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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015
VOLUME CL, ISSUE 81
WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
Internship, UCS voices support for students hurt by Herald columns employment Council also discusses changes to alcohol policy, site updates Student Code of Conduct navigability at general body meeting By MATTHEW JARRELL
New online Job and Internship Board features more streamlined, userfriendly interface By JULIE PHAM CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The Center for Careers and Life After Brown has launched a new version of the Job and Internship Board designed to make discovering new opportunities more efficient and intuitive for students, said Matthew Donato, director of CareerLAB. This marks the first major interface update to the JIB in five or six years, Donato said. Simplicity, a software company that produces career management software, has been working on the update for over a year, Donato said. “Once we saw the new interface design, we decided to launch it because we think it is more intuitive to use and it is more user-friendly,” he said. The JIB is a website that enables current students and recent alums to find job and internship postings offered by companies and alums. Students can also upload job application materials, register for on-campus interviews, schedule career counseling appointments and monitor the status of their applications. The update includes a modern, streamlined and user-friendly interface. » See JIB, page 4
STAFF WRITER
The Undergraduate Council of Students released a statement of solidarity with students affected by the recent publication of two racist Herald opinions columns at its general body meeting Wednesday. The UCS Executive Board drafted the three-sentence statement, which was amended through discussion and approved through an electronic vote by the general body. “The Undergraduate Council of
Students stands in solidarity with students of color in the wake of racist publications in The Brown Daily Herald this week,” the statement reads. “We join fellow students in urging The Herald to hold itself accountable for its actions. UCS pledges to attend the demonstration organized by Native Americans at Brown on Monday, October 12th to support and amplify the voices of students of color who have been silenced.” UCS President Sazzy Gourley ’16 emphasized the need for productive conversation in the wake of the publication of the two columns. “There’s a huge need for more learning and dialogue in this area on campus,” he said. “We can all do our part by being informed about what’s going on.” » See UCS, page 2
ARJUN NARAYEN / HERALD
The Undergraduate Council of Students drafted a statement urging The Herald to “hold itself accountable for its actions” at its meeting Wednesday.
Providence faces potential teacher shortage Urban school district struggles to fill positions, grants emergency teacher certifications By MARIAH KENNEDY CUOMO CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Providence — along with three other cities — is “among the large urban school districts having trouble finding teachers,”the New York Times reported Aug. 10, citing the Council of the Great City Schools, an organization composed of large urban schools. CGCS identified Providence as a school district experiencing a teacher shortage as a result of “responses to a
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question we posted to our listserv of district representatives,” said CGCS Research Manager Moses Palacios. “The information was gathered from school district responses to an informal question rather than a formal study, survey or data set,” Palacios said. The council asked the questions, “Are declining applications at Colleges of Education affecting school district recruiting and hiring of teachers?” and “Are you seeing shortages?” CGCS Communications Manger Tonya Harris told GoLocalProv. “Typically not all districts respond to a listserv question,” Palacios said, adding, “It would be fair to say that Providence is among large school districts having trouble filling teacher vacancies.” The information obtained from
CGCS is not sufficient to support the claim that Providence has a teacher shortage, said Kenneth Wong, professor of education and chair of the department. Identifying the teacher shortage is done through looking at the number of emergency certifications given to teachers each year, said Elliot Krieger, public information officer for the Rhode Island Department of Education. Emergency certifications are awarded for one academic year, during which teachers work toward their certification “if and only if there are no certified teachers available for that particular job,” Krieger said. Teachers receiving an emergency certification must have a bachelor’s degree, though not necessarily in the area in which they are being certified, Krieger said.
Emergency certified teachers are not necessarily unqualified, but do require extra support, President of the Providence Teacher’s Union Maribeth Calabro said. For the state as a whole, “we have probably more certified teachers than jobs. We have eight or nine schools of teacher preparation in the state,” Krieger said. In “some areas there’s a surplus. It’s very difficult for newly minted teachers to get a job teaching English or grade-level schooling.” Out of the some 14,000 teachers across the state, only 180 received emergency certifications, Krieger said. But 74 of those emergency certifications — over 40 percent — are in Providence. Only 16 percent of the state’s public » See TEACHERS, page 2
U. partners with high school to pilot pre-college engineering program Fontbonne Hall Academy students to take online course, receive scholarships By RACHEL GOLD CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The University has launched the Brown Pre-College Scholars Program in Engineering, a new program that allows students at a private, Catholic, all-girls school in Brooklyn, New York to take an online course led by a Brown professor during class time, said Ren Whitaker, director of online development for the School of Professional Studies. Twenty-two students at Fontbonne
SCIENCE & RESEARCH
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Hall Academy have been learning about engineering design principles and collaborating on biomedical, materials science and renewable energy engineering projects through the online course, according to a joint press release. Karen Haberstroh, director of STEM outreach and assistant professor of engineering, serves as the lead instructor of the online course. “The course is designed so that (Haberstroh) can interact with the students asynchronously on a regular basis,” Whitaker said, adding that Haberstroh also “connects via video conference to help them better understand the coursework and to get to know the students.” Outside of class, the students work in groups to develop their own engineering projects, said Adam Segall, STEM specialty programs coordinator at Fontbonne. The students finished
but did not have an existing engineering program. “I chose Brown University because of its commitment to diversity and sustained outreach to women and minorities,” DeLuca wrote. “Brown was the one and only university I initiated conversations with.” “The timing was exquisite because we had been thinking about how we might be able to connect with high schools not only in the U.S., but also abroad,” Whitaker said. “It was a gift when they reached out because we could conduct this pilot on a very small and intimate scale to make sure we did it really well.” James Chansky, director of summer session and pre-college programs, said the proposal fit in with the School of Professional Studies’ mission of “bringing the capabilities for teaching that we have to high school students.”
