The College Hill Independent —Vol 46 Issue 4

From the Editors

The front doorknob to our apartment went missing at some point during the Indy party. Since then, though, my ghost has gotten shy. No more Conmag-related nightmares, no more human-sized shadows beckoning to me at early hours.

He still shows up sometimes, when I’m sleepy: about a week ago, clutching a flimsy cup of library vending machine coffee and watching the text on my screen start to take on an evil, vibrating fuzziness, I noticed an inexplicable pink glow emanating from my laptop. Reflecting off the screen, it cast a perfect rectangle of rosy light onto the table.

Or, recently, even more subtle: 10 a.m. on a weekend, sunlight slinking through the blinds in gluey yellow strips that cling to the clutter on my desk and render it thickly incandescent, objects somehow bleeding beyond their own periphery. Or at dusk, dimensions now falling away, my room reduced to an assemblage of translucent, desaturated planes that shift slowly against each other like a gloomy Mac screensaver.

I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to tell me. Maybe he’s bored. Maybe he’s apologizing for stealing my doorknob. Maybe I should just stop falling asleep with my contacts in.

Happy International Bagpipe Day!

Masthead*

MANAGING EDITORS

Zachary Braner

Lucia Kan-Sperling

Ella Spungen

WEEK IN REVIEW

Karlos Bautista

Morgan Varnado

ARTS

Kian Braulik

Corinne Leong

Charlie Medeiros

EPHEMERA

Ayça Ülgen

Livia Weiner

FEATURES

Madeline Canfield

Jane Wang

LITERARY

Ryan Chuang

Evan Donnachie

Anabelle Johnston

METRO

Mark Buckley

Jack Doughty

Rose Houglet

Sacha Sloan

SCIENCE + TECH

Eric Guo

Angela Qian

Katherine Xiong

WORLD

Everest Maya-Tudor

Lily Seltz

X

Claire Chasse

DEAR INDY

Annie Stein

BULLETIN BOARD

Sofia Barnett

Kayla Morrison

SENIOR EDITORS

Sage Jennings

Anabelle Johnston

Corinne Leong

Isaac McKenna

Sacha Sloan

Jane Wang

STAFF WRITERS

Tanvi Anand

Cecilia Barron

Graciela Bautista

Mariana Fajnzylber

Saraphina Forman

Keelin Gaughan

Sarah Goldman

Jonathan Green

Sarah Holloway

Anushka Kataruka

Roza Kavak

Nicole Konecke

Cameron Leo

Abani Neferkara

Justin Scheer

Julia Vaz

Kathy/Siqi Wang

Madeleine Young

COPY CHIEF

Addie Allen

COPY EDITORS / FACT-CHECKERS

Qiaoying Chen

Veronica Dickstein

Eleanor Dushin

Aidan Harbison

Doren Hsiao-Wecksler

Jasmine Li

Rebecca Martin-Welp

Kabir Narayanan

Eleanor Peters

Angelina Rios-Galindo

Taleen Sample

Angela Sha

Jean Wanlass

Michelle Yuan

DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR

Angela Lian

SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM

Kian Braulik

Angela Lian

Natalie Mitchell

Chinmayi Rajaram

WEB MANAGER

Isaac McKenna

WEB EDITORS

Hadley Dalton

Arman Deendar

Ash Ma

GAMEMAKERS

Alyscia Batista

Anna Wang

*Our Beloved Staff

Mission Statement

COVER COORDINATOR

Zora Gamberg

DESIGN EDITORS

Anna Brinkhuis

Sam Stewart

DESIGNERS

Nicole Ban

Brianna Cheng

Ri Choi

Ashley Guo

Kira Held

Xinyu/Sara Hu

Gina Kang

Amy/Youjin Lim

Andrew Liu

Ash Ma

Jaesun Myung

Tanya Qu

Zoe Rudolph-Larrea

Floria Tsui

Anna Wang

ILLUSTRATION EDITORS

Sophie Foulkes

Izzy Roth-Dishy

ILLUSTRATORS

Sylvie Bartusek

Lucy Carpenter

Bethenie Carriaga

Julia/Shuo Yun Cheng

Avanee Dalmia

Michelle Ding

Nicholas Edwards

Jameson Enriquez

Lillyanne Fisher

Haimeng Ge

Jacob Gong

Ned Kennedy

Elisa Kim

Sarosh Nadeem

Hannah Park

Luca Suarez

Yanning Sun

Anna Wang

Camilla Watson

Iris Wright

Nor Wu

Celine Yeh

Jane Zhou

MVP

Mark Buckley

The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI in Seekonk, MA

The CollegeHillIndependent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Our paper is distributed throughout the East Side, Downtown, and online. The Indy also functions as an open, leftist, consciousness-raising workshop for writers and artists, and from this collaborative space we publish 20 pages of politically-engaged and thoughtful content once a week. We want to create work that is generative for and accountable to the Providence community—a commitment that needs consistent and persistent attention.

While the Indy is predominantly financed by Brown, we independently fundraise to support a stipend program to compensate staff who need financial support, which the University refuses to provide. Beyond making both the spaces we occupy and the creation process more accessible, we must also work to make our writing legible and relevant to our readers.

The Indy strives to disrupt dominant narratives of power. We reject content that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism and/or classism. We aim to produce work that is abolitionist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist, and we want to generate spaces for radical thought, care, and futures. Though these lists are not exhaustive, we challenge each other to be intentional and selfcritical within and beyond the workshop setting, and to find beauty and sustenance in creating and working together.

WEEK IN ETERNAL

SUNSET HUNTING

Caution: Do not eat recklessly. Side effects of undercooked sunsets include dehydration, heat stroke, prickly skin, and an inexplicable craving for pickle-flavored peanuts. Nothing less can be said about overcooked sunsets. They tend to leave the average consumer with a foul taste in their mouth. I liken it to the smell of partially-digested spoiled eggs on a wet, sticky sidewalk. The kind that lingers on the ground with bitter regrets.

Sunsets are best served barely alive. The perfect sunset must be consumed exactly one minute before it hits the horizon line. If you make it there, sitting criss-cross applesauce at the perfect place and time, you become the richest person in the world (lasting 60 seconds; your payment in time). Like layers of an onion, the sky gently peels away sheets of maroon-orange, pink-lemon, plum-gold, and my favorite: rose-lavender. The barely-alive sunset is a respite from the monotonous nature of daily routine—a break from the shuffling papers, rumbling car engines, and never-ending notification stream.

Preparations

This month, the sun sets at approximately half past six in Providence, Rhode Island. To savor the barely-alive sunset, you must first be wellversed in checking the weather app. Specifically, look for a sunset emoji on the forecast widget, which reports when today’s sunset will occur. You should aim to be at least nine minutes early—a minute for set up, a minute for snacks, a minute for silence, a minute for pictures, and five minutes in case the weather app lies (which happens more often than you might think).

If you plan to watch the sunset with friends, throw in an extra two minutes in case your friends get distracted seesawing on broken pieces of concrete. Providence sidewalks are quirky like that.

LITTLE CINEMA

Fans of the Saturday morning cartoon, rejoice! This past week, the Providence Children’s Film Festival offered kids a reprieve from the little screen by offering a slightly bigger screen with a series of feature films, shorts, and workshops hosted throughout the city. The festival was held in person for the first time in two years— notably the age of its most raucous attendees. Attendees (“I liked the movies”; “It was a real community event and I’ve missed having spaces like this”; “the bass player for that one band was really hot”) and critics (“Who are you? What is this interview for?”) alike were raving. Highlights include: a musical collaboration with PVD World Music, a testament to local libraries as public spaces and restrooms, and an appearance by a small pony named Will.

But that’s not all.

In the tradition of the greats—A. O. Scott, Roger Ebert, Richard Brody—this College Hill Independent correspondent set out to live-tweet the entire event, spoilers included. Although my editor advised against 140-character-stanzas-as-journalism (in addition to suggesting a title better than watching kids watch things), I will reproduce my findings here to the best of my ability.

Prospect Terrace

At sunset, the great tower and tapering steeple loomed blackly against the flaming sky.

-H. P. Lovecraft

Rumors say horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft frequented Prospect Terrace Park, one of my favorite sunset hunting grounds. Perched near the tip of College Hill, this west-facing park overlooks many prominent downtown landmarks. Among them, there’s the First Baptist Meetinghouse, St. John Catholic Church, and Rhode Island State House.

Midday, Prospect Terrace shimmers against a bright, blue backdrop of hanging stratus clouds. Come sunset, the park takes on a whole new persona. Violets and reds and pinks and golds envelop the bleak silhouettes of neighboring builds and distant hills, splashing the city with color. Leaning (safely) over the park railings, you can enjoy a panoramic vista of the golden-hour skyline—accompanied by the park’s Roger Williams statue, built in honor of Rhode Island’s nonconformist founder. In 1939, after an apple tree root broke into Williams’ old crypt and devoured part of his body, community leaders transferred his remains beneath the statue. There, his fierce spirit continues fighting to this day.

As the wind whips your hair into a terrible frenzy, you momentarily escape from the whistling cars and bustling city. Pause, and allow your imagination to soar and reach new heights.

P.S. A black cat haunts one of the houses by Prospect Terrace. Beware. Moments after sunset, he enjoys staring out the windowsill. If you happen to spy him on your way back from the park, kindly wave and smile.

Pedestrian Bridge

Venture down the hill to the Pedestrian Bridge (recently renamed the “Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge”). This wooden beam bridge beats at the heart of Providence, and while sunsets at Prospect Terrace are outside-looking-in,

1. Baby Mozart: Remix’d

Studies show that babies that listen to Mozart turn out smarter.* Such seems to be the logic of the opening night party, hosted at the Wheeler School with “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in da Haus!” The evening, complete with refreshments by sponsor Campus Fine Wines, included a screening of the feature film The Magic Flute, an adaptation of the classic opera which includes “Harry Potter-esque elements” (we imagine they meant thaumaturgy, not transphobia) and a cross-temporal love story, guaranteed to improve IQ. With kids bumbling and adults milling, I’d say the party was far more exciting than any half-hearted attempt at a post-premiere networking event.

