SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
VOLUME CL, ISSUE 71
WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
Open forum surveys Title IX at Brown Dean of faculty cuts
$450,000 from budget
Panel of admins respond to questions about ‘responsible employees,’ due process for accused
Temporary teaching funds for ‘non-essential’ courses trimmed in effort to reduce structural deficit
By MATTHEW JARRELL STAFF WRITER
Issues related to the University’s updated Title IX policy, including the designation of “responsible employees” and the complaint process, surfaced as major topics of discussion at an open forum hosted by the Undergraduate Council of Students Wednesday. The open forum came on the heels of the release of survey results from the Association of American Universities that showed that 25 percent of female undergraduates at Brown have experienced sexual assault — attempted or completed non-consensual penetration or non-consensual sexual touching by force or incapacitation — since enrolling. Students submitted questions online before the forum, and three student representatives from the Title IX Oversight and Advisory Board posed these questions to administrators. Since the Sexual Assault Task Force released its final report last spring, the University has made a number of changes to the system it uses to handle alleged Title IX violations.
By BAYLOR KNOBLOCH SENIOR STAFF WRITER
ARJUN NARAYEN / HERALD
A panel of five administrators responded to student questions submitted online and in person at Wednesday’s open forum on Title IX at Brown. The new process for handling an alleged violation will be less “adversarial and dramatic,” said Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, executive vice president for planning and policy. In the past, the process centered on a one-day hearing, said Amanda Walsh, Title IX program officer. Students would submit statements and prepare questions for those involved with a case, and all evidence would be considered during the hearing. The altered procedure is an “investigation model,” in which an investigator is assigned to the case, speaks with all parties involved and compiles a report that is then presented to the Title IX Council, Walsh said. This
body, composed of six students UCS helped select, will decide for or against the respondent and recommend the sanction, if necessary. While Walsh and Carey addressed most of the questions, they sat alongside four other panelists: Mary Grace Almandrez, interim assistant vice president for campus life and student services; MaryLou McMillan, interim assistant vice president for campus life and student services; Liza CariagaLo, vice president for academic development, diversity and inclusion; and Sara Matthiesen, a postdoctoral student and former member of the Task Force on Sexual Assault who now » See TITLE IX, page 4
The Office of the Dean of the Faculty has reduced the temporary teaching budget by $450,000 this fiscal year as part of the University’s efforts to reduce the structural deficit. The cuts to temporary teaching funds bring the Dean of the Faculty budget almost halfway to its $1 million reduction goal, which was announced in the University’s deficit reduction action plan released Sept. 10. Temporary teaching funds are used to hire adjunct or visiting faculty members to stand in for faculty members on leave. Prior to this cut, these funds made up $6 million of the $140 million Dean of the Faculty annual budget, said Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin P’12. When the Deficit Reduction Working Group formed last fall, McLaughlin knew there was a strong possibility that he would be asked to find ways to cut down on his budget, he said. To find the necessary savings, his office focused
specifically on the temporary teaching budget because of their larger control over that than over other elements of the budget, he said. The process of determining temporary teaching fund allocations begins in February of each year, when the Office of the Dean of the Faculty calculates the anticipated amount of funding needed to cover each department’s faculty leaves for the following fall semester. Once department chairs have been presented with the proposed amount of funding, they have the opportunity to make appeals to the dean of the faculty if they feel their department’s financial needs will not be adequately met. “It’s always a conversation” between the departments and the dean’s office, said Jeri Debrohun, chair of the Department of Classics. The Deficit Reduction Working Group’s May recommendations asked the Office of the Dean of the Faculty to produce $1 million in savings over the next two to three years. The office will ask departments to be judicious about what courses they would like to offer again next fiscal year despite the normal faculty member being on leave, McLaughlin said. McLaughlin informed departments in fall 2014 that budget cuts would likely » See BUDGET, page 2
Alum launches mental SCIENCE & RESEARCH health care website Yuri Tomikawa ’12 partners with undergrads, med students to increase access to therapists By BRIGITTE DALE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Yuri Tomikawa ’12 launched a new website this fall that aims to help students find local therapists and obtain longterm mental health care, she said. The launch of the website, Zencare. co, follows significant criticism of the seven-session limit for therapy at Counseling and Psychological Services. The Mental Health Community Council recommended extending the limit on the number of appointments a student can make at CAPS earlier this month. After graduating from Brown, Tomikawa found the process of locating a therapist to be daunting and overwhelming. As a result, she assembled a team of Brown undergraduates and medical students to create a website aimed at helping students find therapists
INSIDE
based on personality matches, insurance providers and specific needs. The website seeks to bridge the gap between the short-term care offered by CAPS and the long-term care students may require. Eliza Lanzillo ’16, president of Active Minds — a student group that advocates mental health awareness — served as a student advisor to Zencare. Lanzillo said she was eager to help simplify the process of finding a therapist. “Finding a therapist is like dating” because a patient needs to like the therapist’s personality, she said, adding that the process of picking the right one can be “overwhelming and time-consuming.” “Those three words, ‘I need help,’ are some of the hardest words to say,” Lanzillo said. Zencare emphasizes the importance of finding the right care right away, Tomikawa said. The website provides photos, videos and shared stories — all of which help students find therapists and provide the comfort of knowing that others have been through this before, Lanzillo said. » See THERAPIST, page 2
Fieldwork provides hands-on opportunities
Summer fieldwork leads to varied experiences, experimentation with new technologies By CLARISSA CLEMM STAFF WRITER
As archaeology and anthropology undergraduates, graduate students
and faculty members transition back to life on College Hill, the start of the semester marks a hiatus from their fieldwork undertaken around the globe this summer. The Department of Anthropology sent people to 14 countries, including Brazil, England, India and China, while the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World sent about 30 students to 10 countries to
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work on 15 different projects, according to departmental estimates. “Almost everyone (at the institute) was away doing fieldwork,” said Catie Stiedl GS, a 4th-year PhD student at the Joukowsky Institute. Stiedl worked on two projects over the summer. She first flew to Turkey to assist Felipe Rojas, assistant professor of archaeology and the ancient world and of » See FIELDWORK, page 4
WEATHER
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
UNIVERSITY NEWS CareerLAB collects student feedback on BrownConnect, set to launch update in November PAGE 3
COURTESY OF CATIE STIEDL
The ancient Greek city-state Notion, located in modern Turkey, is one site of many at which faculty and staff members in the archaeology and anthropology departments spent the summer doing fieldwork.
