Thursday, April 13, 2006 by The Brown Daily Herald

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006

Volume CXLI, No. 49

www.browndailyherald.com

An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891

BEAM ME UP, POSTThis week, post- takes a look at William Shatner — the man, the myth, the legend

PASSING IT TO THE LEFT For the ﬁrst time, Rhode Islanders are growing and buying marijuana under the Medical Marijuana Project METRO 3

INSIDE

HE KNOWS HOW TO SERVE Dan Hanegby ’07 brings maturity learned in the Israeli army to the men’s tennis team SPORTS 16

TODAY

TOMORROW

showers 64 / 46

showers 62 / 45

Neighbors’ lawsuit on LiSci impact continues

No easy explanation for PPD, DPS crime report differences BY SIMMI AUJLA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Discrepancies in crime reports from the Providence Police Department and the University’s Department of METRO Public Safety continue to puzzle members of the community as new reports of such incidents become available. One reporting discrepancy arose following a recent incident on campus, according to Michelle Nuey, manager of special services for DPS. A Brown staff member was struck in the face by an acquaintance on Benevolent Street on March 30, Nuey said. DPS officers and a PPD officer responded to the scene and heard the testimony of three witnesses. DPS officers recorded the incident as a simple assault, but the PPD officer recorded the incident as a suppressed disturbance, which is a less serious charge, Nuey said. Nuey said she was surprised that the PPD officer had not recorded the attack as a simple assault, since witnesses said the assailant had slapped the complainant. The PPD officer’s decision to report the March 30 crime as a suppressed disturbance will make it more difficult for the victim to press charges, Nuey said. “In my mind, classification is key when making a decision in court,” she said. She added that such incidents are unfair to victims, who may perceive that their experiences are being “minimized.” Ward 7 City Councilman John Igliozzi

BY ELLEN WERNECKE STAFF WRITER

Jacob Melrose / Herald

Richard Lowry, editor of National Review, spoke to a small crowd in Salomon 101 last night, defending the necessity of the war in Iraq, though he acknowledged mistakes in its handling.

see LISCI, page 4

QA and College Hill for Christ to co-sponsor free HIV testing BY ROSS FRAZIER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Queer Alliance and College Hill for Christ will co-sponsor free, anonymous HIV testing Saturday from 12 to 5 p.m in the Salomon Center. AIDS Care Ocean State, a Rhode Island-based support group for AIDS patients, will provide the oral tests in addition to staff support, said QA Co-President Josh Teitelbaum ’08. Teitelbaum said he expects a large turnout for the event because the HIV testing available at Health Services is

National Review editor defends ideology, practicality of war on terror The Bush administration was correct in starting the war in Iraq, and Americans’ gloomy attitude toward the war is a product of the mainstream media, Richard Lowry, editor of National Review, told an audience of about 150 in Salomon 101 Wednesday.

see HIV TESTING, page 4

Jacob Melrose/ Herald

The College Hill Neighborhood Association and other community members have raised concerns about the Life Sciences Building’s potentially negative effect on the neighborhood.

see CRIME AUDIT, page 4

BY SARA MOLINARO STAFF WRITER

“conﬁdential, but not anonymous,” and students’ insurance companies are charged a laboratory fee, which could potentially show up on statements that are mailed to parents. Also, the tests on Saturday are oral, while Health Services’ tests require drawing blood. The two groups have worked together to promote the event, will help staff it and will each make a monetary donation to AIDS Care Ocean State, Teitelbaum said. A Feb. 23 Herald article incorrectly reported that QA and College Hill for Christ would co-sponsor an HIV testing event. When The Herald corrected the story the following day, the two groups were still not working together. Since then, Alana Rabe ’08, a member of QA’s Community Subgroup who is also a member of College Hill for Christ, proposed that the two groups work together after all, Teitelbaum said. He added

As the Life Sciences Building nears completion, a lawsuit claiming the University did not adequately report the building’s impact on the neighborhood has yet to be resolved. The College Hill Neighborhood Association and 11 community members filed a suit in 2004 alleging a 2003 environmental assessment of the LiSci, conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Association and the U.S. Department of Energy, was insufficient and that the public was not given enough time to respond to it. At the time, neighbors were seeking to stop construction of the LiSci until a more thorough assessment was completed, The Herald reported in October 2004. Barbara Harris, president of the CHNA, said she believes “corners were cut” in the University’s decision to not conduct a more complete environmental impact study on the LiSci. The University was legally obligated to conduct the environmental assessment done by NASA and DOE but is not required to conduct an environmental impact study. “This is about the chemicals that are being used — the kind of chemicals,” Harris said. “We wanted to be extra sure that it wasn’t going to be hazardous air or even potentially hazardous air.” Now that the LiSci is scheduled to be completed this summer, the plaintiffs are only looking for information, Harris said. In October, U.S. District Court Judge Ernest Torres denied the plaintiffs’ motion to compel the University to disclose information on 14 topics outlined by plaintiff William Touret. Court filings by Touret sought information about several points of the en-

Lowry’s lecture, titled “The Benign Superpower — A Defense of the Bush Administration’s War on Terror,” addressed the conﬂict in Iraq from both an ideological and a practical point of view. He focused largely on the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war and the philosophy behind ﬁghting a war to promote the spread of American values. He emphasized that the war on terror is an appropriate response, both historically and ideologically, to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “A military response, in order to spread American values, will ultimately make us safer,” Lowry said. The Bush administration’s decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was ultimately correct, Lowry said, because while there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, “it would be a matter of time before (Hussein) attempted to reconstitute these weapons programs.” He also defended the link between Hussein’s regime and terrorism, stating that the regime gave $25,000 each to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. But Lowry admitted some mistakes were made in the handling of the invasion and subsequent war. Among these, Lowry highlighted the admin-

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see LOWRY, page 6

SHAKING THE SHELVES

Courtesy of Jeremy Forster

Yesterday afternoon, the Save the Bookstore Coalition held a rally in front of Faunce House to oppose outsourcing the Brown Bookstore. Those attending the rally delivered a petition favoring an independent bookstore signed by 1,201 community members, 56 percent of whom were undergraduates, to an assistant of President Ruth Simmons, who was not in her University Hall ofﬁce.

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THIS MORNING THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 2 Jero Matt Vascellaro

TO D AY ’ S E V E N TS “SCIENCE, EDUCATION AND PUBLIC TRUST” 7 p.m. (Barus & Holley 166) — Professor of Biology Ken Miller ‘70 P’02 will discuss an erosion of the public’s trust in science as well as how to repair it. RENAISSANCE STUDIES LECTURE 5:30 p.m. (Annmary Brown Memorial) — Katharine Park, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, will speak.

“CHOOSING WAR IN VIETNAM AND IRAQ” 3 p.m. (Watson Institute) — Fredrik Logevall, a professor of history at Cornell University, will discuss the merits of comparing the conﬂicts in Iraq and Vietnam. PROSE READING 8 p.m., (McCormack Family Theater) — Fiction writer Rebecca Brown, author of 10 volumes of prose, will present a reading of her work.

Chocolate Covered Cotton Mark Brinker

MENU SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Wafﬂe Fries, Pasta Primavera, Hot Ham on Bulky Roll, Louisiana Style Calzone, Green Peas, Lyonnaise Potatoes, Kielbasa and Jelly Rolls

LUNCH — Chicken Soup with Tortellini, Sloppy Joe Sandwich, Falafel in Pita, Cauliﬂower au Gratin and Swiss Fudge Cookies

DINNER — Spinach and Rice Bake, Mashed Red Potatoes with Garlic, Cajun Corn and Tomatoes, Broccoli, Baked Potatoes, Pasta with Sauce, Spice Rubbed Pork Chops, Mashed Red Potatoes and an Ice Cream Sundae Bar

DINNER — Vegetarian Cream of Mushroom Soup, Chicken Soup with Tortellini, Roast Turkey with Sauce, Shells with Broccoli, Mashed Potatoes, Bread Stufﬁng, Wax Beans, Green Peas, Garlic Bread and Jelly Rolls

9 Justices of the Supreme Court —

Deo Daniel Perez

Homebodies Mirele Davis

but can they www.browndailyherald.com? RELEASE DATE– Thursday, April 13, 2006

C Times R O S Daily SWO RD Los Angeles Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Cabinet wood 6 Silents actress Negri 10 43,560 square feet 14 Familia member 15 Cave, perhaps 16 Board partner 17 “Funny Lady” actor 19 Ship with a prophetic prow 20 Chance to speak 21 Makes lace 22 Senior 23 No. 2 24 Like antennae 26 Take full responsibility 30 Ham medium 31 Cal. stretches 32 “Waterloo” singers 35 1961 Literature Nobelist Andric 36 Some are hidden in 17-, 26-, 46and 59-Across 40 Abner’s size 41 Montego or Monterey, briefly 43 Unfold, in verse 44 Relate with 46 Serving dish warning 50 Drinks with limes 52 Legal right 53 “... I’ve never done this with __ live girl”: song lyric 54 Fulda feeder 55 Gp. with Cavs and Mavs 58 Come down 59 Exchanges one’s tiles in Scrabble, e.g. 62 Singer James 63 Zeus’ wife 64 Some spirits 65 Capone harasser 66 Turow book 67 Atelier need DOWN 1 Hebrew prophet 2 Tibetan monk

3 Time to act 4 Misspell a word, e.g. 5 Traveler’s oasis 6 River past Fremont, Nebraska 7 Galley gear 8 DXX ÷ X 9 Kennel call 10 It’s been shrinking since 1960 11 Veal dish 12 Rhode Island founder Williams 13 Georgia university 18 Leftovers meal 22 Wrap up 23 Paul’s “Exodus” role 24 Certain 25 Formerly, formerly 26 Derby feature 27 You might find a nest in one 28 Decorations 29 Impressionist John 33 Jots

34 Burn balm 37 Hit in the air 38 PFCs’ addresses 39 Cheap accommodations 42 Drinks with coconut 45 Hostelry 47 Address bk. entry 48 Longtime crony 49 Contends

50 Influential Greek physician 51 Seething 54 Irish homeland 55 They have their orders 56 Spreadable hors d’oeuvre 57 Deep blue 59 MAX competitor 60 Barbie’s ex 61 Actress Leoni

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 3

State’s Medical Marijuana Program receives its ﬁrst applicants BY THI HO STAFF WRITER

The Rhode Island Department of Health received its first applicants for the Medical Marijuana Program last week, according to Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project. The General Assembly voted to create the program in January, overriding a veto from Gov. Don Carcieri ’65. To qualify, each patient must be a resident of Rhode Island and must be diagnosed by a physician as suffering from a “chronic or debilitating disease or mental condition,” according to the bill passed by the General Assembly. With written statements from their physicians, patients can then apply for marijuana registry identification cards from the Rhode Island Department of Health. Last week, the health department received 60 requests for identification card applications and five completed applications, said Charles Alexandre, chief of the health department’s Office of Health Professionals Regulations. It takes 30 days to process and verify an application for a marijuana identification card. Since the act does not specify where the marijuana should come from, a patient with a marijuana registry identification card may obtain the drug from any source, Alexandre said. The act only stipulates that patients and their caregivers are protected from arrest and prosecution if found in possession of marijuana for medical purposes. This means patients can cultivate their own marijuana or have their caretakers grow it for them, Mirken said. Mirken said he also believes “people will go to illicit sources,” adding that “marijuana is not really hard to find.” Mirken does not believe this will result in an excessive abuse of marijuana. He called criticism that marijuana may be abused by patients “ridiculous.” “Marijuana is no more addictive than coffee. This has been proven true in 10 states that have had the law for a long time,” he said. Rhonda O’Donnell, a registered nurse who suffers from multiple sclerosis, was one of the individuals who filed an application under the Medical Marijuana Program. In an April 5 press release from the Medical Policy Project, O’Donnell expressed her appreciation of the act. “As a person struggling with the disabling effects of multiple sclerosis, I am grateful to have one more treatment option I can try without fear of arrest or jail,” O’Donnell said. O’Donnell’s sentiments were echoed by Warren Dolbashian, who will file his application once he meets with his physician. “This law puts treatment decisions where they belong, between patients and doctors. I’m glad I now have a chance to be able to treat my illness without becoming a criminal,” said Dolbashian in the same Medical Policy Project press release. Mirken said implementation of the medical marijuana program has been going smoothly. “Thus far the feedback has been positive,” he said.

