THE/COLLEGE/HILL
INDEPENDENT VOLUME XXII, ISSUE 5 MARCH 10, 2011 BROWN/RISD WEEKLY
Dictators & Mansions // 9 Zen // 11 Stress // 15
FROM THE EDITORS: Having confidence in someone implies an intimate relationship, as if you have confided a fault or confessed a secret. Perhaps this is what makes “a vote of no confidence” sound like an act of damnation. Last Wednesday the RISD faculty so damned President John Maeda and the provost Jessie Shefrin, approving a motion of no confidence by a margin of 147 to 32. Reactions to this vote are naturally mixed. There are lots of false and alarmist rumors: swipe cards will no longer work, the cardboard chair class will end. Facebook groups and 147to32.com have ardently supported the faculty since controversy began. One person made an upside-down RISD logo that sits above the statement “RISD is not Maeda. Maeda will not be RISD.” Older students recall the 2007 vote of no confidence in President Mandle. Mandle stepped down shortly thereafter, ending a fifteen year reign. Some are jaded and skeptical of the motion’s revolutionary showmanship. In the words of one senior: “Why don’t they eat their hats and write a manifesto?” The present dissatisfaction with Maeda was provoked by his “Connecting the Dots” plan for the future of RISD. In its current online form, the plan is unsurprisingly bland and full of still-vague courses of action that will theoretically lead to wonderful but equally vague goals. The contentious part merges the Deans of Fine Arts and Architecture into one Dean of Undergraduate Studies. Though fears of downsizing likely contributed to faculty discontent with this restructuring, Maeda’s proposal is also an uncomfortable poke at the tender divide between fine art and design. Maeda’s proposal fails to realize that a fundamentally different sort of soul is excited by painting ten self portraits in an hour than by creating excruciatingly precise chipboard models. Every art school tries to cultivate a complementary interaction between fine art and design, but placing oil and water in one glass creates an unmixable metaphor and demonstrates a lack of sensitivity to the delicacy of this relationship. Mutual independence has long been held as necessary for successful collaboration. Firm Trustee support for Maeda means that the motion could easily have no effect on “Connecting the Dots.” Most likely we will see apologies and superficial conciliations. The artistic repercussions for student work from meddling with the division of fine art and design are, of course, unknown and unknowable. Deconstructing the existing methods for the instruction of art makes the uncertainty of the practice painfully clear. Confidence has been lost all around, but perhaps there never should have been confidence in the first place, only the terrifyingly elemental question: how do you train an artist, anyway? –AF
THE ISSUE: News WEEK IN REVIEW
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MIDWESTERN MAYHEM
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by Ana Alvarez and Ashton Strait
by Erica Schwiegershausen
Metro SPEAKING THROUGH SUPREME COURT SILENCE by Malcolm Burnley
Features BLOOD ON OUR HANDS? by Kelsey Shimamoto
ZEN AND NOW by Mimi Dwyer
MANAGING EDITORS Gillian Brassil, Erik Font, Adrian Randall • NEWS Emily Gogolak, Ashton Strait, Emma Whitford • METRO Emma Berry, Malcolm Burnley, Alice Hines, Jonah Wolf • FEATURES Belle Cushing, Mimi Dwyer, Eve Blazo, Kate Welsh • ARTS Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, Olivia Fagon, Alex Spoto • LITERARY Kate Van Brocklin • SCIENCE Maggie Lange • SPORTS/FOOD David Adler, Greg Berman • OCCULT Alexandra Corrigan, Natasha Pradhan• LIST Dayna Tortorici • CIPHRESS IN CHIEF Raphaela Lipinsky • COVER/CREATIVE CONSULTANT Emily Martin • X Fraser Evans • ILLUSTRATIONS Annika Finne, Becca Levinson • DESIGN Maija Ekey, Katherine Entis, Mary-Evelyn Farrior, Emily Fishman, Maddy Jennings, Joanna Zhang • PHOTOGRAPHY John Fisher • STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Sarah Friedland, Annie Macdonald • SENIOR EDITORS Katie Jennings, Tarah Knaresboro, Erin Schikowski, Eli Schmitt, Dayna Tortorici, Alex Verdolini
AESTHETICS OF POWER THE FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL by Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, and Oliva Fagon
Contact theindy@gmail.com for advertising information. // theindy.org Letters to the editor are welcome distractions. The College Hill Independent is published weekly during the fall and spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA
THE GREATEST POKEMON BATTLE OF ALL TIME: Two major events triggered the chain of suicides. The first was a Truth or Dare topic. tealmarie was dared to go to the Pokemon board and ask the now-infamous question, “Why is Pikachu Yellow?” She was suspended and later banned for board invasion. After that, gostevie made a topic requesting all Dutch LUEsers to unite. CJayC saw this as a board invasion, and also banned him. Shortly after these incidents, Flaming Nun suicided, and all hell broke loose with multiple users suiciding in an extremely short period.
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Science DEEP BREATHS by Jittania Smith
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Literary CARE by Rebekah Bergman
COVER ART Emily Martin The College Hill Independent PO Box 1930 Brown University Providence, RI 02912
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Arts by Alexandra Farnsworth
THE INDY IS:
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WEEK IN REVIEW Celebrity Meltdown Edition by Ana Alvarez and Ashton Strait Illustration by Annika Finne
MEAN SHEEN BEANED FLINGS While the wild ride that has been Charlie Sheen’s very public meltdown over the last two months has become excellent fodder for internet memes and re-tweets, it seems that as a nation we’re neglecting to remember that the man with “tiger’s blood” and “Adonis DNA” isn’t such an Adonis after all. Sheen’s public persona has veered from lovable bad boy to semischizophrenic, fully delusional public performer, but Sheen has an even darker history of unhinged behavior that isn’t quite as charming as calling himself a “warlock” on the Today Show. Below, a brief introduction to Charlie Sheen via present tweets and past indiscretions: •
In addition to an “F-18 of an id,” he has two restraining orders against him, both from former wives. Denise Richards filed one in 2006 when he threatened to kill her. Several weeks ago, current wife Brooke Mueller filed another when he threatened to cut her head off, put it in a box, and send it to her mother.
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He considers his “Warlock brain 2 B a weapon of mass destruction,” but did more than enough damage with a mere handgun when he accidentally shot fiancée Kelly Preston in 1990.
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Sheen claims he and his team “bludgeoned [their] way into the 2nd greatest book of all time” and that the Guinness Book of World Records was “now complete” because he gained a record number of Twitter follow-
ers in a 24-hour period. He also bludgeoned a college student with his fists in 1994 because she wouldn’t have sex with him. •
He is a proud owner of “the only real tiger blood in the known universe” as well as several criminal complaints against him, the most recent from Capri Anderson, who had to lock herself in a bathroom at the Plaza Hotel last October during one of Sheen’s rampages. –AS
BIEBER SHEARS, FEVER DISAPPEARS Perhaps Justin Bieber should take a leaf out of Charlie Sheen’s book and start waxing poetic about warlocks and tiger’s blood to his 7.5 million followers. Word in the Twitterverse is that the tween star lost upwards of 80,000 followers when he debuted pictures of his new haircut last month. The Canadian pop star gave a lock of his former fringe to Ellen DeGeneres on her show the day after. The talk-show host auctioned the hair (in a signed box) on eBay, fetching $40,668, which shedonated to an animal rescue organization. Bieber has yet to comment on whether, like Samson, his new do will affect his lion-wrestling skills and/or ability to slay an entire army with a donkey’s jawbone. –AS GALLIANO GALLS GAULS British designer John Galliano has always been a darling of the fashion world. Unfortunately for him, anti-Semitic comments are never in style. The now ex-head designer of fashion powerhouse Christian Dior was suspended on February 25 after he was accused of making overt anti-Se-
mitic comments to a group of Italian woman at a bar in Paris. Gallia no’s drunken rants about his love for Hitler were only made worse by the fact that Jewish actress and recent Academy Award-winner Natalie Portman (née Hershlag) is the face for Miss Dior Cherie, one of Dior’s fragrances. After a video of Galliano’s comments was leaked on March 1, Portman wrote in a statement that she was “shocked and disgusted” by his behavior. Immediately after the condemnation from their Hollywood starlet, Dior turned Galliano’s suspension into a definite dismissal. Even worse, making anti-Semitic remarks is illegal in France. According to the Financial Times, if found guilty of making anti-Semitic comments, the designer could face up to six months in jail or a fine of up to $31,000. Galliano’s controversial slip-up could not have come at a worse time: his demise unfolded days before his ready-to-wear Fall/Winter collection was to be released during Paris Fashion Week. Instead of the regular runway blowout, the collection was modestly presented to fashion insiders, who flocked in morbid fascination to see what may be the designer’s final show. The collection was standard Galliano, with languid, pastel-colored chiffon gowns and dark-tinted lips. Although his aesthetic was ever present, the designer himself was not; Galliano is rumored to be currently attending alcohol rehab somewhere in the Arizona desert. Even though his looks may never grace the Parisian runways again, he will have to return to France to attend trial sometime this spring. –AA
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MIDWESTERN “I
t’s like Cairo has moved to Madison,” remarked Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, describing the widespread protests in Wisconsin’s capital following Governor Scott Walker’s proposal for a bill that severely threatens the future of unions in the state. Though it is unlikely that Ryan intended to compare his fellow Republican, Walker, to Hosni Mubarak, he would hardly be the first. In recent weeks thousands of protesters have descended on the Capitol, with many accusing Walker of violating fundamental democratic rights and carrying signs like “Mubarak for Governor,” and “Walk like an Egyptian.” Walker’s “budget-repair” bill, announced February 11, aims to close a projected $3.6 billion shortfall by requiring public employees to pay five percent of their salary towards pensions and 12.6 percent of their healthcare premiums, an increase of an average of six percent within the state, which will translate to a pay cut of between seven and ten percent for affected workers. More controversially, the bill would restrict the scope of collective bargaining to wages for most state and local employees, ending negotiations on issues such as benefits and work conditions. The bill would effectively prevent unions from bargaining over issues such as mandatory overtime, performance bonuses, or hazardous duty pay. With the state facing a $137 million deficit, most recognize the need for budget-crunching. In fact, the state’s public employee unions have actually already agreed to Walker’s proposed wage and benefit reductions—that is, if Walker agrees to abandon the clause restricting collective bargaining rights. However, Walker refuses to compromise on the matter, and little progress has been made since the announcement of the bill. On March 1, Walker released his full budget proposal, announcing plans to cut $1.5 billion of aid to public schools and local government. These plans include a cut in funding to public schools of nearly nine percent, meaning a reduction of approximately $900,000. In addition to these cuts, Walker has proposed requiring school districts to reduce their property tax authority by an average of $550 per pupil. The budget proposal also included substantial changes to the University of Wisconsin system, including a plan to eliminate state funding for UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. Additionally, plans include cutting $250 million in state aid from the system, $125 million of which would be cut directly from UW-Madison. Walker claims that these large cuts in funding could be paid for