2. iPad kid to film-bro pipeline fortified by robust discussion and supportive after-school programs

Perhaps one of the most promising (and harrowing, for this reporter at least) outcomes of the festival was the buzz of young children with a newfound passion for film. Free interactive activities, programming collaborations with schools, and filmmaking workshops all coalesced to convince prospective auteurs of the viability of the field and joy of the process. One such event: the Youth Filmmaker Showcase and accompanying panel screened films submitted by young filmmakers and provided a platform for film-bros to be.

sunsets at the Pedestrian Bridge unfurl around you like graceful tapestries—in the sky, in the water, in the iridescent glow of faces walking past.

Sunsets here come in streaks of peach-orange and indigo-red. Where the sky is bold, rebellious, and flamboyant, the river below is calm, reflective, and unassuming. There’s a hypnotic quality to the way small ripples, carried by the wind, curl and vanish beneath the bridge. During one of my sunset hunts, I was fortunate enough to spot a leaf swimming against the current, a sight that filled me with profound joy and wonder.

What draws me most to the Pedestrian Bridge are the people. As they hurry on to their next destinations, bundled up in their wooly gloves and scarves, their rosy cheeks are etched with spirit. When the sunset arrives, they pause for a moment to gaze at the sky above. Winter air escapes their open mouths.

P.S. Residents of the Providence River include swans and dabbling ducks. They like to mingle near stone steps along the river bank next to the bridge. As long as you don’t advance too close to a baby duckling, these feathered creatures don’t mind sharing the steps—so you can feast on the barely alive sunset, too.

-CP

3. “Topics span[ing] the entire range of emotions.”

As proclaimed by a rather effusive copywriter, the Providence Children’s Film Festival programmed films that spanned “the entire range of emotions.” Here at the Indy, we often oscillate between vengeful (Taxi Driver) and forlorn (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), but commend children under the age of 13 for encountering the entirety of their feelings on screen.

4. Small pony (Will)

Did we mention the pony?

Although everyone knows the point of film festivals is to give “culture writers” an afterparty to navel gaze at, this critic thinks the Providence Children’s Film Festival puts Sundance and Tribeca to shame, in content and in heart. The future of filmmaking will be in good hands, at least in the city of Providence.

*This writer exclusively listened to the Bangles until the age of two and seemed to have turned out fine.**

**Despite our extensive fact-checking team, the Indy cannot verify the veracity of these claims— both regarding music taste and (emotional) intelligence.

RECLAIMING TEXAS

A leftist reckoning with far-right politics and home

“Dallas & Brown,” my Instagram bio reads. What else is there to say?

Well… a lot.

I have lived in Dallas my whole life, so the familiarity of the former made it much less exciting to broadcast compared to a school like Brown that I would have killed to get into, had it come down to that. I also know, however, that only a scant portion of the Brown University student body has ever been to Dallas, so I thought this pairing might make my hometown its own sort of spectacle upon my arrival to college.

Sure enough, it was. My first month at Brown was a cacophony of names, intended concentrations, icebreakers, repeated names, and of course, hometowns. I thought that since Dallas-Fort Worth was the fourth largest metropolitan area in the U.S., it might find some register, but it seemed there was a pretty clear delineation between the top three cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and everywhere else. And even then, I barely met anyone from Chicago, so maybe it was more like the top two. Even when people weren’t from Los Angeles or New York City, they were from the Bay Area or New Jersey. Or Boston. Or San Diego. Or D.C. Despite more centrally located cities like Houston, Chicago, and Dallas housing multiple millions of people, the culture of Brown is heavily bicoastal.

In fact, introductions of “LA” and “New York” (or more commonly just “the city”) were either met with excitement or even just those subtle nods of approval, as if this was simply the standard. The heavily leftist community at Brown seemed to find comfort in hailing from a consistently blue hometown and state as a means of legitimizing their political identities. “Dallas” was more often than not treated like a pejorative. And when slight grimaces and backhanded “oh’s” were not immediately delivered, it only took a quick clarification of “yeah, like in Texas” to finally coax them out. As a Texan, I understand that a combination of outspoken Republicans on top of a statewide superiority complex (Everything’s bigger in Texas, amirite?) does not make “Texan” sound like the most welcoming identifier.

And given how highly concentrated New Yorkers and Californians are in our student

body, it makes sense that they have had little interaction with any Texans to poke holes in that stereotype. For those who have never been to Texas, the prevailing stereotype is a state filled with strip malls of Trump merchandise vendors and parking lots full of pickup trucks, suburbs of suburbs with public schools that refuse to respect any pronoun besides “y’all,” and temperatures so high the state is quite literally red. But at a school that prides itself on being as uniquely welcoming and inclusive as Brown does, I was shocked at how easily most people bought into these narratives. Throughout my first semester, people asked me how many Trump signs were in my neighborhood, if my dad drove a truck, and how far away the nearest farm was from my house.

While it is certainly true that these characteristics exist and largely do dictate life for many people in Texas, I see about as many bumper stickers for Beto as I do Trump, and have to drive about an hour before I start seeing farms—in a sedan, of all vehicles. I think the tone with which these stereotypes are illuminated in conversations is telling. These questions about how conservative my city is or what kind of history classes I took are not empathetic inquiries. They are not offering to understand the nuance of my identity in the way that invoking “the city” might prompt further probes about what neighborhood, street, and school someone comes from. The question of politics is very rarely even broached because in large part, I think, the answer is already assumed. And when someone does ask what Texas is like, my response that I don’t always love it, but it’s my home and I have hope for its future is laughed off, unless I have the time and energy to dig into a real discussion about Texas politics. As for that discussion, the opportunity rarely even presents itself.

So I am taking advantage of that opportunity. Right here.

Yes—the government of Texas is being ambushed by the far-right (even more so now under Greg Abbott than in previous years under Rick Perry), and these same radical individuals are some of the louder voices audible beyond our state’s borders. But that does not mean our entire state holds those values. In fact, those politicians being in power is much more a symptom of extreme voter suppression and gerrymandering than extremism within the voting-aged populace. On the outside, Texas may seem like a state full of fascists. As a lifelong Texan, I can safely say it is a much more mixed bag.

My upbringing as an atheist gay white man in suburban Dallas is a mosaic of interactions and relationships with this varied assortment of personalities. My first nine years of education were spent in public school classrooms, surrounded by friends of largely white, Christian, middle to upper-middle class, and moderately conservative backgrounds. We were all children, and we did not yet comprehend the baggage that these identities carried, in the way we understand them now that we are all adults. This made it easy for me to be the gay best friend to a bunch of popular Christian white girls without even being out. At the time, they did not really care that I was more artsy and feminine than our other guy friends. My comfort as a white man and discomfort as a gay or atheist person became more apparent as we progressed into middle school. While discussions about identity, in my experience, were not explicit in the social sphere, these unspoken judgments were felt internally.

I began to actually realize I was queer around the same time that such an identity came to be a more serious insult among the athletic guys who surrounded me. Before I would have been forced to come out, I ended up moving to a private high school.

Most private schools in Dallas are heavily Christian, and in large part serve to help wealthy WASPs insulate themselves from the true diversity of thought, identity, and income that exists within our state. I moved to the only college prep school in the Dallas metro area that was not religious, and prided itself on being inclusive and diverse. While the school looked more diverse on account of the varied religions, races, genders, and sexualities present on campus, there was one

thing almost everyone had in common: wealth. While I had mostly escaped the developing social intolerance of my public school environment, these issues existed in my new community, just to a lesser degree. What had been exacerbated, and went wholly unacknowledged, was the issue of money.

Many of my childhood and family friends and I were more or less demographically homogeneous, yet we came to differ greatly in our politics and outlook on the world. Most of those individuals are now at least moderately conservative and Christian. My high school friends and I are much more alike on a personal and ideological level, yet we are far more diverse in family backgrounds and upbringing. While most of us are queer and relatively leftist, we are also Jewish, Catholic, and Buddhist, Asian, Black, and Hispanic, and range from middle class to some of the richest families in Dallas. No matter where I turned, no community was perfectly accepting nor wholly exclusive. Much of my life has unfurled in the gray spaces in between. There is far more intersectionality to Texas than what is portrayed beyond our borders.

First, Texas is a state of immigrants, and has been since long before white Americans first migrated to what was then the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. The Texan economy employs the highest level of undocumented workers in the country, but since 2021, Governor Greg Abbott has given at least $4 billion to the ridiculously expensive and violent Operation Lone Star, which deploys thousands of new state authorities along the Mexican border to arrest migrants. Organizations like the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) provide legal assistance to underserved immigrant and refugee families. And hundreds of protesters, largely from Latino-led and -allied organizing groups across the state, marched on the Capitol in Austin on the operation’s second anniversary. When considered in the context of Texas’ Indigenous history, and its occupation by Spanish and later Mexican regimes before American annexation, this legal aggression towards Latino communities only further illustrates the long arc of colonial rule that has dominated populations within the region.

Other threats to immigrants remain in the air as state legislators continue to propose a ban on Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and North Korean citizens buying land in Texas. A Texas Senate Committee hearing saw over 100 people from Asian American organizations testify against the law last week. But, it has yet to be voted on, so time will tell what else advocacy groups may do if the bill becomes a law. The anti-Asian sentiment that this ban codifies only further disappoints progressive advocates in the state, especially because Texas’ population saw an increase of 600,000 people of Asian descent between 2010 and 2020.

Furthermore, many Texan communities are living on the frontlines of the climate crisis due to a combination of more extreme weather and a vulnerable energy grid independent of any national oversight. Energy has become an increasingly important topic, as Texas is the largest state producer of both wind energy and oil in the country. While the state is a leading force in transitioning to renewables, it also

still has a vested interest in the exploitation of fossil fuels. Texas ranks first in the nation for carbon dioxide emissions, and the Houston Ship Channel specifically is not only the busiest international port in the country, but also houses the Western Hemisphere’s largest petrochemical refinery complex. Groups like Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services and the Texas Campaign for the Environment are actively working to monitor pollution levels and advocate against the expansion of existing facilities and the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure along the Gulf Coast.

