Thursday, February 22, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD T HURSDAY, F EBR UAR Y 22, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 20

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Many students support affirmative action in College admission

TOUR OF CAMPUS

BY JAMES SHAPIRO SENIOR STAFF WRITER

More than half of Brown undergraduates support considering an applicant’s racial and ethnic background in the admission process, according to a recent Herald poll.

A narrow majority of respondents — 53 percent — said they favor the University’s use of race and ethnicity as a factor in admission, while 30 percent said admission decisions should be based solely on merit. Another 17 percent said they had no opinion or did not answer. The poll was conducted from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2 and has a margin of error of 4.7 percent with 95 percent confidence.

“In the admission process we’re looking at a dozen or more variables for each applicant. Some are subjective, some are objective, and race can become one of those variables,” said Dean of Admission James Miller ’73. “It is not ever the sole factor. For any student there is no sole factor that determines admission.”

Miller cited diversity as the major reason for employing affirmative action. “We are trying to construct a community that is as vibrant, as interesting and as talented as we can make it. Part of that involves making sure that people from all parts of society have a chance to come to Brown and take advantage of the opportunities here,” Miller said.

“It is important, as America changes demographically, that places like Brown identify people who are going to be leaders in emerging communities and that we play a role in training them to be leaders,” he added.

The extent to which race and ethnicity actually affect admission decisions at Brown and other private universities remains unclear, as private universities, unlike many public institutions, rarely disclose their admission data.

“Freedom of Information (Act) requests generally only apply to government institutions, such

Chris Bennett / Herald Tour Guide James Kraemer ’08 speaks to a group of interested students and parents at Soldier’s Arch on Wednesday.

Quiz Bowl team heads to nat’l competition

BY ANNA ABRAMSON CONTRIBUTING WRITER

It doesn’t play on a court or field, but one of Brown’s most successful teams has been winning competitive regional tournaments and is heading to a national competition this spring.

Quiz Bowl, a relatively new group at Brown, competes in team “Jeopardy”-style trivia tournaments.

Brown’s growing team qualified Feb. 10 for a national competition in Minneapolis by winning a tournament hosted by Harvard, where Brown defeated several other teams including Yale, Dartmouth and Boston universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The team has performed well at several other regional competitions this year, winning the Penn Bowl over winter break by defeating 16 teams from schools including the University of Chicago, Princeton University and Williams College.

The team hosted two tournaments on campus last fall, each drawing a field of 10 to 12 teams.

When Jerry Vinokurov GS arrived on campus two years ago — having played quiz bowl as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, and in high school — he found that while Brown had a team, it was inactive.

Vinokurov organized other grad students and first-years who had played in high school to renew the continued on page 4

INSIDE:

3 METRO

Facebook profiles become makeshift memorials

BY KRISTINA KELLEHER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Though Luis Pagan ’06, a 22year-old senior from Providence, died while swimming off the coast of Mexico in January 2006, his profile on Facebook is still active, serving as a memorial for his friends who post written messages on his page’s “wall” even today.

“Sometimes I miss the third grade. I miss the recess. I miss the candy. I miss you,” wrote Rebecca Barlow in a Feb. 6 message on Pagan’s wall. “I saw some shooting stars the other day and thought of you.”

Facebook has allowed Barlow, who attended third to 12th

grade with Pagan, to stay connected with her friends whom she was no longer in touch with on a daily basis. Now, it’s one way she has to remember a friend in death, as Barlow was unable to attend Pagan’s funeral or visit his gravesite.

“I know he’s dead, no longer physically able to read his wall posts or check his messages.

Heck, the ‘no recent activities’ remind us of that every day,” Barlow said. “But like a gravestone covered in flowers or notes, Facebook is letting some continued on page 6

THE HERALD POLL

First in a three-part series on admission policies

are able to provide your students with a range of ideas, opinions, outlooks and views. Literature on learning clearly establishes a relation between depth of learning and complexity of thinking,” she said.

“Individuals bring something to the institution, not in spite of their background, but because of it,” she added.

Students interviewed by The Herald expressed a variety of views on affirmative action, ranging from supportive to critical.

“A lot of people here come from a homogenous background.

It’s beneficial for them to be exposed to people who come from different walks of life, though I don’t think that race and ethnicity are the only areas where that manifests itself,” said Alex Dean ’08. “(Minority students) can contribute to our school’s diversity without hurting our reputation in any way. All of the students of color here are really intelligent continued on page 4

Joint RISD/Brown degree program ready for 2008 launch

BY FRANKLIN KANIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A new five-year dual degree program that would award students a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree from Brown and a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design is set to launch in 2008.

The idea of a dual degree program is not new, said Roger Mayer, professor emeritus of visual art at Brown and a member of the working group responsible for the new program. “It is also something that has been pointed out by visitors who come here,

VIRUS OUTBREAK IN R.I. The norovirus, a disease that causes symptoms similar to those of stomach flu, is being recorded in surprisingly large numbers in the state

www.browndailyherald.com

FEATURE

as large flagship state universities. They do not apply to private colleges or universities such as Brown, Princeton or Harvard. It’s difficult to get reliable data from private institutions,” said Edward Blum, a visiting fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

The racial and ethnic diversity of the Brown student body has remained roughly constant in recent decades. “The ethnic diversity of the class has been pretty consistent here, I would say for at least 20 years,” said Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity.

Allen said diversity is critical to education. “With a diverse student body and diverse faculty you

5 CAMPUS NEWS

who note that the two schools are immediately adjacent to one another, but there’s really nothing ... that (brings) students together in a more formal way,” he said.

The proposal has been approved by Brown’s Academic Priorities Committee and the College Curriculum Council, as well as by those committees’ counterparts at RISD, but it still needs approval by both the Brown and RISD faculty. Administrators and professors in the program’s working group told The Herald they expect the program to continued on page 6

QUEER CONCENTRATION? An undergraduate working group affiliated with Queer Alliance is pushing to increase course offerings and faculty in queer studies

Meara Sharma / Herald File Photo RISD’s fall 2006 art sale.

15 OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

ASIAN DISCRIMINATION? Neil Vangala ’09 and Jon Bogard ’09 offer two different viewpoints on college admission’s treatment of students with Asian backgrounds

16 SPORTS

SPORTS EXTRA! An extra-large Sports section covers men’s tennis, women’s basketball, gymnastics, women’s swimming and women’s hockey

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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WE A

Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker

T H E R

TODAY

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

TOMORROW

snow showers 30 / 16

light rain 43 / 26

MEN

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SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Cajun Fettuccini, Vegan Tofu Pups, Chicken Soup with Tortellini, Pepperoni Spinach Feta Calzone, Kielbasa, Shrimp in Sauce, Chicken Pot Pie, Fudge Bars, Cupcakes

LUNCH — Vegetarian Escarole and Bean Soup, Chinese Chicken Wings with Sticky Rice, Wisconsin Ziti with Four Cheeses, Mandarin Blend Vegetables, Fudge Bars

DINNER — Mexican Cornbread Casserole, Cheese Bread, Honey Dipped Chicken, Whole Kernel Corn, Chicken Breast Florentine, Pot Roast Jardiniere, Brazilian Chocolate Cake

DINNER — Roasted Red Potatoes with Shallots, Eggplant Parmesan, Spinach with Lemon, Acorn Squash, Cheese Bread, Beef Vegetable Soup, Cilantro Chicken, Brazilian Chocolate Cake

SU

WBF | Matt Vascellaro

D O K U

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

How to Get Down | Nate Saunders

Deo | Daniel Perez

CR

O S S W O R D

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Great Barrier Reef phenomena 5 Young with a guitar 9 Throng 14 Hard follower, at sea 15 Language that gave us “khaki” 16 Skirt 17 Trying to look important 20 Forgets about 21 Cabbage concoction 22 Philosopher Descartes 23 Two-time U.S. Open champ 25 Monastery sight 27 Song that ends “all alone and feeling blue” 33 “Lord, is __?”: Matthew 35 Eponymous surgical family name 36 “Carmen,” e.g.

37 Address with a letter missing 39 Gas or brake 42 Lasting impression?

43 Peaks 45 Desire personified 47 Dark __ 48 Route for Texas drivers 52 Movie extra, for short 53 Good people to know 54 Architectural curve 57 Soissons seasons 60 “__ in Love”: 1991 #1 hit 64 Really funny comic, say 67 Not a good thing 68 Mark’s follower 69 Appointment 70 Dance parts 71 Initiation, often 72 Seth’s son DOWN 1 Family head?

2 Styptic compound 3 Literally, Tibetan for “bear from a rocky place” 4 Living room piece 5 “Lilies of the Field” character 6 Units in physics class 7 Star watched by many 8 Madness 9 “A likely story!”

10 Coincides with in spots 11 Went for a spin 12 “My Heart Will Go On” singer 13 Drop-off point 18 Sadat’s faith 19 Terrible time?

24 Hike from the center 26 Routine first baseman 27 Ohio university 28 Color 29 User’s device 30 Window sticker 31 Like some accounts 32 Hard finish?

33 Apple for the teacher?

34 rpm measurer 38 Bungled 40 Public hanging 41 Loughlin of “Full House” 44 Moo __ pork 46 Osaka-based electronics giant 49 Crude group 50 Bit of romantic memorabilia 51 Wagner heroine

54 Electrical impedance units 55 Pace 56 Sea bird 58 Special case 59 Separate 61 __ Bator 62 Turning, in product names 63 Members of the flock 65 Balaam’s mount 66 Counter person?

Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

SilentPenny Soundbite | Brian Elig

xwordeditor@aol.com

2/22/07

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By Jack McInturff (c)2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

2/22/07

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown demic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once during Orientation and P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Offices are located at 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. E-mail herald@browndailyherald.com. World Wide Web: http://www.browndailyherald.com. Subscription prices: $319 one year daily, $139 one semester daily. Copyright 2007 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

METRO THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

E - W E E K E X T R AVA G A N Z A

Blue State Coffee to open first store on Thayer

BY HELEN MOU CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Chris Bennett / Herald Cisco engineer Ted Tracy ‘81 kicked off Brown’s first celebration of Engineers Week with a talk on the social impact of technology.

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Japanese takeout restaurant and grocery store to open Haruki East, a Japanese restaurant on Wayland Avenue, will open Haruki Express, a small takeout restaurant and Japanese grocery store, at 112 Waterman St. in about a month, said manager Kazu Kondo.

The location, adjacent to Subway, will offer Japanese cuisine — mainly sushi — prepared on site for prices similar to those at the Wayland location, where a sushi entree costs about $10. There are no “definite”” plans for food delivery, Kondo said, adding that he does not know how many people the location will be able to serve in a day.

Ben Wong, owner of Thai restaurant Spice — located nearby at 110 Waterman St. — said he wasn’t worried about competition because Thai and Japanese cuisine are different. “I like it,”” Wong said of the new Haruki site. The restaurant is owned by his friend, Haruki Kibe.

— Simmi Aujla

Blue State Coffee, a locally sourced coffee company that identifies itself with the Democratic Party, is slated to open its first location at 300 Thayer St. in May or early June.

With the motto “Drink Liberally,” Blue State, which currently only sells ground coffee online, intends to add a political twist to the regular college coffee joint. The company donates half of its profits after taxes to causes that “reflect Democratic values,” according to the company’s Web site, and pledges to continue to do that for its coffee shops.

“We’re pretty unapologetically liberal,” said co-founder Bridie

Clark. She said the company has two missions. “One is to serve really great, fairly traded organic coffee, and the other is to fund important, progressive causes. It’s kind of a unique business model in that we are overtly political,” Clark said.