Through City Arts, Brown volunteers help expose local youth to creative endeavors

HEADING TO HILLEL

BY ROBIN STEELE STAFF WRITER

The Senior Class Coordinating Board has teamed up with Providence City Arts for Youth, a local non-profit organization located at 891 Broad St. that runs after-school and summer programs in fine arts, to create a mosaic in South Providence. Christopher Sha ’06 was inspired to start this project after viewing similar public arts projects in his native Philadelphia, he said. Sha said he believes Brown students need to get off of College Hill, and he sees this project as a way to do that. The tiles and design for the mosaic project will be created in a City Arts class led by senior volunteers this spring, and the mosaic will be installed on the north exterior wall of Compare Foods Supermarket on Broad Street over the course of three days. The mosaic will cover about 100 square feet, leaving 1,400 square feet of the wall empty. Sha said this space is reserved for future senior classes, in hopes that they will add to the mosaic each year. A continual effort The initiative comes after years of Brown student involvement in the City Arts program. Executive Director Barbara Wong described City Arts as a grassroots initiative to provide positive after-school opportunities for neighborhood kids free of charge. “The arts are incredibly important,” Wong said, noting that studying art can teach children critical thinking and self-expression skills. City Arts gives children access to the arts that they may not get elsewhere because of the erosion of art programs available to children in Providence’s public schools, she said. City Arts reaches over 400 local children ages eight to 14 each year, she said. City Arts provides kids with a “multidisciplinary arts experience,” Wong said, with classes offered in visual art and design, performing arts and theater, music and creative writing. Classes meet twice a week during the school year, and there are two four-week summer sessions, she said. The majority of classes at City Arts are in visual arts, where students learn about mask-making, puppet-making, painting, drawing, landscape, architecture and ceramics, Wong said. She added that class offerings vary based on the talents of artists hired by the organization. Volunteers this year have faced a number of challenges stemming from the ongoing renovation of City Arts’ Broad Street building, which began in October 2005. As a result, this year’s classes have been held at a number of different sites throughout Providence. The renovated facility will be larger, with additional outdoor space, and will include visual art and dance studios, a digital media lab, library and gallery spaces, administrative offices, gardens and playgrounds. Wong said she hopes that classes will be back at the Broad Street location by January 2007. In Wong’s estimation, about six students from Brown

Jacob Melrose / Herald

Large crowds of students lined up outside Hillel last night to attend their choice of several free seders for the ﬁrst night of Passover.

and two to four from the Rhode Island School of Design have worked for City Arts this year as teaching assistants. “In terms of instructors, we have quite a few RISD alumni as faculty,” she added. City Arts’ staff is composed mostly of professional artists and certified art teachers from the community. Some students work at City Arts on a volunteer basis, while others receive pay as part of the Federal WorkStudy Program. One such student is Shelley McDavid ’08, who first got involved in City Arts as part of her work study program at Brown. Last semester, McDavid worked as a teaching assistant in a class at City Arts about murals, in which students used art to express the positive and negative aspects of their communities, she said. Beyond a basic technical knowledge of drawing and painting, McDavid said, class projects “made (the children) think about their communities … and approach (them) in an artistic way.” McDavid noted there were some challenging aspects to her work for City Arts. She said consistent attendance was the biggest problem, making it difficult to add to skills taught the week before and build relationships with the kids, she said. Though McDavid enjoyed being involved in the community and working with local children, she will probably not work for City Arts again because of logistical difficulties like transportation and timing, she said. Chloe Paisley ’08 also worked as a teaching assistant for City Arts last semester and was involved in a class called “Off the Wall,” in which students made comic strips about things they wanted to change in their neighborhoods, she said. The class was held at the West End Recreation Center. Paisley, a Portuguese and Brasee CITY ARTS, page 4

PAGE 4 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006

Crime audit continued from page 1 said he had never heard of a “suppressed disturbance” charge before. “A disturbance seems to me more like a ticket violation, or a noise complaint,” he said. A slap in the face is usually recorded as a simple assault, he said, but he added that he does not know the facts that led the PPD ofﬁcer to make his decision. Nuey said she is not aware of any other incidents of the PPD and DPS charging perpetrators with different crimes. DPS and PPD statistics may, however, reveal differences in classiﬁcation as early as 2003. Between 2003 and 2004, DPS reported four hate crimes on campus, according to the department’s Web site. PPD statistics from the same time period, however, record no hate crimes in the eighth or ninth districts, which include the East Side and Brown’s campus. Igliozzi said he hopes the audit of the PPD’s crime statistics and the creation of the Public Safety Committee will answer questions about such discrepancies. In March, The Herald reported that James Lombardi, the city’s internal auditor, had begun an audit of PPD statistics at the request of some concerned

council members. The council has also created a Public Safety Committee to look into the matter and to guide Lombardi through his search. “We need to act proactively and start finding out what’s going on,” Igliozzi said. “These types of hard questions need to be asked and answered.” Ward 1 City Councilman David Segal said he did not know enough about the ways in which the PPD and DPS report crime to offer an explanation, but he called the discrepancies “troubling.” There may be simple explanations for the discrepancies, Nuey said. DPS reports crime statistics for the Brown campus to state police, so the PPD might only be reporting ninth district crimes that occur off campus to state police, she said. A PPD officer who asked to remain anonymous said the PPD only records on-campus crimes to which DPS asks them to respond. The officer said DPS often responds to serious crimes without help from the PPD. “They’re their own country,” the officer said. DPS and the PPD may simply define crimes differently, Nuey said. She added, however, that she expects a “universal definition” for every crime. Deputy Police Chief Paul Kennedy and District 9 Commander Lieutenant Paul Campbell could not be reached for comment.

Top Hollywood agency to play hardball for athletes BY GREG JOHNSON AND CLAIRE HOFFMAN LOS ANGELES TIMES

LOS ANGELES — After years spent largely on the sidelines, Hollywood’s most powerful talent agency is blitzing the sports world. In little more than a week, Creative Artists Agency hired three top sports agents representing

HIV testing continued from page 1 that, because of the nature of QA’s organization, subcommittees are given a great deal of autonomy for “special projects.” “Subcommittees can make whatever alliances they will. It still could raise questions for some members of our communi-

City Arts continued from page 3 zilian studies concentrator, said she “really liked getting into the (Providence community and) biking through neighborhoods where signs are in Spanish and Portuguese.” Paisley’s students often surprised her. “(Some of the children) were surprised I didn’t have a kid,” she said. “(It was) really hard to control this batch of kids … (but) it felt really good to be challenged,” she said, adding that many of her students had longstanding relationships with City Arts through

LiSci continued from page 1

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

Solution, tips and computer program at www.sudoku.com.

vironmental assessment, including the fact that part of the LiSci would be designated “Biosafety 2.” The Centers for Disease Control specify four different levels of safety in the use of biological material; Biosafety 2 denotes the presence of “agents of moderate potential hazard” and requires laboratory personnel to have training with pathological agents. “It’s an experimental science building — animals, chemicals, all the things that we think don’t really belong so close to residents,” Harris said. “This is a building that has to have heavy ventilation,” Harris added, “and if everything works right it’s supposed to be ventilated.” Beverly Ledbetter, vice president and general counsel and a member of Brown’s defense team, said though the University was named as co-defendants with NASA and the DOE, the three par-

such stars as NFL quarterback Peyton Manning and New York Yankees heartthrob Derek Jeter. Matt Leinart, star quarterback at the University of Southern Califnoria, this week dumped veteran agent Leigh Steinberg. Leinart is reportedly considering replacing the Newport Beach-based agent with CAA, which already represents him for endorsements. Though agencies sometimes

negotiate off-the-ﬁeld endorsement deals for athletes, they generally do not negotiate their contracts with teams. As the line separating athletics and entertainment blurs, similar moves are expected as Hollywood looks to sports to generate an endless stream of content that it can package and repackage.

ty, but for others it’s great. I think it’s a great thing,” Teitelbaum said. “CHC wants to co-sponsor this event because it gives us an opportunity to become involved with groups we haven’t been involved with before,” Rabe said. “There’s been a common misunderstanding that our group wouldn’t want to be involved with the QA, and this gives us the opportunity to work with them.”

Teitelbaum said he expects QA to work with religious organizations again in the near future, though he does not know if or when it will partner speciﬁcally with College Hill for Christ. Rabe said she thinks the two groups will be able to work with each other in the future. “This event allows both our groups to demonstrate our concern for the health of the Brown community,” Rabe said.

activities at their schools and public libraries. Art-semiotics concentrator Isabelle Zaugg ’06 started working for City Arts as a sophomore and has continued her work there this year after returning from a junior year abroad in Ethiopia. “Sophomore year was a hard year. … (City Arts was the) thing that got me through it,” she said. Zaugg has served as a teaching assistant for architecture, mask-making and comic-tomural classes in the past. This semester ﬁnds her assisting a group of eight fourth- and ﬁfthgraders in a puppet-making class at Providence’s William D’Abate Elementary School.

Zaugg said her classes this year have been challenging, and she attributed discipline problems to the temporary location. Zaugg said she “really appreciates the philosophy City Arts is based upon,” adding that they “don’t fall into the trap of labeling kids good and bad.” While working in Providence schools independent of City Arts during her ﬁrst year at Brown, Zaugg said she saw kids who were “alienated from what they were learning” and noted that City Arts lets students incorporate their own interests and cultures into their artwork. “(This is) the kind of work I want to do throughout my life,” Zaugg said.

ties are not working together because a U.S. attorney is defending NASA and the DOE. “This lawsuit is a challenge to NASA and the DOE,” she said. The latest ﬁlings have tried to force the court to “go outside the scope ... of what NASA and the DOE handle. … We really don’t think that anything has been found that changes anything (about the LiSci’s impact),” Ledbetter said, adding that much of the lawsuit concerns research functions already being performed without incident on campus. “We’re moving from one building to a newer building, and in the process we’re using new updated technology and assessing things,” Ledbetter said. “That’s true of all new buildings.” While the CHNA’s Web site also criticizes the LiSci’s appearance and calls the building’s Olive Street site “devastated,” Harris said the aesthetics of the LiSci were not a motivating factor in the ﬁling of the lawsuit. Before construction began, the CHNA asked the University to relocate

the LiSci. “We don’t think at this point that it’s very attractive, but hopefully when it’s completed it will look better,” Harris said. “We’re losing a lot of sky and light, but Brown is doing that to its own campus.” “It’s a different aesthetic, but that’s not the basis of the lawsuit,” Harris said. “It’s a question of whether the air will be adversely affected.” “I think most people believe (the plaintiffs’) original intent was to block the building,” Ledbetter said, “but that just wasn’t realistic.” She said the plaintiffs “want relief from the University.” Regarding the lawsuit’s potential to interrupt the building’s operation, Ledbetter said, “It’s not that it’s impossible, but it’s very improbable.” Ledbetter said she believes the court’s decision will be handed down sometime in 2006 and will show the University had taken all the necessary precautions with regard to the LiSci. “We are very respectful of the court’s ability to decide” in this matter, she added. But Harris expressed disappointment with the University’s handling of the matter. “If (the environmental impact study) had been done and said that the chemicals and the things they’ll be using and their systems were really secure, that would be the end of it,” she said. “Why Brown has refused to do an environmental impact study in the midst of a residential area, we don’t know.”

