the VOLUME 40.5 ISSUE 01 7 AUGUST 2020
THE PLIGHT AND FIGHT TO VOTE AS AN AMERICAN IMMIGRANT
WHEN A DORM IS NOT A HOME
SO BAD IT’S GREAT: HATE-WATCHING CATS AND LOSING MY VOCABULARY
For new voters, COVID-19 isn’t just a public health issue
On institutional harm, and a call to action
What does it mean when we love to hate?
Indy
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From The Editors
Cover The Skin I Shed Victoria Xu
The Indy spent its first summer at sea.
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The four of us have been spread across different time zones that are slowly converging. The 24-hour news cycle is taking on a new and somewhat ironic meaning, as we’ve realized that at least one person on staff is always awake. We’ve sat down to engage with a patchwork of voices — multiple threads coming together over a profusion of urgencies, not least among them a viral pandemic and the sustained, sinister effects of systemic racism.
Proximity Yukti Agarwal & Anna Kerber
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The Plight and Fight to Vote as an American Immigrant Aicha Sama
In brief, it’s been a long two months of scheming, scheduling, and surrendering our lofty visions to the reality of our circumstances, but we could not be prouder of the final product and the lessons we’ve learned to get here. As we test new structures and explore new projects, we want to publicly recommit ourselves to the Indy’s values of accessibility, accountability, and the relentless support of social justice.
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When a Dorm is Not a Home Mira Ortegon
Consider this volume a test run for the fall: not quite the well-oiled machine of our dreams, but taken just as seriously and approached with just as much love, care, and thoughtfulness.
Arts 07
So Bad It’s Great: HateWatching Cats and Losing My Vocabulary Cecilia Barron
X 09
Maia Chiu & Ethan Murakami
List 10
Tara Sharma & Sara Van Horn
MISSION STATEMENT The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. We are committed to publishing politically engaged and accessible work. While the Indy is financed by Brown University, we hold ourselves accountable to our readers across the Providence community. The Indy rejects content that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism and/ or classism. Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond. The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing process provides an internal structure for accountability, we always welcome letters to the editor.
STAFF Week in Review Amelia Anthony Nick Roblee-Strauss | Nation + World Emily Rust Leela Berman Giacomo Sartorelli Anchita Dasgupta | Metro Ricardo Gomez Deborah Marini Peder Schaefer | Arts + Culture Seamus Flynn Alana Baer Ella Rosenblatt | Features Alina Kulman Alan Dean Edie Elliott Granger | Science & Tech Gemma Sack Anabelle Johnston Thomas Patti | Literary Star Su Kate Ok Bowen Chen | Ephemera Yukti Agarwal Anna Kerber | X Maia Chiu Ethan Murakami | List Tara Sharma Sara Van Horn | List Designer Mehek Vohra | Staff Writers Uwa Ede-Osifo Mara Cavallaro Muram Ibrahim Justin Han Izzi Olive Bilal Memon Seth Israel Nell Salzman Victoria Caruso Zach Ngin Evie Hidysmith Kaela Hines Ella Spungen Sarah Goldman Alisa Caira Laila Gamaleldin Drake Rebman Morgan Awner Elana Hausknecht Rhythm Rastogi Nicole Kim Lucas Gelfond Rose Houglet Joss Liao Nicholas Michael Belinda Hu Leo Gordon CJ Gan Vicky Phan Tammuz Frankel Amelia Wyckoff Auria Zhang Olivia Mayeda Justin Scheer Gaya Gupta Eduardo Gutiérrez Peña Marina Hunt | Copy Editors Christine Huynh Grace Berg Jacqueline Jia Elaine Chen Sarah Ryan Jasmine Li Nina Fletcher Madison Lease Alyscia Batista | Design Editor Daniel Navratil | Designers Anna Brinkhuis Katherine Sang Kathryn Li Isaac McKenna Miya Lohmeier Pablo Herraiz García de Guadiana | Illustration Editor Sylvia Atwood | Illustrators Sandra Moore Katrina Wardhana Floria Tsui Mara Jovanović Hannah Park Jessica Minker Rachelle Shao Yukti Agarwal Sage Jennings Ophelia Duchesne-Malone Joyce Tullis Simone Zhao | Business Isabelle Yang Lauren Brown Evan Lincoln | Web Designer Sindura Sriram | Social Media Christina Ofori | Alumni Relations Jerry Chen | Spanish Translation Felipe Félix Méndez | Senior Editors Tara Sharma Sara Van Horn Cate Turner | Managing Editors Audrey Therese Cabrera Buhain Andy Rickert Ivy Scott | Managing Designer XingXing Shou *** The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts.