Blue State determines where their donations go by customer preference. After every online purchase, customers can vote for one of four “Democratic” organizations.

Blue State will then distribute portions of its donation based on the percentages of customers who vote for each organization.

At present the National Even Start Association, a family literacy program whose funding was completely cut in President Bush’s 2007 budget proposal, leads with almost

40 percent of the vote this quarter.

It is followed by a general fund for Democratic candidates and organizations, Disabled American Veterans and the World Resources Institute.

Blue State’s organic, fair-trade coffee comes directly from New Harvest Coffee Roasters in Rumford — just 3.3 miles away from the Thayer Street location. They will serve Rhody Fresh milk, a variety of cheeses from New England farms and baked goods and bread from Seven Stars Bakery.

Blue State’s cocoa will come from Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company of Ghana, which guarantees “slave-free” chocolate by using cocontinued on page 4

Outbreak of norovirus hits Rhode Island

BY TARYN MARTINEZ STAFF WRITER

Rhode Island is experiencing a general increase in cases of norovirus — a category of diseases similar to the stomach flu — but the University has not been affected.

The Rhode Island Department of Health uses syndromic surveillance to monitor the number of norovirus cases, tracking changes in levels of reported cases instead of counting individual cases.

“There are reporting mechanisms in place with schools, nursing homes and emergency (medical) departments,” said Annemarie Beardsworth, spokeswoman for

the department. “They report back to the DOH an increase in the number of cases — they give a general summary.”

“All those systems that report back to the DOH are seeing increased cases of norovirus at the same time,” she added. “Normally what we expect at this time of year is a small cluster of an increase.

What is significant this year is all those segments are reporting an increase at the same time.”

But the increase in cases should not be cause for panic, wrote Edward Wheeler, director of University Health Services, in an e-mail to The Herald. Periodic outbreaks occur in certain settings, such as day care centers, nursing homes

and cruise ships.

The increase in cases statewide has not yet touched campus, Wheeler said.

“So far this semester we have not had any significant increases in the number of patients with diarrhea seen at University Health Services or admitted to the nursing inpatient unit,” Wheeler wrote.

“We always have a few cases of probable diarrhea a week. If we see a significant increase, then we may test for (the norovirus) to see if it is in our community.”

The family of noroviruses all share similar effects, primarily “the sudden onset of gastrointescontinued on page 4

Stop & Shop workers may strike

BY SIMMI AUJLA METRO EDITOR

Students who shop at Stop & Shop may have to stop elsewhere this weekend — members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 328 and Local 1445 voted Sunday to authorize a strike against the grocery store chain if a new contract could not be agreed upon by the end of Thursday.

Union representatives from the locals, as well as three others — representing roughly 43,000 workers in New England, according to the Providence Journal — have been negotiating a new contract with Stop & Shop executives since Tuesday. Talks are scheduled to end Thursday evening.

The previous contract for Stop & Shop employees expired Sun-

happy birthday george washington

day morning. Among other changes, the new contract proposed by Stop & Shop asks employees to pay part of their health care premiums. The company formerly paid the full premium, said Faith Weiner, a spokeswoman for Stop & Shop Supermarkets.

Union demands include “wages that pay the bills,” “secure retirement,” “affordable, quality health care for all” and “fair treatment and respect,” according to a press release on the Web site of Local 1445, which represents union members in northeastern New England.

“If the company forces a choice between making rent and going to the doctor, we are prepared to fight in New England and in every market the company operates — whether union or non union — be-

cause a fight against one of us is a fight against all,” the press release read.

“More than most” Stop & Shop employees belong to the UFCW, Weiner said.

Jim Riley, secretary-treasurer of Local 328 of the UFCW, could not be reached for comment.

“We are hopeful that by (Thursday) there will be a bargain agreement,” Weiner said. Stop & Shop is always “fully operational and ready to serve customers,” she said.

Weiner declined to comment on how the company would handle a strike. “If something changes, we will communicate with customers and the public at an appropriate time,” she said.

Sam Culver ’07, who said he continued on page 8

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Norovirus hits Rhode Island continued from page 3 tinal problems, nausea and diarrhea,” Beardsworth said. Norovirus can also sometimes cause “stomach cramping, low-grade fever, chills, aches and headache,” Wheeler wrote. “It is very common,” he added.

The duration of the illness can vary among individuals.

“With most people, the illness usually lasts for one or two days,” Beardsworth said.

The disease spreads through contact with contaminated stool or vomit, Wheeler wrote, and the ways in which it can be contracted are “eating food or liquids

contaminated with the virus, touching surfaces contaminated with the virus and then touching your mouth, and sharing eating utensils or sometimes contaminated towels and face cloths.”

Older children and adults are at the highest risk of contracting the infection, according to the Web site of the state Department of Health, but young children and the elderly can experience harsher symptoms.

Beardsworth recommended those with the virus should keep hydrated, rest and stay at home. But, she said, prevention, especially by thorough handwashing, is the key.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

Blue State Coffee launches first store on Thayer continued from page 3 coa grown on local family-owned cocoa farms, according to the company’s Web site.

“When we can source it locally, we do,” wrote Alex Payson ’03.5, general manager of Blue State, in an e-mail to The Herald. “If we can’t buy it from a local producer (cocoa for example), we look for the best socially and environmentally conscious producer we can. That way, we pay respect to local business and also expose people to some of the most progressive and quality products from around the world.”

Blue State is a “father-son, father-daughter team,” Clark said, referring to herself and her father, Tom Clark, and longtime family friend Drew Ruben and his father,

Marshall Ruben. The Rubens came up with the concept on a morning coffee-and-donut run, she said — they thought profits from such overpriced coffee should be donated to important causes, such as the environment, education and civil rights.

The founders chose to open their first coffee shop near Brown’s campus because of the “sympathetic student body,” Clark said. “We like Brown.”

“It’s a fun customer base,” she added. The company’s previous partnership, with Rhode Islandbased New Harvest Coffee Roasters, also worked to draw it to Rhode Island.

Blue State will serve coffee in cups with a biodegradable cornplastic lining and plans to compost

their food scraps at a commercial composting site in Rhode Island.

The founders also plan to hold “some sort of a speaker series, where we bring in nonprofit leaders, politicians — people who have a very educated point of view,” Clark said.

“I think Brown students will be genuinely enthusiastic about having a locally and politically conscious alternative to corporate institutions like Starbucks,” said Hannah Sheldon-Dean ’10.

“Right off the bat we just want to serve great coffee, a light menu of breakfast foods and snacks,” Clark said. Once the Thayer Street location is running smoothly, Blue State hopes to open stores on other college campuses such as New Haven, Hartford and Cambridge.

Herald poll shows general support for affirmative action continued from page 1 people, and many come from top schools,” said Sheila Dugan ’07.

“I think it’s more of an issue for schools that aren’t as prestigious.”

But other students said they disapprove of the practice.

“There is this notion that certain types of diversity — racial or ethnic — are some kind of an end in themselves. I don’t buy that,” said Pratik Chougule ’08, editor in chief of the Brown Spectator, a conservative campus publication. “When you look at criteria such as academic achievement, athletic achievement, music or any number of things, that is the type of diversity you should be aiming for, not frivolous things like how dark one’s skin complexion is.”

Some students said they were ambivalent over the use of race in the admission process.

“I’m really torn on this one,” said Alex Cox ’08. “It almost ensures that race remains a major factor in making decisions in academia and society. If anything, we should be trying to move beyond that.”

Other students said they think affirmative action compensates for

the way race already operates in the admission process.

“It counteracts some inherent — possibly subconscious — racial stereotypes that we need to work toward eliminating,” said Tor Tarantola ’08, president of the Brown Democrats. “I think certain criteria that are important to success in college admissions are biased toward traditionally dominant racial groups.

There is evidence that the SAT has a bias toward white, upper-middle class applicants because of the cultural content in the test.”

The wide range of student responses reflects the heated national debate over affirmative action.

Over the past three decades, legislative and judicial actors have incrementally curtailed the practice of giving preference to individuals based on race and gender. In 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the use of racial quotas in college admission in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

The Supreme Court in 2003 examined admission practices at the University of Michigan. In Gratz v.

Bollinger, the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan’s two-track undergraduate admission

system was unconstitutional — the university’s policy gave a substantial advantage to applicants in certain racial groups without individual consideration.

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, which prohibited the consideration of sex, race and ethnicity in public institutions, including state universities. Michigan voters passed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative in 2006, banning affirmative action based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public education, employment and contracting purposes. On Jan. 19, 2007, the Supreme Court denied review to a legal challenge to the Michigan initiative.

More recently, private universities have come under fire for their use of affirmative action in admission. Jian Li, a freshman at Yale, has sought to get the federal government to cut off funding to Princeton University for an allegedly discriminatory admission policy that, Li claims, disadvantages Asian applicants. Jason Carr ’09 and Neil Vangala ’09 founded Asian Equality in Admissions to investigate similar concerns about admission at Brown.

Quiz Bowl team heads to national competition continued from page 1 team. They started practicing and attending competitions in 2005.

“It was quite different, because at Berkeley I had come into an established club, we had more funding — the structure was already there so we didn’t have to do much to build it,” Vinokorov said.

This year, the team has four grad students and about seven undergraduates, according to team members.

In quiz bowl competitions, a moderator asks questions on various topics, and participants signal using buzzers to answer each question. Tournaments generally begin with a round robin, followed by bracketing that pits the top four teams against each other.

“By virtue of having two grad students in physics and a sophomore who is going to concentrate in biology or chemistry, we’re a pretty science-heavy team,” said Dennis Jang ’10. But, he added, all team members prepare to answer questions on a variety of subjects.

Both Evan Lazer ‘10 and Jang noted that Vinokorov’s expertise and skill are great assets to the team. “Jerry is one of the best ac-

tive players in the nation,” Jang said.

Team members cite the excitement of competition and the chance to learn about a range of subjects as reasons for joining the team.

“I (wasn’t) very interested in philosophy — I knew next to nothing — and then I heard all these questions on philosophical works, and I thought, ‘Hey, that’s really interesting,’ and I went out and started reading it, and I think the same goes for a lot of literature that I’ve been exposed to. As a physics major, you don’t get to read a lot of literature,” Vinokorov said.

“I really like having an outlet for the information I pick up,” said Sofia Pellon ‘10, who played quiz bowl in high school and now competes for Brown. “It’s really stimulating,” she said, and it’s a “nice break from other academic and extracurricular activities.”

“You get to know everybody because it’s a small group,” Lazer said.

“The feeling that you get on the team is a little like being backstage in a theater production in terms of the camaraderie and inside jokes that (develop),” Pellon said.

The team practices on Monday

and Wednesday evenings in Barus and Holley. Currently, the team’s main sources of funding are the $90 it receives from the Undergraduate Finance Board as a Category II club and the entrance fees collected at tournaments it hosts.

The tight budget can limit the team’s activities. Jang said the team may not be able to send its underclassmen to the national tournament, which will be held on April 13 and 14 on the campus of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and is sponsored by National Academic Quiz Tournaments.

The team also plans to compete at another national competition at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., on March 31, which is sponsored by the Academic Competition Federation. The ACF competition does not have a qualifier as the NAQT tournament does, but the ACF competition is also difficult, members of the team said.

The team is hopeful about quiz bowl’s future at Brown.

“Last year we had practices where three people showed up, and this year it’s 10, so it would be great to get up to 20,” Vinokorov said.