COMMENTARY Malik ’18: Students and professors should embrace e-books as efficient alternatives to textbooks
COMMENTARY Lennon ’18: Social media activism doesn’t last long enough to produce real change
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UNIVERSITY NEWS PAGE 2 • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
» THERAPIST, from page 1 Ben Williams ’16, another student advisor to Zencare, said the last thing anyone would want when struggling with a mental illness is “to have to jump through hoops.” Ben Johnston MD’18 and Nick Lemme MD’18, who also served as adivors for Zencare, both said they understand the importance of treating a mental health issue before it becomes a systemic issue. Last spring, Johnston and Lemme applied to the Summer B-Lab program and won funding for a project to help break down barriers to obtaining good mental health care. While they originally planned on pursuing their own project, they ended up learning of Tomikawa’s work and partnering with her on Zencare. Those involved with Zencare hope the site will not only help students find therapists and treatment more easily but also diminish the stigma surrounding mental illness. “More people would share that they have a heart valve defect versus depression even though they are both physiological and both treatable,” Johnston said.
» BUDGET, from page 1 be necessary, he said. Beginning in December, he worked with the departments to find ways to “save some money in that budgeting process that wouldn’t have an ill effect on the concentrations” by identifying non-essential courses, he said. All courses that were proposed to be taught by adjuncts and were not
Williams said Brown students feel pressure to “conform to the notion that Brown is the happiest school.” Students feel that their “issues aren’t valid” because they were “selected from amazing applicants and have this amazing opportunity,” he said. Through communication with student groups like Active Minds and Project Let’s Erase the Stigma, Tomikawa compiled references to find therapists that current Brown students already know and trust. Therapists are eager to work with the “inquisitive and exploratory” students at Brown, she said. Zencare helps modernize the therapy process, as many therapists are “hesitant about technology” and have not yet transitioned online, Tomikawa said. Students can reach out to Zencare anonymously, making it a “very welcoming” site, Tomikawa said. Zencare also accepts many different insurance providers, Medicare and Medicaid and continues to add more. Though Zencare is not intended to replace CAPS resources, students may find the site approachable and use it to make therapist appointments more quickly, Williams said.
concentration requirements “got a closer look,” McLaughlin said. Enrollment history and curricular importance were taken into account when assessing these “non-essential” courses, McLaughlin added. “If there’s a class that has five students in it, does it have to be taught every year or every semester?” asked Provost Richard Locke P’17, who co-chaired the
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
COURTESY OF YURI TOMIKAWA
The office of Dr. Stephanie Hartselle, who is listed on Zencare.co, a website that aims to help students find therapists in the local community who fit with their specific needs, personalities and schedules.
Deficit Reduction Working Group and helped produce the final action plan. “The answer to that question is sometimes yes, it does have to be taught every year because it’s important for the curriculum. And other times, it doesn’t,” he said. The goal was “to fund all of the essential courses that were requested and to fund as many of the non-essential courses
that the departments thought were important,” McLaughlin said. Ultimately, the departments decided which courses to offer given the amount of temporary teaching funds provided, McLaughlin said. “We gave them a budget, and they managed it,” he added. Debrohun said the most important thing is that departments are “able to teach the classes that we need to teach and offer the kinds of things that our students need to get.” “It’s never been the case in my experience that we haven’t been able to do that, and there’s nothing about the new formula or discussions around it that looks to me as though it’s really going to be problematic for our department,” she said. But not all faculty members share Debrohun’s confidence that the budget cuts can be implemented without affecting the
University’s ability to provide the same quality of education. “We are already far from able to hire enough temporary instructors to cover courses left uncovered by faculty sabbaticals,” wrote Luther Spoehr, senior lecturer in education and history, in an email to The Herald. “The proposed cuts in the University’s budget for such temporary instructors will make it even more difficult to sustain the number and quality of undergraduate courses,” he added. In the coming year, the Office of the Dean of the Faculty will look more closely at long-term commitments to visiting faculty members to meet the $1 million request, McLaughlin said. “We are very much focused on the money,” he said. “We’d rather not do this, but we’ve been told that we have to find $1 million.”