7 AUGUST 2020
VOL 40.5 ISSUE 01
@INDYCOLLEGEHILL
WWW.THEINDY.ORG
PROXIMITY BY Anna Kerber ILLUSTRATION Yukti Agarwal DESIGN XingXing Shou
THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT
EPHEMERA
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THE PLIGHT AND FIGHT TO VOTE AS AN AMERICAN IMMIGRANT COVID-19 COMPLICATES VOTING FOR NEW AMERICANS The ongoing pandemic has changed the dynamics of voting, making the electoral process even more daunting for new Americans. Because of the high risk of infection, voters now face the added steps of obtaining absentee ballots and understanding the new legislative actions that their state may have taken. However, for new immigrant American voters, the stakes are even higher. Twenty-three million immigrants will be eligible to vote in this year's election, and various initiatives are being put in place to ensure voter turnout is large among this group. The number of eligible immigrant voters has almost doubled since 2000, reaching a record high. With issues such as growing populations in immigration detention centers and uncertainty surrounding the future of DACA recipients, immigrant voter turnout seems more important than ever. However, making it possible for this sector of the population is rarely straightforward. To vote legally in the United States, one must be a US citizen who meets residency requirements. Permanent legal residents and any other persons who are non-citizens are unable to vote in most elections, making naturalization an essential pathway for new Americans to gain the constitutional right of casting a ballot. Although some jurisdictions (namely San Francisco) have granted local voting rights to non-citizens, the real fight for national reform of immigration policies starts with the voices of immigrants being heard and represented on the federal ballot on November 3, 2020. Local voting rights are essential for immigrant stakeholders in debates on critical curriculum (the framework of what all children are required to study) within specific counties, the presence of police in public schools, and sustainable power usage. However, federal voting rights are essential to general immigration policies that dictate the personal security of immigrants; the federal government has exclusive rights over the regulation of immigration laws, including who can enter the country and which rights they hold as residents. The outbreak of COVID-19 has also contributed to major disparities among new American voters, and the pandemic may prevent potential voters from becoming eligible in time for the election. Naturalization ceremonies, which are events where immigrants receive their certificate that allows them to apply for a passport and register to vote, have been cancelled in light of the
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pandemic. Approximately 150,000 naturalizations have been postponed and none of the ceremonies are guaranteed to be rescheduled. As deadlines for voter registration begin to approach, many immigrants may miss out on voting in this year's federal elections. The lack of urgency surrounding rescheduling or creating virtual alternatives to the naturalization ceremonies have caused accusations of voter suppression and discrimination. According to Joseph Edlow, the deputy director for policy at US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the department “will not ignore federal law, which has clear in-person requirements for naturalization, in the name of convenience or expediency.” This stance may account for the thousands of cancelled ceremonies, but people like Doug Rand, a former immigration policy adviser to the Obama administration, feel Edlow’s comments act as a weak excuse. According to Rand, “there are logistical challenges, but that is not the same as an insurmountable obstacle. The entire country is conducting its business virtually now, at a scale that is unprecedented. . . . For them to say it can’t be done doesn’t pass the laugh test.” +++ To ensure a large immigrant voter turnout, organizations like the National Partnership of New Americans are working with local communities across the US to engage with newly naturalized voters and make the voting process more accessible to them. These efforts have included broadening the spectrum of languages that election materials are available in, holding voter information sessions in multiple towns, and even providing transportation to these sessions. Some counties have attempted to offer interpretation to voters at the polls. With that said, interpreters must follow a specific set of requirements in some states. If they do not meet such standards, they are blocked from translating for voters at the polls. The requirements may be extensive, such as ensuring that the interpreter has also registered to vote in the vicinity of a voter. In Georgia, it took a settled lawsuit to allow a pair of voters to vote with a translator beside them. In particular, many immigrants living in the US under DACA have created meaningful organizations, like Operation Dream Act Now and United We Dream, and some even staged sit-ins to speak out against politicians who have denounced DACA. The extensive work and passion has led to new support for the DREAM Act and helped tear down stigmas against undocumented immigrants. First-generation American voters, in particular, are paving their own way through multifaceted struggle. While learning how to handle various immigration policies, they must deal with the discrimination faced by many American immigrant communities,