“Hopefully it will just grow and get better,” Lazer said.

C AMPUS N EWS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

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UCS voices support for socially responsible investing

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BY KRISTINA KELLEHER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Eunice Hong / Herald

Dining Services is adding healthier options to the late-night menus at the Gate and Josiah’s.

Late night eateries go healthy Dining Services has recently boosted its offerings of healthy foods at the Gate and Josiah’s and is planning more significant menu additions for the next academic year.

There is a need for healthy food at the late-night eateries, said Jacques Larue, director of retail dining operations. The layout of the Gate and Jo’s will change over the summer to accommodate healthier dining options, he said.

A salad bar is planned but will not be self-service — “you pick and choose what you want,” and “we toss it for you,” he said. A fried and grilled “fish option” will be added to the menu at the grill at Jo’s, Larue added.

The Gate may soon feature a soup station, but the Gate is limited by its small size, Larue said. Planning for a renovation is underway, but the exact details are still being worked out.

Kevin Bayer, assistant manager of retail operations for Dining Services, said the renovated Gate will have “an emphasis on healthier eating.”

Healthier foods have already been added, and students now “have more options,” Bayer said. Dining Services has introduced items including salads, POM beverages, hummus, fruit salads, soups, pita chips, Kind bars and sliced apples, all of which are “very popular,” Bayer said.

Nick Bell ’09 said he has changed his dining habits because the new options allow him to get his food more quickly and eat healthier. He now regularly orders “pita chips, apples and soup.”

“I probably would have bought pizza before,” Bell said.

Gate pizza, though rich in calcium and protein, has “significant” levels of fat and sodium and should eaten infrequently, said Bridget Visconti, administrative dietitian of Dining Services.

But Dining Services does not plan to remove any of its less healthy options — “We’re not going to fix it if it’s not broken,” Visconti said.

— Ian Nappier

Asian Arts Festival to entertain with ‘Strokes’ What do you think of when you hear the word “Asian”? Brown students answered questions such as this one on camera Feb. 15 – Feb. 16 in the Friedman Study Center.

The organizers of this year’s Asian Arts Festival — Hee Kyung Chung, ‘09, Janine Kwoh ’09, Katharine Joo ’09 and Wendy Chen ’09 — made a video exploring what Brown students think about Asian and AsianAmerican issues to be presented at the festival on March 3.

The theme of the festival is “Strokes of Unity: Tracing Our Heritage and Community,” and its goal is “to combine the expression of art with the expression of Asian-American identity,” Joo said.

“Most of the performances are influenced by cultural traditions, so we’re acknowledging and embracing that, using it to strengthen our community,” Kwoh said.

The festival, which is one of the primary fundraising events for the Asian American Students Association, traditionally draws a large, diverse crowd each year, according to its organizers.

“The festival is an opportunity for different student groups who are interested in Asian and Asian-American issues to express themselves, and it’s an opportunity to increase awareness of such groups on campus,” Chung said.

“Our work is largely political in nature, so it’s a way to raise awareness in a different sense, give people exposure to different Asian cultures in a lot of mediums,” Kwoh said.

The lineup of groups performing at the festival include the Break Dancing Club, Brown Lion Dance, Tang Soo Do, Brown Tae Kwon Do, Amnesty International, Off Beat, the Filipino Alliance, Archipelag-a, Badmaash and the Brown Hapa Club.

The festival will be held Saturday, March 3 at 7 p.m. in Salomon 101.

Tickets will be sold for $3 at the mailroom the week before the show and will also be available at the door.

—Soojean Kim

The Undergraduate Council of Students passed a resolution supporting socially responsible investment and a change to their own code that will standardize consideration about raising the student activities fee at their weekly meeting Wednesday night.

Members also introduced and discussed a separate resolution on graduate student support and teaching assistant availability, but did not vote on it.

Joined by history graduate students Oded Rabinovitch MA’05 GS and Derek Seidman MA’05 GS, Academic and Administrative Affairs Chair Sara Damiano ’08 introduced a resolution expressing concern over the Graduate School’s new five-year stipend program for doctoral candidates and how the change might affect teaching assistants.

Damiano focused on the consequences this change could have for undergraduate students, particularly a possible shortage of graduate teaching assistants.

“Because we are an under-

Chris Bennett / Herald Oded Rabinovitch MA ‘05 GS, at right, and Derek Seidman MA ‘05 GS spoke on the topic of graduate student funding at last night’s UCS meeting.

graduate body, we decided not to make a detailed recommendation on the graduate program,” Damiano said. She added that the resolution instead “express(es) concern about how it affects undergraduate education and ask(s) that the situation be carefully monitored.”

A lengthy discussion on the nature of a doctoral program began with UCS President John Gillis ’07 asking the grad students present if the change affected

grad students from various graduate programs in different ways.

The humanities and social sciences are particularly hard-hit by the uncertainty of funding after the fi fth graduate year, Rabinovitch said, noting that those departments typically require more fieldwork and advanced training than others.

“You’re supposed to be able to continued on page 6

Students advocate for more queer studies offerings

BY ANNA MILLMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Several students have organized an Undergraduate Working Group for Queer Studies to advocate for more academic offerings dealing with queer issues.

The group — part of the Queer Alliance — held its first meeting on Jan. 30. Michael DeLucia ’07, the group’s founder, said the group is currently focused on gathering student support and assessing student interest in the field of queer academics and will later advocate for those offerings.

“We want to reach out to the students — you know, we sort of have a hunch that there are queer students on this campus who want there to be more LGBT-related classes, and so now our job is to go out there and prove that there are those students and show that there is a demand for those courses, and then once that demand has been demonstrated to exist, we’re going to be more focused on the issue of gaining faculty support,” he said.

DeLucia said the group wants more courses about queer issues to be offered and more professors specializing in those fields to be hired. The ultimate goal is to establish an undergraduate concentration in queer studies, according to

Robert Smith ’09, the chair of the Queer Political Action Committee, which has been working with the undergraduate working group on the issue.

“We’re starting to reach out to departments, hoping that they will bring scholars to campus who specialize in queer studies, with the long-term goal of having a queer studies concentration,” Smith said.

DeLucia said the process of bringing more queer academic offerings to Brown could take a long time.

The lack of faculty involved in queer studies has played a role in the lack of course offerings. “I can say that as a graduate student who writes about the history of sexuality in America, it’s really difficult for me to find people to work with here,” said Evangelia Mazaris GS, who teaches AC 19 Sec.5: “Queer Public Histories.” She said she is not involved with the student group.

“There’s a real intellectually valid reason for wanting to study this, and I think that having a queer studies program that’s supported and that the University is really proud of and invests in gives Brown an opportunity to really be a leader in this field, and I think in the long run would really pay off for the University,” Mazaris said.

But the paucity of offerings in

the field may simply reflect a lack of student interest, said James Green, associate professor of history, who advises the Gender and Sexuality program. He said attendance at queer studies courses offered in the past has been low.

“This is a market-driven university.” he said, “Students vote with their feet on the classes.”

The concentration in Sexuality and Society merged with the Gender Studies program this fall to create Gender and Sexuality Studies, a new interdisciplinary concentration, according to the Web site of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.

While the Gender and Sexuality Studies program offers several courses in queer studies, there are no faculty exclusively dedicated to studying and teaching queer issues, according to Mazaris. Green said only a few students concentrating in Gender and Sexuality have expressed interest in queer studies.

Though the departments may give faculty discretion in the classes they teach, the faculty themselves are limited by their academic experience. “If students came and asked for the class, then I would definitely think about teaching it,” Green said. But, he noted, his primary focus is on Latin American history, not queer studies.

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UCS supports socially responsible investing continued from page 5 teach both Greek and Latin with a Brown PhD in classics. That’s a lot,” Rabinovitch said. The grad students and UCS members then discussed funding options from departments for doctoral students, including dissertation fellowships and teaching assistantships.

The discussion of the resolution itself broke down into a debate over whether the members should or could suspend the UCS code that requires a week-long wait between the introduction of a resolution and a vote on it. While Webmaster Jake Heimark ’10 and At-Large Representative Stefan Smith ’09 originally advocated voting on the resolution that night, no member brought a motion to suspend the code and bring forth the vote.

A change to the UCS code, proposed by Student Activities Committee Chair Hugh Livengood ’07, that would require the chair of

the Student Activities Committee to decide each fall whether to put forth a proposal to raise the student activities fee passed without notable discussion. The vote was unanimous.

UCS Corporation Liaison Lauren Kolodny ’08 and Dan MacCombie ’08, who serves on the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies, discussed a resolution on socially responsible investing, which UCS passed unanimously.

The resolution supports an initiative to create a separate fund within the endowment which donors could chose to specifically donate to, investing their money in socially responsible mutual funds that include companies with positive records on social activism.

The Corporation will consider the proposal at its meeting this weekend, according to MacCombie.

With the support of President Ruth Simmons and other admin-

istrators, MacCombie said he thinks the chances of Corporation support this spring are high.

Heimark expressed concern that mutual funds investing in only socially active companies might have smaller returns than a typical mutual fund. He noted that the University’s endowment consistently ranks seventh among the eight Ivy League schools.

“We can’t compete financially, at least in the near future,” Kolodny said. But, she added, “We can uphold our reputation as the progressive Ivy.” UCS also appointed Bentley Rubinstein ’09 to the Computer Advisory Board and Bochay Drum ‘09 and Albert Carter ’09 to the Public Safety Oversight Committee.

Damiano announced UCS would soon appoint four students to serve on the Task Force on Undergraduate Education being put together by the Office of the Dean of College.

Joint RISD/Brown degree program slated for 2008 continued from page 1 launch in 2008.

The program will initially be capped at 20 students per year.

Students would have to apply and be admitted to both Brown and RISD separately before being able to apply for the dual degree program. The program will not accept transfer students and will not have an early admission program.

The main challenge in academic collaboration between the two institutions, Mayer added, was that the schools operate on different academic calendars, making it difficult for students to take classes at both at the same time.

The program started to come together after the committee devised a solution for the differing schedules — students will take all their classes in a given semester at either RISD or Brown, rather than taking classes at both schools in a single semester, said Shelley Stephenson, assistant provost at Brown and a member of the degree program’s working group.

“Depending on at which point they are in the five-year program, they would live at the school where they are currently attending class-

es,” Mayer said. “So if it’s a semester or a year that is devoted entirely to being at RISD, they would live at the RISD dorms, and when they come to Brown for a semester, they would live at Brown.”

“The breakthrough of this program was when the committee that came up with it began to think about students claiming primary residency in one institution or the other,” Stephenson said. “At that point it opened up the opportunities of different schedules.”

Students in the program would have two concentrations — one at RISD and one at Brown — and two concentration advisers who would work together.

The dual degree students at each institution would live near each other and possibly take a firstyear seminar together in order to cultivate a sense of community, Mayer said.

“I think this will be a hugely interesting collaboration between Brown and RISD in that it will provide complementary opportunities for students who might be choosing between a university and an art design school and are in many respects conflicted about which one to choose,” RISD Provost Jay

Coogan told The Herald.

Currently, students can enroll in both institutions and receive degrees from both Brown and RISD, but managing the logistics of attending the two universities can prove problematic.

Gamaal Wilson ’06.5 created his own dual degree program, requiring a summer program and spending 11 semesters taking classes at Brown and RISD. “It allowed me to do a track that most RISD students aren’t taking and most Brown students aren’t taking … a program like that enables students who are interested to have the best of both schools and make that happen,” Wilson said.

