Wednesday, March 14, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDA

Volume CXLII, No. 34

M ARCH ARC H 14, 2007

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Simmons explains to BUCC why U. won’t apologize for slavery

BY MICHAEL SKOCPOL SENIOR STAFF WRITER

As Brown expands its outreach to Providence public schools as part of its slavery and justice response, the University — with 52 existing programs in schools — is “not starting from ground zero,” Lamont Gordon ’93, director of education outreach, told the Brown University Community Council Tuesday.

Currently, 52 K-12 education programs based in 16 University departments reach out to Providence schools in several capacities, Gordon said. Nineteen are based in the Swearer Center for Public Service.

Thirty-seven programs aid public school students — through enrichment, mentoring and college counseling programs, among others — while 17 provide teachers with professional and curricular development and eight support district administrators.

Of 44 programs working directly with schools, 18 operate at the

President Ruth Simmons presented the University’s official plan to make amends for its historic ties to slavery to the Brown University Community Council Tuesday, calling the plan an “extensive response that reflects an understanding of the issues raised” by the report of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.

Simmons acknowledged and discussed her decision not to issue a formal apology, elaborated on the implementation of some elements of the University’s plan and explained how the response would be funded.

In 2003, Simmons appointed the steering committee to investigate Brown’s ties to slavery and the slave trade and recommend actions for the University to take. The committee issued its report last October.

The University’s response to that report, announced last month, called for a $10 million endowment for public education in Providence and funding for graduate fellows who agree to serve local schools. Its other initiatives included increased transparency about the University’s historic ties to slavery, discussions with local officials about the creation of a memorial to commemorate the slave trade and academic research initiatives related to slavery.

But the response did not include a formal apology. Simmons acknowledged Tuesday that an apology was an “implicit recommendation” of the committee’s report, but she said she intentionally excluded an apology because it seemed “like a dollop of whipped cream on a very serious, extensive process.”

“In drafting the response, I found it hardest to get my head

continued on page 4

continued on page 4

Chris Bennett / Herald

Lamont Gordon ’93

Outreach to public schools will build on existing efforts

BY SIMMI AUJLA METRO EDITOR

Chris Bennett / Herald President Ruth Simmons discussed the University’s response to the slavery and justice report at Tuesday’s BUCC meeting.

Greek and program houses see recruitment boom

BY IRENE CHEN STAFF WRITER

Last week’s Super Deadline Day brought a bumper crop of new recruits to Greek and program houses on campus — 397 students joined houses this year, bringing the total number of students living in Greek and program houses next year to 653, according to Justin GlavisBloom ’07, chair of Residential Council.

The number of students in “program housing and Greek housing (has) increased this year,” said Richard Bova, senior associate dean for residential life. Glavis-Bloom said he did not have numbers for previous years.

This year, 207 bid cards were returned to the Greek houses

— excepting St. Anthony Hall, which is not a member of Greek Council — as of last Wednesday, “a huge increase from last year,” said Mark Connolly ’07, chair of Greek Council and a member of Delta Phi. That’s up from last year — Connolly said having 180 returned cards is usually seen as “a great number.”

Connolly said he believes the increase in students joining Greek houses is thanks to increased publicity efforts this year. “We did a few things this semester — we got the rush book out the first week of classes. In the past couple of years, the books went out at the beginning of rush period,” he said.

“Getting the word out early, advertising and having an excontinued on page 4

Hillary Clinton’s ‘secret’ paper: an undergrad thesis enters the race for ’08

BY ABE LUBETKIN STAFF WRITER

If you plan to run for president, be careful what you research.

Some reporters and political operatives are digging for blemishes in presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton’s past are suggesting that the junior Democratic senator from New York’s 1969 undergraduate thesis about leftist community organizer Saul Alinsky could shed light on her current political outlook.

The controversy surrounding Clinton’s college paper reminds undergrads that, no matter how much time has passed since graduation, their college writings are never too far behind.

“Oftentimes people have gone

INSIDE:

3 CAMPUS WATCH

back to candidates’ colleges and found information that is damaging,” said Darrell West, professor of political science and director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy. “I think they’re going to dig further this year.”

FEATURE Whether Clinton’s Wellesley College thesis reveals anything about her current political mindset is debatable. “It’s always interesting to hear how people came to the political process because sometimes that does shape how people act later in life,” West said. “Everybody wants to know how, if in any way, (Clinton) was shaped by Alinsky’s thinking.”