such as being told that they are not “real Americans” or that they should “go back to insert country of origin.” Marie*, a first-generation American and first-time voter, told the Indy, “You have to do your research. I have to see if the candidate's actions match up to their words. I keep in touch with others who have done research as well to aid me in the deciding process.” She expanded on her thought process leading up to this year’s elections, stating, “Fortunately, I have never personally felt guilt or discrimination as a new voter or first-generation American voter. I know that my views on politics are solely mine, and if I believe in it, I should be able to stand up for it. It is more so that I feel pressure to choose the “right” candidate.” Young first-generation Americans seem to share the sentiment of being overwhelmed during this process as they learn to vote for the first time. Ana*, another first-generation American and a recent high school graduate, mentioned to the Indy that she felt rushed during this year's voter registration period, as she prepared to vote for the first time. Though she hasn’t cast her vote yet, Ana reported already feeling the stigma that “the younger generations don’t know anything and will not take the privilege of voting seriously.” She cited that she simply wanted to live in an America that treats people right, and holds people in office that make good choices for all Americans. Ana was able to register to vote with the help of an official at the DMV. As she awaits her absentee ballot, she is keeping up-to-date on major news regarding immigration policies and the fight against racial disparities. Another new American voter who spoke to the Indy, Jess*, did not feel as prepared to vote. She reported wanting to vote this year after finally turning 18, but she has not yet gone through the voter registration process because she’s unsure of where to start. Jess noted that she initially didn’t even know about the registration process. She also felt some guilt because of how little she knew about American politics, and she felt that her limited knowledge came from school, a place where “we barely talked about [politics].” The logistics of voter registration alone can be very overwhelming, but adding the pressures of being a young, new American in today’s political atmosphere may be enough to turn people away from voting entirely. +++ Unfortunately, some immigrants won’t receive that choice in 2020. Of nearly 44 million immigrants living in America, approximately 20 million are waiting for their chance to vote, and are still ineligible. Even though 8.9 million residents lawfully have the
7 AUGUST 2020
BY Aicha Sama ILLUSTRATION Floria Tsui DESIGN Kathryn Li
for some, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Heightened border violence has also negatively altered the perception and experience of immigrants, and the thousands of children separated from their parents as a testament to the abysmal treatment of immigrants in this country. This further emphasizes the disenfranability to undergo naturalization, the backlog of appli- chisement of immigrants in contrast to their supposcations, as a result of COVID-19 and an unsympathetic edly fellow citizens, with only the latter having a real Trump administration, has limited potential voter voice in public policy. registration. Ultimately, the inability to vote disproportionately +++ harms immigrant communities; their limited access to basic rights, like healthcare or legislative influence All of us have a responsibility to mitigate the over their children’s education, hinders their electoral effects of discrimination and work toward a more power in particular. In addition to inadequete voter inclusive environment for Americans and soon-to-be representation, a fifth of adult undocumented immi- Americans. Meaningful change can start with voting grants live in poverty, according to the Pew Research and educating those who are new to the process. Center. This combination creates a disheartening Providing immigrants with comprehensive informadynamic, leaving immigrants unable to influence tion is essential; doing so will improve American politthe systems that they work for. Even after securing ical literacy and equip new Americans with the tools to voter registration, working-class voters often have a properly exercise their right to self-advocacy. hard time prioritizing voting because of their jobs and Protesting voter suppression is another important families. Making Election Day a federal holiday would aspect of improving the American electoral system benefit immigrant voters immensely. in the near future. Historically, voter suppression has While facing such disadvantages, immigrants been used to reduce the influence of minority voters, are often criminalized, with many undocumented which in turn impacts immigrant voters, as most immiimmigrants detained at borders or immigration grants are part of racial minorities. For example, gerrydetention centers without any prior criminal history. mandering schemes, which often involve diminishing Incarceration is a major factor in voter suppression, as it can render potential voters ineligible before they even begin the voting process. Individuals without citizenship accounted for 64 percent of federal arrests in 2018, making voting more difficult or impossible
THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT
minority voters to very few districts to dilute their votes, continue to occur in cities like Detroit and Atlanta. Increasing the awareness of schemes like these can help protect minority voters from strategies created to silence their political voice. Immigration will likely serve as a critical talking point in the 2020 election. As the unfathomable reality of kids detained at borders persists, people continue to protest systems that profit off of immigrant detainment. Given that a large portion of Trump’s political stances are anti-immigrant, voting in this year’s federal election remains of utmost importance for new American voters. As a Black first-generation American voter, I am undergoing the process of voting for the first time myself. I think about my future as an American often, and I am working towards educating myself on the major policies that candidates are standing behind. I’m excited to enter my first year of college as a student and a voter, and I hope to continue to fight against discrimination while advocating for better immigration policies. *Names have been changed to preserve the privacy and security of the interviewee.
AICHA SAMA B'24 will wear her “I Voted” sticker proudly.