see HOLLYWOOD, page 6

CAMPUS NEWS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 5

Grad School will not adopt pluses and minuses BY OLIVER BOWERS STAFF WRITER

Administrators at the Graduate School have no plans to make changes to its current grading system, Dean of the Grad School Sheila Bonde told The Herald Monday. Earlier this semester, officials at the Grad School had discussed changing its grading policy in light of a proposal drafted by Dean of the College Paul Armstrong to add pluses and minuses to the University’s grading system. The College Curriculum Council voted against Armstrong’s proposal March 14, and Bonde told The Herald Monday that “we have no plans to go ahead independently.” “Since the CCC has not brought this forward, (a new grading policy) probably will not be raised until there is a new dean of the college,” she said. At this point, there is “no real pressure to change.” Bonde told The Herald in March that, following the outcome of Armstrong’s plus/minus proposal, the Grad School “may decide to go to a uniﬁed system, and we might decide to use a separate system” from the undergraduate College. At a University-wide forum in March addressing the proposal, Bonde described “a high level of support” for the proposal at the Grad School, according to a March 10 Herald article covering the event. The GSC had voted to send a proposal to add pluses and minuses to the Grad School’s grading system to the Faculty Executive Committee before the CCC decision. Since the CCC did not recommend a new grading policy for the College, no changes were

adopted. The Grad School currently has no formal policy dictating how professors should grade students. Instead it has adopted the same policy as the undergraduate College, Bonde said. The Grad School gives out A’s, B’s and C’s and also provides a Satisfactory/ No Credit grading option. In addition, some departments have a policy requiring professors to give students written evaluations along with grades at the end of every semester. According to Chung Nguyen GS, vice president of administration for the GSC, the Department of American Civilization uses such a requirement and also solicits evaluations from professors outside of the department for its students. Support for the plus/minus proposal at the Grad School partially stemmed from a desire to combat the “rise in the terminal masters population” with a more nuanced evaluation system that would allow Brown’s grad students to thrive in highly competitive job markets, Bonde told The Herald back in March. Jonna Iacono GS, president of the GSC, said she believes grad students are largely indifferent to changing the grading policy. Typically grades are less important for grad students than the quality of a ﬁnal project, such as a dissertation, Iacono said. Nguyen had a different view on the importance of grades for grad students. “For me grading is very important,” he said, adding that other students likely feel the same way. Iacono summed up her perception of grad student opinion on pluses and minuses pithily when she joked that “grad students want pluses and minuses to grade, but not to be graded.”

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Student charged with kicking Thayer Street windows plans to plead not guilty BY SIMMI AUJLA SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Nicolas Bell ’09 was arrested April 1 for allegedly kicking in four ground-level windows at 220 Thayer St., which sits at the corner of Thayer and Waterman streets and houses STA Travel and Salon Kroma, according to a Providence Police Department incident report. The incident occurred at 12:44 a.m. Bell told The Herald he plans to plead not guilty to a charge of malicious mischief at a hearing scheduled for April 18. PPD and Department of Public Safety ofﬁcers responded to a report that a college-age man wearing a “Brown Lacrosse” sweatshirt was kicking in store

windows. PPD and DPS ofﬁcers searched the building and surrounding area and noticed Bell outside of Café Paragon, located at 234 Thayer St. Bell was wearing a sweatshirt matching witnesses’ descriptions and had several bleeding cuts on his legs, according to the report. PPD ofﬁcers took Bell into custody and transported him to PPD’s downtown headquarters, where they charged Bell with malicious mischief, according to the report. Bell “appeared very intoxicated and smelled of alcohol,” according to the report. Bell said he does remember seeing other men kicking in windows as well, but he does not know who they were or whether

they were Brown students. Bell attended a pre-arraignment April 5 where his charge was explained. He will attend a hearing April 18. At the hearing, he plans to plead not guilty to the charge “as written by the police,” he said. “I’m pleading innocent just upon the advice of my lawyer,” he said. Bell’s lawyer told him the charge will most likely be dismissed because the incident is his ﬁrst offense and the charge is only a misdemeanor, Bell said. Bell expects he will be asked to pay retribution for the broken windows, he said. He has not talked to the owner of STA Travel about the cost, but he said he expects it will be “inexpensive.”

UCS hears presentation on Banner, updates on UFB and appointments process BY THI HO STAFF WRITER

The Undergraduate Council of Students received an update on Banner, a system that will replace the University’s current databases for admissions, ﬁnancial aid and course registration, from Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar at its general body meeting last night. The council also heard a report on this year’s ﬁnancial allocations from the Undergraduate Finance Board and an update on the appointments process.

Dunbar called the University’s current system of storing data “outdated,” adding that she hopes the integration of these systems with Banner will improve students’ access to this information. One of the goals of Banner is to eliminate paper-based course registration. Under the current registration system, students can pre-register for courses but are not guaranteed a spot in a given course. “What we don’t have now is a way of letting students know when they’re registered for a class,” Dunbar said. Banner will

provide a way for students to register and be approved online. Zachary Townsend ’08, vice president of UCS, criticized this component of Banner, saying online registration will reward students who sign up for courses ﬁrst and not those who are most interested in a course. But Dunbar said she believes faculty and students will be able to address this concern. “Faculty members can still override any restriction to registration,” she said. see UCS, page 6

PAGE 6 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006

Lowry continued from page 1 istration’s misconception that Hussein’s regime could be dismantled while salvaging most of Iraq’s infrastructure, including electricity and oil, as well as the misconception that Iraqi civil society would immediately adopt a new style of government. He also spoke about the lack of a “profound or delicate cultural understanding” of the Iraqi people on the part of the military and the administration. Lowry stated that the war on terror is essentially a conflict over the best way to run a country, adding that democracy can only prevail by denying legitimacy to Islamic radicalism and secular fascism. However, he emphasized that the war is not against Islam or for secularism. “The most credible sources of legitimacy in (Middle Eastern) societies are religious,” Lowry said. “If you chase religion out of public life, you lose the deepest sense of justice a society can have.” When speaking about the necessity of maintaining conﬁdence in the American people and the American system of government, Lowry blamed the mainstream media for the country’s pessimism about the war. “There are really no he-

roes created ever in the popular imagination,” he said. “If you are some idiot from West Virginia who puts a leash on an Iraqi prisoner in Abu Ghraib, everyone in the United States, in the world, will know your name. If you are a good soldier who does his duty, does the right thing by his comrades, no one will ever hear of you.” Lowry concluded his speech with an optimistic quote from former President Abraham Lincoln, who called the United States “the last best hope of mankind.” He reiterated that American efforts in the Middle East are not in vain. After his speech, Lowry ﬁelded some questions from audience members, many of whom questioned whether the spread of American values to other sovereign nations is acceptable or appropriate. Lowry responded by telling the audience not to underestimate the Iraqi desire for good government and democracy. When asked at what point he would consider America’s endeavors in Iraq a failure, Lowry responded that a real Iraqi civil war would be recognized by the total collapse of the government and infrastructure. “(In such a situation), blood will ﬂow in the streets, I won’t deny it, and it will be plain for everyone to see,” he said. Lowry’s lecture was sponsored by the College Republicans.

Hollywood continued from page 4 “Access to a superstar athlete can be invaluable for an entertainment agency,” Steinberg said. “So I’d expect to see more of these deals. There’s a sea change occurring.” What agencies bring to the ﬁeld is the ability to mold athletes into global celebrities, product endorsers and partners in potentially lucrative entertainment ventures. Former Los Angeles Lakers star Magic Johnson leveraged his celebrity into a successful business career. Manning has a second career as a star in commercials. Los Angeles Clippers basketball star Elton Brand moonlights as a movie producer. Jeter and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady each hosted “Saturday Night Live.’’ A Leinart spokesman said the quarterback would announce his decision on an agent next week. For CAA, which declined to comment for this story, the larger question is whether it can turn sports into a signiﬁcant moneymaker when its bedrock business of representing stars and directors is suffering amid tighter entertainment economics. Hollywood agencies historically have avoided negotiating on behalf of stars in team sports, in part because player unions make them work under tight rules. NFL

agents, for example, can take a maximum 3 percent commission, compared to the 10 percent norm agents take when representing actors. In addition, the typical NFL player contract is relatively small compared to what the Leinarts of the sport can command. And a star athlete’s career can end on a single tackle. Some sports agents who continue to operate their own, independent shops questioned what a Hollywood agency would bring to athletes. Casey Wasserman, whose Los Angeles-based Wasserman Media Group represents athletes in contract negotiations and arranges marketing and business opportunities for them, described Manning representative Tom Condon as “a great football agent.’’ But, Wasserman said, Condon is not a better football agent simply because he is working at CAA, nor are his clients necessarily more marketable celebrities. “Put it this way — Kobe Bryant is a good rapper or he’s not. That isn’t going to change because of who represents him,’’ Wasserman said. Geography also could limit Hollywood’s sporting life. Unlike the entertainment industry, which is anchored ﬁrmly in Hollywood, the sports business is much more dispersed. Condon works out of Kansas City, Mo. Jeter’s agent, Casey Close, works in New York. “Everyone who wants to be in

the entertainment industry is in L.A.,’’ Wasserman said. “In sports, it’s the exact opposite. If you live in Columbus, Ohio, and your buddies are kids who are playing football at Ohio State, all of a sudden, you’re an agent.’’ Last month, Steve Feldman, a longtime football agent, moved his roster of players, including Rodney Harrison of the New England Patriots and Lorenzo Neal of the San Diego Chargers, into the Beverly Hills-based Gersh Agency. “Sports are just another form of entertainment, the players are in front of the TV every week,’’ agency chief David Gersh said. But some agencies prefer athletes who aren’t in team sports represented by unions because they offer bigger potential commissions. The William Morris Agency represents tennis star Serena Williams and teen golfer Michelle Wie — who has reportedly garnered as much as $12 million in endorsement deals since turning pro in October. United Talent Agency represents tennis player Anna Kournikova in endorsements and recently signed ﬁgure skater Michelle Kwan. Before its latest moves, CAA has represented such individual stars as skateboarder Tony Hawk and surfer Laird Hamilton. For CAA, last week’s hiring of football agents Condon and Ken Kremer, who bring with them more than 70 players, represents its biggest move yet into sports.

UCS

will then be allowed to talk to the appointed candidate. Townsend suggested the proposed meeting between the new provost and the group of students underscores the need for student voices to be heard regarding every University appointment. “The symbolism of it is pretty important,” Townsend said. Appointments Chair Benjamin Boas ’06.5 reported there are 100 applicants vying for 50 positions in the council’s upcoming appointments process. Boas said the council may face a serious dropout problem over the summer. “People who are (appointed) in the spring decide to drop out during the summer. This leads to an emergency process to ﬁll these positions in the fall,” Boas said. He proposed a “waitlist of priority” that will give the appointments chair a speedier and more effective option to ﬁll those empty positions in the fall. The council approved this change. The meeting also saw surprise visits from Joel Payne ’05 and Brian Bidadi ’06, both former UCS presidents. Bidadi advised the council to “stay above the fray” during upcoming elections. He also reminded UCS members to listen to what students have to say. These sentiments were echoed by Saxton-Frump at the end of the meeting. “Go out and talk to students. You’ll be surprised by what they have to say,” she said.

continued from page 5 UCS also received a report from Swathi Bojedla ’07, chair of the Undergraduate Finance Board Chair. According to Bojedla’s report, UFB expenditures for ﬁrst semester amounted to $33,174. This semester’s expenditures have so far totaled $63,848. Bojedla attributed increased spending for second semester to large-scale student events like the Ivy Film Festival. Bojedla detailed two changes to UFB’s Code of Operations. According to her report, the ﬁrst change states that UFB cannot fund preprofessional activities meant to “advance the career and postsecondary educational opportunities of Brown students.” The second code change states that UFB cannot fund charity events. Bojedla told The Herald after the meeting that UCS has never funded such activities before, but she added that this policy had “never been formally articulated” in its Code of Operations. After the report from UFB, Townsend summarized the April 4 faculty meeting he attended with UCS President Sarah Saxton-Frump ’07. Townsend said the selection process for a new provost was discussed at the faculty meeting. According to Townsend, a small faculty group will be involved in selecting the next provost. A group of students