in large part by forcing government employees to pay more for their pensions and health care benefits, as his budget repair bill proposes. He also argues that by eliminating most collective bargaining, state agencies, local governments and school districts will have flexibility to react quickly to the cuts. “This is a budget reform. It is about getting Wisconsin working again, and to make that happen, we need a balanced budget that works— and an environment where the private sector can create 250,000 jobs over the next four years,” Walker told lawmakers inside the assembly chamber of the Capitol. He also claims that his budget proposal can avoid layoffs of state workers. Walker has received harsh criticism for cutting $1.5 billion in funding from the public sector while avoiding any tax or fee increases. Robert Kraig, director of the consumer advocacy group Citizen Action of Wisconsin, told the Huffington Post that Walker’s budget places “the entire burden of Wisconsin’s budget shortfall on our children, our most vulnerable citizens in need of health care and long-term care, and our dedicated public employees.” Many Democrats also worry that Walker’s bill is more about weakening unions than balancing finances, and question how eliminating collective bargaining would help state budgets or restore fiscal balance. As of March 9, Wisconsin’s 14 Democratic senators have fled the state, taking advantage of the clause that requires a quorum in the house to hold votes on legislation. This has caused a temporary halt in the legislative process, and in the ensuing weeks thousands of protestors have made their way to the Madison Capitol. Livy Baldwin, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that large-scale reactions to the bill began in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Students made “Valentines for Walker” that protested his plan to cut funding for UW, which is currently a provision of his state budget proposal. Many read, “We Heart UW: Governor Walker, Don’t Break My Heart.” On February 14, over 1000 members of the UW community and its supporters showed up at the Capitol to deliver the Valentines, although Walker refused to meet with the students. Madison’s unique geography lends itself well to largescale public protests, which began on Tuesday, February 15. Marchers filed down State Street, which runs through the
center of the city, connecting the UW-Madison campus with the Capitol building. Protests began in the rotunda of the Capitol, where the public workers, teachers and students formed a drum circle which has remained nearly constant in the three weeks since the bill was announced. On Wednesday of that week, Madison public schools were closed after many employees called in sick to help lobby as protests dominated the large public square surrounding the Capitol building. By Friday officials were estimating protestors numbered 30,000. Baldwin describes the nature of the protests: “You can enter the Capitol at any given time and find a drum circle with at least 50 spectators in the rotunda with people intermittently standing on milk crates and shouting about how much they love democracy and hate Walker.” The crowds include protesters of all ages and backgrounds, and Baldwin has even seen some middle school students taking up the megaphone, talking about how they’re affected by the bill and why they care about it. What’s been most amazing, according to Baldwin, is the sense of camaraderie that the bill has bred throughout the city of Madison. “That’s really cool in itself…just seeing how it’s cross-generational and cross-cultural, and how people of all classes and walks of life are coming together in solidarity.”Adam Frees, a Brown sophomore currently in Madison explains that the protest is unique because the police are actually on the side of the protesters. Although police and firemen are technically exempt from the bill’s cuts, they are unionized, and largely share protestor’s objections to the infringement of union rights. As a result, most protesters don’t view the police as enemies, and the protests have been civilized and safe, which perhaps also explains why they have been allowed to continue on such a large scale for weeks. Midwestern hospitality is rampant in the city’s support for the protesters. Many citizens have donated huge amounts of food to the protesters. Ian’s Pizza, one of Madison’s most popular pizza shops, closed for a number of days to process donation orders. Protesters have brought construction paper and markers into the Capitol, so the walls are now all covered in signs made by citizens expressing sentiments such as “There’s Still Good In You (Sky) Walker” and “Scottie Ya Blew It.” Frees remarks that the only time he has encountered a tense atmosphere at the Capitol was during
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MAYHEM one of the more significant Tea Party counter-protests two weekends ago. About a week after the initial announcement of the bill, Tea Partiers arrived in Madison, with several thousand counter demonstrators spilling onto the Capitol square, carrying signs like “Sorry, we’re late, we work for a living,” and “The gravy train is over.” However, Frees emphasizes the size difference between the protesters and counter-protesters: “I’ve been kind of disappointed with the national coverage because a lot of them make it seem as though there is a counter protest movement… I mean, it’s minimal at best. [On] their main day…they had maybe 3,000 people there, as opposed to the 50,000 there for the protesters.” He continues: “[But] of course all the headlines seem to read protesters from both sides show up.” But even after weeks of protests, which have captured national and international attention, Walker gives no signs of budging. He claims that he has no other options to solve the state’s budget problems, and says that if his proposal does not pass soon it is possible that as many as 1,500 state workers will lose their jobs by July. He appears undeterred by ongoing protests, recently telling Fox News: “We are willing to take this as long as it takes because in the end we’re doing the right thing.” Currently, the state is largely divided on the bill. Polls released last week by Rasmussen Reports found 52 percent of voters are opposed to weakening collective bargaining rights, with 39 percent in favor of the measure. When asked whether state workers should take a 10 percent pay cut, 44 percent supported the move, and 38 percent were opposed. Generally, polls have reflected diminishing support for the bill since its announcement three weeks ago. In the meantime, protests are still going strong. Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore traveled to Madison this past weekend, praising the AWOL Democratic senators and encouraging protestors to keep fighting Walker’s proposal. “The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke,” Moore
Madison Fights for the Right to Unionize
told protesters in a characteristic speech. “It’s part of the Big Lie. It’s one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can’t win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.” However, it remains to be seen how much Moore’s message will catch. In recent weeks the protests have spurred a wider national debate over the role of labor unions and where sacrifices should fall as states try to “repair” budget deficits. Presently, other states where Republicans came to power in the November elections are beginning to see similar movements in legislation. Gerald W. McEntee, President of the American Federation of State, Country and Municipal Employees, told the New York Times: “Workers’ rights—including the fundamental right to organize and bargain for better pay, benefits and working conditions— are under attack in states from Maine to Ohio, from Wisconsin to Florida…if they succeed in Wisconsin, the birthplace of A.F.S.C.M.E., they will be emboldened to attack workers’ rights in every state. Instead of trying to work with public employees at the bargaining table, they’ve decided to throw away the table.” For Republicans, the political benefit of weakening labor unions is undeniable. Proposals like Walker’s can weaken the bargaining power of labor, thus weakening an essential check and counter balance to big business, while simultaneously shutting off a significant funding source to Democrats, who have traditionally received backing from unions. However, the repercussions for American society are great. The decline of unions over the past few decades has been far steeper in the United States than in Canada or Europe. Today, less than seven percent of workers in the private sector are unionized; in the public sector, the rate is just over 37 percent. According to a recent study by sociologists Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld, this decline in labor may account for as much as a third of the rise in wage equality in American since the 1970s. Despite the significant declines in unions, labor continues to be one of the only large scale organizations consistently representing the American middle class. However, while unions are consistently weak-
by Erica Schwiegershausen Design by Eli Schmitt ened, groups representing the affluent have grown increasingly stronger. As a result, Washington has been shifting tax and economic policies away from middle class Americans for decades. In Wisconsin, it is unclear how the situation will resolve itself. Although there have been numerous discussions between Wisconsin Republican and Democratic senators, little progress towards a compromise has emerged. Republican State Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald described the process of talks with the 14 Democrats as “negotiating with Jell-O.” It is believed that a standoff is drawing near, which may mean that the Democrats will soon return to the state and allow a vote to take place on the original bill, which is expected to pass in the Republican dominated State Senate once a quorum is met. “You reach a point where you say, ‘if our goal was to enlighten the public, we’ve done it,’ ” Bob Jauch, one of the missing Democratic senators told the New York Times this week. “There’s a time—and the time seems to be drawing near—where our usefulness is wearing thin.” Timothy Cullen, another Senate Democrat, told the Times: “This is a movement that’s bigger than us, so it’s time to go home and debate and make the case on other issues.” For the time being, the Madison protests continue with consistent support. Frees comments: “I don’t think personally that they will be successful, but it’s more about screaming at the top of your lungs that it’s not okay and that you’re not okay with this. You’re voicing your opinion in what is really the only way that is possible at this point.” ERICA SCHWIGERSHAUSEN B’13 worries about the state of Wisconsin cheddar.
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n a late-February afternoon, an eerie afterschool lull occupies Providence’s Hope High. It feels like graduation has come four months early, or like every student has been locked away in detention. Only a few students linger about the drop-off loop, where every yellow school bus has already disembarked from the three-story brick behemoth. The bustle and traffic of school hours are gone, and Hope High has emptied of most of its 1,400 students and 108 teachers. Through its double doors, halfway down a dormant hallway, a sense of urgency builds in Room 115, where three seniors—Jose Velasquez, Cynthia Jackson, and Jennifer Sanchez—are squished into a semi-circle of desks, listening to their attorney, Miriam Weizenbaum. The students are silent. They glance up at Weizenbaum, dressed in a dark grey legal suit and sitting at their eye-level, then back down at their desks, as Weizenbaum speaks: “Most of the law is used to protect those in power. That same system can be used to help people who aren’t in power, but it’s not going to help if you don’t use it. And we really gave them a run.” It’s been a long haul since June, when Weizenbaum and the students began their tenacious legal challenge against the Department of Education and Board of Regents, fighting to restore a crucial feature of Hope High’s curriculum—Common Planning Time—that was severely reduced last fall. Prior to the 2010-2011 school year, teachers were allotted 195 minutes of Common Planning Time (CPT) per week, used for one-on-one time with students, cur-
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By Malcolm Burnley Photos by John Fisher Design by Joanna Zhang
Hope High Students Challenge RI Dept. of Ed.
riculum planning, and professional development. Teachers and students have credited CPT for revolutionizing Hope High, turning it from an underperforming school in 2003 into an emblem of the district school system by 2010. But the Providence School Board, in an effort to standardize CPT across the district at 90 minutes per week, slashed Hope High’s substantially larger CPT by half this school year, spurring the students’ legal challenge. Weizenbaum and a group of Hope High seniors argued that the overhaul violated state regulations against reducing CPT, and challenged the Department of Education to reimplement the lost 105 minutes immediately. After slogging through nine months of bureaucratic procedures, the Department of Education validated their appeal, but did not grant an increase in CPT, forestalling enforcement until after the school year. In January, Weizenbaum and the students appealed the agency’s deferral in the courts, and their case ended at the Rhode Island Supreme Court. On February 11, the Supreme Court sent Weizenbaum a brief fax message—the five justices had held a conference and decided not to hear the student’s case, ending their challenge. As Weizenbaum articulates the Supreme Court’s legal rationale to the seniors, Jennifer begins to cry. “We expect our parents to help us, but they can’t because they work. You acted like our parents, to take the time to take care of us and defend us—like our mom,” Jennifer says before calling her a “guardian angel.” The Rhode Island Supreme Court silenced their nine-month legal odyssey, but not their resolve: “I feel like I have a voice now,” Jennifer says. “I feel proud. We got involved. We went deep. We opened doors for kids at other schools to get involved in their education.”
