Wednesday, February 28, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDAY, F EBR UAR Y 28, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 24

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Banner demo shows students new system

Med School introduces ‘concentrations’

Banner, which will be longer and segmented. Under Banner, most pre-registration advising for the Fall 2007 semester will take place from April 2 to 20 and rising seniors — the first to register under the new system — will begin pre-registering on April 24.

Dunbar then demonstrated how the new course search feature, which is divided into two sections, will function. Students who want to learn general information about a course will use the “course catalog” for multi-departmental searches and searches for multiple professors or attributes at once, similar to features provided by the student-run Mocha system but not the University’s BOCA site.

“The catalog will be the complete compendium of courses offered at Brown,” Dunbar said.

Students who want to know term-specific details about a course, such as where it is meeting and certain course restrictions, will consult the “course schedule.”

Finally, Dunbar showed students how they would register

BY CHAZ FIRESTONE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

BY NANDINI JAYAKRISHNA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Alpert Medical School has introduced a scholarly concentrations program that will allow medical students to take electives and conduct research in an interdisciplinary field outside the conventional medical curriculum.

Part of the Med School’s broad curricular redesign, the program is voluntary and is intended to promote creative scholarship in medical learning, said Philip Gruppuso, associate dean of medicine for medical education. It was first introduced for the class of 2010.

“The traditional medical curriculum does not have scope for creativity,” he said. “These concentrations are analogous to what people would consider minors.”

The program currently offers 12 concentration areas with topics including global health, aging, advocacy and activism, medical ethics and disaster relief.

Emily Rickards, manager of the program, said it is likely to grow in terms of both concentrations and number of students in coming years.

Gruppuso and Rickards said they expect between 20 and 30 students out of the 92 in the class of 2010 to enroll in the program this year.

The program requires students to undertake projects on campus, in local hospitals or abroad during the summer after their first year. Funding for the summer assistantships will come from the Summer Research Assistantship program and from “generous gifts and grants” received by the Med School for infrastructural changes and curriculum redesigns, Gruppuso said.

Some concentrations — such as continued on page 4

Chris Bennett / Herald Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar gave a PowerPoint presentation Tuesday about the Banner system.

The first public demonstration of Banner’s online course registration system was given last night

by Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar to an audience of 13 students in Salomon 001.

Dunbar, who ser ves as Banner project owner, went over the aspects of registration that directly apply to students, including the relationship between advisers and students, the course search feature that will replace the Brown Online Course Announcement and the registration procedure itself.

She used a PowerPoint presentation instead of the interactive Banner client because the Banner interface is still under development.

“We’re still in a test environment, and things are always changing in a test environment,” she said.

Dunbar emphasized the difference between the current preregistration process — where all advising and paper work take place during a two-week period — and pre-registration under

continued on page 4

Retiree learning group’s vote to split from U. fails despite garnering majority

BY NANDINI JAYAKRISHNA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Brown Community for Learning in Retirement will remain affiliated with the University, though a majority voted to become independent at a convocation Tuesday.

At the lunchtime meeting at Josiah’s, 56 percent of the members present voted in favor of disaffiliating from the University, short of the two-thirds necessary to break away.

A growing scarcity of classroom space on campus and the possibility that University officials would seek more academic and administrative oversight had caused the group to consider disaffiliating with the University.

BCLIR is a community of older adults interested in continuing their learning experience in various fields. It has been affiliated with Brown for 23 years.

Harry Switzer, the incoming president of the group, said he will work with Karen Sibley, dean

of summer and continuing studies, to plan the group’s future.

“We had two viable options — staying or leaving — and we’ve picked one,” he told The Herald.

“We will work with Dean Sibley in every way possible to make the best of the situation.”

Switzer said the decision to function through Brown will hold for now, but if “things do not work out” in the future, the group may reconsider its decision.

The organization, which had previously managed its own ad-

ministrative affairs, will hand over management of its programs to Sibley’s office, and the group’s members will advise her on academic affairs, Switzer said.

Sibley, who attended the first half of the meeting, said she would want as much advice from the group as possible regarding its courses and publicity. The group’s name will now be included in the summer and continuing studies catalogue, which should continued on page 4

Nutritionist urges students to have healthy body image

BY STEPHANIE BERNHARD FEATURES EDITOR

Chris Bennett / Herald Health Services Nutritionist Heather Bell spoke Tuesday about body image as part of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.

INSIDE:

3 CAMPUS WATCH

DARTMOUTH DRINKERS Dartmouth banned water pong in some residence halls in response to potential health risks and property damage

www.browndailyherald.com

5 CAMPUS NEWS

S&J MEDIA COVERAGE The national media reported the U.’s revelation last week of how it was planning on making amends for its slavery ties

Heather Bell, a nutritionist at University Health Services, spoke Tuesday in Petteruti Lounge about the importance of accepting one’s body as it is and rejecting media images of perfection. The talk, part of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, was titled “Be Comfortable in Your Genes: Your Body Is A Work of Art.” Discussing body image with college students is necessary because it is a widespread preoccupation, Bell said. Obsessive anxiety about body image can lead to eating disorders, compulsive exercise and other physical and psychological conditions. Bell said about 10 students per week make appointments with

11 OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

SPEAR-ED Courtney Jenkins ’07 laments Britney Spears’ self-destruction and the subsequent loss of our generation’s innocence

her to discuss issues related to eating disorders.

She cited a national study that shows 74 percent of undergraduate women and 46 percent of men think “constantly or very frequently” about how others perceive their bodies.

Bell said her suggestions for improving positive body image include separating one’s body image from character and “recognition of body diversity.” Bell explained that a graph of the population’s body weight would look like a bell curve, with most people falling in the middle. “But if you look at media images, all the women at least fall way to the left,” Bell said.

She showed slides of a Barbie continued on page 6

12 SPORTS

SKIERS SNAG FIRST The ski team is headed to Nationals after tying for first place at the regional competition over the weekend

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 2

WE A

T H E R

TODAY

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker TOMORROW

mostly sunny 41 /32

partly cloudy 41 / 23

MEN SHARPE REFECTORY

U VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Cheese Tomato Strata, Meatball Grinder, Buffalo Chicken Wings with Blue Cheese Dressing, Kale and Linguica Soup, Vegetarian Cream of Broccoli Soup, Magic Bars, Apple Turnovers

LUNCH H — Vegetarian Corn Chowder, Country Wedding Soup, Chicken Andouille Shrimp Jambalaya, Spinach Strudel, Mandarin Blend Vegetables, Magic Bars

DINNER — Tilapia Provençal, Couscous, Italian Vegetable Saute, Asparagus Spears, Vegan Warm and Spicy Dhal, Orange Jello, Orange Delight Cake

SU

WBF | Matt Vascellaro

DINNER — Vegetarian Corn Chowder, Country Wedding Soup, Roast Turkey with Sauce, Shells with Broccoli, Mashed Potatoes, Stuffing, Wax Beans, Green Peas, Orange Delight Cake

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 ACROSS 1 Let the cat out of the bag 5 Head up 10 Birthstone after sapphire 14 Petrarchan unit 15 Extremely, to Mozart 16 Venice Film Festival site 17 Many Wall St. apprentices 18 WWI chemical warfare weapon 20 Enjoy a soak 22 Mozart’s “__ kleine Nachtmusik” 23 Baseball execs 24 Law office staple before Xeroxing 28 “Macbeth” witches’ word 29 Trash holder 32 Brad’s ex 35 Informed, with “in” 38 Carpentry groove 39 Versifier’s “before” 40 Show-offs (and this puzzle’s theme) 43 Actor Gulager 44 Battle or Sills 46 Like ZIP codes 47 He’s a doll 48 Throb stopper 51 Consumer 53 Be all for it 59 School of thought 61 Type of sax 62 Ark contents 63 1980s-’90s slugger who ranks fourth in career home runs by a switch hitter 67 Emerald City traveler 68 Gaunt 69 Navratilova rival 70 The dark side 71 Way 72 Flier’s concern 73 Tear up DOWN 1 Hardly a brainiac

O S S W O R D

2 Father of Leah 41 Cut needing 56 Flock and Rachel stitches, probably 57 Have leftovers, 3 Vintage violin 42 Dangerous say 4 Air rifle pellets precipitation 58 “Get __ of 5 Sportscast suffix 45 Penny prez yourself!”

6 2007 Sugar Bowl 49 Jai __ 59 START I treaty champs 50 __ the lily: subj.

7 Japanese adorned 60 “Fly away, immigrant unnecessarily fly!”

8 Montmartre 52 Tear gas target 64 Drain cleaner morning 54 Fend (off) component 9 Mick’s ex 55 Shantytown 65 Keogh cousin 10 “Something __, dwelling 66 Slob’s room something ...”

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: 11 Like some tots’ rides 12 First name?

13 Bottom-line bummer 19 Classic autos 21 Tennyson’s Arden 25 Missile site 26 Bull in a china shop 27 Advanced deg.

30 Run out of gear 31 It may be proper 32 “Star Wars” knight 33 Actor Stoltz 34 “Forget it!”

36 Tokyo, long ago 2/28/07 xwordeditor@aol.com 37 Coffee mate?

Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

Cloudy Side Up | Mike Lauritano

T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 Business Phone: 401.351.3260

University community since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the aca-

Eric Beck, President

once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. POSTMASTER please send corrections to

Mary-Catherine Lader, Vice President Ally Ouh, Treasurer

By Dan Naddor (c)2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

2/28/07

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown

Mandeep Gill, Secretary

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.

CAMPUS WATCH WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

Princeton system enables anonymous feedback to professors

BY OLIVIA HOFFMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Thanks to an initiative launched

by Princeton’s student government, students no longer need to wait for end-of-semester course evaluations to tell their professors what they really think — they can now use a Web site to send anonymous e-mails to their professors.

According to Princeton Undergraduate Student Government president Rob Biederman, the idea for the initiative — announced Feb. 19 — came from a suggestion from a psychology professor visiting from the University of Virginia, which he said has a similar system.

The site operates in a similar fashion to Princeton’s “crush finder,” a Web site at which students anonymously enter the network IDs of their top five romantic interests. Students are notified if they and one of their interests are “mutually crushing,” wrote Josh Weinstein, a sophomore who coded the site, in an e-mail to The Herald.

