Wednesday, October 29, 2003 by The Brown Daily Herald

W E D N E S D A Y OCTOBER 29, 2003

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXVIII, No. 102

An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891

www.browndailyherald.com

ResCouncil advocates more coed housing BY MONIQUE MENESES

Next semester’s housing lottery will offer an unprecedented number of coed suite options if the Office of Residential Life approves a proposal passed at ResCouncil’s Tuesday meeting. The five-page coed suite proposal recommends that “all suites in Minden, Barbour, Young Orchard, and the Graduate Center be designated optionally coed in the upcoming lottery.” The only suites currently available to coed groups are those in Vartan Gregorian Quad and Morris-Champlin, as well as a limited number on Wriston Quad. ResCouncil will “almost certainly” send the proposal to Dean for Campus Life Margaret Jablonski and ResLife today, said Jesse Goodman ’04, ResCouncil chair. “In my opinion, this recommendation will result in some level of expansion that will affect the lottery for next year,” Goodman said. Jablonski told The Herald she is in favor of offering a “reasonable amount” of coed suites and is open to recommendations from ResCouncil about the extent of these offerings. But, Jablonski added, she will not make a final decision about this year’s coed options until the Residential Life Committee, co-chaired by Goodman and Assistant Dean of Student Life Salvador Mena, submits a report on the result of last year’s lottery. The Committee will complete its report within the coming weeks, Jablonski said. ResCouncil’s proposal in favor of more coed suites cites council surveys that show more students would choose coed

Sara Perkins / Herald

When editor of the Daily News, Zimbabwean Geoff Nyarota was arrested on six occasions between 2000 and 2002. He received two death threats, his office was bombed and the paper's printing press was destroyed. Nyarota captivated a packed house in Wilson 102 on Tuesday night.

University faces labor charges BY MICHAEL RUDERMAN

The Laborers’ New England Region Organizing Fund has charged the University with condoning unfair labor practices stemming from an incident at the construction site for the new Facilities Management offices on Lloyd Avenue. According to a letter sent to President Ruth Simmons by Regional Organizing Director Nick Manocchio, the University hired contractors who, over the summer,

see RESCOUNCIL, page 7

CCC votes to keep GPA off transcripts BY ELLEN WERNECKE

Would you pay to keep your GPA a secret? The College Curriculum Council voted unanimously Tuesday not to recommend that grade point averages be added to official or internal transcripts in implementation of the new computerized registration and transcript system, despite an estimated $100,000 price tag. Dean of the College and CCC Chair Paul Armstrong said Vice President for Computing and Information Services Ellen Waite-Franzen quoted him the estimated price, which would include not only removal of GPA computation, but also changes to reflect the current tuition credit system. Armstrong called the current policy of GPA non-computation “a symbol of

the New Curriculum” and evidence that the University is a “wonderfully idiosyncratic place.” “As (Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry) William Suggs said at our last meeting, we’ve been wondering what the cost of the New Curriculum was,” Armstrong said, “and we found it.” “Not calculating the GPA is a small thing, but it’s a significant difference in a way that would be a shame to give up,” he added. Armstrong said, “It’s not a very large price to pay to signal we’re putting learning first.” “The GPA at Brown is meaningless,” said Associate Professor of sociology Ann Dill. “I don’t know any employer worth working for who will deny you an

interfered with workers’ rights by locking them into their job site during breaks, preventing them from meeting with union officials. The National Labor Relations Board has assigned an investigator to test the validity of the charges. Vice President for Administration Walter Hunter expects the investigation to conclude in a matter of weeks. “We’re pretty confident that the investigation will be thorough and impartial and conclude that the charges against Brown have no weight,” Hunter said. If the charge is upheld, the University could face fines and a possible order to cease and desist any unfair labor practices. The NLRB charge implicates the University and two non-union firms Brown hired — Cranshaw Construction, a contractor hired by the University, and D’Agostino and Associates, a masonry subcontractor hired by Cranshaw. The labor union accuses the University, and specifically Simmons, of inaction “to stop or change the offending behavior,” in the charge. The labor union cites the actions of the D’Agostino subcontractors as violating the National Labor Relations Act. “It’s pretty clear that Brown is not responsible for the actions of a subcontractor, under a contractor,” Hunter said. “We don’t have any control over the labor relations policies of a contractor’s subcontractor.”

Journalist discusses challenges to free press BY ZACH BARTER

During Geoff Nyarota’s tenure as editor-inchief of Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper, his office was bombed, his printing presses were destroyed and he was arrested six times. But through it all, the Daily News never missed an issue. Nyarota, now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, spoke about his career in journalism and challenges currently facing Zimbabwe before an over-capacity crowd of 130 students in Wilson Hall Tuesday night. Nyarota’s talk was the second in a series of lectures sponsored by The Herald and was co-sponsored by the Africa Group. After the government fired him from posts at two other state-controlled papers, Nyarota founded the Daily News on a shoe-string budget in 1999. “I had the sense that the people of Zimbabwe were totally disillusioned with the government media,” Nyarota said. “The Daily News became a runaway success almost from day one.” The Daily News quickly became Zimbabwe’s best-selling paper. But its criticism of President Robert Mugabe and efforts to expose corruption led to a gov-

see CCC, page 6 see UNION, page 6

I N S I D E W E D N E S D AY, O C T O B E R 2 9 , 2 0 0 3 UPenn students question newspaper’s “racially insensitive” crime coverage campus watch, page 3

Student sues Northwestern for failed grade and lack of diploma campus watch, page 3

No need to congratulate selves for listening like first-graders, says McAuliffe ’05 column, page 9

see ZIMBABWE, page 4

TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T Sarah Green ’04 says students, faculty and U. show some bias against transfers column, page 11

Volleyball picks up second league win against Big Green, but bleeds defeat with Crimson sports, page 12

rain/wind high 62 low 40

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

THIS MORNING WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 · PAGE 2 Coup de Grace Grace Farris

W E AT H E R WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

High 62 Low 40 rain/wind

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

High 63 Low 47 partly cloudy

High 59 Low 43 sunny

High 65 Low 49 partly cloudy

GRAPHICS BY TED WU

Three Words Eddie Ahn

MENU THE RATTY

V-DUB

LUNCH — Vegetarian Corn Chowder, Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini, Beef Tacos, Vegetarian Tacos, Refried Beans, Carrots in Tequila, Swiss Fudge Cookies, New York Style Cheesecake, Key Lime Pie

LUNCH —Vegetarian Mushroom Barley Soup, Split Pea & Ham Soup, Beef Enchiladas, Vegan Burrito, Vegan Refried Beans, Corn & Sweet Pepper Sautee, Swiss Fudge Cookies

DINNER — Vegetarian Corn Chowder, Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini, Italian Beef Noodle Casserole, Filet of Sole & Lemon RollUps, Baked Polenta, Vegetable Risotto, Beets in Orange Sauce, Broccoli Spears, Italian Bread, Swiss Fudge Cookies, New York Style Cheesecake, Key Lime Pie

DINNER — Vegetarian Mushroom Barley Soup, Split Pea & Ham Soup, Rotisserie Style Chicken, Spinach Quiche, Vegetable Risotto, Broccoli Cuts, Polynesian Ratatouille, Italian Bread, Key Lime Pie

Greg and Todd’s Awesome Comic Lance Rubin

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Ridicule 5 P.M. periods 9 Buffalo 14 There and back 16 Pick 17 Commodores chart-topper 19 Give off 20 Computer problem 21 Did a smith’s job 24 One on a force 26 Gets more benefit from 30 Porter and a king 32 Fly sky-high 34 Opera star 35 “For sure!” 37 Deere product 39 Give a thumbsdown to 40 Roy Orbison chart-topper 43 Support system? 44 Munich Mrs. 45 Change 47 Sofer of soaps 49 Aborigine of Japan 51 Rocky debris 52 __ out: eliminated ones 54 USNA grad 56 Door fastener 57 When doubled, a Samoan city 59 “__ Play Golf”: Tiger Woods book 61 Paula Abdul chart-topper 68 Actress Woodard 69 Kvetch 70 Cooks, in a way 71 1974 Gould/Sutherland film 72 Sgts., e.g.

