The Negatives

Colleges & Universities A-Z Brown University
1

<p>Loving something means talking about its faults openly and without a hint of embarrassment. Since we are all into Brown, why not be frank about Brown’s flaws? Yes, subjectivity is inevitable but here goes …</p>

<p>1) The small endowment. Whether its a mere numbers race to see who amasses 20 billion or a sum that affects quality of teaching and life, it is undeniable that our endowment is very small for an Ivy. Why? Stingy alumni or lack of campaigning? (bar Boldly Brown)</p>

<p>2) Food. I don’t know true this is but it seems many people are griping about campus food, especially the Ratty’s. How bad is it really?</p>

2

<p>In measuring Brown's endowment, one should compare it to other schools with predominant undergraduate populations, such as Dartmouth or Princeton. The amount per student is more important than the absolute amount. Also, a lot of income can be generated from professional schools, such as law and business, that Brown doesn't have. This is not only from alumni of such professional schools but organizations and corporations with ties to them. In that regard, I personally would be very disappointed if Brown lost it's emphasis on undergraduate education, the quality of which is truly unique.</p>

<p>That said, here are a few possible reasons that the endowment is not as large as it can be:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Brown's national reputation is not as old as some of the other ivies. It only became a "hot" school in the late 70s early 80s after the new curriculum. By then, other schools had been generating income from old money (both literally and figuratively) for a long time. Other younger schools, like Cornell, Duke, and Vanderbilt, started out with very large endowments from wealthy industrialists. Again, these are all large universities with substantial professional schools, which generate a lot of money.</p></li>
<li><p>Brown attracts and nurtures kinds of students who develop careers where the main priority is not making money, who would indeed forsake lucrative careers to do something they are passionate about or think is important. I imagine many Brown graduates preferring to become public defenders, for example, rather than corporate lawyers, cancer research doctors rather than Hollywood cosmetic surgeons, academics rather than McKinsey consultants. As a result, Brown graduates are not as rich as they could be, and therefore may have less to give.</p></li>
<li><p>Brown also attracts and nurtures students who tend to go against the mainstream and have a bit of an anti-establishment, reactionary spirit. This is often coupled with an acute social consciousness. In this light, I imagine many Brown graduates deciding to give to other causes that need money more, or just more immediately, than Brown. (Although I've been giving consistently since graduating, I often wonder whether the money could be better used elsewhere. In the end I decide to give to Brown precisly because I believe that it continues to attract and nurture students who do do a lot of good in the world).</p></li>
</ol>

<p>In the end, what is true in life is true for Brown. Money, though important, is not everything. What Brown lacks in dollars it has in a wealth of human capital. And the question is, how much would Brown have to give up to prioritize increasing its endowment? Ultimately, I'm not sure the endowment should be seen as being a "negative" aspect of Brown. It could reflect something very positive.</p>

3

<p>Couldn't have said it better myself, Brown 1996. It is also interesting to note that despite the fact that our endowment is low compared to the Ivies, it's still 27th in the nation, and a good number of the schools ahead of us have significantly larger populations (even 4x greater in a few cases).</p>

<p>As for my negatives, I'll make a second post in a few mins as I discussed my negatives in another thread on CC from last year that I'm going to go find.</p>

4

<p>i<em>wanna</em>be_brown--
modest, i would be curious to hear the stuff that you think would be ridiculed on this board. The one problem I have with Brown atm is the school's reaction to the sexpowergod scandal last year. If Brown/the QA wanted to at least pretend sexpowergod still had some meaning, they wouldnt have cancelled it. O'Reilly accosted Brown for allowing it to occur on campus; however, if it weren't on campus it would be even more dangerous. Yes, 05s SPG had a record number of EMSings, but did anyone die? No, and that's because it was on campus where EMTs were readily available. Move it off campus, and I feel that you are increasing the risk of someone not getting the help they need. (also, don't make it a dry party, although I think that's because the QA doesnt want to deal with alcohol liability) I also feel that some of the actions taking to cut down on binge drinking are actually steps backward. The fact that class Fs are no longer $5 with unlimited drinks and must be $3 with $1 drinks only further promotes pre-gaming, the main aspect of drinking the university is trying to curtail. I also still dont see the logic behind the no kegs rule. With 30 racks of Genny Light being slightly less than $10 it's not hard to buy just as much beer as a keg party would have. Kegs would actually slow the distribution of beer at parties because right now, all you have to do is pop the tab and hand the can to someone, whereas a keg requires pumps and waiting for the cup to fill. Being an enviornmentally concerned school, why don't we allow kegs, which would cut down on the amount of cans that litter our campus and don't get recycled but should be. Cups would still litter the greens, but at least we would be removing the cans, which are obvious signs of drinking.</p>