“The two sites are basically the same — I took the code from the crush site to make the course comment site,” he wrote. With the professor feedback site, students enter their name and network ID and the network ID of the professor to whom they want the message delivered and then type their comments into a textbox on the Web site.

The message is then sent anonymously to an account monitored by the student government, where it is screened to ensure appropriateness, Biederman said.

“Anything that’s obscene … and anything that’s not constructive and has no grounds in reality” will be censored, said Undergraduate Academics Chair Sarah Breslow, a junior.

Though the system is only in its first weeks, Breslow and Biederman both said students have already begun to put the service to good use. “100 percent of the messages so far have been constructive,” Breslow said.

For example, one student’s anonymous message requested that his or her professor order a few copies of the required texts for the class and keep them on reserve at the library, as the student did not have the means to purchase them, Biederman said.

In another, a student suggested that the professor incorporate more multimedia into the lectures to make them more meaningful and engaging.

In some cases, the messages are neither complaints nor sug-

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gestions. Biederman said one email was from a student who simply wanted to express how much she was enjoying the professor’s class but would feel like a “suck up” if she sent the message directly.

For now, the system is onesided — professors cannot directly respond to the messages.

But student government officials said they are looking at ways to expand the program to allow professors to respond to the e-mails while still preserving the anonymity of the students.

But some students are less than enthusiastic about the system. Courtney Quiros, a firstyear, told the Daily Princetonian on Feb. 19 that she didn’t believe the system was a good idea. “I wouldn’t use it because I think that if you can’t attach a name to a complaint, it doesn’t have much honor,” Quiros said.

Biederman told The Herald that he doesn’t see it that way. “I don’t think it’s cowardly to not want to tell a professor to their face that their lectures could be more stimulating if they did x, y or z,” he said. Weinstein agreed, noting that the anonymity does “take the pressure off.”

Breslow said she thinks the system will help open lines of communication, despite a “perceived power relationship between professors and their students.”

“I think it’s a shame that these days students won’t go to their professors and talk to them openly and honestly,” Breslow said.

“But if we can provide a service that will make teachers more effective, I think it’s great.”

There are no plans to implement a similar system at Brown, according to Undergraduate Council of Students Academic and Administrative Affairs Chair Sara Damiano ’08.

Damiano said there are downsides to the anonymous feedback method. “Certainly there’s less responsibility to provide wellthought-out comments. The freeform nature might mean that students aren’t necessarily providing the most helpful feedback possible,” she said.

Still, she said, she did not want to “rule anything out.” Currently, students who wish to express concerns or suggestions must speak with professors in person, e-mail them directly or wait for course evaluations. “I think the Princeton program is something that UCS could consider, but I think looking at the existing methods and looking at how to improve them would come first,” Damiano said.

Dartmouth bans water pong on campus

BY KARA APLAND CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Dartmouth College banned the game water pong in some residence halls early this month, claiming the game — a variant of beer pong — has caused property damages and poses health risks related to the over-consumption of water.

Water pong, a version of the drinking game beer pong that substitutes water for alcohol, is an “esteemed tradition to prepare wet-behind-the-ears freshmen for the ‘big leagues,’ ” said Dartmouth senior Nathan Raines.

Dartmouth officials have expressed concern about the game.

“The issue of water pong came up in a particular location early this January,” wrote Marty Redman, Dartmouth’s dean of residential life, in an e-mail to The Herald. “In an all-first-year facility, students decided to put the study tables together in a study room to play water pong,” he wrote.

According to Redman, students ignored e-mails from administrators and caused serious damage to Dartmouth facilities playing the game.

“We now have to have the tables refinished due to water damage and (hire) custodial staff to spend extra time cleaning the space,” Redman wrote. “The situation continued, and in order to address damage issues and other students’ complaints, the building staff decided to ban water pong in the study room location.”

Yet the main source of controversy among students stems from officials’ expressed concern about health risks. In an early February e-mail alerting students to the new policy, Kristin Deal, community director for two

of Dartmouth’s freshmen dorms, cited overhydration as a risk associated with the game. She also included a link to a CNN article titled, “Woman drinks so much water she dies,” which reported on a woman from California who died during a “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest.

Deal declined to comment for this article.

Many students doubted that overhydration was a plausible risk. In the weeks after the ban, the Dartmouth, the college’s student newspaper, ran editorials criticizing and mocking the notion of the health risk. Water pong rarely involves actually drinking the water, they said.

“Despite all its thrills as a proving ground for one’s athletic prowess pong’s popularity is due completely and entirely to the fact that people like to get drunk.”

Nathan Paines Dartmouth Senior Raines was dubious about the perceived risk of overhydration from the game. “I mean, there’s the whole idea of overhydration messing with your sodium ion concentrations in your body that has proved fatal in the past, but it’s a negligible risk,” he said.

Alcohol researchers say the risks associated with over-consumption of water are relatively serious and not well-known.

“Consuming as little as three liters within an hour can constitute a risk. … You can die from drinking water, and people don’t know

that,” said Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Robert Swift, associate director of Brown’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies. Swift said determining whether water pong at Dartmouth constituted a serious risk is hard to say, but “the fact is, students on college campuses die from water consumption.”

Swift added that education is the best solution to substance abuse in general. “The best strategy is to educate and work with the students. Brown does an exceptionally good job of educating students about potential hazards and providing them with information. That’s the primary thing,” he said.

But Redman seemed primarily concerned with facility damage and disruptive behavior. “This particular residential facility has been plagued with high damage bills this year as the result of the behavior of some of the residents … all we wanted is to have students use the space responsibly,” he wrote.

Redman said things have calmed down since the water pong ban. “We’ve seen positive progress in other areas. Disruptive behavior and behavior that was causing damage to property has declined compared to the earlier part of the term,” he wrote. “Is there a cause and effect? I’m not certain, but the action by the staff and the conversations that have taken place since then (seem) to be having a positive impact.”

Whatever the reason for the ban, Raines doubts it will change student attitudes toward water pong’s much beloved cousin — beer pong. “Despite all its thrills as a proving ground for one’s athletic prowess, pong’s popularity is due completely and entirely to the fact that people like to get drunk,” Raines told The Herald.

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Med School begins new ‘concentration’ program

Banner registration process demonstrated to students

continued from page 1 aging and women’s reproductive health, freedom, and rights — have outside funding, said Melissa Nothnagle ’93, assistant professor of family medicine and co-director of the women’s reproductive health, freedom and rights concentration.

The program allows students to work with experienced faculty on projects in specific areas of interest, Nothnagle said. “Rather than having to do everything on their own, students can network with faculty and other students to develop the skills needed to pursue advanced research in areas like advocacy,” she said.

After spending four years in the concentration, students will then present their work in a form of their choosing.

“Students should produce some-

thing tangible, maybe in the form of a thesis. If they are interested in poetry, they can write poetry,” Gruppuso said.

Students seem excited about the program.

Dan Schwarz MD’10, who is concentrating in global health, said he was “enticed” by the program when he heard about it last semester.

“I am very excited about furthering attempts to complement a biomed education with more sociopolitical, humanistic aspects,” Schwarz said. He said the program is a “big step forward” for Brown.

Natalie Nokoff ’06 MD’10, a concentrator in medical humanities, said the program is a “nice way” for students to continue their undergraduate education. “I majored in gender studies, and plan to use the program as a continuation,” she said.

continued from page 1 for courses. She explained that each course has a unique course reference number, which can be used to register for a course by simply typing it into the appropriate field and clicking submit. If students do not know a course’s reference number, they can pull up a list of courses from the course catalog, highlight the ones they wish to take and click submit to register.

Dunbar also clarified a few of the changes that would be made to course descriptions under Banner. Department codes will be four letters long instead of two — for example, the anthropology department will be “ANTH” instead of “AN,” and the biology department will be “BIOL” instead of “BI.” Course numbers will be four digits instead of three, so that Banner will treat different sections of a course as entirely separate courses, allowing students to enroll in multiple sections of a given course.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

“The same logic applies, we just needed more space to build more courses,” Dunbar said.

The student audience raised a number of questions that had not been asked at any previous forum.

Cassie Rogg ’09 asked about Banner’s limit of registering for five courses, which didn’t seem to accommodate half-credits.

Don Thibault, a representative of SunGard Higher Education, the company that produces Banner, clarified that Banner’s limit is five credits, not five courses.

“You could technically take 10 half credit courses if you could find them,” Thibault said.

Bentley Rubinstein ’09 said he felt the override process for course restrictions such as course caps and pre-requisites would have less immediacy under Banner than it does now.

Currently, a professor effectively grants a complete override by signing an add/drop form, which is done right in front of the student. But under Banner,

there would be a delay between a student’s request for an override and when it is granted.

Jonathan Hahn ’10 asked whether Banner had a built-in waitlist feature or if professors would manage course waitlists.

Dunbar said Banner did come with a waitlist feature but the University’s Banner team had elected not to implement it.

“Brown faculty use waiting lists in many different ways, so we wanted to let them do whatever they wanted to do,” she said, adding that Banner’s waitlist feature counts waitlist courses against the limit of five, which the team felt would be too harsh a commitment for students.

By the demonstration’s end, students told The Herald they felt it had gone well.

“I think (Dunbar) did a good job of explaining the process of registration,” said Cara Mazzucco ’10, who had not attended previous Banner forums. “I’m a little less worried now than I was coming in.”

Retiree learning group’s vote to split from U. fails continued from page 1 help increase enrollment, she said.

“I will eagerly welcome input from the group about what you want to study and how to market the group,” she said.

The program will now offer two types of courses: round-table study groups and seminars.

The round-table study groups will retain aspects of the group’s old model of “collaborative learning,” in which classes were peerdeveloped and peer-led. Now, the staff of the summer and continuing studies office will help the group’s curriculum committee develop courses and lesson plans for the round-table classes. The seminars, on the other hand, will probably be taught by faculty members, Switzer said.

Barbara Findley, the incoming vice president of the group, told The Herald that the group would welcome academic advice from the University.

“Brown has tremendous knowledge that we don’t have,” she said. “We welcome any advice that we can get.”

At the beginning of the convocation, Sibley addressed the group and urged them to remain affiliated with Brown.

“I hope you vote to stay because you bring a rich and vibrant learning group to the campus,” she said. “I respect you a lot and have learned a lot from you.”

Sibley said if the group decided to stay, she would work with them to provide “multiple learning opportunities,” including lectures by faculty and graduate students and course-related travel opportunities.