Current attempts by Republicans to make voting inaccessible at both the state and local level only further reify narratives of Texas as white, Christian, and conservative. They continue to legally and administratively uphold practices of voter suppression such as gerrymandering, withholding resources to promote voter registration, and placing polling locations in predominantly white neighborhoods. Organizations like the Texas Civil Rights Project are working to combat gerrymandering, promote voter registration, and protect election integrity. The Texas Organizing Project also uniquely works to empower working class people of color by mobilizing voters in electorally underrepresented neighborhoods and increasing support behind specific electoral campaigns. Organizations like these represent a powerful effort by Black and Latino communities to reclaim political institutions and make them accessible to and representative of all Texans.

promoting dozens more bills targeting drag shows and classroom instruction on gender and sexual identities. Attorney General Ken Paxton has also stated that he is willing and able to defend a law banning same-sex intimacy, should it be passed. Equality Texas is fighting these actions, too, as is the Texas Freedom Network and its youth-led branch Texas Rising, both of which aim to limit the Christian right by protecting public schools and organizing on college campuses under an intersectional social justice framework.

Lastly, Texas passed one of the first and most extreme six-week abortion bans in the country back in 2021. The state also made it illegal to assist a person in accessing an abortion. The evangelical Texas Right to Life group even launched a website for people to anonymously report individuals they suspected of having, or assisting someone in getting, an abortion. While GoDaddy quickly took down the whistleblower site, the laws remain in place. Texas Freedom Network, Planned Parenthood, Reproductive Health Access Project, and many other reproductive rights groups continue to lobby, protest, and provide resources to ameliorate the impacts of these laws until legal protections are codified.

When Texas is mocked, ignored, and generalized at elite institutions like Brown, this only erases both the marginalization and mobilization of people seeking reproductive care, migrants seeking asylum, LGBTQ people living openly, and people of color attempting to cast ballots, and pushes them farther away from the central role they should occupy in national politics. The tolerance, inclusivity, and progressivism that so many students at Brown espouse only go as far as posturing when this discourse writes off people’s lived experiences and their investment in transforming the injustices that ensnare controversial home geographies. To truly care about progressive politics is to engage in the reality of battleground states, where unsavory conservatism is actively causing tangible harm. Rather than framing our communities simply as victims of conservative Christian ideology, we ought to amplify the grassroots organizers promoting justice and progress, actively reclaiming our role as stakeholders in Texas politics. This is how we repossess our power in the state.

Nearly a year ago, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Department of Family Protective Services to begin investigating parents with transgender children under the directive that providing gender-affirming care is child abuse. This prompted thousands of DFPS employees to resign, and many district attorneys stated that they would refuse to prosecute any of those parents. The ACLU is fighting two lawsuits on behalf of different families affected by the directive, which have so far been upheld in state courts. Still, the Texas legislature is introducing other bills to criminalize essential healthcare for transgender youth, which only further threatens the families and doctors of transgender kids in Texas. The group Equality Texas continues to lobby and hold rallies against these bills.

The Texas GOP also recently re-adopted a platform asserting homosexuality to be an “abnormal lifestyle choice,” and have begun

I do not claim to be represented by Republican politicians that seek to strip me and nearly all of my friends of our bodily, sexual, and financial autonomy. I do not claim the many people that put these politicians in office. But I refuse to let those specific voters and the candidates they elect monopolize what it means for all of us to be from Texas. While the narrative may be firmly in their grasp now, I am proud to be one of the many advocates working against these people and their policies. I am excited by the potential Texas holds to be a safe and prosperous home for the over 30 million people who live there, and the millions more that might call it home soon. I am not ashamed of the imperfect childhood and adolescence I experienced as a Texan. I should not have to disown my home to find a sense of it here.

Rather than framing our communities simply as victims of conservative Christian ideology, we ought to amplify the grassroots organizers promoting justice and progress, actively reclaiming our role as stakeholders in Texas politics.

ASHTON HIGGINS B’26 is supporting Marianne Williamson (A TEXAN) for president!

“DEFINITELY

The troubled family legacy behind Brown’s new Lindemann Performing Arts Center

In recent months, the cranes and bulldozers on George Street have slowly given way to a dazzling edifice—a towering rectangle of metal and glass.

After years of planning, Brown University is on the precipice of completing its long-anticipated, mid-campus gem: the Lindemann Performing Arts Center. The “state-of-the-art main performance hall” will be able to transform into layouts “ranging from a 625-seat symphony orchestra hall, to a 250-seat proscenium theater, to an immersive surroundsound cube for experimental media performance,” per Brown’s website.

The building is ambitious, both architecturally and finan cially. While Brown hasn’t disclosed the price tag, REX, the center’s New York-based archi tect, built a similar performing arts center next to the World Trade Center in Manhattan, NY. That project reportedly cost $500 million.

After the reveal of the center’s technological capabilities, all that was missing was its title. Last May, Brown announced that it would be named after Frayda B. Lindemann, a Brown Corporation trustee, and her late husband, the oil billionaire and art collector George L. Lindemann. Specifically, the name would recognize a “generous gift” from the couple, details of which Brown has not divulged.

But the Lindemann name carries a troubling legacy, from criminal penal ties for a Pawtucket chemical spill in the 2000s to more recent journalistic exposés presenting evidence that

various Lindemanns are in possession of allegedly stolen Cambodian relics—and have for years rebuffed efforts to return them.

In an emailed statement to the College Hill Independent, Brown spokesman Brian Clark wrote that “Brown has detailed policies and practices in place to guide our work with donors,” echoing a previous statement issued to the website GoLocalProv.com. “Our policies make clear that acceptance of a gift does not imply or mean that the University endorses or approves of a donor’s views, opinions, businesses or activities. In regard to the Lindemann Performing Arts Center, these policies and practices guided our decision-making, and we accepted the naming gift with full confidence.”

Bradley J. Gordon, a lawyer and Brown alumnus representing the Cambodian

the Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education (ARISE), reached out to Brown President Christina Paxson with her concerns.

“If Brown proceeds with honoring the family, Brown would be causing institutional harm and further disenfranchising the Cambodian people of our fight, struggle, history, and preservation,” she wrote in an email to the Indy. “As a Cambodian refugee whose work has been rooted in education justice, I find this news disheartening particularly since Brown has been working on an image of benevolence.”

Alleged possession of stolen Cambodian relics

Photos from a 2008 issue of Architectural Digest show a large Cambodian statue overlooking a dining room in a Palm Beach, Florida, mansion owned by Ms. Lindemann and her late husband. This rare cultural artifact, along with at least five others, were “definitely looted,” according to Cambodian government experts interviewed as part of a joint investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the Washington Post. The statue in the Lindemann’s dining room is reportedly so important that the National Museum of Cambodia keeps its pedestal empty in anticipation of its eventual return.

Then, in August 2022, the same team of reporters found photographic evidence of other stolen Cambodian relics, this time in a palatial, $42 million San Francisco home owned by Sloan Lindemann Barnett—the Lindemann couple’s daughter—and her husband, Roger Barnett. Cambodian government investigators told the journalists that these various artifacts are central to Cambodian history. “We believe that each of these holds the souls of our ancestors,” Sopheap Meas, a Cambodian archeology expert, told ICIJ and the Post

The senior Lindemanns “amassed one of the greatest collections of Southeast Asian art in private hands” with “passion and discernment,” according to the incriminating 2008 Architectural Digest feature. Because of the difficulty of artifact repatriation without the collector’s consent, these works remain in the Lindemanns’ possession.

For years, Cambodia has been seeking thousands of relics taken from the country by disgraced British art thief Douglas Latchford, whose financial records led reporters to the Lindemanns. This larger investigation, an offshoot of the Pandora Papers data leak, has implicated influential institutions around the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum in London, and the National Gallery of Australia all possess pieces linked to Latchford.

Gordon, the lawyer representing the Cambodian government, told the Indy that the Lindemanns’ statues were stolen from “the ancient royal capital of Koh Ker” some time around 1997, according to interviews with former Khmer Rouge child soldiers. The Indy also reviewed as-yet unpublished photos of the Lindemanns on vacation in Cambodia in 1997, which Gordon said were retrieved from Latchford’s computer. The photos show Frayda and George Lindemann posing with Latchford and Martin Lerner, a former Met

VAZ, MARK BUCKLEY, SACHA SLOAN, HANNA ABOUEID & MEGHAN MURPHY DESIGN AMY LIM ILLUSTRATION JANE ZHOU

LOOTED”

curator. In one photo, the Lindemanns have their arms draped around a large stone figure that is similar to the relics in their home.

Latchford was indicted on smuggling charges by the United States in 2019, but died before he could be tried. U.S. prosecutors had accused him of playing a leading role in the ransacking of sacred Cambodian sites and the trafficking of artifacts stolen from those sites. Latchford had attempted to use the items in his collection as a leverage for legal immunity, according to a leaked memo acquired by ICIJ and the Post

In an effort to “honor” and “absolve” her father, Latchford’s daughter returned his private collection to Cambodia after his death. Now, U.S. law enforcement officials, including the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, are trying to return other stolen artworks that Latchford sold to wealthy collectors.

The Lindemanns, who have not been formally accused of any crimes, did not respond to requests for comment from ICIJ journalists, nor have they responded to entreaties from the Cambodian government. Citing two anonymous sources, ICIJ and the Post reported that U.S. federal agents have also contacted the Lindemanns about the artifacts, but have seen “no indication that the family plans to return the statues.” Efforts by the Indy to reach Frayda Lindemann, Sloan Lindemann Barnett, and Roger Barnett were similarly unsuccessful.

“Rhode Island is home to many Cambodian artists and families,” Sarath Suong, a local Cambodian organizer and co-founder of Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), said in a statement. “The true cost of war and colonization is one the Cambodian people will spend generations paying. And we know, in our souls, that cost is much more than what the Lindemann family gave Brown University.”