But, Wilson added, he did not really feel at home in either community. He said the proposed program should improve the student experience and help dual degree candidates fit in better.

“I think it’s great. I think they’re trying to make some strides or some efforts to making it a little more conducive for students to kind of feel a little bit more part of a community at both schools and not feel kind of torn or pulled between the two,” he said.

Facebook hosts makeshift memorials continued from page 1 of us grieve without having to be there.”

Officials at Facebook said they are aware of profiles like Pagan’s that have transformed into memorials and that they have a policy concerning them.

“Facebook notes accounts of deceased members and allows the profile to remain on the site for 30 days in which time friends can still post on the wall. After the 30 days, the profile is removed,” said Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokeswoman, in an e-mail to The Herald. Facebook did not respond to queries about how it learns of its members’ deaths.

But apparently, Facebook missed the profile of Pagan, who died over a year ago, and of Arin Adams ’07.5, who died in October last year. Barlow is fine with that, saying that profiles of deceased members should not be removed.

“It may sound morbid to allow Facebook to have dead members, but they are my family, and I want to stay connected with them.

What harm is it to the alive or the new members?” she said. “All (Pagan) has on his site is memories, and in the end … isn’t that all of what death comes down to … how you are remembered?”

“Facebook is a social network, and recognizing death and memorializing loved ones is a very effective and meaningful way for me, among many to grieve,” said Carla Doughty, a high school classmate of Pagan who has also posted on his wall. “Grief is a very important part of life. … To come together in a large group to accept and face death is meaningful.”

Roxanne Young, who also went to high school with Pagan, echoed Barlow’s feelings. “In Luis’ case, I am glad that his profile still exists. It helps to keep him in my consciousness. It reminds me that

his spirit remains among us, even though his person is gone,” Young said. She suggested Facebook should change a deceased member’s profile status to “Memorial” and ask current users for their consent for a memorial account in case of their deaths, “morbid as that may be.”

Some students who did not know Pagan said they had mixed feelings about such memorials.

“I think it’s a good idea as memorial — it’s thoughtful,” said Lee Richter ’10. “But it’s also awkward because it’s so public.”

The decision “should be left up to the family,” said Ray Grant ’10.

Facebook is not the only site where people grieve the deceased online. According to an Apr. 27, 2006, New York Times article, MyDeathSpace.com has documented at least 116 people with profiles on MySpace, another social networking site, who have died.

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Deliberation begins in Libby trial WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — A federal jury ended its first day of deliberations Wednesday in the perjury trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby after the presiding judge urged jurors to rely on their “life experiences” in deciding whether the vice president’s former chief of staff lied to investigators — or made an honest mistake — about his role in a CIA leak.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton’s instructions to the jury of eight women and four men reinforced the issue of the fallibility of human memory that has been central to one of Washington’s most celebrated trials in years.

Prosecutors allege that Libby, then Vice President Cheney’s top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury to obscure the fact that, in the spring and summer of 2003, he aggressively sought out and shared with reporters information about Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer. Plame is married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was emerging then as a harsh, early critic of President Bush and the Iraq war.

The only person accused in the three-year CIA leak investigation, Libby, 56, is charged with five felonies: two counts of making false statements to FBI agents, two counts of perjury and one count of obstructing justice. He is not charged with the leak itself. If convicted of all charges, he would face a potential prison term of one-and-a-half to three years under federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors outside the case have said.

Libby’s attorneys contend that Libby did not intentionally lie, but inaccurately remembered his conversations about Wilson and Plame with administration colleagues and Washington journalists.

GOP supporter faces terrorism charges WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — The National Republican Congressional Committee says it will donate to charity the $15,000 it received in recent years from Abdul Tawala ibn Ali Alishtari if Alishtari is convicted of assisting terrorists.

Alishtari, a.k.a. Michael Mixon, pleaded not guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Friday to charges of terrorism financing, material support of terrorism and money laundering, among other things.

Alishtari, on a Web resume he apparently posted this year, says he was named to the NRCC’s “White House Business Advisory Committee” and was named the NRCC’s New York state businessman of the year in 2002 and 2003.

He was indicted in a plan to send $152,000 to Pakistan and Afghanistan to support a terrorist training camp, the Associated Press reported. And he was accused of funneling $25,000 from a bank account in New York to an account in Montreal, allegedly to support terrorists.

Britain to remove 1,600 troops from Iraq by spring

BY KIM MURPHY LOS ANGELES T IMES

LONDON — Britain’s decision to pull 1,600 troops out of Iraq by spring, touted by U.S. and British leaders as a turning point in Iraqi sovereignty, was widely seen Wednesday as a telling admission that the British military can no longer sustain simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The British military is approaching “operational failure,” former Defense Staff chief Lord Charles Guthrie warned this week.

“Because the British army is in essence fighting a far more intensive counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, there’s been a realization that there has to be some sort of transfer of resources form Iraq to Afghanistan,” said Clive Jones, a senior lecturer in Middle East politics at the University of Leeds, who has closely followed Britain’s Iraq deployment.

“It’s either that, or you risk in some ways losing both,” he said.

“It’s the classic case of ‘Let’s declare victory and get out.’”

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government has been pressed to add 800 new troops to Afghanistan to halt a resurgent Taliban and a worrying escalation of drug trafficking, at the same time that it is beset by criticism for joining the United States in an unpopular invasion and

prolonged war in Iraq.

The decision to draw down forces by more than 20 percent in the southern city of Basra means that Britain will significantly shrink its military footprint at a time when the Pentagon is increasing U.S. forces to battle militants to the north, in Baghdad and Anbar province.

The Bush administration hastened to present the British decision as an indication that the U.S.-led military operation was succeeding.

Vice President Dick Cheney called the reduction “an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well,” and White House press secretary Tony Snow said the U.S.-led coalition “remains intact” despite a roster that has fallen from 35 countries in 2004 to 25 now.

But the Pentagon, in its most recent quarterly report to Congress, listed Basra as one of five cities outside Baghdad where violence remained “significant,” and said the region is one of only two that are “not ready for transition” to Iraqi authorities.

Once a promising beacon, Basra suffers from sectarian violence as well as Shiite militia clashes over oil smuggling. Ferocious street battles have broken out between rival Shiite groups in provincial capitals such as Samawa, Kut and Diwaniyah over the last year.

Democratic leaders in Congress

denounced the Bush assessment as misleading.

“No matter how the White House tries to spin it, the British government has decided to split with President Bush and begin to move their troops out of Iraq,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. “This should be a wake up call to the administration.

Prime Minister Blair’s announced redeployment of British troops is a stunning rejection of President Bush’s high-risk Iraq policy.”

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the British decision “confirms the doubts in the minds of the American people” about the decision to boost the U.S. force.

“The president’s escalation plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq is out of step with the American people and our allies,” Pelosi said in a written statement. “Why are thousands of additional American troops being sent to Iraq at the same time that British troops are planning to leave?’”

In Britain, Blair’s opponents quickly painted the withdrawal as an admission of failure. “The unpalatable truth is that we will leave behind a country on the brink of civil war, in which reconstruction has stalled and corruption is endemic, and a region that is a lot less stable than it was in 2003,” Liberal Democratic leader Menzies Campbell said continued on page 10

Bush visits Chattanooga to push health-care plan

BY MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ WASHINGTON POST

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The last time President Bush visited Tennessee last September, it was to campaign with GOP Senate hopeful Bob Corker against the Democrats.

Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Corker was in the audience and the state’s Democratic governor was on the stage at the convention center here for a folksy discussion on how to improve the health-care system.

Bush hailed the Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen, for his “innovative policies,” as he talked up his new plan to increase coverage of the uninsured by tinkering with the tax code and giving states more flexibility to design low-cost benefit plans for those who lack health coverage.

Bredesen said it was the first time he had been invited to appear with Bush in such a setting.

Democrats in Washington are showing little enthusiasm for the Bush health agenda, but the president is plugging away, insisting he sees hope for compromise before

happy birthday george washington

his term ends in less than two years.

Indeed, the end seemed on his mind as he bantered with several hundred audience members, arguing for greater transparency in healthcare pricing.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember ever asking how much something was going to cost when it came to health care. I do when it comes to a car — or I used to,” Bush said, quickly remembering that he is driven around in a limousine. “I will soon!” he added to laughter.

While the focus of his administration is the war in Iraq, Bush is pushing an ambitious health-care agenda, the key element of which is a tax plan to make it easier for individuals to purchase health insurance coverage in the private market.

He is also proposing to restrain the growth of Medicare and Medicaid by cutting payments to health providers and charging higher premiums to wealthier individuals, a plan Democrats have described as dead on arrival.

Under his tax plan, every fam-

ily would get a standard deduction of $15,000 and individuals would get a deduction of $7,500 if they buy health coverage, whether they obtain it through their employer or individually. Bush says this would help rectify a situation in which people who work for companies that do not offer health coverage do not get any tax break for buying insurance, as workers essentially get through employer-sponsored health plans.

He argued that his plan would make insurance more affordable for middle-income workers.

“Right now there’s a limited market for the individual; it makes it hard to find a product that either suits your needs or you can afford,” Bush told his Chattanooga audience.

Bush was joined on stage by several uninsured workers and business owners who he claimed would find insurance cheaper under his plan.

Many health economists believe Bush is overstating the impact of the tax code changes, but say he might have a bigger bang if he continued on page 8

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Stop & Shop workers may strike continued from page 3 shops weekly at a Providence Stop & Shop, said he doubts the store will be affected by a strike. The company cannot afford the financial losses caused by a shutdown, he said. “I think they’ll figure something out before the deadline,” Culver said.

Still, Culver said a shutdown would be inconvenient because he would have to shop at the pricier East Side Marketplace or at a grocery store in Seekonk, Mass., which is significantly farther away.

“Most everyone of my friends

off meal plan go to that Stop & Shop,” Culver said of the location he shops at on West River Street, which is about two miles from campus. He often runs into friends from Brown while grocery shopping, he added.

“I live much closer to East Side (Marketplace), but I still go to Stop & Shop, and that’s the case for every single one of my friends off meal plan,” said Madeline Rake ’07, who shops at the same location as Culver. “I guess I’d have to go to East Side Marketplace or Whole Foods and spend a little more money” if there is a strike, she said.

Bush pushes health-care plan continued from page 7 were to give low-income persons tax credits to buy insurance, an idea the White House considered and rejected. A study released this week by the Community Research Council of Chattanooga concluded that very few of the uninsured in Hamilton County, which includes Chattanooga and its suburbs, make enough money to benefit under the current Bush plan.

In an interview, Bredesen said he is glad that Bush is starting to tackle health care more seriously but voiced doubts about the tax elements. “I get less excited about the tax deduction stuff because there are a lot of people ... for whom that’s not going to make a difference,” he said.

Even as the president arrived in Tennessee, the local news was full

of reports that a change in federal reimbursement policy could cost the state as much as $250 million annually for charity care, countering any relief under the president’s new plan. “It certainly would be a sore blow to us,” Bredesen said.

The president’s plan has also elicited mixed reaction on Capitol Hill. In the House, the idea has been declared a non-starter, and House leaders are moving in an opposite direction, hoping to expand funding for the federal-state children’s health program much more ambitiously that the president contemplates. The president’s plan is for “every individual on their own,” said Rep. Rahm Emmanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “He does nothing to control costs and he does nothing to expand the number of insured. Other than that, it is incredibly helpful.”