“We would like to expand the array of things available and let you choose what you want most so we can cater to your needs to the best of our ability,” she said.

The vote was conducted by secret ballot after about two hours of discussion among members regarding the pros and cons of remaining affiliated with Brown or becoming independent. A presentation by Tom Rooney, chair of the group’s communication committee, explained to the members the consequences of either decision. Members asked questions of Sibley, Switzer and Rooney after the presentation.

In response to some members’ concerns about whether Brown would intervene in the social aspects of the group, both Switzer and Sibley said the social and cultural activities of the group would continue as before.

Peter Dunst, a former president of the group, said he supported the motion to become independent.

“It is important to everyone in this room to belong to an organization which has social discourse amongst the members. There is a difference beatween going to a seminar offered by Brown and joining a collaborative learning group. The fabulous experience we have with BCLIR will be lost,” he said.

Roberta Segal, a member of the group’s executive committee, said the group’s long history of collaborative learning would be “compromised” by staying affiliated with Brown.

“I resent that our seminars will be called round-table study groups. I think it is an insult to our talent and leadership. The executive committee will be disbanded, and we will become an advisory group,” she said.

But other members said they wanted to remain on-campus.

“If we leave, we would be in a competitive stance with Brown and its program for retired people,” said Susan Belles.

Mary Shepherd, another program participant, said the University’s assistance should not be spurned.

“I feel Brown is making an effort to cooperate with us. We should stay with this great institution,” she said.

Peter Ciccariello, a member of the group’s curriculum committee, told The Herald he is confident the group will survive as an organization.

“Everyone wants the program to succeed. We will work with Brown to make the best of it,” he said.

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C AMPUS N EWS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

NEW

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I N

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S&J response draws media coverage

I E F

Researchers study strong natural glue Scientists at Brown and Indiana University-Bloomington have received a $1.2-million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the properties of a natural “super glue” they discovered in secretions of the Caulobacter crescentus bacterium.

Assistant Professor of Physics Jay Tang and Indiana microbiologist Yves Brun, along with other scientists, discovered the adhesive substance last spring, according to an Indiana University press release.

The researchers found that the substance could withstand a force of up to 70 newtons per square millimeter, or five tons per square inch. In contrast, commercial superglue can withstand a force of only 28 newtons per square millimeter, according to a United Press International article. Tang and Brun found it was the strongest natural glue ever discovered.

The natural “super glue” could potentially be used as a biodegradable surgical adhesive, but Brun told UPI that it could be challenging to prevent the glue from sticking to everything used to produce it.

Brun said scientists were able to isolate the glue on a glass surface.

“We tried washing the glue off,” he told UPI. “It didn’t work.”

—Debbie Lehmann

BY MICHAEL SKOCPOL SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The University’s plans to make amends for its historic ties to the slave trade made front-page news in the Providence Journal this weekend and garnered coverage in nearly 100 media outlets.

The Associated Press wire service ran an article on the University’s official response, announced Saturday, to last year’s report by the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. That article ran in a wide range of media outlets, including the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and CNN.com. The Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education ran their own stories on the announcement.

The response calls for Brown to establish a $10-million endowment to support public education in Providence and provide tuition waivers for up to 10 graduate students a year who make a commitment to aid local schools, among other actions. The committee’s report, released last year, found that Brown had benefited from past ties to slavery and the slave trade and recommended the University take steps to acknowledge and atone for its past.

Vice President for Public Affairs and University Relations Michael Chapman said tthe total number of media outlets covering the response was roughly the same as the number that covered the report’s release last October.

But several major outlets that covered the original report did not run stories on the response. The New York Times wrote its own

Chris Bennett / Herald The John Carter Brown Library is currently displaying documents which served as part of the basis for the University’s Slavery and Justice Report.

story and an editorial on the report when it was first released, but

the newspaper did not cover Saturday’s announcement.

Course reserve system goes streaming

BY ANDREW KURTZMAN C ONTRIBUTING WRITER

The University Librar y introduced video and streaming video to its Online Course Reser ves Access system on Monday, adding to the audio offerings already provided by the system.

The addition of video to OCRA is intended to increase flexibility so faculty members will be able to provide different forms of media for their classes in one place, said Stephanie Birdsall, librar y external relations and development officer.

OCRA makes materials on reser ve more accessible, Birdsall said. “Wherever and whenever students want to access these resources, they are able to do so, which is a dramatic improvement over the old system,” she said.

OCRA is designed to work in conjunction with the MyCourses digital course-management software provided by Computing and Information Ser vices.

“Many faculty have neither the time nor the expertise to scan and upload their own materials.

The interface and the scanning

are taken care of by the librar y.

Part of the benefit of OCRA has been a significant increase in the use of electronic resources paid for by Brown,” Birdsall said.

The librar y hopes to continue expanding the variety of media offered by OCRA. In addition to video and streaming video, Birdsall said the librar y is considering ways to incorporate images into the system and is continuing to tweak OCRA so it is easier for faculty and students to use. “We also continue to work on how to incorporate eBooks into OCRA, which is often a challenge given the different licensing and different deliver y methods of the various eBook providers,” Birdsall said.

OCRA was first implemented with 97 classes in Spring 2004 and grew to 279 classes and 2,898 items in Fall 2005. Last semester, OCRA hosted 4,335 unique audio and text-based items for 345 classes. So far this semester, 359 classes have registered with the system.

OCRA has been well-received by faculty and students, according to Shelley Lonergan, a manager in Gateway Ser vices, which

www.browndailyherald.com

oversees the librar y’s course reser ves.

“We get ver y few complaints from faculty and students,” Longergan wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “Occasionally faculty will contact us because they are having difficulty using the system, and we walk them through it. That happens ver y rarely, however. By and large, faculty find it ver y easy to use. … Faculty and students find it ver y, ver y convenient.”

Despite the relatively small number of complaints received by the librar y, some students are not happy with OCRA. “Not only is the system unnecessarily complicated, but there are also several levels of redundancy which make me feel as though I’m choosing the same options over again and still not getting closer to accessing the reser ved material,” said Akram Abed ’09.

In addition to difficulties with what he described as the convoluted login system, Abed was particularly frustrated by the fact that, for several of his classes, some necessar y material was not posted.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 6

Nutritionist promotes healthy body image continued from page 1 Doll and a G.I. Joe action figure, explaining that if enlarged to human size, Barbie would be immediately hospitalized due to emaciation and G.I. Joe’s bicep would be as thick as his waist. Mattel, Inc. introduced Barbie in 1959, and Bell said media images of the female body have only become more distorted since then.

“Models used to weigh 8 percent less than the average woman.

Now, they weigh 23 percent less,” Bell said.

Rather than trusting television and magazines to provide realistic and attractive portrayals of the body, Bell recommended turning to art. She showed slides of statues and paintings ranging from the classic to the modern. The artists offered an “alternative reality” to the “extreme” reality of the media, she said.

“She’s so curvaceous,” Bell said, observing a Rodin painting. “I see hips, a rounded belly. That’s something I believe.”

Jenny Wyron ’09, a Women Peer Counselor in New Pembroke 4, said she planned to take Bell’s words of advice back to her unit. Wyron is organizing unit programs in conjunction with the national awareness week because “people don’t necessarily have the tools to talk about their body and relationship to food in healthy, constructive ways — they need support.”

She said attending lectures like Bell’s helped promote her own body image as well.

“I really benefit from having my sense of normalcy recalibrated,” Wyron said. As a WPC, she makes herself open to other students who want to talk about this issue, but said she feels “underutilized” because people are too uncomfortable to discuss such personal problems.

She said she hoped larger forums would allow students to be more open.

In addition to last night’s lecture, Health Education will be hosting “The Great Jeans Giveaway” today and tomorrow in the mailroom from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Students may donate jeans, or any clothes that don’t fit them, to Providence-area shelters.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

Researchers hail two new classes of HIV drugs

BY JIA-RUI CHONG LOS ANGELES TIMES

LOS ANGELES — In what some are hailing as the most important development in HIV therapy in a decade, two new classes of drugs have been found to block virus replication in patients who have become resistant to existing drugs, researchers said Tuesday.

The two new classes, called integrase inhibitors and CCR5 inhibitors, doubled the number of patients in a group of studies whose infections could be brought under control, researchers said at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

This is “a pivotal moment” for patients who have become resistant to most AIDS drugs, said Dr. Eric Daar of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Daar, who was not involved in the research, estimated

that about 20 percent of his patients are resistant to the existing classes of drugs.

Given the serious problems in treating drug-resistant patients, Daar said the findings “brings the opportunity for a new life.”

Dr. John Mellors, of the University of Pittsburgh, said the new findings hearken back to the introduction of the powerful drugs in the 1990s that converted HIV infection from a mostly fatal disease to one that could be managed for long periods of time. “This is really a remarkable development in the field,” said Mellors, who was not involved in the studies.

Closest to federal approval is maraviroc, developed by drug maker Pfizer Inc. The drug binds to a receptor on the surface of human cells, known as CCR5, preventing HIV from locking on and entering the cells.

Maraviroc represent the first

class of HIV drugs that targets the human immune system rather than the virus itself.

Several other companies have attempted to bring out CCR5 inhibitors, but with little success. Trials with GlaxoSmithKline’s candidate, aplaviroc, were halted in 2005 because the drug was toxic to the liver.

Dr. Howard Mayer of Pfizer reported on studies of maraviroc in 1,049 patients in 13 countries: 840 received the experimental drug in combination with their regular drug regimen, while the rest received a placebo and their regular drugs.

About 44 percent of the patients receiving maraviroc saw their blood HIV concentrations fall to undetectable levels after 24 weeks of therapy, Meyer said, compared to 23 percent of those receiving placebo.

Experts believe the drug could

be approved by the Food and Drug Administration by the end of the year.

The second new drug is Merck & Co.’s raltegravir, formerly known as MK-0158. It blocks an HIV enzyme called integrase, one of three enzymes used by the virus to copy itself in human immune cells.

Dr. David Cooper from the University of New South Wales in Australia and Dr. Roy Steigbigel from State University of New York at Stony Brook reported on two studies involving 699 patients, twothirds of whom received raltegravir in addition to their regular HIV drugs. Both studies were funded

by Merck.

The drug, which has been fasttracked by the FDA, was well tolerated by patients. Its side effects, which were similar to those of the standard drug regimen, included gastrointestinal bloating, diarrhea and nausea.