GEE, WIFE SPLIT Former Brown President Gordon Gee and his wife, Constance, are getting divorced after 12 years of marriage

www.browndailyherald.com

5 CAMPUS NEWS

A controversial topic Widely considered the father of community organizing, Alinsky brought together residents in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood in the 1930s. Yet the activist’s anti-establishment mantra made him a controversial figure.

“He argued that powerless people could learn to trust one another and recognize their potential for making change,” said Associate Professor of Sociology Hilary Silver. “I don’t think that anybody who advocates for poor people has been considered a mainstream guy in this country.”

Though some biographers labeled Alinsky a communist, he disputed those claims before his continued on page 6 SPRING CLEANING Facilities Management will have custodial services work in the residence halls during Spring Weekend

11 OPINIONS

Jacob Melrose / Herald File Photo An undergraduate thesis by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has been accessible to Wellesley visitors since 2001.

CHANGE IS GOOD Joey Borson ’07 declares that the New Curriculum could use a review as it approaches its 40th year and that change isn’t necessarily a bad thing

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

Banner mock registration draws positive reviews

BY CHAZ FIRESTONE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Banner’s mock registration — the week-long debugging process designed to expose and rectify flaws in the program’s online course registration module — ended Friday to praise from students and administrators.

“All of the systems were tested, and everything worked like it was supposed to,” said Lisa Mather, associate registrar for registration services and the leader of mock registration, though she noted that some students had difficulty connecting to the system due to firewall restrictions unrelated to Banner itself.

A total of 62 participants completed the five-day program, which simulated an entire semester of registration, including preregistration, shopping period and weeks of classes later in the semester. Members of the Undergraduate Council of Students, Meiklejohn peer advisers and various professors were given scripts that instructed them to enter and misenter data and then report Banner’s response.

Students were mostly positive about their experiences with Banner.

“The whole thing was really easy to use and really fast,” said Sean Kotkin ’09, a Meiklejohn peer adviser. “You just enter the course reference number and you’re registered.”

“I loved that I got instant feedback about my registration,” said Kaitlin Lemei ’07.5, a Meiklejohn peer adviser and lab consultant continued on page 4

12 SPORTS

M. LAX ROLLS ON Bellarmine proved to be no match for the men’s lacrosse team yesterday as it picked up its third straight victory with a 9-8 win at home

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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WE A

TODAY

cloudy 64 / 47

T H E R

MEN

SHARPE REFECTORY

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker

TOMORROW

pm showers 57 / 37

U

VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Polynesian Chicken Wings, Stir Fried Rice, Vegan Stir Fry with Tofu, Chocolate Frosted Eclairs, Apple Turnovers

LUNCH — Vegetarian Cream of Tomato Soup, Egg Drop and Chicken Soup, Italian Sausage & Peppers Sandwich, Vegetable Strudel, Mini Eclairs

DINNER — Salmon Provençal, Cheese Quesadillas with Sour Cream and Salsa, Mushroom Risotto, Greek-style Asparagus, Lime Jello, Whipped Cream Peach Cake

DINNER — Swiss Steak, Vegan Ratatouille, Mashed Red Potatoes with Garlic, Mashed Butternut Squash with Honey, Whipped Cream Peach Cake

SU

WBF | Matt Vascellaro

D O K U

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

Hi, How Are You | Alison Naturale

Deo | Daniel Perez

Puzzles by Pappocom

CR

O S S W O R D

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis ACROSS 1 Midday break 6 O. Henry’s “The Gift of the __” 10 Eject, as oratorical venom 14 Interest to complain about 15 Server’s edge 16 Highland tongue 17 Drive 19 Mortgage payment components acronym 20 Place to get 1Across 21 Not opposed 23 Part of a race 26 House members, briefly 28 Twisty-horned antelope 29 Moisturizer ingredient 31 Card game with trumps 34 Source of a businessman’s power?

35 Ulyanovsk’s river 37 Trusty 38 Stud site 39 Drive 42 Bit of legislation 44 Reading for “Lovely Rita” 45 Disorderly demonstrations 48 “Get it?”

49 King of the fairies 51 “James and the Giant Peach” author 52 Snidely Whiplash look 54 Zipped 56 “Looker” actress 57 Tried 60 More than suggestive 62 Essen’s region 63 Drive 68 Home run run 69 Terrible ruler?