CPT SPELLS SUCCESS Before charter was the buzz-word in education reform, Hope High was a shining anomaly—a success story of inner-city public school revival. In 2002, a Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) statewide review classified the school as “low performing, not improving,” the worst possible category. Commissioner of Education Peter McWalters intervened to install dramatic reforms in September of 2003, including a four-by-four block schedule in which students spent 90 minutes a day in four classes and teachers were given 195 minutes of CPT each week. Christina Toro, who taught full-time at Hope High from 2006-2010 and had previously student-taught there in 2003, noticed CPT’s impact on improving student-teacher relationships. Instead of having 130-140 students, the current average under the new six-period schedule, she was responsible for 90. Teachers met weekly to brainstorm cross-disciplinary projects and discuss the well-being of their students—academic, social, and emotional. “Students
knew we were actually looking out for them,” she says. “Having more than one adult know who you are is one of the biggest keys to success with these kids.”
A LEGAL ODYSSEY Once known for fights, failing grades, and disengagement, Hope quickly showed signs of progress following the 2003 reforms. According to a 2005 RIDE report, while drop-out rates persisted at high levels, the school met 19 of 21 benchmarks of No Child Left Behind, just two years after McWalters intervened. In the spring of 2010, the Providence School Board decided to remove the block schedule at Hope in order to synchronize the district under the uniform six-period schedule already in place at other schools. It was an unexpected interruption for Hope’s teachers and students: class length diminished from 90 minutes to 53, the flexible schedule disappeared (students were mandated to take English, math, and science every day), and most crucially, CPT was cut in half. After the announcement of the change, frustration bubbled among students; in May, 400 walked out in protest during second period. As punishment from the school administration, the students—including Cynthia, Jose, and Jennifer—served detention and listened to a lecture on the benefits of a six-period schedule. Several parents, outraged by the punishment, contacted the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union regarding the ongoing developments at Hope High. The students’ story was relayed to Weizenbaum, a cooperating attorney with the ACLU; she agreed to represent the students free of charge. “What really came across was the value they placed in the reform that had been put in place at their school,” she remembers.
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In June, Weizenbaum and the students filed a legal appeal against the Providence School Board, targeting the reduction of CPT at Hope High and citing a state REgents regulation that protects against any reduction to CPT: “local educational agencies shall not reduce the number of sessions or amount of time allotted to Common Planning Time currently practiced.” They demanded a full re-implementation of CPT for the 2010-2011 school year. But three months after their appeal was filed, Hope High began its first semester with a six-period schedule. On September 13, Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist sided with the students, calling for CPT to be restored at the “level previously established at that school.” She sent Attorny John Lyle, a “special visitor,” to investigate how Hope High might comply with state CPT regulations, Lyle began visiting the school in November. After meeting with students, teachers, and administrators at Hope High, Lyle submitted his report to the Board of Regents on January 10, halfway into the school year. The report cited teacher complaints not only about the negative impact of reduced CPT—such as diminished one-on-one time for 200 ESL and 300 special needs students—but also about the danger of flipping a curriculum mid-year: “With virtual unanimity, they agreed that to reinstitute the 4-by-4 at this juncture would be disruptive and counterproductive,” Lyle wrote. One proposed solution, using afterschool time for CPT would have required an additional $80,000 to compensate faculty: the school budget had less than $10,000 in funds to work with. Lyle listed a total of seven options for CPT compliance at Hope, but the Board of Regents ultimately worked within his final suggestion: “maintain the status quo.” The Regents also sided with the students’ claim— agreeing with their interpretation of “shall not reduce”—but deferred any changes until after the school year: “As a matter of our discretion, we felt it would be inappropriate and potentially disruptive in the middle of a semester,” Regents’ Chairman Robert Flanders explains. “It would be in the best interest of the students and everybody connected with the school to wait until the end of the semester to implement that change.” Weizenbaum believes the measure was an intentional delay tactic: “The Board wanted to deny the effect of the law until they could change the law, not enforcing it until the students aren’t students anymore.” She thinks the Regents deferred enforcement to avoid a Catch-22: invalidating its own regulation or giving in to the students’ demands, which would create a curriculum headache. On January 20, Weizenbaum filed an appeal in the Rhode Island Superior Court, later taken up by the State Supreme Court, challenging the Regents’ stay of enforcement. Weizenbaum argued that delaying enforcement beyond the 2010-2011 school year violated the students’ right to due process. Following the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s decision on February 11th to ignore the student’s case, Weizenbaum persisted; calling it a “draconian decision,” and adding that “The Supreme Court is allowing the Department of Education to completely circumvent the effect of a clear, unambiguous, legally enacted regulation at the expense of these students.”
BLOCKING OUT TIME It is Sunday afternoon at Providence Place Mall, two days after the Supreme Court’s fax, and Cynthia spends the afternoon in jeans and a sweatshirt, sporting pulledback hair and hoop earrings. She seems unfazed by the mall’s mayhem—giggling gangs of teenage girls and food court free-for-alls—and appreciative of a rare moment of senior slow-down. Usually, she is pre-occupied writing for the school literary magazine, Spoken Word, or until recently, taking part in the escalating legal battle. Cynthia is satisfied with how she played the game, but not with how the game is played: “We did everything we were supposed to do, we were mature. We played by their rules, and they didn’t even play by their own rules. Is that the example they’re really setting?” For the rest of the school year, she will cope with Hope High’s chaotic fray, knowing now that the unpleasant atmosphere will last through graduation. She describes walking through hostile hallways eight times a day, remembering the warm environment once there. She used to soak up creative class plans, extended enrichment time, and advisory, but now those “might as well be gone,” she says. Ms. Toro was Cynthia’s English teacher and advisor during ninth grade. In November of her freshman year, she met with Cynthia and her mother for extended conversations during CPT. Together, they identified Cynthia’s A-plus grades in English and passion for writing, then mapped out a trajectory for a career in journalism. Next year she would like to stay close to home and is planning to major in English at one of the local colleges. She feels disappointed with the school she will leave behind: “I feel like Hope isn’t the same place. The only thing different now is the schedule.”
As a result, art teachers cope not only with shorter class periods, but also with high turnover of students quarter-to-quarter. “Teachers basically have to start all over again,” Jennifer says. Ever since eighth grade, Jennifer was devoted to theater. She agreed to be a plaintiff in the court case when she sensed Hope High’s program crumbling. “If you feel something is not right, you go with what you believe in. I gave the schedule a shot, but by week three, it was downhill already.” Frustrated with curtailed classes, she sums up the new curriculum as a “quick rush” of material
“The sch edule wa s our foun dation. It was everythi ng to us.”
A HUMBLE ACTIVIST When he entered high school, Jose expected pulled fire alarms and graffiti-tagged walls: “My freshman year, I was scared about going to Hope. I heard that students broke out in fights, dealing drugs, and bringing weapons. But my first day…it was friendly.” Jose warmed up to Hope and saw it as “a big toolbox” that allowed him to find his passion for theater. But when periods were reduced to 45 minutes this year, theater became “a joke,” without the necessary time for production, like blocking and costuming. “We are just there to take up space,” he says. Jose talked about why was inspired to be one of the three plantiffs in the case: “I didn’t want to leave Hope High School knowing that it was going to go down the tubes, back to the Old Hope,” he says. “I wanted to make Hope a school that all students would want to go to. Overall, I want to make it a second home, because Hope is a second home to many of us.” Jose’s parents are immigrants from El Salvador; his mother is a janitor at the Wheeler School—a private high school in Providence—and his father is a truck driver. Neither made it through high school and Jose values the education they never received: “I’m not the stereotype you see on T.V. I’m not the typical Hispanic male. I take my education very, very seriously.” To earn a diploma this June, Jose must take a Credit Recovery Program in April. Over the course of six weeks, he will make-up credits he squandered at the beginning of high school: “I was on a path to destruction,” he says of freshman and sophomore years. But he changed his attitude when he met with teachers during CPT sessions: “They pulled me aside and said ‘this is unacceptable.’ You are a good student.” Making up for lost time, he intends to become the first in his family to graduate and go on to college. CURTAIN CLOSING With a month left before college decisions are due, Jennifer is applying for scholarships and considering an acceptance letter from New York University’s American Musical and Dramatic Academy, a celebrated theater conservatory program. Like Jose, she first realized her theater aspirations at Hope High, dreams incubated in Ms. Auxier’s 90-minute theater classes. Without the block schedule, those dreams are no longer a reality: “I feel like there is no arts program now. The schedule was our foundation. It was everything to us.” Of the many changes brought on by the schedule change, the arts program is a glaring casualty. Jennifer speaks of stingy new limits on electives: non-seniors can only take one arts class—musical, visual, or performing—for half a year, whereas under the four-byfour block schedule, full-year electives were prevalent.
with less interaction among students and teachers. The hallways are frenzied “like a jungle,” she says.,“I want to cherish my high school years, but I can’t with this change.”
STILL STANDING Jose, Cynthia, and Jennifer are waiting out their remaining time at Hope High, a shadow of the school they once loved. For Weizenbaum, closing the case brings her back to an old lawyer joke: “After you finish a case, you take a hose and flush it away.” But, it’s not so easy this time. “These kids get the short-end of the stick at every turn. They finally get to a high school that is transforming into something of quality, and then that gets ripped out from them—illegally.” Chairman Flanders says that while no further hearing has been scheduled to re-implement 195 minutes of CPT after this school year, he anticipates the measure will be taken up by the summer. Weizenbaum thinks the Regents will change the regulation before ever having to act on the students’ claim, and the challenge will disappear. “The abuse of an agency,” she says, “goes completely un-reviewed.” As Weizenbaum got to know the students, she watched their confidence build in the same manner their protest patiently snowballed. What began as a scribbled petition with a simple slogan--“SOS” (Save Our Schedule)--evolved into a student-driven defense of their own education. For nine months they stood up to the state’s most powerful educators. “I don’t know what made them so audacious that they thought they could do this,” Weizenbaum says. While she remains disgusted with the final outcome, calling it an “injustice,” there is no sense of defeat: “Did this litigation achieve the goal of giving tools to these students to use over and over again in their lives? Yes, in that respect, we succeeded. It would make a stone cry, how much they believed.” Looking back over the court process, Jose describes the appeal as “life changing. Before, I wouldn’t think that my opinion mattered or a student from Providence could make something happen. But seeing how far we came changed that. Students from Providence can make things happen, students from urban environments can make things happen. This won’t be the last you will see of us.” MALCOLM BURNLEY B’12 wrote this article during CPT.