UNIVERSITY NEWS THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 • PAGE 3
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Students find success with BrownConnect during inaugural year During program’s first year, over 3,000 alums contacted, 200 students hired through website By ALEX SKIDMORE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
More than 200 students obtained internships this summer through BrownConnect, the internship and networking site launched last year, according to a survey by the Center for Careers and Life After Brown. This marks a significant increase from the 90 hires that occurred during BrownConnect’s pilot phase the previous year, said Aixa Kidd, director of BrownConnect. In addition to letting students search for internships and research positions, the site also features an extensive list of alumni that can be sorted by field or location. Students reached out
to alums 3,674 times, who responded more than three-quarters of the time, according to the CareerLAB survey. Katelynn Pan ’18 praised her experience using BrownConnect to secure an internship this summer at Mt. Sinai Hospital’s Preventive Medicine Department in East Harlem, New York. As part of her internship, she helped with the hospital’s “Cyclopedia” program, which encourages urban adolescents to ride bicycles and contribute to their communities. Pan said the BrownConnect site had an easy-to-use interface and listed many appealing opportunities. But she added that she wished she could have signed up to receive email notifications
“whenever a job opened up.” But Sophie Mateu ’16 decided to discontinue the unpaid internship she found through BrownConnect two weeks after her start date. She ultimately pursued a paid internship with NBC in France that she did not find through BrownConnect. Mateu criticized the site for not providing enough internships that pertained to her interest in media. But she expressed satisfaction with the high response rate of employers whom she contacted through BrownConnect. “I get a huge success rate of at least hearing back from (internships) through Brown Connect,” she said, adding that when she sends resumes to organizations she finds without BrownConnect, she does not hear back as often. CareerLAB plans to address some
issues that arose with the first version of the site with BrownConnect 2.0, Kidd said. One issue that emerged was that students who could only find jobs overseas were often “hit with high percentages of taxes” when they returned to the U.S., she said. Another issue involves funding, as only 60 percent of all internships and 78 percent of full-time internships obtained through BrownConnect have been paid, Kidd said. CareerLAB will seek to increase the percentage of paid internships that students obtain from BrownConnect 2.0, she said. “Other departments are offering great internship funding for our students, but it’s not feeding into BrownConnect,” she added. For the upcoming summer, Kidd also emphasized procuring quality internships over a larger number of
opportunities. With this goal in mind, CareerLAB hopes to amass more “Bruno opportunities,” which directly connect students to alums and parents. “We think that students benefit from having an internship that might have a connection to an alum or a parent,” said Matthew Donato, director of CareerLAB. “Brown students can be more competitive for those positions because alumni or parents will preference Brown students.” In addition, CareerLAB will look to feature more high-quality STEM internships, especially in engineering. Due to student interest, planning is also underway for increasing the number of job opportunities in its programs Careers in the Common Good and iProv, which both focus on providing students with internships at nonprofits, Kidd said.
Acting out the past: history courses rely on role-playing Students in four history courses this semester engage with curricular material through role-playing game By HATTIE XU CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Students enrolled in some history courses this semester have found their professors using a surprising teaching technique — role-playing — as a means of engaging them in the material. Three history professors have incorporated Reacting to the Past, a role-playing game that originated at Barnard College, into their courses, said Nancy Jacobs, associate professor of history and Africana studies. RTTP assigns students the roles of various historical characters and places the class in tense situations that require compromise and debate, said Joan Richards, professor of history. While acclimating to the character and scenario can be difficult, students find the overall experience engaging and constructive, Richards said. The game will be featured in HIST 1030: “Southern African History,” taught by Jacobs, HIST 0522N: “Reason, Revolution and Reaction in Europe,” taught by Richards and HIST 0521A: “Christianity in Conflict in the Medieval Mediterranean” and HIST 1205: “The Long Fall of the Roman
Empire,” both taught by Jonathan Conant, associate professor of history. In preparation for RTTP, students learn background information about the event they are role-playing, including key figures, events and movements of thought, Jacobs said. “Students coming out of high school may think that history is about memorization and facts, and is a somewhat passive discipline,” said Ethan Pollock, director of undergraduate studies for the history department. These courses “help students realize is that materials can be actively used to formulate arguments.” During the game, students play characters who belong to different groups and factions, and they must collaborate with their groups to reach a common goal through debate and discussion. For example, in one game, students role-play the conservative, moderate and liberal groups in the National Constituent Assembly who must write a new constitution during the French Revolution, Richards said. RTTP is almost entirely studentrun, Jacobs said. While professors act as masters of the game, they only intervene when the debate veers off topic,
Conant said. “It can be difficult at first for students to figure out what we’re doing,” Richards said. “It takes committed students to make this work.” Because the game allows for such freedom, students can proceed with actions such as declaring a civil war, Jacobs said. “It’s not called ‘Reenacting the Past’; it’s called ‘Reacting to the Past,’” Jacobs said. “Things can happen in class that didn’t happen in history.” This marked the third year that RTTP was integrated into history classrooms. In past years, students have sometimes been assigned roles that forced them to advocate beliefs very different from their own, Richards said. Ian Shank ’16, who took “Reason, Revolution and Reaction in Europe” in spring 2014, said a group of students played the part of a mob in the French Revolution by rioting and singing revolutionary songs while marching around the Main Green. Shank, meanwhile, played the role of bishop. “My position in the game was totally at odds with everything I believe to be true, (but) because you assume that role in a very combative environment … that solidified my position,” Shank said. Serena Leis ’17, who has taken two courses with an RTTP component, was
also exposed to controversial social and political thoughts in HIST0971I: “Science and Society in Darwin’s England” during her freshman year. Students in the class portrayed the Royal Society debating whether to award the prestigious Copley Medal to Charles Darwin. “A lot of arguments that were made were based off racism or sexism, and some people had trouble with that,” Leis said. “I had less trouble because it’s like acting — this isn’t who you are.” RTTP has succeeded in making students more engaged and excited about classes, said Conant, who also used the game when he taught at the University of San Diego.
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“Years later, they would come back and say, ‘That class was really formative in making me confident about speaking in class, or helping me write persuasively or speak persuasively,’” Conant said. Pollock said the game helps students view history both analytically and empathetically. “Part of history is to hopefully teach people empathy to the range of human experience, and that range of experience can be quite dramatic and hard,” Pollock said. RTTP culminates with a final discussion, in which students reflect on their decisions and the actual resolutions of the historical events.