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WHEN A DORM The institutional harms caused by Brown’s Office Of Residential Life BY Mira Ortegon ILLUSTRATION Mara Jovanović DESIGN Audrey Therese Cabrera Buhain
content warning: sexual assault
Paint peeling down the walls, a broken heating system, and mice scampering under the bed. As many college students know from experience, the physical conditions of on-campus residence halls can range from disappointing to unacceptable. Brown University is no exception. Jason Carroll, Vice President of Brown University’s Undergraduate Council of Students (UCS) in 2019–2020, told the Independent that the most frequent type of complaint that students brought to UCS in the past year had to do with on-campus housing or the Office of Residential Life. Students have experienced heating and cooling issues, vermin problems, discolored water flowing from the tap, and mold that makes them sick. These issues have even garnered national attention—the New York Times featured a Brown student who developed a heat rash and pain after mold grew in her humid, uncooled dorm room. When asked to comment, Brian E. Clark, a spokesman for the University, assured the New York Times that this was an isolated issue. Clark rejected the idea that unfit dorm conditions are a pattern at Brown, pointing to yearly room inspections and the University’s paint program. Carroll echoed the sentiment that the University maintains upkeep of residence halls through the Summer Restoration Fund. The Fund allows Brown to perform repair work on 1–2 residence halls each summer, and focuses on the bare essentials, such as a dorm that needed a new roof last summer. The University has also taken larger steps that reflect its recognition of persistent issues with on-campus housing, recently announcing plans for two new residential communities to alleviate the increasing need for updated on-campus housing. On some issues, students have successfully advocated for changes in residence halls. Carroll explained that broader concerns that affect the health and safety of large swaths of students are the types of issues that UCS can and does make traction on. Carroll himself created a buzz on campus after he brought bottles and bottles of brown water from the tap of on-campus residence halls located on Wriston Quadrangle to one of his UCS campaign events. In Carroll’s time as VP, UCS has successfully leveraged its frequent meetings with administration and staff in the Office of Residential Life to convince Brown to replace all of the water tanks in the dorms located on Wriston Quad. While the reception to addressing physical dorm issues is positive, Carroll said that the UCS also receives complaints that it doesn't have as much ability to advocate for. Regarding individualized student complaints concerning mental health or accessibility, the UCS protocol refers students to the appropriate resources on campus, like Student and Employee Accessibility Services (SEAS), Sexual Harassment & Assault Resources & Education (SHARE), and the Office of Title IX. These offices then advocate for students and work with the Office of Residential Life to find appropriate solutions. +++ But what happens when students have support from the appropriate resources but are ignored by the Office of Residential Life? While dorm conditions are a highly visible manifestation of the issues with Residential Life happening at the University, there is also a dark underbelly of harmful experiences that students have had with the Office that are not as visible. Feeling safe, comfortable, and happy where one lives
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is a fundamental factor of being a successful college of Residential Life lacks an effective mechanism student. Combatting issues that undermine this to deal with these individualized cases related to environment should be a priority for Brown’s Office mental health. After surviving sexual assault during of Residential Life, but the University lacks a formal her first year at Brown, Jamie now has panic attacks mechanism for addressing such issues. when she sees her assaulter around campus. These When asked to comment on how the Office of panic attacks are so draining that Jamie is sometimes Residential Life handles issues related to disability, unable to attend class, instead returning home to mental health, sexual assault, and more, Koren sleep for the rest of the day. As she began to process Bakkegard, Vice President for Campus Life, told the the experience during her sophomore year, Jamie Independent that “Residential Life works with many realized that she needed to reach out to resources on partner offices and processes to support and respond campus to get support. When the housing lottery for to students’ needs.” While Bakkegard did not provide junior year on-campus housing came around, she a more detailed explanation of the Office’s protocol, had already been in touch with Advocates from the she did say that “where there is such an intersection Sexual Harassment & Assault Resources & Education between a student’s needs and a change in their room (SHARE) office. Alana Sacks from SHARE worked configuration, room assignment, or room condition, with Jamie to reach out to the Office of Residential then staff in Residential Life work to address those Life. Given how debilitating these panic attacks were needs in a timely and responsive way.” when Jamie was out on campus, it was clear that she Despite the University’s purported commitment to could not live in the same on-campus dorm as her supporting students experiencing a variety of complex assailant without a deeply negative impact on both her issues, students continuously share stories that paint academic performance and personal well-being. Even a very different picture. Students have provided with a SHARE Advocate, a professional employee of accounts of reaching out to the appropriate resources Brown’s administration, on her side, communication for help navigating poor housing situations that were on Jamie’s behalf was largely ignored. Alana had to call negatively affecting their mental health. Though four people within the Office of Residential Life before students carefully followed the necessary protocol, the she could even discuss the situation with them. Office