Congress considers giving FDA power over Big Tobacco

BY STACY A. ANDERSON LOS ANGELES T IMES

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration should be able to limit cigarettes’ nicotine levels as well as require stronger warnings on packages and in advertising, health experts on Tuesday told legislators considering a bill to allow the agency to regulate tobacco products.

“FDA regulation will help us to combat the vicious marketing practices of a deceptive industry that has preyed upon our children, minorities and existing smokers who are desperately trying to kick their habit,” Dr. Elmer Huerta, incoming president of the American Cancer Society, told members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Similar legislation passed the Senate in 2004, but it was defeated in the House. Supporters say they hope the Democratic majorities now in both chambers will smooth passage.

One committee member, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., argued that asking the FDA to set standards for tobacco products implied to consum-

ers that such products could be safe. About 400,000 Americans die each year from smoking-related ailments, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The FDA approves cures, not poisons,” Enzi said. “Forcing the FDA to regulate tobacco but not letting them ban it would undermine the long history of the agency protecting and promoting the public health.”

The legislation, introduced earlier this month with bipartisan support in both chambers, would require tobacco companies to submit “reduced risk” products to the FDA for inspection and disclose all ingredients. It would also ban manufacturers from using terms such as “light” or “low-tar,” which the bill’s supporters say have misled consumers by indicating that such products are less harmful.

In addition, the bill would give states the power to control tobacco advertising and promotion, areas that often target young people.

Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said children were still vulnerable to advertisements despite a 1998

agreement between 46 states and five tobacco companies to end marketing of tobacco products toward children.

“The tobacco companies have easily overcome these restrictions by dramatically increasing marketing expenditures and constantly finding new and sophisticated ways to market their products, many of which impact kids,” he said.

The tobacco industry doubled marketing budgets and spent more than $15 billion from 1998 to 2003, Myers testified. Surveys by his organization indicate that young people are almost twice as likely as adults to remember tobacco advertising, he said.

Panelists said the use of hip-hop music, images of lavish lifestyles, candy-flavored tobacco and displays at sporting events and similar venues had contributed to increased tobacco use among Hispanics, blacks and young women. The CDC estimates 45 million Americans are smokers.

The FDA’s efforts to regulate tobacco products began in 1996, when the agency announced plans to restrict tobacco advertising aimed at

young people. Tobacco companies sued, contending that the agency did not have the authority to do that.

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that the FDA needed the specific approval of Congress to regulate tobacco products. The legislation now being considered would give the FDA that authority.

The country’s largest cigarette manufacturer, Philip Morris USA, has announced support for the bill, saying in a written statement submitted to Tuesday’s hearing that it would give the industry “a new framework within which manufacturers can re-focus their efforts in reducing the harm of their products.”

“They figure that it’s good business to be perceived that way. They are still trying to make a profit,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond and a former consultant to the FDA general counsel’s office. “They have such a big market share, they don’t mind being regulated. It may benefit them, because the bill makes it harder for their competitors to gain a larger market share.”

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Ramadi car bomb hits soccer field,18 dead BAGHDAD, Iraq (Washington Post) — Sixteen children playing soccer and two women were killed Monday in a car bombing in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, an Iraqi official said Tuesday, in an attack that Iraqi leaders decried as horrific.

The bomb, hidden under wood panels loaded on a Kia pickup truck, exploded in a residential area near a soccer field where the children were playing, according to Col. Tariq al-Alwani, the security supervisor in Anbar province.

“It’s a tragedy that the kids are targeted,’’ the colonel said. “The kids we consider as a message to the world.’’ He said news of the bombing had emerged a day late because most reporters have left Ramadi out of concern for their safety.

The offices of President Jalal Talabani, who is hospitalized in Amman, Jordan, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, condemned the bombing. Al-Maliki blamed “criminal gangs’’ for the “crime against children in their innocent playgrounds,’’ the Los Angeles Times reported.

Antioxidants don’t prolong life and may shorten it, study shows (Washington Post) — Supplements that millions of Americans take to stave off disease and slow the aging process do not boost longevity and appear to actually increase the risk of dying, according to the most comprehensive study of whether popular “antioxidants’’ help users live longer.

The analysis, which pooled data from 68 studies involving more than 232,000 people, found no evidence that taking beta carotene, Vitamin A or Vitamin E extends life span and, in fact, indicated that the supplements increase the likelihood of dying by about 5 percent.

Vitamin C and selenium appeared to have no impact — either way — on longevity.

Based on the findings, published in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers warned that consumers should be cautious about taking supplements containing the nutrients. At least 150 million Americans regularly take dietary supplements that often include antioxidants.

The findings do not necessarily apply to antioxidants found naturally in fruits, vegetables and other foods, Gluud and other researchers stressed. But the findings are consistent with evidence suggesting that some nutrients may be harmful at high doses or could interfere with the body’s natural defenses, Gluud and other researchers said.

Sudan official accused of war crimes WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor in The Hague outlined what he called operational, logistical and command links between Sudan’s government in Khartoum and horse-mounted nomadic militias it recruited and bankrolled to carry out mass killings in the Darfur region, and he named a member of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s inner circle as a suspect in the atrocities.

In a 94-page prosecution document filed with the court’s judges, Luis Moreno-Ocampo singled out Ahmad Muhammad Harun, now a state minister for humanitarian affairs who was state minister of the interior, along with Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb), a leader of the Darfur militia known as the Janjaweed, for a total of 51 crimes against humanity and war crimes. The filing marked the first accusations against named individuals as a prelude to a trial.

The chief prosecutor’s accusations — which fall short of a formal indictment — come after a 21-month investigation that led to 60 countries and focused on the worst crimes committed in 2003 and 2004. The prosecutor also said his office was expanding its probe to look at current crimes, and, in a teleconference with foreign journalists, he warned that other Sudanese government officials could be held responsible.

Study: More American women have HPV than previously thought WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — More than one-third of American women are infected by human papilloma virus (HPV), which in rare cases can lead to cervical cancer, by the time they are 24 years old, according to a study being published today.

The new estimates suggest that there are 7.5 million girls and women aged 14 to 24 infected with the microbe — about two-thirds more than an earlier but less broad-based study had found.

Overall, about one-quarter of women under age 60 are infected at any given time, making HPV by far the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country.

News of the higher-than-expected prevalence of HPV infection was balanced by the discovery that only 2.2 percent of women were carrying one of the two virus strains most likely to lead to cervical cancer — about half the rate found in previous surveys.

Stock sell-off in China hits Wall Street

BY DAVID CHO AND TOMOEH MURAKAMI TSE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — A plunge in Chinese stocks rippled across global markets Tuesday, triggering a massive wave of selling in the United States that sent the Dow Jones industrial average down 3.3 percent, or 416 points, its biggest decline since March 2003.

The news from Asia sparked the initial sell-off, but a confluence of other events, including news of rising real estate loan delinquencies, a surprisingly weak manufacturing report and a bombing near Vice President Dick Cheney in Afghanistan, made an already difficult day worse.

For most of the morning the Dow declined steadily until it had fallen 300 points. Then, just before 3 p.m., it suddenly plummeted another 200 points before recovering slightly because of a trading glitch that led to a backlog of sell orders clearing at once. The Standard and Poor’s 500-stock index, a broad measure of stock prices, also lost more than 3 percent by the close of the trading day, its biggest drop in three and a half years.

In Wednesday morning trading, Japan’s Nikkei 225-stock index fell 3.56 percent, to 17,475.07.

From currency markets to blue-chip companies to interna-

tional stock exchanges, no sector was left unscathed Tuesday.

The day was reminiscent of when the Internet bubble burst several years ago — traders and investors around the world stared at electronic boards and televisions showing markets falling deeper into the red.

Todd Leone, head of trading at Cowen & Co., said he saw “nothing but sellers. My whole screen is red. Every group is down.’’

Adding to the market’s woes, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan warned in a speech Monday that the U.S. economy might slip into recession by year’s end. “It didn’t help that Greenspan used the ‘R-word,’’’ said Al Goldman, chief market strategist at A.G. Edwards. “People overreacted to that. He’s still an icon.’’

Some analysts said, however, that it was about time for the market to cool after a breathless runup in share prices.

“I don’t think a one-day (selloff) is going to do justice for what’s been going on,’’ said John O’Donoghue, co-head of equity trading at Cowen. “It wouldn’t surprise me to see a total 5 percent correction and even more from here.’’

A major long-term concern among analysts is whether the heady days of “cheap debt’’ is com-

ing to an end. The ability to borrow money at low rates and with favorable terms has fueled much of the world economy in the past few years, including the recordtopping leveraged buyouts on Wall Street, the global run-up in real estate prices and the surge of investments in emerging markets overseas.

Signs surfaced Tuesday that the easy availability of debt may be ending.

The mortgage company Freddie Mac announced tougher standards for its “subprime,’’ or risky, mortgages, saying it would not buy loans that are linked to a high number of delinquencies and defaults.

Moreover, investors fled emerging markets and took safe positions in the currencies of Japan and other countries where borrowing costs are among the lowest in the world. As emerging markets took it on the chin, the yen climbed 2.3 percent yesterday, the most in nearly a year, against the dollar.

This occurred because investors sought to protect their money in case of a sustained downturn.

During a growing global economy, these investors can take more risks and make higher returns by borrowing money and pouring it into emerging economies, such as China and India.

U.S. to relent on talks with Iran, Syria

BY GLENN KESSLER WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — The United States agreed Tuesday to join highlevel talks with Iran and Syria on the future of Iraq, an abrupt shift in policy that opens the door to diplomatic dealings the White House had shunned in recent months despite mounting criticism.

The move was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in testimony on Capitol Hill, after Iraq said it had invited neighboring states, the United States and other nations to a pair of regional conferences.

“I would note that the Iraqi government has invited all of its neighbors, including Syria and Iran, to attend both of these regional meetings,’’ Rice told the Senate Appropriations Committee. “We hope that all governments will seize this opportunity to improve the relations with Iraq and to work for peace and stability in the region.’’

The first meeting, at the ambassadorial level, will be held next month. Then Rice herself will sit down at the table with the foreign ministers from Damascus and Tehran at a second meeting in April elsewhere in the region, possibly Istanbul.

The Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel whose recommendations were largely ignored by the administration, had recommended such a regional meeting in its December report. Rice and other administration officials emphasized, however, that these conferences would be led and organized by the Iraqi government, not the United States as suggested by the study group. Still, Democrats seized on the announcement as a long overdue change in direction by the administration.