Historic sites in Cambodia have long been the targets of looters. Sparked in part by the U.S. bombing of the country from 1965 to 1973, the plunder of temples, such as the historic Angkor Wat ruins, was closely tied to the destabilization of Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime. Artifact trafficking networks that ended in the homes of Western art dealers often began with involvement from armed forces—including the Cambodian military and the Khmer Rouge.

Filbert Aung, a student coordinator for Brown’s Southeast Asian Studies Initiative, told the Indy that the group “envision[s] a future where Brown University repairs the harm in accepting these funds by 1) investing further in Providence’s Southeast Asian communities and 2) furthering the research and study of Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia America at Brown.”

Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture has been open about the need to return antiquities: in a forthcoming interview by the Brown Journal of World Affairs, Cambodian Minister of Culture Phoeurng Sackona said her country hopes to welcome looted statues back to Cambodia in order to “receive [their] ancestors… [the Cambodian] connection, blood, and history that [survived] the century of the dark times.”

Criminal pollution in Pawtucket

At the time of Mr. Lindemann Sr.’s death in 2018, his net worth hovered around $3.3 billion, much of it

gained from his energy firm, Southern Union Company, which he sold in 2012. Forbes once described him as a “natural gas tycoon,” and noted that “his office is packed with art from Cambodia, India and Thailand.”

Before the merger, Southern Union Company was infamous for environmental crimes in Rhode Island. In 2007, a federal grand jury charged the firm with “illegally storing” and “failing to report the spillage” of mercury at a site on Tidewater Street in Pawtucket, RI. For years, authorities said, a Southern Union Company subsidiary ignored repeated warnings that it was dangerously storing mercury in its Tidewater facility. Then, in 2004, a group of children broke into the building, where they spilled mercury before bringing more to a nearby apartment complex, according to a Department of Justice press release.

The mercury spill was only discovered a month later, by a company employee, and 150 people were displaced for two months during the cleanup. According to a 2009 Associated Press report, residents of the affected apartment complex “had unacceptably high levels of mercury in their blood and showed other symptoms of mercury exposure, such as hair loss and rashes.”

Initially fined $18 million for the violations, Southern Union Company was ultimately ordered to pay just $500,000 due to a court procedural error. The funds were then divided among environmental groups and the City of Pawtucket. During the trial, the Southern Union Company’s attorney argued that the company was not “a chronic offender.”

A history of philanthropy

The Lindemanns also donated to Brown before the Performing Arts Center. The family endowed a Lindemann professorship in environmental studies, and in 2018, the elder Lindemanns pledged $1.5 million toward the Political Theory Project, a since-renamed Brown initiative that received over $3.8 million from organizations affiliated with the Koch brothers, as the Indy previously reported.

In addition to their gifts to Brown, the Lindemanns are longtime patrons of the arts. Ms. Lindemann is the president and CEO of the Metropolitan Opera; she and her husband sponsored the opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program. She has also served on the boards of various other New York arts institutions, and was elected to the Brown Corporation in 2019.

One of their sons, Adam Lindemann, is a New York City art magnate; he owns a Manhattan gallery, has given millions to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and wrote a 2006 book about the contemporary art market. He was recently profiled in the New York Times for the large amounts of art he is putting up for auction. Another son, George Lindemann Jr., is the general manager of a real estate group and the president of the board of trustees for a Miami art museum, according to his

personal blog. In 2021, Lindemann Jr. donated 2,000 acres of land to a Tennessee conservancy group. Sloan Lindemann Barnett has historically had a robust media presence, appearing as a “consumer and green contributor” on NBC’s Today Show. She is also the author of the book Goes with Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life and a Greener Planet

The late Mr. Lindemann Sr. was a prolific political donor who gave to both Democrats and Republicans, but primarily the latter, according to a 2015 CNN article. Today, public voting records show that Ms. Lindemann is a registered Republican in Florida.

An “unacceptable” decision

The Lindemann Performing Arts Center is set to be completed next fall. Last May, on a grassy plateau near the George Street construction zone, Brown held a reception to celebrate the center’s naming. Ms. Lindemann was present, along with several Brown administrators.

“President Paxson’s plans are ambitious and future-thinking,” Ms. Lindemann reportedly said. “She wants Brown to lead the way in changing the landscape of the arts in the Ivy League, to make the arts more accessible to surrounding communities. George Sr. and I admired her deeply for that.”

Critics of the center’s name, like Brown alum and ARISE Deputy Director Ngan Nguyen, say Brown’s decision is “unacceptable.”

“Brown shouldn’t shy away from conversations that try to get to the heart of the legacies of colonial theft and dispossession, and the discovery of stolen Cambodian relics is particularly important in light of the large Cambodian refugee population in Rhode Island,” said Elena Shih, a professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown. “In fact, the institution is uniquely poised to be the very hub for hosting these forms of inquiry.”

At the May reception, Ms. Lindemann was jubilant. “The arts are what make us human and separate us from other species,” she said. “They help us remember our humanity.”

JULIA VAZ B’25, MARK BUCKLEY B’23, SACHA SLOAN B’23.5, HANNA ABOUEID B’24, & MEGHAN MURPHY B’23 will be perusing Architectural Digest for stolen artifacts.

Phantom Planetree and Shadows

Cyanotype on cotton, planetree branch

This piece is a collaboration between myself and the titular planetree branch. The backdrop and the strips of cloth are cyanotype records of the sky’s shifting light. The moment passes, but the trace remains, tangled in the twigs. To see the work installed, visit the List Art Center Second Floor Gallery, on display from March 10 to 16.

Jaden Bleier B’23

CHIMERA

An Illness Triptych

content warning: illness, hospitalization, derealization, memory loss

Yuck

3 bands, 2 girls, 1 night of fun

The undressing began with a ring. Thirty minutes into the band’s first song, Gabe slipped a silver ring off of his middle finger, holding it up for a moment before theatrically tossing it into the crowd. Necks craned, following the arc through the air. Imagine the excitement when a t-shirt gun launches shirts into the bleachers of a pep rally, except if the shirts were really cute and probably vintage—who wouldn’t want to catch the ring? It landed on the floor right in front of the RISD student beside us, who knelt down, grabbed it, and placed it onto their left ring finger, passing their camcorder to a friend nearby. Their hand shot up above the crowd, as if to exclaim, “Me! Me!” Of course, even if they were to say this, no one would’ve heard it over the bass and drums deafening the whole room. Moving forward on the shallow stage, Gabe leaned down toward the lucky student who had found the ring, speaking first to them directly before addressing the entire audience: “My hips do not lie. No, they don’t.” He went on repeating this Shakira-style drone for several minutes before somewhat sheepishly asking for the ring back and continuing with the song. Gabe would continue to take off his clothes—but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

On February 11, Providence arts venue AS220 put on a night of noise music. AS220, a downtown Providence arts non-profit, has historically hosted live music and served as a performance venue for established and up-and-coming musicians for over 30 years. Unfortunately, AS220 had to halt live music during the pandemic, only recently restarting their weekly music shows. The Providence noiserock scene revitalized the genre nationally in the early 2000s. Most of this history lies in the demolished walls of art commune Fort Thunder, and in the legacies of Providence bands like Black Dice, Lightning Bolt, and Landed.

This night, AS220’s wailing lineup consisted of New York City’s YHWH Nailgun, Philadelphia’s Primal Rat Screw, and Providence’s “no-wave,” psychedelic funk-inspired avant-garde noise band, Shit Yourself. This show marks one of the first returns of live performances to AS220, which only began hosting music again this January.

Shit Yourself

The aforementioned Gabe is Gabe Bellone, lead singer of Providence-based band Shit Yourself. Along with Gabe, the members of Shit Yourself include bassist Cassius Rich and drummer Geist Topping. Before the show, I (Charlie :P) got a

chance to sit down with Shit Yourself and ask them all of your (my) burning questions. The interview started spontaneously. Waiting for the show to start, I started chatting with Gabe and Geist, not realizing they were the opening act. We sat in a small black booth that faced Mathewson Street, our window looking out onto the sea of 15-ish concert-goers smoking outside waiting for the show to start, huffing together in anticipation. The crowd skewed young, most early-to-mid-twenties, except for some notable exceptions: two older men who would go on to give each other mosh-pit piggyback rides, and two strangers in their 30s who may just have fallen in love <3… more on both later!

When asked how they would describe their band, Shit Yourself gave a very unexpected answer: “I’m…I’m the ocean, Cassius is the land—like rocks—and Geist is the ship,” said Gabe. However, Gabe quickly walked back this comment: “I was actually the boat.” In the spirit of accurate journalism, I asked him to clarify this metaphor twice.

When asked specifically about their sound, the band described themselves as “abstract noise,” where Geist and Cassius provide a “funk noise…a presence of getting down and dancing,” and Gabe’s voice comes in as “the other side of the ‘70s where things were terrible.” Gabe emphasized that, while Shit Yourself’s music is danceable, they are more interested in exper imentation and live improvisation, trying to capture “the insanity” of that time period.

In the spirit of insanity, around 35 minutes into the first—and last—song of their set, Gabe began taking his clothes off. He began with his white cotton t-shirt, throwing it to the ground next to him before moving on to the black vinyl long sleeve he wore below it. That squeaky shirt would meet a fate similar to the one before it, landing at his feet as a shirtless Gabe began to march between the right and left sides of the stage. He then moved lower, sliding his white and blue American-flag printed pants down to his ankles. He walked crudely around the stage for several minutes, clearly in no rush to free his tied-together feet. Eventually, though, he flung the pants aside, performing in nothing but his underwear.

Much like with the ring, Gabe’s performative undressing was later met with performative re-dressing. In the same order, Gabe slipped his two shirts back on, black and then white. As if a signal of what would follow, Gabe inserted the microphone into his mouth, freeing both of his hands as he shuffled his pants back up. In the

forming a kind of graceful push and pull of headbanging and undulating hips, seemingly made for each other. Mere moments into their encounter, unfortunately, the beat that had been the medium for their connection fell away—in a cruel twist of fate, Shit Yourself had chosen this moment to end their hour-long improvised song. However, all was not lost for our newly budding couple, as between acts we noticed them again, outside chatting over cigarettes and cool Providence air.