WORLD & NATION THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 7

Fresh U.S. intelligence leaks in Afghanistan BY PAUL WATSON LOS ANGELES TIMES

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — A computer drive sold openly Wednesday in a bazaar outside the U.S. air base here holds what appears to be a trove of potentially sensitive American intelligence data, including the names, photographs and telephone numbers of Afghan spies informing on the Taliban and al-Qaida. The flash memory drive, which a teenager sold for $40, has scores of military documents marked “secret,” describing intelligence-gathering methods and information — including escape routes into Pakistan and the location of a suspected safe house there, and $50 bounties paid for each Taliban or al-Qaida fighter apprehended based on the source’s intelligence. The documents appear to be authentic, but the accuracy of the information they contain could not be independently verified. On its face, the information seems to jeopardize the safety of intelligence sources working secretly for U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, which would constitute a serious breach of security. For that reason, the Los Angeles Times has withheld personal information and details that could compromise military operations. U.S. commanders in Afghanistan said an investigation was under way into what shopkeepers at the bazaar describe as ongoing theft and resale of U.S. computer equipment from Bagram. The base is the center of intelligence gathering activities and includes a detention center for suspected al-Qaeda and terror suspects flown in from around the world. “Members of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command are conducting an investigation into potential criminal activity,” a statement said. The top U.S. commander here, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, has ordered a review of policies and procedures relating to the accountability of computer hard-

ware and software. “Coalition officials regularly survey bazaars across Afghanistan for the presence of contraband materials, but thus far have not uncovered sensitive or classified items,” the statement added. The credibility and reliability of some intelligence sources identified in the documents is marked as unknown. Other operatives, however, appear to be of high importance, including one whose information, the document says, led to the apprehension of seven al-Qaeda suspects in the United States. One document describes a source as having “people working for him” in 11 Afghan cities. “The potential for success with this contact is unlimited,” the report says. Even the names of people identified as the sources’ wives and children are listed — details that could put them at risk of retaliation by insurgents who have boasted about executing dozens of people suspected of spying for U.S. forces. The drive includes descriptions of Taliban commanders’ meetings in neighboring Pakistan and maps of militants’ infiltration and escape routes along its border with Afghanistan. In another folder, there is a diagram of a mosque and “madrassa,” or Islamic school, where an informant said fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had stayed in Pakistan. Some of the documents can’t be opened without a password, but most are neither locked nor encrypted. Numerous files indicate the flash drive may have belonged to a member of the Army’s 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The unit is operating in southern Afghanistan, where a U.S.-led coalition is battling a growing insurgency. Some of the computer files are dated as recently as this month, while others date to 2004. The shop clerk who sold the comput-

er drive said an Afghan worker smuggled it out of Bagram base Tuesday, a day after the Times first reported that military secrets were available at several shops in the bazaar. The one-gigabyte flash drive sold at the bazaar Wednesday is almost full, and contains personal snapshots, Special Forces training manuals, records of “direct action” training missions in South America along with numerous computer slide presentations and documents marked “Secret.” There is also a detailed “Site Security Survey” describing the layout of the Special Forces unit’s “Low Visibility Operating Base” in southwestern Afghanistan. Another document outlines procedures for defending the base if it comes under attack, and there are several photographs of the walls and areas inside the perimeter. The drive holds detailed information on a handful of Afghan informants identified by name and the number of contacts with U.S. handlers. In some cases, photographs of the sources are attached. The report describes a potential “low-level source” who reportedly has “brought in active and inactive Taliban and al-Qaeda associates/operators who have expressed a desire to repatriate/end conflict peacefully.” The man, is identified as a former ISI agent in the 1980s, during the U.S.-backed mujahedeen war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. He also provided a document on al-Qaeda’s cell structure to the CIA, the report adds. The document also names the man’s wife, children, and lists his cell phone number. It describes the informant as very punctual, with a good sense of humor. Politically, it adds, he is “much like a Republican in the United States.” The computer files also provide a rare look at how the U.S. military contracts and pays its Afghan spies, and the commitments they make in signed contracts, written in English. In a two-page “Record of Oral Commitment,” marked “Secret” and dated Jan. 28, 2005, a source agreed to work for the U.S. Army by providing information on alQaeda, the Taliban and allied militia, the Hizb-i-Islami, led by fugitive warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. “The source will be paid $15 USD for each mission he completes that has verified information,” the agreement stipulates. “This sum will not exceed a total of $300 USD in a 1-month period,” the report says. The sum rises to $500 a month for information “deemed of very high importance.” And there are serious consequences for any breaches of the commitment, such as failing to disclose information on the terrorist organizations, or missing any of two meetings scheduled for each month. The penalty for “using his new skills to participate in activities that are deemed” anti-U.S. or against the Afghan government is “termination with prejudice,” according to the document.

Americans support comprehensive immigration policy BY RON BROWNSTEIN LOS ANGELES TIMES

WASHINGTON — Most Americans say the United States should confront the challenge of illegal immigration by both toughening border enforcement and creating a new guestworker program, instead of by only cracking down on enforcement, a Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg poll has found. By a 2-1 margin, those surveyed said they would prefer a comprehensive approach, such as the one a bipartisan group of senators has proposed, to an enforcement-only strategy, which the House of Representatives approved last December. Support for a comprehensive approach was about the same among Democrats, independents and Republicans, the poll found. “Do you remember 100 years ago when we were saying ‘give us your tired, give us your poor?’” said David Wells, a Republican who works as a golf-course groundskeeper in Plant City, Fla. “How come that doesn’t still stand? I don’t think it is right to send all the people back who have been here 15 or 20 years, who have families here, who have been good, who haven’t been in jail and have been productive.” Still, Americans showed markedly less enthusiasm for allowing guest workers to continue to flow into the United States than they did for proposals to permit the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States to remain. Even some who rejected efforts to remove illegal immigrants already here made clear in interviews that their opposition was more practical than philosophical. “I don’t think you should be in the country illegally, and I think the people who are here are taking away opportunities from Americans,” said Bill Erner, a Democrat who is a factory worker in Dubuque, Iowa. “But the ones that are already here, it would be almost impossible to find them all and send them back to Mexico or wherever they came from.” The Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg poll contacted 1,357 adults nationwide, including 1,234 registered voters, by telephone from April 8 through 11. The survey, supervised by Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, has a margin of sampling error for both groups of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The poll had ominous findings for the Republican House and Senate majorities as the 2006 midterm elections approach. Although President George W. Bush’s job approval rating rebounded slightly from his 38 percent showing last month — his lowest rating ever in a Los Angeles Times survey — the new poll found Democrats

opening double-digit leads on key measures of voters’ early preferences for the November balloting. Democrats now lead Republicans, 50 percent to 35 percent, among registered voters asked which party they intended to support in their congressional districts this fall. When registered voters were asked which party they hoped would control the House and Senate after the midterm election, 51 percent picked the Democrats and 38 percent the GOP. On both questions, independent voters preferred Democrats by ratios of about 3-1 or more. The Republicans “don’t have it anymore,” said Alfred Smith, an independent in Bucks County, Pa., who runs a printing company. “They don’t trust each other. They don’t look like they are all together anymore.” Forecasting the effect of these broad national attitudes on the results in individual congressional contests is an imperfect science. Republicans could be helped this fall because relatively few House districts are closely balanced between the parties, and many of the key Senate races are occurring in states that lean toward the GOP. But the 14-percentage-point lead for Democrats in the “generic” ballot test could represent an unusually formidable threat to those defenses: For example, the GOP advantage was about one-third as large in the last Los Angeles Times poll before the GOP’s landslide gains in the 1994 congressional elections. In these early soundings for 2006, Republicans face the potential re-emergence of a gender gap that Bush narrowed in his 2004 re-election. While men split evenly when asked which party they intended to support in November, women preferred Democrats, 57 percent to 31 percent, the survey found. Democrats hold a commanding advantage not only among single women, a traditional Democratic constituency, but married women, a swing group that broke toward Bush and the GOP in 2004. The impasse in Washington over restructuring immigration laws has led many to predict the issue could become a ﬂashpoint in this year’s election. But the public does not seem impassioned about the controversy: While 84 percent of poll respondents agreed that illegal immigration was a problem, 31 percent identiﬁed it as one of the country’s major problems. The idea that drew the most support in the survey was allowing “undocumented immigrants who have been living and working in the United States” to obtain visas to work here legally, and to move tosee POLL, page 8

PAGE 8 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006

Immigration continued from page 7 ward citizenship if they meet a list of requirements. Two-thirds of those polled said they supported such a proposal, with support notably higher among independents (71 percent) and Republicans (67 percent) than Democrats (59 percent). Still, about one-ﬁfth of those responding agreed with Katherine Asaif, a school teacher in

Colorado Springs, Colo., who rejected such ideas. “I understand why people want to come to the United States,” she said. “But it does seem to be rewarding the law-breaking.” Establishing a program to import future ﬂows of guest workers drew more modest support, with 54 percent of those polled supporting and 21 percent opposing. Vivian Richardson, a nurse’s assistant who lives outside Raleigh, N.C., said she believed guest workers were necessary because they performed jobs “Americans

don’t want to do anymore,” such as working in ﬁelds or poultry plants. The guest-worker idea drew more support among independents (60 percent) and Republicans (56 percent) than Democrats (48 percent). Two centerpieces of the House immigration legislation fared less well, although they attracted more support than opposition: 42 percent of those surveyed said they supported measures to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border and to make illegal immigration a felony, while 35 percent opposed such measures. After hearing the alternatives, 63 percent said Congress should blend enforcement with a guestworker program, as Bush and many senators in both parties want, while 30 percent said Congress should focus on enforcement only, as many House Republican leaders prefer. Among whites, an underlying class division ran through several of the questions. The GOP enforcement provisions drew much more support from whites without college degrees than those with advanced education. Conversely, a guestworker program was notably more popular among collegeeducated whites than those without college degrees, who could face more direct economic competition from the importation of such workers. “They say they (illegal immigrants) want to do a job Americans don’t want to do,” said Erner, the Democratic factory worker. “I think (employers) don’t want to pay a wage Americans can live on.”

The survey found Bush’s overall standing with voters has stabilized but at a relatively low level: 39 percent of those polled said they approved of Bush’s performance, while 57 percent disapproved. Last month, 38 percent approved and 58 percent disapproved. The survey offered few other encouraging signs for the president. The share of Americans who said they strongly disapproved of Bush’s performance (42 percent) remained more than twice as large as the percentage (19 percent) that strongly approved. Regarding Iraq, 37 percent applauded his performance while 59 percent disapproved. Regarding terrorism, long a Bush strongpoint, 43 percent said they approved while 53 percent disapproved. Regarding the economy, 39 percent approved while 57 percent disapproved. Compared with March, those ﬁndings represent virtually no change for Bush on terrorism and slight improvements on Iraq and the economy. But another economic measure trended against Bush: the percentage of those who said the economy was doing well fell from 56 percent in March to 52 percent in the new survey. In January 2005, 60 percent said the economy was doing well. The survey found most Americans unhappy with the news that Bush approved leaks of classiﬁed information on Iraq’s prewar weapons program to bolster his case for invading the country. In the survey, 22 percent of those polled said they believed Bush’s decision was appropriate,

while exactly three times as many deemed it inappropriate. Republicans split in half over the leak. “I think he has reasons for doing the things he does, in keeping us safe,” said Carrie Earhart, a Republican from Tampa, Texas, who works as a housekeeper. But Wells was troubled. “If he’s the president, he is supposed to be setting an example for the rest of us,” he said. “And he’s not setting a very good example by being mischievous.” Broader measures also captured signs of continuing discontent. Just 26 percent of those polled said they considered the country on the right track. Nearly two-thirds said the country was on the wrong track. Similarly, in a question that linked personal and policy judgments about the president, 61 percent of those polled said they liked Bush personally. But 62 percent said they disliked his policies. Adding to Republican unease, 28 percent approved of Congress’ performance while 61 percent disapproved. That’s the lowest approval, and highest disapproval, rating for Congress in a Los Angeles Times poll since Bush took ofﬁce. Neither party sparked much enthusiasm in the survey. Among registered voters, 42 percent said they had a positive impression of congressional Democrats, while 40 percent viewed them negatively. But the GOP appeared to be bearing the brunt of discontent with Washington: 39 percent of voters said they viewed congressional Republicans favorably while 51 percent held a negative impression.