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Fontbonne Principal Mary Ann Spicijaric said she anticipates an increase in students’ interest in Brown as a result of the program. The class will visit the University in November as part of the partnership, she said. Four program participants will also receive scholarships to attend Summer@Brown this summer, Spicijaric said. Though the process for awarding the scholarships has not been discussed, the criteria will likely involve “performance and financial need,” she said. While the pilot was established as a “one-year experience,” students would likely be “disappointed if there’s nothing that follows it,” Spicijaric said, adding, “What we are doing with Brown is so different, so unique, so novel — it’s a fantastic addition to what we already have here.” » See PRE-COLLEGE, page 3
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THURSDAY, OC TOBER 8, 2015
SCIENCE & RESEARCH Study finds no impact of doctor burnout on quality of care received by patients PAGE 3
building prototypes for wheelchairs last week, he said. Haberstroh and co-facilitator Indrek Külaots, a lecturer in engineering, have worked closely with instructional designers from the School of Professional Studies and Fontbonne teachers to design the course, which “knits together” Brown’s four previouslyexisting online engineering courses, Whitaker said. “The feedback from the students has been 100 percent positive,” Segall said. “Working their way through the engineering process has really opened their eyes to engineering as a possible career choice.” Maryann DeLuca, college bridge director at Fontbonne, wrote in an email to The Herald that she reached out to Whitaker last September to propose the course, as Fontbonne prioritized STEM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Readers respond to two Herald opinions columns from Monday and Tuesday
COMMENTARY Asker ’17: Students cast aside their passions to enroll in courses that will lead to careers
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UNIVERSITY NEWS PAGE 2 • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
» UCS, from page 1
EMMA JERZYK / HERALD
» TEACHERS, from page 1 school population is in the Providence Public School District. A Herald analysis of the Rhode Island Department of Education’s certification portal, eCert, yielded that there are 2,379 teachers in the Providence Public School District, 56 — or over 2 percent — of which have emergency certifications. The school with the highest percentage of emergency certified teachers is Charles N. Fortes Elementary School with 12.8 percent, followed by Governor Christopher DelSesto Middle School with 7.2 percent. Providence’s teacher shortage isn’t
unique, Calabro said, adding that all urban school districts struggle to “recruit and retain teachers.” “The teacher shortage has increased over the past few years,” Calabro said. The low salaries, general treatment and “unfair accountabilites that have been put upon us by people who are not in our shoes” contribute to the shortage, Calabro said. The teacher shortage disproportionately affects certain subjects, Wong said. “It’s harder to get teachers in math and science areas and to some degree in English as a second language,” Krieger said. While the number of students per
teacher has increased, this is because of a heavy influx of students, resulting in a lack of classrooms, Calabro said. The student-teacher ratio has not been impacted by a teacher shortage, she added. The teacher shortage is not the problem that Providence should be most concerned with, Wong said. If the Providence Public School District allowed more recent college graduates to become teachers in Providence, the issues involving the imbalance of teachers between certain subject areas and the decreasing number of students going into teaching would be solved, he added.
“It’s important that we recognize UCS’ role as part of campus conversations,” said UCS Chief of Staff Elena Saltzman ’16 while proposing the adoption of the statement. The Herald published the columns — “The white privilege of cows” and “Columbian Exchange Day” — Monday and Tuesday, respectively. The Herald took down the second column and issued an apology in an editors’ note Wednesday. The first column built its argument on eugenics, a concept disproven by numerous scientific studies, and the second suggested that Native Americans should be thankful for the Columbian Exchange and thus celebrate Columbus Day. The general body meeting was extended half an hour for the purpose of debate on the language and content of the statement. Ryan Lessing ’17, UCS community and business relations liaison, expressed concern about the initial structure of the statement, suggesting that it might be advisable to avoid mentioning The Herald altogether and instead focus on UCS support for students of marginalized backgrounds. Other members stressed the idea that UCS should support student groups that have issued statements on the columns. “We need to stand in solidarity with (the student groups’) statements, and they’ve all said that the BDH’s actions were a problem,” said Britt Edelen ’19, a UCS general body member. Lessing also raised the issue of the short time frame over which the statement was introduced and passed. “I’m uncomfortable with general body members committing to something they haven’t had the time to process,” he said. “Given the time-sensitive nature of the issue, we have to do it quickly,” Gourley responded. But the meeting was an inclusive space in which UCS members could ask questions and be
part of the process of finalizing the statement, he said. UCS devoted the rest of its meeting to a discussion of recommendations by the Alcohol and Social Event Committee and changes to the Student Code of Conduct. Interim Assistant Vice Presidents of Campus Life and Student Services MaryLou McMillan ’85 and Mary Grace Almandrez attended this portion of the meeting to brief the general body on the changes. The most-discussed element of social event monitoring was the presence of graduate students in first-year dormitories on Friday and Saturday nights. McMillan said the role of the graduate students is primarily to help facilitate a safer living environment, not to discipline residents. “They’re not putting their ears to people’s doors,” McMillan said. They will only actively intervene in “egregious situations,” she added. “They’re helpful because they provide an extra pair of eyes to help students. They serve as a guide to help us acclimatize,” said Yvonne Diabene ’19. But more clarity regarding the identities and roles of the graduate students would have been helpful to alleviate student anxiety about the extent of their disciplinary power. “It feels like a patrol,” said Lisa Schold ’19. “It would be helpful to know what the repercussions are.” Almandrez outlined alterations to the Student Code, highlighting the move toward an investigator model for all higher-level cases, such as sexual misconduct cases, which are “complex or sensitive in nature.” Witness statements focusing on a particular person’s character will also be eliminated, she said. A process of letter adjudication has also been introduced for lower-level violations, Almandrez said. Instead of the hearing process, a student accused of a lower-level offense now has the option to accept the charges without going through a dean’s hearing, she said.