Not having released any music before the show, Shit Yourself was very eager to announce the launch of their Bandcamp site. The band has since released their first EP, succinctly titled Shit

CHASSE & CHARLIE MEDEIROS

DESIGN ZOE RUDOLPH-LARREA

ILLUSTRATION NICHOLAS EDWARDS

Rock

an intro yoga class—leg-stretching, deep breaths. As Zack completed his impressive stretching routine, and the rest of the band finished their tuning, we were left a little surprised at the lack of movement in Zack’s dancing. Rather than moving around the stage, Zack instead opted to plant his right foot over his left, as if to curtsy. He maintained this crossed-feet position for nearly the entire duration of the set, combining it with permanently clenched fists kept close to the chest and a gentle gyration of the hips. Each of YHWH Nailgun’s songs were followed by a shrieking “Thank you!” into the microphone in a voice only describable as rockand-roll-Miss-Piggy-meets-Lady-Bunny standup routine.

While YHWH Nailgun’s performance did not have the bombastic energy of Shit Yourself, they possessed a hypnotic charm. Zack’s vocals came out more like yowls than words, as if bursting out of his body. While the lyrics were not exactly decipherable, their slurred tone gave them an almost instrumental quality, the harsh vocals bleeding into the instruments behind it. While YHWH Nailgun may have not ignited the most energetic crowd, they did have a magnetic performing style. We may not have wanted to mosh, but we definitely did not want to look away.

Primal Rat Screw

Will’s voice filled the room, first in a low chant, his words raspy and inhuman, cracking like a reanimated corpse testing its vocal chords for the first time since returning from the abyss. Somehow, his voice further intensified, building into urgent, rhythmic shrieks at the climax of the first song—a skill that Will divulged having mastered during a scene phase at age 13. Despite the makeup, Primal Rat Screw declares firmly that they are not a metal band—their specialty is “freak music.”

thats a gig (I love that) [but I am uncertain as to whether or not I’d move to rural florida].” These songs sound similar to the one they performed at AS220, maintaining their chaotic and noisy feel, only now in one-tenth of the time!

YHWH Nailgun

The second band to play was New York Citybased band YHWH Nailgun. Two things stuck out to us in YHWH Nailgun’s performance. Let’s start with the dancing—or, more accurately, the stretching. The lead singer, Zack Borzone, began his performance on the floor. Unlike Shit Yourself’s style—microphone-gagging, splayed-out-on-the-floor—Zack moved as if in

In our preparation for the show, we had only heard Primal Rat Screw, not thinking to look through photos on their Bandcamp or swipe through their Instagram. Because of this oversight, we were not prepared for their makeup: Think Nina from Black Swan (2010) meets smudgy French mime. Or maybe if the members of Kiss stood outside for a couple hours on a 100-degree day. The lead singer’s outfit caught our eye, the star of which was his pair of pants— or, more accurately, pairs of pants. Long, baggy jorts sagged over a much smaller, belted pair of jeans. Genius! I (Claire ( )) suddenly felt underdressed, as if my own single pair of jeans was inadequate—why hadn’t I thought to wear two?

Primal Rat Screw’s music—remember, this is an article about more than clothes—is guttural and a little bit gross. Their songs feature harsh, grating vocals over frantic guitar and bass. When asked if he has a vocal chord care routine, Will responded, “No, not at all. I smoke a pack of cigarettes every day.” Jokingly, I (Charlie) added that the cigarettes probably make the music better, to which Will replied, “Maybe.”

Primal Rat Screw’s performance was explosive. As the band plunged into their first song,

Like most musical acts, Primal Rat Screw began on the stage. Unlike most musical acts, lead singer Will soon jumped off that stage, onto a chair he had placed in the middle of the crowd. Grabbing hold of a ceiling pipe above him, Will swung himself around while screamgrowling at the thrashing audience before him. Between songs, when Will would get back on stage, the crowd was quick to push the chair out of the way to make room for moshing. The mosh-pit—maybe more accurately mosh-bunch or mosh-huddle—quickly formed. Even we moshed—despite being there on official journalistic business—pushing ourselves through the sweaty crowd, only to realize that maybe we had a better view from where we originally were standing. We witnessed some poor mosh etiquette, as two older men seemed more interested in running around while giving each other piggyback rides than making room for their fellow moshers. But, touchingly, we also witnessed a heartwarming mosh-moment, where the whole crowd paused to help one rocker who had been pushed a little too hard and found themselves moshed right into the floor.

As Primal Rat Screw finished their set, we started getting a little emotional. So much happened that night: love was found, clothes were ditched, and a small gallery space was transformed into a land of magic, wonder, and noise. And when the night began to come to its close, and as our poor ears started to ring and throb, we noticed something had changed within us, something felt different inside—we were hungry! So we left the venue with smiles on our faces and hands rubbing our temples, making a necessary pit-stop at 7-Eleven before our long pilgrimage up College Hill. We got two Big Gulps: half cherry, half Coke.

CLAIRE CHASSE B’24 + CHARLIE MEDEIROS B’24 are the wind, or maybe like the sea currents…

THE HUMAN-MADE DISASTER OF THE CENTURY

TURKEY

content warning: death, descriptions of suffering

The Turkish government halted instruction in all schools and universities following the earthquakes on February 6, 2023. While the decisions they made prior to and after this disaster are what cost thousands of people their dreams and lives, we will not allow them to steal the future away from us as well.

The two consecutive earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5 on February 6 impacted a large landmass inhabited by 26 million people. All that was left of ancient cities like Antakya, Maraş, and Adıyaman was debris; thousands of their residents were left trapped under the rubble. According to the official reports, over 50,000 of those people died. However, knowing that over 160,000 buildings collapsed can help us grasp how much larger the actual death toll is.

The buildings were not the only things that collapsed in Turkey—so did the government. Lack of coordination and adequate response caused the greatest harm during the first few days after the earthquakes, when people were still hopeful that their loved ones would be rescued. However, the voices that screamed for help had fallen into silence by the time the government set foot in those cities.

Weeks have passed since February 6. Powerful aftershocks continue to affect the region and the Turkish government continues to pretend that they are the ones trapped under the rubble. Instead of helping survivors, the government is busy arresting reporters and protesters trying to hold them accountable. Not a single official has resigned.

The ruling party was quick to call February 6 and the events following it “the disaster of the century.” The officials sought sympathy from the public by emphasizing that earthquakes are natural disasters that cannot be predicted or prevented, and that these earthquakes were some of the biggest in recent history. Yet, they could not have been more wrong. The real disaster of the century is their rule.

Weakened Foundations

In the last 20 years of their reign, the ruling party made Turkey vulnerable to earthquakes like this one. Their policies allowed construction companies to roam freely, building unstable infrastructure in every inch of the land without any fear of their buildings being inspected. In 2018, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey made the decision to grant amnesty to over seven million buildings, legalizing their status without proper safety documentation or examinations. Instead, the contractors were asked to pay a simple fine to the government in return for being granted amnesty. This decision was widely celebrated by the government and was

even called the “Construction Peace.”

The level of negligence this policy allowed becomes clear when you consider that 18,000 people died during Turkey’s last massive earthquake in 1999. Then, as now, what killed people was not the earthquakes directly, but the thousands of buildings that collapsed in seconds because of contractors’ choices to sacrifice the quality of construction materials in favor of profits—and the government that encouraged them. Their greed cost people their lives and dreams. This is why February 6 and the events following it are nothing short of a massacre.

Closing the Doors

Despite a clear division across party lines between those who criticize and those who try to defend the response to the earthquakes, there was one decision that left everyone bewildered. On February 6, the Ministry of Education halted instruction in all K-12 schools until February 13; on February 9, they postponed reopening to February 20. Also on February 6, the Council of Higher Education announced their decision to close universities in cities affected by the earthquakes; then, on February 9, they widened their decision to include all universities in Turkey. Unlike the Ministry of Education, the Council of Higher Education did not give a date for the reopening. Both of these decisions were shocking because the earthquakes did not directly affect every single part of Turkey. Though they wreaked havoc across hundreds of miles of land, the affected area only spans 10 cities out of Turkey’s 81.

What was even more atrocious were the decisions announced on February 11. During his visit to my hometown—one of the cities hit by the earthquake—the President of Turkey announced that all higher education institutions would switch to virtual instruction for the remainder of the academic year, until mid-July. Standing in front of a mic, surrounded by his security guards, ministers, and children that survived the earthquakes, the president also declared that the dorms run by the Directorate of Higher Education Credit and Hostels Institution (KYK), the governmental body responsible for providing accommodation services and financial aid for students, were going to be used by the earthquake survivors. The president could make this change without even consulting the Grand National Assembly of Turkey because—since a 2017 referendum that led to several constitutional changes that his party had proposed—all executive, legislative, and judiciary decision-making capacity is consolidated in his role.

On February 11, in an apparent attempt to silence the widespread opposition raised in response to the decisions about universities, the Ministry of Education announced that all K-12 institutions outside the 10 cities hit by the earthquakes would resume instruction on

February 20. Meanwhile, institutions located in those 10 cities would remain closed until March 1. A few days after February 11, reopening in two of the 10 affected cities was postponed until March 13, and plans to resume instruction were pushed back even further in four of those cities to March 27. Since then, even though the Council of Higher Education has mentioned the possibility of revisiting its decision to make all universities in Turkey operate virtually, the officials did not move the in-person reopening dates forward.

Dorms, Hotels, and Palaces

The decision about higher education institutions was also bewildering because the Minister of Education keeps proudly announcing that the Ministry was able to create transfer quotas for 1,029,000 K-12 students from the cities hit by the earthquake. These quotas allow students to resume their education in schools located in the remaining 71 cities of Turkey if they choose to do so. Why was such an arrangement not made for university students?

One of the reasons for making universities switch to virtual instruction was so their dorms could become available for those who survived the earthquake and had lost their homes. But while the government-run dorms in Turkey have the capacity to host 850,000 people, hotels have the capacity to host 2.2 million.