MARCH 10 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
7 |FEATURES
BLOOD ON
Cellphones,
Conflict Minerals, and the best hope for the
Democratic Republic of the Congo
N
ext time your phone vibrates across the table, consider the secret provenance of your unassuming cell phone. Consider its capacitors, its wiring, the other components that make up its guts: statistically speaking, there’s a good chance that some part of it was stripped from an illegal mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a hammer and chisel, under conditions not far removed from slavery. The profits from that part’s sale helped purchase weapons, pay solider salaries, and finance crimes against humanity. It’s an image that seems fundamentally at odds with the business-like Blackberry, the glossy iPad, the sleek Macbook, yet all rely on the same violence-tainted minerals for their production. Worldwide demand for these minerals has risen with the explosive growth in the manufacturing of cell phones and other electronics. And as prices rise, so do the stakes in mining, and the commensurate suffering of those caught between armed militiamen and the minerals that stand to earn them tens of millions of dollars. Once mined, the mineral ores—mainly coltan, gold, cassiterite, and wolframite—are sold to traffickers, beginning the long, strange journey into the homes and pockets of consumers all over the world. To obscure their illicit origins, the minerals are smuggled across the Congolese border to neighboring
countries like Uganda and Rwanda, and then out of Af- rica to refineries in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. At this point, they are smelted and mixed in with minerals from other sources, making their origins nearly impossible to trace. The refined elements are then sold to electronics companies, for use in vital components of cell phones, laptops, game consoles, and in nearly every type of consumer electronic: • tantalum, extracted from coltan, is used to make the capacitors that store energy in power supplies. • tungsten, refined from the mineral wolframite, is used, among other things, to create the components that allow cell phones to vibrate.
•
tin, from the mineral cassiterite, is used as a solder on the circuit boards of most electronics. • gold, in addition to its value in jewelry and other goods, is used to insulate wires. Currently, there is no electronics company in the world that tracks the sources of its minerals, or has the capacity to determine if their products contain militiamined Congolese minerals in their products.
the country exist in a semi-anarchic state, with armed forces vying for control of resources, fighting for land, and clashing over ethnic divisions. Heavily armed, and with the promise of impunity, the Congolese military and armed militias execute horrific inhumanity on a scale impossible to describe adequately, let alone explain. And their activities are financed, in part, through the international trade in consumer electronics.
Twelve hundred men, women, and children were killed today in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), joining the twelve hundred that died there yesterday and preceding the twelve hundred that will die tomorrow, the latest casualties of the Second Congo War. An estimated 5.4 million Congolese have been killed by violence or succumbed to starvation and preventable disease since the most recent resurgence of hostilities in 1998, the toll of a war that ranks as the deadliest conflict since World War II in terms of human casualties. It’s also one that many have never even heard of. Involving forces from eight nations and more than two dozen armed groups with different ambitions, political entanglements, and areas of influence, the war in the Congo defies compression into a single, coherent narrative. Destabilized by years of misrule by former
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most resource-rich countries in the world, encompassing fertile volcanic-soiled farmland, a sizable portion of the second largest rainforest on Earth, and a river system that could, according to a report by the UN, provide enough hydro-electric power for the whole continent. The country also presides over vast mineral deposits, valued at upwards of 24 trillion dollars (an amount significantly larger than the combined annual GDPs of the United States and China). Despite these natural resources, Congolese citizens have the second lowest nominal GDP per capita in the world, just behind neighboring Burundi, with 80 percent of the population living on the equivalent of 20 cents a day. Congo’s recent history has been marked by the ruinous exploitation of its natural wealth and people. The region was purchased in its entirety by King
President Mobutu Sese Seko, the DRC (then known as Zaire) first plunged into violence in 1994 as fighting related to the civil war and genocide in neighboring Rwanda spilled over the eastern border. Since then, the country has been the site of unrelenting internal strife, despite several changes in leadership and the signing of official peace accords in 2003. The conflict’s latest iteration has witnessed the adoption of extreme sexual violence as a weapon of war, leading to rates of mass rape unmatched anywhere else in the world. Though accurate statistics are notoriously difficult to gather due to underreporting (and indeed, the lack of any law enforcement agency to report to), estimates place the number of rapes that have occurred during the course of the conflict in the hundreds of thousands. In the absence of an effective central government, many war-torn regions in the east of
Leopold II of Belgium in 1885, who proceeded to loot it for rubber and ivory. Leopold’s soldiers became notorious for enforcing rubber quotas by cutting off workers’ hands, and an estimated 8 to 10 million deaths are thought to have occurred under Belgian colonial rule. The Congo was granted independence in 1960 and has since been governed by a series of corrupt and ineffective presidential regimes. The longest lasting of these regimes was that of Mobutu Sese Seko, who seized power in 1965 in a military coup following the (allegedly) US-backed removal and assassination of the country’s first president, Patrice Lumumba, for his Communist sympathies.Mobutu’s 32-year rule beggared the country, as he nationalized mining and proceeded to embezzle an estimated five billion dollars while roads, government services, and the remains of the colonial infrastructure fell into ruin. At the time of its independence, the Congo was the second most industrialized country in Africa. However, in the intervening years, no presidential regime has managed to create a viable Congolese economy. The lack of an organized central
MARCH 10 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
FEATURES| 8
OUR HANDS? economy has led to the proliferation of small-scale, subsistence mining operations, where miners use hand tools to extract valuable ores from the area’s many deposits. More than half of these open pit mines are controlled by militias, who exploit the population of the surrounding areas to harvest the valuable ores in exchange for meager wages and under grueling, unsafe working conditions. Many of these subsistence miners are children between the ages of 10 and 16, and injuries, mine shaft collapses, and worker abuse are the norm. Profits from the lucrative trade in these ores are used to finance the purchase of more weapons, which in turn fuel more violence, looting, and rape. Organizations like the Enough Project, Raise Hope for Congo, and STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, advocate education on the issue, urging the public to assert their influence as consumers and shareholders to demand “conflictfree” electronic alternatives and to refuse to invest in companies that trade with militias, such as the South African gold mining giant AngloGold Ashanti. Activists at colleges across the US, including Brown, have begun to wage divestment campaigns to make their campus “conflict free.” A resolution calling
on companies it invests in to track their minerals sources (the first of its kind), was passed in June 2010 by the Stanford Board of Trustees. On a national level, the recently passed Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act contains a section requiring companies that use these minerals to begin monitoring their supply chains and to publicly report on the success of their efforts. The bill calls for the Security and Exchange Commission to draft guidelines regarding the implementation of supply chain monitoring, which advocates of conflict-free electronics could then use in the boycott of companies that refuse to comply. However, a final draft of the guidelines has not yet been released, and the conflict mineral provision of the bill lacks any type of mechanism to ensure corporate compliance. As such, it currently stands as a largely symbolic gesture. Others seek the creation of an international monitoring system akin to the “Kimberely Process,” the protocol created by the UN in an attempt to curb the sale of so-called “blood diamonds.” In the Kimberely Process, diamonds are shipped in specially sealed containers along with a document certifying their provenance and
assuring that they were mined according to mandated ethical standards. The problem is that the efficacy of the Kimberely certification process depends on the presence of a stable government—evidence has shown that the process is not effective in areas without a credible central authority to certify the diamonds. The enfeebled and corrupt central government of the DRC certainly lacks the ability to provide such monitoring. To further complicate matters, the illicit mineral trade isn’t the only operation fueling the arming of militias. Several militias are not funded by mining at all, but by taxing the movement of goods through areas under their control; through trade in charcoal, timber, and other resources; or else by the financial backing of external sources. The mineral trade appears to be just one of several factors, economic and ideological, driving the continued violence. It remains unclear if shutting down mines is the most effective way to curb the atrocities perpetuated by militias. If the recent attempted
mining ban in three of the most volatile regions of the DRC is any indication, then no. Enacted by current president Joseph Kabila in response to international pressure to reign in illegal mining, the September 2010 ban simultaneously plunged the regional economies into chaos and failed to bring about a substantive decline in violence in the area. The ban was lifted a month later, demonstrating a grim reality: despite deplorable working conditions and the rampant exploitation of miners, sustenance mining provides the sole source of income for more than a million Congolese. Cutting off their access to a daily wage without providing for an alternative means of income only leaves miners more impoverished, more vulnerable to the ravages of starvation and more at the mercy of armed groups. However, this doesn’t mean that the tracking of mineral supply chains, combined with the establishment of an effective governmental body to oversee mining operations, wouldn’t benefit the country enormously. The current system allows tens of millions of dollars worth of mineral ore to flow out of the DRC, without any sort of external monitoring. These resources, untaxed and unregulated, con-
tribute little to the long-term economic development of the country. Legitimizing the mining of coltan and other minerals— and subjecting them to taxation—could be a crucial step towards stabilizing the country. The revenue generated could be used to fund the provision of any number of critical and currently absent governmental functions: defense, healthcare, law enforcement. However, this is contingent on the possibility that government corruption, ranked by Transparency International as some of the worst in the world, could be successfully curbed. The best hope for a functional government undoubtedly lies in the election of honest, effective government officials. Elections are due to be held in November of this year, although the country currently lacks the 346 million dollars necessary to fund democratic safeguards to ensure free and fair voting.
A look at Botswana, a country with substantial diamond deposits, provides an example of how a government can successfully use its mineral resources to fund education, infrastructure, and other services. Botswana, which derives 40 percent of its government revenues from the mining industry, has one of the fastest growing per capita income growth rates in the world, as well as the least corrupt government in Africa, according to Transparency International. In the hands of an honest and effective government, Botswana’s natural wealth has been used to generate jobs, shore up government stability, and vastly improve the quality of life of its citizens. The war in the Congo is not a simple conflict, and it will not be solved by making a few small changes in the way we buy. It is naïve and hubristic to assume that we as consumers have the power to “fix” the DRC simply by purchasing this phone or laptop instead of that one. But it’s not a bad place to start. By pressuring companies with a vested interested in Congolese resources to be accountable for their suppliers, consumers could potentially help introduce reform to the Congolese mining industry. That, combined with aid to bolster the DRC’s failing democratic institutions and the continued engagement with humanitarian and diplomatic operations in the region, could very well constitute the first steps towards a fragile peace. KELSEY SHIMAMOTO B’13 asks: “Can you hear me now?”
by Kelsey Shimamoto Illustration by Charis Loke
Design by Eli Schmitt
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photo from Egyptian National Archive MUBARAK (EGYPT) Mubarak lived mostly in the Heliopolis Palace, a rich enclave northeast of Cairo. An archive of Egypt’s state website shows the grandeur of the former European-influenced hotel, filled with “hundreds of gold-plated seats,” and a drawing room with weapons given to the President -- including a pistol owned by Mussolini and Saddam Hussein’s gold-plated AK-47. The official website describes another home (Ras Al-Tin) of Mubarak in Alexandria, adorned with “golden ornaments and silk covering the walls.” On February 11, protestors took to the President’s home.
QADDAFI (LIBYA) The horrifying death toll of Qaddafi’s regime continues to rise. His dozens of mansions sprawl from Libya to Spain, but the most infamous villa lies in Al-Bayda. The forty rooms come with swimming pools, rapant gold, nuclear bunker and tunnel labyrinth. The rooms are also lined with billions of diamonds. Absurdly paranoid, he supposedly prefers a Bedouin tent that he pitches outside his family’s home when not taking it on diplomatic missions. Despite holding a press conference to prove he was at home, news agencies have reported his private planes departed March 9th.