SCIENCE & RESEARCH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015 • PAGE 3
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Study examines doctor stress, » BRAIN, from page 8 patient care relationship Despite perceived link between stress and low quality of care, researchers find no correlation By MARK LIANG STAFF WRITER
A paper recently published by a University researcher reports on the causes of burnout among doctors, as well as the impact of burnout on the quality of patient care. Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine Joseph Rabatin, lead author of the article, worked alongside faculty from universities across the United States to provide a framework for understanding the causes of physician stress and the effects on their patients. “Burnout is described as a combination of stress, emotional exhaustion and a lack of a sense of personal accomplishment,” said senior author Mark Linzer, director of the division of General Internal Medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. While burnout rates vary between different medical fields, they are all generally high and have appeared to be increasing over the last few years, he added. The paper, published Sept. 28 in the Journal for Primary Care and Community Health, details the findings of two studies conducted between 2002 and 2003 involving 422 family practitioners and general internists. The research team evaluated physician mental health and the success of outcomes in their patients with conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, Rabatin said. After running statistical analyses on the compiled data, the group found several correlations between environmental factors, such as time pressure and chaotic workplaces, and physician burnout, he added. But in regards to the impact of burnout on patient care, the researchers found that there was no correlation between the two. According to
the paper, “Care quality thus appears to be preserved at great personal cost to primary care physicians.” Under the current health system, doctors will continually set patient health above their own, compounding burnout, Linzer said. When stress reaches an unbearable level, a physician may leave the workplace and perhaps even the medical field itself because they do not want to risk the well-being of their patients. Declines in the number of people choosing certain careers in fact led Linzer to begin researching the health field in the 1980s, he said. This inquiry eventually worked its way up into investigating physician mental health in the workplace. Rabatin said his employer, the Veterans Administration in Providence, “makes very good accommodation for both patient visit times and physician health.” He added that he hopes other institutions will follow suit with changes to reduce doctor burnout while maintaining quality of care. Many organizations have recognized the need to improve conditions for their own physicians, wrote Neda Ratanawongsa, associate professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, in an email to The Herald. These choices are practical for the institutions as well: “if you want outstanding care, you want to go where the health care team members are healthy and have healthy relationships with one another,” wrote Ratanawongsa, who was not involved with the study. Ratanawongsa highlighted the positive effects of support groups and relationship-centered care but noted that awareness of self-care in the medical field is still not yet fully recognized. But Linzer is nevertheless “quite optimistic” about the future of health care. He said he believes it is a “wonderful career” and that he sees a new generation of medical students and residents rising up to change the infrastructure of health care to benefit both doctors and patients.
not simply correlational, in staying on track, Chatham said. The use of both techniques, and correspondence between them, shows that the RLPFC was “playing a causal role in the task performance,” Nassar wrote. This finding was unprecedented, according to Desrochers, in that previous research had shown that the more abstract something is, the farther forward into the frontal cortex it activates. Additionally, the frontal lobe has been thought to be involved in static rather than sequential tasks. But according to the study, previous work that looked at the brain areas that control simple motor tasks or cued sequences do not fully illuminate the neural mechanisms involved in task sequences. Going into the experiment, the team believed this region was performing this task, Chatham said. But “you can only say so much from the fMRI,” he said. Seeing this effect displayed in the two TMS trials was “a real triumph,” Chatham said. These results are important, Desrochers said, because they distinguish the RLPFC from the other parts of
» PRE-COLLEGE, from page 1 “We will see how the Fontbonne model works and take what we learn,” Chansky said. “If we learn this is incredibly successful and that there are other schools that are eager to connect with us in this way, then presumably we would move in that direction.”
