Friday, March 9, 2007 by The Brown Daily Herald

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD F RIDAY,

Volume CXLII, No. 31

RCH

9 , 2007 200 7

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

IWP fellow could face arrest upon return to Iran

Iranian author Ravanipour takes refuge at Brown BY TAYLOR BARNES S TAFF WRITER

Iranian author Moniro Ravanipour was too scared to shower when she was in Germany for a writers’ conference in 2001. Soon after she arrived, her husband called to tell her Iranian authorities opposed the conference. She feared they might have installed secret cameras in her hotel bathroom and would broadcast the footage in Iran to suggest the conference attendees were engaging in salacious behavior.

BY TAYLOR BARNES S TAFF WRITER

When Shahryar Mandanipour’s fellowship with the International Writers Project ends this June, he will be forced to return to Iran and potentially face arrest unless he ﬁnds a job in the United States that will allow him to extend his visa. “It will not be easy to return, for me. I don’t know what will happen in the airport,” Mandanipour said, explaining that in the past three months, about 150 scholars, writers and journalists have been arrested upon returning home from abroad. “Everyday I’m thinking about it. Sometimes I think I’ve got to go back. Sometimes, when I try to be rational, I think of my responsibilities to my family … here. Honestly, I don’t know what to do,” Mandanipour said. He said he is especially concerned for his 16-year-old son. “Here, he will be safe. There is no hope for him in Iran,” he said. This predicament is not entirely new for IWP fellows. They are selected for the fellowship precisely because they face oppression in their home nations, said Robert Coover, director of the IWP and adjunct professor of literary arts. Sponsored by the Graduate Program in Literary Arts and the Watson Institute for International Studies, the year-long IWP fellowship provides a stipend and workplace to writers who face political oppression in their countries of origin. “The hardest thing is, what do you do about people when you have to let them go in a year or so?” Coover asked.

“I had many wounds from this country, but I still loved it.” Shahryar Mandanipour Though the difﬁculty was anticipated, Mandanipour’s situation is especially challenging, Coover said, because relations between Iran and the United States have worsened since Mandanipour arrived on College Hill. Mandanipour was eligible for the fellowship because Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance censored many of his writings. “You can’t anticipate which story will be allowed to be published,” he said, adding that including a “sexy scene or love scene” in a story will jeopardize its publication. While at Brown, Mandanipour continued on page 4

INSIDE:

ARTS & CULTURE

“Living in Iran, for a writer like me, is a risk,” said Ravanipour, who is the fourth fellow the International Writers Project has brought to Brown. Sponsored by the Graduate Program in Literary Arts and the Watson Institute for International Studies, the program hosts one writer each year who feels unable to engage in free expression in his or her home country. Shortly after the conference in Germany, Ravanipour returned to

Min Wu / Herald Moniro Ravanipour (right) is the fourth fellow the International Writers Project has brought to the University. The program hosts one writer each year who feels unable to engage in free expression in his or her home country.

continued on page 6

Metcalf to temporarily house history dept., other programs BY OLIVIA HOFFMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Metcalf complex — including the Metcalf Chemistry, Metcalf Research and Medical Research labs — will serve as a temporary home for several programs and departments, allowing for large-scale construction and renovation projects elsewhere on campus. Considerable space opened up in the complex last fall when the Department of Neuroscience relocated to the Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences. “It’s really the only space on campus right now that we have ﬂexibility with,” said Associate Provost Pamela O’Neil, who staffs the provost’s Space Committee, which monitors how space in campus buildings is allocated. According to O’Neil, the vacant areas will be used as “interim space” for a number of departments. “In the next few years, we are going to be using it to solve some temporary problems,” she said. “When we take a building and move it or gut it to renovate it, we need some place to put the people that are currently occupying it,” O’Neil said. “It doesn’t sound very glamorous, but we can’t do the major build-

THE STARS OF IMPROV A proﬁle of Brown’s newest improvisational comedy troupe, Starla and Sons — a long-form improv group that has gained a cult following

www.browndailyherald.com

FEATURE

Eunice Hong / Herald File Photo Shahryar Mandanipour (above) may be forced to return to Iran and could face arrest when his fellowship ends this June.

5 CAMPUS NEWS

ing projects that we’re doing unless we have that space to move people into.” The Department of History will occupy office space in the complex for six months, O’Neil said. Some members of the history department will be displaced from their offices in Peter Green House when that building gets picked up and moved to a nearby location to make way for the Walk, the pedestrian pathway that will link Lincoln Field to the Pembroke campus. An anthropology lab was also recently installed in Metcalf, but O’Neil said she hopes the lab will eventually move to Rhode Island Hall, which will be renovated to house the Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Metcalf will also house the ADVANCE program, which will move into office and conference space on the second floor of the building within the next week, O’Neil said. Funded by a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, the program, which is directed by O’Neil, aims to facilitate the advancement of women faculty in science and engineering. O’Neil said “a subset” of the Department of Mathematcontinued on page 6

SPRING FORWARD — EARLY Turn your clocks ahead one hour this Sunday — daylightsaving time starts this weekend, three weeks earlier than in previous years

Med School report calls for more research collaboration BY KRISTINA KELLEHER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Boosted by a $100 million donation from the late Warren Alpert, the Alpert Medical School is embarking on a new phase of strategic growth as it aims to strengthen research ties with area hospitals and unify research administration. The Corporation broke from its traditional routine for its February meeting and replaced some committee meetings with a full-day retreat to discuss the future of the

Med School and hear from members of a planning group appointed by Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 last September to consider strategic initiatives for the Med School. The objective of the planning group’s discussion with the Corporation was to “share ideas, educate, bring up to date, seek feedback and ask for advice,” said Eli Adashi, dean of medicine and biological sciences, who chaired the working continued on page 4

R A D I O S TA R

Chris Bennett / Herald NPR and ABC veteran Robert Krulwich spoke Thursday night on his career in journalism.

11 OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

POINT-COUNTERPOINT Don Trella ’08 and Michal Zapendowski ’07 square off on the issue that has haunted all of us since high school English class — human free will

12 SPORTS

ALUM TO COACH PATS Former Brown football player and coach Bill O’Brien ’92 has been hired as an offensive assistant coach by the New England Patriots

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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WE A

T H E R

TODAY

FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker TOMORROW

mostly cloudy 49 / 37

sunny 33 / 24

MEN

SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — TTomato Basil Pie, Roasted Herb Potatoes, Fresh Sliced Carrots, Gyro Sandwich on Pita, Chicken Jambalaya with Bacon, Washington Apple Cake

LUNCH — Vegetarian Broccoli Cheese Soup, Roasted Corn Chowder with Bacon, Chicken Fingers, Baked Vegan Nuggets, Vegan Rice Pilaf, Whole Kernel Corn, Blondies

DINNER — Manicotti Piedmontese, Rice with Peas & Coriander, Mashed Butternut Squash, Italian Green Beans, Turkey Tetrazini, Grilled Salmon with Minted Pea Puree, Chocolate Cinnamon Cake Roll

WBF | Matt Vascellaro

DINNER — Salmon Provensal, Grilled Chicken, Mexican Cornbread Casserole, Basmati Rice, Fresh Vegetable Melange, Sugar Snap Peas, Pueblo Bread, Chocolate Cinnamon Cake Roll

D O K U

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

Hi, How Are You | Alison Naturale

Deo | Daniel Perez

Puzzles by Pappocom

CR ACROSS 1 Philatelist’s find 6 Big oxygen producer 11 Degree for an MIT Sloan School grad 14 Refuge 15 Eponymous veep associated with redistricting 16 Allied gp. since 1948 17 Dolphin rookie? 19 Herald Sq. site 20 Chow chow, maybe 21 Valley of the Kings land 22 __ of Attalos, Athens landmark 23 Roseanne Roseannadanna’s venue, initially 25 Desktop publishing precursor 27 Wimbledon Centre Court activity? 32 Listing with a gate no. 33 Part of 19Across 34 Inception 37 Wound formation 39 Course with no unexpected curves? 42 Spent 43 Big name in Ethiopian history 45 Milo’s pal, in a 1989 film 47 “The Crying Game” actor 48 What I look forward to after the Iditarod? 52 Ways to get around 54 A kiss may follow one 55 Org. with more than 37 million members 56 Amber, for one 59 Mr. Hulot portrayer 63 DOD component 64 Delirious wanderer? 66 Magnum, e.g., briefly 67 Alamogordo experiment 68 Kennedy associate

O S S W O R D

69 Wapiti 70 New York governor before George 71 Corsair or Pacer DOWN 1 “Brave New World” feel-good drug 2 Manx’s lack 3 Stat 4 Brunch libation 5 Pressure meas. 6 Wide-eyed 7 Assess 8 Passé ailment name 9 Trig function 10 Give the onceover 11 Educator who appeared on the 1000 lire bill 12 Marshy tract 13 Org. with a Jazz Wall of Fame 18 Nervous one? 22 Setup of a sort 24 Home of 23Across 26 __-Cat 27 “Our House” songwriter 28 SeaWorld’s Corky II, e.g. 29 Rail 30 Hellenic vowel

31 “Sounder” actress 35 Samuel W. Bodman’s cabinet dept. 36 It’s darker than Nile blue 38 One might drop in 40 Financial stmt. heading 41 Intending 44 Ostrichlike bird 46 Pink Floyd guitarist Barrett

49 Slips 50 Warm sign-off 51 Grew tiresome 52 “Divine Comedy” poet 53 Oil support 57 Acapulco “Absolutely!” 58 Digging 60 Pals abroad 61 Atterbury Street gallery 62 Loved one 64 Smack 65 Hamish’s refusal

Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Cloudy Side Up | Mike Lauritano xwordeditor@aol.com

3/9/07

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3/9/07

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ARTS & CULTURE FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

Starla and Sons stands out in improv comedy BY LYDIA GIDWITZ ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR

Does Brown really need another improvisational comedy group on campus? The students in Starla and Sons, a year-old improv troupe, seem to think so — the group has joined the ranks of such campus improv mainstays as Intramural Improv and Improvidence. But Starla and Sons’ unique sketch structure and intimate, even revealing, comedy distinguishes it from the crowd — and has gained it a cult following. “I got to Brown freshman year and didn’t do improv at all,” said William Guzzardi ’09, the group’s founder. “I watched some groups on campus, and I felt that none of them were doing improv the way I grew up with it.” The other improv groups on campus mostly practice a form of comedy known as short-form improv. “Short form is typically based on games you create so scenes have a deﬁnite trajectory,” said William Litton ’09, one of the four members of Starla and Sons, “whereas long-form has a much larger structure that can go on for a half an hour.” “Long-form is about explaining different worlds and explaining truths between two characters,” Guzzardi said. Long form can be performed in different styles but this group uses it in