METRO
PAGE 4 • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Spotlight on the Statehouse BY ALEXANDER BLUM, METRO EDITOR
Stuck at home plate, for now The proposal to build a new stadium for the Pawtucket Red Sox baseball team on I-195 land in Providence is officially dead. “This particular parcel of land had a series of challenges that we weren’t going to get through, and it was time to move on,” Gov. Gina Raimondo told ABC 6 News Sept. 21. Earlier this month, the deal appeared very unlikely, given the University’s higher-than-expected $15 million price tag for 2.19 acres that would have been part of the parcel on which the stadium was to be built, The Herald reported Sept. 9. The failed deal means that the team may leave the Ocean State. Larry Luchino, one of the team’s managing partners, does not intend to keep the team in Pawtucket, Turn to 10 reported Sept. 21. The team’s owners also considered relocating to a site in central Providence, but that land has since been sold to the Lifespan hospital network, ABC 6 reported Sept. 11. Chairman of the Stop the Stadium Deal group Sam Bell turned in a petition with over 1,500 signatures to City Council, the Providence Journal reported Sept. 21. The petition urged City Council to put an ordinance preventing the I-195 land from being used for a stadium, as well as any taxpayer dollars from being used for commercial subsidies up for vote by referendum. Jeffrey Dana, the city solicitor, sent a memorandum Tuesday explaining that the Home Rule Charter of Providence “expressly provides that the power of initiative excludes ordinances related to budget, capital programs, the appropriate of money or the levy of taxes,” WPRI reported Sept. 22.
Roger Williams to combat R.I. brain drain In hopes of helping the Ocean State retain more students after they graduate from college, Roger Williams University is planning to open a $10 million campus in Providence, in the same building formerly occupied by 38 Studios, which went bankrupt in 2012. The school is also modifying its curriculum to require students to collaborate with local businesses, Rhode Island Public Radio reported Sept. 21. The facility — expected to open this spring — will double the school’s footprint in Providence, and is expected to house classrooms, a bookstore and a cafe, WPRI reported last year. The school, which has its main campus in Bristol, is implementing the requirement for students to work with local businesses this year. “We start with our feet not on the campus, but in the community looking back at the campus and saying ‘What is it the community needs from us?’” said President of Roger Williams Donald Farish, Rhode Island Public Radio reported.
Fourth grant received to help immigrants preparing for citizenship Progreso Latino, a non-profit community organization based in Central Falls, R.I., was recently awarded a $250,000 grant from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to expand the organization’s programs that help lawful residents prepare for full citizenship. The organization is one of 40 in the country to receive this grant. Since the program was launched in 2009, Progreso Latino has been awarded the grant four times — in 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ website. The 2009 and 2011 awards of $100,000 and $200,000, respectively, are smaller sums than the $250,000 awards of 2013 and 2015. In addition to providing citizenship preparation services — which the grant will help support — Progreso Latino also offers an adult education program, health and wellness resources, a small business program and a food pantry, according to its website.
COURTESY OF CATIE STEIDL
Catie Steidl GS spent her summer working in Greece (pictured above) on the Mazi Archaeological Project, as well in Turkey in the ancient Greek city-state of Notion. At both locations, she analyzed pottery from the regions.
» FIELDWORK, from page 1 Egyptology and Assyriology, with the Notion Archaeological Survey. She spent four weeks analyzing ceramics and identifying and measuring stone quarries. Stiedl then flew to Greece to work on the Mazi Archaeological Project — commonly referred to as MAP — to catalog pottery in the region. “The Notion project is strongly tied to my own dissertation research,” Stiedl said. “I’m thinking about the questions I’m asking in my research and looking at how they relate to research questions in the (Notion) project.” Second year anthropology Ph.D. student Alice Larotonda GS spent the summer doing fieldwork and exploring potential dissertation topics. She stayed in Cape Verde for eight weeks, speaking to caretakers of young children — mainly mothers and grandmothers — to learn about their experiences raising children as well as the challenges they face. “I was working on defining what I wanted to do and what was relevant for the population there,” Larotonda said, adding that she had to start everything from scratch but greatly benefited from contacts she made through members of the Cape Verdean community in Rhode Island. “There’s a large Cape Verdean community here in Providence,” Larotonda said. “I’m happy to be doing something that can be useful to the local community, too.” John Cherry, professor of archaeology, classics and anthropology, along with his team, spent five and a half weeks in the West Indies for the Survey
» TITLE IX, from page 1 works in the Title IX Office. Changes to the handling of Title IX cases also extend to the treatment of those involved with the case. There will be “greater clarity regarding interim measures,” Carey said, including a penalty of separation for the respondent that will take effect during any appeals process following an initial ruling by the Title IX Council. Walsh stressed the fact that a Brown community member need not make an official complaint in order to secure access to certain resources and services, such as a no-contact order. That can be done “with no intention ever to file a complaint,” she said. The panelists addressed concerns about ambiguities surrounding the roles of students who have signed on as “responsible employees,” including