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The future of global warming has arrived in Bangladesh BHAMIA, Bangladesh (Los Angeles Times) — Global warming has a taste in this village. It is the taste of salt.

Only a few years ago, water from the local pond was fresh and sweet on Samit Biswas’ tongue. It quenched his family’s thirst and cleansed their bodies.

But drinking a cupful now leaves a briny flavor in his mouth. Tiny white crystals sprout on Biswas’ skin after he bathes and in his clothes after his wife washes them.

The change, international scientists say, is the result of intensified flooding caused by shifting climate patterns. Warmer weather and rising oceans are sending seawater surging up Bangladesh’s rivers in greater volume and frequency than ever before, experts say, overflowing and seeping into the soil and water supply of thousands of people.

Their lives are being squeezed by distant lands they have seen only on television — America, China and Russia at the top of the heap — whose carbon emissions are pushing temperatures and sea levels inexorably upward. Earlier this month, a long-awaited report by the United Nations said that global warming fueled by human activity could lift temperatures by 8 degrees and the ocean’s surface by 23 inches by 2100.

Here in southwest Bangladesh, the bleak future forecast by the report is already becoming a reality, bringing misery along with it.

Heavier-than-usual floods have wiped out homes and paddy fields. They have increased the salinity of the water, which is contaminating wells, killing trees and slowly poisoning the mighty mangrove jungle that forms a natural barrier against the Bay of Bengal.

General to lead renovation effort at Walter Reed WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — A top Army general vowed Wednesday to personally oversee the upgrading of Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Building 18, a dilapidated former hotel that houses wounded soldiers as outpatients.

Gen. Richard Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, used terminology similar to that of a military campaign to describe his plan to overhaul the broken building, including giving it a more “appropriate” name, and the sluggish bureaucracy for outpatient care.

“We own that building, and we’re going to take charge of it,” Cody said at the Pentagon. “The senior Army leadership takes full responsibility for the lack of quality of life at Building 18, and we’re going to fix it.”

Cody blamed “a breakdown in leadership” for the troubling conditions but said no one has been fired or relieved of command. He did point to lower-ranking officers and noncommissioned officers lacking “the right experience and the authority to be able to execute some of the missions.”

“That’s what we’re correcting right now,” he said.

Cody and William Winkenwerder Jr., the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said at a news conference that they frequently visit Walter Reed and were surprised and disappointed by the living conditions and the fact that they had learned about them from media reports. The Washington Post reported Sunday and Monday on the challenges facing outpatients at Walter Reed.

“We get concerns all the time directed to us. But we never got a concern sent our way about this issue, which is a little surprising. I’m not sure why that is,” Winkenwerder said.

Standards of medical care at Walter Reed remain high, he said, but he acknowledged: “The trust has taken a hit here. And I think it’s our job to repair that trust and to re-earn that trust. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

3 die in attack on chlorine truck in Iraq

BY ERNESTO LONDONO WASHINGTON POST

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A tank truck carr ying chlorine exploded Wednesday in western Baghdad, killing three people and wounding at least 25 in the second such attack in as many days, according to a spokesman for Iraq’s Interior Ministr y.

Brig. Gen. Sadoun Abdul Karim said that several people exposed to the fumes were taken to hospitals and that the explosion set vehicles and shops on fire.

The chlorine attacks appear to be among deadly tactics adopted by insurgents in recent weeks as the U.S. militar y and the Iraqi government launch a security plan that will include the deployment of thousands of soldiers to outposts in Baghdad. Insurgents have also displayed newfound prowess in shooting down U.S. helicopters.

The attack came on a day when the political scandal over the reported rape of a Sunni woman by Iraqi police officers escalated, with the Iraqi prime minister’s office releasing what it said was a portion of the woman’s medical record.

The medical file, e-mailed to reporters by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office, includes a highlighted handwritten note with the notation “no vaginal lacerations or obvious injur y.”

In a simple diagram of the

front of the patient’s body, there are numerous marks indicating bruises around her inner thighs and groin. There is also a mark indicating a bruise on her head.

The woman said she hit her head against the wall as three uniformed police officers raped her Sunday.

The medical record was attached to a news release that said the woman was going to be sued for making up the stor y.

Al-Maliki said Monday that the rape allegation would be thoroughly investigated by a committee. Hours later, however, he said the investigation concluded that the woman had fabricated the stor y, and he announced that the accused police officers would be honored.

Al-Maliki, who leads a government dominated by Shiites, did not identify the officers or say why the accolades were justified.

It is unclear how al-Maliki’s office obtained the medical record, but disclosing its contents was apparently intended to bolster the conclusion that her stor y was made up — and thus defuse a particularly sensitive example of the countr y’s sectarian strife.

The woman has been championed by Sunni politicians, and at least one insurgent group has vowed to carr y out attacks against Iraqi security forces in her name. Arab news stations have aired repeatedly a tearful inter view in which the woman describes the alleged sexual as-

sault in graphic terms — highly unusual in a countr y where sex is seldom discussed publicly.

A U.S. militar y spokesman said Wednesday that he could not immediately confirm the accuracy of the information in the woman’s medical record. Militar y officials have acknowledged that the woman was treated Sunday at the U.S. militar y-run Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone. But they have not disclosed what kind of treatment she received or whether specific tests for rape were administered.

“I don’t know how they got it,” Capt. John Fleming said about the medical record. “Our policy is we do not release that stuff.”

Another U.S. militar y spokesman, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, said during a news conference Wednesday that the woman was discharged Monday and was provided with a copy of her medical record.

Al-Maliki also announced Wednesday the dismissal of Sunni official Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samaraie, who ran the Sunni Endowment, a government agency that oversees Sunni mosques.

Al-Samaraie had called for an international investigation of the woman’s allegations, and he said many women have been raped by the countr y’s security forces, which are predominantly Shiite.

Violence continued in Baghcontinued on page 11

Slowing economy isn’t cooling prices

BY NELL HENDERSON WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — Inflation flared last month as rising prices for medical care, food and other items more than offset falling fuel prices, raising concern in financial markets that a slowing economy has not yet tamed price pressures.

Stock and bond prices fell after the Labor Department released its latest inflation figures, which convinced many investors that the Federal Reserve is unlikely to cut interest rates any time soon and might have to raise them to subdue prices.

The department’s consumer price index, a widely followed inflation gauge, rose 0.2 percent last month, as a 1.5 percent drop in fuel prices helped offset higher prices for many other goods and services.

The index was 2.1 percent higher than in January of last year — a milder increase than the 2.5 percent rise for all of 2006. That’s consistent with other recent data suggesting that overall, the economy has cooled.

But investors saw ominous trends in the details. Prices for gasoline and fuel oil tumbled last month because of falling crude oil prices, while natural gas price fell because of unseasonably warm weather. Both trends have reversed in February, suggesting inflation will be higher this month.

And because oil prices swing so much, economists seek signs

of underlying inflation by studying so-called core measures, which exclude volatile food and fuel prices. The department’s core consumer price index jumped 0.3 percent in January — the largest monthly increase since June. That left core prices 2.7 percent higher than a year earlier.

The higher core inflation resulted primarily from a rapid 0.8 percent increase in medical costs, including prices for prescription drugs, hospital care and visits to physicians’ offices.

Food prices rose 0.7 percent in January, the biggest increase since April 2005. Air fares and hotel room rates climbed. Prices also increased for electricity, water, and sewer and trash collection, the department said.

“Inflation is not yet under control,” Bernard Baumohl, managing director of the Economic Outlook Group, told clients. “Clearly this is not what the Fed wants to see.”

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress last week that the central bank is likely to hold interest rates steady for a while to see whether slowing economic growth nudges inflation lower.

Inflation pressures have eased in recent months, but the monthly figures can jump around, so it “will be some time before we can be confident” that price pressures will continue to ease as the Fed forecast, Bernanke said.

He stressed that inflation remains too high, and Fed policymakers worry that it may climb higher. They are prepared to hike

interest rates if necessary to force inflation lower, he said.

Bernanke and his colleagues are unlikely to hike interest rates because of one monthly inflation report but will if they see a series of similar reports in coming months, analysts said.

Fed policymakers forecast inflation to fall this year and next because of slower economic growth, cooled in large part by the slumping housing market. Recent data — including flat retail sales, lower industrial production and plunging home construction in January — show the economy is probably growing at a modest pace, around 2 percent a year, analysts said.

The Conference Board, a private business group, said Wednesday that its index of leading economic indicators — data such as building permits, consumer expectations and stock prices that hint at where the economy is heading — rose slightly last month, by 0.1 percent. Analysts saw that as a sign that economic growth will keep to a modest pace in the months ahead.

Some of the price increases last month reflected temporary factors, such as crop freezes in California that boosted prices for some fruits and vegetables.

But analysts worried that some of the trends in the inflation report are likely to continue. Medical costs, for example, were 4.3 percent higher in January than a year earlier, and inflationary pressures in that sector are excontinued on page 11

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Britain to remove 1,600 troops from Iraq by spring continued from page 7 in Wednesday’s parliament debate on the troop drawdown.

“That is a long way short of the beacon of democracy in the Middle East that was promised some four years ago,” he said.

For Blair, the decision to begin reducing Britain’s 7,100 troops in the south to 5,500, with possible further withdrawals later in the year, was almost a political necessity. His Labor Party is trailing in the polls ahead of crucial regional elections in the spring, and Blair is preparing to hand over the country later this year to his likely successor, chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown, who favors a phase-out of Britain’s deployment in Iraq.

In announcing the troop reductions, Blair said they coincide with

the increasing assumption of security responsibilities by Iraqi military and police forces. He said British troops will continue to patrol the border with Iran and remain at their main base in Basra through at least 2008, to assist Iraqi forces if needed.

“It is important to show the Iraqi people that we do not desire our forces to remain any longer than they are needed; but whilst they are needed, we will be at their side,” Blair told Parliament.

Most analysts say the prime minister’s assertion that significant progress has been made in securing southern Iraq stretches facts on the ground. Though the south is not nearly as violent and chaotic as the capital and the Sunni heartland, it remains jittery, unstable and frequently bloody. Shiite militias and armed gangs lord over cities like Basra

and Amara, as well as the long desolate stretches of roadway through the marshlands and deserts of the south.

British bases in Basra regularly come under mortar fire. British troops engage in almost daily gunfights with militiamen. In recent months, the British offices all but evacuated their downtown base and moved to a more secure site on the grounds of the city’s airport.

A study on the south issued this week by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that has been sympathetic to the administration’s foreign policy goals, describes southern Iraq in dire terms.

It notes that Basra itself, once one of Iraq’s more liberal and cosmopolitan cities, has become a bastion for Islamists who use the south’s vast oil wealth to “fill their war chests.”

Gymnastics defeats Bridgeport with season-best score continued from page 16 about the meet,” Goldstein said.

“This definitely was a confidence boost for next weekend.”

Next weekend, the team heads into the most important meet of the season — the Ivy Classic at the University of Pennsylvania. The team has been working all season in order to perform its best at this competition and improve upon last year’s last-place finish.

But the absence of Durning and Rachel Foodman ’09 due to injury and the limited size of the team are daunting obstacles for the Bears to overcome. Every Bear healthy

enough to perform must hit her routines perfectly in order for the team to be competitive.

UPenn is the slight favorite to win the Ivy title, as it sits in the No. 2 spot in the ECAC rankings. But Cornell and Yale are right on the Quakers’ heels, claiming the third and fourth spots on the list. Brown is farther down, coming in eighth.