“Better late than never,’’ said Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff who served on the panel headed by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton. He said the announcement was “an important step in trying to bring stability to Iraq’’ and that combined with the recent nuclear agreement with North Korea and renewed efforts

by Rice to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace, “the administration is finally recongnizing that part of its arsenal is strong diplomacy.’’

“The administration is right to reverse itself and engage Iran and Syria on Iraq,’’ said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., chairman of the Foreign Relations Commitee, in a statement.

“Right now, they’re a big part of the problem, but they have an interest in becoming part of the solution to prevent chaos in Iraq.’’

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri alMaliki has long advocated a regional conference, though originally it was only meant to include Iraq’s neighbors. The administration decided in recent weeks to attend the conference, but in an effort to avoid the spotlight, it ensured that it will be joined at the table in March by other permament members of the U.N. Security Council, U.S. officials said. The foreign minister’s meeting in April will be further expanded to include representatives of the “Group of Eight’’ industrialized countries.

It was decided “relatively recently’’ to include the permanent Security Council members, and the G8 was invited “as of last night,’’ a senior administration official said.

Rice’s announcement appeared intended to assuage congressional concerns about the administration’s Iraq policy, which have threatened to derail passage of a nearly $100

billion supplemental spending request for Iraq.

Administration officials noted that former secretary of state Colin Powell attended a regional conference on Iraq in 2004, where at one point he found himself seated next to the Iranian foreign minister and made idle chit-chat. But that meeting took place in a different context, before Iran had started uranium enrichment and before Syria was implicated in the murder of a Lebanese political figure — two reasons frequently cited by the administration for limited diplomatic engagement with Tehran and Damascus.

“The only reason to talk to us would be to extract a price — and that’s not diplomacy, that’s extortion,’’ Rice told Der Spiegel, a German magazine, when asked last month about the international conference promoted by the Iraq Study Group.

Since the start of the year, in fact, Rice has rhetorically divided the region between “mainstream’’ actors, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and “extremists’’ such as Iran and Syria. She suggested that rather than draw out Iran and Syria through diplomacy, the United States would seek to isolate them unless they changed their behavior on their own.

“We do have a regional approach,’’ Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January. “It is to work with those governments that share our view of where the Middle East should be going.’’

She argued at the time that “the problem here is not a lack of engagement with Syrians but a lack of action by Syria. ... If the government in Tehran wants to help stabilize the region — as it now claims — then it should end its support for violent extremists.’’

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

For Majority Leader, a life of quiet victories, redefined purpose

BY MARY BETH SHERIDAN WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — His father abandoned him. His stepfather was an alcoholic. By his sophomore year at the University of Maryland, Steny Hoyer was short of cash, getting D’s and drifting.

Then one spring day in 1959, a Pontiac convertible cruised past him on campus, carrying a familiar figure. Hoyer followed it to the student center. Spellbound, he listened as Sen. John F. Kennedy appealed to young people to get involved in government.

“It was just like that,” Hoyer says, snapping his fingers as he sits in his U.S. Capitol office.

“Just like that.” The next week, he switched his major from public relations to politics. He started getting A’s and went on to law school.

“You know the rest,” he says.

The rest is this: At 27, Hoyer became a state senator. At 35, president of the Maryland Senate. At 41, a U.S. congressman.

And, last month, he captured the second most-powerful post in the U.S. House of Representatives: majority leader.

At 67, Hoyer seems the very image of the Washington political insider, with his starched white shirts and patrician cap of silver hair. He is known as a pragmatist, skilled at navigating the legislative maze and wooing K Street lobbyists. A workaholic who makes the trains run on time.

Yet there is another side: The man who quietly fought for Soviet Bloc dissidents. The husband of a teacher devoted to the poor. The idealist who keeps a bust of Kennedy in his office.

Hoyer now stands at a historic juncture, as he tries to steer the resurgent Democrats’ agenda through Congress. With a record as a moderate consensus-builder, he could be key to keeping the party together and coaxing Republicans to cross the aisle.

“I aspired throughout my life to make a difference in the things I cared about,” says Hoyer, his brown-and-white springer spaniel at his feet. And to make a difference, you “try to be in a position where you can effectively advocate for what you believe is best.”

A position like majority leader.

Steny Hamilton Hoyer was born in Manhattan, an only child.

He was named for his father, Steen.

“He was a very arrogant, opinionated person,” Hoyer says.

“What I remember was not particularly happy.”

The young Hoyer bounced around. At 4, to Texas, when his dad got a job with the military.

At 6, to Massachusetts, for prep school. At 9, back to New York, when the money ran out and the father took off.

“I think I saw my father maybe two or three days in the next 20 years,” Hoyer says. But the memory of that prickly, apathetic man would haunt him.

“He didn’t want to be like his father,” says the congressman’s daughter Anne Hoyer. “That’s what really drove him — to be not just good, but strive to be the best you possibly could be.”

By the time Steny was 16, his mother had married an Air Force sergeant and the family settled near Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Washington. His stepfather’s alcoholism roiled the home.

Nikki Kahn / Washington Post A bust of President Kennedy is prominent in the Capitol Hill office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. Listening to Kennedy speak at the University of Maryland inspired Hoyer to enter politics.

But in high school, the outgoing youth found the two interests that would define his life. He got involved in politics, and he started dating Judy Pickett, the warm, energetic class secretary.

Judy’s home became like his own. Her mother bought him new shoes, cooked for him when his stepfather was on a bender.

Judy was at his side through it all.

She married him at 21, becoming, Hoyer says, “an example and guide.”

Fresh out of Georgetown’s law school in 1966, Hoyer launched his campaign for state Senate as an underdog, a liberal reformer.

But he had an army of volunteers: classmates, friends from the statewide Young Democrats, interns from the U.S. Senate, where he worked part time.

“It was a youth corps onslaught,” laughs Hoyer.

“He was a ball of energy,” recalls Sen. Benjamin Cardin, DMd., then a state representative.

But the young reformer quickly befriended the older senators, he says: “Rather than fight the establishment, he really co-opted it.”

Hoyer pushed for better treatment of rape victims and funds for lower-income schools. But he became better known for his hardnosed grasp of politics. He and his allies replaced the local Democratic machine with the Breakfast Club: Over coffee and Danish, they met with party factions to plot strategy, pick candidates, and dole out judgeships and other posts.

His life went from success to success. In 1975, he became the youngest Senate president in Maryland history. His political organization was the most powerful in the state. He and Judy bought a home and had three daughters. In 1978, he ran for lieutenant governor, the latest move in a career exploding like a bottle rocket, higher, higher ...

And then he and gubernatorial candidate Blair Lee III lost. The political insiders were upset in the primary by a reform ticket.

For two years, Hoyer practiced

law. Then a local congresswoman suffered cardiac arrest, and her seat was vacated. Hoyer reactivated his formidable political network.

“I remember the day he called me to say, ‘I’m running for Congress,’ “ says Peter O’Malley, a close ally. “The joy was back in his voice.”

Hoyer won and quickly ingratiated himself with House Democratic leadership, working overtime to round up votes and fundraise. He landed on committees such as Appropriations and was so successful at steering funds to projects such as Metro and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center that they became known as “Steny dollars.”

Not everyone was a fan. The nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste eventually gave him a 12 percent career score — “hostile.” A Hoyer spokeswoman says voters have shown time and again that they appreciate “the federal investment he secures.”

Then there were the whispers in Congress: that Hoyer was too ambitious, too slick. After rising in the House hierarchy, he lost a 1991 race for whip, the No. 3 job in the party leadership, to the lower-key David Bonior, Mich.

Judy was his sounding board and always supported his goals: civil rights, helping the less fortunate. But her heart was with her work in early-childhood education. She eventually wearied of politics.

“She thought it was in some ways superficial,” Hoyer says.

“She was really into substance.”

In 1985, Hoyer joined the congressional Helsinki Commission, which monitored human rights in the Soviet bloc. With little publicity, he flew red-eyes to Eastern Europe and Russia for the next eight years, visiting dissidents, lobbying officials to release political prisoners.

It was a chance, Hoyer says, to help “people who otherwise were powerless.”

One day, the Hoyers were at an event when a coffee cup suddenly flew from Judy’s hand. It was epilepsy. Hoyer shepherded the Americans With Disabilities Act through the House, broadening rights for epileptics and others.

In 1994, after losing their 40year grip on the House, Democrats turned to Hoyer to help with a comeback effort. He hopscotched across the country, recruiting candidates, focusing laserlike on Election Day: Nov. 5, 1996.

The bombshell came in October. Judy had stomach cancer.

Four months later, she was dead at 57.

Hoyer plunged into grief.

“You really do reflect back on all the things you did, all the travel I did overseas, all the time that was not spent with Judy and the family,” he says.

“He’s got all this energy; he’s working 12, 16 hours a day — that was what life was to him,” says his daughter Stefany Hemmer.

“My mother’s death sort of jerked him into reality and said ... there’s something else out there other than Congress.”

But Hoyer couldn’t quit. “I sort of threw myself into work more,” he says.

In 1999, he began a grueling, two-year battle for the post of minority whip against a formidable opponent, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, DCalif.

He lost. But, he realized, “In comparison with losing a loved one, that loss is not nearly comparable.”

Something was changing.

Friends felt he’d become a better listener. His eldest daughter, Susan Taylor, says her father was “a little more interested in the human relation, not just the global relation.” Hoyer began establish-

ing “Judy Centers,” fulfilling his wife’s dream of creating one-stop facilities to offer poor families health, literacy and other services. Maryland now has 24 centers.

Hoyer finally rose to minority whip in 2002, when Pelosi moved up. But the “angst of ambition” was easing, he says. “I suppose the fear of failure was not nearly as great.”

Then came the November 2006 earthquake that ousted the Republicans. Though Hoyer was the favorite to become majority leader, Pelosi suddenly threw her support to Rep. John Murtha, DPa. But this time, Hoyer won.

All those nights on the road paid off, for Hoyer and the party.

In the 2006 campaign alone, Hoyer helped raise $8 million for Democrats and traveled to 33 states.

“I feel a sense of accomplishment,” Hoyer says. But reaching the top meant something different than it once had.

Hoyer recently visited a suburban retirement community where he strolled the stage with a microphone like a talk-show host, calling out to friends. The whitehaired residents rose, clapping and cheering.