5 Web site? 6 Big name in chips 7 Russert of “Meet the Press” 8 Gush 9 Supposed hiccups cure 10 Jewish scriptures 11 Charlottesville sch. 12 Prefix with day or week 13 Carry on, as a trade 15 Like nearly half the Sen. 18 Woes 21 H.S. subject 22 Roasted, in a way 23 Vet 25 17-, 40- or 61Across 27 Rat Pack leader 28 Shows clearly 29 What Kenny G plays 31 Peasant 33 An ex of Rita 36 Drive up the wall 1

I N A W E

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T A L K

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B I P E D H E L E N H U N T

E T T A E R T T H H E A A S W I T E R A M S O A S T I T I C M O A N T

S T R I D E T I D Y H B O

M U G O R O A I L N F L A B O L L A S H A L T A I L S O A C A N H E E L I R A E V Y C O E R N S E

A M O U R

F A S T T R A S C A K S H A D H A O P N T

My Best Effort Andy Hull and William Newman

T I L E

A D O S

E S A I

V I N E

W I S E R

S E E D Y

Hopeless Edwin Chang

10/29/03

xwordeditor@aol.com 5

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60 Like ironic humor 61 Terrif 62 Schnoz extender 63 D.C.’s __ Stadium 64 “Sho ’nuff” 65 Former govt. RR regulator 66 Sweater letter 67 French article

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: T A P E R

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Dirty Brown by Scott Yi & David Petruccelli 26

DOWN 1 A-Team muscleman 2 “Golly!” 3 Bad dog 4 Mired

38 Excites 41 Skater Babilonia 42 Divided state 43 Sis’s sib 46 Hardly nerdy 48 Current unit 50 Immoral 53 A-frame overhangs 55 Spiritual essences 58 Globes

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10/29/03

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CAMPUS WATCH WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 · PAGE 3

UPenn “crime wave” puts spotlight on campus reporting BY SARA PERKINS

A beginning-of-the-semester spike in on-campus crime at the University of Pennsylvania has focused criticism on the campus newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian. Students have criticized the independent paper for over-reporting crime in a racially insensitive manner and for running the name and photograph of an undergraduate accused of a sexual assault. The Pennsylvanian reported that there were 15 robberies on or near campus between Aug. 27 and Sept. 23. At Brown, only four robberies have been reported to the Department of Public Safety since Aug. 27, including one armed robbery on Oct. 26, according to Assistant Manager for Special Services Michelle Nuey. Students have told the Pennsylvanian that the paper’s coverage is “perpetrating a culture of fear around campus” and “demonizing west Philadelphia,” said Amy Potter, the executive editor of the paper. Students Quanisha Smith and Andrine Wilson wrote a guest column that appeared in the Pennsylvanian on Oct. 8, in which they accused the paper of sensationalizing its crime reports to get readership. “Individuals’ current racial and class prejudices are only going to be justified and reinforced by the prevalence of these articles,” they wrote. Smith and Wilson also set up an open Internet discussion group at Yahoo.com called “Be About It” to continue talks of race and crime coverage at the university. The articles that sparked the most criticism concerned a dormitory sexual assault. In the early morning of Sept. 28, a female student reported she woke up to

find a male intruder fondling her, according to the Pennsylvanian. University police reported they had made an arrest in the case on Sept. 30. After learning that an African-American sophomore in the Wharton School had been arraigned for the assault, the Pennsylvanian printed his name, class year and a smiling photograph of him on Oct. 2. The accused was a resident of the same dormitory as the victim, Harnwell College House. The next day, the headline “Harnwell residents exercise caution; emails sent throughout dorm reminded students to lock doors” ran next to his grim mug shot. Participants in an Oct. 3 rally at a Fox News broadcast on campus took issue with what they perceived as a lack of sensitivity to race in the Pennsylvanian’s coverage. “For a large part of American history, the connotations of a black male have been lock your doors, clutch your purse,” UPenn senior Darcy Richie told the Pennsylvanian. “It’s so blind to then put on the front page an image of a black man next to the words ‘lock your doors.’” Other students also felt the accused student’s reputation would be damaged before he was proven guilty. “By posting one’s picture and name in the paper, it socially implies that one is guilty,” Smith and Wilson wrote. Potter defended the paper’s right to print the photos. “We’ve listened to what the community has offered us as feedback. Whether we agree with it or not, we’re going

Northwestern student sues over grade BY SARAH LABRIE

A former Northwestern University student who was denied his diploma because of a failing grade has pressed charges against both the university and the assistant professor that issued the grade. Anton Rozenbaum transferred to Northwestern in 2000. He was scheduled to graduate with the class of 2002 when a dispute over a biology exam during the winter quarter of that year led Assistant Professor Erik Sontheimer to accuse Rozenbaum of cheating. Rozenbaum claimed in his lawsuit that the failing grade resulting from Sontheimer’s accusation kept him from graduating and will prevent him from going to graduate school. He is suing for more than $50,000 in damages, as well as his diploma. He also wants the original grade placed back on his transcript and other academic records, the Chicago Tribune reported. The conflict arose from a meeting between Rozenbaum and Sontheimer, his biology professor, in May 2002. Rozenbaum stated in court documents that, after receiving a B-plus on his biology exam, he scheduled the meeting “to better understand the material” and that he took notes on the test during his discussion with Sontheimer, according to The Daily Northwestern. Rozenbaum admitted he had previously questioned Sontheimer’s grading policy, but denied requesting his grade be changed. According to court documents, Sontheimer lowered Rozenbaum’s grade from a B-plus to an F, claiming Rozenbaum tried to change his answers after

see UPENN, page 4 see GRADES, page 4

PAGE 4 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2002

UPenn

“I don’t even feel like

continued from page 3

we should have to say

to listen,” she told The Herald. At the beginning of the semester, crime reporting was, unfortunately, a large part of the Pennsylvanian’s coverage, she said. Since then, the crime rate has fallen, and, in turn, so has crime reporting. “I don’t even feel like we should have to say that we have racial understanding,” she said. “We had no malicious intentions with anything we ran. “(But) it’s worthwhile to go back and figure out why they would say that (we lack racial understanding),” Potter added. “Maybe there’s something we can fix.”

that we have racial

Herald staff writer Sara Perkins ’06 is the photo editor. She can be reached at sperkins@browndailyherald.com.

racial understand-

Zimbabwe continued from page 1 ernment crackdown. “It became a challenge for journalists to work in Zimbabwe,” Nyarota said. “(The government) wanted all these issues to be swept under the carpet, and the independent press refused to comply.” The government responded to the allegations by portraying the paper as the mouthpiece of Western interests, Nyarota said, “as if Africans do not have the capacity to think for themselves, as if an African with an empty stomach needs George Bush to tell him he’s hungry.” Nyarota was dismissed from his position in December 2002. Fearing for his safety, he fled to South Africa and was offered to be a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Nyarota’s fellowship and visa end in December, and he said he does not know what he will do after that. The Daily News has since been forced to shut down as a result of its refusal to register with the government under restrictive new media laws. Although the nation is suffering under Mugabe, change must ultimately come from Zimbabweans themselves, Nyarota said. “I think it will come. The peo-

Grades continued from page 3 the test had already been scored in order to receive a better grade. Rozenbaum met with Craig Bina, associate dean of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in June to counter Sontheimer’s accusation. Court documents imply Bina refused to believe Rozenbaum, stating he felt “it was unlikely that a professor would lie to him as a result of this argument and usually it was the students that lied to get extra points,” The Daily reported. In the lawsuit, Rozenbaum

understanding,” she said.“We had no malicious intentions with anything we ran. “(But) it’s worthwhile to go back and figure out why they would say that (we lack

ing),” Potter added.

ple have their backs against the wall. They cannot retreat any more,” Nyarota said. When an audience member asked whether U.S. military intervention would solve the crisis, Nyarota said the role of the international community must be to prepare Zimbabweans for reconstruction following Mugabe’s departure from office. “Press here tends to concentrate on issues American, and sometimes they totally ignore the plight of millions of people in our part of the world,” Nyarota said. Following the lecture, Medicine Mavhondo ’07, who grew up in Zimbabwe, told the audience about the decay of the education system under Mugabe. “My fellow countrymen need help, in the education sector especially,” Mavhondo said. “If a Zimbabwean can have a broad mind, a liberal mind ... someday we will see the realization of the beautiful Zimbabwe I knew 10 years ago.” Audience member Chris Hu ’06 said the lecture made him realize how much Americans take a free press for granted. “In other parts of the world journalism is a very dangerous profession,” Hu said. “This sort of put it in perspective.” Herald senior staff writer Zach Barter ’06 can be reached at zbarter@browndailyherald.com.

accuses Northwestern of failing to follow university protocol by accepting the failing grade without the authority of a school provost. The university plans to deny all charges, according to Vice President of University Relations Alan Cubbage. “We believe the lawsuit to be without merit and we will defend the university and the professor vigorously in court,” Cubbage said. The date for the trial will be set at a hearing in February. Herald staff writer Sarah LaBrie ’07 can be reached at slabrie@browndailyherald.com.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