and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat project’s sixth season. Due to an active volcano on Montserrat, 60 percent of the island is too dangerous to venture into, Cherry said. To overcome the obstacle of not being able to travel to many of the archaeological sites in person, the project teamed up with the Montserrat Volcano Observatory to gather data using a new imaging technology known as LiDAR — Light Detection and Ranging — which had never been used before in the Caribbean. Using this technology, the team worked with 3-D point cloud data to identify structures of interest, such as windmills, on the island. After combing through the data, small teams of students armed with machetes and a handheld GPS device set off to find the structures located throughout the island. “You have to literally chop your way through the thick jungle,” Cherry said, adding that additional problems arose because the LiDAR imagery was sometimes misleading. Cherry said he hopes this summer’s methodological findings will be of use to the wider discipline of archaeology. Many of the teams in the field this summer were composed not only of Brown students and faculty, but also of researchers from around the world. “You’ll hear three, four, five languages being spoken at the same time,” said Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology Peter Van Dommelen, who helped lead a team of researchers in excavating a nuraghe, or stone tower, in Sardinia for six weeks this summer. The experience of fieldwork and this
intersection of languages “broadens people’s minds,” he added. Assistant Professor of Anthropology Parker VanValkenburgh led a team of 20 archaeologists and 20 local workers in Zana, Peru. The team aimed to gain a better understanding of the impact of Spanish colonialism on the region’s indigenous people. “One of the most important aspects of archaeology is the implications for social justice. History is never written about these people,” VanValkenburgh said. This summer marked the third major field season for the project, and a large chunk of the analysis from the last two seasons had been left untouched. Kristina Lee ’16 analyzed that material over the summer, starting with six boxes of skeletal remains. “I got to work with an actual skeletal population, which was not something I had foreseen,” Lee said. Though much of her summer was spent in a lab, Lee was also able to visit the site and help out in the field. She was also able to spend time with locals, which she said let her connect the work she was doing to those who actually lived there. During the summer, those in the field can focus solely on their projects, Cherry said, adding that they cannot maintain that same intensity during the school year. But despite the physical distance from the work, team members continue to stay in touch from afar, multiple sources said. “The best thing about archaeology is the great people,” VanValkenburgh said. “The work that one does is only as good as the people that you work with.”
Residential Peer Leaders, Women’s Peer Counselors, Minority Peer Counselors and Meiklejohn Peer Advisors. Walsh said increasing the transparency surrounding the responsibility that these roles entail is crucial moving forward. “Students don’t know that the leadership position puts them into the ‘responsible’ category,” she said. After addressing the initial questions submitted online, the panelists opened up the floor to audience members in a question-and-answer session. In response to a comment from Rohan Gulati ’17 about the lack of a mechanism for hearing the concerns of the respondent, Walsh said the completed investigation report would be provided to the respondent in addition to the complainant. The respondent would also be given the opportunity to submit a written response, she said.
Daniella Dichter ’17 asked whether the new process “shifts the burden of proof to the respondent.” Carey responded that the process is not meant to follow a traditional legal framework. “It’s an educational process,” he said. Trying to attach legal terminology to it “misses the point,” he added. “The policy is not in place to get certain people in trouble,” Matthiesen said. “It’s in place to hold everyone to the same bar.” Kathleen Finn ’16 asked whether students who could not afford to hire an attorney would be offered financial assistance or other accommodations in the process. “Every student has the right to an advisor, and that could include an attorney,” Walsh said. The Office of the General Counsel will work with parties in the case to ensure access to adequate representation, she said.
TODAY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 • PAGE 5
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
menu
mic drop
SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS
Pizza: Barbecue Bam Bam, Spicy Artichoke, Nacho JOSIAH’S
BLUE ROOM
Made-to-Order Quesadillas
Soups: Turkey Chili, Chicken Artichoke Florentine, Vegetable
DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH
DINNER
Falafel, Sweet Ginger Vegetable “Chicken” Stir Fry, Broccoli Rabe, Sugar Cookies
Grilled Boneless Pork Chops, Cheesy Zucchini Casserole, Chocolate Macaroon Cupcake
VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH
DINNER
Gourmet Turkey Sandwich, Eggplant Parmesan Grinder, Vegan Chili, M&M Cookies
Pot Roast Jardiniere, Orange Chipotle Glazed Tofu, Fried Rice Bowl, Apple Crisp
sudoku
crossword
ARJUN NARAYEN / HERALD
Adi Kumar ’17, also known by his stage name Sincere the Rapper, is part of Brown’s burgeoning rap community. Check out The Foreground’s photo essay “Sincere” at foreground.browndailyherald.com.