of Residential Life ignored calls and emails, laid Jamie had hoped that the Office of Residential the burden of these problems on the shoulders of the Life would ensure that she and her assailant did not already struggling students, and exacerbated mental pick the same dorm location for junior year. The Office health crises. of Residential Life told her that all she could do was When Elena* was a sophomore at Brown, she and enter the housing lottery like everyone else, and once a friend were living in a two-bed room on Wriston all the rooms had been selected, the Office would tell Quad. They had mutually decided that they needed to her whether or not he had selected the same building move out of their double and into single rooms—while as her. “It boiled down to the fact that if I picked the they remained friends, the housing situation was same housing group as him,” Jamie explained, “I was not working for either of them. Elena was not getting the one who had to make the decision to leave.” The enough sleep and was experiencing high levels of Office of Residential Life wouldn’t tell Jamie where her anxiety, so she reached out to SEAS and got approval assaulter lived, just whether or not he lived in her dorm. to move out of her room once a single became available This meant that he could live in the dorm next door, on campus. The uncertainty of the situation was frus- or in a dorm where Jamie frequently visited friends, trating, though, and Elena attempted to get in contact without her knowledge—leaving her in constant fear of with the Office of Residential Life in order to ask about seeing him. the chances of a room change, as well as the process The Office cited confidentiality as the reason not to and the timeline. Despite reaching out to various disclose the dorm that Jamie’s assailant had selected. members at the office, weeks went by without commu- There is certainly a valid legal constraint there, but nication, and the lack of support amplified Elena’s where students live at Brown isn’t really a secret. anxiety. She began looking for her own solutions and Names are tacked to doors with playful sticky notes, eventually came across two students who lived in and students know their hallmates; unlike health single rooms and wanted to switch into her double. information or financial status, the living situations When she emailed the office with this information, of students on campus is largely public information. a staff member replied immediately and approved the Without sharing the information with Jamie, it felt like plan as long as all four students were willing. Even so, the Office of Residential Life placed that burden—and after all the students had confirmed their approval, all of its consequences—on her shoulders. “That was a Elena got no response from the Office of Residential lot of what I noticed,” Jamie told the Independent. “Any Life for a week. It wasn’t until her parents, who are time I reached out for resources or help with the situalawyers, called the Office and pressured them to act] tion, it was pretty much like ‘Well, you figure it out. If that Elena and the other students were able to carry this is something you care about, this is your problem.’” out the move. The process, initiated in the beginning of November, dragged on until mid-December, forcing +++ the students to switch dorms during finals period. “When it comes down to it, they [the Office of Despite the fact that Jamie had professionals Residential Life] need to have systems in place that within the Brown community advocating for her, her can handle these types of situations,” Elena told the needs were not met by the Office of Residential Life. Independent. “I was lucky because Brown was made for This was extremely disappointing for Jamie, who said students like me, a student with lawyer parents from that having a safe and comfortable living situation is Massachusetts. But the majority of Brown students a crucial and foundational element of everything else don’t have parents that are capable of making a phone she does on campus. This negative housing situation call in the middle of the day to tell the Office ‘My further intensified the existing challenges that she daughter has anxiety and you are actively harming her was dealing with. “A lot of the support I needed after mental health by not responding to any of the emails experiencing an assault boils down to autonomy and that she has sent.’” control and feelings of safety, and a lot of autonomy, Even though things worked out for Elena in the control, and feelings of safety come back to where you end, her success was a byproduct of her relative privi- live,” said Jamie. “To not have the autonomy to be able lege, and the process still felt deeply unsupportive. Her to say ‘This is how I want to live in a space and this is living situation induced stress, and the responsibility what I want it to look like,’ and the safety of knowing of having to find a solution herself compounded that that I had a space of my own that I felt comfortable in stress. After she moved into a single, she reported that made being on campus feel like a nightmare.” sleeping better and feeling comfortable in her home In order to ensure that her assailant would not be made her significantly more productive and happier. in her living space, Jamie ended up having to sign an Without her parents' help and her own advocacy, Elena informal complaint with Title IX, which required the would likely have been unable to move at all, poten- Title IX Coordinator to sit down with her assaulter tially spending all year in a negative environment. and request his agreement to avoid her dorm. In order Jamie* echoed Elena’s concern that the Office to file the agreement, Jamie had to give up the right