<p>My response:
Those are things I agree with I<em>wanna</em>be, but the things I am referring to aren't even realistic policy changes, and are things that MAY have a more fundamental effect at Brown.</p>

<p>Basically, I do find it amazing however, that Brown can have such a sensible "drug" policy in some senses and totally screwup in others. I also think QA was very weak abou this, and it would be nice to see SPG limited to Brown Students (and RISD) with card readers much like The Underground, and if anything, close the party more to the public and continue to have it as is where it can be more affectively maintained. Ive heard from several sources that the increased EMSing is a direct result to increased EMT presense so that people were more effectively identified.</p>

<p>Another complaint that I hvae is the deal with the online registration. Despite the fact that the previous programmer of most of the databases was Polish, commented in Polish, and had *<strong><em>ty code, there is no excuse for spending this uch and being this delayed. I know far too much about computers and database management toknow that htis could have been done from scratch for less than they're gonna pay at this point and it would be faster. It's a symptom left over from poor decisions that plagued Brown from past presidents-- other examples include the Grad Center, which is a poorly planned dormitory moving away from apartment style which was becoming more popular even then, and was setup for anti-riot even though it was meant to house students in a private manner and wasn't designed as a social location-- this could have been done with better designs that i am srue were around at the time and could be afforded. I hate the *</em></strong>*ing about money at Brown-- though our endowment is small for the Ivy League there are certain small thigns that money can and should be spent on rather than sitting hte bank.</p>

<p>Another example is technology at Brown. There is no excuse for not having the entire campus wireless years ago, and I am sick of the talk of logistics and money-- this is an EASY task that's NOT expensive compared to many other endeavors on campus and while it's not a big deal or a priority issue, it's sad, pathetic, looks bad for the school, and puts us way behind even the largest schools with the least money. The decision to go with a cheaper smaller cable company results in the campus being wired with equiptment that can't handle the information currently being carried through coax across the country. This poor inital choice will now costs a whole lot of money if we're to ever get more than 25 channels, and it's not that I watch TV-- coax and fiber optics are the backbones of information sharing and there is no reason that ANY campus, particularlyone that charges as much as Brown shouldnt have the most up to date technology of anywhere in the world.</p>

<p>It drives me nuts that there is talk of food reforms being made as being incredibly expensive-- I understand it's mostly good enough, and not that big a deal, but truthfully, if they defer 250-500 dollars to student costs and take on 250-500 themselves the food would be SIGNIFICANTLY better, this isn't much if you ask me for something that affects the lives of students every day.</p>

<p>There are many very small (though I make them sound big here) complaints that really aren't a big deal when it comes down to it that just ticks me off. These are the types of complaints though I feel you'd have at any school, every campus always has some spending controversy over something.</p>

<p>Btw, none of those are the one's I referred to would get my head bitten off on CC, and they are all minor and I don't want to alarm anyone.</p>

<p>It stems from discomfort due to the tremendous ineffective bureaucracy that exists on many campuses. Student government is a joke, filled with self-congratualatory people who don't have any significant influence getting the administration moving on big issues and can only win smaller even less important battles, if that. People don't work with those that are directly making the decisions.</p>

5

<p>Btw, this was over the summer. I have had yet another semester's experience at Brown and have become much more aware of my university in that time. I haven't reread it to see what my response to this would be now, but FWIW, those were my impressions after a year at Brown.</p>