Last week, an eerie crop of photos appeared in Western media coverage of North Africa and the Middle East. Men covered in dust climbed through the gilded rubble of Zine al-Abidine Ben-Ali’s, Hosni Mubarak’s and Muammar Qaddafi’s former official and family palaces. Some came to search for the allegedly-stashed diamonds, while others simply arrived to shake their heads in digust at the dictators’ excess. But the palaces, advertised in pre-revolutionary times on the governments’ websites, were banal in their lavishness; the dictators’ stayed true to dictator-schtick: big, gaudy-hotel-like Francophile interiors with books, old paintings, marble, glass and self-portraits. Tres gauche. Given unparalleled access to money, land and artistic consult, powerful rulers are able to test the limits of design. But their design choices seem to constantly prove the old adage: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Access to absolute resources have produced, over the course of the 20th Century, absolutely corrupt interior design. And while the rich and powerful’s silly antics obviously constitute the best entertainment throughout time, the raw insanity of mismanaged wealth strikes an emotional chord. Beyonce’s public apology for entertaining Qaddafi begs this question: why didn’t she, Jay-Z or her PR people notice the amount of gilded yachts flaunted on the president’s website when people slept in graves in the cities? Last December, Wikileaks released a cable written by a former Tunisian ambassador to the United States. Outlined in sections named “The Sky’s the Limit,” “All in the Family,” “Yacht Wanted,” “Show Me Your Money,” “Mob Rule?”, he described the lifestyle of former Tunasian dictator Ben-Ali and, specifically, the silliness of his son-in-law in 2009. He reported extensively about their palatial compound in a seaside Tunisian resort, adorned with French frescoes and live tigers in cages surrounded by pastiche Roman columns. The son-in-law apparently spent the majority of the ambassador’s time discussing plans to open a McDonalds. The Ben-Ali’s, like other elites, had half-hidden their excess under the veil of national pride. But when everything collapsed, the palaces were revealed for what they really are. One 22 year old Libyan student, trekking through the Titanic-esque former Qaddafi residence in the hills of
lly as se, especia nue to ri ti n co idden h h ) lt es IA NIS re ston ily’s wea BEN-ALI (TU en-Ali fam ros and ra B eu e resort f o th e s th n n s o y fire at ding billio n ar fi u n Speculation w Ja o n a ring s are only A look du their citizen’ mansions. ed et. -fl ly d am ar m az h ed in Ham in their hap or condemn d sa as b m A e compound th
STHETICS F POWER
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by Alexandra Farnsworth Design and graphics by Joanna Zhang Al Bayda, remarked: “Imagine if he spent the same amount of money for people to build houses and schools.” Illusions of grandeur proved to be simple the sum of their parts--simply, blood money. The corruption of minority ruling classes is no surprise; the surprise is how accustomed to it that all but the repressed became. The nearest precedents that come to mind are images of American soldiers navigating Saddam Hussein’s tacky palaces. The young soldiers weren’t awed by the gilded columns and marble swimming pools; these monuments to virility and control seem more similar to dorm room posters than anything new, tasteful, or even worth the money. Outsiders laugh at Hussein’s paintings of nude Baywatch babes enveloped in monsters. But dictators’ characteristic tackiness and excess is less funny to the Libyans finding billions of Euros in Ben-Ali’s walls. Propped-up despots’ lifestyle choices reveal both their incapacity to judge just about anything--even furniture--and their lack of creativity. Qaddafi, famous for bizarre paranoia, stuck to traditionally gaudy gold “ivy” covering marble columns. The architecture, the interiors, and the art on the walls belie a postcolonial tone, and the older they get, the more they collapse. Time will tell what is in store for countries with widespread protests--including Libya, Iran, Bahrain, Yemen Tunisia, Morocco, Oman, Kuwait, Algeria and Dijibouti. Satelite maps and surveillance images only start to show the excesses, and most royal palaces are illegal to photograph. Still, citizens are fighting back against their ex-rulers’ aesthetic blind spots: this past Wednesday, Libyan sympathizers took over Qaddafi’s son’s £10 million mansion in Hampsteatd Heath London, putting Al-Jazeera Engligh on all the flat-screens. Design intervention. Dictator style has proven immune to regional taste throughout time--most leaders, no matter their context, display the same distain for restraint. The 20th Century alone gave us obsessions with larger-thanlife marble, hotel-chic, glass chandeliers, leopard print and creepy selfportraits. So, though the media will have to wait until more despots are overturned to see their lavish interiors, the Independent looks back on the undying style of megalomanics past.
nchant for leopard prove Tito’s fake flowers and pe riatic kitsch. him a true patron of Ad
Mobutu favo red French decor interio Zaire-style clot rs, Chinese hing: “African” pavillion flowered tuni cs and leopar d hats.
exteriors,
and
Mussolini went for large-scale marble and bizarre self-portraits for his house in Rome.
MARCH 10 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
Off I-295 and past strip malls of supermarkets and dollar stores, the Providence Zen Center sits frozen and silent. Its fifty-acre grounds house pristine buildings derived from traditional Korean architecture. The PZC is the historical epicenter of the Kwan Um School of Zen, the popular Western sect founded by Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn. Raised in North Korea by two Protestant Christian parents, Sahn immigrated to the United States in 1972 and wound up working at a Laundromat in downtown Providence. He began teaching Zen meditation to students at Brown within months of arriving in the US. The students ate it up—to them, Sahn was a living expression of the philosophy that the Beats had made sexy. He founded the PZC in October of 1972 and by 1979 the school was popular enough to build its current elaborate complex in Cumberland. Sahn officially created Kwan Um Zen in 1983, and by his death in 2004 his legacy had spread to over 100 centers worldwide. His first center in Providence serves not only practitioners of Buddhism, but also any laypeople interested in Zen meditation practice. Inside the complex, I meet George Hazlbauer, the PZC’s work-master. He was raised in the largely atheist Czech Republic, Hazlbauer has lived in Zen Centers across the US for the last thirteen years. His story fits squarely into the kind of soul-searching narrative Westerners love. “I was a pretty successful young man with a construction business, a band, all that kind of stuff,” he says. “Everything worked out. I had fifty people in my company and I was only nineteen. And I was like, what’s going to be next? I can have more people, I can have more money, I can be a really famous musician rather than somebody who is just well-known, and I was like, what, why? It was just empty. So I tried different things as I was looking into that—a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs, a lot of parties.” It’s a familiar trope—it all felt hollow, so he searched, and eventually “dropped the company, gave it to [his] workers, and went to travel to find some kind of meaning of life.” He traveled to Israel, lived with Bedouins, picked up meditation. He chose Kwan Um because he happened to meet a teacher from the PZC at the right time, and because he could relate to Seung Sahn’s philosophy.
Is meditation really as adaptable and universal as he makes out? This importation of culture through religion is hardly unique—Seung Sahn, after all, was the child of Protestants.
iave t i In templative St
ui d e s
i
n Providence, two influential and disparate iterations of Zen in the West stand within thirty minutes of one another: the Providence Zen Center in Cumberland and the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown. Neither didactic, neither proselytizing, both groups see drawbacks to their particular approaches to ‘translating’ the cultural foreignness of Zen. The Providence Zen Center is the international head temple of the Kwan Um School of Zen, one of the largest schools of Zen in the West. It embraces Zen in largely the same way the Beats did—as alluring in its nonconformity and otherness, isolated in the deep and hollow woods, adhering to certain traditional precepts like robe-wearing. The Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown, conversely, approaches Zen through a critical, scientific, and experiential lens, and boasts one of the most developed academic approaches to meditation in the country. As the Zen Center struggles to retain members, Contemplative Studies attracts more and more students and increasingly gains legitimacy in the scientific community. Now you can buy “Zen gardens” in SkyMall, does our approach to the practice mean something different? The role of Buddhism and Zen in the West has long been a point of tension in academic and religious circles. (It’s important to note that there are countless cultural variants of Buddhism in Asia itself, and that talking about it or about meditative practice as a whole inevitably leads to gross generalizations.) Robert Sharf writes that most fundamentally, the practice has functioned as the “religion of science” in the West, asserting “the essential oneness of the material and the immaterial” and basing religious practice on “the pure facts of experience.” There are countless ways of expressing this idea—the irrelevance of opinion, relinquishing the ego, understanding yourself, penetrating reality. Meditation is a central tool in working towards this oneness. The pop-Zen we know drives mainly from Beat poets’ fascination with the practice in the fifties. “I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution,” Kerouac wrote in The Dharma Bums, “all of ‘em Zen lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason, and also by being kind, and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and all living creatures. . . wild gangs of holy men getting together to drunk and talk and pray.” The newborn revolutionaries leapt at the enlightenment to which the Beats alluded. Zen got cool. The PZC found its client base.
“A lot of people think of meditation as, you know, feel happy—which is fine. But it’s not the goal of meditation. The goal of meditation is to understand why we are here and where we go when we die.” The result is a practice that is nonjudgmental and self-relinquishing, but in some ways exclusive nonetheless. Enlightenment “is attainment,” says Hazlbauer. “It’s a state of mind. Anybody who attains that state of mind can see if somebody else has attained it.” While the search for enlightenment he alludes to is ubiquitous, in the United States, meditation is hardly the most common path to its achievement. It appeals to a very specific subsect of the population. “Buddhism has this kind of upper-middle white class vibe around it,” says Hazlbauer. “I don’t know why. But somehow that’s the image we have in society.” Today, only ten of the PZC’s thirty available residential rooms are filled. “At one time, there were forty people living here,” Hazlbauer says. “That was a long time ago.” The sixties are over-- Zen has lost some of the countercultural connotations that once popularized it. Moreover, full-time residency at the center is $725 per month. Not bad, considering it includes meals, room, board, several daily meditation sessions, and even cable and WiFi. But full-time also means no job or income. Thus the communal setting mandates some degree of privilege. “We are not good with balance,” acknowledges Hazlbauer. “We kept ourselves really isolated for a long, long time and just recently came to knowledge that that’s not a good thing to do. Now we want to change that and in the last few years we’ve tried to be more part of the community.” He alludes to high school outreach programs, teenaged “interns” working on the grounds, cooking and cleaning, witnessing meditation if not engaging in it. As Hazlbauer sees it, the decline has to do with an American aversion to ritualistic or de-individualizing practice. “Everything is on time here… A huge part of [meditation] is discipline… You have to put down your personal opinions. There are certain forms we follow, and they have their function, but a lot of people struggle with them. When it happened to me in the Czech Republic I was like, yeah, I’ll try it, but here people are like, it’s not me, I would never put this on myself!” He releases me on the grounds with the offer of dinner and meditation and even an overnight stay. Whatever we want to do. An openness—perhaps related to the new outreach he’s been talking about. What’s off limits? “We do not have such a place,” he says. Then, a less symbolic answer: “There is a building up on the hill with a blue roof
Con
by Mimi Dwyer Photos by Annie MacDonald
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on it. That’s where we host our ninety-day retreats and one is going on right now. There are a few guys sitting for ninety days in silent meditation. Don’t talk around that building. Don’t walk on the porch. You can walk on the road, you can take pictures, but that building is dedicated to people who want to do longer meditation periods... We try to keep it like that. People have left their jobs.”