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IS NOT A HOME to file a formal Title IX complaint, meaning she was essentially giving up the right to hold her assailant accountable and receive justice while at Brown. The process Jamie endured in order to satisfy her shortterm needs—a home she felt safe in—fundamentally preserved the power differential between her and her assailant. The assailant got to choose whether or not to comply with the informal Title IX agreement to avoid her dorm, while Jamie had to give up the right to formally file a report against him. This experience was deeply damaging to Jamie, who had believed that Brown was a place with accessible resources that students wouldn’t have to fight for. She felt like Brown didn’t care about her. At the highest level, the problem that Jamie identified was that the Office of Residential Life has no formal procedure to deal with situations that threaten students’ mental and physical health. These student issues don’t gain critical attention because of their highly personal nature; outside of this anonymous article, the only way Elena or Jamie could have gained widespread support would be to publicly share their personal experiences. While it can be easy to complain openly about the mold in your room and join together with other students, the stigma and legitimate privacy concerns surrounding mental health and sexual assault render these individual student experiences invisible. The reality is that there are likely many more cases like these at Brown—one student even responded to my request for an interview and later declined to participate because they were afraid to antagonize the Office of Residential Life any further. The impact of institutional neglect in the Office of Residential Life is surely felt by many students, but the students who are most detrimentally affected are those who are already facing structural inequalities. The stakes of a housing arrangement are far higher for students who hold marginalized identities, are low-income, and/or are undocumented—especially at a university with a body of students as wealthy and well-connected as Brown’s. The University’s reluctance to sufficiently address student needs exacerbates the intersectional oppression and emotional trauma that these students are already subject to on campus. Even further, students who hold marginalized identities often lack the access and resources needed to advocate for their legitimate concerns, while wealthy students have reportedly used connections to powerful University Trustees like Marty Granoff to “bypass university processes and gain better housing from the Brown Office of Residential Life.” It is crucial to consider the Office of Residential Life’s role in further entrenching these glaring inequalities. +++ What can account for these negative experiences with the Office of Residential Life? Is it true that Brown doesn’t care about students who are struggling with their mental health? In response to my email laying out the subject matter of this article, Bakkegard wrote: “I must reject the implication that students’ legitimate needs are disregarded by the Office of Residential Life. The professional staff members in Residential share a commitment to ensuring that our residence halls provide students with healthy, safe, and comfortable
THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT
places to live and study and that our operations and processes are fair and responsive to students’ needs.” Clearly, there is a considerable disconnect between the Office of Residential Life’s ostentible commitment to student wellbeing and the actual lived experience of students at Brown University. While the administration's intent may be to support students, Residential Life is a heavily bureaucratic system in which students’ needs often fall through the cracks. To continue to dismiss the claims of students and shirk accountability for harmful housing situations is neglectful on the part of the University. This issue is perhaps attributable to understaffing, something the Office has struggled with for years. The Brown Daily Herald published an article in 2018
Independent’s question of whether or not this impacts the Office’s ability to carry out its work. Another component of the problem could be the fact that there is no formalized procedure for the Office of Residential Life to take student feedback into account. In response to my questions about the process by which students should express their housing needs, Bakkegard suggested that students report physical dorm issues to Facilities Management. She recommended that students experiencing mental health challenges speak with their Residential Peer Leaders, who would connect them with resources from offices like Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Students with disabilities must seek out housing adjustments through the SEAS office. When students followed the exact processes Bakkegard described, however, their communications were ignored and their needs neglected. Their experiences of deep personal harm became invisible. The solutions Bakkegard provided are vague and place the burden of responsibility on other offices within Brown University. This decentralized, bureaucratic system hinders institutional change, as students are not able to make their voices heard. The root cause of this issue is not clear, and the University’s Office of Residential Life did little to elucidate that. My repeated emails to multiple staff members were ignored for weeks, until Bakkegard finally responded. Rather than conduct an interview with me, she asked for a list of questions and answered only a handful of them. My attempts to follow up—even for seemingly innocuous questions on statistics—were also ignored. What has become clear is that the University’s Office of Residential Life needs to take a concerted, critical look at their processes and impact on student experience. The Office’s Mission Statement affirms the following: “The Office of Residential Life fosters a safe and inclusive living environment that promotes student learning and holistic development by providing tools to help students navigate the social, emotional, and academic elements of their residential experience.” Brown must recognize the fact that their lack of action to address student housing needs actively hurts their students, exacerbating mental health crises, compounding structural inequalities, and ultimately threatening the holistic wellbeing of the student body. A purely discursive commitment to support students does more to undermine students’ claims of harm than to reduce actual instances of harm. The Office of Residential Life should stop writing empty statements and instead focus on creating new systems of accountability-- —systems that are transparent, center student experiences, and actually mitigate harm.