Not only is there simply more space to host people in hotels, but hotel rooms are more suitable for a family to be able to live in and feel a sense of normalcy, which is crucial for overcoming the severe trauma they are going through. Hotels would have allowed families to reside in units, have private bathrooms, host visitors, and share common recreational spaces like green areas. Their lives in dorm rooms will look very different: multiple families will have to share one room and bathroom and will have access to very limited personal space, let alone any recreational spaces.

Many hotels in Turkey are not far from the areas affected by earthquakes, either. Antalya, the capital of tourism, would be accessible to survivors from even the furthest city in 10 hours by car. In fact, the Minister of Tourism himself owns some of those hotels, in addition to one of the largest travel agencies in Turkey, Etstur— both of which could be used by survivors.

Moreover, in İstanbul alone, there are 800,000 apartments lying empty, in part due to unaffordability. Could arrangements not have been made with the landlords of those apartments? Could financial support not have been given to the survivors for rent so that they could start rebuilding their lives instead of living precariously in temporary accommodations? Or could the 1,150-room presidential residence, or the “Presidential Complex,” as they call it, not open its gates for the survivors when ownership of every inch of the 3,200,00-square-foot place belongs to the people of Turkey? Did those people who were left under the rubble to freeze to their death not pay for the important glass and marble used to build that place, its thousands of dollars worth of electricity and heating bills, 63 elevators, and gold-inlaid cups, adding up to $1.2 billion (in today’s exchange rate) spent during its construction alone?

Digging Us Deeper

In the clear presence of other—and better— options, the choice to sacrifice universities is a deliberate one. The students who lived in government-run dorms reported that the procedures for their removal started minutes after the president’s announcement. While students

I STANBUL location of Bogaziçi University ANKARA

ANTALYA

I ZMIR

EARTHQUAKEAFFECTED ZONE

CENTURY

expressed their frustration at dorm administrators for only allowing them a few hours to pack up all of their belongings and leave, in some other dorms, students’ belongings were thrown into large trash bags by the administrators themselves.

The KYK was supposedly founded to serve students who are in need by providing accommodation services and financial aid so everyone in Turkey can have access to high-quality education. There is great hypocrisy in leaving thousands of university students with no place to go in order to accommodate thousands of earthquake survivors who were deprived of shelter by the very same actors.

University students in large cities were already experiencing a housing crisis prior to the decision to empty the dorms. Low dorm capacities force many students who are not from the Western part of Turkey but still want to attend high-quality universities in places like İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir to bear the higher cost of renting an apartment in those cities. Hence, using university dorms to host earthquake survivors only serves to harm the already disadvantaged and exacerbates educational inequality by making it even more challenging for students who are not from Western Turkey to access high-quality education.

No Tools to Rebuild

The decision to make all universities virtual not only robbed students of their living spaces, but of their futures. Currently, university students all around the country are protesting this decision, despite police violence and the threat of detention. Speaking from personal experiences during the pandemic, protestors are insisting that infrastructure to conduct virtual instruction does not exist in Turkey—particularly for those living in the region hit by the earthquakes, who do not have access to a stable internet connection or a safe place from which they can attend their classes. Virtual education in Turkey means practically no education for many.

In one of many interviews on Turkish national television, Selçuk Şirin, an Applied Psychology Professor from Turkey currently working at New York University, criticized the Council of Higher Education’s decision, noting: “Turkey was one of the three countries in the world with the longest school closure period during the pandemic.” This year’s graduating class in Turkey is going to consist of students who only had in-person instruction for a year and a half.

Şirin argued that a country like Turkey cannot afford such disruptions of education—not only because children and youth constitute the larger share of the population, but also because the challenges the newer generations will have to deal with are more profound in comparison to some other countries. When young people are deprived of education, issues such as the economic crisis Turkey has been going through become harder to solve.

There is a reason why one of the first things earthquake survivors tend to emphasize when interviewed about their needs is the reopening of schools and universities. They repeatedly explain how they do not want to also lose the one thing that they have left: their children and their future. Beyond skills, what schools and universities provide for students is a sense of stability. “Trauma, by definition, stems from the loss of routine,” says Şirin. Considering the hours every student spends in a year on their education, having access to schools is one of the most effective ways for young people to restore their routines. Waking up every morning, traveling to school, seeing familiar faces, eating a meal, get-

ting distracted from the outside world—even for a brief moment—while reading a book, speak ing with teachers and counselors, and playing sports are all factors that help young people overcome trauma.

Forging Solidarities

Moreover, the interactions schools and univer sities uniquely offer, particularly those between peers, are essential for building solidarities. And this is exactly why the schools and universities are not fully operating in-person today: power stems from solidarity. Conversing, mourning, supporting each other, making sense of new realities, recovering, thinking about what went wrong, and coming up with plans to hold those responsible for this disaster accountable are all things that the government is trying to prevent. Universities have long been places for the formation of solidarities that lead to protests and change in Turkey. This time, the problems are graver, the responsibility is clearer—and those in power are scared.

For example, students and faculty of Boğaziçi University, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in Turkey, known for its freethinking campus, have been protesting against the Turkish government for over two years. These protests began in January of 2021 when the Turkish president appointed an academic closely aligned with the government’s values as the new rector.

In doing so, he disregarded the established practice in which much of the university community decides who the rector should be. Therefore, it was not only an attempt to exert control over the academic sphere but also to inhibit democratic thought and processes.

Quickly spreading across the country, the protests gained a multi-dimensional political identity. Protestors compared this appointment to the removal of more than 100 elected mayors, who were then replaced by government appointees as a part of the ongoing efforts to suppress the pro-Kurdish democratic opposition. Moreover, when the government started confiscating pride flags and targeting queer Boğaziçi students at the protests, this uprising also became about the rights of the LGBTQ community. Protestors urged trade unions and political parties to join them, and as a response, the police came out in full force, carrying out hundreds of arbitrary detentions across the country.

Though the violence of the state led to a decreased capacity for sustained collective action, the faculty of Boğaziçi University continues to

conduct daily protests. Each day, members of the faculty stand silently for 15 minutes in their ceremonial gowns with their backs turned to the building where the rector’s office is located. In one of their recent protests, the faculty criticized the government for its decision to make all universities in Turkey operate virtually. They highlighted the creative solutions that could have been reached if this decision were to have been made in consultation with any academics or professionals in the field of higher education. But, more importantly, they emphasized that making a decision about all universities is not actually within the political purview of the president or the Directorate of Higher Education, and implementation of this decision without the approval of university senates was another example of the government’s attempts to diminish the power held by universities.

New Scaffolding

It may take years, if not decades, to build back the lives, cities, lineages, and routines that were taken away from us. However, hope persists. Just like the people who opened up their doors to earthquake survivors they did not know, the volunteers who rescued those trapped under the rubble with their bare hands, those who donated their hard-earned money, the students who continued their protests without fear of police violence or detention, the healthcare workers who provided nonstop medical support for days, those who refused to allow migrant communities to be made scapegoats of the ruling party’s failures, the lawyers that documented this massacre and started filing lawsuits, the grassroots organizing that carried out the duties the government failed to provide, we will succeed. It is the promise we make to those children and young people.

Berxwedan jiyane.

Life is resistance.

ROZA KAVAK B’24 will not forget or forgive those responsible for February 6 and the events following it.

technology would usurp control of society.

For close to a half-century afterward, the kinds of robots these movies imagined remained fictional, despite huge leaps in the science of artificial intelligence. Autonomous robots continued starring as metaphysical terrors in blockbusters: Blade Runner (1982), Terminator (1984), and more recently, Ex Machina (2014). But it hasn’t been until the last five or 10 years that anything close to them has existed in reality. Now that they’re here, academics in the nascent field of machine ethics are trying to create “ethical” machines, but the incentives behind the research highlight the problems of making moral robots in an immoral system.

Bertram Malle, a professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University, predicts that the difference between AI and robotics will soon disappear. Social robots, he says, will be the technology that erases that border. Itself a blurry concept, the social robot is an embodied artificial intelligence designed to interact with people in human-centric spaces—hospitals, schools, and offices— instead of factories. To ensure social robots actually serve the communities they are part of, severe scrutiny must be given to the full design process and the fundamental motivation behind it—including the sources of Malle’s own work.

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There are compelling cases for using them. The need for elder care in the U.S. is growing rapidly, consistent with global trends: people over 60 will account for 22 percent of the world’s population by 2050, up from 12 percent in 2015. The amount of people available to provide this care is falling in comparison, which has led to overworked nurses and assistants, contributing to poor treatment. The unavailability of family, friends, or professional help at hand is usually what forces seniors out of their homes and into group living facilities. Social robots could

IS ‘ETHICAL AN OXYMORON?

What military funding means for social robots

in advance by the designers, the robot will not recognize the stakes of the situation.

“People have talked about self-driving cars, and whether we have moral sentiments about the car, or whether it’s really only about the programmers or manufacturers,” Malle told the College Hill Independent. “Well, when you get to social robots, it becomes harder to separate that.”

Even though social robots may not have moral agency, they will have to act as if they do. “My assumption here is that to the extent that we give them roles that are similar to human roles—assistant teacher, assistant nurse, delivery person—they will have to follow the same norms, social moral norms, that humans follow,” Malle says. Every social context has its own web of social norms—silencing your phone in a library is a common example—and robots will need to acclimate to these fluid practices in order to be accepted. “That means the social moral norms and standards will need to be either programmed into them, or taught.”

cially for young children). The industry has been prone to hype and misfires, most notably the general purpose social robot Pepper, which became widely available in 2014. A child-sized white android with huge black eyes, Pepper saw use in Japan as a cheaper alternative to human priests at Buddhist funerals, among other roles like concierge and receptionist. But the robot was mainly bought by academics studying human-robot interaction, and slow sales led to its discontinuation in 2021.

Nonetheless, investors are ready to pour capital into social robotics: IMARC group predicts the industry’s global value will grow from $3.4 billion in 2022 to $17.2 billion by 2028. Much of this growth will come from specialized applications, but the quest for an all-purpose social robot goes on. Elon Musk entered the fray in 2021 with the announcement of Tesla’s android “Optimus,” which he claimed would soon outsell their cars.