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

two ways — Montage and the Harold. A typical Starla and Sons show consists of two parts. The ﬁrst, called Montage, begins with an audience member suggesting a word that provides the inspiration for a series of short scenes between two cast members. The remaining two members of the troupe “edit” the scene by directing the action off-stage, by replacing a member on stage or by ending the scene to begin a new one, Guzzardi said. Though in some respects Montage is fairly unstructured, the Harold follows complex rules and has a rich history. “The Harold is the oldest form of long-form,” Guzzardi said. “It was invented by Del Close, who is the grandfather of modern improv.” Like Montage, the Harold begins with a prompt from the audience. Then, each troupe-member performs an impromptu monologue tying that word into his personal life and experience, Guzzardi said. A series of three subsequent scenes reworks and builds on some of the monologues’ ideas. “The idea is to become collective,” Guzzardi said. “We all take from each other.” Then, after a “group game” where the troupe performs a short gag sketch, another series of three scenes continued on page 6

Berssenbrugge astounds with poetic cubism BY MARIELA QUINTANA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s soft voice soothed her audience at her reading for the Contemporary Writers Series on March 6. Like a gentle lullaby, her coaxing intonation harmoniously complemented the words of her poetry, providing a consistency and steadiness to her ethereal lyrics. The abstract and diffuse threads of her poetry had an even and nurturing quality, as if she was spoonfeeding her listeners. Her poetry expressed the multi-layered complexities of language. Berssenbrugge molded her scattered words into a continuum of multiple perspectives. In her poem, “Kisses of the Moon,” inspired by a performance of the Bill T. Jones dance company, she choreographed a multifaceted rendition of intimacy. Moving quickly between abstract language and speciﬁcs of immediate perception, she peeled away the many layers of human connection. Dealing with what is understood intuitively instead of what is known, the poem goes on to reveal the all-too-familiar fears of friendship and insecurity. The contrasting language of this poem and the shifts of perspective it includes reﬂect the vulnerability that friendship and self-exposure require. The multi-dimensional perspectives portrayed in her poem express the desire to gain self-awareness. Berssenbrugge’s rhetoric evocatively affected her audience. In her poem, “Concordance,” her syntax

astounded. Again, she straddled many perspectives. In the pure acts of reading and writing, Berssenbrugge dove into the consciousness of her reader. In this poem, she rendered a hybridized voice interweaving lyrical, colloquial and even scientiﬁc language. In this way she created a poetic cubism, from which all positions and viewpoints were taken into account. Through the multiplicity of perspectives, she created cohesion, both ﬂuid and holistic.

REVIEW The cyclical nature of her poems demanded contemplation. No clear or ﬁnite end could ostensibly exist with Berssenbrugge’s poetry. In this way, perhaps the essence of her

poetry is the sensual beauty of linguistic patterning and word play. A singular poet, Berssenbrugge extends certainty in the face of inscrutability. Her long sentences do not lose the reader, but rather move them through labyrinthine clauses and phrases. Her linguistic strands guide the listeners and left them couched in an accumulation of thought. Her language fragments and refracts — as if through a prism — only to become whole again. Her poetry does not have a linear structure or end with an incontrovertible proof. Defying logic, her words transcend meaning, grammar and syntax and morph into an algebraic search of the unknown. Perhaps unsolved, her poetic equations are nonetheless balanced.

ED I TO R S’ PI CK S FRIDAY, MARCH 9 Gallery Opening for Candice Smith Colby: Sarah Doyle Women’s Center, 6-8 p.m. Wind Symphony Concert: Grant Recital Hall, 8 p.m. Starla and Sons presents COLOSSUS: Salomon 001, 9-10 p.m. FRIDAY, MARCH 9 through SUNDAY SUNDAY, MARCH 11 “Accidental Death of an Anarchist: ” Production Workshop downstairs space, T. F. Green, Friday to Monday Monday, 8 p.m., with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m.

FRIDAY, MARCH 9 through SUNDAY SUNDAY, MARCH 1 1 and THURSDAY, MARCH 15 through ugh SUNDAY SUNDAY, MARCH 18 “Merrily We Roll Along”: Stuart Theatre, Thursday though ough Saturday Saturday, 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m.

SATURDAY, MARCH 10 and SUNDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY, MARCH 11 Brown University Orchestra Concert: Sayles Hall, 7 p.m.

SATURDAY, MARCH 10 through SUNDAY, MARCH 11 and THURSDAY, MARCH 15 through SUNDAY, MARCH 18 “NA LUTA (in the struggle)” presented by Rites and Reason Theatre: George Houston Bass Per forming Ar ts Space, Churchill House, Thursday to Saturday, 7 p.m., and Sunday, 3 p.m.

SATURDAY, MARCH 10 Mazaa South Asian Students Association Annual Culture Show: Salomon 101, 6-8 p.m.

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FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

IWP fellow could face arrest upon return to Iran continued from page 1 wrote “Censoring and the Iranian Love Story,” which he dedicated to Coover. With that book, “I explained how I make a trick to get the information of the story and pass through the censor wall,” Mandanipour said. Mandanipour hopes to teach Persian language or literature in the United States but has not found any positions. “If you ﬁnd a way, please tell me,” he said.

He added, “If I couldn’t ﬁnd a way to stay here, I have to return.” Mandanipour said he is still glad that he joined the IWP, despite of the difﬁculties he faces as the fellowship comes to an end. He added that even though the conditions in Iran led him to pursue the IWP, he was homesick for his country when he came to America. “I had many wounds from this country, but I still loved it,” he said of Iran. Though Mandanipour said he could try to obtain refugee sta-

tus in order to stay in the United States, he has not pursued this option because he still strongly identiﬁes with his home country. “I love United States culture, but I would like to be an Iranian in the United States,” he said. His experience with the IWP could foster better relations between the United States and Iran, Mandanipour said. “I hope that I can write about American culture and introduce it to the people of my country,” he said.

Research collaboration focus of Med School report continued from page 1 group. The Corporation made no commitments during its discussion of strategic planning with the Med School working group, Adashi said. The strategic planning working group, which completed its work and issued a report in December, was created to look at ways to improve the Med School. “It was good to bring together these very different perspectives on how to improve the Med School and about what’s happening now — what is very good, not so good and where we can add real value,” said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president, who was a member of the planning group. Working group member Terrie “Fox” Wetle, associate dean of public health and public policy and professor of community health, told The Herald, “It was a very exciting time to be doing strategic planning for the Med School, especially when the large Warren Alpert gift came in.” But work on the strategic plan for the Med School had been in progress for over a year and a half before the gift came in, said John Deeley, executive dean for administration for the Division of Biology and Medicine. Before the appointment of the strategic planning working group for the Med School, Kertzer asked Adashi to create his own strategic plan for the Med School. Adashi’s plan was completed in the fall of 2006. Adashi’s plan gave a clear view of the current state of the Med School’s current research stature, highlighting that it is ranked 71st of 123 medical schools in National Institutes of Health grant dollars. “A lot of strategic vision for the Medical School is about increasing the stature and rankings,” said Neel Shah ’04 MD’08, president of the Medical Student Senate. “Certainly from a strategic point of view, research is important, but it’s usually pretty independent from students who are really here in more of a pre-professional capacity.” Building research bridges Adashi’s plan envisioned a Brown University Health Sciences Center, which would consolidate programmatic and administrative facets of its research organizations under one chief academic ofﬁcer, one research dean, one research administration and one grant portfolio. Unlike the dean’s initial plan, the working group’s report uses the term “Health Sciences Center” sparingly, indicating that “the term is not meant to suggest a physical entity. Rather, it is an umbrella characterization of our shared research, educational and clinical missions.”

The working group articulated the need for stronger research partnerships between the Med School and its affiliated hospitals. The new research efforts would be led by a new dean for research and a single office of research administration and would support research “not just on campus but throughout the hospitals,” Adashi said. The working group’s report recognizes “the significant risks to our ability to attract outstanding faculty and students, to provide excellent clinical care at the frontiers of medical science and to attract significant federal and philanthropic support if we do not move effectively to remove organizational barriers to cross-institutional collaboration.” “The most fundamental relationship between the hospitals and the Medical School is about the education of physicians. You can’t have a full-fledged four-year medical school without it,” Adashi said. He continued, “A big piece of the strategic plan is to complement the education partnership with a research partnership.” Currently the Med School and the hospitals are collaborating on research projects, but “operationally, we are distinct entities,” Adashi told The Herald. “We lack a formal research partnership alliance.” “We’re not taking full advantage of the opportunities to collaborate, for example, between hospitals and campus-based faculty, between institutions and individuals and between the life sciences and engineering,” Spies said. The report advocates that Brown and its teaching hospital partners “charge the dean with the responsibility to lead a collaborative strategic planning process to develop a shared, strategically coordinated scientific agenda that builds upon our existing scientific and clinical strengths,” specifically by pouring money into selected “areas of excellence.” Deeley and Adashi both declined to speculate on what the future “areas of excellence” might be. “We are about to send out surveys to faculty,” Deeley said, adding that the division needs significant faculty input before deciding which areas deserve the most attention. “We don’t know where people will see connections. The faculty and students in the field will see the most interesting connections,” Spies said. “The good news is that the pieces are there in a lot of areas to do really exciting things, if we can connect the pieces,” Spies said. “We are not starting from scratch.” Deeley said the University is already particularly strong in cancer research, genomics and biomedical engineering. The new research dean should be “someone who gets up in the morning thinking about how to connect these pieces,” Spies said.

The new dean’s position is to be “a full time facilitator and catalyst.” Every medical school and its affiliated hospitals have a different relationship, Adashi explained. The new dean will have to translate the words of strategic plan into a living, breathing organism unique to Brown. “In many settings hospitals are not home to research, it’s the domain of the medical school. But in our case, as with Harvard Medical School, it occurs in both,” Adashi said. A major factor in the separation between the hospitals and the Med School at Brown is the youth of the Med School. “The hospitals were here before the Med School was. … The Medical School and the hospitals evolved in parallel and arrived at the current state of affairs,” Adashi said. University officials say the affiliated hospitals and clinical faculty are on board with the strategic plan. “The hospitals share the same goal, no question about it. All the hospitals see themselves as academic enterprises where a critical part of what they do is train physicians and conduct research,” Spies said. “Everyone has a lot of interest in seeing us do better — and most people even agree on what better looks like,” Spies said. “We are a long way from what this specifically looks like and knowing if it’s doable.” A new home The other major initiative addressed by the Med School’s strategic plan is the creation of a new medical education building off College Hill. A portion of the Alpert gift has been designated by University officials to help pay for the building. Adashi’s wrote in his proposal about a Health Services Center that was “readily visible from I-95” and “anchored by a medical education institute, a learning center for Brown’s medical students, residents, fellows and faculty.” The working group also advocated a new medical education building, while not going as far as Adashi’s plan. Their envisioned new medical education building would house medical instruction for med students, residents, fellows and faculty and be situated near the Med School’s affiliate hospitals. The medical education building, to be located on the Rhode Island Hospital campus or in the Jewelry District, would provide a home for the Med School. The working group report underscores the importance of such a home, as the “current lack of such a building is a competitive disadvantage and impairs student recruitment efforts and (in some cases) our fundamental ability to deliver the curriculum, given the existing on-campus space constraints.”