WORLD & NATION THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 9

AMD gains on Intel BY TERRIL YUE JONES LOS ANGELES TIMES

Continuing its assault on archrival Intel Corp., computer chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said Wednesday that it swung to a profit on higher firstquarter sales. AMD’s net income of $185 million, or 38 cents a share, marked the Sunnyvale, Calif., company’s best quarterly performance in more than five years as its processors win market share away from Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer. In the same quarter last year, AMD lost $17.4 million, or 4 cents a share. Revenue rose more than 8 percent to $1.33 billion. Excluding the memory business AMD spun off last year, sales soared 70 percent. Much of those gains have come at the expense of Intel, which reports its first-quarter earnings next week. The company warned last month that it would miss this quarter’s sales target amid slipping demand. “They’ve hit Intel in its breadbasket. It does not bode well for Intel for the rest of this year,” said Rick Whittington, an analyst with the investment bank Caris and Co. “AMD has the preferred solution across the board. Their biggest success has been in servers, and pretty soon I think we’ll be seeing them as a strong penetrator of Intel’s notebook stronghold.” AMD chips are seen as having a technological edge by running at cooler temperatures, a crucial function with increasingly powerful processors crammed into small spaces. But AMD warned that second-quarter sales will likely be flat or down from the first quarter, but up about 65 percent

from last year’s second quarter, AMD’s Chief Financial Officer Robert Rivet said in an conference call with financial analysts. Analysts had expected AMD sales to be up slightly to around $1.35 billion. That sent AMD shares, which gained $1.07 to $35.42 in regular trading Wednesday, down 73 cents in after-hours trading. AMD has crossed the 20 percent mark for global market share of PCs and so-called x86 servers, the largest category of server computers, said Shane Rau, a chip analyst with technology market researcher IDC. “What will be telltale will be the third quarter. That’s when the new products from both companies will start to appear in systems built for back-to-school and the holiday buying season,” Rau said. “I think September and October will be the key months, then we’ll see if AMD will be able to lock in its share gains.” Caris’ Whittington said he is “expecting a succession of down quarters for Intel. It could be September or December before they flatten out and next year could be a difficult year for them.” Chief Executive Hector Ruiz said on the conference call that AMD this quarter will start selling its dual-core, 64-bit notebook processors, which process twice as much data at a time as the 32-bit processors more common today. That is earlier than Intel’s plans to bring similar chips to the market. Ruiz said AMD will branch into new niches at it seeks greater share. “It is important for us to win in mobile,” he said. “We have grown considerably in the last few quarters in the mobile segment.”

www.browndailyherald.com

Iran underlines intention to grow nuclear program BY KARL VICK WASHINGTON POST

ISTANBUL — Iran on Wednesday underscored its determination to proceed with its nuclear program, as an ofﬁcial announced plans to install 54,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium in the years ahead. Mohammad Saeedi, deputy chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, told state television the centrifuge cascades would be enough to produce fuel for a 1,000-megawatt power plant — the scale of the nuclear generator Russia is building for Iran at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. The ofﬁcial gave no target date for the expansion. But the statement, coming a day after Iran announced it had successfully enriched uranium to new levels at its pilot plant in Natanz, served to underline the government’s resolve to proceed with an ambitious program that the U.N. Security Council has demanded be halted. “We will expand uranium enrichment to industrial scale at Natanz,” Saeedi said on Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Though Iran has said its nuclear program is intended only to generate power, the Bush administration and several other governments maintain that it is a cover for a nuclear weapons program. In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

said the U.N. Security Council should consider “strong steps” in view of Iran’s nuclear advance. On Tuesday, the head of Iran’s nuclear agency said Iran planned to install 3,000 centrifuges over the course of the next year. Gholamreza Aqazadeh also said the country would invite bids from foreign companies to build two 1,000-megawatt plants. The Bushehr plant was 92 percent complete as of last month, he said. “We hope the test production will be launched in the current year,” Iran’s ofﬁcial news agency quoted Aqazadeh as saying. Though an ally of Iran, the Russian government has joined U.S. and European efforts to way-

lay Iran’s nuclear ambition until its civilian nature can be assured. A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday criticized Tuesday’s enrichment announcement, saying “this step is wrong.” At the United Nations, China’s ambassador said Wednesday that Iranian enrichment is “not in line” with U.N. demands. Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, arrived in Tehran on Wednesday evening for talks on the program. The Security Council gave Iran’s theocratic government until April 28 to freeze the program, which was kept secret for 18 years. The demand carries no speciﬁc threat of consequences, however.

PAGE 10 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006

Median L.A. housing price tops half-million mark BY ANNETTE HADDAD LOS ANGELES TIMES

LOS ANGELES — If this is a bubble, it’s sure taking a long time to pop. For the ﬁrst time, the median price of a Los Angeles County home topped the half-milliondollar mark last month, data released Wednesday showed. Four years ago, the median was half that. By doubling in such a short period, it’s no wonder Los Angeles County appears on many lists of the nation’s most overvalued housing markets. The continued price rises comfort recent home buyers such as Brian Kite. The west Los Angeles resident waited three years to buy a house because he thought prices were too high. He plunged in about a year ago, spending slightly more the median price for a three-bedroom home. “I felt at the time that I was buying at the top, but I knew I had to do it,” Kite says. “But in the back of my head I keep thinking: Are prices still going to go up? I wonder how they can.” Yet they are. In March, the median hit $506,000, up 15 percent from a year ago and 3 percent above the prior month, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a research ﬁrm that analyzes property transactions. Los Angeles County thus joined Orange, Ventura and San Diego counties in crossing the half-million-dollar mark, keeping Southern California’s place among the nation’s priciest housing markets. Orange and Ventura counties’ medians sailed through the $600,000 level in the middle

of last year, and San Diego’s broke through the $500,000 point last fall. To buy a house at the median price, a household would need an annual income of at least $120,000 to qualify for conventional financing with a 20 percent down payment. The county’s median household income: about $47,000. Such stratospheric prices and low affordability have raised concerns about a repeat of the last time L.A.’s real estate market went from hot to cold. After a boom in the late 1980s, local home prices fell nearly 20 percent between 1991 and 1996 — among only a handful of regional markets to see prices fall in the decade. But much has changed since then, economists assert. The region’s economy is less dependent on any single industry, such as aerospace, where a sharp loss of jobs due to defense cutbacks sparked the early-1990s real estate collapse. There also has been much less new-home building here than 15 years ago, so vast tracts of unsold homes are hard to find. Mortgage rates are much lower. And local homeowners may have learned a few things from the last goaround. Namely, that a slowing market is not cause for panic. When the market slows, many just won’t sell. Still, naysayers contend, history is starting to repeat itself. Sales volumes are slowing while more homes are coming on the market. In March, 9,755 homes changed hands in L.A. County, a 10.3 percent decline from a year ago, and the fifth consecutive month of

falling sales. Also, the rate of price appreciation throughout Southern California has slowed from its peak in mid-2004. In some cases, sellers are dropping their original asking prices. Today’s combination of more slowly rising prices, fewer sales and growing supply are typical of the ﬁrst phase of a slowdown, University of California, Los Angeles economist Christopher Thornberg says. “Prices are still going up, because they always go up even when the market starts to cool,” he says. “It will take six to nine months for a cooling market to start to see lower prices. It happens time after time.” But while more homes are on the market, it’s not necessarily a bad sign, other analysts say. If anything, a large percentage of homeowners may be testing the waters to see what price they can fetch. If they like it, they will sell. If they don’t, they will pull the house off the market. Such seller psychology is translating into more homes on the market for longer periods — but not widespread price reductions. “Inventory is deﬁnitely up but it’s not swamping the market,” says Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the California Association of Realtors. Back at the start of the last real estate downturn, in February 1991, there were so many homes for sale in Los Angeles County it would have taken 28 months to sell them all, Appleton-Young recalls. Defense-industry layoffs forced many to sell. No job, no big mortgage.

‘Architectural transformation’ to shut Smithsonian’s American History Museum until 2008 BY JACQUELINE TRESCOTT WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — The National Museum of American History will close for almost two years to reconfigure the core of its often-mystifying layout and build a new gallery for the Star-Spangled Banner. The 42-year-old museum, the largest history museum in the country and the thirdmost-visited branch of the Smithsonian, will close Sept. 5, the day after Labor Day, officials announced Wednesday. Construction is expected to be completed by summer 2008. The museum is home to some of the country’s iconic symbols, such as the desk on which Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and the top hat Abraham Lincoln was wearing the night of his assassination, as well as cultural curiosities such as the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” and the home kitchen of famed chef Julia Child. After four decades of sending visitors through a maze of hallways and galleries, the museum is planning to redo the core of the building, adding 10-foot-high “artifact walls” on the first and second floors — glass cases to display hundreds of items from the vast collections. The center of the 750,000-square-foot building will have an atrium with a skylight and a glass staircase that will allow visitors at the entrance from the Mall to see all the way through the building to the entrance on Constitution Avenue. “This is the beginning of our architectural transformation of the building,” said Brent Glass, the museum’s director. He said the decision to close the museum was made reluctantly after it became clear that doing so was the quickest, safest and most cost-effective way to do the work. American History had 3

million visitors in 2005. The centerpiece of the $85 million renovation will be a dramatic enclosure for the Stars and Stripes that flew over Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor during the British bombardment in 1814. The flag inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that would become the national anthem. The Smithsonian has had the flag since 1907. Over the past eight years, the banner has undergone thorough repairs. The Smithsonian announced Wednesday that the work is complete. In a process initially expected to take three years, curators removed the linen backing, put in place in 1914 with 1.7 million stitches, and mended 165 areas of the flag. They removed dirt with cosmetic sponges and an acetone-water mixture. The work was done behind a glass wall in the museum. Officials calculated more than 12 million people looked on as the flag was being restored. Its new home will be dimmed to evoke the “dawn’s early light,” with Key’s words on a screen behind it. The flag will lie on a platform tilted 10 degrees from the horizontal. It can no longer be hung vertically because of the stress on the wool and cotton fibers. The gallery will be behind a soaring 19foot sculpture of a flag. Panels at the entrance and exit will tell the history of the flag and the painstaking conservation. Announcement of the new plan for the building comes four years after a blue-ribbon commission issued a report sharply critical of the museum’s layout. The report said the museum didn’t “meet any obvious test of comprehensibility or coherence,” adding that even its employees got lost in the building. Blueprints for the overhaul come from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which designed the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the National Gallery’s Sculpture Garden.

WORLD & NATION THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 11

Gay, lesbian parents plan to make presence known at Easter egg roll BY PETULA DVORAK WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — The White House Easter Egg Roll, with its poufy, pastel dresses, cute littleboy suits and squealing children chasing eggs, will take a turn for the political this year. Hundreds of gay and lesbian parents, some from across the country, plan to line up overnight Thursday to get tickets to the 128-year-old Washington ritual Monday, to blanket the White House lawn with a realistic mosaic of their families. “I don’t think this is a protest. Showing up, participating fully in an American tradition, showing Americans that we do exist, that in our minds isn’t a protest,” said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of Family Pride Coalition, an advocacy group for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender parents based in Washington. Critics have denounced the parents for politicizing such an iconic, American event. “I think it’s inappropriate to use a children’s event to make a political statement,” said Mark Tooley, who directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy. He wrote a column earlier this year in the Weekly Standard saying gay civil rights groups were making “covert plans to crash the annual White House Easter egg roll.” Other critics have dubbed this year’s Easter mobilization “Brokeback Bunny” in online message boards, a reference to “Brokeback Mountain,” the Oscar-winning movie about two gay sheepherders. The springtime rite also has been targeted by the Humane Society of the United States, which asked the White House to put the chicken before the egg and use only eggs laid by uncaged hens. The White House nixed the cage-free idea pretty quickly, saying that free-range

hens are far and few between and that officials want to get their 14,200 eggs from caged chickens because of food safety. There has been some handwringing at the White House over the planned gay and lesbian mobilization. White House spokesman Scott McClellan began fielding questions about it since January. The National Park Service finally laid out the rules Wednesday. The Easter tradition is open to the public, and tickets are dispensed on a first-come, firstserved basis. The tickets are for children 7 and younger and for no more than two adults to accompany each child. First Lady Laura Bush’s office Wednesday reiterated, “Mrs. Bush wants to make sure all families are welcome to attend the Easter egg roll.” The egg roll has been a tradition since 1878, with its petting zoos, staff members hopping about in bunny costumes and maypole dancing. The president sometimes makes a brief appearance, and the first lady usually reads a story. The White House was silent about their plans for this year. Usually, the only thing that separates the egg rollers from the rest is the is a measure of practicality that keeps them from sitting on a cold sidewalk for hours, in the dark, waiting to pick up tickets. In the past, people have set up camp outside the White House as early as 4 a.m. To ensure their place on the lawn, gay and lesbian parents are lining up about 8 p.m. Thursday. They will not carry signs or chant slogans. “The message is that gay and lesbian families are everywhere in this country,” said Chrisler, whose group is one of about a dozen planning the event. “We care about the same things that all parents care about: providing our children with every opsee BUNNIES, page 13

www.browndailyherald.com

Drug treatment program lowers jail population BY J. MICHAEL KENNEDY LOS ANGELES TIMES

