SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2022
VOLUME CLVII, ISSUE 43
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
METRO
UNIVERSITY NEWS
Candidates look forward to elections after primaries
Students improvise isolation housing New COVID-19 protocols unclear, say students with positive roommates
Gubernatorial, congressional primaries took place Sept. 13
BY SAM LEVINE & HALEY SANDLOW SENIOR STAFF WRITERS
BY EMMA GARDNER & YAEL SARIG METRO EDITOR & SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Hardly three weeks after setting up his dorm room in Marcy House for the start of the fall semester, Oliver Villanueva ’25 found himself moving many of his belongings for a second time after his roommate tested positive for COVID-19. When he learned his friend Eric Ma ’25 also had a COVID-positive roommate, they came up with a solution: a room swap, where Villanueva would stay in Ma’s room and their COVID-positive roommates would stay in Villanueva’s room for the remainder of their isolation period. “It was definitely a hassle,” Ma said. They had to move more than five days’ worth of clothes as well as sheets and comforters between the two dorms, all while two of the four roommates had COVID-19, he said. The University has shifted to treat-
Primaries in Rhode Island for a number of local, state and federal races took place Sept. 13. That night, incumbent Dan McKee won the Democratic nomination for governor, while Republican candidate Ashley Kalus handily defeated her opponent. Democrat and R.I. Treasurer Seth Magaziner advanced to the general election against Republican Allan Fung in the race for Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, while Providence mayoral candidate Brett Smiley won his party’s primary and faces no opponents in November, effectively making him the next mayor of the city. Following the primaries, candidates and political experts at the Uni-
CYNTHIA ZHANG / HERALD
ing COVID-19 like “other infectious diseases,” Vanessa Britto MSc’96, associate vice president for campus life and executive director of health and wellness, wrote in an email to The Herald. Because COVID-19 is so widespread, the University now focuses “on preventing major outbreaks and instances of severe illness or hospitalization,” Britto wrote. When asked about the current number of cases on campus by The Herald, Britto said that the University will only release this data when it can “inform useful action for the community.” According to five students interviewed by The Herald who all had roommates infected with COVID-19, the
new guidelines that have come with the University’s shift have proven unclear, causing some students to swap rooms with COVID-positive friends, sleep in common rooms and struggle to find University-provided tests and masks. Moving to isolate The University outlined its COVID-19 housing protocols for the fall 2022 semester in an Aug. 8 email from Britto and Vice President for Campus Life Eric Estes. If a student tests positive and lives on campus, the University advises them
SEE COVID PAGE 2
versity reflected on Tuesday’s results and the upcoming general election in November. Tuesday’s takeaways Wendy Schiller, professor of political science and director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy, had a number of takeaways from last Tuesday. The results of the five-way Democratic primary for governor surprised her, she told The Herald. R.I. Secretary of State “Nellie Gorbea coming in third surprised me,” Schiller said. “She’s had a solid campaign organization for a long time, she’s very well known. … It appears that … more (undecided voters) swung to (former CVS executive) Helena Foulkes than Nellie Gorbea.” Tuesday was also a rough night for women in Rhode Island politics, Schiller said. There are “no women running for secretary of state, ... or treasurer, or attorney general — it’s a step backward for women’s representation.”
SEE PRIMARY PAGE 2
UNIVERSITY NEWS
METRO
Brown used to poll local elections. Why did it stop?
Flooding leads RI to address aging drainage
Taubman Center regularly polled Rhode Island from 1984 to 2016 BY WILL KUBZANSKY UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR This fall, Rhode Island will see its first election that garners widespread national attention since 2014’s gubernatorial contest between former Cranston Mayor Allan Fung and thenstate Treasurer Gina Raimondo. On Nov. 8, Fung and current Treasurer Seth Magaziner ’06 will compete for the Ocean State’s second district in the House of Representatives. The Cook Political Report has designated the seat a toss-up — one of only 31 nationwide, making it crucial to Republican hopes of taking back the House. The Fung-Raimondo contest of 2014 featured six reputable polls between September and Election Day — including two conducted by Brown. But this race will not feature polling from the University, said Wendy Schiller, director of the Taubman Center
for Politics and Policy. And, by the numbers, less polling is occurring in Rhode Island overall. Heading into a hotly-contested gubernatorial primary last week, Rhode Islanders only had access to two polls to gauge the state of the race. One came from The Boston Globe and Suffolk University, and the other from WPRI Channel 12 and Roger Williams University; both were released before candidates debated in late summer. No public polls for the Providence mayoral race were released. Organizations like WPRI have a “limited budget” for polling, explained Ted Nesi, a politics and business editor for WPRI. “There’s not going to be a lot of polling unless other organizations step up and pay for it,” he said, adding that without “reliable, regular public opinion polling, the political community is left kind of flying blind.” In the past, the University played a larger role in polling Rhode Island. Beginning in 1984, the University polled on a “wide range of political
SEE POLLING PAGE 3
Experts, advocates urge for green infrastructure after storm shuts down roads, destroys building BY JACOB SMOLLEN SENIOR STAFF WRITER Two weeks ago, torrential rain left parts of the Ocean State underwater. In the coming years, Providence’s stormwater infrastructure will likely be tested by more frequent and intense storms due to climate change, experts told The Herald, with some local climate experts saying the system is outdated and underprepared. Flooding in the Providence area on Labor Day shut down Interstate 95 and Route 10 for hours and even collapsed a building at 215 Peace St. Rhode Island saw five to seven inches of rain over 90 minutes Sept. 5, overwhelming the city’s storm drains, according to a statement from Charles St. Martin, chief public affairs officer at the Rhode Island Department of Transportation. Some drains in the region were built over 150 years ago, said Craig Hochman, an engineer at the Providence Department of Public Works.
ASHLEY CHOI / HERALD
According to climate experts, flooding events like these are likely to become more common and more intense in the coming years. They say investment in green solutions and artificial — also known as “gray” — infrastructure, such as better drainage pipes, will be needed to avoid future flooding issues. The Labor Day storm was “one of the major impacts of climate change that Rhode Island has already begun to see and is going to increasingly see according to all of the forecasts,” said Sheila Dormody, director of climate and city programs for the Rhode Island chapter of Nature Conservancy, an environmental group. “Our stormwater infrastructure is
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not designed for what it currently needs to be designed for,” she said. Providence has seen an increase in the amount of impervious cover — surfaces that do not absorb water — around the city, mostly in the form of asphalt and concrete. With less greenery to soak up the rain, drainage systems can become overwhelmed when larger storms hit the area, Dormody said. The “rare storm” had “severely taxed” the drainage system on the highways, which are overseen by RIDOT, St. Martin said. Much of that infrastructure “was designed 50 years ago and has not been upgraded since.”
SEE FLOOD PAGE 8
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JULIA GROSSMAN '23 DESIGN EDITOR