the frontal cortex. Nassar noted that the work “highlights a new role for prefrontal circuitry in organizing the efforts of more basic motor planning circuits according to higher order task sequencing.” Chatham said it underscores the region’s importance in how the frontal lobe controls behavior, helping decode hierarchical cognitive control — the ability to put effort into immediate goals while still keeping larger ones in mind. Sarah Master ’17, an undergraduate research assistant who assisted with the study, said it is groundbreaking to see that the RLPFC is responsible for controlling tasks in humans. It is hard to know how this research will fit into the larger understanding of the brain, as it is “a small piece of a very large puzzle,” Master said. Desrochers said this region makes us very human. RLPFC is one of the regions that almost certainly does not serve the same function in other animals as in humans, and it illuminates where intelligent behavior, specifically the ability to regulate behavior, comes from, Chatham said. The compromised ability to regulate behavior is a common factor in disorders which reduce the quality of life,
Chatham said. Frontal lobe dysfunction plays a role in head trauma, stroke and diseases, Desrochers said. Though people with frontal lobe dysfunction may perform well on classical tests of functions, they can’t perform sequences and thus can’t live independently, she added. Desrochers said basic science can lead to the development of therapies. A search for therapies that would target this function can begin to narrow its focus, Chatham said, adding that people had reached out about therapeutic implications, and this study gives a direction of where to go. Three follow-up studies have begun, Desrochers said. The first study relates to uncertainty and provides subjects with clues while they are doing the sequences, to see how this affects the results. The assumption had been that the clues will help reduce uncertainty, Desrochers said. But the preliminary answer is that it is not that clear cut, he added. The second study asks whether the learning process is similar in both physical motor sequences — such as pressing a series of keys — and mental sequences. The third study examines the brain’s activation when keeping track of a visual set of images.
The partnership was not developed solely to engage girls in STEM, but the fact that Fontbonne is an all-girls’ school “does make it special,” Whitaker said, adding that future programs would seek to engage other underrepresented groups. Chansky and Whitaker both emphasized that the program is still in
the first few weeks of its first iteration, and the future of the program remains to be shaped. “I know that whatever we do (in the future) needs to be based on a careful assessment of outcomes,” Chansky said. “We still need to figure out the extent to which they’re learning, and how deep that learning is.”
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» JIB, from page 1 The interface was designed with consideration of Google’s principles of material design standards, which are intended to help make web navigation more natural, Donato said. The update also features new opportunities for following employers and keeping track of surveys, Donato said. Students who have used the updated site expressed satisfaction with its design. “At a first glance it looks so much better, cleaner and nicer,” said Vicky Ding ’17. The old search function was particularly challenging because of glitches in which category “tags would disappear,” she said. The website is “more aesthetically pleasing but the functionality is essentiality the same,” said Alana Bhatla ’16, vice president of the Undergraduate Council of Students. “The graphics are better; the designs are better. But the tools and menu option, and the way you upload documents and view them — the functionality has not been changed.” “When I used to visit the website, it used to be hideous,” said Ivelisse Rodriguez ’17. “Now it is more userfriendly and easier to find things.” The JIB overlaps in some places with BrownConnect, another CareerLAB tool that lets students find internships and network with alums. Donato, who took the helm of CareerLAB last spring, said one of his main goals as director was improving the JIB. “Coming into this job, my biggest
issue with the product was always the fact that it was not user-friendly or intuitive,” Donato said. “Given the way people in general — not just students — interact with websites and the Internet, if you can’t figure out how to navigate something very quickly, you lose interest from your users. The Job and Internship Board turned a lot of students off, and it made us look like we were behind on the times in terms of technology.” Looking ahead, the JIB may gain more features as the year progresses. CareerLAB hopes to create a mobile version of the updated JIB available to students soon. While CareerLAB currently offers an app for the JIB, it has experienced a slight delay in incorporating the new interface into the mobile app. The entire redesign of the site was meant to make the site better on computers as well as mobile devices, which have become the primary way that students connect with University resources, Donato said. For this reason, the new JIB was not advertised widely, he said. In the upcoming weeks, CareerLAB will work to better inform students about both the website and the app, he added. Some students noted that it would have been helpful to know about the update prior to the career fairs hosted on Sept. 29 and Sept. 30. Jessica Montes ’16 said she wished the update had been better advertised. But she added that she appreciated that the new website allowed her to filter job listings by time or qualifications.
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD “It was actually weird — I was online when they switched from the old to new version,” said Kyle McIntyre ’16. Donato said CareerLAB’s success in launching the update can be attributed in part to the students who voiced their complaints through regular career counseling and emails. “I think it’s great that the CareerLAB has an updated format for the JIB,” said Emma Currier ’16, a peer career adviser at CareerLAB. The JIB has incredible resources and the new version just makes it easier for students to access all within it, such as workshops, appointments and resources.” In the future, students hope the JIB will be further updated to contain new features. McIntyre said he would like to see changes in the way resumes are named and uploaded to the site so that they can be more easily differentiated for different employers. More information about the companies that advertise on the JIB would also be helpful, Rodriguez said. The update to the JIB is among several CareerLAB initiatives to help students on the track of thinking about their futures. CareerLAB also recently launched Project 2019, a yearlong series of programs, workshops and events, to help members of the class of 2019 in their internship and job searches. Donato and the staff at CareerLAB are committed to making sure that the system is working well, Donato said. Any students who notice any issues or have any suggestions should bring them to the attention of CareerLAB, he said.