California’s 6-year-old program that mandates treatment instead of prison sentences for drug offenders is dramatically decreasing California’s jail population and saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a study released Wednesday. The study, prepared by the left-leaning Justice Policy Institute in Washington, echoes another report released by the University of California, Los Angeles earlier this month that also touted huge taxpayer savings through doing away with prison sentences in favor of treatment. That report said the program, which was passed by voters in 2000 as Proposition 36, saved California $173 million in its ﬁrst year and $2.50 for every dollar invested since then. The Wednesday report by the Justice Policy Institute, which seeksalternativestoincarceration, said the rate of imprisonment for drug possession offenses has decreased by more than 34 percent. It also said that dire predictions of a rise in violent crime with the passage of Proposition 36 were unfounded. “It really helps to put a context to the debate,’’ said Jason Ziedenberg, the executive director of the Justice Policy Institute. “I think people need

to understand how many people were in prison in 2000 as opposed to how many there are today and that there has been progress.’’ The release of the two reports comes at a critical juncture for supporters who contend that the $120 million earmarked for Proposition 36 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when funding runs out this summer is not enough money. They contend that, because of inﬂation and an increase in costs for services, the money does not stretch far enough. “It really needs to be at $209 million just to be bare-bones adequate,’’ said Margaret Dooley, statewide coordinator with the Drug Policy Alliance, which is seeking an increase in funding for the program. She said she and others would descend on the capital later this month to drum up support for the additional

funding, which she believed would be forthcoming because lawmakers would be unable to point to a downside. She also said she was confident of support from the more than 60,000 people arrested but kept out of prisons and jails because of Proposition 36. Scott Ehlers, a co-author of the Justice Policy Institute report, said he and others believe that the next goal should be to expand the reach of Proposition 36 to include those arrested for nonviolent crimes related to drug abuse — such as theft to purchase drugs. He also said he did not anticipate any calls for major trims in the program. “I don’t see anyone calling for a rollback by any means because I think the treatment is more cost-effective than sending people to prison,’’ he said.

THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 13

Bunnies continued from page 11 portunity and every experience possible.” The parents considered wearing some of kind Tshirt that would identify them as a group. But because all those T-shirts could look like a protest — and Washington weather isn’t always T-shirt friendly in April — the group settled on rainbowcolor leis as a unifying symbol, said Colleen Gillespie, a profes-

Baseball continued from page 16 scored another on a sacrifice fly, upping their lead to 3-1. “It’s been a long week,” Burton said of the team’s faults in the field. “This week’s been like spring break all over again.” The Bears played 10 games in seven days over that period. In the fifth inning, the Bears turned the tables and took advantage of the Rams’ mistakes. Dietz reached on an error to lead off the inning, and then shortstop Robert Papenhause ’09 singled after the URI first baseman dropped a foul ball. After centerfielder Steve Daniels ’09 struck out, rightfielder Paul Christian ’06 doubled to left to score Dietz. With first base open, URI elected to walk first baseman Brad Rifkin ’09 — hitting for Tews — but pitcher Matthew Bruderek threw the first pitch-out a good five feet over the catcher’s head, which allowed Papenhause to score and tie the game at three. “He fired it off the backstop,” Hughes said, jokingly. “It was not a good spot, no.” The Rams responded with a

Hanegby continued from page 16 cide bomber. I would deﬁnitely do it again.” Hanegby was dismissed from the military in December 2002. Many of his friends had gone to American colleges to play tennis, and Hanegby decided to try it for himself. But the return to tennis was not easy. “In the beginning, I didn’t think I could get back in shape,” he said. “It was hard. But I put in a lot of effort because I love the game.” In Fall 2003, Hanegby began attending Binghamton University. In doing so, he became the first of his family to come to America. Hanegby said the transition was especially difficult for him, being a 23-year-old freshman. “There’s already a difference between the American 18year-old versus the Israeli 18year-old,” Hanegby said. “And I was so much older.” Overall, Hanegby said the culture change was the toughest part. He called America more “slow-paced” than Israel and said in America, “everyone is in their own bubble. People are so closed here. Israel is like one big family.” Nevertheless, Hanegby settled in and grabbed the top position on Binghamton’s team. He played for the Bearcats for two years, but he “wanted to achieve more in academics and tennis.” The Bears caught his interest because he had clicked with Brown’s players whenever the two teams met.

sor at New York University who began the movement after visiting last year’s egg event with her partner and their daughter, Ella. “It is ironic. If we didn’t identify ourselves somehow, once again, we’re invisible and our presence there, it loses its power,” Gillespie said. The idea came to her after standing in the ticket line for hours last year. She began to talk to people in line. They weren’t her Brooklyn friends or her university colleagues. They

were different. “I met a family that was home-schooling eight kids, a guy reading a Bible on the Palm Pilot. And they all met me, a lesbian parent,” Gillespie said. “Sure, there was a little hesitation, little awkwardness. But now, when someone on TV, saying negative things about my family, they have a visual picture of what that family looks like. It’s just me, a mom. And I’m waiting in the freezing cold so my daughter could get some Easter eggs.”

run in the sixth, capitalizing on a Papenhause error that came on a potential double-play ball. The Bears returned the favor in the bottom frame: Dietz hit his second single to bring home designated hitter Eric Larson ’06, who reached earlier on an error. The Rams took the lead for good in the seventh, however, when catcher Josh Nestor doubled home a run to make the score 5-4. The run was Burton’s only earned run allowed. After struggling earlier in the season, the former lefty specialist went ﬁve strong innings. He gave up two runs on eight hits, walked two and did not strike out a batter. “It was good to get out there and get to throw and feel like you can contribute to what’s going on with the team,” Burton said. Hughes said that Burton not only pitched well, he gave the fatigued pitching staff what they needed — innings. “He did a great job today,” Hughes said. “I wish we could have gotten a win for him.” The Bears failed to mount a comeback in the seventh, but the inning was not without excitement. URI Head Coach Jim Foster, a former Brown coach, was

tossed from the game after arguing with base umpire Michael Sadowski. The home plate umpire ruled that Ryan Murphy ’08 had hit a ball off of the plate, thus a fair ball, but Sadowski overturned the call, saying that Murphy fouled the ball of his foot. “(Murphy) didn’t move, so I imagine he thought he hit it off himself,” Hughes said. “But that first-base umpire was brutal.” Sadowski also called the second contest due to darkness, even though the teams only had to play one more inning to make it official. The statistics from the game will not count, which is unfortunate for Christian, who hit a solo homer, and Thomas, who had two round-trippers and five RBIs. “I just feel bad for the hitters,” Burton said. “Paul and Devin are going to lose those stats, but hopeful they can make them up in (future) games.” The Bears continue the Ivy League season this weekend with doubleheaders against Dartmouth on Saturday and Sunday at Dexter Aldrich Field. Both start at noon. The Bears are currently 7-1 in league play and are tied with Harvard atop the Red Rolfe Division standings.

“He had played some guys on our team,” said Head Coach Jay Harris. “From that experience, he really respected our program. He was ready to be a Bear.” The transfer to Brown was yet another adjustment for Hanegby. Luckily, he made an immediate connection with co-captain Phil Charm ’06, with whom Hanegby plays doubles and whom Hanegby said helped the most in his transition. “We clicked because he was more mature than some of the other guys,” Hanegby said. “Phil also spent some time in Israel over the summer, so he knows where I’m coming from. He helped me a lot with adjusting to Brown’s academics.” Hanegby is an economics concentrator, hoping to someday work on Wall Street, and so far, according to Charm, “He’s done a phenomenal job. He’s very dedicated to his schoolwork.” Aside from academics, Hanegby was also unsure where he would ﬁt in with the team. “It was tough for me,” he said. “The team is young. I was older than everyone else, but they had Phil and (co-captain) Luke (Tedaldi ’06), who had more experience with the team. I didn’t know exactly where to put myself.” “He’s a combination of the college student and the older guy,” Charm said. The players even joke that Hanegby has an AARP card. Harris says Hanegby’s maturity makes him a natural leader. “At times, it’s like having another as-

sistant coach,” Harris said. Hanegby’s teammates feel similarly. “He’s someone everyone can look up to,” Charm said. “It’s very good to be able to ask him questions about working in groups and what to do in difﬁcult situations.” At other times, Harris said, Hanegby is more of a “big brother” to his teammates, especially Saurabh Kohli ’08, another of Hanegby’s doubles partners. “He gives me advice and listens to me,” Kohli said. “He’s always there for me.” In fact, Kohli said, “If I don’t do my schoolwork, he calls me. Sometimes he hits tennis balls at me at practice. I don’t like being yelled at, so I do my work.” In addition to his leadership qualities, Hanegby is famous among his teammates for his extreme punctuality. “He’s always at practice early,” said Chris Lee ’09. “He always tries to get other guys to come early, too.” Hanegby explained that while his service in the army may have helped to strengthen this habit, in general, “I don’t like wasting time. I hate when people are late. I believe in hard work. Hard work gives you an edge.” “He’s the hardest-working guy on the team,” Harris said. “He brings a depth of character to the team that you can’t measure.” The Bears host Cornell on Friday, and Hanegby may be easily spotted at the match as the only player with his shirt tucked in and an Israeli flag draped over his chair for motivation. “It reminds me of the hard times I’ve been through,” he said.

Goldman continued from page 16 had the help of Duncan and Ginobili for most of the season. Kobe Bryant has probably done more than anyone on this list, but he is playing for a team that will be in seventh or eighth place in the Western Conference when the season is over. Granted, without Kobe, who is leading the NBA in scoring at 35.2 points per game, the Lakers would be trying their hands at the draft lottery, but the MVP really must go to a player on a better team. When I think of Kobe’s case for the MVP, I think of the early years of Allen Iverson. Up until 2001,when the Sixers went to the NBA Finals, Iverson carried many teams to the playoffs as a low seed. Without Iverson, those teams would have been lottery bound, but Iverson never got the recognition from the league that he deserved until 2001, when the Sixers were the number one seed in the East. That season, Iverson won the MVP and earned the validation he deserved for all his other great seasons. Kobe is in a very similar boat, and thus will not win it. Kobe is playing for a team struggling to even make the playoffs, but Billups is playing for the Pistons, who have been the NBA’s best team from start to ﬁnish. Billups is the catalyst for the team with the best starting ﬁve in the NBA. He leads the league in assist-to-turnover ratio, the most important statistic for a point guard. He is also averaging career highs in points (19 per game) and assists (8.7). He also has a knack for knocking down clutch shots, thus the nickname “Mr. Big Shot.” Though Billups has had his best season, it still will not be enough to win the MVP. Because he plays for such a strong team, many writers will wonder if it is his supporting cast that makes him better, not the other way around. The Mavericks have not been as good as the Pistons, but they have been a pleasant surprise. Avery Johnson has assembled a team around Nowitzki much like the squad Larry Brown compiled around Iverson in

2001. This Mavericks team is not the run-and-gun group that we are used to, rather, it is made up of role players like Adrian Grifﬁn, DeSagana Diop and Marquis Daniels that are more defensively oriented. With this new cast of characters, Dirk has taken his game to an even higher level, getting 26.5 points and nine rebounds per game. Even with Dirk’s new leadership, he has a reputation of being soft, staying too much on the perimeter when he should use his seven-foot stature to bang on the interior. Dirk has done very little to change that perception, which is why voters will pass him up again. Finally, Steve Nash. I was one of those people that argued that Shaquille O’Neal should have been the MVP last year because he made a bunch of noname players legitimate. That is exactly what Nash has done this year. He is having a better statistical year than he had last year and has had a more profound impact on his team. This is a completely revamped team from the one that made the conference ﬁnals a year ago. Gone are Joe Johnson and Quentin Richardson, and Amare Stoudemire has missed all but three games because of knee surgery. Nash has taken the replacements for these players — Raja Bell, Brian Grant and Boris Diaw — and spoonfed them to career years. Bell and Diaw are averaging career highs in points, while Grant’s career has been resurrected in the valley of the sun. Diaw will most likely win the NBA’s Most Improved Player award a year after no one even knew he was in the league. In the midst of making everyone on the team better, Nash is also averaging a career high 19.2 points per game and 10.4 assists, which ranks second in his illustrious career. The Suns are on the verge of their second consecutive division crown, which is all thanks to Nash. Nash is no doubt more valuable to his team this year than he was last year. For that reason and many others, he has earned his second-straight MVP. Assistant Sports Editor Justin Goldman ’07 makes everyone around him better.