discussing the problem of retaining a full staff in the Office of Residential Life. According to the Herald, three community directors and Kate Tompkins, the Associate Director of Programs, left the already understaffed Office of Residential Life in the summer prior to the 2018–19 school year. The remaining two community directors and one associate director each worked double duty while also relying on student Residential Peer Leaders (similar to a typical university’s Residential Advisor, or RA) to carry the extra weight. Residential Peer Leaders expressed significant concerns over taking on extra responsibilities outside *Names have been changed for anonymity. their jobs descriptions and reported that the department had been understaffed for at least two years. This MIRA ORTEGON B’20 has left her own ResLife was confirmed by Mary Grace Almandrez, Dean of woes far behind her. Students and Acting Senior Director of Residential Life at the time. Given that the Office’s website currently lists vacancies in four out of five Area Coordinator positions, it seems that the Office of Residential Life has not been at full capacity for at least four years, or the entire student tenure of Brown’s cClass of 2020. Bakkegard conceded that the professional staff has vacancies but did not go so far as to respond to the
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SO BAD, IT'S GREAT
BY Cecilia Barron ILLUSTRATION Katrina
Wardhana DESIGN Miya Lohmeier
HATE-WATCHING CATS AND LOSING MY VOCABULARY In January, I took the T into Boston to watch the musical movie Cats with a friend. On the way there, I retweeted something ridiculous by Newt Gingrich. While waiting for the movie to start, I watched a few TikToks about sorority life that my friend knew I would hate. After the lights had dimmed, I sat with 20 other people, laughing and jeering at the T.S. Eliot-inspired mess we had all paid for. Later that night, I watched a compilation of bad Two and a Half Men scenes to fall asleep. I want to think this was a particularly spiteful day of mine, but it looks like many others. When I am consuming media, I am often consuming bad media. When given the choice between good and bad media— Cats was released the same day as Greta Gerwig’s Little Women—I choose the bad. I seek out content that I know I won’t like so frequently that my thoughts are now perpetually clouded by judgement. You never need to indicate you’re sharing a tweet with me ironically; I already expect the worst. These behaviors can be categorized under the self-explanatory term “hate-watching.” In an article for Vox, writer Brandon Ambrosino defines hate-watching as “watching a show or movie you suspect you will emphatically dislike, for the purpose of being able to talk about how much you disliked it, either during the program (on social media) or afterward.” While Ambrosino’s definition includes social media platforms, it does not encompass all modern variants of this practice. His description remains dated despite its 2014 publication. As the irony inherent in apps like TikTok and the oft-depressing channels of YouTube seeped into other social media formats, hate-watching evolved into hate-consuming. Twitter users now ironically indulge in the cheesy, motivational tweets of a lifestyle influencer; Instagram produces many examples of cringey, dated, or otherwise embarrassing photos to be sent among friends. Hate-consuming has literally become fashionable. Ironic t-shirts—my collection includes one with the announcement, “From Ms. to Mrs! Barbara’s Getting Married!” plastered across the front—are actually in. I don’t hate Barbara, but something about her bachelorette party favor was so distasteful that I chose to purchase it at a thrift store. I receive compliments whenever I wear it. Additionally, hate-watching has become a mark of personal intelligence: You have to know enough to know something is bad. It’s not merely a bonding opportunity—though hating the same thing is a popular way to start a friendship—but a way to assert yourself above the simple-minded, loving people of the world. But what does this infectious irony do? Not only culturally, to art and media, but personally, to you? What do my hours of TikTok loathing and Cats self-abasement reap? What does good even look like anymore? +++
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Hate-watching is not a new phenomenon. When we have extreme feelings about anything—good or bad— we want to know more. It’s safe to assume that in the ‘60s, some suburbanites watched and subsequently trashed Family Affairs, a sitcom about a bachelor uncle suddenly forced to care for his nieces and nephews. In the ‘90s, one would hope there were enough level-headed people to recognize Doogie Howser was a bizarre and unrealistic show, with viewers watching a 16-year-old Neil Patrick Harris just for the fun of it. The phenomenon was not defined in any significant capacity until 2012. Only then did the proliferation of social media and the streamingpropelled explosion of TV shows make hate-watching a dangerously popular activity. In an essay titled “Hate-Watching Smash,” acclaimed New Yorker film critic Emily Nussbaum coined the term for the first time. After defining the concept, she explains why she chose to watch the NBC show, one that follows the making of a Broadway musical (a show I loved unironically). A year later, Bravo debuted The People’s Couch, a show that filmed people’s reactions to shows. You could now hate-watch other people hatewatching; the phenomenon was effectively defined and commercialized. Hate-watching, boiled down, is the act of criticism, something we naturally do every time we watch, listen, or read something. Criticism is the practice of identifying the merits, or lack thereof, in a work. While to criticize in most conversations is to tear apart a work, to point out its flaws and weaknesses, the art of criticism begins neutrally. The critic is like a judge: all art is fine until proven otherwise. However, hatewatching inspires a predetermined type of criticism, as Nussbaum’s term implies. If you pay to see Cats, you’re not sitting in your seat, saving your judgments until the lights dim. You already know what your opinion will be; you’re just waiting for the evidence. Criticism, in the negative sense, can be productive, and a generation of wary citizens would be better than a generation of passive ones. But criticism, in theory, should be as much an exploration of the beautiful as it is the ugly. Hate-watching has made identifying the ugly the default. It’s become the path of least resistance. Perhaps in Ambrosino’s peaceful 2014 world, hate-watching could be described as a fun indulgence, something akin to a very guilty pleasure. While he says we hate-watch because we “really, secretly, deep down want it to be good,” and that we only “hate the execution, not the premise,” neither of these things remain true. We hate-watch not because we want the object to get better, but because we want it to be bad. When we hate-watch a TikToker, we do not want them to improve. We make fun of them in groupchats, laughing at whatever trend they are mimicking. If the creator started to create good content, that admission would be humiliating. Day and night, we hate. The more ridiculous, the more pathetic, the more embarrassing the content, the better. We cannot place the blame entirely on the