CAMPUS N EWS FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

NEW

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I N

An alternative vehicle for the developing world

I E F

Campus Internet down for 3 hours Thursday

Brown and RISD professors team up to create a more functional motorcycle

All campus users lost Internet access starting at 4:55 p.m. Thursday, Computing and Information Services reported. The service interruption was due to “malicious traffic originating from a host within our dormitory network,” according to Timothy Thorp, manager of communications and education for CIS. Malicious traffic is the type of Internet traffic that a typical human user would be unable to create, such as an extremely large volume of data transferred at one time by a spammer, according to Thorp. The malicious traffic obstructed campus connection to the Internet. CIS officials thought they had resolved the problem at 5:20 p.m. when they “filtered the malicious host,” meaning that they blocked the offending computer from access to the network, Thorp told The Herald. CIS has no way of knowing the origin of the malicious traffic, Thorp said, though he noted that someone’s computer likely fell victim to a virus. After CIS officials blocked the malicious host, students in dorm rooms continued to report network problems to the CIS Help Desk. Thorp said this problem was related to Internet traffic passing through the Domain Name Server. The DNS has to do with the way Internet pages are called up, Thorp said, so this problem would have affected the browsing of Web sites but perhaps not other Internet traffic, such as IPTV. Patrick Hanley ’09, who lives in Slater Hall, said his Internet connection was down for two-and-a-half hours, starting at around 5 p.m. He said the outage was “just annoying” and that he needed the Internet to use MyCourses to study for a midterm. Campus Internet access was restored by 8 p.m.

BY TSVETINA KAMENOVA STAFF WRITER

— Sara Molinaro

Clocks spring forward Sunday Clocks should be turned ahead one hour Sunday as the country switches to daylight-saving time, three weeks earlier this year than in the past — the second Sunday in March, instead of the third week in April as in previous years. Congress legislated the earlier start to daylight-saving time in 2005. The rationale behind moving the date was that more natural light in the evenings would save energy by decreasing use of electric lights. However, technology with software that was programmed before the 2005 legislation was passed will not automatically update to daylight-saving time on the correct date. Regular cell phones should not experience any problems, but BlackBerrys and other PDAs that connect to a network operating system may have to be updated by going to their service provider’s Web site. However, the Web site of Computing and Information Services states that BlackBerry users with OS 4 or above should not experience any problems. Windows XP users who have enabled automatic software updates will not experience any problems, but users who have disabled the feature may have to download the appropriate update. Most Mac users will also not be affected, but users with older operating systems may need to download an update to fix the problem. Users of iPods with the clock feature will have to update the device by connecting the iPod to a computer, as users normally would do to update music. Timothy Thorp, manager of communications and education for CIS, told The Herald that the University should experience very few problems because “CIS has done a great job making sure every server is patched.” He mentioned that CIS has only had from January to March of this year to fix the problem, because “most computers can only understand one set of time rules.” The only problem that University-based computers may encounter is with Microsoft Outlook calendars, Thorp said. If a user scheduled an appointment for between March 11 and April 1 before the daylight-savings time start date was fixed, the appointment may have incorrectly shifted one hour. But Thorp said CIS has made a significant effort to communicate the nature of the problem to users of Outlook’s calendar. Karin Freed ’09 said she had heard of the technical problems anticipated with the earlier daylight-savings time start but did not plan to do anything to update her technology.“If it happens, it happens, and I’ll deal with it then,” she said. — Sara Molinaro

QA and GAIA team up for free HIV testing The Brown chapter of the Global Alliance to Immunize against AIDS and Queer Alliance are co-sponsoring HIV Testing Day at the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center on Saturday. Unlike the confidential HIV tests available at Health Services, the tests offered by GAIA and QA are free and anonymous. “There is a difference between anonymous and confidential. Confidential means that they take your name but they don’t share it. Anonymous means that you are only assigned a number,” said Michael DeLucia ’07, a member of QA’s Queer Community Committee. The tests at Health Services cost about $25, and Health Services bills mailed home to parents could reflect that a student was tested for HIV. QA has made it a priority since 2005 to offer these tests for free to promote safe-sex practices, but DeLucia said the University should be responsible for providing easy access to HIV testing for students.“We feel that it’s unfortunate that a student group is responsible for bringing free anonymous testing to campus,” DeLucia said. The rapid oral testing method is a relatively new technology that makes the process easier for test-takers. With the old method of blood testing,“you have to come back after two weeks, but with rapid tests you only have to wait 20 minutes,” DeLucia said. QA and GAIA will provide enough tests for 100 to 150 people, and they expect that demand for the tests will exceed their supply, said Madeline DiLorenzo ’08, the founder of the Brown chapter of GAIA. AIDS Care Ocean State, a Rhode Island-based non-profit organization, will send volunteers to administer the free tests. The tests themselves were donated by Abbott Laboratories, DiLorenzo said. The tests will be administered Saturday at the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center between noon and 4 p.m. — Amanda Bauer

In Cambodia in the summer of 2002, Khipra Nichols witnessed for the first time a sight common in developing countries — motorcycles being used in ways that Americans would consider anything but ordinary. Families of six crammed themselves onto one motorcycle, while street vendors used modified motorcycles to carry items such as carts, chickens and water cisterns. “They were fitting on a bike stuff you would put in an SUV,” he said. Nichols, associate professor of industrial design at the Rhode Island School of Design, started making sketches of possible alternative vehicles. “When I see a product being abused, I see an opportunity,” Nichols said. Since then, eMotive, a collaboration between Brown and RISD professors and students, has been developing an electrically powered crossover between motorcycles and cars that can hold four passengers. The goal of the project is to create a new kind of vehicle that can address the specific concerns of developing nations while keeping in mind local conditions and the financial constraints of the users. “It has to be multi-functional, very practical, really cheap, easy to repair and could generate income for the local economy,” Nichols said. He pointed out that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in Africa after AIDS, according to a 2004 World Health Organization report. “We are trying to design and fabricate something that is small, light, energy efficient, fun-to-drive and easily adapted to user needs,” said Christopher Bull, a senior research engineer at Brown. Bull, who has worked on alternative vehicles in the past, became involved in the project in the fall of 2003. By then, Nichols had already teamed up with Michael Lye, an industrial design lecturer at RISD, and the two used their faculty research grants to go on trips to California and Italy to look at other alternative vehicle projects. The prototype vehicle, in its third stage of development, currently has four wheels like a car but is steered like a motorcycle. It is powered by batteries located under the seat. The team has tested the vehicle in its different stages of development around the lab and for brief

Chris Bennett / Herald eMotive, a collaboration between Brown and RISD professors and students, has been working on an electrically powered crossover between a motorcycle and a car.

drives on the roads around Barus and Holley, but they are still in the process of making it street-legal in Rhode Island. eMotive’s team members want to make the vehicle as adaptable as possible, but the huge number of possibilities they face makes their job difﬁcult, Lye said. Making the vehicle adaptable to local power sources, ﬁnding alternative uses such as the transportation of people or goods and designing an adaptable front seat for female drivers are innovations they have considered but not yet implemented, Lye said. Lye said he is prepared for the possibility that the project might not be manufactured for mass consumption but may instead serve as concept vehicle that could generate future production. “We don’t currently have the means to commercialize it — we need outside partners. Then it could take from six months to two years,” Lye said. eMotive is funded by research grants to Nichols and Lye, as well as RISD/Brown Collaboration grant. Adam Geremia RISD GS, a student working on the project, will conduct the research into local customs and attitudes towards safety to make the vehicle adaptable to local conditions. “This has the potential for being manufactured and mak-

ing a difference,” he said. The team predicts that the final prototype will be ready in 2008, at which time they plan to take one or two vehicles to a developing country and lend them to families who will then provide feedback. The team is currently considering different business plan models to take the project forward. “One way we have considered is to offer the design to local entrepreneurs in some South Asian country,” Bull said. It will be difficult to challenge local attitudes towards safety and market a vehicle that may be more expensive than a motorcycle, Nichols said. “We want to create something with them that they will be attracted to. … There has to be a fun factor.” Ultimately, project team members aim to challenge user perceptions about adequate forms of transportation. Michael Chen’07, who is writing a program that will be able to test and measure the vehicle’s performance, said this project has the potential to change the future of transportation. “This vehicle is thinking into the future,” he said. “We are fighting against the idea that one size fits all,” Bull said. “A car is not always the best solution. It’s much bigger than it needs to be. In an urban setting, small and light is better.”

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Starla and Sons join improv scene continued from page 3 follows in which some elements of the ﬁrst set of scenes are preserved. “As a form, the Harold is based off of the rule of three. Each set of scenes is done three times,” Guzzardi said. This cycle (of three scenes, group game, three scenes) repeats anther time until components of all three scenes merge into one, thereby ending the performance. “Long-form focuses on developing relationships. Comedy arises because we’re put on the spot and making things up as we go,” Litton said. Brown students appear to be enjoying this new structure of comedy. After performing their last show in an overﬂowing Wilson Hall, Starla and Sons is moving to Salomon 001 for its performance tonight at 9 p.m. The group is planning to push the boundaries of Brown improv even further — they are holding auditions this weekend and have many ideas about increasing their presence on campus. “We also have radical ideas about different things. We might do a show with a band, we might travel,” Litton said.

FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

Ravanipour, an Iranian author, takes refuge on College Hill continued from page 1 Iran to find a subpoena for her arrest — she had been charged with undermining national security, a crime punishable by death. Her house was broken into and her papers stolen. Though ultimately exonerated, Ravanipour spent 10 months absorbed in complicated legal procedures without even knowing the basis for the charges. Ravanipour is not the first person in her family to face political oppression. After the Iranian Revolution, she said, authorities targeted her family. “They killed my brother. He was 19 years old. And all of my family was in jail,” she said. Born in a small village in the south of Iran, Ravanipour described her home as mystical and imaginative. “We grew up in an ocean of fiction and myth,” she said. In the regional villages, “every-

one wears beautiful colors — orange, red, blue,” she said, adding that the dominant color in Iran today is black. Ravanipour protests: “I don’t know which god says you have to wear black, gray, brown.” Ravanipour studied psychology at Shiraz University in southwest Iran. There, she realized she did not identify with the more traditional girls at the school. “The students told me, ‘You act as a man,’ ” because she played football and did not care about clothing, she said. She chooses not to wear the hijab or any form of covering because women in her family have never observed the tradition. The practice has only become universal since the revolution and has no meaning for her, Ravanipour said. “I want to see the people, and the people to see me,” she said. Not fulﬁlled by her studies at college, Ravanipour started writing “daily memories,” which

made her “calm, quiet, satisﬁed.” After the revolution, she realized she needed to use her writing for more than personal purposes. “I couldn’t remain quiet,” Ravanipour said. “I have to tell something about my situation. For this reason, I am a writer and political.” She has published 10 titles in Iran, including short stories and novels, and describes her style as “magical realist, and a little bit romantic.” Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance prevented several of her works from being published and censored the fourth and ﬁ fth editions of several of her books, an act Ravanipour described as “ridiculous,” because copies of the books in the original editions had already been circulated around the country. Ravanipour is the third International Writers Project fellow to come from Iran. Due to the Iranian regime’s tense relationship

with the United States, the country has “dominated” the project’s attention, according to its director, Adjunct Professor of Literary Arts Robert Coover. Though the project receives applications from all regions of the world, the Middle East has the highest concentration of applicants, Coover said. The previous fellow, Shahryar Mandanipour — who is continuing his fellowship this semester — and the 2004 fellow, Shahrnush Parsipur, are both Iranian. Ravanipour said Iran’s suppression of free expression has hindered its progress as a nation. “The gap between our country and the new world is huge,” she said. She hopes to use her time at the University to refresh herself. “In my mind, there are a lot of bad things, sad things,” she said. “I want to put in my mind happiness.” Ravanipour will be at Brown through the summer.