6

<p>the technology bit has improved a lot since then, hasn't it?</p>

<p>i'm fine with the endowments : in fact, i think there ought to be cap to the size of a school's endowment. yes, they earned it through shrewd investment, but for egalitarian reasons, 10 bil for a single school distorts the competition for bigger, better facilities and brand-name faculty.</p>

<p>what of the living conditions? i heard new pembroke is terrible.</p>

7

<p>Technology issues have somewhat improved, with wireless having been rolled out to almost all residence halls(I think Grad Center and Minden are the only two residences left). As for endowments-- I'm not for the capping of endowments for the purposes of competition, there are many areas of university competition that would be far more fair and realistic to attach, but let me put it to you this way-- I do think that Brown could use more from spending some of it's endowment rather than attempting to increase it for prestige purposes.</p>

<p>Living conditions are medium, much like food. There are some decent options for sure, there are some reasonable places to live, some terrible, some quite nice. The bottom line is that when Brown did most of it's building, the focus was on providing singles not apartments, so the majority of living is built around making it easy to access singles from sophomore year on, but quite difficult to get nice common space (even where there are common rooms the singles are far smaller) and private kitchens practically don't exist (there are probably 8-10 on campus, the rest are communal for a floor or even entire building).</p>

<p>Luckily, off campus housing is easy to get and affordable, and though it's hard to get permission early on, about 10% of juniors live off campus and about 75% of seniors live off campus. They are doing a lot to attempt to improve living on campus, but many of these changes won't be complete until 2010 or later.</p>

<p>FWIW, Brown is doing some AMAZING things. I have recently met with Ruth Simmon's architectural/building adviser about the future expansion of Brown and some of what is occurring on campus over the next 5-10 years is just unbelievable.</p>

8

<p>I haven't actually eaten much of the ratty food this year, being off meal plan, but I work in the Ivy Room, which operates out of the ratty kitchens, and talk to the Exec. chef and his assistants a lot, and honestly, I know I wasn't that satisfied with the food when I was on meal plan, but they really do try hard to make us the best food they can. They could easily order preformed burgers, but instead they grind their own beef, which is more effort and more expensive, but better quality. One thing a lot of people don't know is that some of the ratty recipes come from the visiting chefs they've had over the years, from places like Kabob'n Curry, and it's just that they don't work quite so well when blown up for thousands of people. It's true we don't have our own farm like Cornell, and our food could stand improvement, but I think we're doing the best we can with the budget the University gives us, and I for one would rather have that money put elsewhere.</p>

<p>That being said, my biggest complaint here is the interdisciplinary concentration programs. A lot of them are in the last years of existence (like Middle Eastern Studies), or are underfunded, lacking faculty, or the university won't fund faculty because the willing people are grad students. My friend in gender studies is a senior and almost could not finish her concentration because they dropped her senior seminar...she finally got into another seminar in a different department and had to get the course approved, but it wasn't what she wanted to study when she signed up to concentrate in gender studies. Another senior friend of mine in biomedical ethics is having similar problems. My friend who is writing a thesis in Middle Eastern Studies felt that she couldn't really disagree with her already-unwiling thesis adviser when picking her topic, because he could easily drop her thesis, and there is literally no one else who could advise her. Brown needs to support interdisciplinary programs!!</p>

9

<p>I understand a lot of that Rabo, actually, in reference to the Ratty trying, but I also realize other schools are able to do a better job, and I don't think the Ratty is atrocious, but our food is an area that could use improvement. I'll be off meal plan next semester, so it won't be an issue anymore.</p>