Hoyer turned somber when he spoke of the Democrats’ plans to pass laws on homeland security, energy, the minimum wage. He emphasized that Pelosi sets the policy. “My job is to implement it.”

Occasionally, he weaved in his own story. How he and Judy bought their first house for $28,000. How he just became a great-grandfather.

These days, he told the crowd, “I live alone, with a wonderful woman named Charlotte.”

She’s a 15-year-old springer spaniel, he explained to laughter.

Though she’s in failing health, he takes her everywhere. She was Judy’s dog.

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

W. track sprints to second place finish at Heps continued from page 12 ’10 shined in her Heps debut, as she can now officially introduce herself as the fastest women in the Ivy League after taking the 60-meter dash title. She captured first-place points with a time of 7.58 and set a new meet record.

“I was definitely not intimidated by the environment, but I never go into a race knowing its mine,” Breezeatl said. “I go in wanting it to be mine.”

The finish in the race was so close that Breezeatl and the squad had to wait until the results were posted find out whether or not she had accomplished her goal. When her name showed up in first place, the team erupted.

“To see Thelma win as a freshman was incredible,” Lake said.

“She is a terrific athlete and a great competitor. We knew when we got her to come to Brown she would make an immediate impact, and we were not let down.”

In the 200-meter dash, Breezeatl joined forces with Akilah King ’08 to provide Brown with some more points en route to securing fourth and fi fth place respectively, with times of 25.09 and 25.10.

“Akilah King did a phenomenal job,” Lake said. “She is an incredible leader and role model for our team. You would never have known she had (mononucleosis).

She never questioned herself and never doubted for a moment. She is tough as nails and what every coach would dream to have on his or her team.”

Another team member who took a starring turn this weekend was Nicole Burns ’09, who burned past the competition in

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the 400-meter dash and won the Ivy League title with a time of 54.28. Seeded first entering the finals, Burns posted a time that put her second on Brown’s All-Time Indoor Top 10 Performance list.

King closely tailed her teammate to finish with a bronze in the event, putting up a time of 56.27.

“It was a huge blessing to see my hard work pay off in the end,” said Burns. “My attitude was no excuses, just results. I was nervous about my events, but then I realized I wasn’t a rookie anymore, and I needed to just get out of the blocks and claim it … My win in the 400 m proved to the other Ivies that Brown is not playing. We are the underdog team, and we are ready to rise to the top.”

Dianna Anderson ’09 also contributed to the effort, providing a point by clocking in sixth in the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 9.11 seconds.

Another big performance came from Naja Ferjan ’07. She scored third in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:08.77. Ferjan’s time tied the current indoor school record set by Mary Hale ’02.

In the field events, Brown shone in the shot put as it has all season. Teammates Danielle Grunloh ’10 and Jenna Silver ’10 placed third and sixth respectively to lock down some much-needed points for the Bears.

“The coaches just tried to keep us focused and remind us how important every point is,” King said. “The team that does the little things, like diving over the finish line and jumping those extra centimeters, is going to be

the one to prevail.”

In the relays the Bears took the coaching staff’s words to heart. The 4x400 team notched a second-place finish with Burns, King, Cheryl Scott ’07 and Jasmine Chukwueke ’10 each running a leg. Their time of 3:44.65 puts them second on Brown’s AllTime list.

The 4x800 also put up an impressive time. Ferjan, Brooke Giuffre ’10, Kat D’Auria ’09 and Hannah Nichols ’08 combined for a fi fth-place finish with a time of 9:03.65.

“I could not be more pleased with our team’s finishes this weekend,” Lake said. “We came through and attained our goal of doing better than last year, despite graduating three All-Americans (Kelly Powell ’06, Anna Willard ’06 and Brittany Grovey ’06).”

While many of the Bears took to the indoor track for the last time this season, Brown will send a small contingent to Boston for the ECAC Championships starting Saturday. Those who don’t compete will be gearing up for the fast-approaching outdoor track and field season, but Lake said the team’s 2007 performance was a good stepping stone for next year’s indoor Heps.

“Cornell graduates at least 76 points that we counted, not including their relays that have seniors on them,” said Lake. “This could open the door to the women contending with them for the title next year. We only graduate six points. We are really young and up-and-coming and want to contend for the title year in and year out.”

Sprinters, throwers boost m. track to fi fth continued from page 12 year … but he still pulls through in every race,” Lake said. “You almost take him for granted because you know he will perform well.”

Sean O’Brien ’09 put up a sixth-place finish in the 800-meter run with a 1:53.13 and also led the distance medley relay team of Ozzie Myers ’08, Nick Sarro ’08 and Kevin Cervantes ’10 to a fourth-place finish with a time of 9:57.32.

“Ozzie Myers not only scored for the team in the (3,000-meter run), but had a personal best to anchor our men’s distance medley relay and was gritty as hell,” Lake said. “That is what Heps is all about … he was lying on the ground for a good while after the race, not able to move from sheer exhaustion.”

The key performance in the field came from shot putter David Howard ’09, who had his biggest showing when it mattered most. Howard threw a gold medal distance of 58-03.75 feet, to win the Ivy League Championship and put him third on

Brown’s All-Time Top 10 list.

“On the first day, David did not have a good day, and to watch him bounce back and completely turn things around was incredible,” said Lake. “He not only won the Ivy League, but set a huge personal best, provisionally qualified for nationals, and upset (the athlete) who was supposed to be the clear winner from Yale.”

Reginald Cole ’10 produced a fourth-place finish in the triple jump. His last jump proved to be his most impressive, being both a personal best and a distance good enough to put points on the board for the Bears.

Heps marked the end of the indoor season for most of the Bears, though some will compete at the ECAC Championships this weekend.

Although the Bears dropped from last year’s fourth-place finish at Heps, the squad was pleased with the results.

“Our coaches told us just to fight for every point and never settle,” said McClintock. “I feel like that is exactly what we did.”

W. hoops’ Walls ’10 wins Ivy League Rookie of the Week continued from page 12 the Bears a 7-4 lead with 2:14 left in the third quarter.

The No. 20 Bears eventually fell to the Hawks, but Glick’s three goals gave her 16 goals for the season, tied for the team lead.

— Peter Cipparone W. hoops’ Walls ’10 wins Ivy League Rookie of the Week

Lindsay Walls ’10 scored a career-high 19 points versus Columbia on Friday night, an offensive outburst that earned her this week’s Ivy League Rookie of the Week Award. Walls shot 8-of-14 from the floor, 3-of-3 from the free throw line and added seven rebounds. Her contributions helped the Bears pull out a 72-69 overtime victory and earn a season sweep over the Lions.

Walls has enjoyed a productive freshman campaign for the Bears.

Walls moved into the starting lineup five games ago and is averaging 6.7 points and 3.7 rebounds per game in conference play. Walls is the Bears’ second Ivy League Rookie of the Week this season, following Christina Johnson ’10, who won the award on Feb. 12.

— Peter Cipparone

Ski team stuns opposition at Regionals, headed to Nationals continued from page 12 tial, and we’re at the peak of our season,” O’Hear said. “This weekend was definitely exciting and a great way to go into Nationals.”

For a while earlier in the season, Brown struggled even to make the podium in conference carnivals. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Carnival earlier this month, the team came in fourth in the slalom. At the season-opening University of Connecticut Carnival, Brown finished fourth in the slalom and sixth in the GS. But this weekend, Brown was the most consistent squad in both races. The Bears skied to a runner-up finish in the slalom, a surprising result since the event is not usually the team’s strongest.

O’Hear claimed a dominating victory in the event, besting the second-place skier by a second and a half. She completed her two runs in 49.63 and 46.35 seconds for a total time of 1:35.98.

Elisa Handbury ’10 took sixth in the field of 68 with a time of 1:40.04. Sophie Elgort ’08 rounded out the scoring, finishing 12th in 1:43.43. Meagan Casey ’08 and Anna Bengtson ’09 also competed for the Bears, taking 27th and 65th, respectively.

O’Hear said the Bears were pleasantly surprised by their finish because of the inconsistency they had struggled with in the event this season. But, O’Hear, said the team was expecting better once the postseason started.

On Sunday, O’Hear took gold again in 2:14.72, edging out Montana Molyneux of Colby-Sawyer by sixth-tenths of a second. Elgort captured seventh place in a time of 2:18.27, and Bengtson recovered from her sub-par effort the previous day, finishing a 10th with a time of 2:18.79. With Handbury finishing 13th and Mallory Taub ’08 finishing 23rd out of the field of 77 competitors, Brown showed its depth in the GS. The Bears finished an agonizing 0.15 seconds

behind winner Colby-Sawyer in the event.

In the overall individual standings, O’Hear claimed first. Bengtson commended the captain on her performance.

“Kelly was amazing, as usual,” she said. “She’s having an incredibly exciting senior season.”

Handbury took eighth in the individual results, and Elgort finished in 11th place. Bengtson took 17th place, Taub 29th place and Casey 33rd place.

The entire team qualified for Nationals March 5-10, which will be held in Winter Park, Colo. According to Bengtson, all team members had an outstanding meet and are looking forward to skiing out West.

“Everyone is skiing their best and just having fun with it,” she said. “Everyone is just incredibly psyched now. We’ve been on an upward trend. All we needed to do was get some training in. There is a lot of excitement about going to Colorado.”

www.browndailyherald.com

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 10

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

Action at last After nearly three years of scholarly research and deliberation, we’re glad to see the University’s inquiry into its historic ties to slavery finally yield results. Even if the community dialogue the effort was supposed to generate has not and may never materialize, President Simmons’ response signals a noble commitment to using Brown’s resources to benefit local society.

From the beginning, the endeavor was a bold one. President Simmons’ mandate to the committee attracted national media attention, including a front page story in the New York Times. But as the committee’s initial charge became more distant, it began to seem less likely that the bold inquiry would spark passionate campus dialogue and lead to action.

As Brown students who were here when the committee launched eventually graduated and were replaced by students without even recent institutional memory, the slavery and justice committee, despite its unprecedented mission, quietly became part of the campus fabric. It brought speakers to Brown and was occasionally mentioned around campus, but many took the committee for granted — they probably knew it existed but didn’t give a second thought to the complicated questions it sought to raise.