Departments and programs to move to Metcalf complex continued from page 1 ics will also be housed in Metcalf. The details of the department’s presence in Metcalf are not yet clear, but O’Neil said more mathematics professors may move into Metcalf over time in “increments that make sense.”

The relocation of the neuroscience department also cleared space in the Medical Research Lab, which connects Metcalf to Arnold Lab. “We would like the MRL to be assigned to nanoscientists,” O’Neil said, adding that a few are already moving into the lab. Administrators hope to use the space for professors who are from different departments but are doing interdisciplinary research relating to nanoscience and have overlapping research interests, she said. O’Neil said the Space Committee has yet to determine long-term plans for the Metcalf complex. “It might be that we look at this space for interdisciplinary science, as

we have for nano, or it might be that it’s more appropriate to move a department into this building,” she said. “What we don’t want to do is keep ﬁlling it up with odd people who just need space.” O’Neil and Michael McCormick, director of planning for Facilities Management, who also staffs the Space Committee, meet weekly to discuss space needs across campus. “We ﬁlter all of the space requests … and we are thinking strategically about what the needs are campus wide,” O’Neil said. Metcalf currently houses the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences. William Warren, professor of cognitive and

linguistic sciences and chair of the department, said the changes in the complex will not have a huge impact on his department. “The space that we’ve used hasn’t changed at all,” he said. According to Warren, the cognitive and linguistic sciences department has requested more space to accommodate additional faculty. “I hope sometime this spring that will get ﬁgured out,” he said. The Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences will eventually move into a new building at 154 Angell St., which O’Neil said is currently slated to open in 2010. For now, Warren said, “We’ll make some new friends.”

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Clinton proposes new GI bill WASHINGTON (Newsday) — Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a wide-ranging attack on the Bush administration’s treatment of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers Thursday, saying the White House was so inept it couldn’t run a “two-car parade.” Clinton, joining a chorus of politicians in all parties decrying conditions at the army’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center, called for a new GI bill of rights modeled on the broad array of beneﬁts offered to World War II veterans. Her proposal, which comes with no cost estimate, is aimed at improving health facilities, increasing physical and mental health screenings for soldiers, speeding up payments to the families of the dead and clarifying guardianship rules for orphaned children. “This administration is frankly unable to run a two-car parade,” the Democratic front-runner said during a speech at the Center for American Progress, a think tank founded by former Clinton White House ofﬁcials. Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt dismissed Clinton’s reform package as the “politically convenient calculation that Americans have come to expect from the senator,” adding,“someone should remind Hillary Clinton that President Bush isn’t on the ballot in 2008.” Clinton’s speech, heralded as a major address by her staff, came on a day when she backed Senate Democrats’ plan to mandate a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq within six months. The binding resolution is aimed at ending major operations there by March 2008.

‘Planet Killer’ not in the stars, research indicates WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — The risk that an asteroid capable of wiping out humanity will crash into Earth is minuscule, new calculations suggest, but the chances of a smaller one destroying a city or setting off a catastrophic tsunami remain unclear and may be higher than previous estimates. The calculations were presented at a four-day meeting in Washington this week, leading scores of scientists present to conclude that NASA needs to move aggressively to meet a congressional deadline for identifying most of the potentially hazardous smaller asteroids and to develop ways to deﬂect them if they home in on Earth. But in a report released to Congress Thursday, the space agency said it does not have the funds to do the precautionary work, called for in its 2005 authorization bill. The agency said it is technically feasible to meet the congressional goal of identifying most small “near Earth objects” by 2020, but it said it would have to rely on telescopes built for other purposes and on spacecraft being developed by other agencies. It did not address who would fund research on ways to destroy or divert an asteroid before it became a danger. “Due to current budget constraints, NASA cannot initiate a new program at this time,” said the report, obtained by Washington Post. The NASA document was immediately criticized by the chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn.

Firefighters take a slap at Giuliani (Newsday) — On the presidential campaign trail, Rudolph Giuliani leans heavily on his image as a hero of Sept. 11, but Thursday “America’s Mayor” got a sharp rebuff from a disgruntled constituency most non-New Yorkers probably think is in his corner — firefighters. After Giuliani pulled out of a planned appearance at an International Association of Firefighters presidential forum next week, the group released a stinging draft letter indicating that it almost didn’t invite him because of continuing anger at his “despicable” role in pulling firefighters off the Twin Towers’ debris pile in 2001 before all hope of finding their dead comrades’ remains was exhausted. “The disrespect that he exhibited to our 343 fallen FDNY brothers, their families, and our New York leadership in the wake of that tragic day has not been forgiven or forgotten,” said the three-page letter, drafted by union leaders in late February and first disclosed on Newsday’s Web site Thursday. The union eventually decided to invite Giuliani because the forum is supposed to be open to all candidates. But, said IAFF spokesman Jeff Zack, “To the extent firefighters know or learn about that story, the letter will absolutely represent the view of firefighters across this country.” A Giuliani aide Thursday said he pulled out of the March 14 forum on Wednesday because of a “scheduling conflict.” She refused to discuss the letter, but released a statement from Tim Brown, identified as a former New York firefighter and head of a group called Firefighters for Rudy, saying that “many first responders” back Giuliani. The IAFF backed Al Gore and John Kerry in the last two presidential elections, so loss of its backing isn’t a big deal for a Republican. But the dispute was a fresh reminder of the hidden political perils that may lurk for Giuliani in episodes of his stormy mayoralty that are unfamiliar to many Americans.

U.S. open to talking about Iraq with Iran, Syria BY KAREN DEYOUNG WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration opened the door Thursday to one-on-one discussions with both Iran and Syria at this weekend’s Baghdad conference, as long as the talks are limited to the subject of peace and stability in Iraq. “If a discussion emerges which is focused upon these goals in Iraq, they are discussions which, as diplomats, we will proceed with,” said David Satterfield, State Department coordinator for Iraq and senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “We are not going to turn and walk away.” Such talks would constitute the administration’s first bilateral meeting with Iranian government representatives in nearly four years. In May 2003, Washington ended a series of tentative exchanges amid charges that Iran had a role in suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon, under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, pressed hard for a policy of toppling the Tehran government. Satterfield made clear that the

United States has no interest in discussing in Baghdad Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. The last bilateral talks with Syria took place in January 2005, when then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visited Damascus. Armitage cited improvements in Syria’s efforts to stem the cross-border infiltration of militants into Iraq and expressed concern over Syrian support for terrorist groups. The United States withdrew its ambassador to Damascus the following month, charging Syrian involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The administration has charged both Iran and Syria with undermining peace in Iraq — and, in Iran’s case, with providing materiel and training to insurgents there. Satterfield declined to say whether the U.S. delegation — he and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad — would initiate talks outside the main conference, which is to be attended by representatives of Iraq’s Arab neighbors, Iran, Turkey, the United States and the other four permanent members of the U.N. Se-

curity Council. But he said there will be ample opportunity for bilateral conversations with Tehran and Damascus if warranted. Satterﬁeld did not specify how the contacts would take place. “I am not going to give you a blowby-blow of ‘Will we approach over orange juice or will we wait until lunch is served,”’ he told reporters Thursday. The conference Saturday is to be followed by talks among foreign ministers next month, with an expanded list of participants to include, among others, representatives of Japan and Canada. Rice has said that she will attend. The administration has been at pains to characterize the one-day Baghdad meeting — to be held in the Green Zone — as an event initiated and to be hosted by the Iraqi government. Satterﬁeld described it as a “preparatory meeting” for the later ministerial talks, and said that it will focus on “addressing, in a progressive fashion, Iraq’s needs, Iraq’s undertakings, how best the international community, the neighbors, the region can support Iraq as it moves forcontinued on page 8

Trading halted for 35 ﬁrms over e-mails BY CARRIE JOHNSON WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — Securities regulators Thursday halted trading in nearly three dozen companies — the initial salvo in “Operation Spamalot,” a campaign to block emails promoting stocks to unsuspecting investors. The crackdown against investment spam amounts to the biggest such action in the history of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Shareholders lost tens of millions of dollars in the past year by biting on fraudulent Internet offers to “ride the bull” or win “fast money” by buying thinly traded stocks, agency officials said. They continue to investigate whether the spam emanated from third-party stock promoters, corporate insiders or both. Some of the hyped messages found their way to the e-mail accounts of SEC enforcement lawyers as they spent weeks tracing the alleged scams and their origins. Authorities said the decision to halt trading at 35 penny-stock companies, including a California business that provides computer security services, is merely the first step in a systematic effort to root out the people who sent misleading stock promotions and others who profited from them. “When spam clogs our in-boxes, it’s annoying,” SEC Chairman Christopher Cox told reporters. “When it rips off investors, it’s illegal and destructive.” Americans face at least 100 million spam e-mails hyping stocks each week, and the number continues to rise steadily, said Oxford University law professor Jonathan Zittrain, who has researched the issue. The unsolicited messages work by encouraging people to invest in a stock, driving up the price and trading volume in the days following the solicitations, only to plummet after the culprits have sold their shares at a profit.

Pump-and-dump schemes date to Wall Street’s early days, but the Internet has transformed the dark, smoky boiler rooms filled with fraudsters making phone calls to unsuspecting investors into an easier, cheaper way to reach potential marks with the click of a button, said SEC enforcement chief Linda Chatman Thomsen. Publicly traded companies must tell the truth about their operations and have a reasonable basis for making positive statements, she added. One of the e-mails investigators released Thursday promoted the “huge news expected out on APPM, get in before the wire.” Trading volume on Dec. 18, 2006, the first weekday after the e-mail launch, rose nearly 140-fold, to 484,568 from 3,500 shares, and the stock price rose to 19 cents per share from 6 cents. Less than two weeks later, the stock of Apparel Manufacturing Associates, of Bloomfield, Conn., slid back to 10 cents per share. Stock trading in each of the companies, including CTR Investments & Consulting of Pasadena, Md., will be halted for at least 10 days, according to the terms of an emergency order that regulators sought Thursday. Authorities said that “questions have arisen regarding the adequacy and accuracy of press releases concerning the company’s operations,” according to the order. Jerry Janik, chief executive of CTR, said in a telephone interview that word of the stop in trading came as a surprise. The company, which sells such things as online visitor sign-in books, was the target of a vigorous e-mail spam campaign last year. Janik said he later issued a news release disavowing the messages and portraying the company as a victim of the spam attack. Janik disavowed any connection to the offending e-mails and said the trading shutdown was

already causing problems. “This is going to cause me some heartache. It raises eyebrows, which we don’t need,” he said. Mark Schonfeld, director of the SEC’s New York office, which launched the initiative, said that the potential damage to investors outweighed the inconvenience of the trading halt to companies that were targeted by spam. Each of the stocks at issue trades on the “pink sheets,” a stock quote service that is more lightly policed than the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq Stock Market. Pink sheet companies are not required to file financial reports with regulators, and brokers do not have to perform due diligence on them, unlike with other markets. To make their case, lawyers in the SEC’s New York office have since last fall tracked hundreds of spam messages and uncovered phony claims about patents, acquisitions and inflated assets. Bruce Karpati, an SEC assistant regional director, said he and other lawyers received electronic investment hype about Goldmark Industries, one of the companies whose trading was stopped Thursday, in their agency in-boxes. Officials selected the 35 companies because they were the subject of repeated spam initiatives or particularly egregious claims about their operations or financial performance. Schonfeld said regulators are trying to assess whether a ring of stock promoters might be responsible for multiple spam messages involving different companies and whether executives at some of the companies may have played a role in the hype. At least some of the spam originated outside the United States. Regulators thanked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Ontario Securities Commission, among other international authorities, for their help at the news conference.