WORLD & NATION WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 · PAGE 5

Intelligence veteran criticizes agencies in Iraq WASHINGTON (L.A.Times) — The

newly retired head of the State Department’s intelligence arm said Tuesday the U.S. intelligence community “badly underperformed” for years in assessing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and should accept responsibility for its failure. The assessment by Carl W. Ford Jr., former assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, marked the first time a senior official involved in preparing the prewar assessments on Iraq has acknowledged that serious intelligence errors were made. The assessment by Carl W. Ford Jr., former assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, marked the first time a senior official involved in preparing the prewar assessments on Iraq has acknowledged that serious intelligence errors were made. Prior to the war, the intelligence community assessed that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons and that Saddam Hussein had restarted a nuclear weapons program. After nearly six months of occupation, no such weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq. The intelligence community “has to bear the major responsibility for WMD information in Iraq and other intelligence failures,” Ford, a Vietnam veteran who worked for years in U.S. military intelligence, the CIA and the Defense Department and retired Oct. 3, said in two interviews with The Times. “We badly under-performed for a number of years, and the information we were giving the policy community was off the mark.” Ford could not pinpoint what had gone wrong, but the question, he said, must be answered. The entire intelligence community—including Ford and the bureau he ran— should have done a better job of ferreting out the truth about Iraq’s capabilities, he said. The first step in improving the performance of the agencies, he added, is to admit error. “It’s sort of like the first step in a 12-step program,” he said. “You have to have that moment of clarity to realize that you’ve got a problem. We in the community have not yet accepted that we have a problem. The worst thing, for me, is we could do better. ... We can do far better with the people, the leadership and the money we’ve got. It’s the lost

opportunities I find troubling.” Ford’s comments contrast sharply with the defiant statements by other senior administration officials, including President Bush. At a news conference Tuesday, Bush defended the intelligence on Iraq and noted that much of it preceded his taking office. “We took action based upon good, solid intelligence,” Bush said. “It was the right thing to do to make America more secure and the world more peaceful.” CIA Director George J. Tenet has vigorously defended the community’s performance and disputed any suggestion that its prewar conclusions were wrong. Tenet has apologized for allowing discredited allegations about Hussein seeking uranium from Africa — supposedly for nuclear weapons — to be included in Bush’s State of the Union address. But recently, agency officials said that an exhaustive internal review nearing completion validates their work on Iraq and has yet to turn up any evidence that their prewar conclusions were flawed. Asked for comment on Ford’s remarks Tuesday, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said: “It is entirely premature to reach conclusions about the accuracy of prewar judgments about the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction efforts. The difficulty in locating highly compartmented, secret weapons programs in a country that was extensively bombed and looted should not be underestimated.” Harlow said that while the agency awaits the conclusions of David Kay, the chief U.S. weapons hunter in Iraq, who is writing a report on his findings, “we continue to believe that the work of the intelligence community on Iraq WMD was solid.” Contrary to charges by some critics that the administration politicized the intelligence, Ford argued that the intelligence community — a collection of agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and Ford’s bureau at the State Department — cannot blame its failure on pressure from the administration. Analysts “are trained almost from birth” how to deal see IRAQ, page 7

L.A. Times

A firefighter, near Lake Arrowhead, turns away from the heat.

Wildfire heads toward arrowhead LOS ANGELES (L.A. Times) — An unrelenting wildfire jumped a fire line Tuesday in the San Bernardino Mountains and headed toward Lake Arrowhead, devouring homes and diseasewracked forests in its path. Downcast fire officials said they appeared to be losing their battle for the alpine resort region. The blaze, potentially catastrophic, was just one of several major fires that have burned close to 900 square miles of Southern California in the past week, leaving 16 people dead and destroying at least 2,000 homes. Others raged from Ventura County to Mexico, forcing tens of thousands of additional evacuations and threatening communities, including the Stevenson Ranch subdivision in northern Los Angeles County. Fire destroyed most of the hamlet of Cuyamaca in the Cleveland National Forest east of San Diego, authorities there said. A shift in the weather brought cooling marine breezes to sootcaked fire crews, helping arrest some fires, but fanning others in new and treacherous directions. As exhausted firefighters struggled to gain some measure of control over the fires, the head of the U.S. Forest Service sounded downhearted. “It isn’t getting better yet,” Dale N. Bosworth said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in Sacramento. “It’s pretty grim.” Smoke filled the skies throughout much of Southern California, turning the sky a range of otherworldly colors from a putrid grayish yellow to salmon pink. Close to the fires, eyes stung, lungs ached. Residents of threatened communities, many of whom moved to the fringe of wilderness to escape urban stress, were confronted with life-and-death decisions and wrenching heartache. In the town of Running Springs, along Rim of the World Highway between Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear, local

fire Battalion Chief Ben Wilkins was besieged with telephone calls from anxious residents who had evacuated and wanted status reports on their homes and properties. Wilkins, who recently bought a 3-story log home in Running Springs, was sympathetic but frank. “I fully expect to lose my home today,” he told the callers. “That’s the reality of the whole thing,” he said. “But I’ve got insurance, and I’ll rebuild. Our main concern is that no one loses their life here.” Besides threatening homes, the fire at Stevenson Ranch endangered the Old Glory Oak tree, where an activist spent 71

days nearly a year ago in an effort to save the tree from a road-widening project. “It’s gonna be gone,” said Nathan Gonzales, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department. In Washington, House and Senate negotiators tentatively agreed to provide $500 million in emergency funding to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency respond to the California wildfires, as well as to Hurricane Isabel. The spending was proposed by Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., who called it a “down payment” on the amount that will be needed to repair and rebuild.

Outburst from sun headed for earth (Washington Post) — One of the strongest geomagnetic storms in years will hit Earth Wednesday at midday with potentially disruptive effects on spacecraft, satellite communications, electrical power grids and pipelines, according to space weather forecasters and solar scientists. A gigantic solar flare exploded from a sunspot on the sun’s surface Tuesday at 5:54 a.m. EST, blasting energy and matter into space and sending billions of tons of hot gas and charged particles straight toward Earth at almost 5 million mph. When the storm gets here, it will cause a rapid global change in the magnetic field, scientists said, setting the stage for effects ranging from possible power grid shutdowns to cell phone outages and dazzling displays of northern lights in the skies farther south than usual. Larry Combs of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., said the geomagnetic storm will be much more severe than two others that reached Earth in the last five days. The storm, which will likely last 18 to 24 hours, will periodically reach the highest level on NOAA’s space weather scale, Combs said in a telephone interview. The solar outbursts have already caused a series of radio blackouts, including a pronounced one Tuesday morning that resulted from what one scientist called “the strongest flare we’ve seen in the past 30 years.” The blackouts, which primarily affect aircraft traveling at far northern or southern latitudes, could continue for weeks, scientists said. The solar eruption is “headed straight for us like a freight train,” said John Kohl, a solar astrophysicist at the HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. Two similar eruptions — known as coronal mass ejections — that swept past Earth in recent days “hit with only a glancing blow.” Managers of satellites and utilities were taking protective actions to mitigate possible power surges.

PAGE 6 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2002

CCC continued from page 1 interview because you won’t give them a meaningless number,” she said. Professor of Biology Jonathan Waage said GPA computation has always been difficult at Brown because of the University’s policies on Satisfactory/No Credit courses and the dropping of No Credits from student transcripts. “We recognized (with the formation of the New Curriculum) that this issue would always be with us,” said University Registrar Michael Pesta, adding that the Enterprise system’s capability to calculate the GPA internally should not distract the University from its principles. “The registrar does not have an open GPA, a hidden GPA or any GPA,” Pesta said. “If we’ve got one and we display it and say it doesn’t matter, that creates conflict,” he said. “I have a number of students who come from institutions where a GPA is not computed,” said Senior Lecturer in education Eileen Landay. “Brown has a rep-

utation of being willing to admit students on criteria besides grades and GPA,” she said. Despite the unanimous recommendation, some committee members developed sticker shock. Samuel Brenner GS said most graduate students’ response to paying for non-computation was one of “indignation.” “Students don’t necessarily share that view that $100,000 is not a lot of money,” Brenner said. Chief among issues related to GPA computation was the effect of the current policy on students seeking jobs or other positions for which a GPA may need to be provided. Waage suggested the Career Development Office provide documentation to employers on non-computation. “Students do calculate the GPA on their own,” he said, “but you can get a 4.0 very easily by taking all but one or two courses S/NC.” Jordan Elpern-Waxman ’04 suggested Brown communicate better to employers that official non-computation is a Brown policy, not an individual choice. “Employers think a résumé without a GPA means that the applicant is hiding something,” he said.

Committee members agreed students would still be allowed to calculate GPA for outside purposes, but that they would recommend the University not compute the GPA. “Everyone who needs to calculate a GPA will do so,” Brenner said. Later at the meeting, Pesta unveiled his proposed new schedule of standard meeting times. Pesta said a current classroom crunch and the impending faculty increase under the Initiatives for Academic Enrichment caused his office to re-evaluate the current schedule. Of the 165 rooms available on campus, Pesta said only 98 are under the control of the Registrar, with individual departments, libraries and laboratories controlling the remainder. The University used to trade with departments for space, he added, until it realized “the spaces we got were never as good as the spaces we gave out.” “Often we have 80 or 90 rooms being used at the same time,” Pesta said. “We’re pretty much maxed out then.” Often, faculty demands determine the course schedule, including requests for more classes that meet twice weekly and fewer Friday classes, Pesta said. He said he had to turn down applications for I hour (10:3011:50 a.m.) and J hour (1-2:20 p.m.) classes for this semester due to a lack of space. “Everyone wants to teach Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.,” Pesta said. “I know you can have your pick of classes at eight in the morning,” he added, noting that many of Brown’s counterparts in the American Association of Universities, an exclusive group of Category I research universities, offer 7:30 a.m. classes. “There’s lots of pressure not to have afternoon classes because of athletics,” Pesta said, “and once-a-week seminars that conflict with graduate students’ colloquia.” Under Pesta’s new schedule,

an additional block would be added to Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and the existing 50minute blocks on Monday and Wednesday afternoons would be converted to two 80-minute blocks. Seminars would meet 4 to 6:20 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 1 to 3:20 p.m. Friday. “Over the next few years, we need to find more smaller classrooms for more smaller classes,” Pesta said, “assuming I’m not getting a new building with 50 classrooms. The faculty is growing faster than the infrastructure,” he said. Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor for the President Richard Spies, who attended the meeting, said there are “no clear advocates” for new classroom space, but the administration is still aware of the need. “We talk about space every time we renovate or talk about a new building,” Spies said, adding that the administration was “constantly” looking into dualuse spaces that could be classrooms by day and study or meeting spaces by night. Professor of Computer Science Steven Reiss expressed concern about the elimination of two 50-minute blocks “CS students stay up half the night,” he said. “The earliest we could get students (for a nonrequired course) is 11 a.m.” Brenner suggested graduate students would be happy with more evening seminars, although they might conflict with undergraduate events. Wagge said the real issue was not the number of rooms available, but keeping those rooms in usable condition. “We have unbelievably archaic teaching facilities,” he said. “If the room isn’t dark enough (to show slides) or if students are falling asleep because it’s 96 degrees in the room, that’s a very difficult academic problem.” Herald senior staff writer Ellen Wernecke ’06 can be reached at ewernecke@browndailyherald.c om.