Back on campus a week later, I stand outside the ‘Cheetah House’ at 185 Brown Street. Tom Rocha B’11 and Willoughby Britton, Ph.D. greet me—they’re both members of Brown’s Contemplative Studies Initiative, a newly-established academic program centered at the house. According to its website, the Initiative unites students and faculty “around a common interest in the study of contemplative states of mind, including the underlying philosophy, psychology, and phenomenology of human contemplative experience.” The Initiative is nothing if not inclusive, nondenominational. Portions of it implement the same Zen techniques and Buddhist principles that drive the PZC, albeit with a totally disparate pedagogical approach. And while the Zen Center is struggling more than ever to fill its bedrooms, Contemplative Studies is drawing more students in every year, and by its third year in operation it became involved enough in the spiritual community that Janet Cooper-Nelson, head chaplain at the University, lives here.
Upstairs, Britton settles on a pillow on the floor. Rocha sits on a couch next to her, a stout dog in a dog hoodie curling up under his legs. “You’re asking why places like the Zen Center are struggling,” Britton says. “I think it’s that when you walk in there, you feel like an outsider. And then all these other people, they’re doing chants in other languages, they have their head shaved, they have these titles. It doesn’t feel as inviting as the approach here.” It’s a matter of preference—Hazlbauer acknowledged that, too. After all, very few people practicing meditation are looking to ‘out-meditate’ other practitioners. But what changes when the cultural reproduction of the Zen Center turns into a more scientific form of meditative practice? Perhaps some of the elitism tied into private communal living dissipates. The Contemplative Studies initiative makes its public lectures free or very cheap. “Re-
MARCH 10 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
treats that would be hundreds of dollars are, say, thirty,” says Britton. “But,” Rocha adds, “It’s no more exclusive than going to an Ivy League school. People going here tend to have a lot of money, so in that sense it’s exclusive.” “Contemplative Studies is not just Brown students!” Britton counters. “There are another 400 people from Providence that come to our events; they could be anyone.” Still, Britton acknowledges, “those people probably are pretty educated and likely therefore pretty high socioeconomic status.”
On a more fundamental level, Contemplative Studies changes Zen-Center Zen by removing its isolation. “But I think isolation can be encountered in different ways,” says Britton. “The person that takes up meditation as part of their life and not part of a larger religious system can be isolated too. They’re maybe doing meditation in their office or bedroom. And then the people at the Zen Center… meditate together, eat together, they do everything together. That’s a tremendous community.” Britton argues that retreat-style removal is not necessarily positive. “There can be a division between the ‘retreat’ life and ‘home’ life,” she says. “That’s actually a huge problem. People think they can leave their regular lives and somehow exist in this other place. And there are a lot of teachers actively trying to get rid of that idea.” But wasn’t monastic isolation a tenant of Zen meditation in the first place? “A lot of the teachings we’re using that were intended for monastics are incomplete [in the West],” Britton answers. “Monastics never had to deal with money. They didn’t have to choose jobs, careers, all the anxieties which go with that and which are a huge part of being alive in America. They never had to deal with relationships, boundaries, sexuality… So if you wanted to refer back to monastic teachings to see how you dealt with those parts of your life, they’re not there…Buddhism in America has had to add particular trainings and teachings in those domains,” she says. “Similarly, a lot of the monks and teachers that came from Asia were suddenly introduced to a tremendous amount of money and power and got themselves into a lot of trouble. I don’t think there’s a single meditation center in the West that hasn’t had a scandal.” This is true of the Providence Zen Center—in 1988, Seung Sahn was accused of conducting simultaneous sexual relationships with students at the Center
while leading the community under the pretense of his monastic celibacy. The scandal compounded the Center’s decline in membership.
py… changed a couple things. They called it Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. They made it more scientifically palatable. But the practices are identical.”
Contemplative Studies has embraced the integrated approach to which Britton alludes. Hal Roth, Ph.D. teaches Intro to Contemplative Studies at Brown. “One of the main differences between practicing in a religious center and practicing in a course is something we call critical firstperson engagement,” he says. “With firstperson engagement you’re actually doing a practice. You don’t assume any of the assertions that are made…are true. You test them out and they’re subject to criticism based on what you experience. It’s a very empirical approach.” Then comes the more academic component: “We also do what you call third-person approaches that look at the history, the context, the social and political structures surrounding all of these different contemplative practices. “And then,” Roth adds, “we’re also interested in investigating all the experiences through scientific means.” This is where Contemplative Studies at Brown differs from other forms of appropriated mediation at American universities. “Brown definitely has the most developed [Contemplative Studies] program,” Britton says. “There are interests at other schools, but nothing as integrated and expansive as there is here.” Britton explains how her studies have begun to look at meditation from an academic perspective. She addresses depression, anxiety, and sleep problems, and at Brown, she’s used meditation in several clinical studies—how meditation affects people with chronic forms of depression, how meditation affects drug-addicted adolescents’ sleep patterns, how meditation changes the emotions and social interactions of sixth-graders. Now, Britton is comparing the effects of meditation on Brown students’ emotional wellbeing, brain function, and sleep to other forms of academic first-person engagement like dance. As a whole, the scientific community has slowly accepted Zen as a form of therapy. “Meditation has a lot of connotations with psychedelic drugs and hippies and everything academic psychiatrists hate,” Britton says. “It’s been a struggle to get credibility. The legitimacy has been gained through a process of ‘repackaging.’ Even when it was called MindfulnessBased Stress Reduction, it was sort of fringey. And then a number of the founders of the Academy of Cognitive Thera-
So how does the Contemplative Studies approach look in the eyes of the traditional Zen community like the PZC? The question becomes whether informal, integrated practitioners of Zen are ‘missing’ something derived from more rigid practice—and whether anyone even cares to make such a judgment. Britton echoes Hazlbauer on this topic. Zen “definitely gets oversimplified,” she says. “Meditation has been marketed as a relaxation technique, which it is absolutely not. It’s also marketed as one hundred percent benign, when actually, some people probably just shouldn’t meditate at all as a rule.” One of the central components of meditation, she says, is experiencing states of reality that involve struggle. “People are meditating twenty minutes a day,” she says. “That’s not usually enough to get you in trouble. Most people who do it for stress reduction won’t experience these odd states of consciousness. But even with an hour a day… Often someone that has no idea about that or about ‘penetrating reality’ actually will. And that can actually be surprising and shocking, because they just had no idea.” Hazlbauer had touted the benefits of communal living in grappling with this struggle. Britton agrees-this is where the tradition and cultural guidance can help, she posits: “Then you go and look in the ancient texts and see, oh, there’s a stage called ‘Terror.’ That’s encouraging and relieving.” Presently, however, part of her task is to remove even these texts from Zen tradition. Her lab wants “to get a good description of [these stages] for people who stumble into them and who aren’t necessarily interested in Buddhist texts,” Britton says, “but who are like, what is going on in my mind?!” “People do get profound benefits from fifteen minutes a day… but it’s not the same thing as what these hardcore practices are aimed for,” Britton says. “It’s a good question, and one that’s starting to be discussed in the clinical and intercultural dialogues—are we missing something, and what is the relationship between the lighter forms of practice like an eightweek program where you meditate for an hour a day and the point of meditation practice from a Buddhist perspective. We just don’t know.”
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In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Job is a righteous man whom God punishes for no apparent reason. In Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Book, Job’s last words are “Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.” Boils festering, possessions gone, children dead, a pious man suffers excruciating punishment for no reason explainable through a logical conception of justice. It is the ultimate paradox of Judeo-Christian vision of the human condition. Zen approaches this paradox without looking for any solution or answer to it. In a rough and partial sense it operates from this fundamental conception of dust— something that’s difficult for ego-paradigmed Westerners to grapple with. “One of the things about the Western psyche is that we’re very suspicious of religion,” Britton said. So if [a religion] has any trappings or robes or bowing or power hierarchies that’s going to be a harder sell… Between the sciences and humanities, not a lot gets through the cracks. You’re going to have a hard time ‘pulling one over’ on America. Things based on faith that have been passed down for hundreds of years because they’re part of the tradition, but have no effect aren’t going to last here. People are too skeptical.” If the ‘historical’ problem of Zen in the West has been aesthetic preference without ideological underpinnings, perhaps the problem of academic or clinical Zen is that those ideological underpinnings sometimes get lost in the promise of more tangible goals like stress reduction—hence some of its appeal to Brown students. Any imported spiritual practice is going to a) change when it comes to the West and b) function differently for different individuals. And ultimately, no one has the objective authority to call one form of practice superior to another. That’s not the point. Anybody practicing Zen has a purpose for it (and themselves)— whether it be aesthetic preoccupation or stress-reduction or enlightenment. None of the actual practitioners I spoke to made a judgment over what sort of Zen practice was relevant or accessible or superior in modern American culture. After all, a fundamental tenant of Zen is the irrelevance of opinion—or of ideological underpinnings as a whole. So how do we interpret the changes in something without goals? For all of the quibbling over the problems of cultural appropriation or reproduction or ‘shallowness’ of practice—perhaps such critiques are just another way of escaping the Dust we so dread. MIMI DWYER B’13 has been marketed as a relaxation technique.
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French kissing(and intellectualizing, killing, speeding, vandalizing, sabotaging, and steeling) spend a week in Providence by Ana Alvarez, Maud Doyle, and Olivia Fagon Between Thursday, February 24, and Sunday, March 6, The French Film Festival took over the Cable Car Cinema on South Main Street, selling 2,600 tickets mainly to the Brown community, but also to the Providence community and members of Providence College, and Johnson and Wales. This year, the festival was organized around four French-language films that dealt with World War II—Liberté, L’armée de crime, La rafle, and Gainsbourg—but the full roster of films was a diverse selection exploring a wide range of content and construction. The committee expanded outwards from this anchoring center, aiming for a diverse group that would include a certain number of films by female directors, a certain number of comedies, and films made outside of both France and Québec. The anticipated political and artistic films were shown off by a dose of popular cinema (Le petit Nicolas, L’Arnacoeur). Many of the films have not been and will not be widely distributed in the US, including the four Québecois films (and, unsurprisingly, Hitler à Hollywood, a mockumentary in which director Frédéric Sojcher comes up with a new conspiracy theory for the fall of European cinema from preeminence following World War II).