In the end, however, no amount of speculation can determine how teams will perform under the pressure of the winner-takes-all meet.

When asked the team’s goal this Sunday, Carver-Milne, Durning and Goldstein answered without hesitation: “To win.” The team

is taking every measure this week to ensure victory, said Durning.

“We are trying to make sure we are as confident as we can be going in,” she said. “If we feel good at practice, then we’ll feel confident at the meet. We’re working hard at the gym, and everyone is ecstatic.”

Goldstein is likewise confident in her team’s ability and believes the Bears are at an advantage because of their underdog status.

“This is the strongest team I have ever been on at Brown,” she said. “What we have going for us is no one is expecting us to win, and no one knows our potential.”

PAGE 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

3 die in attack on chlorine truck

Slowing economy isn’t cooling prices

continued from page 9 dad and elsewhere in Iraq on Wednesday. Bombs exploded in Baghdad, Najaf and Kirkuk, killing at least 15 people, according to police in those regions.

A Black Hawk helicopter was shot down north of Baghdad by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, according to the militar y. The militar y said in a statement that none of the nine soldiers aboard suffered serious injuries.

Also on Wednesday, the militar y disclosed the death of an American soldier killed in northern Baghdad on Tuesday. In addition, the militar y disclosed the death of a Marine killed Tuesday

in al-Anbar province, in western Iraq. The names were not released.

Caldwell said the first week of the security plan brought a “significant” decrease in sectarian killings, but he noted that the body count remains high because of car bombs and suicide bombers. “The thing we have not been able to bring under control is the number of vehicle-borne IEDs, and in the last few days, the suicide vests,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices. “We think the tactics have slightly switched.”

“The effects of the operation will not be seen in days or weeks but over the course of months,” he said.

continued from page 9 pected to continue as the aging U.S. population consumes more health care.

The increase in many food prices reflects federal efforts to encourage the production of ethanol as an alternative fuel, said Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research. Higher demand for ethanol has boosted prices for corn, an ingredient in the fuel’s production, as well as for other grains as farmers have shifted resources to produce more corn, he said. Corn is the main source of high-fructose corn syrup, a widely used ingredient in sweetened beverages and processed foods.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

Yamarone said overall inflation is contained. But he forecast fuel prices to stay close to where they are now, while food prices rise this year.

“You’ll see people complaining less about their gasoline bills and more about their grocery bills,” he said.

If inflation continues at this pace, workers may also complain about lagging pay. Average weekly earning for most workers fell 0.3 percent in January from the month before after adjusting for inflation, the Labor Department said in a separate report. These wages, paid to factory and non-managerial workers, were 2.1 percent higher last month than in January 2006, after adjusting for price changes.

www.browndailyherald.com

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 12

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

Italy’s prime minister resigns after Afghanistan war vote

BY TRACY WILKINSON LOS ANGELES T IMES

www.browndailyherald.com

ROME — Stung by a bruising foreign policy defeat, beleaguered Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned Wednesday, his center-left government collapsing after just nine months in power.

Prodi failed to win parliamentary endorsement of his decision to maintain Italian troops in Afghanistan, a loss attributed in part to desertions by members of his coalition who oppose continued cooperation with the U.S. military in Italy and abroad.

Chants of “quit, quit!” filled the Italian Senate as opposition politicians in business suits jumped up and down and pumped their fists upon realizing Prodi had lost the vote. A few hours later, he tendered his resignation to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

Napolitano said through a spokesman that he would begin talks Thursday aimed at forming a new government.

Among the scenarios, he could ask Prodi to build a new government, avoiding fresh elections

that neither the right nor the left appeared eager to engage in just yet.

Prodi will continue as a caretaker prime minister until a new government takes power, Napolitano’s office said.

Italy was once infamous for its revolving-door governments during decades of tumultuous political infighting and scandal. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi last year became the first Italian prime minister since World War II to finish a five-year term.

Berlusconi prided himself on the length of his tenure; and many Italians hoped a new era of stability had dawned. But Prodi’s government probably was doomed from the start. He narrowly defeated Berlusconi’s center-right coalition in elections last year, gaining only the tiniest of majorities in the Senate, which enfeebled his mandate.

The specific event that triggered the government crisis was not a confidence vote and did not carry a constitutional requirement that the prime minister step down. It was, instead, a Senate

vote to endorse the government’s general foreign policy, including maintenance of Italy’s 1,800-man mission in Afghanistan.

But Prodi and his foreign minister, Massimo D’Alema, had staked their credibility on the measure.

“I am asking for a strong and clear consensus,” D’Alema said on the Senate floor.

The move proved to be a serious miscalculation. The measure fell short of winning Senate majority approval by two votes.

Prodi’s coalition, a patchwork of nine disparate political parties, has been torn by divisions and bickering. Several leading leftists in the coalition want Italy out of Afghanistan and oppose Prodi’s decision to permit the U.S. military to expand its base at Vicenza in northern Italy.

Tens of thousands of Italians, including members of three parties from the Prodi coalition, marched last week on the northern base to protest the expansion.

Prodi has said he is obliged to carry through with a promise made by Berlusconi that gave Washington permission to enlarge

the base. Reneging would be seen as an “act of hostility,” Prodi said.

Earlier this month, in a move that also embarrassed Prodi, Berlusconi’s opposition bloc managed to pass a measure in the Senate approving the Vicenza expansion.

Angered over Vicenza, two Communist senators, Franco Turigliatto and Ferdinando Rossi, took Wednesday’s vote as their cue to abandon Prodi. Their desertion deprived Prodi of the majority he needed, setting in motion the government’s fall.

Prodi may yet be able to hold on to power. His allies were rallying Wednesday evening to his defense and plotting ways to reconfigure their government.

“We are ready to reconfirm our full support for the Prodi government,” Dario Franceschini of the centrist Margherita (Daisy) Party said, suggesting that a confidence vote could be called that would demonstrate that Prodi and his coalition still have a majority to govern.

But the opposition was equally skeptical that Prodi would continue in office.

SPORTS EXTRA THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007 THURSDAY

SP

O R T S

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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W. hockey suffers scoreless losses v.

Dartmouth, Harvard over weekend The women’s hockey team’s season officially ended this weekend with losses against Dartmouth and Harvard. Though the Bears fought hard, they were unable to muster a single goal in either defeat. Dartmouth defeated Brown 6-0, while Harvard dismissed the Bears 4-0.

Against No. 3 Dartmouth, Brown was disadvantaged by several penalties. Nicole Stock ’09 had 17 saves in the first period, despite facing two five-on-three advantages.

However, with 14:14 left in the first period, the Big Green converted a power-play goal when a Dartmouth forward attempted a pass that ricocheted off a Brown defender. The ricochet happened so quickly that Stock could not react, and the puck found the back of the net for a 1-0 Big Green lead.

The Big Green scored another goal 5:27 into the second period.

Brown was once again trying to kill a penalty when a Dartmouth forward posted up in the slot deflected a shot from the left point past Stock.

Dartmouth scored again on the power play with 8:53 gone by in the third period. Big Green freshman Sarah Parsons skated in on Stock and dropped off a pass to Katie Weatherston, who slipped a shot by stock.

Dartmouth’s fourth goal came on another five-on-three advantage with nine minutes left in the period.

The Big Green added two more goals in the second half of the third period, which were the only goals that it scored at even strength.

Despite the lopsided score, Stock shone between the pipes. She had a career-high 45 saves, including several of highlight-reel quality.

The Big Green went 4-for-9 on the power play while the Bears were 0-for-5. Dartmouth also held a 51-44 advantage in shots.

On Saturday, penalties once again came back to haunt Bruno. The Crimson scored its first goal of the game at a two-skater advantage.

Stock was once again fabulous in net, but after several spectacular saves, Harvard’s Caitlin Cahow slipped a one-time shot through Stock’s five-hole at 17:58 to give the Crimson a 1-0 advantage.

Harvard struck again 4:45 into the second period when Julie Chu received a centering pass on a Crimson breakaway and beat Stock with a stick-side shot.

Sarah Vaillancourt then put the game away with two goals in the third period. The first was a one-time shot off a face-off, and the other was on a breakaway.

Harvard outshot Brown 41-15, with Stock making 37 saves.

Brown ends the season in ninth place in the ECACHL standings. After a rough 0-9 start, the Bears went 10-8-2 for the rest of the season and challenged for the last playoff spot.

—Justin Goldman

W. swimming and diving comes in 6th at Ivy League Championships at Princeton

BY ERIN FRAUENHOFER ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

The women’s swimming and diving team wrapped up its season over the weekend with a sixth-place finish at the Ivy League Swimming and Diving Championships at Princeton. Brown completed the competition with 811 points.

Princeton was the competition’s first-place finisher with 1,496 points, edging out Harvard, which finished with 1,408.5 points and Yale, which finished with 1,122 points. The University of Pennsylvania and Columbia placed fourth and fi fth, and Dartmouth and Cornell rounded out the pool in seventh and eighth place, respectively.

“We felt pretty good about the outcome,” said co-captain Ashley Wallace ’07. “Everyone had a pretty good meet. We swam a lot better than we did last year, even though the standings were lower.”

The Bears took a seventh-place finish in the first event of the competition, the 200-yard freestyle relay. Meredith Cocco ’07, Sarah Goodman ’09, Kathleyn Brandstetter ’07 and Lauren Zatorski ’08 clocked in at 1:36.22.

In 1-meter diving, Dana Meadow ’07, Katie Olko ’10 and Amy Latinen ’07 reached the finals.

Meadow finished sixth with 250.65 points, with Olko following in seventh with 227.25 points and Latin-

en in eighth with 223.50 points.

The squad followed up the strong diving performance with a sixth-place finish in the 400-yard medley relay — in which the team of Emily Brush ’07, Ally Wyatt ’08, Wallace and Becky Kowalsky ’07 earned a time of 3:53.60. Later, in the 200-yard medley relay, Brush, Wyatt, Cocco and Brandstetter completed the event in 1:45.84 for fi fth place.

Ainsley McFadgen ’09 swam the 1,000-yard freestyle in 10:13.23 to place ninth out of a field of 28 swimmers.

In the 100-yard breaststroke, Wyatt clocked in at 1:05.38, good for sixth place. “Wyatt was in the finals for the first time, which was really exciting,” Wallace said.

After her preliminary run, Brush earned a spot in the finals of the 100-yard backstroke. She finished fi fth in the event, swimming a time of 57.53 seconds, less than two seconds behind firstplace finisher Moira McCloskey from Yale.

In the 800-yard freestyle relay, Kowalsky, McFadgen, Wyatt and Brush earned sixth place with a time of 7:37.52.

Kowalsky and Wallace then grabbed slots in the finals of the 200-yard butterfly, finishing with respective times of 2:04.97 and 2:05.50 for seventh place and eighth place.

“I was pretty happy,” Wallace

said. “It wasn’t my best time, and it was disappointing to be eighth, but I’m psyched to make the finals all four years. Not many swimmers do that. I was happy to be in the finals one last time.”

It was also the last Ivy League Championship for Latinen and Meadow, who competed in 3-meter diving. Latinen placed 12th with 258.50 points, while Meadow earned 247.60 points for 14th place. Olko earned 240.30 points for 15th place in the event.

Later, the 400-yard freestyle relay team of Kowalsky, Brandstetter, Goodman and Brush swam a time of 3:30.15 for seventh place.

The Bears scored two other top-10 finishes during the competition. In the 1,650-yard freestyle, Dillon Delaney ’10 clocked in at 17:08.77 for 10th place, and in the 200-yard breaststroke, Baily Langner ’09 checked in at 2:19.91 for ninth place.