Union continued from page 1 Will Collette, strategic researcher for the union, said the charges were brought against the University to pressure the school into hiring only union contractors. The charge focuses on the events of July 31, 2003, which Collette characterized as “the climax of a summer’s worth of abuse.” On the day in question, union representatives approached the construction site and attempted to speak to construction workers about “the benefits of joining the union,” Manocchio wrote in a letter to The Herald. The union members found that the gate to the job site was locked before their arrival. The union interpreted this as a “lock-in” of the 20 workers at the Facilities Management building project. According to Hunter in a letter he wrote to Manocchio, the gate was locked to prevent anyone from entering “the work site without permission, without hard hats, and without checking in at the job trailer. … There is no reason for the Laborers’ organizers to enter construction sites; they would be trespassing and exposing the contractor to significant liability when they do so.” “A construction site is not open to the public. It’s a dangerous place,” Hunter told The Herald. The union also alleges that D’Agostino manager Paul Costa threatened to “set up a worker lineup to see who supported the union and who did not,” according to the charge. If a worker had sided with the union, Costa allegedly threatened to fire the worker on the spot. The lineup did not take place. The contractors hired by the University are accused in union flyers distributed around Providence of employing day laborers who are not given appropriate rights on the job site. These temporary workers were hired from Labor Ready Inc., which Manocchio characterized as “one of the most notorious and predatory temporary employment agencies in the country” in a letter to Simmons. The union spread flyers accusing the University of unfair labor practices, including preventing the D’Agostino workers’ right to organize. The flyers contained images of prisoners behind bars, black protesters during the civil rights movement, and Simmons’ head shot. Collette said the union attempted to meet with Simmons on repeated occasions, but she would not talk to them. “Why (Simmons) would allow these injustices to take place in her own institution, her own backyard, and not talk to us is a mystery,” he said. “I thought with her history and reputation, she would appreciate the injustice being done to these immigrant workers. I guess I thought wrong,” Manocchio wrote in a press release. Simmons did not return an email seeking comment. The University awards the majority of its construction work to union contractors and does not foresee changing these practices in the near future, Hunter said. Herald staff writer Michael Ruderman ’07 can be reached mruderman@browndailyherald.com.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 7

Volleyball

ResCouncil

continued from page 12

continued from page 1

Head Coach Diane Short laid out the key to a successful season for Brown. “We need to play great defense and we need to be a strong serving team,” Short said. “Anytime that we can minimize our errors plays a big role in winning. We did serve very well, so that helped out a lot,” Gibbs said. “We minimized our errors — that was the most important part of that game.” Bruno was not able to repeat its success against Dartmouth the next day against Harvard, although the team came out fighting, winning the first game 30-22 and battling throughout the second in a 27-30 loss. But the second game shifted momentum in favor of the Crimson, and Brown dropped the last two games, 23-30 and 24-30. “I think during Harvard we beat ourselves,” Gibbs said. “It wasn’t really anything that they did. It wasn’t that they were too powerful; it was just that after the second game we couldn’t bring it back together.” Elvina Kung ’05 led the team defensively, coming up big with 28 digs. Highlund also had a great game, bringing her to third for career digs in the Brown record books. “I think that the team is doing awesome defensively,” Gibbs said. “Our blocks still need some work, but as far as digging goes in the back Kim (Highlund) and Elvina (Kung) are picking up pretty much everything that the other teams’ offenses have to throw at us.” Gibbs led the offense with 20 kills and three blocks. Kuchenbecker had another double-double with 15 kills and 10 digs. Phenom Cvitan added 11 kills and four blocks, and Martin had 54 assists in the loss. After their mixed success last week, the Bears will face the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton at home this weekend, two matches that will likely determine if they close out the season well or sink back into the abyss. “I think that with a young team, it takes time and it takes practice, and we’ve been working hard,” Gibbs said. “Everybody, with this practice, is becoming more confident.”

housing if it were available. In last year’s lottery, no mixed-gender groups with sophomores were able to select coed housing, according to the proposal. As a result, the housing selection process failed “to encourage friendships between individuals of different genders, both in the dorms and on the rest of campus,” ResCouncil argues in the proposal. According to the proposal, one of the limits on coed housing options has been administrators’ concerns about creating coed bathrooms in Minden, Young Orchard, Barbour and Grad Center. In response, ResCouncil’s proposal suggests that students who choose to live in coed environments do so with the understanding they will share bathrooms with members of the opposite sex. ResCouncil has also expressed

Herald staff writer Kathy Babcock ’05 covers volleyball. She can be reached at kbabcock@browndailyherald.com.

Iraq continued from page 5 with political pressure to tailor their conclusions to bolster policymakers’ views, Ford said in two lengthy telephone interviews. “We push back on political pressure and the only problem is when there’s a weasel in the intelligence community who does not have the backbone (to stand fast) and starts giving the policymakers what they want to hear.” Ford said, he suspected there may have been such “weasels,” analysts who succumbed to the very human temptation to find evidence to support the prevailing political view. But if so, Ford said, he does not know who they are. “I certainly wouldn’t say that key members of the intelligence community leadership that I worked with were weasels,” Ford said. Nevertheless, “When you have policymakers going astray as they did on Iraq, the principal problem has to be with intelligence. If somebody gives them bad information, nothing but bad can happen after that... and the intelligence community gave them bad information.”

concerns that coed suites will compromise the summer waitlist, since students cannot be placed in them without their consent. To resolve this problem, the proposal suggests adding a checkbox to the summer waitlist contract giving students the option of accepting coed housing. This option may actually alleviate in part the “artificial shortages” that result from ResCouncil’s current coed housing policy, according to the proposal. Goodman said, after the meeting that students in search of coed housing next year have something to be optimistic about, despite the University’s past reluctance to expand coed housing options. “The University is completely failing in this respect,” he said. “It has been dragging its feet for a long time.” Herald senior staff writer Monique Meneses ’05 can be reached at mmeneses@browndailyherald.com.

Though there were dissenters whose views were ignored, Ford said, “the majority view prevailed, and that (view) was wrong.” The Bureau of Intelligence and Research, known as INR, functions as an independent intelligence analysis agency inside the State Department. Unlike the CIA or most other agencies, it does not have employees, satellites or sensors collecting raw intelligence. But it does have its own experts on regions and issues who perform separate analysis on information gathered by others.

the brown daily herald L E C T U R E

S E R I E S

c o - s p o n s o r e d b y t h e s a r a h d o y l e w o m e n’s c e n t e r

“Cracking the Code: Journalism in a World of Secrets” Marie Brenner talks Reporting Currently a writer-at-large for Vanity Fair, Brenner was a staff writer at The New Yorker and a contributing editor at New York. Her work has appeared extensively in Vogue. Her explosive article on Jeffrey Wigand and the tobacco wars, one of the longest and most compelling reports in Vanity Fair’s history, became the basis of the1999 feature film, The Insider, starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. Her investigation into the Enronscandals made national news when Senator Peter Fitzgerald used it to question witnesses testifying before a Senate committee. “The Enron Wars” will be a film, which Sydney Pollack will direct. Brenner is the author of five books, including the New York Times extended paperback bestseller, Great Dames: What I Learned From Older Women, and the best-selling House of Dreams: The Binghams of Louisville.