comics Cat Ears | Najatee’ McNeil
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Medieval Circle Lecture 5:30 PM Annmary Brown Memorial, 21 Brown Street
The Swedish Program Info Session 4:00 PM J Walter Wilson, Room 440
BURP Time-Out Thursday 1:00 PM Campus Center, Room 229
Muslim Eid al-Adha Prayer 8:00 AM Pembroke Field, Meeting Street
TOMORROW Violence, Terror and the Image 9:30 AM Pembroke Hall, Room 305, 172 Meeting Street
UCS Roundtable with President Paxson 4:00 PM TBD
Shabbat Services and Dinner 6:15 PM Brown/RISD Hillel
Neuroscience Seminar with Dr. Cepko 9:00 AM Smitty-B, Room 106
COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
EDITORIAL
Crowded lunch eateries During the peak lunch hours of 12 p.m. or 1 p.m., hoards of students attempt to enter the Sharpe Refectory, Verney-Woolley Dining Hall, Andrews Commons and the Blue Room. During these time periods, the line to grab food can resemble the horrendously long lines at busy theme parks like Disneyland. And when people finally do make their way into one of these eateries, the seating can be insufficient for the number of students. For students who have packed days filled with studying, classes and unfinished homework, these unnecessary obstacles can be distracting hassles in already hectic schedules. As the University continues to fundraise and plan for the renovation of the Ratty, we encourage the administration to consider the traffic patterns associated with such a renovation and solve many of the capacity problems inherent in the current Ratty. Much has been said about the scale of the renovations Brown is planning for the Ratty. It is projected to be one of the most expensive undertakings associated with President Christina Paxson’s P’19 strategic plan because the whole building has to be gutted. Its food preparation, electrical, ventilation and heating infrastructure will have to be replaced. As the University plans and fundraises in an effort to bring the dining hall into the 21st century, it is important that discussions about service capacity and traffic flow are given as much focus as the more exciting conversations about increasing food offerings and eliminating the buffet style. Simple structural changes could improve the long wait times associated with eating at the Ratty during peak meal times. The University could consider giving students on meal plans a set meal time when they are allowed to enter certain eateries. For instance, based on each person’s individual class schedule, a simple computer program could discover which time period a student should be allowed to access these lunch places. Or better yet, the new upgraded Ratty could not only post its menus online, but also allow student to virtually monitor the business of the eatery. As students swiped in, that information could be used to estimate how close to capacity the dining hall was at any given time. Looking forward, there are many ways that the University could consider improving the dining experience during peak hours for students. But in addition, the administration must also put thought into where students will eat during these renovations so that problems of capacity don’t compound while the Ratty is under construction. It seems difficult to imagine a world in which most students on meal plan are forced to pick between Andrews, the V-Dub and the Blue Room at lunch. Such a scenario would be a traffic jam at best. This outcome should be avoided at all costs, either by renovating the Ratty during the summer or by expanding the hours of other eateries like Josiah’s and the Ivy Room. Additionally, the Blue Room and Ivy Room should accept meal credits all day. This would make students more likely to explore all the options for lunch, thus distributing students around campus in a more reasonable, manageable manner. As Brown looks into the future and imagines the possibilities for the beloved Ratty, we encourage all those involved in the discussions to be sympathetic of students’ time. Undue congestion can eliminate much of the relaxation associated with a meal time, and any improvements to the Ratty should try to eliminate this everyday frustration for students. Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editors, Manuel Contreras ’16 and Meghan Holloway ’16, and its members, Emma Axelrod ’18, Noah Fitzgerel ’17 and Aranshi Kumar ’17. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
Letters, please!
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Q U O T E O F T H E D AY
“Those three words, ‘I need help,’ are some of the hardest words to say.” —Eliza Lanzillo ’16, president of Active Minds
See therapist on page 1.
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COMMENTARY THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 • PAGE 7
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
The joys of e-books AMEER MALIK opinions columnist
Not long ago, The Herald published an article about the rising costs of textbooks and how this places a financial burden on students (“Rising textbook costs add to affordability challenges of student life,” Sept. 9). The piece mentioned numerous ways in which students and faculty members try to reduce costs by exchanging used textbooks, renting textbooks from the Brown Bookstore and placing books on reserve at the libraries. I remember bringing a whole suitcase filled with textbooks each time I came home for break. The textbooks took up so much space on the shelf in my bedroom. But how did I even have space on my shelf for the books I bought at Brown? Ebooks. I love using e-books. I find them, in certain ways, preferable to physical books. Using electronic versions of texts in classrooms might help with reducing costs for course materials, and even if they are not always the cheapest option, they can still provide numerous health- and efficiency-related benefits for students. I have noticed that the books I read for pleasure are available for lower prices in electronic formats than in new, printed editions. Though used books might still be cheaper in general, I have — from time to time — noticed great titles available as e-books for under $5 on Amazon. Many e-books of literary
classics are even free online through sites like Project Gutenberg because their copyrights have expired. The problem of physical quality also does not apply to e-books in the way it applies to used books whose pages may be underlined or torn. Many online sellers might not accurately represent the quality of their used books. In addition to sometimes being more affordable, electronic texts also possess other qualities that make them, in certain ways, better than printed books. One quality is
28,000 people were treated for backpack-related injuries in the United States last year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission). You also wouldn’t have to worry about going back to your dorm to pick up books between classes, nor would you be concerned about packing your backpack appropriately before camping out in a library. In this way, electronic texts can make getting work done for classes easier. There is an additional classic dilemma that electronic texts can fix: the issue of trying to get work done
allow one to get work done late at night in one’s dorm room. Students would therefore not have to stay in the Sciences Library or other places that are open late and worry about getting back home. I remember once leaving the SciLi and walking to my dorm room late at night. The experience made me shake with fear — Thayer Street, the shortest route to my dorm, was way too quiet — and I hope to never make that trip again. Of course, e-books have their own limitations, but these issues
I think using electronic versions of texts in classrooms might help towards reducing costs for course materials, and even if they are not always the cheapest option, they can still provide numerous health — and efficiency — related benefits for students.