Overall, Wallace said the squad’s results this season were disappointing. “We didn’t swim as well as we wanted to this season,” she said. “We could have been closer to what we were last year.”

But, Wallace noted, the team’s chemistry was at an all-time high.

“We really came together as a team,” she said. “There was a lot of leadership coming from the seniors, and we had a lot more team spirit this year, more so than any other year.”

W. basket basketball drops 2 to Harvard, Dartmouth continued from page 16 didn’t have the execution or defensive intensity it had in the first half.

The Big Green scored 49 points in the second half on 62 percent shooting en route to victory. After the first half of the second half,

Burr went back to her normal substitution pattern, but the change didn’t help matters.

“They got a couple of quick scores and their lead just kept growing,” McCahill said. McAfee and Fitzpatrick led Bruno with 12 points apiece.

Brown will go on a New York road trip this weekend to face off against Columbia on Friday night and Cornell on Saturday night.

The weekend after next, the Bears will honor their seniors in their last home game at the Pizzitola Center.

M. tennis splits matches over weekend continued from page 16 Hanegby said. “And I just couldn’t get into the match. I had my chances, but I didn’t capitalize on my opportunities.”

The decision rested on the fourth singles match between Kohli and Corace. Kohli dismantled Corace early on, taking the first set 6-0, but he gave up a close second set by a score of 7-5.

“I guess I had a mental lapse,”

Kohli said.

After bringing the third set to an even 5-5, Kohli served his way to a 6-5 advantage, and then broke Corace to win the set 7-5.

“It was fun,” Kohli said. “I knew the match was coming down to me. Everyone gathered around my court, and the guys really helped me through it.”

With Kohli’s win, the Bears beat the Hokies 4-3.

The Bears credit their solid play

over the weekend to the work they have devoted to doubles. “We’re very solid in doubles,” Hanegby said. “Without exaggerating, we have one of the best doubles lineups in the country. It gives us a lot of confidence.”

Having such a powerful doubles lineup especially gives Brown an edge in 4-3 decisions, when the doubles matches become crucial.

“The doubles point can be the key point of the match,” Lee said.

“It can determine the winner. Our goal this season was not to lose a single doubles point.”

The Bears are on the right track so far, having won all their doubles points this season, and they look to continue collecting doubles points this week. After Brown finishes up its action in Virginia with a match against the College of William and Mary, they will head back to Providence to host the United States Naval Academy and the State University of New York at Buffalo in a doubleheader on Saturday.

The Bears’ strategy for winning is simple. “We hope we come out fighting, win the doubles point, and continue that moment momentum in singles,” Kohli said.

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 14

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

POM is not enough The upcoming debut of Blue State Coffee and Haruki Express on College Hill affirms the gradual conversion of our main thoroughfare into a food court, but given the state of on-campus food offerings, it’s hard to decry their arrival. Locals and concerned students have long protested Thayer Street’s slow but sure transformation from a collection of distinctive specialty shops to a hub for overpriced pizza and brand name lattes. But when the sushi at Jo’s tastes more like frozen rice than Japanese food, we’re loath to oppose the prospect of finer fare.

Of course, improved food comes at a price. Few students can repeatedly shell out the cash that daily dining on Thayer Street requires. Swiping your Brown ID at Jo’s or the Gate to pick up food included in your awfully expensive meal plan seems free in comparison.

But the meal plan can have an insidious impact on unsuspecting students. Eager to use up the day’s credits, first-years often load up on sugary food they don’t need and don’t want — the food that makes the apocryphal Freshman 15 a reality. Older students, eager to return to their slimmer pre-meal plan days, may simply let meal credits go to waste and eventually forgo meal plans altogether.

Campus life officials have often expressed an interest in keeping upperclassmen living in dorms and contributing to a vibrant campus life. For administrators to reverse the trend of older students increasingly straying from campus life, they need to make staying on campus more attractive, whether that means improving residence halls, creating more comfortable study and social spaces or offering better dining options.

University officials have already made noteworthy attempts to bring upperclassmen back to campus. The Friedman Study Center reinvigorated a campus hub close to many off-campus residents, renovations to create more social space in Faunce House are in the works and the revamped meal plan program includes an option specifically for those living off campus. But further improvements to campus facilities — and campus menus — are needed.

Efforts to bring new “healthier options” to Jo’s and the Gate are well intentioned and sure to please those already on meal plans, but they’re not likely to attract those who have already sworn off the Ratty. We’ve professed an affinity for POM before, but the light pink, overpriced goodness isn’t enough to convince rising seniors that staying on meal plan is worth the dollars — or the carbs.

More comprehensive overhauls of Jo’s and the Gate — including a redesign of their layouts — suggest that Dining Services’ renewed commitment to healthy eating is more than a frenzy over pita chips and locally produced milk. Still, we question the value of laboring over a “make your own salad” bar at Jo’s when Au Bon Pain already has one three blocks up the street and the basic meal plan offerings — like hot ham on bulky roll — stand to be improved.

T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Editors-in-Chief Eric Beck Mary-Catherine Lader

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O PINIONS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 15

AEA only seeks to begin a dialogue

BY NEIL VANGALA GUEST COLUMNIST

There have been a great many misconceptions thrown around about the motivations and convictions of Asian Equality in Admissions. As such, we are convinced of the need to explain our group, our beliefs and our goals.

AEA’s objectives are to investigate and identify possible sources of prejudice in the admission process, to promote institutional transparency by compiling an objective statistical analysis of the current state of Asians and Asian Americans in the Brown admission process and to educate and inform the Brown student body about discrimination and other forms of injustice against Asians and Asian Americans outside of Brown.

The source of these goals is twofold — first, there is a past legacy of Asian-American discrimination here at Brown, and second, there is a growing body of evidence to indicate that students of Asian descent are currently subject to forms of prejudice in the admission processes of Brown’s peer institutions.

The history of discrimination at Brown was discovered in 1983, when a report published by the Asian American Student Association conclusively proved that Asian applicants to the University were put at a disadvantage solely because of their race. As a result of this report, the subcommittee on Asian-American admission of the Corporation went as far as to “concur that AsianAmerican applicants (had) been treated unfairly in the admission process.” They then went further to mention that “if left unrecti-

fied, (this) combination of policies and practices would make the resulting inequities intentional.” Reports that drew similar conclusions were also written at Harvard and Stanford universities.

Added to this history of past discrimination is evidence that discrimination may still be occurring. In 2005 Princeton researchers Thomas Espenshade and Chang Chung produced a report which proved that Asians were subject to lower rates of acceptance than any other applicant group. Further re-

Americans regardless of their interests or socioeconomic background.

Given the evidence of current discrimination and given the definite history of past discrimination at Brown, AEA hypothesizes that the admission process at Brown is prejudiced against students of Asian descent. We would like nothing better than to be proven wrong. Our goals, however, are to explore our hypothesis by requesting data from the admission office and by working to understand the complexity of the admission pro-

Given the evidence of current discrimination and given the definite history of past discrimination at Brown, AEA hypothesizes that the admission process at Brown is prejudiced against students of Asian descent. search by Yingyi Ma at the Johns Hopkins University indicates that this lower rate of admission applies to Asians regardless of academic interests or declared course of study.

Even more research from Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley, shows that this disadvantage applied to Asians occurs regardless of the socioeconomic traits of the applicant. This total body of evidence demonstrates that Brown and many other schools may disadvantage Asians and Asian

cess in general.

In conducting our investigation we seek to include the perspectives of administrators, faculty and students. As of late, we have offered our thoughts and ideas to the Asian American Student Association, the South Asian Student Association, Brown Hillel, the Brotherhood, Brown Sistahs United and the Latin American Student Association. Each of these groups has given us valuable feedback, which we are incorporating into our in-

vestigation process. We hope that if we draw upon the varied views of these student organizations, we will prevent the disenfranchisement of any minority group or perspective from our objective analysis.

A consistent concern we have faced during our campus outreach has been in regard to AEA’s position on the current system of affirmative action as it is enacted at Brown and its peer institutions. For this reason, we would like to clarify that we are in favor of affirmative action that strictly serves the dual purpose of creating a diverse class and correcting for past and present injustices. As a caveat to this belief, we would like to add that there is significant legal precedent to indicate that Asians are a protected subgroup under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and are also subject to the same present injustices as many other minority groups.

That being said, conversations surrounding affirmative action are irrelevant to the motivations of this group, as the sole purpose of our organization is to collect data, understand admission and publish an objective report. We do not seek to change as much as we seek to educate. It is certain that our pro-stance on affirmative action will not affect our analysis or our aims at achieving an objective understanding.

As mentioned before, our single motivation is to understand the admission process and identify possible instances of prejudice on campus. It is our subtle hope that the Brown student body will look favorably upon this noble cause.

Neil Vangala ’09 co-founded Asian Equality in Admissions with Jason Carr ’09. For more information on AEA, visit www. asianequalityadmissions.org.

Asians are not discriminated against

BY JON BOGARD GUEST COLUMNIST

This past weekend I went on a picnic.

It isn’t always easy for me to go on picnics as I’m quite the finicky eater. I always end up bringing a lot of carbohydrates — the most common type of food — but I also bring some spicy foods so it’s not a boring meal.

I have a pretty small picnic basket so I can’t bring all of the wonderful food that I would like on my picnic. Taste, of course, isn’t my only criterion for selecting food — I also like varied textures, courses and consistencies.

It would be way too tiring to talk about all of the factors I consider.

A recent Herald article (“Two students challenge Asian American admission discrimination,” Feb. 9) chronicled two Brunonians fighting discrimination against Asian Americans by starting a club, Asian Equality in Admissions. As evidence that Asians face discrimination, they cite the fact that Asian Americans are effectively dealt a fi fty-point penalty on their SAT scores, compared to their white peers, when applying to the United States’ top universities.

To characterize the admission process in this way is simply ludicrous. Examining that same study, we should conclude that whites are levied a full 230-point penalty on their SAT scores when compared to black students. Tempted as I was to start a club calling for the end of discrimination of whites in the admission process, I decided against it.

This is all based on a study which focuses

solely on race and SAT scores, which are only two of many factors considered by an admission committee. There are, to quote Dean of Admission James Miller ’73, a “myriad of variables, and to look at one factor makes no sense.”

To affirmatively value one quality is not to discriminate against those who do not have that quality. If Brown prefers clever, athletic oboists when creating its class, I am not a victim of discrimination because I am dull, clumsy and tone-deaf. An unf unfortunate side-

Davis, where race is not considered in the admission process, Asian Americans are represented at ten times their national proportion.

I am not arguing that each university should exactly mimic the makeup of national demographics. I simply offer these statistics to illuminate the fact that Asian Americans are not underrepresented in universities and so, in my opinion, they shouldn’t benefit from affirmative action. Put another way, just because affirmative action gives

If Brown prefers clever, athletic oboists when creating its class, I am not a victim of discrimination because I am dull, clumsy and tone-deaf. effect of admission is that many smart, talented people, no matter how high their SAT scores may be, are going to get rejected. It is wrong to call this re rejection racist or discriminatory.

Affirmative action is a preference-based system. It does not tax those who aren’t of a specific race. Instead, it favors certain underrepresented groups. Asian Americans are not an underrepresented group in the university system – the Brown Asian-American population is three times the national proportion. At the University of California,

added value to someone of Native American or Hispanic ancestry, that doesn’t mean that Asian Americans are being discriminated against since they aren’t a benefited minority group. They don’t profit from the affirmative action system because they aren’t underrepresented. No admission officer looks at a file and immediately demotes the applicant because of his race — be it Asian, white or otherwise.