Thursday, November 6 Carmichael Auditorium 7:30 p.m

PAGE 8 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2002

Kobe continued from page 12 doesn’t seem so important. For mostly the wrong reasons, the Lakers are the story of the NBA season. And Jackson, who it always appears can quiet the stormiest waters, isn’t so certain about the ship as it prepares to set sail. “It’s a role that’s totally uncharted,” he said Friday night, before the latest Shaq-Kobe dustup. “This one is filled with all kinds of things that could go on and a whole lot of suspicions and hopes. We could be anything from a team that could win 65, 70 games to a team that could implode in some ways. I don’t think we will, but that’s my optimistic viewpoint.” And it’s increasingly possible that this will be the last season that Jackson, or whoever is coaching the Lakers, will field a team with Shaq and Kobe on it. When a player as savvy as Bryant says he wants to test free agency, it’s not an academic pursuit. He wants to see what other teams are interested and what he can cook up somewhere else. A lot of folks think that somewhere else is Memphis, where Jerry West, whom Bryant admires greatly, runs the show. But of course the field is going to expand. Who wouldn’t move heaven and earth to try to get Bryant? Presuming he is free to play after his trial, Bryant can go anywhere he wants; maybe a new start will be exactly what he needs. He’s got three championship rings, so it’s not like he needs another right away to val-

And then, Shaq and Kobe will have what each claims he wants, no matter that neither has won a championship without the other. But for now, they’ve got to deal with this mess they’ve created. idate his career. Any team he’s on is an instant contender, just the way Michael Jordan made any team an instant contender when he was 25 years old. And Kobe, just 25, can play someplace where he doesn’t have to acquiesce to Shaq’s wishes. What, Kobe couldn’t go to Phoenix or Atlanta? Kobe couldn’t go someplace and team up with the suddenly available Pat Riley? And then, Shaq and Kobe will have what each claims he wants, no matter that neither has won a championship without the other. But for now, they’ve got to deal with this mess they’ve created. Without question, Bryant isn’t in the kind of shape, coming off knee and shoulder surgery, to launch jumpers and play his usual acrobatic style. So Shaq is 100 percent right in his initial criticism, that Bryant needs to use his teammates more until he’s fit. And Shaq clearly resents that Kobe, already perceived by even his peers as aloof and selfcentered, put the team in this circus position in the first place. ButShaq could have and should have just let Kobe’s comments slide this once. If

Kobe is agitated and hypersensitive, shouldn’t Shaq understand this one time? Shaq is there every day at practice and in the locker room, and he knows what pressure Kobe is under. Shaq, like the rest of us, heard Kobe say that every day is a bad day, as he awaits a trial that could land him in prison. Shouldn’t Shaq have been a better teammate and called Kobe in privately and set him straight, instead of telling him publicly to get out? The Lakers, with Jackson at the wheel, have a way of getting back on course, of fighting one day and hugging the next and not really suffering any great repercussions. And with Malone and Payton excited about the prospect of winning that elusive NBA championship, perhaps this is just one more squabble that Shaq and Kobe can put to rest when the lights are turned on tonight and there is an opponent on a basketball court. But with each outburst, it’s beginning to feel more and more serious, as if they genuinely don’t want to play with one another, that what we’re about to watch, instead of being a prelude, is quite possibly a finale.

WXC continued from page 12 New England Championships two weeks ago, when they won the meet for the first time in Brown’s history. Brown followed the win with a runner-up finish to Yale at last weekend’s CCRI Invite. The Bears were competing with a squad of one sophomore and four freshmen. The team was led by the third-place finish of Madeleine Marecki ’07. Marecki’s time of 19:31 was her fastest 5K ever. In the race, Wemple assigned each of the five runners to a specific Yale athlete. By matching up individuals, Wemple said he hoped one-on-one victories would translate into a team victo-

Perlmutter continued from page 12 mary nurse and then return to the dugout. We know how this story ends, and now we also know how Grady’s tenure with the Sox ends. It was almost as if Grady’s Game 7 mishap was a sign from the gods — no matter what it seems the Sox will achieve, old school Grady won’t be the man to take them there. Game 7 completely epitomized the conflict, on the grandest and most costly of scales. The bottom line is that every

ry. The Bears, however, came up short and lost to Yale by three points. Wemple said he was not discouraged by the outcome of the race strategy and plans to use it again in the Heptagonal Championships. “It is Yale that we will be racing again, but for third place this time,” Wemple said. “We’ll have to win the individual battles. Even though we lost at CCRI, it was very close and illustrates how one person can make such a big difference.” The Heptagonal Championships will be held at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City on Oct. 31. Herald staff writer Melissa Perlman ’04 can be reached at mperlman@browndailyherald.c om.

statistically unsound move Grady makes goes a little way toward undermining a statistically sound team. The sabermetric ideology is here to stay, at least for the next several years, and, in this respect, Grady Little was a clear misfit in the organization in this respect. So was he released because of his Game 7 performance? The answer is yes — but only because what happened there represented much more than just one decision. Eric Perlmutter ’06 hails from Chappaqua, N.Y., and he promises this is his last column on the Red Sox until spring training … maybe.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

OPINIONS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 · PAGE 9

The final word on Horowitz Last week’s lecture should make us wonder why conservatives have to defend their right to speak here AFTER EXHIBITING RELATIVELY GOOD of thoughts and opinions is not important see its adherents as slightly strange, defec- “diversity,” Allen’s shallow public probehavior at last week’s lecture by David to universities, they may as well close down. tive or possibly evil. What happened in the nouncements on “good” and “bad” ways to Horowitz, Brown students, faculty and David Horowitz’s purpose last Wednesday spring of 2001 proves that an examination of think are an unacceptable abuse of her posiadministrators have been quick to congrat- was to prove how lacking Brown is in this this phenomenon is not simply academic. tion. I await her apology on behalf of any ulate themselves. The collective campus crucially important ideal. His method was Just last week, at the interracial dating student who found some value in David monologue of self-praise over the past few to advance mainstream conservative and forum, one panelist claimed Brown is not a Horowitz’s speech. Essentially, Brown has evolved very little days has seemed to articulate something classical liberal critiques of the issues about “safe space.” His reasoning? “Because of akin to “we suffered intolerable provocation which the prevailing dogma at elite schools David Horowitz, because of the College since the infamous Herald theft. True, the at the hands of a controversial, racist, war- is most intractable: the politics of race and Republicans.” Thankfully, another panelist Horowitz event went down without any chided him for these remarks, but it remains serious disturbance, but the entire commumongering madman, yet we are so intellec- gender. The fact that many students and admin- true that large subsets of the Brown com- nity had pretty much been “called out” by tually mature that we chose not to riot, wet ourselves, abscond with school papers or istrators were so aghast at Horowitz’s widely munity persist in turning the University into the College Republicans to behave decently commit other various felonies. Are we not a held opinions on such matters proves not a political party that recognizes protections in the presence of some of the highest-rankthat he is an extremist, a racist or any other for designated victim groups, while remaining members of the Brown administration. model community?” No, actually, we are not. Even as epithet the intellectual elite would like to ing hostile to individuals who seek intellec- The fact that we can listen as politely as Horowitz was uttering his closing words, the hurl at him, but rather that Brown has failed tual creeds outside of the elite leftist ortho- most first graders does not call for self-congratulation. Rather, we must ponder why, aisles were filling up with students offering miserably in a centrally important aspect of doxy. Perhaps the most upsetting recent mani- when the ever-so-occasional conservative one insipid question after another, their pri- its academic mission. Why, as Horowitz mary unifying characteristic being a demonstrated incapacity for any sort of The fact that we can listen as politely as most first graders does not call for self-coninward examination. Indeed, much of the campus response in the following days congratulation. Rather, we must ponder why, when the ever-so-occasional conservative tinued the trend of conspicuously denouncing Horowitz as the mortal comes to speak at Brown, the issue seems always to be his or her right to be here. enemy of humankind. This is disasked, do we not have professors here festation of this psychology of fear was comes to speak at Brown, the issue seems turbing not because I, for a single who will provide critiques similar to Associate Provost and Director of always to be his or her right to be here. We minute, expect the entire Brown his own (and most likely make Institutional Diversity Brenda Allen’s must ask why Brown does not even community to fall in line behind more apt use of statistics)? Why appearance at a meeting of the Coalition for acknowledge its failure in the area of intelHorowitz’s ideology. Rather, are course reading lists loaded Social Justice. Allen paid the mandatory lip lectual diversity, even when ideologies with the response is upsetting in with Cornell West, Edward service to “intellectual diversity” before centuries of intellectual tradition and milthat it seems to have missed Said and Earl Ofari denouncing the Horowitz event as utterly lions of adherents are met with the same the entire point of his Hutchinson, while the worthless and “a waste of time.” Given kind of ignorance and fear that Joe appearance, which was Brown Bookstore stocks not Allen’s title, her remarks represent the pin- McCarthy may have shown to a Hollywood not about reparations, a single copy of books by nacle of inappropriate behavior for an communist. affirmative action, the christopher Maybe when David Horowitz’s harshest Thomas Sowell, Dinesh administrator, and the lack of a swift repriPatriot Act or any other mcauliffe mand reflects an astonishing double stan- critics bother to learn what a conservative D’Souza or Shelby Steele? policy position, so much live free When an entire intellec- dard. If, say, a Brown dean had offered that it actually is, their erstwhile intellectual masas it was about intellectuor die tual movement is so slighted was “a shame” that some students may have turbation will evolve into truly constructive al diversity. in elite culture, it is no surprise felt enlightened after a lecture by Al criticism. When this happens, their arguIntellectual diversity is that insiders should come to Sharpton, would Brown officialdom have ments will demand all of our engagement, not a partisan issue, nor is it remained so silent? As a and ideological exchanges at Brown may negotiable for any truly openminded individual. If diversity Christopher McAuliffe ’05 is, in fact, an optimist. director of unqualified once again breed true wisdom.