EDITORIAL/LETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 14

STAFF EDITORIAL

Classifying crime At the end of March, a Brown staff member reported being struck in the face by an acquaintance on Benevolent Street. Both Department of Public Safety officers and a Providence Police Department officer arrived on the scene, though their police work generated surprisingly different crime reports — while DPS recorded the incident as a simple assault, the PPD officer logged the incident as a “suppressed disturbance,” leaving officials close to the incident somewhat perplexed. Though the incident, which seems isolated and minor, does not likely underscore a serious threat to the Brown community, the divergent reports are cause for concern. As Michelle Nuey, manager of special services for DPS, points out, classifying a crime as a “suppressed disturbance” might limit the victim’s ability to press charges. But, beyond how the incident might be handled in court, the apparent disconnect it reveals between DPS and the PPD could severely limit the ability of both departments to effectively police College Hill. The correct analysis of ongoing trends is one of the most powerful tools in fighting crime. By providing accurate statistics, a police force can ensure that officers and community members are aware of prevalent threats and conduct themselves accordingly. When DPS and the PPD report crimes differently, these statistics are distorted, turning a valuable asset into a potential burden. We commend the City Council for attempting to address crime report discrepancies by forming the Public Safety Committee, and we hope the research of James Lombardi, Providence’s internal auditor, reveals why the two departments’ statistics don’t line up. But we also believe that increased coordination between the two departments is in order. Through heightened communication and the streamlining of crime reporting tactics, the PPD and DPS will prevent such discrepancies from occurring in the future. Additionally, we believe increased dialogue will dispel the misguided notion that these departments act independently. One PPD officer, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Herald that DPS routinely handles serious crimes without assistance from the PPD. This is understandable — after all, PPD officers must patrol an entire city, and many incidents on College Hill likely don’t warrant outside assistance. But the same PPD officer referred to DPS officers as operating in “their own country,” a statement that indicates an unfortunately shortsighted tendency to dismiss obvious connections between the two departments. It’s foolish to assume that criminals operating on College Hill will necessarily remain there. PPD officers would be wise to actively engage with DPS, because criminals pose a threat to the entire city — not just the neighborhood where a police report is filed.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD EDITORIAL Robbie Corey-Boulet, Editor-in-Chief Justin Elliott, Executive Editor Ben Miller, Executive Editor Stephanie Clark, Senior Editor Katie Lamm, Senior Editor Jonathan Sidhu, Arts & Culture Editor Jane Tanimura, Arts & Culture Editor Stu Woo, Campus Watch Editor Mary-Catherine Lader, Features Editor Ben Leubsdorf, Metro Editor Anne Wootton, Metro Editor Eric Beck, News Editor Patrick Harrison, Opinions Editor Nicholas Swisher, Opinions Editor Stephen Colelli, Sports Editor Christopher Hatﬁeld, Sports Editor Justin Goldman, Asst. Sports Editor Jilane Rodgers, Asst. Sports Editor Charlie Vallely, Asst. Sports Editor PRODUCTION Allison Kwong, Design Editor Taryn Martinez, Copy Desk Chief Lela Spielberg, Copy Desk Chief Mark Brinker, Graphics Editor Joe Nagle, Graphics Editor

PHOTO Jean Yves Chainon, Photo Editor Jacob Melrose, Photo Editor Ashley Hess, Sports Photo Editor Kori Schulman, Sports Photo Editor BUSINESS Ryan Shewcraft, General Manager Lisa Poon, Executive Manager David Ranken, Executive Manager Mitch Schwartz, Executive Manager Laurie-Ann Paliotti, Sr. Advertising Manager Susan Dansereau, Ofﬁce Manager POST- MAGAZINE Sonia Saraiya, Editor-in-Chief Taryn Martinez, Associate Editor Ben Bernstein, Features Editor Matt Prewitt, Features Editor Elissa Barba, Design Editor Lindsay Harrison, Graphics Editor Constantine Haghighi, Film Editor Paul Levande, Film Editor Jesse Adams, Music Editor Katherine Chan, Music Editor Hillary Dixler, Off-the-Hill Editor Abigail Newman, Theater Editor

Allison Kwong, Night Editor Amy Ehrhart, Natalia Fisher, Copy Editors Senior Staff Writers Simmi Aujla, Stephanie Bernhard, Melanie Duch, Ross Frazier, Jonathan Herman, Rebecca Jacobson, Chloe Lutts, Caroline Silverman Staff Writers Justin Amoah, Zach Barter, Allison Erich Bernstein, Brenna Carmody, Alissa Cerny, Ashley Chung, Stewart Dearing, Kristina Kelleher, Hannah Levintova, Hannah Miller, Aidan Levy, Taryn Martinez, Kyle McGourty, Ari Rockland-Miller, Chelsea Rudman, Kam Sripada, Robin Steele, Spencer Trice, Ila Tyagi, Sara Walter Sports Staff Writers Sarah Demers, Amy Ehrhart, Erin Frauenhofer, Kate Klonick, Madeleine Marecki, George Mesthos, Hugh Murphy, Eric Perlmutter, Marco Santini, Bart Stein, Tom Trudeau, Steele West Account Administrators Alexandra Annuziato, Emilie Aries, Steven Butschi, Dee Gill, Rahul Keerthi, Kate Love, Ally Ouh, Nilay Patel, Ashfia Rahman, Rukesh Samarasekera, Jen Solin, Bonnie Wong Design Staff Adam Kroll, Andrew Kuo, Jason Lee, Gabriela Scarritt Photo Staff CJ Adams, Chris Bennett, Meg Boudreau, Tobias Cohen, Lindsay Harrison, Matthew Lent, Dan Petrie, Christopher Schmitt, Oliver Schulze, Juliana Wu, Min Wu, Copy Editors Chessy Brady, Amy Ehrhart, Natalia Fisher, Jacob Frank, Christopher Gang, Yi-Fen Li, Taryn Martinez, Katie McComas, Sara Molinaro, Heather Peterson, Lela Spielberg

JOSEPH NAGLE

LETTERS UCS and UFB need active candidates To the Editor: It’s April — time for lazy afternoons on the Main Green, Spring Weekend and A Day On College Hill — and Undergraduate Council of Students and Undergraduate Finance Board elections. Every year, positions on UCS and UFB — ranging from sophomore class representative to UFB vice chair to Student Activities chair — go uncontested. We’re writing to encourage everyone, lovers and haters of UCS or UFB alike, to consider running for a position on one of them. Why, you ask? First, running for a UCS or UFB spot is a powerful way to ensure that your opinions, dreams and frustrations will be heard at Brown. You may not win, but often just the ideas you put forth and the feedback you receive from students are impetus enough for change. Second, the more candidates there are for these spots, the more choices the student body has. While we trust undergraduates to elect those most qualified, they can only make this determination if they have choices. Finally, your election to UCS or UFB is a uniquely strong avenue through which you can change what you don’t like about

Brown, student government or the finance process. Running is a commitment to putting your money — or, in this case, your energy — where your mouth is. Do something about what annoys you — run for UCS or UFB, make sure your voice is heard and know that you’re doing something to help yourself, your friends and your university. If you don’t run, who will? Information sessions to learn about the positions and organizations and to explain what is involved in running for UCS or UFB are on Thursday at 6 p.m. in Peterutti Lounge and Friday at 3 p.m. in Faunce 201. If you cannot come to either, email Katrina_Brockwehl@brown.edu. We hope to see you there! Sarah Saxton-Frump ’07 President, UCS Kate Brockwehl ’08 Chair, Elections Board April 12

Visit www.browndailyherald.com Send a letter to the editor: letters@browndailyherald.com Send a guest column: opinions@browndailyherald.com Apply to be a regular columnist: opinions@browndailyherald.com CORRECTIONS POLICY The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. C O M M E N TA R Y P O L I C Y The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reﬂect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reﬂect the opinions of their authors only. LET TERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed. A DV E RT I S I N G P O L I C Y The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

OPINIONS

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · THURSDAY, APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 15

Sit-in for a slaughter Those who call for American forces to exit Iraq ignore the growing threat of civil war BY NATE GORALNIK OPINIONS COLUMNIST

Those urging President George W. Bush to set a deadline for withdrawing American troops from Iraq labor under a dangerous illusion. Today’s Iraq quitters have become the mirror image of the Bosnia and Rwanda isolationists of yesteryear: deadly civil war looms, the fate of millions hangs in the balance, but America turns a blind eye as a nation plunges into civil chaos and genocide. “Each time we are told of ‘ancient tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ hatreds; … each time there is a demand for an ‘exit strategy’ rather than a ‘success strategy,’” wrote Richard Holbrooke, former ambassador to the United Nations, in 2004. “The killing really takes off only after the murderers see that the world, and especially the United States, is not going to care or react.” In the last 15 years, America’s inaction has hammered nails into the cofﬁns of some 900,000 innocents in Bosnia and Rwanda alone, and we risk making the same cataclysmic mistake in Iraq. If we abandon our efforts to construct a national unity government there, there is no doubt that Iraq, too, will face war. This is why, even if I were a left-leaning sociopath looking to turn a wonderful gift by Michael and Ellen Doherty-Granoff ’83 into an object lesson in why politicians don’t listen to protesters, I would applaud, not denounce, the support of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for the war. I supported the protesters in March 2003, when Bush was poised to entangle our troops in a costly, bloodstained quagmire that I feared would wreak havoc on Iraq’s population. But in April 2006, the reasons that Iraq has become such a nightmare are also reasons why we absolutely cannot give up on the Iraqis now. Far from the source of Iraq’s problems,

the American occupation is the only thing standing between the current mediumintensity ethnic conﬂict and a full-blown civil bloodbath. Tensions have run extremely high since late February, when Sunni terrorists killed dozens near a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra. Since that attack, American casualties have actually fallen as Iraqis have increasingly turned away from coalition forces to attack one another, leaving over 1,500 Iraqis dead in recent weeks. Iraq’s warring groups have embarked

International Studies, these are omens of “a creeping polarization of Iraq,” marked by a “slow, steady loss of confidence, a growing process of distrust.” Even Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who blames the Americans for the conflict, has publicly warned the United States not to pull out of the conflict. “Now? It would be a disaster ... It would become an arena for a brutal civil war and then terrorist operations would flare up not just in Iraq, but in very many places.” Despite the challenges Iraq faces, the

Far from being the source of Iraq’s problems, the American occupation is the only thing preventing a full-blown civil bloodbath in Iraq. on a barbaric campaign of ethnic cleansing, an eerie reminder of the early events of Bosnia’s genocide. Scores of Iraqis are kidnapped seemingly every day, many of them slaughtered and dumped into alleyways or ﬁelds. So many of these killings have been carried out by Shiite-controlled death squads operating within the security forces that Iraq’s government has warned Iraqis not to trust any police units operating without American supervision. In the last month alone, this campaign of armed intimidation has forced over 30,000 Iraqis to ﬂee mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad to the promise of safety among their religious kin. To Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and