» DCYF, from page 8 double checks and other mismanagement problems, Raia said. “It was a department that was operating in crisis mode,” and consequently “the attention was not paid to contract management,” Raia said. The State Police Department began an investigation into DCYF finances per the request of DCYF, the Providence Journal reported. Raia and Steven O’Donnell, superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police, said they could not comment on an ongoing investigation. The two networks that work with DCYF are both faced with uncertainty as they wait for a concrete long-term plan from DCYF. Their contracts were extended for six months in July on a limited scope, Raia said. Rhode Island’s child welfare system is performing poorly compared to other states, said Marty Sinnott, chief executive officer of Child and Family — the lead agency for the Rhode Island Care Management Network. DCYF has been under-resourced for over a decade and is in need of support from the government, said Margaret Holland McDuff, chief executive officer of Family Service of Rhode Island, the main agency for Ocean State Network for Children and Families. In 2012, the two private nonprofit networks were contracted for three years in order to streamline services and reduce costs for DCYF. The networks manage the placement of children with social workers as well as placement with a family or in a congregate care facility, McDuff said. The organizations also provide 24-hour on-call services and rapid assessments of the needs of children new to DCYF. MacDonald recently announced that due to years of spending shortages, the DCYF will most likely bring services back into the agency, the Journal reported. The conversation about the networks has been “misdirected” because the contracts were “established at the same time that the state reduced spending in these areas of child welfare by over $40 million,” and they did not address the possibility of caseload increases, Sinnot said. The caseloads were significantly underestimated, MacDonald said. DCYF initially estimated 1,000
children per network, but now the networks serve 1,500 each. The contracts also didn’t factor in other components that contribute to the number of children in the services, such as increases in unemployment, drug abuse and childhood poverty — all of which have occurred in Rhode Island recently and contributed to the deficit spending. Additionally, the cost of placing children out-of-state is double that of placing children within the state, Sinnott said. This also contributes to deficit spending for which the networks are held accountable, while the decision to place a child out-of-state is made by family courts and DCYF. “There are no bad guys here, but I think it’s simplistic to conclude that the networks have not been responsibly managed or cost-effective,” Sinnott said. Despite these challenges, Sinnott argues “the networks deserve a little bit of credit for keeping a lid on things.” He said he hopes that the reform will result in a multi-year plan with a clear destination. “Everybody is hung up on the dollars, but this is about kids in situations that they should not be in,” MacDonald said. The children’s advocacy group Children’s Rights updated their legal complaint against DCYF in August. The group filed a federal class action lawsuit in 2007 “seeking to correct serious deficiencies in Rhode Island’s child welfare system,” said Adriana Luciano, staff attorney at Children’s Rights. The two major areas the group aims to change are “the state consistently and seriously overloads all of its critical child welfare workers” and that there are not enough child foster homes, Luciano said. DCYF is currently “warehousing” children in congregate care facilities instead of placing them with foster families, she added. When asked why this lawsuit has not moved forward since 2007, Luciano said, “Fighting this process takes time. The state has challenged our right to bring this lawsuit, our right to get systemic information and even our right to meet with child clients.” Luciano states that Children’s Rights hopes that the DCYF reform will produce a concrete plan “with teeth” and accountability built in to “hold the state to that promise so the children are not forgotten.”
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TODAY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015 • PAGE 5
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
menu
bridge art
SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS
Pizza: Na’cho Pizza, BBQ Bam Bam, Spicy Five Cheese and Garlic JOSIAH’S
BLUE ROOM
Made-to-Order Quesadillas
Soups: Turkey Chili, Chicken Artichoke Florentine, Vegetable
DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH
DINNER
Falafel, Portobello Sandwich, Bean and Potato Stew, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bars
Shrimp Macaroni Casserole, Jumbalaya, Quinoa and Chickpea Curry, Caramel Apple Cupcakes
VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH
DINNER
Shaved Steak Sandwich, Vegetable Strudel, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bars
Roast Turkey, Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes, Yellow Cake with Coconut Frosting
sudoku
SAM BERUBE / HERALD
Evidence of the artwork created by an anonymous graffiti artist known as the Lonely Tagger earlier this year can be seen above the Providence River.
comics Ampersand | Wasita Mahaphanit
crossword
A Horse of Any Other Name | Zach Nelkin
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Heavy Petting 11:30 PM Main Green
BUFF Presents: City of God 9:00 PM Petteruti Lounge, Campus Ctr.