Facing our fear of intimacy with creativity An old-fashioned trial and error approach to love might just work Once I asked out a girl who told me she IN THE LAST THREE WEEKS I HAVE asked out six gorgeous women. All six women had too much baggage from a previous rejected me. “I would love to, but I’m cur- relationship to get involved with me. I invitrently dating someone.” Fair enough. ed her over and when she entered the room Unless you’re making it up, in which case I gave her two suitcases and asked her to stand there for a few seconds. Then I took you are just mean. I just don’t have the energy or time any the literal baggage from her hands and asked her if we could go out more. When I ask women out I now. She was a tad confused usually do it in some odd, with my intention, but after a funny, time-consuming way. JUDAH LAKIN GUEST COLUMNIST brief explanatory note of the This method usually stems from my own insecurities in verbal interactions, but they nonetheless seem very successful in pleasing the girl. My latest interest received a letter in the Rock. I had never talked to her before and I wrote her a little note that read something like the following: “I don’t know you, but you’re beautiful — truly gorgeous. I would come up and talk to you but I am rather socially awkward. I would shower you with other compliments but I don’t actually know you. Thanks. Judah — the awkward-looking white dude sitting behind you with an ARMY shirt on.” When she got up to go to the bathroom I placed the note on her book and sat back down. She ended up having a boyfriend but thought receiving the letter was truly “wonderful.” That is just one tactic, however. I called up an African-American woman friend of mine and without pausing, asked her, “Do you date white dudes?” That got a good laugh. Judah Lakin ‘04.5 hails from Cleveland, Ohio.

metaphor, I kissed her. I have taken a girl on a picnic consisting of a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke and M & M’s. Who doesn’t like diet soda and chocolate? Another time I was invited to dinner and thought I should bring wine. The problem is I don’t know anything about wine. Plus, it is so cliché — wine has no flair or personality. Instead, I showed up with 12 different candy bars and asked her to pick one, so instead of wine, I brought dessert. On a different occasion I wrote a rhyme for a girl and asked her to appear on the Main Green at noon where I rapped it for her. One time, I showed up at a girl’s door at 2:30 in the morning knocking very softly so as not to wake anyone up. After 20 minutes she finally appeared in her pajamas, where she was greeted by the question, “I was wondering if it would be too much of an inconvenience to kiss you?” I couldn’t sleep, what was I going to do? Why I am telling you these things? After all, it’s risky, since revealing my tactics may lessen their idiosyncratic effect. First of all, most of the ideas I come up with are rooted in the fact that I am inse-

cure. I come up with humorous/sweet things to do in hopes that girls will see past my awkwardness and appreciate the thought, and in turn appreciate me. These things tend to make women feel really good. You can see it in their eyes as they flirtatiously laugh at you or you can hear it

know you better. In the last few weeks, in spite of all my rejections, I have come to realize that I deserve a banging girl in every respect — physically, emotionally and intellectually. I won’t settle for less. I am not looking for cheap hook-ups or bullshit game playing. I

I find it highly unlikely that college kids can feel satisfied getting drunk and hooking up with random people every weekend. Something is missing. in their words as they tell you, “That made my day.” Great. Right? I want someone to make my day. I’m tired of pursuing girls. I’m tired of having conversations with women in which they confess to me that they would never ask out dudes — “It’s just weird,” they say. I’m tired of having to be the one who lays it out there and tries to make something happen. I want girls to come up to me — to leave me little notes, buy me chocolate or take my baggage away. If it makes you feel good, it probably would make me feel good. Aside from making a direct request for women to start creatively asking me out, I want to encourage women in general to become more active in the dating process — do not be a passive participant. If you like somebody, ask him out. Gentlemen will appreciate it and it will even the playing field. That said, guys, don’t assume if a woman asks you out that it is an invitation for a “free hook-up.” She might just want to get to

just don’t have the time or patience for it. I know most people probably feel the same way — they are just too scared or too nervous to admit it. Or maybe they think having a girlfriend/boyfriend is too much work (save the six girls I asked out, of course). I find it highly unlikely that college kids can feel satisfied getting drunk and hooking up with random people every weekend. Something is missing. So, this is a call to arms. Don’t settle for bullshit. Pursue your interests. Tell that dude at the Ratty sitting next to you that you think he’s cute. Buy him some chocolate and ask him out. It might not work but at the worst you will have a humorous story to tell to your friends. Girls need to become more active and guys need to become more creative. Make someone smile and laugh. You like doing those two things, don’t you? Go out there and make someone’s day — mine included.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

EDITORIAL/LETTERS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 · PAGE 10 S T A F F

E D I T O R I A L

Money well spent Is the New Curriculum worth $100,000? Many employers request a GPA on applications, and sample resumes at Brown’s own Career Services list GPA. But the CCC is doing the right thing when it shells out six figures to keep GPA out of the University. It’s a small price to pay in the short-run to protect our values as a University. While students today often look at college as one step closer to a job, this philosophy is in opposition to the University’s emphasis on pure intellectual growth. And as much as graduate programs focus heavily on grades, a quick look at one’s GPA should not be the way to admission. Though it is a small statement that a Brown student cannot be reduced to a number, keeping GPA out of the immediate picture forces one to look closer at the entire person reflected in the application. Although GPA takes up a single line on a transcript, its addition would represent one more chip away at the values of the New Curriculum that have been slowly fading as Brown students become more and more preprofessional. It becomes slightly easier to imagine adding class rank, pluses and minuses, a required class to the curriculum or a dozen other modifications that by themselves seem petty, but taken together transform Brown into something it vowed not to be 34 years ago. The counter-argument, of course, is that $100,000 is a lot to spend on purely ideological grounds. But when it comes to something that defines the University as an institution, that sum shouldn’t matter in the long run.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD EDITORIAL Elena Lesley, Editor-in-Chief Brian Baskin, Executive Editor Zachary Frechette, Executive Editor Kerry Miller, Executive Editor Kavita Mishra, Senior Editor Rachel Aviv, Arts & Culture Editor Jen Sopchockchai, Asst. Arts & Culture Editor Carla Blumenkranz, Campus Watch Editor Juliette Wallack, Metro Editor Jonathan Skolnick, Opinions Editor Philissa Cramer, RISD News Editor Maggie Haskins, Sports Editor Jonathan Meachin, Sports Editor

BUSINESS Jamie Wolosky, General Manager Joe Laganas, Executive Manager Joshua Miller, Executive Manager Anastasia Ali, Project Manager Jack Carrere, Project Manager Lawrence L. Hester IV, Project Manager Bill Louis, Project Manager Zoe Ripple, Project Manager Peter Schermerhorn, Project Manager Elias Roman, Human Resources Manager Laurie-Ann Paliotti, Sr. Advertising Rep. Elyse Major, Advertising Rep. Kate Sparaco, Office Manager

PRODUCTION Zachary Frechette, Chief Technology Officer Marc Debush, Copy Desk Chief Yafang Deng, Copy Desk Chief Grace Farris, Graphics Editor Andrew Sheets, Graphics Editor Sara Perkins, Photo Editor

POST- MAGAZINE Alex Carnevale, Editor-in-Chief Dan Poulson, Executive Editor Morgan Clendaniel, Senior Editor Theo Schell-Lambert, Senior Editor Micah Salkind, Features Editor Ellen Wernecke, Features Editor Abigail Newman, Theater Editor Doug Fretty, Film Editor Jason Ng, Music Editor Colin Hartnett, Design Editor

NICK SCHADE

LETTERS Deconstructing Herald coverage of whiteness forum asks environmental racist questions conference insufficient To the Editor:

To the Editor:

Re: “Students deconstruct the nature of whiteness,” Oct. 27. I was disturbed to read that the question “Does being white automatically make you racist?” was both proposed and contested. Only at Brown. That’s got to be one of the most absurd, racist and offensive opinions I’ve ever heard. In a similar vein, perhaps we should hold a forum entitled “Blacks: Aren’t they good at basketball?” or “What makes Asians excel in mathematics?” Webster’s says that racism is “discrimination or prejudice based on race.” Notice absence of the words “by white people” at the end, an omission with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Last weekend (Oct. 24-26) the Brown Environmental Action Network hosted a Northeast Environmental Conference, which was attended by over 100 students from 12 different schools and involved a full weekend of activities. Unfortunately, it was barely covered by The Herald. The conference, which was open to the entire Brown community and all students in the Northeast, involved 10 workshops on a range of topics; networking and coalition-building opportunities; lectures by environmental activists; and delicious vegetarian food. It was organized entirely by students and took a full year to plan. Nevertheless, despite BEAN’s efforts to inform the Herald prior to the conference, The Herald only made reference to the conference once, in its coverage of the conference’s keynote address by Ross Gelbspan (“Environmental journalist warns of pollution’s dire consequences at Saturday’s conference,” Oct. 27) and neglected to expound on the details of the weekend events or the conference’s connection with the Brown Environmental Action Network. As a newspaper by and for Brown students, The Herald has a responsibility to report such impressive student efforts to create change on campus, in the region and beyond, so as to encourage current and future student activism and to recognize the amazing outcome of collaborative student organizing at Brown.