portability. Ebooks do not take up physical space themselves; only the devices that access them do. Thanks to sites like Project Gutenberg and free applications like Amazon’s Kindle app, students can carry an entire library of books on one laptop. Just imagine being able to access all of the readings you have to do for your class with the computer you probably never leave your dorm without. Your back wouldn’t hurt from carrying textbooks around campus. (Heavy backpacks are an actual health concern, as more than
late at night without disturbing your roommate. I’m willing to bet that, in many cases, the light emitted by a laptop is less disruptive to a sleeping roommate than the light emitted by a desk lamp. Ebooks and PDFs can also be accessed on portable tablets, e-readers and even smartphones, and the light from these devices would be easy to conceal. Plus, numerous apps that allow you to read electronic texts can adjust the fonts of the texts, making it easier to read in the dark. Basically, electronic books would
can be resolved easily. Many applications that allow you to read e-books let you highlight passages and type notes that correspond to the marked excerpts. This might be a bit more cumbersome than writing in a printed book, but for people who type their notes, e-books allow readers to organize the excerpts they highlight and the corresponding notes they write. I personally tend to take notes in my note-book, regardless of whether I am reading an e-book or a printed edition. The notes I scribble in my note-book
are easier to read than the words I squeeze into the margins of a printed page. I’m sure several of my fellow students who prefer to write their notes by hand would agree with me on this. Another small issue is that, though some e-books include page numbers that correspond to actual printed editions, these page numbers may be inaccurate, especially if someone changes the text’s font. But I have been in classes in which people have different printed editions of the some text, and we’ve still had engaging in-class discussions. We’ve just pointed out the excerpts we wished to talk about by mentioning the chapter and paragraph number. And while I was worried about problems of citation that e-books might pose, I was happy to discover that the Modern Language Association’s citation guide explains how to cite an e-book. I have found that numerous Brown professors are okay with students using e-books. I think it would be great if professors used electronic versions of the texts they teach as much as they think reasonable. Despite a few problems, electronic texts provide several benefits in regards to affordability, portability and efficiency. While I do not think that e-books should replace printed books completely, I see electronic texts as a technological resource upon which faculty members and students should rely more.
Ameer Malik ‘18 can be reached at ameer_malik@brown.edu.
Online activism not enough MAYA LENNON opinions columnist
On Sept. 26, thousands of people will gather in Central Park with one common goal: to end poverty. The Global Citizen festival occurs annually in September to promote campaigns such as investing more in education or making the world polio-free. Top musicians will perform at this year’s show, including Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé, Pearl Jam and Coldplay, and celebrities such as Kerry Washington and Stephen Colbert, among others, will co-host. So, how does one get free tickets to the most exciting concert of the year? Global Citizen has you take “action journeys” — a series of actions throughout the summer in order to be entered into the ticket raffle. Actions include writing emails, tweeting at political leaders, signing petitions and calling senators. The more actions you take, the better your chances of winning two tickets to the concert. I could not resist once I knew I had the slightest chance of winning tickets to see Beyoncé, so I joined my fellow citizens in the competition for tickets. I crafted heartwarming emails and signed every petition offered. Halfway through the summer, I found myself speeding through the actions at the last minute, barely reading about the cause I was supporting. So what if my
email isn’t the best? Of all the emails, I was sure mine would not be read that closely. Sadly, I do not believe I was the only one thinking this. I was motivated to do these tasks more by the possibility of going to the concert than by that of promoting change. If the stars were less well-
as attention-grabbing as staging a protest at the state capital or as impactful as sending school supplies to kids in developing countries. There are people out there who think and are proud that their “clicking” is saving the world. Nine percent of Americans see online activities
Global Citizen should expect us to do more than just press a button. By not doing so, the organization fails to acknowledge the ways in which we can help other than through a computer screen. known or if people had to pay, how many people would actually complete these action journeys? While I learned new information — for example, 58 million children do not receive a basic primary education — I was doing it for Beyoncé, not for the world. Helping people learn about issues in the world and getting them to discuss it on social media by bribing them with the possibility of a free concert seems like a great idea. But I don’t think the average competitor was that engaged with the issues Global Citizen is fighting. I’m sure the concert will be great, but if I had won a ticket, I would have felt unfulfilled. What did I actually do besides the action journeys? How helpful was my tweet? These “actions” are not
as the most helpful way to do service. As Malcolm Gladwell states in his New Yorker piece “Small Change,” these people are the same ones who think a “Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960.” Social media campaigns do not produce the results that active engagement in a cause can. I have canvassed for political campaigns and seen the difference between door-to-door canvassing and phone canvassing in recruiting volunteers. A connection to a cause is very important in motivating people to act on it. Some may have a personal connection to it. For those who don’t, see-
ing a picture of a homeless woman on the street on Facebook will not be as successful in creating lasting engagement as inviting a friend to visit a homeless shelter. Even if the picture stirs an initial response from an audience, the likelihood of continued support is low. With the popularity Global Citizen has, it needs to expand their platform from being an awareness group. The end result of the campaign is unclear. Participants write letters and retweet tweets in order to get leaders to help fund health care in developing countries, but that should not be enough. Global Citizen should expect us to do more than just press a button. By not doing so, the organization fails to acknowledge the ways in which we can help other than through a computer screen. While many social media campaigns have raised plenty of awareness about the world’s issues, the duration of the promotion is short. For instance, the Ice Bucket Challenge was a fun way for friends to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. But this social media trend quickly turned into a fad rather than a way to raise money for ALS. Studies show that most of the participants did not even donate. Using social media may be an easier way to earn support for a cause, but ending poverty is going to take more than just a few retweets.
Maya Lennon ’18 always wants a Blue Room muffin.