United States has been remarkably successful in staving off civil war and bringing all of Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups into the political process. A case in point is the ongoing dispute about Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s position in the next Iraqi government. Sunnis and Kurds have called for Jaafari to resign, citing his poor performance in the aftermath of February’s bombing in Samarra. The resulting standoff made many observers fear that interethnic confrontation would spill out of the parliament and into the streets. Yet Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq’s top Shiite bloc, has recently bowed to the Sunnis’ concerns. “The prime min-

ister,” said Hakim’s deputy, “should have national consensus inside the parliament, and he should have the support of the international body.” This remarkable move is a clear signal that the American presence is making a difference. Iraq’s ethnic groups are slowly coming to understand that they all stand to gain if they can compromise and avoid civil war. The logic of every-faction-for-itself has not taken hold because American and British firepower has kept Iraq’s ethnic groups, particularly the dangerous Shiite militias, from taking matters into their own hands. Coalition forces have provided both protection and restraint for Iraq’s sectarian groups, and while the Interior Ministry’s police forces have been infiltrated by Shiite militants, the Defense Ministry has broad multiethnic representation. This has built confidence on all sides and given the parties a genuine incentive to compromise. An immediate American withdrawal, however, would encourage the Shiite militias to fill the power vacuum and make a unilateral land grab. The Sunnis, and possibly the Kurds, would lose their stake in the political process and dig in for battle over Kirkuk. No force would prevent the Shiites, like the Serbs in Yugoslavia, from turning the security forces and other government resources to their own, violent uses. So there is a huge danger in Iraq, but there is also a real promise that leaders will moderate their demands and achieve a modus vivendi. If we give up now, we would roll out the red carpet for an unmitigated human catastrophe — like a Bosnia, but possibly worse, both because it could suck the entire region into conflict and because the blood would be all over American hands. Nate Goralnik ’06 is asking you a question, Senator!!!

The cult of science Believing that science can explain everything about the world requires a leap of faith BY MATTHEW LAWRENCE OPINIONS COLUMNIST

Atheism, or scientism, as it is often practiced, requires every bit as much faith as do other organized religions and belief structures. Lacking knowledge about whether or not there is a god, one could admit to being an agnostic (meaning you “don’t know”). Saying there is a god, of course, takes some faith. Logically speaking, saying there is no god takes exactly the same degree of faith. Let’s break it down logically. My belief in science tells me that all things in existence can be explained by science, be it why I make the decisions I make or how a stew of chemicals became life. I give science total ability to give an answer, X, to any question, Y. However, that X will still be subject to questioning. Eventually, on some level, we must rely on some kind of faith to answer X. Science can’t explain it all. Whether you have faith in a particular god, or faith that there is no god, since you have no way of knowing, that is faith nonetheless. Existence came from somewhere. Whether it was created, came into being by accident or is in some kind of self-replicating cycle, something got the whole thing in motion. Science explains existence, but it does not explain the origins of existence. Think about it: maybe science proved the Greek gods wrong by explaining what caused lightning — a transfer of electrons. Maybe today it can explain electrons in the stan-

dard model in terms of their constituent particles: quarks, leptons, gluons and, perhaps someday, strings. But eventually, when science has discovered the tiniest particle of matter, it still won’t know what caused that particle, what made it and what made it the smallest. Likewise, knowing the mass and light output of a star or planet and knowing how gravity and other forces pull them together doesn’t tell us the reason gravity does

beginning of the universe (like Stephen Hawking and other cosmologists try to do). They have a faith in science’s ability to explain where all of existence came from. But as I said, while science explains relationships, it can’t explain where the whole thing came from. Atheists would disagree; “Oh yes it can,” they say. And if I asked how, they would say, “I don’t know, but there are theories… or could

But eventually, when science has discovered the smallest particle of matter, it still won’t know what caused that particle, what made it and what made it the smallest. that. It increases our knowledge, but the explanation remains unclear. Even with all our volumes of data and equations describing them, looking up at the stars should be no less wondrous today than it was for our ancestors. The problem with atheists, and many others, is that they have a “faith” of their own in science but don’t admit to it. It’s not just a faith in science’s ability to explain speciation (like Darwin did) or the

be some day.” Talk about blind faith. If you don’t have any faith in one explanation of the origin of things or another, you ought to be an agnostic, but certainly not an atheist. Agnosticism means you think there might be a God, but you don’t know. But in order to be an atheist, you have to have some competing explanation for existence that refutes all others. If science and reason can’t do

that, how else can you? Only with faith. If you still think science can, as I said earlier, you haven’t escaped faith at all — and yours is grounded in a demonstrable fallacy. Just ask famous scientist, anti-intelligent design advocate, and Brown Professor of Biology Ken Miller ’70 P’02. His 1999 book, “Finding Darwin’s God,” has two parts: the first attacks religious zealots who would deny Darwin, the second attacks scientific zealots whose scientism would deny religion. The problem with the false belief that science can explain not just all things, but where existence came from, is that it takes away from the credibility of many of those who attack religion. The crazies you see supporting intelligent design, or creationism, have no trouble defending themselves, because in many cases their opponents’ arguments are grounded in the logical fallacy of scientism. In order to combat religion, if you think it’s up to no good, you need to understand its legitimacy. Religion requires faith, and it is a way for people to understand the existence of the world. Science itself does not require faith. But if you’re under the mistaken impression that science can eventually explain the existence of the world, then you have faith in science, and science is your religion.

Matthew Lawrence ’06 co-wrote this column with his brother David Lawrence, a senior physics major at UMass-Amherst.

SPORTS THURSDAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD · APRIL 13, 2006 · PAGE 16

‘Old man’ Hanegby ’07 gets his drive, discipline from stint in Israeli army BY ERIN FRAUENHOFER SPORTS STAFF WRITER

Dan Hanegby ’07 knows what it means to love the game. He knows hours, months, years of pushing himself harder and harder. He knows the sore wound a single defeat on the tennis court leaves behind. And as the No. 66 singles player in the country, he knows exquisite moments of triumph, moments when dreams are things that can be held in one’s hands. Everything is for those moments. He knows what it means to have dreams. A 25-year-old junior from Herzliya, Israel, his dream was to become a professional tennis player. By the age of 16, he had captured the No. 1 ranking in the country. He held the title until he was 18 — the age in Israel when compulsory military service begins. But according to Hanegby, Israeli athletes are awarded a special status that allows them to do an easier service, assigned to a base close to their home where they only spend three or four hours a day — so he would still be able to play tennis. However, “Israel was starting to heat up at that time,” Hanegby said. “There were a lot of suicide bombings. Every week we had something. There isn’t a person in Israel who doesn’t know someone who died in a bombing. So I wanted to do something for my country.” Hanegby quit tennis and volunteered for the Special Forces. He would not step back onto a tennis court for three and a half years. Hanegby knows what it means to have dreams — yet he says that his time spent in the army was worth sacriﬁcing his tennis career. According to Hanegby, the army is “sacred” in Israel. Ever since he was a

Aaron Eisman / Herald

Dan Hanegby ’07, the No. 66 singles player in the country, was the top tennis player in Israel from age 16 to 18, when he was forced into compulsory military service. child, Hanegby had known that when he turned 18 he would be required to join the army, and it was something he would talk about with his friends. “Being in the Special Forces is like going to an Ivy League school,” he said. For Hanegby, his service in the Special

Forces put everything in perspective. “I hate to lose in tennis, but there are other things in life that are worse,” he said. “No tennis win can compare to that feeling of knowing you helped to stop the next suisee HANEGBY, page 13

Rhody hands baseball first home loss Second game of doubleheader called due to darkness BY CHARLIE VALLELY ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

Heading into Wednesday, the baseball team had played ﬁve games in the previous three days, two of which went to extra frames. It showed on the ﬁeld. The Bears fell victim to a number of mental mistakes and lost 5-4 to the University of Rhode

Island in a seven-inning game that took nearly three hours to play. The loss breaks the Bears’ six-game winning streak and drops them to 8-14 on the season. The two teams were supposed to play a second seven-inning contest but could only ﬁt in four innings before the game was called due to darkness. The Bears trailed 9-6 at the time.

Aaron Eisman / Herald

Second baseman/outﬁelder Paul Christian ’06 hit a home run in the second game of a doubleheader against URI, but it did not count because the game was called. Christian is four home runs away from breaking the Brown record for career homers.

Though the Bears played sloppily, they still almost pulled out the win against a tough URI team (18-6). Co-captain and leftfielder Danny Hughes ’06 said the team just did not have much left in the tank. “We came out and we weren’t very sharp,” he said. “We had a few mental mistakes, and I think everyone’s a little worn down. Not that that’s a really good excuse for playing poorly, but I think everyone’s ready for a day off.” The Bears got on the board first when first baseman Jeff Dietz ’08 singled through the right side to bring catcher Devin Thomas ’07 home from second. But the Rams plated three in the third inning, taking advantage of a variety of Brown miscues. Starting pitcher Robert Dykehouse ’07, making his second collegiate appearance on the mound after officially becoming a pitcher a week ago, retired the first six batters he faced. But Dykehouse struggled to find the strike zone in the third and walked the bases loaded without recording an out. Head Coach Marek Drabinski turned to lefty Ethan Burton ’06 to get out of the jam. Before he threw a pitch, Burton was called for a balk, forcing home the Rams’ first run. Drabinski brought in the infield against the next batter, who hit a sharp grounder to second baseman Bryan Tews ’07. Tews made a nice stop and fired home to cut down the runner. The throw arrived in time, but Thomas failed to tag the runner, forgetting that Burton’s balk had taken away the force play at home. The Rams see BASEBALL, page 13

In thick pack for NBA MVP, Nash still tops As the NBA season winds down, the inevitable question of who should be the league’s MVP has to be posed. A plethora of viable contenders for the award emerged this season, but no clearcut front runner. The way I see it, there are six candidates, all of whom fit a stereotype. There is the JUSTIN GOLDMAN “player with great GOLD STANDARD stats on a good team” in LeBron James, the “player that has emerged as a star” in Tony Parker and the “player that is the only reason that his team is even worth talking about” in Kobe Bryant. In addition, there is the “steady hand on the best team in the NBA,” Chauncey Billups, and the “player that has emerged as the dominant superstar on a very good team,” Dirk Nowitzki. Finally, there is last year’s MVP, Steve Nash, who is arguably more valuable than he was a season ago. James has made his case for being MVP over the last month of the season. He has led the Cavaliers to their first playoff berth since 1997 while scoring 31.7 points per game, along with 7.1 rebounds and 6.8 assists. The only other three players to have a single season in which they averaged 30, six and six have been Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. In his last 10 games, LeBron has stepped up his game to an unthinkable level, averaging 38 points per game and making two game-winning shots. The one knock on him is that he has not come through in clutch situations, but that claim is becoming false. Even with the great season he is having, he is only 21 years old and has plenty of time to win multiple MVPs. For that reason, the basketball writers will most likely pass him up for someone who has a little bit more seasoning. The next candidate is Tony Parker. I know everyone will think that I am sniffing glue, but just look at the statistics. I am not mentioning his name in this category just because I like those camera shots of Eva Longoria during Spurs games, but because Parker has put together his best season as a pro. He has done more than win the heart of the hottest woman on Wisteria Lane — but he has carried a team that has been the best in the Western Conference all season. With Tim Duncan battling plantar fasciitis en route to his worst statistical season as a pro, and Manu Ginobili missing much of the first half of the season with back spasms, Parker has been a constant force for the defending champions. He ranks third in the NBA in field goal percentage at 54 percent and third in the NBA in points in the paint. He is the only guard in the top five in both of those categories and is averaging a career-best in points per game (19.8) and assists (6.1). However, it will be tough for Parker to get votes because he has see GOLDMAN, page 13 BROWN SPORTS SCOREBOARD WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12 BASEBALL: URI 5, Brown 4; Second game called due to darkness THURSDAY, APRIL 13 GYMNASTICS: USAG Nationals (at Cornell)