When the committee finally released its report last October, it generated only a muffled reaction and little buzz. The 110-page opus was released with little fanfare on the University’s Web site, and we questioned whether administrators would expand the inquiry beyond a project that existed largely in closed committee meetings and University Hall. Even the lone public forum slated to address the report proved little more than a lovefest as community members gushed about the University’s noble endeavor.

The report’s release may not have led to a thoughtful campuswide discussion, but, thankfully, it generated bold action. The $10-million fund and boosted fellows program don’t simply utilize Brown’s resources for the greater good. The initiatives clearly demonstrate this University’s — and this president’s — commitment to use the academic platform for socially responsible leadership in both our small city and the broader national context of higher education.

Though it may be hard to think ahead to the fund’s use in “800 years” as Simmons did in an interview Monday with The Herald, she’s right to suggest that Brown’s deep roots in Providence will never change. Universities are uniquely grounded in a sense of place.

But the University’s inextricable link to the city has not always been friendly or fruitful. Even despite gestures like the upcoming fund, locals will still begrudge the University’s tax-exempt status.

All Rhode Island universities share this status, but Brown’s valuable real estate atop College Hill and rapid expansion in the Jewelry District take many dollars off the property tax rolls each year.

The annual payout of roughly $500,000 that the newly promised fund will generate may not approach the value of Brown’s tax exemption, but the clear commitment to this city should not be underestimated.

This weekend, Simmons and the Corporation signaled that Brown will be a positive force for change in Providence. We’re glad to see it happen.

Arts & Culture Editor Arts & Culture Editor Features Editor Features Editor Metro Editor Metro Editor News Editor Opinions Editor Opinions Editor Sports Editor Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor

PHOTO Eunice Hong Christopher Bennett Jacob Melrose

Photo Editor Photo Editor Sports Photo Editor

Divestment may not affect genocide in Sudan To the Editor: There has been much talk lately and some official decisions to divest Brown investments from Sudanbased companies. I question how the inhuman and unspeakable tragedy of state-sponsored genocide will be affected by capital flight. Of course it is morally questionable to want to make money in a nation so beleaguered. However, I would be much obliged if someone could explain exactly why divesting from Sudanese companies is any relief to the people in Darfur or in what way it will cause their suffering to end.

Are we hoping that the economically stressed private sector will pressure the government to alter its genocidal tendencies? Or perhaps we hope that citydwelling Sudanese who are otherwise unconcerned about the plight of those in Darfur will somehow be pressured to support their cause due to the sudden lack of goods on the market? What sense does it make to pressure the population to pressure a corrupt dictatorship to change its mind?

In fact, if history is any indicator, such economic boycotting, sanctions and embargoes have proved in-

effective at best and detrimental to the original objective at worst. Economic sanctions on India in 1998 after the testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran did not change a thing. This is an example of the former. An example of the latter case is the fact that trade embargoes, sanctions and the Oil for Food program in Iraq brought about no change to Saddam Hussein’s standard of living. If anything, more Iraqis died as a result.

A lack of funds will cause the Sudanese government to increase the scale of corruption, appropriate more property and print more money in the short term. Inciting a revolution against unpopular leadership is a sure-fire way to more bloodshed in the absence of a democratic framework and neutral troops.

A lot of things can be done to help bring the conflict in Sudan to an end. Private divesting from Sudan is not one of them.

Sriram Subramanian ’10 Feb. 27

To the Editor:

Editors-in-Chief Eric Beck Mary-Catherine Lader

Senior Editors Stephen Colelli Sonia Saraiya BUSINESS

EDITORIAL Lydia Gidwitz Lindsey Meyers Stephanie Bernhard Stu Woo Simmi Aujla Sara Molinaro Ross Frazier Jacob Schuman Michal Zapendowski Peter Cipparone Justin Goldman Sarah Demers Erin Frauenhofer Madeleine Marecki

LETTERS

Gender studies and Sexuality & Society to merge this spring

T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Executive Editors Allison Kwong Ben Leubsdorf

A L E X A N D E R G A R D - M U R R AY

General Manager Mandeep Gill General Manager Ally Ouh Executive Manager Darren Ball Executive Manager Dan DeNorch Laurie-Ann Paliotti Sr. Advertising Manager Office Manager Susan Dansereau PRODUCTION Design Editor Steve DeLucia Copy Desk Chief Chris Gang Graphics Editor Mark Brinker Graphics Editor Roxanne Palmer Web Editor Luke Harris POST- MAGAZINE Hillary Dixler Melanie Duch Taryn Martinez Rajiv Jayadevan Mindy Smith

Managing Editor Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor

Sophie Elsner, Steve DeLucia, Designers Ted Lamm, Cici Matheny, Copy Editors Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Oliver Bowers, Zachary Chapman, Chaz Firestone, Kristina Kelleher, Debbie Lehmann, Scott Lowenstein, James Shapiro, Michael Skocpol Staff Writers Susana Aho, Taylor Barnes, Brianna Barzola, Evan Boggs, Irene Chen, Stewart Dearing, Nicole Dungca, Thi Ho, Rebecca Jacobson, Tsvetina Kamenova, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Zachary McCune, Nathalie Pierrepont, Robin Steele, Allissa Wickham, Max Winograd Sports Staff Writers Amy Ehrhart, Kaitlyn Laabs, Eliza Lane, Kathleen Loughlin, Megan McCahill, Marco Santini, Tom Trudeau, Steele West Account Administrators Emilie Aries, Alexander Hughes Design Staff Brianna Barzola, Aurora Durfee, Sophie Elsner, Christian Martell, Matthew McCabe, Ezra Miller, Sarah Raifman Photo Staff Stuart Duncan-Smith, Austin Freeman, Tai Ho Shin Copy Editors Ayelet Brinn, Catherine Cullen, Erin Cummings, Karen Evans, Jacob Frank, Ted Lamm, Lauren Levitz, Cici Matheny, Alex Mazerov, Ezra Miller, Joy Neumeyer, Madeleine Rosenberg, Lucy Stark, Meha Verghese

We were pleased to learn in The Herald (“Students advocate for more queer studies offerings,” Feb. 22) that students are uniting “to advocate for more academic offerings dealing with queer issues.”

As concentration advisers for gender studies and Sexuality & Society, we would like to take this opportunity to announce the recently approved merger of the two concentrations — starting this spring, the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program will replace them. We invite interested students to look to gender and sexuality cross-listed courses for a variety of classes on LGBTQ topics.

In our experience, there has been a high demand for such courses at Brown. While departments, rather than interdisciplinary programs such as ours, de-

termine hiring decisions and curricular offerings, the program’s faculty will continue to advocate for hiring in gender and sexuality studies and to work with students to promote these fields of study.

Tamar Katz Associate Professor of English Program Director and Concentration Adviser Gender Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies Gretchen Schultz Associate Professor of French Studies Concentration Adviser Sexuality and Society Feb. 26

CORRECTION A photo that accompanied an article in Wednesday’s Herald (“M. tennis swamps Navy, Buffalo,” Feb. 27) incorrectly identified a men’s tennis team member as Zach Pasanen ’07. The photo was of Eric Thomas ’07.

CORRECTIONS POLICY The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

COMMENTAR Y POLICY The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed.

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O PINIONS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

PAGE 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Rational beliefs, red shirts and Jack Bauer JOEY BORSON OPINIONS COLUMNIST

A few weeks ago, I was sitting around, eating a sandwich and skimming Newsweek when an article caught my eye. It reported that Harvard, in the midst of overhauling its curriculum, had considered having a “Reason and Faith” course — in essence, having some sort of comparative religion requirement for its student body. When the proposal came to light, elements within the Harvard faculty, concerned that these courses would somehow teach “irrational” beliefs, objected to the plan, and the proposed changes were eventually dropped.

Now, I’m not here to debate the relative merits of Harvard’s plan — I’m not a member of that institution, and I can’t speak to their internal affairs or politics. But it does illustrate a growing debate in our society — the importance of belief in people’s lives.

Belief, specifically that the scientific method is superior to religion in determining basic truths, contritubed to Harvard’s decision. This same view, albeit from the other side, motivates Kansas’s continuing “evolution v. creationism” (excuse me, “intelligent design”) debate. Indeed, an outside observer could look at this dialogue and confuse it with an ironclad division between staunch, unchanging rationality on one side and the complete reliance on su-

pernatural deities on the other.

But of course, that’s not how the world works.

Instead, people live their lives based on a range of rational and irrational beliefs. I can look at a flounder, a snake and my cat and know that all of these species share similarities in their vertebrae, biochemistry and genomes that stem from a shared common ancestor — in other words, that

sources of some of my most important beliefs come from such “trivial” sources as badly written TV shows. “Star Trek,” for all its hokeyness, captures the drama of the human spirit and the value inherent in exploration and discovery, not to mention the nearly always fatal mistake of wearing a red shirt when fighting with bad guys. Curious about whether “the end justifies the means?” Watch Jack Bauer on “24” torture

I’m absolutely positive that rational empiricism is the only way to scientific truths, but I don’t deny that there is something unquantifiably beautiful about a sunset. they all evolved from the same original vertebrate. This claim, as “natural” as it may seem, is the result of 150 years of careful, empirical scientific research and is a true triumph of humanity.

At the same time, the world is far from rational, a fact evident to any economist who has tried, and failed, to boil humanity down to a few equations. Indeed, the

his first — or perhaps 50th — subject and you’ll come away with an answer. Even my ideas on affordable living in Manhattan are motivated more by “Friends” than by close readings of the Proceedings of the New York City Rent Control Board.

Is it rational for me to develop answers to complicated moral issues from watching shows originally designed to sell pick-

up trucks and plane tickets? Probably not.

And I’m certainly not following an empirical process, nor am I getting a complete picture of the evidence or the issues. But it doesn’t matter — consciously or not, I make my decisions via a process filled with incomplete and self-motivated information, some based on fact and some based only on beliefs.

Indeed, in all our lives, we integrate both these views into our perceptions of the universe. I’m absolutely positive that rational empiricism is the only way to scientific truths, but I don’t deny that there is something unquantifiably beautiful about a sunset, or that realizing the Moon is 4.6 billion years old is an awe-inspiring achievement.

What I do know is that rational thought and irrational emotions, regardless of their original source, are fundamental to the human experience, and pretending that only one deserves study, or worse, that only one exists, is unrealistic, silly and dangerous.