SCIENCE & RESEARCH THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2015
RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT
Exploring the relationship between Alzheimer’s and driving ability By ELENA WEISSMANN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
This profile is part of a series focused on Brown faculty members and students engaged in science and research, with the purpose of highlighting and making more accessible the work being pursued at all levels across disciplines. Professor of Neurology Brian Ott will soon begin conducting research on the effect of mild cognitive impairment and early Alzheimer’s dementia on driving ability by using a car video-monitoring device. Previous research has shown that most individuals at an early stage of cognitive impairment can drive safely without getting into accidents for several years, and that two-thirds of those impacted can pass road tests. But many people still believe in banning cognitively impaired people from driving at all, Ott said. “We don’t want to terminate someone’s driving prematurely because it’s so important in terms of their livelihood, social life and independence,” Ott said. “So we need to pay attention not just for
safety reasons, but also to help these people remain autonomous if we can.” Funded by the National Alzheimer’s Association and centered at the Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders Center at Rhode Island Hospital, Ott’s research will examine whether a monitoring device called DriveCam can improve driving ability by providing video feedback. When a two-way camera in the car senses risky driving, it records for 12 seconds and transmits the clip to a central site wirelessly, where the video events are collected and posted on a website for the driver to review later. “So if the driver steps on the brakes too hard or the car jiggles precariously, the camera will capture what the driver was seeing, hearing and doing before and after the incident,” Ott said. Previously, DriveCam has been used successfully with teenage drivers to reduce unsafe driving. Ott said he hopes people with Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment will equally benefit from the video footage. “Spouses or other caregivers can coach someone with Alzheimer’s by
going over the videos with them and reviewing unsafe driving events — what’s causing them and what could be done to avoid them in
the future,” Ott said. In a pilot study funded by the department of neurology, Ott’s research team examined how 12 people with mild dementia responded to the DriveCam, finding that it reduced the severity of unsafe driving events by 60 percent over a period of three months. The current study, which will take place in a few
months, will include a more controlled trial of a larger group of people. “If we can show that it’s effective, it can improve the safety of our roads. It’s a good safety check as well as a training device,” he said. Ott has been involved in research related to driving and cognitive impairment for the last 15 years. Besides his DriveCam study, he has also studied the natural course of driving decrement and how it relates to cognitive impairment. His research found that people affected by mild dementia were able to continue driving safely for around one year, while those with very mild cognitive impairment were able to continue driving for double that time, as measured by a general road test. But another study at Washington University in Saint Louis found that some research participants without any cognitive impairment also declined in their ability to perform in the road test over time, Ott said. Responding to this finding, Ott said some of these test subjects may be “developing Alzheimer’s changes in
their brains.” In another of Ott’s studies, he is investigating this possibility. In the study, he conducts amyloid PET scans on participants who are cognitively normal in order to see if the presence of amyloid plaque is associated with unsafe driving behavior. Beta amyloid is a protein fragment, and in Alzheimer’s disease, these fragments accumulate to form plaques between neurons in the brain, according to the Alzheimer’s Association website. Besides his focus on driving, Ott also engages in research on experimental therapeutic treatment and prevention methods for Alzheimer’s. One of the major trials involves monthly antiamyloid antibody injections that may reduce amyloid plaque burden in people without any cognitive impairment, Ott said. But these people are already recognized as being at-risk due to evidence of amyloid plaque in their brains from PET scans, he added. “These plaques may build up in the brain 10 or 20 years before you even have symptoms,” Ott said. “So if the trial is successful, it could be a major gamechanger in how we treat the disease.” PHOTO COURTESY OF BRIAN OTT
New technology offers faster wireless data exchange U. researchers develop hardware, utilize terahertz frequencies with real-world applications By MARK LIANG CONTRIBUTING WRITER
New research led by a Brown graduate student and professor explores a new technology they believe has promise to be much faster than current communication signals such as Wi-Fi. The paper, published in Nature online Sept. 14, marks a significant contribution to telecommunications by creating a proof-of-concept of data processing in the terahertz wave spectrum. The research team created a terahertz multiplexer — a relatively simple mechanism that can both combine and separate information waves. Using a frequency called the terahertz spectrum, on which little research has focused, this system has the capability to rapidly increase the speed and size of wireless data transfer, said Professor of Engineering Daniel Mittleman, the senior author of the paper. Terahertz waves, unlike their microwave and infrared counterparts, are capable of much higher rates of data transfer — up to 100 times faster, said lead author Nicholas Karl GS.
Terahertz has the potential to be even faster than Wi-Fi, he added. Karl, who works in Mittleman’s lab, said the multiplexer consists of two aluminum plates with a slit through the top, adding that the technology takes advantage of a phenomenon known as a “leaky wave antenna.” Collaborating with a researcher at the University of Tokyo, Mittleman’s lab showed that different wave inputs will escape through the slit at different fixed angles. A single data stream can then be split into a variety of independent information waves, or vice versa, almost like the way a beam of light splits into color through a prism, Karl said. Mittleman likens the multiplexer to a cell phone tower; both take in separate frequencies and manage to parse apart the information, such as multiple callers in the same area. The Mittleman lab is in the process of fully transitioning to Brown from Rice University, where the work was completed. The terahertz field is an exciting area for Mittleman, as he has spent over 20 years researching the wave’s capabilities. He said he sees his lab and the University at the forefront of implementing this technology over the next few years, working on new devices and ways to implement the wave spectrum in daily life.
COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY
Professor of Engineering Daniel Mittleman and Nicholas Karl GS created a terahertz multiplex — a relatively simple mechanism that combines and separates information waves. Karl agreed, adding that such systems could supplement current telecommunications in high-impact areas, such as at a conference center. He said he is personally excited about new man-made discoveries arising out of the study of terahertz waves, such as material design and imaging. While this research is a significant contribution to telecommunication research, it is not yet a complete system,
wrote Ian Akyildiz, chair professor in telecommunications at Georgia Institute of Technology, in an email to The Herald. Akyildiz was not involved with the team’s research. The research paper neither uses actual communication signals nor experiments with the entire range of waves in the terahertz spectrum, he wrote. Still, Akyildiz wrote that he hopes
the use of such technology is not too far off, adding that the telecommunication sector may begin implementing terahertz waves within three to five years. Akyildiz wrote that he supports Mittleman’s “relevant” work and believes exciting times are coming to the field in terms of regulation, standardization and material design. “This type of work should be encouraged and extended,” he wrote.
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