In early March, after Brown made the call to finish the semester virtually and cancel all events on campus, the Undergraduate Finance Board was faced with making a number of important decisions. One such decision was whether to permit service groups to donate their unused funds to the greater Providence ...
Student government has the ability to play a vital role on our campus, but its constitutive organizations are severely struggling to be transparent and accountable to the students they serve. At Brown, student government is composed of three different organizations: Undergraduate Council of Students, ...
Since roughly the middle of March we have all been living in a professional and social world of distance and remoteness imposed by the coronavirus public health emergency. As the Dean of the Faculty at Brown, I can confirm that we are managing to navigate the crisis at the University. The faculty has ...
Recently, Brown University announced it will temporarily house those fighting coronavirus on the front lines, namely emergency personnel and healthcare workers. This is a testament to the power the University has to do good in a global crisis. To that end, we would like to remind the institution that ...
I have always found it ironic that Alexander the Great likely died of a fever. With the benefits of modern medicine, it is hard for us to appreciate the threat that fevers have posed to people in the past. Before the 1920s, fevers were the leading cause of premature death. Fevers are an evolutionarily ...
In a campus-wide email sent on March 30, Dean of the College Rashid Zia ’01 officially denied the adoption of a Universal Pass system at Brown, which has gained substantial momentum among students. A great deal of this momentum comes from the Undergraduate Council of Students Executive Board’s endorsement ...
On April 8, Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign for the presidency. This had been coming for a while. Though Sanders started as the Democratic frontrunner, his campaign was dealt repeated blows as his moderate opponents consolidated around Joseph R. Biden, Jr., who is now the presumptive nominee. This ...
Crises illuminate how institutional power works. They prompt us to ask: How do dramatic, unexpected shifts impact decision-making? What role do larger pressures and resource constraints play? Who is included in decision-making — and how is input gathered? Here at Brown, we have most recently seen ...
I believe that in times of crisis the true character of each and every individual comes to light. Leaders are tested, communities are strained. But in times of hardship, one can truly find out where one’s allies rest. I think the word ally is critical here; when true hardships arise, individuals need ...
Over the past two months, we have watched the Trump administration flounder in its response to the largest public health crisis in the world’s recent memory. Once again, glaring administrative incompetence has met executive egotism in the face of a national catastrophe. And once again, the American ...
Almost daily for the past week, the University has sent its students an email about how we will remain connected during these “unprecedented times.” They shared best practices for how students, along with the entire University community, will endure. In President Christina Paxson's P'19 video address ...
On the evening of March 24, 2020, Rashid Zia, dean of the College, and Andrew Campbell, dean of the Graduate School, emailed the Brown community detailing temporary academic policies that will be implemented in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of these new policies reads: “The last day of classes ...
As spring break comes to a close and we resume classes this week, the fervor around the grading option debate continues to increase. The three options most widely debated amongst students at Brown are implementing Mandatory S/NC, extending the grade option deadline (as the University recently affirmed ...
More a love letter than an op-ed, I write with a deep April heartache for beloved, far-flung Brunonia and a suffering world. Everywhere, everything has changed. College Hill is now oddly quiet, despite a loud riot of daffodils and magnolias defiantly gathered to bloom. Suddenly dispersed, we are ...
Amid the panic and fear caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, college students everywhere have been left in limbo about the trajectory of their academic careers. The most prominent concern I have encountered among students is the impact the global crisis might have on their academic success, and specifically ...
In recent days, there has been a call for all courses to switch to mandatory S/NC grading as a measure to “achieve real equality,” claiming that the loss of our on-campus community and access to resources necessitates the implementation of a forced pass/fail semester. As a student who is on full ...
On March 20, Brown University announced that they would no longer pay student workers after Saturday, April 4, if students could not continue their on-campus jobs remotely. While we agree that the termination of in-person student jobs was a necessary response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we also ...
As the majority of students depart from campus, entering into new environments with new routines, I fear that remote learning will amplify the inequalities among our student body. The University must take action to mitigate the challenges that remote learning will have on those who will face real, complex ...
Last fall, I watched a livestream of the Whitney Museum filling with smoke. The smoke emanated from bundles of sage burned by members of Decolonize This Place, an activist collective based in New York City advocating for the removal of Warren Kanders ’79 P’23 from the board of the museum. #WarrenKandersMustGo, ...
Recently, I participated in a screening of the film “Black Like Me.” The event was hosted at Brown University’s Manning Chapel by the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life. The 1964 film is based on the true story of John Howard Griffin who decided to temporarily change his skin pigmentation, ...
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