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In his 2014 “Plea for morally competent autonomous robots,” Malle and his co-author Matthias Scheutz proposed a hypothetical scenario: Say there’s a healthcare robot that lives with an elderly woman in acute pain—the robot checks in every few hours and administers painkillers, contacting a human supervisor if the situation calls for more than is prescribed. What if the internet and phone lines are down, and the robot has no way to reach the supervisor? Or the supervisor, for whatever reason, doesn’t respond? The woman may be experiencing intense pain: should the robot administer an extra dose, or wait?

The thought experiment, grounded in the current capabilities and applications of social robots, is supposed to demonstrate that they will have to make “morally charged” decisions. Weighty judgments on human suffering will be left to code, and unless carefully thought through

Advances in learning algorithms in the past two decades have made the task of ‘teaching’ such innately human activities to pieces of software appear much more feasible. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for many, was the final proof that artificial intelligence could write as well as the average person and understand complex commands in everyday language, having ‘learned’ from a huge database of online text. Yet these algorithms also encode the biases of the data they train on: ChatGPT, for example, will spew out text riddled with sexist and homophobic assumptions given very little prompting, even after OpenAI introduced hard-coded restraints to prevent the bot from gener ating hateful speech. Wouldn’t social robots absorb the discriminatory norms of the environments in which they operate?

Malle’s unhesitating response: “True for children!”

Any child inherits the biases of their parents, their larger family, their school, the place they grow up. “The same will be true of robots,” Malle says. “If you have a robot in the hospital that now gets exposed to nurses and doctors and family members and patients and cleaning personnel and children that come to visit—that robot will adopt the goods and some of the bads of the community.”

‘ETHICAL ROBOT’ OXYMORON?

But Malle argues this data-set is better than the data-set available to chatbots online: “The data that we train our AI on are actually much worse, because they are unregulated, because they are just sort of lying around.” In a living, breathing social world, by contrast, members of a community actively regulate each other’s behavior. Malle in fact holds out hope for the possibility that robots may be more ethically conscious and consistent than ordinary people. That hope, he says, is why he’s accepted substantial grants from the military for his research.

Professor Benjamin Kuipers, who supervises the Intelligent Robotics Lab at the University of Michigan and refuses to accept military funding for his research, writes in the introduction to his course on AI and robot ethics that “humans must be ethical as we design and deploy intelligent systems.” The ethical problems are systemic, tied to the perverse incentives of American capitalism and the military-industrial complex in particular.

Since 2014, Malle has won three major research contracts with the Department of Defense. The largest came from the Office of Naval Intelligence: a $1.4 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) co-led by Scheutz at Tufts University. The goal of this five-year initiative was “to develop moral competence in robots.” Malle also received $400,000 from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2016 for a project labeled “Foundations of Human–Machine Collaboration: Networks of Social and Moral Norms in Human and Artificial Agents.” Most recently, in 2017, Malle undertook a project co-sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory and U.S. military contractor General Dynamics Land Systems worth $50,000 to study the development of trust in “soldier-robot teaming.”

Other Brown professors have worked with the military on similar projects. Data requested by the Indy through Brown University’s Research Administration Information Systems indicates that Stefanie Telex, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, directed a series of projects on humanrobot collaboration sponsored by the Army Research Office and General Dynamics Land Systems from 2015 to 2019 worth $240,000. Former Brown psychology professor Fiery A. Cushman, now at Harvard, received a $350,000 grant from the U.S. Navy to work on “a computational approach to human moral judgment” in

Malle explains that the military’s interest in this effort is to ensure the U.S. abides by international law. “One of the major motivations for the military to put money into this stuff was that they are very worried about the norm violations, human rights violations, engagement rule violations that soldiers commit,” he says. Drawing a

comparison to body cameras for police officers, Malle says the military wants to embed robots in platoons to remind soldiers of the proper standards of conduct and let them know they’re under observation.

“The norm and value of loyalty is so strong that many violations occur, when you have soldiers deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq—even Peace Corps, UN observers, but nobody talks about it until 15-20 years later,” Malle said. “The military got really nervous, because it’s a true vulnerability.”

In 2014, Amnesty International accused the United States government of covering up war crimes in Afghanistan, including detainee abuse and targeted killing of civilians. When the head prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested formal proceedings against the United States in 2017, the U.S. government threatened to arrest the judges and impose financial sanctions on the court’s members. The United

what I publish and whether it could be misused; if I think it could (e.g. training robots in criminal or inhumane norms) I try to propose ways to combat that (e.g. community governance of machines).”

The potential for misuse of social robots is enormous. The security and robotics company Knightscope manufactures the K5 crime-fighting robot that was deployed to deter homeless encampments in San Francisco in 2017. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the leading international activist group urging a ban on autonomous weapons, argues that such technologies will make wars deadlier by automating target detection and firing; that the speed of autonomous weapons may lead to unstoppable chain reactions and mass destruction; and that the lower cost and ostensibly lower risk to human life of robotic soldiers could make wars easier to start.

There are also privacy concerns over the data social robots collect. As one study reports, “Social robots are being equipped with technologies such as sensors, cameras, and processors, which promote the collection of human data (such as where a person is standing, where they are looking, what they are saying, etc.) with high fidelity, as well as support on-line, on-going analysis of a human interaction partner’s behaviour.” Creating “ethical” social robots has, on the underside, such potentially catastrophic consequences that the ethics of the whole effort are in doubt.

States has consistently refused to subject itself to international processes like the ICC that could impose penalties for human rights violations.

There may be another motivation for the military. In 2019, Rodrigo Ochigame, a student of Joichi Icho, former director of the MIT Media Lab and head of its group on AI ethics, wrote in the Intercept that Ito’s authority served to legitimate governments and corporations’ use of AI by only ever proposing adjustments rather than restrictions on its use: “At the Media Lab, I learned that the discourse of ‘ethical AI,’ championed substantially by Ito, was aligned strategically with a Silicon Valley effort seeking to avoid legally enforceable restrictions of controversial technologies.” Ito was a consultant to the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Board in the creation of its “AI Principles Project”; other members of the board included high-level executives from Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, companies that have large contracts with the Department of Defense. Researchers working on making ‘ethical robots,’ especially those funded by the military, might similarly be legitimating their backers’ use of this technology in spite of calls from scholars and activists to restrict development.

“Doing publicly accessible science makes you vulnerable to misuse whether you are funded by the military or not,” Malle says later over email. “So the key for me is to think about

Malle has been vocal about the need for robots to be able to provide an explanation for their behavior, which is impossible for most deep learning algorithms. His research aims in part to counterbalance “expert” opinion by canvassing the opinions of ordinary people, hoping to incorporate their perspectives into any social robot deployment process. But, he acknowledges, the economic imperatives at work do not give much cause for hope. When asked in 2019 what most excited him about the future of the field, he replied that it would be easier to say what scared him. Malle fears that we are about to “put these things into our world when they’re really not ready yet, and, maybe, when we are also not ready.”

Big tech companies and the armed forces are prepared to harness this technology for their own ends, with only token consideration for the interests of ordinary people. If that happens, no “ethical” robot will ever exist.

ZACHARY BRANER B’23 wants to Stop Killer Robots.

Researchers working on making ‘ethical robots,’ especially those funded by the military, might be legitimating their backers’ use of this technology in spite of calls from scholars and activists to halt development.

Cam

Lasson R’24

Sauna Stove

Carbon steel, stainless steel, sea stones

This sauna stove was inspired by a generic moka pot and a Smokey Joe barbecue. As you burn more fires in it, it develops a patina, which is a life and a memory that the object has. It shows the spirit of the object developing in a more literal and visual way.

INDIECENTEXPOSURE

We here at Dear Indy don’t care about how much skin you show* (I mean, you might get cold in this weather, but that’s your prerogative.) No, for this columnist, it’s what’s beneath the skin that counts. Not your flesh or bones or inner organs, because those are gross and freak me out. I mean your deepest, truest, nude-est self: the innermost pieces of your personality, the secrets you’ve buried deep below the surface, the pouch that stores bile in the upper-right—oh, no wait, ew, that’s your gallbladder.

Anyway, exposure is the issue that’s gotten under my readers’ skin this week. How much of ourselves do we reveal to each other? How much of ourselves should we reveal to each other? Though you might not have experienced the exact dilemmas described in this week’s issue, these are questions that apply to all of us. Because, when you really think about it, aren’t we all naked, in a way? I mean, I am right now. I tried to get the Managing Editors to join in, but they told me that “weekly critique is neither the place nor the time.”

Dear Indie, Something terrible happened… I accidentally (!) saw my roommate’s boyfriend completely naked the other night. We just stared at each other for a second before I turned around and ran away. It was so awkward. Now I’m ab- solutely dreading seeing him, and I haven’t even told my roommate about it. How can I survive this incident?

Love, He’s Naked and I’m Afraid

Dear He’s Naked and I’m Afraid,

I think the best way to move forward is to get everything out in the open. And by “get everything out in the open,” I do not mean you should institute an equalizing universal no-clothes policy in your home (but I am kind of intrigued by that idea and I just wrote it down in my notes app so I can remember to bring it up with my roommates).

What I mean is that you should probably just rip off the Band-Aid. Although it might be a little uncomfortable, you should definitely tell your roommate, and maybe have a conversation about boundaries so that this horrifying incident doesn’t repeat itself. As for the boyfriend, I wouldn’t recommend avoiding him (unless you’re uncertain about his state of undress). Maybe it’ll be a little awkward to look him in the face, but it can’t be as bad as when you saw the rest of him. The best course of action is probably to do your best to interact with him as normal, even if you’re faking it. Eventually, it’ll start feeling normal again for real. And at some point, if you’re up for it, you can lightly, jokingly address what happened—maybe with your roommate around—to diffuse the last of the unspoken awkwardness.

The sooner you can all talk about it, the sooner you can all laugh about it. The sooner you can all laugh about it, the sooner it becomes a story from the distant past. The sooner it becomes a story from the distant past, the sooner it will feel like maybe it didn’t actually happen to you, and wasn’t that just an episode of Friends?