Visions/AASA Open Mic 8:00 PM The Underground, Campus Center
Thursday Night Interfaith Supper 5:30 PM 58 Keene Street
TOMORROW National Coming Out Day on the Main Green 12:00 PM Main Green
Shabbat Services and Dinner 6:15 PM Brown/RISD Hillel
The Tempest 7:30 PM Pell Chafee Performance Center, 87 Empire Street
Latino Fellowship Bible Study 5:00 PM Brown Center for Students of Color, 68 Brown Street
COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Diversity benefits the majority To the Editor: Your recent editors’ note ends, “We do not and will not tolerate racism,” but this begs the question: What are you actively doing to dismantle it? I mean, if you ain’t for us, you’ve got to be against us. It seems many organizations at Brown and beyond think recruiting a few token people of color is enough. In 2008, for instance, The Brown Noser was still a predominately white male organization, for which I was writing political satire as a black woman. I was having some difficulty getting published, so I asked the editor, who’d written the entire staff about the general lack of quality in the work, for some feedback on mine specifically. The response I received called my writing “very good and funny” but said “it made the reader feel kind of bad about race relations on campus.” White tears. Quiet as it’s being kept, diversity in organizations, in many ways, benefits the majority more than the minority. The majority can pat themselves on
the back for making a quota and learning about other cultures without even applying for a study abroad. Meanwhile, students of color have been set up for failure inside of systems that were built to exclude them and their authentic expression of their needs. We’re given brief platforms, tone policed and finally mocked for creating under-resourced but safe spaces for ourselves. Privilege is spending more time proving you aren’t a racist than becoming an ally. Privilege is racism only crossing your mind when someone calls you a racist. Privilege is defending your right to bear arms and free speech or press when unarmed black bodies can’t even breathe and brown people are being denied an education. Privilege is reading this letter and not publishing it just because it makes you feel bad. So while I don’t know what cows have to do with white privilege, if Mr. Brown can moo, you need to be making sure everyone else can too. All the best but do better, Elizabeth Morgan ’10 MFA’13
The only standard that you should use to determine whether to publish anything is the quality of what is written. If you made an error by publishing something that was of inferior intellectual quality and included factual errors or widely discredited and offensive or inciteful material, then you should be commended for admitting your mistake, highlighting it and publicizing it. But you should be in the business of critical thought, which requires that students engage with different views, including those that are ugly and even contrary to substantive liberal ideas. The most sacred liberal idea, which I was taught at Brown, is the exchange of free ideas so they can be tested in
CORRECTION An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“University clarifies role of responsible employees,” Oct. 6) misstated that the University is bound by Rhode Island state law when designating responsible employees. In fact, it is bound by federal law. The article also misstated that the University cannot create confidential resources. The Herald regrets the errors.
The role of a free press To the Editor:
I VA N A L C A N TA R A
the open marketplace of ideas. If you publish garbage, let it be adjudged as such by the community. You are a newspaper not a censor, though you should maintain minimal standards particularly with respect to certain ideas that the community has long ago determined have no place in liberal society, such as overt racism. But other ideas, such as so-called micro-aggressions, which are largely imaginary and frankly political agenda items, could be censured if you are not careful. You are always better off allowing the community to act as the arbiter of ideas. That is what a free press does in a free society.
An article in Wednesday’s Herald (“Segui leads BCSC as interim director,” Oct. 7) misstated that Joshua Segui’s appointment was made in consultation with members of the Brown Center for Students of Color’s Student Advisory Board. In fact, it was made in consultation with other leaders and administrators. The article also misstated that Mary Grace Almandrez’s office is located in University Hall. In fact, it is in Graduate Center E. The Herald regrets the errors.
Q U O T E O F T H E D AY
“Everybody is hung up on the dollars, but this is about kids in situations that they should not be in.
Michael Lewitt ’79
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COMMENTARY THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015 • PAGE 7
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Career-bound NICHOLAS ASKER opinions columnist
As both a philosophy and economics concentrator, I walk the line between curiosity on the one hand and practicality on the other. Through the former, I chase my passion and try to make the most of my liberal arts education. Through the latter, I will most likely seek employment. Of course, there are people who dedicate themselves to economics because they love it: For them, theorizing, researching and solving the world’s problems is euphoric. I, too, appreciate this particular kind of economics, but it’s not the sort that concerns me here. I want to talk about the kind that business schools almost exclusively teach, the kind that will get you a lot of money if you study it, perhaps even get you to Wall Street — in short, the kind you feel compelled to take. In this sphere, it’s not so much love of the game that characterizes students, but rather a “no pain, no gain” attitude, a discipline that allows them to delay gratification now to get a big payout later in life. Indeed, a theoretical economist might marvel at the willpower of these students, who, in foregoing pleasure now, overcome the natural tendency to “temporally discount” future rewards. One thing students preparing for the business world forego, myself included, is taking courses that actually interest them. Instead, they take more tedious ones to make themselves
more employable. So we lose out on the pleasure that comes with quenching our curiosity. But we also miss out on a full liberal arts education, and consequently on a chance to become more refined, creative and openminded people. To some extent, then, we sacrifice authenticity: We’re less true to ourselves and our humanness than we could be, shelving our unique interests and benching the potentials that would make us flourish.
college. Otherwise, a life of financial uncertainty awaits. This is unfortunate for all the humanities generally, which suffer every time a potential inductee is instead conscripted by the business world. Indeed, the humanities can’t fully thrive without maximizing the number of people who partake in them so that we can answer questions about who we are, who we want to be and how to get there. The more participation,
last year, “These form half of the socalled STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) subjects, but if the goal of an education is simply economic advancement and technological power, those disciplines, just like the humanities, will be — and to some degree already are — subordinated to future employment and technological progress.” In his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” John Maynard
We’re less true to ourselves and our humanness than we could be, shelving our unique interests and benching the potentials that would make us flourish.