Aaron Fritschner ’06 Oct. 28

Peter Henderson, Night Editor Marc Debush, Copy Editor Senior Staff Writers Zach Barter, Danielle Cerny, Dana Goldstein, Lisa Mandle, Monique Meneses, Joanne Park, Meryl Rothstein, Ellen Wernecke Staff Writers Kathy Babcock, Elise Baran, Hannah Bascom, Carla Blumenkranz, Robbie CoreyBoulet, Philissa Cramer, Ian Cropp, Sam Culver, Jonathan Ellis, Amy Hall Goins, Bernard Gordon, Krista Hachey, Jonathan Herman, Sarah LaBrie, Hanyen Lee, Julian Leichty, Kira Lesley, Allison Lombardo, Chris Mahr, Jonathan Meachin, Sara Perkins, Melissa Perlman, Eric Perlmutter, Cassie Ramirez, Zoe Ripple, Emir Senturk, Jen Sopchockchai, Adam Stern, Stefan Talman, Joshua Troy, Schuyler von Oeyen, Juliette Wallack, Jessica Weisberg, Brett Zarda, Julia Zuckerman Accounts Managers Laird Bennion, Eugene Clifton Cha, In Young Park, Jane C. Urban, Sophie Waskow, Justin Wong, Christopher Yu Pagination Staff Lisa Mandle, Alex Palmer Photo Staff Gabriella Doob, Benjamin Goddard, Marissa Hauptman, Judy He, Miyako Igari, Allison Lombardo, Elizabeth MacLennan, Nicholas Neely, Michael Neff, Alex Palmer, Yun Shou Tee, Sorleen Trevino Copy Editors Emily Brill, George Haws, Katie Lamm, Anne Rabbino

Deborah Lapidus ’05 Oct. 28

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

OPINIONS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 · PAGE 11

The unintended consequences of racial categorization SCANDAL ERUPTED LAST WEEK WHEN A higher education. California has an exten- money or, in some other way, a fast ticket descriptions from it show it may be, albeit confidential memo was leaked to the sive “State University” system (it includes to easy street is also stereotyping and hyp- unwittingly, exacerbating racial tensions. The event posed questions like “How do California press (a report meant for the schools such as Cal State LA) and the state ocritical. Assuming a person of any race, Regents of UC Berkeley’s eyes only) that university campuses provide extremely including white, automatically shares you contribute to whiteness?” and “What reported that hundreds of places were low-cost, high quality university educa- opportunities, or shares characteristics is the distinction between whiteness and offered in Berkeley’s class of 2006, and tion through the Ph.D. level. But, State besides humanity and skin color, is white people?” The questions insinuate that individuality may be less relevant for again in the class of 2007, to applicants University degrees do not have the “wow” ridiculous. During class discussions at Brown, I whites. We have to be careful because pinwith abysmal SAT scores (combined ver- factor that UC diplomas add to their bal/math scores starting at 601) and that graduate’s credentials. That factor derives sometimes find I have the urge to hang my ning characteristics on a race is part of several thousand applicants with scores to a large extent from the common per- head because I am white. The consensus how we got into this whole prejudice mess above 1400 were rejected. A few days later, ception that only California’s brightest seems to be that I, and others equally in the first place. Another part of the discussion “encourUCLA’s almost identical admission anom- students are offered the opportunity to melanin-challenged, must own up to a attend a UC. What happens to the wow, vileness and snobbish racism toward aged those in attendance to examine their alies also hit the papers. California banned affirmative action especially for minority students at the minorities that permeates each of us in the own racial prejudices.” Ironically, this from UC admission’s decisions several UCs, when their SAT scores are perceived womb, grows stronger through the years whole discussion seemed to further racial years ago, and though the leaked reports do to be lower? Certainly minorities will not and will continue to grow until we confess prejudice against whites by insinuating not themselves give racial breakdowns of be helped by a public perception that and lower our heads in shame, regardless that if they are white, they are racist. But the most potentially detrimental lower standards were applied to their of who any of us are as individuals. People the students in the controversial admits racial or ethnic group’s applications. who shared my skin color did horrible roadblock to eradicating racial prejudice and rejects, further research did deterBut there is another concern here, things to people who didn’t. It does not was this: “Special significance was placed mine the majority of the very low SAT too. It looks as if these admissions mean that I performed these actions or on the need for minorities and white peoscore acceptances were minorities, committees will give close scrutiny that I know anyone who did. It does not ple to be especially aware of latent racism raising suspicions that Berkeley and in daily conversation.” to characteristics and qualifica- make me rich — or racist. UCLA admission committees have This only encourages people to see As a matter of fact, it does not make me tions other than SATs if an applidone an end-run around the cant is a minority, but a white anything, except a girl who sunburns easi- prejudice where quite possibly there isn’t state’s affirmative action ban. applicant must perform at a ly. Everyone I know at Brown feels that any, and if people are constantly listening Although UCLA and high level on the SAT to be prejudice and racism should not exist. for it, how are we supposed to leave it Berkeley made these deciconsidered a viable candi- Unfortunately, it seems as though part of a behind? sions with nothing but Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of date, in a sense lumping widely accepted solution is vilifying a difhonorable intenwhites together. It seems ferent race. Problems develop when we equality and of people being judged tions, they may ultisociety’s antidote for assume anything about a person based based on their character. We look to his mately have done a healing one prejudice is solely on her skin color. We are all individ- words for inspiration. I cannot believe he disservice to those alexandra meant granting privileges to any one race sometimes to replace it uals. they most want to toumanoff and denying them to another. I read “Informal discussion centers on with another. help. The UCs offer what’s a girl Racism is never okay. While prejudice still racism, self-identification” (Oct. 28) in The But blindly and hypothe most prestigious gotta do? critically assuming that Herald yesterday, an article that described sadly clings like a sticky spider’s web to of California’s statewhites are blessed with the most recent event in Deconstructing some parts of society, re-directing it college degrees, but power, privilege, Whiteness Week. Quotations and the toward a different group is not what will they are not make it disappear. Assessing California’s only pubindividuals individually may. licly funded schools of Alexandra Toumanoff ’06 still believes we should burn avocados for fuel instead of oil.

Exploring bias against transfer students, part II LAST WEEK I WROTE ABOUT CONCRETE whole, I have felt welcomed by the stu- to the Office of Undergraduate ways in which the University could dents at Brown, and find them (no matter Admissions: I called them to check on a improve the sad lives of transfer students. how many years they’ve been here) to rumor that financial aid is not available to This week I want to address something have in common their intelligence, cre- transfers. All they would say is, “Financial that’s harder to quantify: bias against ativity and passion (stroke, stroke), there aid is limited for transfer students.” When transfer students. It’s difficult to show tan- is the occasional vitriolic diatribe to the I asked if it was limited more than for gible evidence of the kind of unseen but contrary, such as the following comment: other students, she said, “More than for pervasive bias that Virginia Woolf once “Brown is well known as THE place for freshmen.” When I asked in what way, she described as an “aroma,” but there are those who are able and willing to take said she couldn’t tell me or she’d have to times when bias will flare up in more visi- responsibility for making their own indi- kill me. Actually, she just said she couldn’t ble ways — from faculty, students or the vidual choices and charting their own tell me. On the Office of Undergraduate individual paths. If you don’t want to University as an institution. One day, you go after class to the office thrive and be content at Brown, why the Admissions Web site, under financial aid, of your Distinguished Professor to discuss heck would you want to be a student under “special groups,” it says transfers are admitted on a need-blind basis, but the day’s lecture. DP leans back in his here?” This comment was posted on The that the budget for transfers is limited (as chair, starts chatting you up. You confess that you’re a transfer. A cloud passes over Herald Web site in response to my column is the budget for international students). DP’s face. Where from? he wants to know. last week, and it displays just the kind of Isn’t that a contradiction? Furthermore, Georgetown? (We don’t know why he bias against transfers I want to indict. So transfers can’t apply for financial aid if assumes this. Confused, we try to ignore thank you, “student,” as you signed your they were accepted without it; i.e. if two letter, for helping me in this. Who days after you accept Brown’s offer of the randomness of his guess.) charts a more individual path, who admission, both your parents lose their Connecticut College. “Wee-heh-helltakes more responsibility for their jobs at Enron and you’re up the proverlll. ‘Connecticut College’” — you choices than transfer students? bial creek without so much as a Teva sancan hear the quotation marks in his We rearranged our whole lives dal for a floatation device. But, if you voice — “is a veh-herrrry different because we thought we could were admitted to Brown as a freshman, place than Browwwwwn.” You thrive at Brown, and we do and your dad (Ken Lay) is suddenly out of notice that the Distinguished want to be content here! And work, financial aid can be yours. Who Professor has made a comof course, life will always knows why? Maybe transfers, along with mon error in saying “differpresent challenges; howev- international students (whose financial ent than” instead of the er, if the unnecessary aid status parallels the status of transfer grammatically correct challenges transfers students, and who are also, apparently, “different from,” but face were mini- “special,” along with students whose parbecause you are not an mized, we would be ents are drug addicts), are simply a necarrogant snob, you say better able to get on essary, revenue-producing unsightliness nothing as you are dissarah with the challenge for the University. creetly waved from his green Student and faculty bias against transwe came to Brown office like a bad smell. better than fers, even though they probably aren’t to pursue: learning. Hence, the “aroma” cats For an example of aware of it, affects how transfers interact — you can’t see it, but i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d with Brown as an institution. It is stuit stinks. challenges, I refer you dents and faculty who run many of the Nor are students programs which immune from resenting transfers. While, on the Sarah Green ‘04 is still glad she transferred. make applying (not to

mention getting in) more difficult for transfers than nontransfers. Even the format of these programs punishes transfer students: Perhaps not intentionally, but it is punishment all the same. For example, the Writing Fellows program has a yearly admissions cycle, beginning in March. When, as a prospective transfer, I called their office to see about applying to the program, I was told (over and over … what can I say, I’m a persistent little twerp) that I was too late. “But I went to a different school in March!” I cried. Finally, I was told: “Look, if we let you apply now it wouldn’t be fair. We’d be giving you special treatment!” But having two application cycles or more flexible application procedures so that the 200 students who transfer to Brown each year could at least have the chance to take part in the program shouldn’t be seen as special treatment, but rather as equal opportunity. I could go on. I have more examples: horror stories of transfers housed in lounges or squeezed into freshmen doubles, or the sad tale of the promised but mythical “transfer directory” … But fortunately for you, the reader, The Herald has a word limit. Let me just conclude by saying that around a ninth or a tenth of Brown students transferred here. So why don’t we transfers have our own liberation movement? C’mon people. I want a listserv. I want a flag. I want a cool acronym. I want a fringe militaristic movement that threatens to discredit the center. But seriously. If Brown cannot have faith in the transfer students it admits, then it should change its admission policies so that it can have faith in them.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