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FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

Democrats outline Iraq withdrawal plans Many mothers nabbed in BY NOAM N. LEVEY AND RICHARD SIMON LOS ANGELES T IMES

WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders outlined plans Thursday to compel President Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq as soon as this summer, marking the first time the majority in Congress has called for a deadline to end the unpopular war. The proposals dramatically shift the debate on Capitol Hill from symbolic measures to concrete plans to bring troops home just two months after Democrats assumed power. “Our troops must be out,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., who has spent weeks trying to craft legislation to fulfill her party’s electoral mandate to end the war. Underscoring the challenges that confront Democrats with their latest legislative gambit, House and Senate leaders have drawn up different timetables and mechanisms for achieving a withdrawal. It also remains unclear whether Democratic leaders will be able to persuade all their members to back the efforts, with some worried about restricting military commanders and others convinced the war should end even sooner. White House officials responded Thursday with a promise that Bush would veto any legislation that constrains the war effort. “What we’re seeing here is an artificial, precipitous withdrawal from Iraq based on, unfortunately, politics in Washington, not on conditions on the ground in Baghdad,” Bush senior adviser Dan Bartlett said. Republican leaders meanwhile blasted the proposals as a dangerous attempt to micromanage the four-year-old war. For Democrats searching for an Iraq plan to help them regain the momentum that swept them into the majority in November, Thursday’s announcements seemed to provide at least a momentary jolt. “This is a major moment in the history of ending the Iraq war,” said Sen. Russell D. Feingold, D-Wis., a leading war critic who had faulted his colleagues earlier for not being aggressive enough. Senate Democrats, including Feingold, announced plans Thursday to push a binding resolution that would begin troop withdrawals no later than 120 days after the

resolution is approved and would set as a “goal” the withdrawal of all combat troops by the end of March 2008. In the House, Pelosi and senior lawmakers laid out a more complex timetable that would require the withdrawal of U.S. forces as soon as the end of this year, if the Iraqi government fails to meet key goals, such as disarming sectarian militias. House Democrats incorporated their plan in a spending bill that is essential to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both the House and Senate proposals would allow some U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for limited missions, such as training Iraqi armed forces and conducting anti-terrorism operations. By attaching a timetable to the supplemental war spending bill, House Democratic leaders appeared to be offering a substantial concession to the party’s staunchest war critics. Under the plan outlined Thursday, Bush would have to certify by July 1 that the Iraqi government is making progress on a series of benchmarks, including training its army and passing laws designed to reduce sectarian strife. If the president cannot do that, the administration would have to begin withdrawing troops immediately and conclude by the end of the year. If the president reports progress, he would face another deadline on Oct. 1. At that time, he would have to certify that the Iraqi government had met the benchmarks. If he cannot, U.S. forces would have to withdraw by March 2008. Even if all the benchmarks are met, U.S. forces would have to begin withdrawing by March 1, 2008, and ﬁnish by the end of August. The House Democratic plan also would put a series of requirements on the president to certify that military units deploying to Iraq are adequately rested, trained and equipped, a measure designed by Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., to slow the president’s “surge.” But in a nod to moderates, Murtha and House leaders agreed to allow the president to waive the requirements if he explains why he is doing so. In addition, the Democrats have proposed changes to the more than $100 billion supplemental war spending bill. They want to boost funding for

U.S. open to Iran, Syria talks continued from page 7 ward.” He said that Saturday’s session will begin with a statement by Iraq, to be followed by statements from the other participants taking turns. “We will make clear our own views in our own presentations during the multilateral session regarding the need for support ... for a secure, stable, peaceful, democratic Iraq from all of its neighbors, as well as the broader international community,” Satterﬁeld said. The administration, he said, views the conference in the context of what he said are the four pillars of President Bush’s new strategy for Iraq — security, political reconciliation, economic development and diplomacy. While noting that Iraq has taken some steps toward politi-

cal unification, Satterfield said its Shiite-dominated government needs to make more progress on de-Baathification legislation to bring more Sunnis into national life, as well as on a “meaningful amnesty” program to demobilize, disarm and reintegrate “all armed groups” in the country. A separate meeting of Iraq’s donor nations is scheduled for March 16 at the United Nations, although Satterfield said that he expects some discussion of outside economic aid in Baghdad. “Far too little has materialized from the commitments for both direct assistance and debt forgiveness with respect to Iraq,” he said. While attention in this country has focused on potential U.S. talks with Iran and Syria, other countries in the Middle East have their own concerns about the Baghdad conference.

veterans’ health care in the wake of news reports about deplorable outpatient housing and lengthy bureaucratic delays at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And they want to allocate more money for combat operations in Afghanistan, which Democrats argue should be the focus of U.S. efforts to combat global terrorism. Democratic leaders have not ﬁnished drafting the bill and many provisions remain vague. The plan nonetheless received cautious endorsements from several moderate Democrats, a group whose support is critical for it to pass. “We’re on the one-yard line right now,” said Rep. Patrick Murphy, DPa., a member of theBlue Dog coalition of moderate Democrats who served in Iraq with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division before being elected to Congress last year. The proposal generated less enthusiasm among hard-core antiwar lawmakers in the House, who lined up Thursday behind a proposal sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., to fully fund the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year. Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a leader of the more than 80-member Out of Iraq Caucus, said the group had a “lively” meeting with party leaders Thursday afternoon, but has not endorsed their proposal. “We’re not there yet,” she said. Senate Democrats appeared more uniﬁed behind the straightforward resolution sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who was joined Thursday by Feingold and Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., a centrist. Reid said he hoped to attract Republican support for the measure. “Truly changing course in Iraq will require Republican cooperation,” he said. As Democrats edged toward a high-stakes showdown that puts a military funding bill at the center of a debate over ending the war, there were few signs of Republican support. Republican leaders immediately promised to vote against any spending measure that dictates how the war is fought. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, “should be making decisions on the ground in Iraq and not Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha.”

immigration raid on factory

BY ERIKA HAYASAKI LOS ANGELES TIMES

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Before heading off to jobs stitching safety vests for U.S. soldiers, the mothers kissed their babies goodbye, leaving them at nurseries or with sitters. The factory employees — mostly women from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador thought to be in the United States illegally — had just started their workday earlier this week when immigration officials arrived. Tejada Tiodora, 37, sat at a sewing machine in the back, while Vilma Inestroza, 22, cleaned military backpacks nearby. Tiodora recalled hearing someone shout: “Turn off the machines. … Don’t run!” At first, she said in an interview, she thought it was a fire drill. Then she saw hundreds of workers running toward her — along with dozens of immigration officers with guns and barking dogs. The raid was the latest in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown on illegal workers nationwide. In all, 327 employees were detained for possible deportation. Company officials also were arrested. By Thursday, officials said, 60 of the workers had been released on humanitarian grounds. They included immigrants who were pregnant, had medical issues or did not have someone to care for their children. New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang called the factory a sweatshop, like “something out of a Dickens novel.” Richard Rocha, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Thursday that the raid on Michael Bianco Inc. was part of an investigation coordinated with social service, law enforcement and city government officials. “The people who were arrested as a result of this investigation have been criminally charged … for violating immigration laws,” he said. Tiodora, who had dropped her 1-year-old daughter off at day care the morning of the raid, was among those authorities let go, pending a hearing. Many who were not released were transferred to detainment centers in Texas and else-

where in the United States. The arrests of the undocumented workers in this community 50 miles south of Boston stranded about 140 children until someone could be found to take care of them, said Bethany Toure of the New Bedford Community Connections, which is helping the immigrants find legal and social services. A church was turned into a triage center Tuesday, as husbands showed up looking for wives, and children came looking for mothers. One baby was rushed to the hospital for dehydration after she refused to drink anything other than her mother’s breastmilk, Toure said. Residents delivered diapers, bottles, juice and formula to the church. “When a child today in New Bedford asks where his mother is, we don’t necessarily have the answer,” said Massachusetts state Sen. Jarrett Barrios, a Democrat. “And we can’t say that we will have the answer tomorrow, or next week, or next month, because the federal government has chosen to send some of these mothers to another state. … We don’t know when they will be reunited with their children.” Harry Spence, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, said two teenagers were missing Thursday night. The other children had been accounted for. Social workers were able to locate relatives of one 7year-old girl who called a hot line Tuesday night saying she could not find her mother. “We met the children and made sure they had a safe place to go,” Spence said. “But for the long-term arrangements, we don’t know.” Tiodora said she spent seven hours on the factory floor during the raid — her hands tied behind her back and her feet bound in front of her with plastic cuffs — as officers rounded up illegal workers. All the while she worried about her baby and a 16-year-old daughter she left behind. She said she was not allowed to drink water, make phone calls or go to the bathroom. Outside, she said, a helicopter hovered above the factory and boats searched a nearby lake, looking for undocumented workers who had escaped.

In S.C., inmates would trade organs for time BY JENNY JARVIE LOS ANGELES T IMES

ATLANTA — Prison inmates in South Carolina could get up to six months shaved off their sentences if they donated a kidney or their bone marrow, under a proposed bill before the state Senate. “We have a lot of people dying as they wait for organs, so I thought about the prison population,” said state Sen. Ralph Anderson, the bill’s main sponsor. “I believe we have to do something to motivate them. If they get some good time off, if they get out early, that’s motivation.” The proposal was approved Thursday by the Senate Corrections and Penology Subcommittee. But it is almost certain to prompt ﬁerce opposition from legal experts and prisoner rights advocates about whether inmates are able to make such a decision freely

and without coercion. “For a prisoner to actually have a beneﬁt for giving up an organ violates every ethical value I’m aware of,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and chairman of the Institute of Medicine’s committee on human subject research in prisoners. “It’s grossly unethical, if not unlawful,” he said. The institute is part of the National Academy of Sciences. Legislators said they would not debate the measure until they established whether exchanging prison time for body parts violates federal law. Under current law, it is illegal to exchange an organ for “valuable consideration.” Lawmakers are attempting to determine whether a reduced sentence constitutes a consideration. “Getting out of prison early is more valuable than money,” Gostin said. “That’s your freedom.”