Nonetheless, self-denial now for a period of comfort in the future is inevitable given the current economy. College students are fortunate to even be in a position to get a degree so they can signal to the business world their relative worth. But we face looming loan debt upon graduating, as well as the responsibility of financially supporting ourselves and, sometimes, our immediate family. Throw into the mix that, today, the American Dream is more of a quaint ideal than an achievable reality, and it’s easy to understand why we need to land a good job after
the greater the concentration of ideas and dialogue from which progress in the realms of art and morality can be made. As far as being disfavored by today’s economic climate, the humanities aren’t alone. Mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, geology and other subjects are also neglected and devalued insofar as knowledge in these fields is pursued out of intellectual curiosity rather than business interest. As Scott Samuelson, who teaches philosophy at Kirkwood Community College, put it in an Atlantic column
Keynes expressed optimism that within a few generations of his lifetime, the world would become so technologically advanced that the “economic problem” would be solved. Everyone would be able to “devote their energies to non-economic purposes.” This is really strange, of course, considering that all of human history has been spent struggling for subsistence. “For the first time since his creation, man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem — how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science
and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.” We would be able to pursue things like art and philosophy and spend more time with the people we love. Moreover, we could finally jettison “the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues,” including greed, stinginess and never stopping to smell the roses, because they were necessary for productivity’s sake. But I worry that our “needs” keep changing, that what constitutes “enough” is ever-shifting. Even today, it seems like we allow businesses to drive demand for unnecessary things as though we’re bottomless pinatas. If we allow this to continue past a certain point, we’ll never reach a state of contentment in which people can be vocationally free. So we need to tread carefully, stamping out meretriciousness as it comes with technological advancement and commercialism. At a certain stage, productivity may actually be counterproductive, opposing what’s actually good for us. So I guess there’s some solace to the angst I feel entering an unideal world. Getting a job might be a necessary evil now, but we can have hope that one day posterity won’t be career-bound like us, provided we keep our priorities straight, our eyes on the real prize.
Nicholas Asker ’17 can be reached at nicholas_asker@brown.edu.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Feminism should be personal, not paraded To the Editor: Robyn Sundlee’s excellent opinion piece (“Sundlee ’16: Selling out the patriarchy,” Sept. 30) identifies numerous oft-ignored points about the intersection of feminism and capitalism. Sundlee points out that when we buy “F*** the Patriarchy” t-shirts, we are probably “courting mega-corporation employers.” I agree. I think that such shirts are also representative of a second problem from which Brown’s mainstream feminist population suffers, whose root lies in capitalism: that of self-branding and identification. I note a disturbing trend on the Internet and in person of self-identification for the very purposes of (one) branding and (two) self-aggrandizement. How often do we say that we are feminists, or wear t-shirts saying we are feminists, in order to signify that we are willing to sit down for an expert and meaningful conversation about ideology? I think we far more often wear those shirts in order to earn a theoretical gold star, a pat on the back from some amorphous, unnamed ordainer of social justice. I suggest that the commoditization of ideology reaches beyond our literal buying power. The mindset of personal branding, self-labeling and self-association with broader movements — along with the strong impulse to prove to the world that association — all stem from a very corporate and capitalistic climate. Indeed, the very idea of a “personal
brand” is obviously capitalistic in nature. (Of course, there is nothing wrong with identifying as a feminist, and any social justice movement requires some amount of self-labeling, if only for practical purposes of organization. But it is not for practical purposes that most of this type of self-identification occurs. Instead, we don our feminist t-shirts while we eat in the Ratty.) I consider myself a feminist. But I don’t go around parading myself as one, because I’m not in the business of showing off my social justice prowess, and I’m not cocky enough to presume that I ought to educate every person I meet about my ideology. I’m also not involved in any on-the-ground activism right now. I’m not volunteering at Planned Parenthood or a rape crisis center. I share in feminist ideology. I am not ashamed to be a feminist (insofar as feminism is defined as sharing in the basic ideology that women and men ought to be treated in fair and equal manners and in the belief that, as of now, women are not treated thus). But I would be ashamed to shout that I am a feminist from the rooftops, because I don’t believe that simple act of assertion does much more than ask to be rewarded for my opinion. We ought to ask ourselves not only from whom we buy our t-shirts, but why we buy them at all.
Veganism has deficiencies To the Editor: I am writing in response to a recent column (“Horowitz ’16: The FAQs of veganism,” Oct. 7). While I commend AEPi for going vegan on moral grounds, I find blanket statements about veganism being healthier than omnivorism troublesome. Horowitz writes, “Plant based sources of protein and calcium are just as effective (as animal sources), if not more so.” However, there is one glaring deficiency in non-animal foodstuffs: a lack of vitamin B12. This vitamin is essential for proper
biological function in humans, and it is almost exclusively found in animalbased food. Without fortification or multivitamins, it is exceedingly difficult to be vegan and get all of the nutrients one needs. Arguments about the historical necessity of omnivorism in humans aside, veganism should not be treated as a panacea, but as an alternative with its own benefits and drawbacks. To all current and potential vegans: Please make sure you are well-informed.