SPORTS WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 29, 2003 · PAGE 12

Little not big enough for Sox GRADY LITTLE DIDN’T HAVE A PRAYER at keeping his job. He still had his confidence, he still had his dignity — he even had support from some players — yet Grady Little had almost no shot of retaining his job as manager of the Red Sox. But believe it or not, his decline started before the recent postseason debacle. His decision to leave Pedro Martinez in for the eighth inning of game seven of the ALCS, only to see him get battered like chicken simply ERIC PERLMUTTER epitomized what it PERL MUTTERS is that the Red Sox front office can no longer stand. Grady isn’t a stats guy, plain and simple. He’s an old school manager who goes with his gut and defers to his partially informed conscience when making decisions. Contrast this with the front office, which has transformed itself into a sabermetric, number-crunching machine, and the divide is clear as day. Grady was brought in during the transitional period between the firing of former General Manager Dan Duquette and the promotion of current GM Theo Epstein. Mike Port was acting as interim GM at the time, and the sabermetric philosophy had yet to be implemented. Bill James, who has practically cornered the market on being called a “statistical guru,” was still out on the streets, and sabermetrics, at least in Boston, hadn’t hit the big time. In other words, it made sense for the Sox to hire Grady at the time, knowing full well what he was capable of as a traditional manager. What they did not know was that the direction of managing would change so drastically during Grady’s tenure. A year later, Theo and his supporting cast, comprised of some of the founders of sabermetrics, were given the opportunity to run the franchise based on their academic study of baseball. For the first time Bill James and his disciples had significant control over a major league team, an influence that was obvious during this last off-season. A big reason the Sox loaded up on lefty hitters, for example, is that they ran the numbers and found that lefties hit for much better averages in Fenway than on the road. A quick look at the team’s home and away numbers reveals how right this analysis was — the Sox hit 53 points better at home than on the road. Alas, old school Grady Little was to be the manager in the dugout, with a year remaining on his contract. He couldn’t be forced to change his managerial style because that would be asking too much of a man. So the season began with this tension of ideology unresolved, and with the front office frustrated that a year’s worth of baseball management would be farther from perfect than they preferred. Indeed, Grady managed as he likes to manage, and statistically foolhardy moves abounded. Fast forward to the eighth inning of Game 7 of the ALCS. Grady sends Pedro back onto the mound to the surprise of many who assumed he would be yanked after throwing exactly 100 pitches. Opponents hit .364 off Pedro this year after his 105th pitch — even Tony Clark could hit Pedro in the late innings. I can imagine the front office’s reaction when Grady visited the mound, only to softly ask how Pedro was doing, like an infirsee PERLMUTTER, page 8

Approaching the end of an era in L.A.? (The Washington Post) — This time it’s differ-

the season with a stress fracture. Anya Davidson ’06, who led the Bears at the New England Championships with a top 10 finish, is expected to lead the team once again. She will be accompanied by teammate Meredith Crocker ’05, returning from a foot injury. Wemple said he hopes Davidson and Crocker will guide Brown to a thirdplace finish in the meet, given that placement in the top two spots will be nearly impossible. “I think it will be a shoot-out between Princeton and Columbia,” Wemple said. “Both teams are strong and have close packs. They are national class teams, so third place will be between Yale and us, as long as we run what we are capable of.” Brown is going into the Heptagonal Championships with positive momentum, Wemple said. The Bears had their best finish thus far in the year at the

ent. It’s nasty, and it’s pointed, and if this latest episode isn’t the end of Shaq and Kobe, you can certainly see the edge of the cliff from here. The NBA season began last night, and already Shaq and Kobe have taken the gloves off and started throwing haymakers at one another, with Shaq concluding that Kobe should just get out. If Phil Jackson thought going into last weekend that there was a possibility that the Lakers might implode from the stress of Bryant’s sexual assault trial and trying to incorporate Karl Malone and Gary Payton into the lineup, what in the world must he think after Bryant and Shaq verbally squared off with each other Sunday night after practice? Here are the highlights. Shaq said Friday night after the preseason finale in Las Vegas that Kobe might want to pass more and shoot fewer jumpers until his legs are strong enough to take and make jumpers. Kobe answered, “I know how to play my guard spot. He can worry about the low post, and I’ll worry about the perimeter.” Shaq, Sunday night, lowered the boom, saying, “As we start this new season, (stuff has) got to be done right. If you don’t like it, then you can opt out next year. If it’s going to be my team, I’ll voice my opinion. If he don’t like it, he can opt out. ... Just ask Karl and Gary why they came here. One person, not two. One. Period. I’m not telling him (Bryant) how to play his position. I’m just telling him how to play team ball.” I know what you’re thinking, that Kobe and Shaq do this all the time, argue and fuss in public and then Jackson comes in and works his magic and the two biggest stars in the game kiss and make up and the Lakers keep winning. But this seems so much more confrontational, even personal. Of course, Kobe and Shaq will make up for the cameras, maybe even by the time you read this. Somebody will blame it all on the media and try to build a case that this will bring the Lakers closer. And you shouldn’t believe a word of it. At a time when he is quite literally fighting for his life, Kobe Bryant is not going to take kindly to being told by Shaq, essentially, to get out. Repeatedly, Kobe has said he will “opt out” of his current deal and test the free agent market after this season. And now Shaq is calling Kobe’s bluff, before the season even begins. It’s not that they’ve hated or even disliked each other, but each likes getting under the other’s skin. But as is often the case with these things, the horseplay got too rough. Now, feelings are bound to be hurt. Suddenly, the locker room may not be big enough for the two of them. One reason Kobe has been flirting with free agency is that he wonders if he can go elsewhere and win a title without Shaq. And likewise, Shaq would like nothing more that winning a championship this season without Kobe. Kobe believes an out-of-shape Shaq was ungrateful last year when Kobe carried the team on his back in late February and early March. Shaq believes Kobe is an elitist and aloof kid who has been handed everything and, as of right now, isn’t physically prepared to step into his usual role as the NBA season begins. Suddenly, the debut of LeBron James

see WXC, page 8

see KOBE, page 8

Nick Neely / Herald

Lauren Gibbs ’06 and Kim Highlund ’04 celebrate Bruno’s victory over Dartmouth on Friday night. Over the weekend Highlund moved into third place for career digs at Brown.

Brown defeats Big Green, unable to topple Crimson BY KATHY BABCOCK

Brown women’s volleyball (3-12, 2-5 Ivy League) picked up its second league win of the season Friday night, defeating Dartmouth (7-12, 1-7 Ivy League) 3-1. But the Bears were unable to sweep its Ivy foes, falling to Harvard (6-12, 5-3 Ivy League) the next day 3-1 in a hardfought match. The Bears seem to have turned a corner, earning splits the last two weekends. After breaking into the win column for the first time against St. Peter’s on Sept. 27, the team endured another losing streak until last weekend against Columbia. “It feels like the team finally started to come together on the court,” said Lauren Gibbs ’06. “You can never anticipate if you’re going to win or not, but we’re going to play better.” Bruno dominated the first game against Dartmouth, winning 30-18, and fought off the Big Green in the second

for a 31-29 victory. The Bears were defeated in the third 25-30, but ultimately refocused to win the final game 30-24. Karalyn Kuchenbecker ’06 led the Bears against the Big Green with her seventh double-double of the season. Kuchenbecker tallied 17 kills and 19 digs, both match highs. The youngsters performed well, with Rikki Baldwin ’07 and Liz Cvitan ’07 both recording 13 kills; Baldwin added five blocks as well. Gibbs, a consistent performer, notched 12 kills, while Kim Highlund ’04 moved closer to the record books with 14 digs and Leigh Martin ’06 notched a double-double with 13 digs and 51 assists. Kuchenbecker and Baldwin both made five service aces, an unusually high number for the Bears. After the first game of the season, see VOLLEYBALL, page 7

W. cross country healthy, ready to take on top teams at Heps BY MELISSA PERLMAN

When two of the top teams in the nation are in your league, the competition can be pretty tough. It is precisely this level of competition the Brown women’s cross country team will face this week at the Heptagonal Championships. Brown will be competing against the entire Ivy League, including the Columbia and Princeton squads, both ranked in the nation’s top 15. Coach Rick Wemple said he is looking forward to the high level of competition. “It gives each of our individual athletes a chance to see how they stack up on a national, as well as league, scale,” Wemple said. The team has had a rough road getting here, as the season has been filled with sicknesses and injuries. But the Bears say they are finally at full strength with an almost complete squad, though the team will continue to miss the presence of Nora Sullivan ’06, who is out for