consumer, however. The more networks, apps, and websites creating content, the higher possibility for that content to be bad. In the time of Family Affairs, it took more than a skewed sense of self-importance and an iPhone to become famous and influential. While our perverse TikTok habits might force a random 15-year-old influencer into even cringier terrain as they compete for likes, their capacity for cringiness was already there, as it exists in every high school sophomore. But if we could only have four media platforms, would we pick the best TV channels, or keep TikTok? I shudder thinking of life without an endless stream of hard-to-watch videos. A life filled with exclusively excellent art seems even more terrifying. Wading through a subliminal stream of Citizen Kane, The Sopranos, and actual T.S. Eliot poems sounds exhausting. Hate-watching is easier than watching. There’s also a tangible gain from this passive, spiteful activity. Just as disliking Katy Perry in 2012 was the alternative stance, disliking most popular things has become a badge of intellectualism today; irony is the hallmark of a good critic. To simply find something good is too easy, too naive. Wasn’t my love of Smash in 2012 an indication of my immaturity, not the result of a genuine, affirmative, thoughtful preference for the show? Hate-watching has warped the emotion of distaste into a competitive sport. Disliking something implies that you know enough about good art to know that this piece of art is bad. However obvious it may seem, you prove that you have a grip on mainstream American culture if you can understand why Newt Gingrich’s tweet was so preposterous. You’re in-the-know if your TikTok account is purely ironic. Cats was a resoundingly bad film, but if you paid $10 to see the movie— twice—you’re affirming, in an oh-so-small way, that you’ve seen enough films to know how extremely bad this one was. Hate-watching remains an important socialization tool as it sorts the know-it-alls from the know-nots. Each minuscule irony is a signifier that you know better. +++ Over the past few years, my hate-watching has absorbed practically all of my media habits. I’ve avoided some of the more popular books, movies, and TV shows, simply because I know that my first position—no matter my actual feelings—will be to criticize. I remember watching Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a critically-acclaimed French film released this past year, and remarking that it was slightly “overdone.” I refuse to read Bad Feminist because I know I’d take the contrarian position. A few weeks after watching Cats, I saw Uncut Gems, a movie I actually liked. Talking about the movie after, though, I realized I had lost all vocabulary for describing something good: “I liked how the tension built.” When it comes to explaining the warm feeling of approval, I can only provide a meager six-word
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sentence, like a second-grader learning how to transcribe their feelings. I would rather deliver a twenty-minute sermon on the drawbacks of some other film like Lady Bird, a movie I actually enjoyed, than clumsily attempt to string together verbs and nouns indicating my approval. Since criticizing is more rewarding, I do it more often. The more I criticize, the better at it I become. My dictionary for hating things is vast and sometimes remarkably creative. I apply it to movies, like Portrait, that shine a little too much for my liking. I defensively suffocate these excellent works with my overdones, tireds, and passés until I’ve sufficiently silenced them and their supporters. Hating something ends the conversation, and this way, I get to have the last word. When I try to explain, however, the way Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf effortlessly cradle the fragile mother-daughter relationship in Lady Bird, the task seems too hard—and, more upsettingly, too earnest—to even attempt. Instead, I stick to my usual
THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT
script: “If I knew Lady Bird in high school, I wouldn’t like her either.” In her book Our Aesthetic Categories, critic Sienne Ngai writes that “the sublime refers to what is finally or properly unrepresentable.” She argues that the striking dumbness brought on by an especially beautiful sunset isn’t indicative of a lack of intellect but the result of a truly sublime moment. The beautiful is wordless. Perhaps, all this time, liking has been harder to justify than hating. Cats is easy to trash, from Dame Judi Dench in whiskers to the movie’s $95 million budget. The sublimity of a film like Portrait of a Lady on Fire is much harder to capture. My reaction to Portrait—“overdone”—was much less a critique than a symptom of my frustration. How could a film communicate so much and leave me communicating so little? I won’t stop hate-watching, for, if nothing else, it’s one of my primary forms of socialization. With that said, the collective pat on our backs we all give each other for hating TikTok and trashing Timothée Chalamet
shouldn’t substitute for the harder task of finding, consuming, and describing beautiful works. I saw Cats for the second time in March. James Corden’s musical number was just as embarrassing, and the theater was just as rowdy. But there was something different about the second viewing. The dialogue, largely based on T.S. Eliot’s poetry, sometimes leaned more towards the lyrical than the kitschy. There were moments of shared feline and human pain. While the ending sequence was hard to stomach—watching Dench chant “A CAT IS NOT A DOG” was an especially painful moment—there was something beautiful about the CGI’d sunrise over London. I’m still searching for the words to describe it.
CECILIA BARRON B’23 is thinking she should actually read T.S. Eliot instead.
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