Andrea Fleckenstein ’19
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METRO THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015
Governor’s task force to take measures against opioid overdose R.I. receives $3.76 million grant to implement plan aimed at reducing overdose, drug abuse By HANA PARK CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Gov. Gina Raimondo has formed a task force to address the opioid epidemic that claimed the lives of 239 Rhode Islanders in 2014. The task force will build on efforts to curb the epidemic made by legislation and research. The Rhode Island Department of Health has named the 32-member task force as their means of fighting against the opioid overdose epidemic. The task force includes representatives from law enforcement and health care, said Joseph Wendelken, RIDOH’s acting public information officer. “It’s a broad spectrum of people.” RIDOH supports the renewal of the Good Samaritan Law, which offers legal protection to people who give assistance to those at risk of overdose. The law expired July 1, and the General Assembly will have the opportunity to renew it when they next convene. On Sept. 8, Rhode Island received a $3.76 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. RIDOH hopes to achieve four goals with this grant, according to the grant’s
one-page summary. The department’s first priority is to make the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program more accessible and increase registration in the program, Wendelken said. In addition to making the PDMP more accessible, the department also aims to increase education about prescribing opioids and making Narcan, an opioid overdose antidote, more available, said Jennifer Koziol, unintentional injury program coordinator at RIDOH. Second, the department hopes to provide more community interventions for those at risk of overdose. RIDOH has contracted with the University to create software to help partners develop and target these interventions, Koziol said. Third, the department will evaluate laws, policies and regulations, including quantifying the impact of the nowexpired Good Samaritan Law, according to the one-page summary. The department’s final goal is to implement a “rapid response project,” according to the one-page summary. This includes providing more data about overdoses in the state and making smaller grants available to community-based organizations. On July 15, Rep. David Bennett, DWarwick and Cranston, passed a bill that would require all schools to carry Narcan. “If you’ve got the tools to save someone’s life, why not have it in the schools?” Bennett said. The impact of
EMMA JERZYK / HERALD
the law has been mostly educational, Bennett said, adding that it helps students understand the resources available to them. Traci Green, associate professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology, who is advising the task force, is vying
for pharmacies to provide rescue kits for those at risk of overdose. Regulations set by RIDOH in March 2014 allow a prescriber to issue an order to an organization that will give it access to Narcan. Prior to this, Narcan was only available through community-based
programs, which are geographically centered in the cities. Greater access through pharmacies will lead to greater overdose prevention, Green said. Green said she hopes the task force will “change the epidemic and give hope to the people.”
R.I. Dept. of Youth looks to reform services Brain region linked to unique human ability to stay on task Study tracks brain activity, finds rostrolateral prefrontal cortex resolves uncertainty By ELLIE BLEIBERG CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The results of a new University study suggest a link between an area of the brain called the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex and the ability to stay on track in a sequence of tasks. The paper — published in the journal Neuron and authored by David Badre, associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, Postdoctoral Fellow Theresa Desrochers and Christopher Chatham, a former postdoc in Badre’s lab — involved study participants recording the color and shape of objects. While they did this, their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure activity in specific parts of the brain. The participants were asked to remember patterns — for example, color, color, shape, shape — and repeat these sequences, identifying objects in sets of four. The study found that the activity in the RLPFC specifically ramped up throughout the display of one sequence and reset before the start of a new one. Desrochers said because participants did not receive cues as to which part of the sequence they were on, the RLPFC can be seen as resolving uncertainty by increasing activity throughout sequences. Matt Nassar, a postdoctoral research
SCIENCE & RESEARCH
SAM BERUBE / HERALD
The Department of Children, Youth, and Families was almost $16 million over budget when Gov. Gina Raimondo took office in January 2015. An investigation revealed redundant services and a lack of contract management.
Review of government agency reveals financial blunders, governor calls for major overhaul By SUVY QIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The Department of Children, Youth and Families is undergoing a major overhaul after a recent Rhode Island Office of Administration audit revealed the agency to be embattled with financial and accountability issues. When Gov. Gina Raimondo took office, she immediately identified that DCYF was in need of reform and ordered an overhaul. Raimondo assigned DCYF with new leadership
to carry out a “turnaround plan” and ordered a “top to bottom financial review” of DCYF to be conducted, said Mike Raia, communications director for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, which oversees DCYF. The audit, which was released in July, identified significant challenges such as redundant services, lack of contract management and concerns with financial and purchasing processes, which revealed parts of the agency to be in “dysfunction,” Raia said. The restructuring will also impact the agency’s relationship with its two key networks, Ocean State Network for Children and Families and Rhode Island Care Management Network,
which were contracted three years ago to reduce costs. In January, former Director Janice DeFrances resigned, and Raimondo assigned Elizabeth Roberts, secretary of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, and Jamia MacDonald, chief strategy officer at the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, to lead the overhaul of DCYF. At the time Raimondo took office, the agency was almost $16 million over budget and had deficits five out of the last six years due to lack of financial management and administrative blunders, according to the July audit. The audit revealed issues with contracts that were lost or unauthorized, erroneous payments, » See DCYF, page 4
associate in Associate Professor of Cognitive Linguistic and Psychological Science Michael Frank’s lab, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email to The Herald that, according to the study’s results, activation of the RLPFC is consistent with amplification of a control signal that is related to “uncertainty about the current sequence position.” While the task drew on participants’ ability to track where they were in the sequence, it also involved other cognitive control components such as naming the current shape or color and switching between task sets of color or shape identification, Chatham said. For further evidence that the RLPFC deals with the ability to resolve uncertainty and keep on track, rather than other components of cognitive control, the researchers asked the participants to perform the sequential tasks while undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation in the RLPFC and two other regions of the pre-frontal lobe. TMS sends a non-invasive pulse signal to briefly disturb the activity of the brain in the targeted area. In two separate experiments, only stimulation of the RLPFC resulted in participants making more errors. “In the face of the much publicized replication issue recently brought to the forefront of psychological and medical research, it is great to see that they performed a direct replication of their primary causal (TMS) result,” Nassar said. This pattern was parallel to the activation pattern that had also been observed using fMRI, Desrochers said. The TMS technology enabled the researchers to conclude that the implications of the RLPFC were causal, » See BRAIN, page 3