Instead, we should try to synthesize both of these worldviews, which means that we must study both beliefs and empiricism or at least recognize the fundamental relevancy of both. Perhaps one should be valued over the other — that’s a value question I can’t answer. But pretending that one or the other doesn’t exist is simply irresponsible and shows a vast ignorance in how the world truly functions.

Joey Borson ’07 wouldn’t wear a red shirt if he was talking to Jack Bauer.

She’s not that innocent: The decline of our pop princess COURTNEY JENKINS OPINIONS COLUMNIST

Our parents have bellbottoms, the Beatles, Woodstock and Watergate. In 30 years, we too may reminisce over Uggs, iPods, Princess Diana and the Iraq war. But this week, my friends, we witnessed an event which may become our generation’s defining pop cultural moment: Where were you when Britney Spears shaved her head?

To most of the world, this seemingly trivial — if somewhat unbelievable — story took second place to Anna Nicole Smith’s tragic death in the entertainment news world. But to those of us who have grown up alongside the former Mouseketeer from Louisiana on her rapid ascent to American teen idol status, mouthing the words to “…Baby One More Time” while dancing in circles at high school dances in our wedge heels and “Clarissa Explains It All” camisoles, Britney’s collapse signifies something so much more.

We are, for better or worse, the generation of the boy-band heartthrobs and the teen princesses — we know Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore just as well as we know the boys of *N Sync, Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees.

Our formative years were shaped by the melodies, lyrics and lives of the late 90s and early millennium pop idols — after all, who hasn’t cried to “Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely” after a middle-school heartbreak?

So what does it mean when one of our own breaks down in such a painful and

publicly humiliating way? Maybe simply that Britney has come a long way from 1999, and so have we.

In the beginning, Britney was the archetypal doe-eyed ingenue in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform who danced into our hearts as the former-Mouseketeer-whocould. Then somehow, before we had time to embroider her eerily foreshadowing lyr-

vorce from Fed-Ex while sporting that cute new blonde ‘do and classy dress, making the right appearances at the right awards shows and not guzzling too many Jacks ‘n Coke? Believe me, I was ecstatic. But then she flopped again with a bad dye job, that heinous-cowboy-boots-and-shor t-shor ts combo, and a few too many Xanax and Lindsay Lohan cocktails. And then, before

For every fall of the Soviet Union, there is a Milli Vanilli or Corey Feldman waiting to be analyzed, scrutinized, Googled and discussed. ics to “Lucky” on a pillow — “Lost in an image, in a dream / But there’s no one there to wake her up / And the world is spinning and she keeps on winning / But tell me, what happens when it stops” — Britney hit rock bottom on the national stage.

It was a tragic moment, as I had always believed Britney would emerge unscathed.

Even as she made poor decision after poor decision, from the 55-hour Vegas marriage to going commando in the front seat of Paris’ ride, I had an unwavering faith that she would pull out of it. After all, she was Britney Spears, pop culture icon.

Remember when she announced her di-

we could say, “You’re toxic!” she buzzed off her locks — a calculated rebellion from a girl who has been in the public eye since middle school, and it showed in its immaturity and rashness.

Deep down, it’s clear that Britney is still young. She’s a country-bred, corn-fed mama’s girl from Kentwood who is sitting at a crossroads between Page Six and a life filming “Surreal Life” reunions and VH1 specials. But just as she’s not a girl and not yet a woman, we too are at a crossroads — and I don’t mean the rehab center or her 2002 movie flop.

To be sure, in the eight years since Brit-

ney’s debut album hit the charts, we have seen our share of sobering moments. From our high school lockers and the vista of College Hill, we have endured Sept. 11, 2001, a litigious war, the horrifying disaster of Hurricane Katrina and more than our share of challenges to our domestic concord and national character. These events have forced us to grow up, just as they have left us uncertain of our next steps.

But regardless of the magnitude of these events or World Book-liness, they are only half the story. For every fall of the Soviet Union, there is a Milli Vanilli or Corey Feldman waiting to be analyzed, scrutinized, Googled and discussed. Popular culture has long been another lens through which to study history, and this week is no exception. In a sense, Britney Spears’ misguided homage to Kojak and Mr. Clean was a watershed moment for the new millennium.

It was the moment that signaled the end of our naivete as the children of the 1990s.

No longer can I look back at my BOP! centerfolds of Devon Sawa or play my “Oops I Did It Again” single on repeat, blissfully unaware of the outside world. It was this moment when it became abundantly clear that there really are limits to the American dream. Her meteoric rise to stardom from small-town beginnings inspired millions to believe that it was really possible to make it with enough hard work and just one chance.

But as Britney checks into rehab yet again, lost, adrift and gearing up for what will be a difficult custody battle, it’s sad to realize that no amount of money can save a former pop star who simply doesn’t want to be saved — only shaved.

Courtney Jenkins ’07 would have preferred a good mullet.

S POR TS T UESDAY WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2007

PAGE 12

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

McAndrew ’08 is m. hoops’ Player of the Week

Ski team buries opposition at Regionals, headed to Nationals

The honors keep rolling in for Mark McAndrew ’08, who has been named Ivy League Player of the Week for the fourth time this year. He has been honored twice as many times as any other Ivy League player thus far in the 14-week span of play.

McAndrew earned his latest honor thanks to strong performances against Columbia and Cornell in Brown’s split this weekend. During Friday’s game the guard scored 12 points in helping the Bears defeat the Lions 64-59. On Saturday, he fought through cramping to score a career-high 33 points against the Big Red. McAndrew is the Ivy League’s leading scorer in conference play at 20 points per game and is second in overall scoring with a 16.3 ppg average.

— Erin Frauenhofer W. water polo’s Glick ’10 takes Northern Division Player of the Week After scoring three goals versus national No. 13 Hartwick College, Sarah Glick ’10 was named Player of the Week by the Northern Division of the Collegiate Water Polo Association. Glick scored goals in each of the first three quarters of Saturday’s contest to give

After an up-and-down regular season, the ski team showed it is still a force to be reckoned with on the national stage with its performance this weekend at the USCSA Eastern Regional Championships, held at Waterville Valley, N. H. Brown finished in a three-way tie for first with Colby-Sawyer College and Boston College, the two most dominant teams during the regular season.

The three victorious schools topped a field of 16, with the Bears claiming second in both the slalom on Saturday and giant slalom on Sunday. Colby-Sawyer took third in the slalom and first in the GS, and Boston College won the slalom and finished third in the GS. If a tiebreaker were held, Brown would have won whether the winner had been determined by individual places or race points, according to Captain Kelly O’Hear ’07. For an unknown reason, a tiebreaker was not conducted — a highly unusual circumstance, said O’Hear.

“It was frustrating that we didn’t win outright and that now, every time we say we won, we have an asterisk next to our name,” she said. O’Hear said the team shook off the disappointment of sharing the championship and instead focused on the completeness of its performance this weekend.

“We finally realized our poten-

continued on page 9

continued on page 9

BY MADELEINE MARECKI ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

Courtesy of Gil Talbot Kelly O’Hear ’07 won both the slalom and giant slalom races at this weekend’s USCSA Eastern Regional Championships.

W. track sprints to second-place finish at Heps

BY SARAH DEMERS ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

Dan Grossman ‘71 Nicole Burns ’09 finished first in the 400-meter run and was part of the Bears’ second place 4x400m relay team.

The women’s track and field team traveled to the Armory Track in New York City this weekend to face the toughest competition the Ivy League had to offer at the Indoor Heptagonal Championships. The Bears turned in a big performance in the Big Apple, placing second behind Cornell, a perennial powerhouse that has won six straight team titles.

Cornell scored 159 points this weekend versus 71 for the Bears, who narrowly beat out the University of Pennsylvania for the runner-up spot.

“Every point in these meets counts,” said Director of Track and Field Craig Lake. “It came down to three points in the women’s meet, as we beat UPenn for second place by just three points. You have to dig to get each and every point ... and our team did just that.”

Though they fell short of the team championship podium, the Bears did not go down quietly. They scored in the top six in nine events and brought home two Ivy League titles.

“The atmosphere at Heps is unbeatable,” Lake said. “It is insanely intense, extremely high energy and high pressure. It is definitely exciting, and the nerves are high. It is the pinnacle of the season.”

Sprinter Thelma Breezeatl continued on page 9

Sprinters, throwers boost m. track to fi fth at Hep

BY SARAH DEMERS ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

The men’s track and field team took fi fth place at the Indoor Heptagonal Championships in New York City this weekend. Brown emerged with two Ivy League Champions — sprinter Paul Raymond ’08 took first in the 60-meter dash and thrower David Howard ’08 came in first in the shot put.

Princeton won the meet with a total of 154 points, and Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia all edged out Brown’s 48 points.

“The team struggled during the indoor season battling injuries, and we were missing some of our best runners and jumpers,” Raymond said. “But we still wanted to come and perform as best we could this weekend. Representing our school and program, it was great to see guys come up big and perform so well.”

The meet started off on an auspicious note for the Bears, as reigning 60-meter dash champion Raymond set out to defend his title for the second consecutive year. He blazed to a winning time of 6.85 and put Brown up on the board early with 10 points.

“Personally, I didn’t run well in previous meets,” Raymond said.

“But my coaches and teammates kept working with me and made sure I stayed positive. Coming into the weekend, I felt I put in the training, and I was very confident I would repeat if I ran my

race. I was hoping to qualify for nationals running a faster time in finals, but I was happy to contribute to the team.”

Raymond’s win allowed Brown to leave New York with both the conference’s men’ and women’s fastest individuals. Thelma Breezeatl ’10 won the 60-meter dash on the women’s side.

Another big contribution to the Bears’ effort came from Jamil McClintock ’08. He sprinted his way to a second-place finish in the 60meter hurdles with a time of 8.08 seconds, and teammate Matthew Jasmin ’09 came in fi fth at 8.36.

“I was more proud of Matt in the hurdles than myself,” said McClintock. “The previous two weeks before Heps, he worked on certain technical issues he had with the hurdles, and to be able to put them together in such a short time and on such a big stage shows how much he focused and how hard he worked.”

McClintock said he didn’t have the race he had hoped for, losing to his competitor by .01 second.

“Personally, I was disappointed with my performance,” McClintock said. “I didn’t have a good race, and losing is never fun … but you learn from everything, and next time I will leave no doubt.”

Director of Track and Field Craig Lake praised McClintock for his toughness.

“Jamil has been injured all continued on page 9