Even without the incentive of reduced prison time, Gostin said, the proposal would be unethical because prisoners have little autonomy and live in highly coercive environments. Federal law, for example, prohibits inmates from entering clinical trials of drugs under development even if they have cancer or AIDS, because their conﬁnement could cause them to make a decision they might not otherwise make. Anderson said his organ donation program would impose comprehensive oversight. “We would check that this was voluntary and they had all the information,” he said. “It would not be forced upon them.” According to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, more than 95,300 Americans are awaiting an organ transplant, and about 6,700 die every year before an appropriate organ is found.

FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

6,000 protesters await Bush with shouts, marches in trip to Brazil BY PATRICK J. MCDONNELL AND MAURA REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES T IMES

SAO PAULO, Brazil — As President Bush flew here aboard Air Force One on Thursday, thousands of protesters shouting, “Out Bush!” marched down this city’s main drag, Avenida Paulista. Hundreds of riot police flanked at least 6,000 protesters near the city financial center, and the scent of tear gas hovered along the march route. At least three protesters and a news photographer were reported hurt as baton-wielding police and protesters clashed, but there was no immediate word on their condition. Authorities later said that 16 police officers suffered minor injuries. “We don’t want Bush here,” shouted Marcelo Prado, 19, echoing a common sentiment. “Tell him to go home!” Bush arrived here Thursday to begin a five-country Latin American visit designed to bolster U.S. standing in the region and counter the growing influence of Venezue-

lan President Hugo Chavez. The trip is the president’s longest to date in Latin America, a region many Bush critics say has been largely ignored as the White House focused on Iraq and the Middle East. In Brazil, Latin America’s largest and most populous nation, Bush and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are expected to unveil a new commercial partnership centering on ethanol, a plant-based gasoline substitute produced that Bush is championing as a future alternative to fossil fuels. But in their pre-arrival protest, many here Thursday hoisted banners likening Bush to Adolf Hitler and warning Bush to keep his “hands off” Venezuela, while also decrying any U.S.-Brazilian bio-fuels pact as a plot by Washington to grab Brazilian resources. “For Bush this is a matter of getting cheaper fuel and getting out of the mess in the Middle East,” said Cristiana Coimbra, 35, a translator who wore a sticker featuring Bush with a swastika. The protest march, which in-

cluded representatives of environmental, student and labor groups, broke up before Bush’s plane touched down. Brazilian police also were deployed in force to clear the route that Bush was scheduled to take from the airport to his hotel near downtown. Reports here indicated that as many as 4,000 law-enforcement officers were participating in one of the largest security operations in recent memory. Anti-Bush rallies seem likely to follow Bush on his Latin America tour. On his last visit to the continent, in 2005, Bush never witnessed the massive demonstrations criticizing his presence at a hemispheric economic summit in Argentina. Bush and first lady Laura Bush have planned a busy agenda for Friday, meeting with Brazilian President Lula and with a variety of community representatives. Lula, standard-bearer of the leftist Workers Party, has veered to the center since first being elected in 2002 and is now regarded as a firm U.S. ally committed to ortho-

Muldoon ’10 makes presence felt from the start continued from page 12 It was great. I played lacrosse at St. Albans. … It was one of the best leagues in the nation, with Georgetown Prep and Landon. Landon was the best team in the country in the 1990s but Georgetown Prep took over the top spot around 2003. Did you ever defeat either of those teams? In my four years of lacrosse, we never beat either of those teams at the varsity level. We lost against Landon four years in a row, each time by one goal. In the semifinals of the league tournament, we lost by one in overtime and the other two years we lost by one in the final minutes of the game. What was the toughest part about transitioning to Brown? Figuring out the classes was difficult. You have to learn the whole style of college to fully transition.

You learn what you need to do to succeed. Sometimes, that means I don’t have to do everything one night but I have to make up for it another night. You have to work with your schedule and it becomes a lot more ﬂexible. You really need to manage your time. Does the Duke program come up a lot? It did a lot in the beginning. It’s really sad for the sport. Lacrosse is a small sport, especially when I was growing up. If you see a guy wearing a basketball shirt, he may not be playing basketball, but if you see a lacrosse shirt, you know he plays lacrosse. We’re a tight knit group. The Duke players made some poor decisions and I don’t like to see people get hurt, but it’s also sad that there is a stigma about lacrosse players. Have you traveled anywhere recently? I went to Europe this past summer. I actually saw Sweden play

England in (Cologne) when Joe Cole scored from outside the box. He volleyed it and hit the top right corner of the net. It was an amazing game, even though it ended in a 11 tie. What did you think of Beckham? It was just cool seeing him and knowing he was there. I don’t remember him doing much in that game. Do you follow professional lacrosse? I’m not an avid fan, but I like watching the games. Its fun seeing players you’ve been watching since fourth grade playing together on the same team. Do you think the professional lacrosse league has potential to be popular in the mainstream media? I hope so. It’s a summer league so it does compete with baseball. I think it would be great to play in the league if I could one day.

W. and m. fencers ﬁnish 5th and 9th at IFA championships continued from page 12 spectable ninth place. “The results speak for themselves,” Tass said. “After doing so well in the IFA, it has been a very good season. It is one of the best that Brown has ever had.” Hausmann won the Cointe Award, named after a former Cornell coach, a year after teammate and current tri-captain Christine Livoti ’08 was nominated for it. Candidates are nominated by their fellow fencers and then coaches elect the winner. “It was really nice to win that award,” Hausmann said. “I have always really liked that award personally at the IFAs. In the past I have been very close with the other fencers who have gotten this award. Last year my teammate Christine Livoti was nominated for it as well. So it means a lot for me to be awarded that.” Tass said he felt that Hausmann deserved the award. “That tells a lot about the character and principles of Brown fencers,” he added. Pagliaccio, an epee fencer, advanced out of his qualifying brack-

et to reach the 16-fencer epee finals. He advanced to the semifinals before losing to Harvard’s Teddy Sherrill, the eventual champion, and then fell in the third-place match. “A highlight of the day was when David Pagliaccio made top four in the men’s epee event,” said tri-captain Dan Mahoney ’07. “It was a very strong field, so that was just tremendous.” No other men made the final 16 in their respective weapons, but four women qualified. Randy Alevi ’10 finished fi fth with the saber, reaching the quarterfinals. Joining her in the round of 16 was fellow saber fencer Charlotte Gartenberg ’08. Foilist Kirsten Lynch ’10 and epeeist Livoti also qualified for the round of 16. The women’s saber squad of Alevi, Gartenberg and Charlotte Rose ’09, who narrowly missed qualifying for the field of 16, posted a fourth-place finish, the best result of the Bears’ six squads. “I am really happy with the way the team fenced and our final placement,” Hausmann said. “I think it speaks to how much effort we’ve been putting into our practice and

how well we’ve been fencing over the season.” The Bears now turn their attention to the NCAA Regionals, coming up on Sunday. For the second year in a row, Brown has qualiﬁed a full team of three fencers per weapon. Last year, several fencers came close to qualifying for Nationals, but only Ruth Schneider ’06 made the cut. Tass said he hopes that more of his fencers will advance this year. “This competition is going to be very, very tough,” Tass said. “I am hoping to get out a number of people. I think we will have two or three women and about the same on the men’s side. If we do that, it will be awesome.” Hausmann said she sees qualifying a full team for Regionals as a sign of progress. “That is something I’m very proud of,” she said. “We usually send a large number of people to Regionals. It just really speaks to how strong our team is and how every year we are getting stronger members, improving the members we have and just really coming together as a solid fencing team.”

dox economic policies. The two presidents are scheduled to deliver a joint statement on bio-fuels technology at a facility of Petrobras, the state-run energy firm. No concrete pact on bio-fuels is expected during the visit, but a final deal may be hammered out during Lula’s planned visit to Camp David, Md., later in March. What the deal will involve remains unclear, but some have spoken of a joint arrangement to market ethanol elsewhere in Latin America. The Brazilian government has called for the repeal of tariffs that have hindered imports of ethanol to the United States. But U.S. and Brazilian officials say the tariffs are unlikely to be eliminated. While the White House has denied trying to counter the oil-funded diplomacy of arch-enemy Hugo Chavez, Latin American experts almost uniformly see the Bush trip as an effort to neutralize the Venezuelan president, who has rushed to fill the void left by Washington’s focus on the Middle East. Chavez has provided billions in cheap gasoline, medical care and other aid to allied

nations, while also reaching out to U.S. enemies in Iran and elsewhere, alarming the White House.. “This visit is part of a strategic project to topple Chavez,” said Bernardo Kucinsky, a former press advisor for Lula. Bush is scheduled to fly late Friday to neighboring Uruguay, where he is to meet with President Tabare Vasquez, another left-wing leader. A major part of Bush’s agenda, officials say, is to demonstrate that the White House can work with Latin American elected leaders of all political stripes — except for Chavez. Washington and Uruguay are also discussing a trade deal. From Uruguay, Bush is due to head to Colombia, the continent’s leading recipient of U.S. aid, much of it designed to counter narcotics trafficking in the nation that is the principal source of U.S.-bound cocaine. Conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is a staunch Bush supporter, but Uribe’s government lately has come under fire for alleged links to right-wing paramilitary groups as a leftist insurgency still rages in the countryside.

Three wrestlers make All-Ivy continued from page 12 league defensemen with eight goals in Ivy play. He now has 19 goals on his career, the eighth highest all-time for a Brown defenseman. It is Hurley’s first appearance on the All-Ivy team. Rosen finished the year with a .920 save percentage, first in the Ivies and fi fth all-time for Brown. He also recorded a 2.75 goals-against average, which was good enough for sixth all-time in school history. For an eightweek stretch, Rosen had the top goals-against average and save percentage in the country. — Peter Cipparone W. hockey’s Moore and Stock honored The six head coaches in the women’s hockey league voted Nicole Stock ’09 and Hayley Moore ’08 All-Ivy Honorable Mention on Wednesday. Moore is the eighth-leading scorer in the league, while Stock was the Bear’s top goaltender. Moore logged 20 goals scored 36 points over the course of 29 games this season. The Nov. 5 game against Quinnipiac was one of Moore’s biggest, and she recorded her first career hat trick. She was tops on the team in power-play goals with eight, scored three game-winning goals and was tied for the team lead in shorthanded goals, unassisted goals and plus/minus. Moore ranked 22nd in the country with 1.24 points per game and 15th with .69 goals per game. She now ranks 17th on Brown’s all-time leading scorer list with 105 points. Stock had three shutouts for the Bears this season, and two of those earned her ECACHL Goaltender of the Week honors. She started in 20

games, including the last nine of the season, and finished with a record of 9-9-2. Her goals against average was 2.82, and she had a save percentage of .910. January saw her biggest week of the season, when she played in three games, making 56 saves and allowing only one goal over the course of 137:24. — Sarah Demers Wrestlers claw onto All-Ivy squads On Thursday, wrestling cocaptain Levon Mock ’08 was named Second Team All-Ivy, and Shawn Kitchner ’07 and Mark Savino ’08 earned All-Ivy Honorable Mention status. Mock earned his honor by finishing 20-12 overall in the heavyweight class. In conference play, Mock went 3-1, losing only to Cornell’s Zach Hammond, who was named to the All-Ivy First Team. In his three league victories, Mock had two major decisions and one pin. Mock is a twotime conference honoree, landing on the All-Ivy Second Team for the second year in a row. Kitchner missed every Ivy League contest but was still honored for his strong non-conference results. Wrestling at 165 all year, he finished second at the Brockport-Oklahoma Gold in November, but was injured at the Lone Star Duals on Jan. 7. He returned from injury this past weekend to take fourth in the EIWA Championships and earn a bid to the NCAA tournament. Savino piled up 16 wins on the season and finished the year with a 3-2 Ivy League record. Hi season highlights included placing fi fth at the Brockport-Oklahoma Gold and taking fi fth in the EIWA championships. — Peter Cipparone

www.browndailyherald.com

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 10

FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

Diamonds and coal A diamond to the new dorm chair tested last week by ResLife. It’s shiny, expensive, marginally useful, unnecessarily complicated, mostly around for its wow factor and missing some essential elements — just like a Brown education. Coal to special nights at the Ratty. Karaoke and red velvet cake are novel, but salmon pizza and uncomfortably loud music should be banned. When will the Ratty gods realize that all we really want is chicken ﬁngers and macaroni and cheese — all day, every day? A diamynd to the Watermyn co-op. We support your noble pursuit of close-knit community, but we wonder what drawing an “older crowd” means when only four Brown students make the cut in a house of 12. A cubic zirconium to the Department of Modern Culture and Media’s “Battlestar Galactica” panel, which featured comments from the President of Space on the blurred line between fact and ﬁction. Ah, MCM — blurring the line between academic and ridiculous, one panel presentation at a time. ROXANNE PALMER