Dear Overthinking Oversharing,

Do you remember the scene in Peter Pan where Tinkerbell needs applause in order to not fade away and die? That’s pretty much Dear Indy’s relationship to oversharing—without people pouring out their darkest secrets via Google Form, my column would wither away into a sad, sparkly pile of pixie dust. That said, it’s worth at least considering your friends’ advice. Being vulnerable is a great way to form an emotional connection, but how personal is too personal, and how soon is too soon?

While it may not seem like it, there are actually two equally important players in every great overshare. For all of your dredging and divulging, the act of oversharing is not complete until someone on the other side absorbs whatever you’ve dredged and divulged. That means there’s no hard-and-fast rule on getting personal: When it feels right, and when the other person seems comfortable, getting deep can bring you closer together. On the other hand, sometimes the moment isn’t quite right, and then a complete stranger finds out when you got your first period and everyone hates their life.

If you’re feeling the urge to share something personal, don’t hold back just because your friends told you it might be too much; but do make sure you’ve laid enough groundwork that your overshare doesn’t feel like an ambush. You might want to start by testing the waters with your lighter-hearted secrets first (e.g., “I collect stuffed animals”), especially when you’re just getting to know someone, before you plunge into what’s harder and heavier to talk about (e.g., “I collect stuffed animals as a way to cope with my parents’ divorce”). You might not assess the situation perfectly every time, and that’s okay, too. If you end up divulging a little too much, too soon about the significance of Mr. and Mrs. Froggy (who are happily married and will stay in love forever), your date might be a little weirded out, but if you’re mindful of that reaction, you can easily pull things up from those grim stuffed-animal depths. If you think you’ve done more than your share of oversharing, a good strategy is to give your date a turn: “Sorry, that’s enough about my stuffed frogs. What about your stuffed frogs?” You might just bond over a shared affinity for fuzzy, polyester-filled friends! Or maybe they’ll misinterpret the question and you’ll find out they’re a taxidermist. (If I had a dollar for every time one of my Hinge dates turned out to be a taxidermist…!)

DearIndie, I’mgoingonmyfirstHinge datenextweek.WhenIaskedmy friendsforadvice,theyallsaidthe samething:thatItendtooversharewhen I’mwithpeopleIbarelyknow,andthat Ishouldkeepitlightandavoidgettingtoo intense.Ithinkthatconnectingwithpeopleby beingvulnerableisoneofmystrengths,butnow I’msecond-guessingmystrategy.What’stheright waytonavigatesharingpersonalinformationwith someoneyou’restillgettingtoknow?ShouldIfollow myfriends’advice?

*Literal indecent exposure is a crime, though, so don't do that.

Upcoming Actions & Community Events

Email the RISD Administration

RISD’s Presidential Office claims to “eschew exclusion and inequity” and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, but does not pay its workers wages and benefits that are comparable to what other college and university staff receive. Submit an email at bit.ly/RISD-pay-workers to support RISD custodians, groundskeepers, caretakers, and movers.

Every Saturday until May @12PM: National #FiveFreedmen Book Club Reparations Educational Series

The SoliDarity Community Engagement Group, an organization that supports efforts to educate, empower, and uplift the community in regard to reparations, is hosting weekly Zoom calls for people to learn about reparations and how descendants of chattel slavery can become a protected class as ‘American Freedmen.’ Sign up for the free online series here: https://tinyurl.com/Reparations-Educational-Series

Location: Virtual, over Zoom

Wednesday 3/15 @3PM: Demand for New and Dedicated Safety

Lockdowns in Schools

Join the Providence Student Union, a youth-led coalition aimed at promoting student power, in their call to action to demand that the Providence Public School District (PPSD) prioritizes student voices and experiences regarding lockdowns, implement funding for consistent ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate) training, and provide trauma-informed trainings in all PPSD schools. Read more about their demands on their Instagram: @pvdstudentunion.

Location: 769 Westminster St, Providence, RI 02903, near Nice Slice Pizzeria

Saturday 3/25 @4:30-6:30PM: We Won’t Back Down Vigil

In honor of Brianna Ghey, Tortuguita, Tyre Nichols and others who have lost their lives to oppressive violence, Wide Awakes Collective, a Providence community aid collective, will be hosting this vigil/celebration. The event will include an open mic and painting opportunities to honor the lives lost and cherish the relationships we have.

Location: Dexter Park, Parade St & Willow St, Providence, RI 02909

Thursday 3/23 @7PM: Author Talk with Eric Stanley Eric Stanley, Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, will give a talk about their recent book, Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable at Riffraff Bookstore + Bar, discussing structural anti-trans/ queer violence. Learn more and add the event to your calendar here: https://tinyurl.com/Eric-Stanley-speaker-event

Location: Riffraff Bookstore + Bar, 60 Valley St #107A, Providence, RI 02909

Arts

Wednesday 3/15 @7-8:30PM: Fly in Power Documentary Screening

Join Professor of American and Ethnic Studies Elena Shih, Director Yoon Grace Ra, Director and Brown Artist in Residence Yin Q, and Producer Xen Nhà for a screening of their feature documentary, which centers the stories and issues of massage and sex workers from the Asian diaspora. Sign up for the reception here: https://tinyurl.com/ Fly-in-Power-screening.

Location: McKinney Conference Room, Watson Center, 111 Thayer St, Providence, RI 02912

Thursday 3/16 @6:30-8:30PM: PVD Things Workshop Info Session

PVD Things, a non-profit organization focused on lending useful things at or below cost, will be hosting an information session for people interested in leading a workshop or skillshare. The organization welcomes both individuals and groups, and asks that you come prepared with a topic or general handout and a list of materials or tools PVD Things should acquire to make it happen. Sign up for free here: https://tinyurl. com/PVD-Things-Workshop-Info

Location: 12 Library Ct, Providence, RI 02909

Thursday 3/16 @7PM: ProvSlam Open Mic & Open Poetry Slam

Get on stage or just listen with Providence Poetry Slam, an institution of the Providence art scene for over 20 years, at their open mic and open poetry slam next Thursday at AS220! The winner will receive a cash prize, and the top two poets will be invited to the May grand slam to compete for a spot on the ProvSlam Team. Doors open and sign-ups are posted at 7PM; the show starts between 7:30 and 8PM.

Location: AS220 Mainstage, 115 Empire St, Providence, RI 02903

Saturday 3/18 @12-6PM: Native Traditional Storytelling

Join this event where five Indigenous storytellers, Waya’aisiwa Gary Keene, Roger Fernandes, Sunny Dooley, Jonathan James Perry, and Fern Naomi Renville, will present their stories. Time will be allocated between each storyteller to allow the audience to write short responses and thoughts on each presenter. Attendees are also encouraged to participate in the cycle of reciprocity and are invited to bring any gifts, physical or otherwise, to exchange with storytellers.

Location: Old Library College Building, 15 Westminster St, Providence, RI 02903

Mutual Aid*

&

Community Fundraisers

*Mutual aid is “survival pending revolution,” as described by the Black Panthers. Join in redistributing wealth to create an ecosystem of care in response to a system of institutions that have failed or harmed our communities.

+ Donate to RI Community Court Debt Fund

Donate at https://direct-action-for-rights-and-equality.snwbll.com/ ri-community-court-debt-fund.

DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equity) operates a fund to help members of the community pay off court debts that often accumulate without their knowledge and can lead to warrants for their arrest. Help Rhode Islanders facing financial hardship keep their freedom, jobs, and families by donating.

+ Pioneer Tenant Support Fund

Donate at tinyurl.com/pioneer-support-fund

Tenants of Pioneer Investments properties have spoken out against unsanitary and unsafe conditions in their buildings. In response, Pioneer Investments owner Anurag Sureka issued retaliatory evictions and terminations of tenancy to five tenant households. The Pioneer Tenant Union wants to raise $50,000 in the coming weeks in order to cover first and last month’s rent and security deposits for the evicted tenants, and to prepare for further evictions.

+ Wide Awakes Collective

Wide Awakes Collective is a Providence community aid collective. Every week, Wide Awakes collects and distributes clothes to people in need at Kennedy Plaza. Currently, the organization is searching for volunteers to help with sorting clothes on Sundays. DM @wideawakescollective on Instagram if interested!

+ Support a Formerly Incarcerated Owned Business

Donate at https://down-the-road-movers.snwbll.com/ support-down-the-road.

Down the Road Movers is a Black-owned cooperative staffed by formerly incarcerated people who are currently working 100+ hours/week to stay afloat as costs rise. They are raising money to hire new employees and buy their own truck.

+ AMOR Bond Fund 2022-2025

The Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance (AMOR) is a grassroots, community-led coalition working to provide support for immigrant Rhode Islanders, including organizing legal services, holding know-your-rights trainings, and accompanying clients to court dates and ICE check-ins. All donations to AMOR’s legal fund will go toward paying for clients’ legal expenses and bonds. Donate at https://secure.actblue.com/donate/freethemall or write a check to “Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance” and mail to: AMOR, P.O. Box 9379, Providence, RI 02940.

+ George Wiley Center

Donate at tinyurl.com/George-Wiley-Center-donations.

The George Wiley Center coordinates food and clothing distributions on an ongoing basis, based on donations and volunteer efforts, primarily for people facing eviction. Contact them to assist with fighting food insecurity, utility shutoffs, and evictions. Walk-in sessions are held every Wednesday from 6:30-7:30 PM at the George Wiley Center, 32 East Ave, Pawtucket, RI 02860, or email at: organize@georgewileycenter.org

+ Queer & Trans Mutual Aid Providence

Venmo: @qtmapvd | Paypal: qtma.pvd@gmail.com | Info: tinyurl. com/qtma-pvd

QTMA PVD is a small, volunteer-run mutual aid fund for queer and trans folks in the Providence area. They do payouts once per week and have distributed over $80,000 since their founding in June 2020. They currently have over 30 outstanding requests for aid and would appreciate any donations!

Do

you have an event, action, or other information for the Providence community that you’d like to see shared on this page?