we mean, but maybe animal life and plant life and the dirt?” what we can’t yet mean or can’t yet Bennett said he first explored say,” Bennett said. “The meanings or these topics in depth at Princeton the language we are still in pursuit of, University while working on his Ph.D. I think that is what poetry is at its core.

The Dartmouth Staff

It gives us a language for the ‘not yet,’ as a poet is to pass that knowledge the world that is not yet here, and it down.” is helping us build it.”

This responsibility is why the title In “The Sobbing School,” of “The Sobbing School” comes from Bennett’s poetic world focuses a Zora Neale Hurston essay. heavily on historical preservation.

“I hope when people Google Many of his [“T he Sobbing poems deal School”] they find with African “I always had a sense not only my book A m e r i c a n that black people and my poems but characters also her essay,” from history. were active in global Bennett said.

H e a l s o and American history.

Bennett added expressed that historical I never felt like I gratitude for African American his family and couldn’t participate figures and teachers who in the world, which w r i t e r s a re a n incorporated essential element A f r i c a n I think is one of the of our common A m e r i c a n aims of the American history and that is lives and to him to school system: to make important achievements “lift those people’s black children, brown into his life. names to the air.”

“I always children, indigenous In anticipation of had a sense his two upcoming t h at b l a c k children feel left out of works — a people were the grand narrative of collection of essays active in titled “Property history” global and Once Myself: American Blackness and h i s t o r y , ” - JOSHUA BENNETT, the End of Man” he said. “I and a new poetry n e v e r f e l t ENGLISH AND CREATIVE book “Owed” — like I couldn’t WRITING PROFESSOR both of which are p a r t i c i p at e projected to come in the world, out in 2020, I read which I think is one of the aims “The Sobbing School,” and found of the American school system: to it to be is a soaring work of poetry, make black children, brown children, ruminating on family, history and the indigenous children feel left out of black experience. the grand narrative of history.”

In the poem “On Extinction” Bennett Both his writings and his course are writes about the resiliency necessary designed to reclaim space for African for African Americans to survive in a Americans in the narrative of history hostile world: “The woman across the and literature. Of his knowledge and table from is scared to raise her son, awareness of African Americans fears he will be killed by police.” The in history and art, he said that he line that most struck me and that most believes “part of [his] responsibility communicated both strength and

fear was the line, “In 1896, Frederick Hoffman claimed every Negro/in the U.S. would be dead by the year/of my younger brother’s birth.” Bennett’s narrator is claiming ownership of a life that must resurrect itself by the act of living in the face of a predicted and violent disappearance which is inherently revolutionary.

The speaker writes that, because of this, “...When I consider extinction,/ I do not think of sad men with guns .../but the sheer breadth/of our refusal,/how my mother, without stopping/even to write a poem about it,/woke up yesterday/and this morning again.” The refusal to die is the opposite of extinction, but that refusal is also the crux of what the word ‘extinction’ actually means, for we can only know extinction by the absence of someone who was once there.

To me, “On Extinction” conjures a reclaiming of the polarity of the word “extinction,” meaning that the existence of the speaker’s mother, and symbolically a larger African American community, is made even stronger by being aware of its opposite. In his poem “On Blueness,” Bennett asks, “Who can be alive today/and not study grief ?” “The Sobbing School” is in itself a study of grief punctuated by brief moments of joy.

For me, my own study of joy centered on my conversation with Bennett, who is truly the most poetic and inspiring person I have ever met. To anyone still skeptical on the power about poetry, I wish to leave this article in the same way Bennett ended our conversation — with the following musing: “Poetry is infinitely valuable … poetry gives language to life and gives us a better language for life.”