A diamond to Recyclemania for giving Brown students yet another reason to dismiss college rankings. We’re above all that … unless we’re on top. A diamond to the opening of Rhode Island’s own Chipotle. Not only will it put the Ivy Room burrito bar to shame, but if student opinion can be trusted, we’re going to be able to eat a Chipotle burrito and not need to eat again for four days. Now that’s a meal plan. Coal to the Brown Noser. We commend you for reaching Category III status despite turning a proﬁt last semester thanks to your grandma’s ads. But if you’re going to write moderately amusing articles about University life, you should know that the provost is David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98, not University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer. As freshmen who arrived after Zimmer left for the Windy City, how did you even get that wrong? A diamond to the brave souls who participated in ResLife’s speed-dating-cum-Russian roulette roommate social Wednesday night. Don’t worry — the warm embrace of a Keeney triple probably awaits you and your newfound friends next year.

LETTERS J-term doesn’t need credit to have meaning To the Editor: A recent Herald editorial (“J-term’s identity crisis,” March 7) refers to the January@Brown pilot program as “not an utter failure” and a “lackluster winter session.” While I agree with The Herald that academic credit would strengthen January@Brown, I believe the overall tone of yesterday’s editorial conveys a complete misunderstanding of the reasons why students would choose to participate in a January term. Even though students who completed this year’s pilot program didn’t receive academic credit, they still took part in meaningful academic exchanges with professors and social exchanges with friends. The Herald’s odd description of the January@Brown planning committee’s charge as a choice between a “snowy, homework-ﬁlled vacation” or “rigorous work for a

grade” conﬂates varied academic experiences into either one of two groups: valid (with credit) or useless (without credit). These types of generalizations do little to further discussion among Brown students of what an ideal J-term could offer. As any Brown student could tell you, letter grades — or in this case, credit — do not necessarily validate an academic experience. It is unfortunate that a newspaper representing the Brown community seems to have forgotten this very important principle. Tristan Freeman ’07 Vice President Undergraduate Council of Students March 7

Forget J-term — extend summer break T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Editors-in-Chief Eric Beck Mary-Catherine Lader

Executive Editors Allison Kwong Ben Leubsdorf

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

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

To the Editor:

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

The recently-held January@Brown seems to have been getting a lot of attention, but silly arguments have been made on both sides. For-credit, not-forcredit … who cares? What we need to accept is that our winter break is too short for a solid J-term. That said, our winter break is also too short to get a job or internship or do much anything useful. On the other hand, we also need to accept that our winter break is too long. At least in my case, all my friends at home are back in school two to three weeks before I am, leaving me bored out of my mind. We shouldn’t be arguing over details of the J-term;

instead, we should accept its futility, and winter break should be shortened by two or three weeks so we can get out in early May. It’s win-win: no endless periods of winter sitting at home doing nothing, and far more time to go home and earn money or complete longer internships, and maybe even squeeze in a summer class or two for credit. It also goes without saying: free time is much better spent over the summer than in the winter. Kevin Neal ‘09 March 8

POST- MAGAZINE Hillary Dixler Melanie Duch Taryn Martinez Rajiv Jayadevan Mindy Smith

Managing Editor Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor

Brianna Barzola, Steve DeLucia, Designer Jacob Frank, Chris Gang, Ezra Miller, 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, Marielle Segarra, Robin Steele, Allissa Wickham Sports Staff Writers Amy Ehrhart, Kaitlyn Laabs, Eliza Lane, Kathleen Loughlin, Megan McCahill, Marco Santini, Tom Trudeau, Steele West Business Staff Dana Feuchtbaum, Kent Holland, Alexander Hughes, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Viseth San, Kaustubh Shah, Jon Spector, Robert Stefani, Lily Tran, Lindsay Walls 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

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. ADVER TISING POLICY The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

O PINIONS FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 11

Free will v. determination Choose to read this column! When Herald Opinions Editor Michal Zapendowski ’07 first told me of his plan to write a column arguing against the existence of free will — and his desire to run the piece as a “point-counterpoint” segment — I praised him for using his position as an opinions editor to undertake a bold endeavor in journalism, breaking new ground for what may constitute acceptable dialogue on the opinions page of a college daily. He clearly appreciated my compliment, but ironically, he shouldn’t have if he truly believes in his own argument. If determinism — the belief that human beings have no free will — is true, then the notion of giving someone credit (or taking credit) for a novel idea is fundamentally illogical. The concept of assigning praise or blame to a choice an individual makes is just plain silly if that individual could not have chosen otherwise. That being said, I do not retract my praise for Michal’s efforts here because — to borrow from Harr y Truman a little — I’m right, he’s wrong, and I’m going to prove it to you! Arguments for determinism are made in different ways. One type of determinism is the so-called “compatibilist” view, which says that free will and determinism can actually co-exist. This sounds counterintuitive but can be better clarified by means of an example. Let us take your decision of whether to read this column. A compatibilist would say that whatever choice you make has been predetermined from the beginning of time, but your choice is free in the sense that nothing or no one is forcing you to make that choice. Compatibilists do not believe that both choices (to read and not to read) would be compatible with the complete state of the universe as it exists at the moment in time when you make your decision. Rather, compatibilists would say that if you had desired not to read it, you would not have read it, but the simple fact of the matter is that you did desire to read it. Hence, you find yourself reading it now. The other form of determinism is an “incompatibilist” view, which rejects free will outright. Under this view, ever y event in the universe has both an underlying cause and a subsequent effect, and our actions are no different from any other event — all events can theoretically be explained by following the chain of cause and effect back to “the Big Bang” and the dawn of the universe as we know it. Hence, ever ything we have done in the past and will do in the future has been and always will be an inevitable consequence of “the Big Bang”. The arguments that seriously call determinism, in both of its forms, into question come, perhaps surprisingly, from science. Work by 20th-centur y physicists in quantum theor y revealed that quantum mechanics predicts events only in terms of probabilities. If the larger universe is governed by indeterministic laws — as it is on the quantum level — then determinism is indeed false. But while the truth of this proposition would destroy determinism, it would not necessarily promote free will either — if our actions were the result of nothing more than quantum randomness, free will would still remain absent. But there are reasons to doubt the truth of that conclusion as well. First, there are some physicists, mathematicians and philosophers who recognize that the laws of cause and effect are obeyed in many other areas of science, and they hypothesize that a level of quantum indeterminism in the brain (with an other wise deterministic universe at the macroscopic scale) may in fact be strong

evidence for the existence of free will. The second reason to doubt that “it’s all just random” (even if some girl who lives down the hall from you has a Facebook photo album with this highly original title) is the positive case for free will. Literally, speaking, the best justiﬁcation for free will is actually our innate sense of its absolute truth, and the fundamentally irreplaceable role it plays in almost all human emotions and modes of conceptual human thought. It is doubtful that anyone (save perhaps a few bizarre people) could ever eliminate it totally from their lives. Appeals to our intuition are almost invariably bad arguments, and if we established as a society that such an appeal was a valid argumentative technique, we could never have discussions or debates at all, because no one’s opinions could ever be wrong. So if we say that it’s unacceptable to justify one’s beliefs by pure intuition, why can I (or anyone) appeal to it when arguing for free will? The answer is clear — but you’ll have to read this next sentence ver y carefully. In order for any argument (we’ll call

I had no choice but to write this column We have no free will. We ourselves have control over our own actions, of course. Even if someone has a gun to your head you can still clearly “choose” not to do what they say. Determinism, the belief that there is no free will, states not that you lack control over what you do – merely that you can only ever “choose” to do one thing. You are following a predetermined set of choices, each of them leading you to another set of choices whose outcome is also predetermined. You are living your life along a linear trajectory, approaching your irrevocable destiny. Like the protagonist of George Orwell’s “1984,” there is nothing you can do to escape this prison – because even your efforts at defiance are under the control of the forces that be. Believing in determinism does not imply that we could predict anyone’s actions, or even that they could be predictable. With today’s technology and expertise, we cannot foresee an individual’s decisions unless they are in an artificially simple environment. Whether we will ever be able to predict such things is uncertain and largely irrelevant — we are able to disprove free will through our observation of other natural phenomena. This is because from a scientific stand-

DON TRELLA OPINIONS COLUMNIST

POINT COUNTERPOINT MICHAL ZAPENDOWSKI OPINIONS COLUMNIST

it argument X) to have force, the plausibility of argument X’s premises must be greater than the plausibility of the premises in any other argument that would deny argument X’s conclusion. There is no philosophical premise to start from that will ever be more powerful than the statement, “I have free will,” and philosophy can never be more than the sum of human wisdom that builds from certain basic premises whose truth it seems almost impossible to deny. Determinism amounts to pure skepticism and is no more reasonable than statements like, “Maybe the external world does not exist.” In fact, it may even be less reasonable, since the scientiﬁc evidence undermines determinism, and philosophy bolsters the case for free will. I’m proud to defend free will, I’m proud to defend the idea that our lives have meaning and as a result, I think we all should have something to say in our search for what’s right and wrong.