<p>I think the interdisciplinary programs is a legitimate complaint, but do realize how difficult it is to fund these fledgling disciplines, many of which are not truly interdisciplinary, but instead exist to fight against the "norms" that existed in the traditional disciplines which did not fairly look at issues. For instance, Middle Eastern Studies largely arose to give a Middle Eastern perspective to historical issues that were taught entirely from the perspective of "white" historians. Gender studies is another example of attempting to "fix" gender bias in history, sociology, and other fields. They are interdisciplinary because they seek to make the traditional disciplines vulnerable due to their inability to accept all cultures and perspectives in the past. As history, sociology, anthropology, etc begin to accept (as disciplines) many of the changes that the Civil Rights movement and current philosophy requires of them, these fledgling disciplines which never have fully established themselves (due to lack of time-- many of these disciplines are not even that well defined yet, nor do they have a core set of knowledge and ideology simply because there hasn't been time to develop one) are having a bit of an identity crisis. The majority of truly interdisciplinary study (which many of these departments take part in) is actually funded through centers seeking to bring together academics from various fields interested in the same issues. The existence of a Department for Africana Studies when the discipline of history begins to accept the African experience as a part of history as valid as any other comes into question. However, when sociologist, anthropologist, and historians come together to study issues of importance to Africa and Africans across the globe, they can do so in a well funded center which helps to find funding for these common interest and bring together the disciplinarians.</p>

<p>The other major issue is very few people are actually trained in these specific studies areas, they are instead, a part of another discipline (at least by training, such as history, sociology, and anthropology) and often just have research and academic interests/experience in fields that fit well into these alternative departments. What this results in is joint appointments where teaching and research responsibilities often side with both departments. However, with the future unclear for many of these departments (how much longer are some of these studies required and separate? Are they truly their own disciplines? Are they going to mature to that point? Will there be interest in the future in studying these areas?) the actual awarding of tenure typically occurs in the more traditional department. It's therefore necessary for professors to be more a part of their traditional fields, do service activities at the university related to those fields, research respected in those fields, and teach well in those fields in order to gain tenure. This means there is little to hold together the smaller disciplines in terms of camraderie and desire to work there and together-- professors with dual appointments are often steered away from work that is truly interdisciplinary, and they end up doing work that's primarily from the discipline of their training dealing with a subject in their "sub-appointment". Since the members of these departments are not even trained int he same discipline, this too serves to lessen coherent structure wihtin the discipline.</p>

<p>Anyway, like with the Ratty, challenges are greater than money.</p>

10

<p>About the "small" endowment: Per capita, Brown's somewhere in the middle of the Ivy League. Schools like UPenn and Columbia may have higher net worth, but they also have a ton of more students, whereas Brown is primarily full of undergraduates.</p>

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<p>What of the living conditions? Comparatively speaking. Which dorm is the worst?</p>

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<p>the santas on motorcycles...or the bearded old men on motorcycles. i'm not going to brown i just know that thayer has quite a few of those</p>

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<p>are you kidding me?</p>

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<p>I would say that New Pembroke is probably the worst place to be. Housing is fine, just limited really. Everywhere has major flaws for all their benefits-- Grad Center singles are larger than others, but there are no common rooms. New Dorm has a huge common room but there is no kitchen. Barbour has kitchens in the suites but often have doubles as well. Hegeman has small singles to make up for the common room and communal bathrooms. The list goes on...</p>

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<p>There are major plans to build new dorms - apartment style I think - but they won't be done for years. Housing is ok, there's not a whole lot that's great, but everything is liveable.</p>

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<p>Although it doesn't bother many people, having visited my friends at other schools (even ones with smaller endowments than us), I have to say our facilities in general are pretty lacking. The gyms aren't that great, we could definitely use more library space (there is no giant reading/study hall in the main library like at virtually every other campus), wireless is still pretty spotty in main areas, online registration lol, in general there are many "little things" needing improvement which are eschewed in favor of grand plans like "the Walk", and most importantly there isn't a real student center. Yeah we have Faunce, but really that just feels like any other building.</p>

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<p>A Student Center is something strongly discussed and debated when talking about the Walk. There was a time where a traditional student center was shunned by Brown's population, but now we seem to be more receptive (at least, that's my understanding).</p>

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<p>Who's psyched for online course registration next semester!? I'm actually not...from what I've heard, it just sounds confusing and it sounds like sophomores will get screwed in limited enrollment classes, but I'm sure I'm just hearing the downsides.</p>