The final collection of films screened covered subjects ranging from the French Resistance at the beginning of World War II (L’armée du crime) and illegal immigration (Illégal), to the modern stresses of family life (Maman est chez le coiffeur) and the fantasies of married men (3 p’tits cochons), to the marriage of heiresses (L’Arnacoeur) French society in the seventies (Potiche). “We try to cover as much as possible… We really try to give an idea of what French-speaking cinema is about right now,” explained Shoggy Waryn, the Brown University French professor who selected the films to be shown at the festival. The festival included the requisite great works, in this case Les herbes folles, from the canonized director giant Alain Resnais. Waryn suggested that though Resnais “was the oldest director we showed this year, in terms of structure of the narrative, he was probably the most modern.” (Les herbes folles is the groundbreaking 88-year-old’s most recent film, and the appropriately titled Vous n’avez encore rien vu, (‘you haven’t seen anything yet’), is scheduled for release in 2012. Get excited.) This year’s festival, though, had a strong political accent. Films like Orpeilleur, which is set in French Guyana (called
“an overseas region of France,” the movement for autonomy dried up in the ‘70s and ‘80s), and Un homme qui crie, the first film from Chad screened at the French Film Festival, helps break a stubborn Paris-centric vision of France held as much by the French as by the rest of the world. Waryn points out that the “false impression we get… is that everyone lives in Paris, in the same arrondissement, and that when they open the windows we can see both Nôtre-Dame and the Eiffel Tower.” Un homme qui crie, co-produced by France, Belgium, and Chad, the film offers an often unvoiced perspective on issues like civil war and relationships in divested countries. According to Waryn, these issues which don’t usually get much play from filmmakers in Africa, who, because of the small local market for such projects, tend to do more commercial work for Europe. Orpeilleur and Un homme qui crie are actually more convincing because they are imperfect—the imperfections in execution and storytelling become apparent when shown next to brilliance of Resnais (Les herbes folles) and the budget of Le petit Nicolas. La rafle (The Roundup) and Liberté, too, deal with histories that have long been silenced. La rafle tells the story of July 16, 1942, when French Jews were rounded up
by French police and brought to the Velodrome in Paris, before being taken to concentration camps. Liberté deals with the often-forgotten and little-recorded mass arrests of Gypsies in occupied France by telling the tragic story of one Gypsy family. Many critiques regard La rafle as an important step towards French acknowledgment of its participation in the crimes of World War II through the Vichy government. At the heart of the festival this year was a recurring theme of displacement and alienation—mothers leave families and marriages, brothers reunite over their comatose mother, immigration and deportation, French citizens become aliens in their own country, a boy fears replacement by his unborn brother. Several films, within the context of the festival, evoke the compelling notion of leaving Paris (and, by extension, Paris-centrism) to explore the marginal corners of the Frenchspeaking world, and others—Illégal, Liberté, La rafle—explored the forgotten margins within Western Europe. The range of the films’ content and interest, particularly the inclusion of films giving voice to ghettoized or silenced subjects, succeeds in both celebrating French-speaking film and challenging visions of a high-culture francophone universe. —Maud Doyle
Un capitalisme sentimental Directed by Olivier Asselin Québec | 2008 | 92 mn
After her artistically threadbare existence in Paris is interrupted by failed love and an attempt at suicide by oil paints (“I decided to go out like Van Gogh”), the aspiring modern artist Fernande (Lucille Fluet) must place her faith in the love of successful trader Victor (Alexander Bisping). The film moves from antique color to luminous black and white as we move across the Atlantic to a collaged New York. Victor’s business brilliance lies in the realization that desire is at the heart of all demand. “A quotation is a measure of love,” he tells Fernande after making her the first person to be quoted on the Stock
Exchange. Under his guidance, Fernande turns herself into the most valuable brand listed in the pantheonic Exchange. Set against an era when businesses realized the need to produce demand rather than supply, art and desire become the most valuable commodities of all––Fernande even signs a porcelain kingpin’s urinals to increase demand for his product. “To sell, we convert to poetry,” one of the businessmen says over cocktails. But the balance between love and value, French and English, is unsustainable. When Fernande decides to end her commercial life to be with Victor, she inadvertently causes the market crash of 1929. The collapse of
the system reverses the dichotomy set up at the films beginning––now it is the businessmen who are stricken by poverty and driven to suicide. And so Fernande and Victor, both ruined themselves, turn the bodies of businessmen into paint tubes and depart from New York by steamship, with their lives ahead of them and the stars above. Director Olivier Asselin’s characters and caricatures of American businessmen and French bohemians are touchingly simple and often comic. Eschewing traditional narratives in favor of compelling visuals, the film is a brilliantly constructed tribute to the power of desire. —MD
“The only thing that really matters is the stock’s quoted value. One could even make money on an empty mine. On a company that produces nothing, or even on a simple name.” - Victor A beautiful homage to the classical Hollywood film noir, this moving, mystical film about love and art, money and power, follows the beautiful and romantic French bohemian Fernande Bouvier from Paris to New York at the beginning of 1929.
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Il a suffi que maman s’en aille Directed by René Féret France | 2007 | 90 mn Un homme qui crie Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun France - Belgium - Chad | 2010 | 80 mn Directed by African filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and set in modern day Chad, Un homme qui crie (A Screaming Man) initially centers on a 50-year-old man entering a mid-life crisis. Except this Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize winner isn’t your typical tale of mid-life demise that entails purchasing a Porsche and having an affair. The protagonist, Adam, is Chad’s old swimming champion turned poor, has-been hotel pool man whose life’s deterioration is only paralleled by the ever-worsening political situation of his country, which continually suffers rebel uprisings in perpetual civil war. “The pool is my life,” Adam calmly protests to his boss as he’s fired from his beloved job and demoted to the hotel’s gatekeeper, while his younger son Abdel supplants his position. At the same time, rebel forces in Chad threaten the military’s tight hold on the country, putting its citizens in constant threat of violent attacks by armed opposition groups and even more violent repudiations by the “democratic” military forces who demand their cooperation. Because of the growing violence, Adam is pressured by a local leader to pay his dues and prove his loyalty to the Chadian govern-
ment. His personal failure intermingles with Chad’s political unrest, leading to a surprising twist of familial betrayal and regret. “The film can be read as a metaphor for Africa,” director Haroun commented. The resulting conflict between Adam and Abdel shows how “fathers are mortgaging coming generations’ future” in order to secure their own. The film is successful because of its seeming contradictions: even though Adam’s world is slowly collapsing you never see a screaming man. Instead of overwhelming you with violent or overdramatic scenes common to films centering on African political plight, the film’s quiet pace slowly pulls you along with Adam’s and Chad’s breakdown. Initially, the calm of the movie is subtly betrayed by snippets of radio casts about the number of deaths in the last rebel attack, and silent but painfully tense moments between Adam and Abdel. Yet near the end, when the rebel violence becomes as real as the consequences of Adam’s betrayal, you feel the carpet abruptly pulled under you from behind. And with just 10 minutes left to the film, you know there’s nothing you, or Adam, can do except watch in despair. —AA
Orpailleur Directed by Marc Barrat France | 2010 | 90 mn
French Guyana after an 18-year absence, to confront his family’s history and its demons. A slightly off-kilter action movie, punctuated with moments of subtle, earthy magic, follows Rod (Tony Mpoudja) in his journey through the jungle to find the truth about his brother’s alleged death. Rod, a beautiful man, and Yann, a stunning environmental tour guide, must also rescue Rod’s Parisian friend Gonz from the brainwashing spell of gold and cocaine, leading the pair deep into the
“What did you come back for? There is nothing left here. Only ghosts.” A man is racing through the forests of the northern Amazon basin. He is shot at. Suddenly, he is hit. The death of his brother, Myrthos, brings Rod back from Paris to his native
From French director René Féret, Il a suffi que maman s’en aille is an affecting but uplifting meditation on family, identity, and fatherhood. The queboquian style narrative follows workaholic Olivier (played by Jean-Francois Stevenin), whose disconnect with his family comes to the fore when he barely notices his much younger wife walk out on him. In retaliation, Olivier pursues and wins custody of his tomboy daughter, Lea (daughter of the director, Mary Féret), but his previous ambivalence is shattered when he is left alone with a child he barely knows. Set in dark, shadowed domestic spaces, Lea’s rebellious antics and Olivier’s frustrated parenting make up the meat of the film; we learn that Olivier’s parental impotence has some history. Estranged from Mary (played by Salome Stevenin), his grown-up daughter from a previous marriage, the plot is driven by Olivier’s decision to reconnect with both Lea and Mary, the latter’s resentment at her father’s absence is contrasted poignantly with her desperate need for his recognition. Féret’s performance of Lea proves to be the film’s most compelling element; her comedic timing breaks up the film’s grim pensiveness, and her quiet dignity withstands Olivier’s thoughtless inquiries into her identity (“Do you want to be a boy?” “Will you ever start acting like a
world of the galimpeiros, the criminal and irreverent chasseurs d’or. The film confronts a little-noticed, lawless, vice-ridden culture of illegal gold hunting in Guyana with humanity and emotion, asserting an almost religious belief in the possibility of redemption through love. Orpailleur, the debut of director Marc Barrat, is one of the first films made by someone from French Guyana about French Guyana. It roundly condemns pollutive gold-hunting practices in in the for-
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girl?”). Lea’s androgynous appearance and independent ‘masculine’ attitude confuse Olivier, while also raising questions surrounding father-daughter love in the context of gender and sexuality—one of the film’s more original inquiries. Lea’s femininity becomes necessary for him to be the masculine patriarch, his only understanding of fatherhood. Olivier operates on the belief that daughterhood is equivalent to femininity, and fatherhood is demonstrated through masculinity, therefore his inability to understand the tomboy Lea as both person and daughter, is an expression of his own ignorance of how to be a father. The film, though both emotive and discerning, is crippled by its dialogue and rhythm. Though the translation might be to blame, the film’s dialogue at times verges on banal and predictable, undermining the sincerity and modesty of its acting. The film’s pace is slow—very, very slow— which serves to heighten its moments of emotional intensity (the brutal reconciliation between Mary and Olivier) but also burdens the viewer with long periods of waiting for any sign of onscreen life. The uncertainty of Olivier’s past relationship with Mary, his present relations with Lea, and the future of both make Il a suffi que maman s’en aille an absorbing character study of a man who finds neither security nor affirmation in his familial ties, yet is desperate to stay above water by reasserting his fatherhood. —OF
bidden areas of the Amazon as an abuse of immigrants, the environment, drugs, and family values. The film is important but perhaps a tad uncomplicated. The script’s seeming naiveté of the art or commerce of filmmaking shifts from jarring to endearing around halfway through the movie––and in the end, its imperfections, its lack of polish or subtlety, are perhaps the best affirmation of its honesty. —MD
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DEEP BREATHS Why You Should Stress About How Much You Stress by Jittania Smith Illustrations by Becca Levinson
L
et’s say you were to drop by any college campus, corporate office, or Providence Teachers’ Union meeting, pick an individual at random and profile their stress hormones. Now make your way to the savannah in Western Africa, intercept a gazelle trying to escape a hungry cheetah, and do the same. What you will find is that both bodies respond to stress in a very similar manner. That is to say, both utilize an evolutionary adaptation—stress—to combat what their brains have perceived to be imminent and lifethreatening danger. The effects of stress on the body and mind are puzzling—if anything, some people use it as a motivator. However, there is a lot of extremely prominent data supporting that prolonged stress not only damages your body, but could even explain the rise of diseases including obesity, adult onset diabetes, and heart disease in western society. The easiest way to envision the stress response is to consider the scenarios leading to its evolution. For most of human existence, stress was completely different than it is now and more similar to the kinds of stress found in the rest of the animal kingdom. For most animals, stress is a reaction to an “acute physical challenge”—in other words, the need to eat and the fear of being eaten. Disease is also a big stressor,
and for some species the process of finding a mate can be stressful (think of a couple of male rams hashing it out on a steep mountainside). But in the case of modern humans, the definition of a stressor has expanded to include the anticipation and mere idea of an actual stressor happening. For us, just the thought of something bad happening in the distant future is enough to send our bodies into stress-induced biological chaos. In fact, “stress” as we know it today is almost exclusively a consequence of a truly stress-free world. In Western society especially, where the threat of immediate danger or starvation is generally absent, people seem to just find other things to get stressed about. What it all comes down to is this: though the actual stressors affecting gazelles (acute, physical stressors) and humans (chronic, psychological stressors) are quite different, the biological stress response is basically the same. The main difference is duration—a gazelle may experience intense stress for a period, but then that switch goes off. For people who are consistently stressed, that switch might never go off completely. The effects of long-term stress can only be determined by studying what actually happens in the body. On the most basic level, the brain propagates stressful messages to
the rest of the body using the nervous system. Two specific parts of the nervous system are relevant here: one that’s responsible for the “fight-or-flight” response and another in charge of “rest-or-digest” functions. The “rest-or-digest,” or parasympathetic component, is responsible for mediating the basic chores of maintaining the body: digestion, tissue repair, and growth. When you are sleeping or relaxing, the parasympathetic system is getting work done. By contrast, the “fight-or-flight” component, or sympathetic system, basically serves to divert resources to your muscles in times of perceived crisis. These components work in opposition, and are effectively like the gas and brake pedals of your body. The sympathetic system increases heart rate while the parasympathetic system slows it down. Stress hits the gas on your sympathetic functions while throwing the brake on your parasympathetic functions. In this example, the “gas” is a team of stress hormones—namely epinephrine, norepinephrine, and the glucocorticoids. Don’t worry too much about the names— the main thing to remember is that epinephrine and norepinephrine (adrenalin and noradrenalin) kick in immediately, inhibiting blood-supply to many of your organs so that more can go toward your lungs, heart, brain, and muscles (the “fight-or-flight” essentials). Glucocorticoids (types of steroid hormones) come on the scene later, and help divert energy towards fighting the stressor by upping your blood sugar and shutting down the immune system. In the case of the gazelle evading the starved cheetah, the stress response is an elegant and logical solution. Who has the time to digest lunch and worry about reproducing some day when you might not live to see tomorrow? The answer is to shut
those long-term projects down. But humans activate the same red-alert response on a constant, ongoing basis for stressors that are comparatively trivial. Over time, there can be severe consequences for ignoring those long-term projects.