Don Trella ’08 would like to thank PL12 and “Free Willy.”

point, the argument over free will essentially boils down to whether or not you believe in universal physical laws. If there are laws (such as gravity) that apply universally and explain all natural phenomena, then free will cannot exist — because we can no more “choose” to go against our destiny than a rock could “choose” not to roll down a hill. The brain is where decisions get made, and the proteins, electric currents and neurons that make up our brain are all governed by these universal laws. Through sheer force of will, we cannot make an electric current in our brain ﬂow backwards. What about quantum physics, which postulates that the behavior of sub-atomic particles is truly “random?” Even if this is the case, utter randomness does not imply any sort of rational “free will.” And since the brain’s decisions are reactions to outside phenomena which are themselves governed by universal laws, life is like a pinball machine, a series of collisions whose outcome is predetermined. All of these notions, however, are still only scientiﬁc facts. Many proponents of free will take a more spiritual view, asserting that there is a human soul that does not bend to physical laws. However, Western religion

provides no refuge. For all of the monotheistic faiths — Christianity, Islam and Judaism — deny the existence of free will. All monotheistic faiths believe in an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (allknowing) deity. Even though it seems like the lesser of the two powers, omniscience is actually the more significant in terms of theological arguments over free will. For if God knows everything, clearly he must know our future actions, therefore clearly our choices have already been made — even if only in God’s mind. For Christians, this principle is clearly illustrated in several sections of the Bible. In the Gospels, Jesus informs all of the Apostles of Judas’ coming betrayal. He even tells Judas himself (John 13:21-28), even though the betrayal has not yet taken place. The apostles arrogantly ignore Jesus’ pronouncement because, like many of us, they don’t understand how future actions could be predetermined. Interestingly, the Bible explicitly endorses determinism, stating that “the devil had already induced Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, to hand [Jesus] over” (John 13:2). The Gospel doesn’t merely say that the devil had entered Judas’ heart, which would imply that he could have resisted temptation through “free will.” It says the Devil had already induced Judas. In other words, the evil in Judas was simply greater than the good. Jesus knew of the coming betrayal, and perhaps Judas himself did not – but it was already there, inside of him. Judas, as a sinner undeserving of God’s mercy, personifies us all from a religious standpoint. This Biblical lesson is mirrored by similar parables in the Old Testament (the Torah) and the Quran. It is also mirrored by the findings of science. In the 1980s, a neuroscientist named Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment in which he asked subjects to flick their wrist at a “random” moment, while he measured their brain activity. Libet’s experiment revealed that choices take place on a subconscious level before they become conscious decisions. In other words, Libet saw the intention to flick the wrist in people’s minds before they themselves were consciously aware of the fact that they had made the decision. The implications of this experiment are tremendous. The subjects proved incapable of behaving unpredictably — Libet was able to tell what they were going to do before they themselves knew. All of us are having our decisions fed to us by our subconscious minds, before we consciously “make” them. While we think we are “weighing the choices,” the choice has, in fact, already been made by our minds. There is a famous maxim: “The side that wins is the one that succeeds in framing the debate.” In a sense, when we make our decisions, our minds have already framed the debate for us. The outcome is predetermined. Whether you believe in scientific universal laws or an omniscient, omnipotent God, it really makes no difference, because nothing is free from his or their will. Is it not the essence of religion, of Islam, to accept that we are mere mortals carrying out the will of God? Does it not demonstrate a healthy submission to the laws of science to acknowledge that they govern us as well, not just the phenomena we observe? This does not mean that we shouldn’t still go through the motions of making choices, or even that they are not, for all intents and purposes, unpredictable. What it does mean is that we are all taking part in a great universal narrative. Where it goes, nobody knows. All we know is: It has been written. Michal Zapendowski ’07 is a pantheistic existentialist.

S PORTS W EEKEND FRIDAY, MARCH CH 9, 2007

PAGE 12

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

W. and m. fencers ﬁnish 5th and 9th at IFA Championships

Muldoon ’10 makes presence felt from the start BY MARCO SANTINI

STAFF WRITER

BY ANDREW BRACA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Just two games into his Brown lacrosse career, Thomas Muldoon ’10 is already one of the leading attackmen for the men’s lacrosse team. He recorded a hat trick last weekend against Hofstra University, including the game-winning goal in the team’s 7–6 victory. For his inspired play, Muldoon was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week. The High School All-American and second all-time leading scorer in St. Albans School history reﬂected on his ﬁrst-year success.

ATHLETE OF THE WEEK The Herald: How did it feel to get a hat trick in your second career game at Brown against Hofstra, including the game winner? Muldoon: It was a lot of fun beating the 14th-ranked team in the nation. It was a great team effort and we played well. It also was great to get our coach’s first win as a Brown Bears coach. What was your off-season schedule like? During the off-season, the Ivy League is only allowed 12 official practices with our coaches. All of the other leagues can have unlimited practices. Does that put your team at a disadvantage in non-conference play? It sets us back a little bit, but it just makes you work harder. We are allowed to have an unlimited number of skill sessions with six man groups during the off-season. Are you excited to play Providence College this weekend? I’m always looking forward to the next game. I love playing out-ofconference teams because it shows us what we can do on a national scale, but I especially want to beat Providence because my dad went there. However, I hear you’ve never played a game until you play in an Ivy League game. When did you start playing lacrosse? My dad talked to a Madison high school coach when I was going into third grade. They practice next to my house and my dad asked where I could start playing. The coach, Chad McRae, actually had a summer camp that I attended the summer going into third grade. But I had a fiddle stick when I was two years old. How was your high school lacrosse experience? continued on page 9

O R T S

BASEBALL: at South Carolina SKIING: at USCSA Championships (Winter Park, Colo.) M. TENNIS: vs. Rhode Island, Varsity Tennis Courts, 3 p.m.; vs. Lafayette, Varsity Tennis Courts, 7 p.m.

SATURDAY, ATURDAY MAR. 10 ATURDAY,

Patriots hire O’Brien ’92 BY ZACHARY CHAPMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Former Brown football player and coach Bill O’Brien ’92 has been hired as an offensive assistant coach by the New England Patriots. O’Brien played linebacker and defensive end for the Bears before embarking on a coaching career that has spanned 14 years and multiple coaching positions in the Atlantic Coast Conference. O’Brien developed a solid record during 12 years of coaching in the ACC. He has four years of experience as an offensive coordinator and has coached in three bowl games. Although O’Brien played defense during his collegiate career, his coaching experience has consisted mainly of roles on the offensive side of the ball. Following his graduation from Brown, O’Brien latched on as a graduate assistant tight ends coach under former Brown Head Coach Mark Whipple ’79. Whipple also served as quarterbacks coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 2004 to 2007. After two seasons at Brown, O’Brien was hired by Georgia Tech, where he coached for eight seasons and served as recruiting coordinator, running backs coach and offensive coordinator. The Yellow Jackets played in a bowl game during each of his two years as offensive coordinator. In his ﬁnal year with the team, Georgia Tech led the ACC in passing and was third in the league in scoring. In 2001, O’Brien landed a spot as the University of Notre

SCH

FRIDAY, DAY MAR. 9 DAY,

BASEBALL: at South Carolina EQUESTRIAN: at Connecticut College M. LACROSSE: at Providence

Jacob Melrose / Herald David Pagliaccio ’10 ﬁnished fourth in men’s individual epee at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships last Saturday. Pagliaccio reached the tournament semiﬁnals before bowing out to the eventual winner.

E D U L E

W. LACROSSE: at Maryland SOFTBALL: at Youngstown State; at Morgan State W. TENNIS: vs. Rhode Island, Varsity Tennis Courts, 11 a.m.

SUNDAY, DAY MAR. 11 DAY, BASEBALL: at South Carolina SOFTBALL: at Youngstown State; at George Mason W. TENNIS: vs. West Virginia, Varsity Tennis Courts, 11 a.m GYMNASTICS: vs. Southern Connecticut, Pizzitola Center, 1 p.m.

Dame’s offensive coordinator when George O’Leary, then the head coach of Georgia Tech, was hired to coach the Irish. O’Leary was fired five days later, though, when it was discovered that he had falsified numerous items on his resume. Notre Dame jettisoned all of O’Leary’s staff, making O’Brien’s stay at one of college football’s most prestigious jobs painfully short. O’Brien was not out of a job for long. He was quickly picked up by the University of Maryland, where he coached for two years as a running backs coach. Following his time at Maryland, O’Brien became the offensive coordinator at Duke University, where he coached for two seasons before accepting the Patriots offer this February. O’Brien was unavailable for comment, as Patriots policy bars assistant coaches from speaking with the media. Brown football Head Coach Phil Estes, who said he developed a close relationship with O’Brien when the two coached together at Brown, told The Herald he spoke with O’Brien recently. Estes said O’Brien is enthusiastic about his opportunity to work with the Patriots organization. According to Estes, O’Brien has received a number of interviews in the past with NFL teams and has always wanted to coach in the NFL. Estes said he is happy for his close friend. “Billy is just an unbelievable person. He’s one of those guys you instantly like when you meet them,” he said. “He has a great personality and great sense of the x’s and o’s of the game.” The move to New England represents a homecoming of sorts for O’Brien, an Andover, Mass. native. Estes said it should be an exciting experience for O’Brien to coach so close to home. “Obviously it will be a tremendous opportunity for him to be coaching with someone like (Patriot’s Head Coach Bill) Belichick,” Estes said. “Clearly they liked what he had to offer their organization.”

Led by several strong individual performances, the men’s and women’s fencing teams finished their regular season Saturday with a combined seventh-place finish out of the 12 teams competing at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships. David Pagliaccio ’10 finished fourth in the men’s epee event to secure the Bears’ best individual result of the day, and tri-captain Jennifer Hausmann ’07 was named co-winner of the Georges L. Cointe Award for sportsmanship and skill. Head Coach Atilio Tass said the women’s fi fth-place finish was the Bears’ best result ever at the IFA. The men’s team came in at a recontinued on page 9

Two m. basketball players make All-Ivy Men’s basketball players Mark McAndrew ’08 and Damon Huffman ’08 have both been selected to the All-Ivy League team for their performances this season. McAndrew was selected First Team All-Ivy, and Huffman was named an honorable mention AllIvy selection. McAndrew finished his impressive breakout season as the top scorer in the league, with 18.6 points per game. Last season, the guard from Barrington averaged only 1.2 points per game. He also ranked third in the Ancient Eight in free throw percentage at .848 and fi fth in both three-point field goal percentage at .442 and threepoint field goals, averaging 2.48 treys per game. This season, McAndrew’s three-point shooting was particularly impressive, amassing 72 treys, ranking him second all-time at Brown. For his incredible improvement, McAndrew has been nominated for the most improved player in the nation. Huffman’s contributions were also impressive — notably that his average 14.7 points per game ranked him seventh in the league. After suffering a serious injury during Brown’s season opener against Michigan State, Huffman returned in December and picked up where he left off. He finished the season ranked second in the league in three-point field goals per game at 2.83 and was also third in three-point field goal percentage at .455 and fourth in freethrow percentage at .843. As a freshman, Huffman was honored as Ivy League Rookie of the Year. —M Madeleine Marecki M. icers earn all-conference 1st and 2nd team recognitions In recognition of their stellar play this season, Jeff Prough ’08 and Sean Hurley ’08 made the men’s hockey All-Ivy First Team, while Dan Rosen ’10 made the Second Team.

Jacob Melrose / Herald File Photo Mark McAndrew ’08, a native of Barrington, led the men’s basketball team to a 6-8 conference record this season. His 18.6 points per game was his highest since he averaged 25 points per game his senior year at Barrington High School.

Prough was recognized for his explosive scoring. The forward ﬁnished the year with 33 points, second in the Ivies only to conference Player of the Year David Jones of Dartmouth. Prough was also second in the Ivy League in goals, with 16 on the season. He has now led the team in scoring two years in a row. Hurley tied for ﬁrst among allcontinued on page 9