Remember in kindergarten how every time you did something well you got a gold star on your chart, and if you collected

enough gold stars you got a lollipop? Consider the admission process. For every characteristic, talent or achievement that a university values which you possess, you get some gold stars in the mind of the admission officer reading your file. Thirty-six on your ACT? You get a few gold stars. President of the student council? A few more.

At the end of the day, those with the starriest files are admitted. As far as the University is concerned, diversity is a worthwhile thing.

So being from someplace exotic — be that Laos or Montana — or being from an underrepresented race is positively valued. Being Congolese A American may win you a few gold stars, but being Asian American (or Caucasian American) won’t win you any gold stars.

The AEA essentially seems to want the University to be race-blind between Asian Americans and whites. As far as the preference-based system of affirmative action is concerned, these two groups are on equal footing — neither gets a star for their race, but neither does anybody have a sticker peeled from their chart.

I don’t deny the AEA’s assertion that, inasmuch as it is meaningful to look at a profile of applicants’ race versus their “scholastic merit,” Asian Americans have a lower rate of acceptance than white applicants. I’m just doubtful that this difference is the result of discrimination. The ultimate validity of the AEA’s claims rest on their characterization of the admission process, and I believe it is a false one.

Jon Bogard ’09 only got in because he’s clumsy and tone-deaf, and Brown didn’t have one of those.

S PORTS T HURSDAY THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2007

PAGE 16

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Gymnastics defeats Bridgeport with season-best score

BY MADELEINE MARECKI ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

Jacob Melrose / Herald

Saurabh Kohli’s ‘08 victory at fourth singles clinched Brown’s win over Virginia Tech over the weekend.

Men’s tennis splits weekend against top competition

BY ERIN FRAUENHOFER ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

After weeks of dominating opponents by scores of 7-0 and 6-1, the men’s tennis team met its first challenges of the season in Virginia over the weekend. No. 65 Brown let a match slide 4-3 to No. 48 University of Louisville on Saturday, then bounced back on Sunday to grab a 4-3 win over No. 51 Virginia Tech.

“It’s a totally different world,” said co-captain Dan Hanegby ’07 of competing against ranked opponents. “It was the first time we’ve been pushed. We were tested in every spot.”

The Cardinals may have tested the Bears in doubles play, but Brown still swept the doubles matches to seize the doubles point. The No. 25-ranked team of Hanegby and Chris Lee ’09 took the first doubles match by a score of 8-7. At second doubles, the No. 15-ranked duo of co-captain Eric Thomas ’07 and Basu Ratnam ’09 triumphed 9-7, while Saurabh Kohli ’08 and Zach Pasanen ’07 won the third doubles match 8-5.

“We came out with a lot of energy in doubles,” Lee said.

The Bears followed up their doubles victories by dropping the first four singles matches. At first singles, No. 82 Hanegby fell to No. 71 Slavko Radman 6-3, 6-1. Thomas, Kohli and Ratnam also had straight-set losses at second, third and fourth singles, respectively.

Pasanen gave the Bears a win at fi fth singles, overpowering Kenneth Nordheim 6-2, 6-2. At sixth singles, Lee earned a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Chris Herrlinger, leaving the final match score at 4-3.

“We had a very good chance to pull out a win,” Hanegby said. “But the top guys in the singles lineup

— me, Eric, Saurabh and Basu — we didn’t step up, and that’s probably why we lost.”

Though match play was finished for the day, the Bears were not — instead, they put in a full hour of practice to prepare for the Hokies.

“Obviously, after the first match we were disappointed,” Kohli said. “(Head Coach Jay Harris) told us to come out with more fire the next day, and that’s exactly what we did.”

The Bears captured the doubles point from Virginia Tech to gain an early edge. After Hanegby and Lee dropped the first doubles match 8-6, the second doubles pair of Thomas and Ratnam won an 8-6 match against Yoann Re and Alexei Sergeev. At third doubles, Kohli and Pasanen defeated Brandon Corace and Albert Larregola 8-6.

“Our doubles lineup is really deep right now,” Lee said. “We’ve been working on doubles the past few weeks to make sure we win the doubles points.”

Singles play posed greater challenges to the Bears. At third singles, Ratnam lost 6-2, 6-2 to Re, and at fi fth singles, Pasanen fell 76, 7-3 to Pedro Graber, tipping the total match score in the Hokies’ favor. Lee evened the score at 22 with a 6-3, 7-6 win over Sergeev at sixth singles. Then, Thomas defeated No. 87-ranked Nicolas Delgado 6-4, 7-6 at first singles, advancing the Bears to 3-2. “Thomas played a very good match,” Hanegby said.

At second singles, Hanegby lost 6-7, 6-4, 6-1 to No. 70 Larregola, and the score remained even at 3-3. “(Larregola) was very good,” continued on page 13

After suffering a disappointing defeat against three nationally ranked teams last weekend in New Hampshire, the gymnastics team rebounded this Sunday and defeated the University of Bridgeport.

Competing in the Pizzitola Center, the Bears did not disappoint the home crowd as they outscored the Purple Knights a season-high 186.125 points to 180.575. In addition to another tally in the win column, the team posted several individual personal and season highs.

The team won every event except the vault, where it fell to Bridgeport, 45.725 to 45.150. The Bears soundly defeated the Purple Knights on the uneven bars, 46.950 to 44.025 and were equally impressive on the balance beam, winning 46.450 to 44.600. Brown also comfortably won the floor exercise, which was its highest scoring event, outperforming Bridgeport 47.575 to 46.225. Head Coach Sara Carver-Milne said the meet was a great success and that it was team’s best meet of the entire season.

Alicia Sacramone ’10 led the Bears yet again with victories on the bars, beam, floor and the allaround competition. Her best performances were on the beam and floor, scoring 9.85 on both.

On bars, Sacramone posted a 9.750. By the end of the day, she had tallied 38.750 points in the allaround.

The Bears were overpowering on the bars, sweeping the top four spots. Co-captain Hannah Goldstein ’08 took second behind Sacramone, posting a 9.525. Izzy Kirkham-Lewitt ’10 finished third with a 9.475, and Jennifer Sobuta ’09 took fourth with a 9.250. Goldstein, Kirkham-Lewitt and Sobuta’s efforts were all season highs.

Co-captain Sarah Durning ’08 said Sunday’s lineup for the bars was the best all season.

Brown had a one-two punch in the beam competition, with Sacramone taking first and Sobuta finishing second. Carver-Milne pointed to Sobuta’s performance as particularly noteworthy.

“Jen Sobuta scored 9.75 in the last three meets. It was great that she got a personal best of 9.8,” she said.

On floor, Bridgeport’s Katherine Reitz took second behind Sacramone with a 9.575, and Bruno’s Kirkham-Lewitt nabbed third with a season-high performance of 9.525. Although they fell short of top three, Goldstein and Alanna Kwoka ’10 successfully added a new element into their routines — a double back — which will make them more competitive in next week’s competition.

Though the Bears did not win the vault, they still had strong results. Kwoka, last week’s ECAC Rookie of the Week, led the field with a 9.425, while Sobuta took third with a 9.375. Reitz, however, denied Brown a sweep on the podium, capturing second place with a 9.35.

Jacob Melrose / Herald

Izzy Kirkham-Lewitt ’10 recorded a career high on the uneven bars in Brown’s victory over Bridgeport over the weekend.

The team’s depth was best demonstrated by the all-around results, which combines each gymnast’s scores for all four events.

Brown swept the top four spots in the all-around — Sacramone won with 38.750 points, Sobuta finished second with a season high of 37.850, Kwoka took third with 36.600 and Kirkham-Lewitt finished fourth with 36.500.

“Everyone felt really good continued on page 10

W. hoops stumble against Harvard, Dartmouth

BY JUSTIN GOLDMAN SPORTS EDITOR

Though the women’s basketball team fought hard, it just didn’t have enough energy to overcome the tough frontlines of Harvard and Dartmouth last weekend.

The Bears dropped a 67-41 contest to the Crimson on Friday night and were beaten 75-53 by the Big Green on Saturday.

On Friday night, Brown did not score much at first — a trend throughout the year. Harvard quickly set up a 10-2 lead in the first four minutes of the game. “(Getting down early) is difficult because you have to constantly battle back,” said co-captain Lena McAfee ’07. “A lot of times this season we have not learned from our mistakes that we make early in the game and we continue to get down early.”

Even when they were down, the Bears refused to wilt. Brown eventually tied the score at 12 when Lindsay Walls ’10 hit a jumper at the 11:56 mark.

The Bears used the momentum from Walls’ score to fuel their run. After the Crimson took a 16-14 lead, Herald Sports Staff Writer Megan McCahill ’09 hit a three-pointer to give Bruno its first lead, 17-16. McCahill then hit another jumper to give Brown its largest lead of three.

But that was the last lead Bruno would enjoy. Harvard outscored Brown 20-5 — including a streak of 15 points in a row — to end the half and gain a 36-22 advantage.

The Crimson held the Bears

to 32 percent shooting in the first half.

“Their defense was strong and being on the road is always difficult,” McAfee said. “It is always harder to play your game on the road.”

The Crimson used the momentum gained at the end of the first half to outscore Brown 15-3 in the first eight minutes of the second half. With the score 5125, the game was out of reach for Brown.

“Harvard was a solid defensive team, and when we got down, we started taking bad shots,” McCahill said. “We weren’t moving the ball around on offense like we needed to.”

Harvard cruised the rest of the way, once again limiting Brown’s opportunities offensively. In the second half, Bruno shot a paltry 6-of-31 from the floor, good for 19 percent. McCahill, who was the only Bear in double figures, led the team in scoring with 11 points.

Though the Bears had been thoroughly outplayed the night before, they came out with a new mindset against the Big Green.

Trying to find some offensive stability, Head Coach Jean Marie Burr switched up her substitution pattern. Burr created two teams, each playing half of the first half.

“Coach has been looking for the best group in terms of chemistry,” McAfee said. McCahill echoed the sentiments of her cocaptain. “Having the two different teams really fired us up,” she said.

The first half was exciting,

with both teams trading baskets and the lead changing hands four times. Brown gained an 11-7 advantage at the 13:39 mark when Shae Fitzpatrick ’10 — who was in the quintet of herself, McAfee, Walls, Christina Johnson ’10 and Courtney Lee ’10 — converted a lay-up and was fouled. She converted the free throw, giving Bruno its biggest lead of the game.

But the Big Green responded with two consecutive threes on its next two trips down the court to give it a 13-11 advantage.

Brown refused to go quietly and scored the next four points, giving it a 15-13 lead. The second five of McCahill, Ashley KingBischof ’07, Ann O’Neal ’08, Herald Sports Staff Writer Amy Ehrhart ’09 and Catherine Schaper ’09 continued to fight hard for the remainder of the first half.

But Brown could not maintain the momentum that it had created. The Big Green’s defense stiffened and outscored the Bears 134 over the last seven minutes of the first half to give it a 26-19 halftime lead.

Dartmouth scored the first five points of the second half, increasing its lead to 12. Though Brown continued to fight, the Big Green’s offensive execution was good in the second half.

“They scored on their first five possessions in the second half, which was demoralizing,” McCahill said. “We also did not come out with the energy that we came out with in the first half.”

In the second half, Brown continued on page 13