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
The link between stress, personality type, and cardiovascular disease was first identified by an upholsterer. In the mid-1950s, Dr. Meyer Friedman and R. H. Rosenman ran a very successful cardiology practice, but were repeatedly burdened by one financial pitfall: reupholstering chairs. For some reason, the chairs in their waiting room were being subjected to such a degree of wear and tear that they needed to be fully reupholstered on a monthly basis. One day, a new upholsterer came in to the clinic, took one look at the chairs, and said to Dr. Friedman “What the hell is wrong with your patients? People don’t wear out chairs this way.” The upholsterer had inadvertently discovered that Type-A personalities visited the cardiovascular clinic more than average, although the actual “Type-A” phenomenon would not be formally acknowledged and linked to cardiovascular disease until years later. Type-A is characterized by “toxic hostility” resulting from the perception that, basically, the world is out to get you. Type-A people are impatient, aggressive, competitive, and tend to dislike waiting so much that they were wearing the lobby room chairs down just by way of their constant fidgeting. In other words, Type-A people are chronically stressed. By the 1980s, studies showed that being Type-A is at least as big of a health risk as smoking and having high cholesterol.
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Beyond the Type-A issue, these statistics imply something more general: stress is not good for your heart. Cardiovascular disease turns out to be the most well-documented and consistent consequence of chronic stress, regardless of your personality type. It also follows a relatively predictable course of action, and it all starts with being stressed out too much and too often. When you start to feel stressed, epinephrine (adrenalin) pours into your blood stream and hits all kinds of nerve endings along the way, causing your blood pressure to skyrocket. You know the feeling—maybe you’re waiting in a grocery store line, about to miss your bus home, and there are five people ahead of you. Over time, these regular mini-crises add up: your blood vessel walls tighten up in attempt to control that high blood pressure (think of how much harder it is to control the flow of a fire hose than a garden hose), meaning that now your blood pressure is high by default. Tada! You’ve got chronic hypertension. Meanwhile, your heart is also taking a beating from your high blood pressure, and your left ventricle, which receives blood, has to muscle up to deal with it. The result is left ventricular hypertrophy—a lopsided heart that struggles to beat regularly and is likely to give you a heart attack. In fact, statistics show that left ventricular hypertrophy is the best predicting factor for cardiac risk. Like most people, you have probably been under the impression that arterial plaque is just the result of poor diet. These assumptions are incorrect. When you have high blood pressure, your blood vessels start to fall apart. As the vessel walls become rough and inflamed from friction, they develop a Velcro-like attraction for any crap that happens to be in your bloodstream. The result is chunks
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of plaque choking up your arteries. It doesn’t help that stress makes your body dump even more crap (namely fatty acids and sugars—the Gatorade for your muscle tissues) into your bloodstream. If you’re really unlucky, one of these plaque balls can detach and wind up wedged somewhere it doesn’t belong, causing a stroke. A poor, high-cholesterol diet—which many mistakenly believe is the cause of arterial plaque—can certainly aggravate the situation, but stress has to do its damage first in order for plaque to form. The 2010 report on United States health trends from the Center for Disease Control says it all: “In 2007, heart disease was the first leading cause of death and cancer was the second. One quarter of all deaths were from heart disease.” High on their list of morbidity risk factors were diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, and obesity, all of which have ties to a chronically stressed lifestyle.
ANXIOUS APPETITES (OR DISCOMFORT FOOD)
Anybody that has suffered from stress knows its effects on appetite. But that effect can vary from person to person—some people are prone to nausea and appetite loss (hypophagia), others may experience the alternate extreme of carb-cravings and binging (hyperphagia). Both extremes make sense in the context of the stress response, and timing is especially important. Epinephrine (and norepinephrine) are the earliest on the scene and cause appetite loss. This also explains why stage fright can give you dry mouth, and why it’s easy to forego eating when you’re cramming for a final. On the other hand, certain steroid
hormones (glucocorticoids) are released later to motivate your body to replenish the energy stores it burnt up during its stressful period. These hormones drive your post-stress appetite for foods that are often high in simple sugars and fats for easy energy. For still-unknown reasons, energy stores built after a stressful time tend to accumulate in a specific area: your gut. This visceral fat, which can lead to an “apple” body shape, happens to be a lot worse for you than fat deposited elsewhere because of its proximity—and obstructive potential—to your vital organs. Fat not caused by stress tends to go your bottom half, leading to a pear body-shape. It turns out that “apple-shaped” people are at high risk for cardiac disease, onset diabetes, and other stress-related diseases.
PRESSURE OFF
In this country, the general expectation is to work your ass off your whole life so you can get into a good school, then get a good job… you know the drill. Americans are hell-bent on making it big young, even if that means working 70 hour weeks just so we can retire at age 50. The sad thing is, by that point, the damage has been done. By that point, thank goodness you’re retired because it’s going to take a lot of time and energy to deal with your weakened heart and immune system, plus the diabetes, hormone imbalances and crappy demeanor you may have picked up along the way.
The good news is that it’s mostly preventable. Exercise is a big one, especially aerobic exercise done on a regular basis. In fact, a little exercise can improve your mood and fight off your stress response for up to a whole day after. One surprising caveat about exercise is that it’s only a good stress-reducer if you want to do it. Studies of rats have shown their health to improve radically when they voluntarily run in a wheel, but take a turn for the worst when the rats are forced to do the same exercise. It’s clear that stress is a huge detriment to health, both mental and physical. However, rather than locating your next gazelle like the hungry cheetah, human stress is often a reaction to some sort of societal demands. Rather than letting external pressure harm your heart and expand your waistline, take a load off and don’t let any waiting room chairs fall prey to your anxieties. JITTANIA SMITH B’11.5 skyrockets her blood pressure every day.
MARCH 10 2011 | THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT | www.THEINDY.org
17 |LITERARY
CARE There was a larva on the table from our mud pie or from the pounds and pounds of potatoes mom had left there to rot. We called it our pet and named it Tim. We told dad about him but were told to stop telling lies. We worried about what to feed a pet larva. We decided the pounds and pounds of rotten potatoes were a good place to start. We took him outside once each day. We were responsible pet owners. Dad didn’t notice the potato peels in the kitchen sink. He didn’t ask about the cage
Once, you told me you thought you loved Tim. I care for him, I told you, but I don’t love him. There’s a difference. Also Tim is getting fat, I said, and I’m not sure I love fat things or fat people. When I said that part you looked mean. You said, fat or skinny, I still love him. I don’t care. Soon Tim stopped eating our potatoes which was ok because they were almost gone and besides they had gotten slimy. Our shirts were too thin for the weather but dad didn’t bring down our winter
by Rebekah Bergman
comes out. What if he comes out but can’t remember who we are. You said nothing. You couldn’t hear me under all those layers. One night you stepped on a broken piece of glass in the kitchen with your bare feet. I wrapped your toe up tight with a sock like a band-aid so it would stop bleeding. Still, you woke with blood all over the sheets and the sock was missing. That morning, Tim started to come out. We saw it while fake-eating mud pies.
Illustration by Charis Loke
we’d built from pine twigs and kept on a shelf in the pantry. Mom hadn’t been back for days and the dishes were starting to pile up, the garbage to smell. Tim liked it so we stopped worrying and just kept feeding him potatoes. We kept peeling them over the sink. We kept leaving the peels there. We kept being careful with the knife. We thought about becoming professionals. You drew a sign. “Responsible Pet Owners for Hire,” it said. “Experienced in Larva Care.” I was going to draw a dozen more just like it and hang them around the neighborhood. But then dad threw it out. We made ourselves a fresh mud pie and pretended not to care.
sweaters and we didn’t know what the boxes looked like from the outside or else we would have grabbed them ourselves. Tim started cocooning himself up in silver threads. This looked nice so we played Tim Cocoon too. We took turns wrapping each other up in blankets, wishing we could spin yarn from the spit inside our mouths like Tim could. Whenever I was inside our cocoon it reminded me of mom, which was weird because I couldn’t even see or hear anything in there. We’d think about Tim coming out and what he’d look like. We were going to draw pictures of him. Tim as a butterfly or Tim as a fairy. But by then the magic markers were dried out. Do you miss him now since he went inside there, I asked you from the living room. What if he never
Come on Tim, you said, be a butterfly. Come on Tim, I prayed, be a fairy. (If Tim were a fairy then the front door would open up and mom would come in. If one of these things happened, they both would. Otherwise, neither one would ever come true.) I could hear dad snoring in the other room. My T-shirt was so thin I shivered all over my body. I thought about wrapping myself in a Tim Cocoon but decided against it. Come on Tim. All of a sudden, the mud pie tasted terrible. I shivered again. All of a sudden I thought of maggots crawling up and down my spine. And I shivered. Come on Tim. Come on Tim, you kept saying. Come on.