70 Chambermaid’s purview 71 Three-time Pro Bowl linebacker Joyner 72 Use an old Royal 73 Enjoyed

DOWN 1 Carry with difficulty 2 “For indoor __ only” 3 Crackpot 4 Heavy, sticky snow, to skiers 5 Really keyed up 6 Influence unfairly 7 Include 8 Leslie Caron title role 9 Knowledgeable about 10 Flower part 11 Drive 12 Baltic Sea republic 13 More bizarre 18 Away from the wind 22 Subtle overture 23 Loo 24 Jeff Lynne band with violins and cellos 25 Drive 27 Ballpark officials 30 Self-esteem 32 Skid on wet roads

33 “Maple Leaf __”: 1899 piano work 36 Public emergency shelter, often 40 Place to surf 41 Assist 42 States categorically 43 Official reprimand 46 With 67-Down, last words in many movies

47 Underhanded 50 Have to have 53 Soil 55 Obsess (on) 58 Work on a galley 59 Noted locker owner Jones 61 XIII x XXXIX 64 Faucet 65 Execute, in a way 66 Part of UCLA? 67 See 46-Down

Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Cloudy Side Up | Mike Lauritano

xwordeditor@aol.com

3/14/07

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

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

Mary-Catherine Lader, Vice President Ally Ouh, Treasurer

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

Mandeep Gill, Secretary

3/14/07

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

CAMPUS WATCH WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

DePauw gives sorority the axe after it evicts homely members

BY AUBRY BRACCO STAFF WRITER

The old saying “beauty is only skin deep” has taken on new meaning at DePauw University in recent months.

Media coverage and protests from students and faculty at the Greencastle, Ind., university have landed Delta Zeta sorority’s national leaders in trouble with the school’s administration after accusations that they asked members of the university’s Delta Zeta chapter to leave because they weren’t up to conventional standards of beauty.

The New York Times reported Feb. 25 that Delta Zeta national officials demoted 23 sisters from the DePauw chapter to “alumna status,” saying the sisters were uncommitted to the recruitment process.

Only a dozen sisters remained — all of them good-looking and popular with fraternity brothers — after what the Delta Zeta national officials called a “reorganization” of the chapter. Among those removed from the sorority were all the overweight sisters and black sisters and many of the chapter’s Asian sisters, the Times reported.

“I believe wholeheartedly that (the mass eviction) was not a matter of lack of commitment, lack of dedication, lack of academic prowess or even lack of a personable attitude,” DePauw junior Rachel Pappas, a former sister who resigned in protest, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “Taking away all of those criteria, what is there left to form suppositions upon? Image, at least in part.”

In a letter Monday addressed to alums and the national Delta Zeta president, Deborah Raziano, DePauw President Robert Bottoms announced his decision to “sever … future ties with the Delta Zeta national.”

Bottoms wrote in the letter that he does not take issue with local members, “who have handled themselves with extraordinary poise and maturity,” nor with Delta Zeta alums. “I wish to emphasize that our problem is with Delta Zeta national. … The values of DePauw University and those of the Delta Zeta National Sorority are incompatible,” Bottoms wrote.

DePauw officials did not return phone calls from The Herald.

Bottoms told the Associated Press the only response from the national sorority to his letter had been an e-mail from Delta Zeta’s attorney asking for the name of DePauw’s attorney.

Delta Zeta sisters have had a reputation as studiers rather than partiers, and their chapter was widely known among students as the “dog house,” according to a March 13 AP story. The chapter was facing recruitment problems, starting the year with just 35 women — only one-third full on a campus with 70 percent Greek participation, the AP reported.

Delta Zeta national has suspended all contact with the media. But a statement was posted on the organization’s Web site Monday addressing its frustration with the media and with Bottoms’ decision. The national chapter’s Web site has a restricted-access section with information for sisters on how to handle media inquiries about the sorority.

“Delta Zeta national leadership is extremely disappointed that after 98 years, university officials have unilaterally closed the chapter and still refuse to meet with us. … The situation concerning Delta Zeta at DePauw University continues to be mischaracterized and is harming all parties involved,” the statement read.

The statement also included an apology to “any women at DePauw who felt personally hurt by (the national organization’s) actions.”

But Pappas said she does not believe this apology is sufficient.

“They have had the opportunity to stand up and admit that they were unethical and apologize to those women for judging them unfairly,” Pappas wrote. “However, Nationals have chosen instead to defend their actions and even lie about them — which is the most damning thing of all, to me.”

Pappas wrote to The Herald, as well as to the Times in previous interviews, that the issuance of the apology was “like the thief who isn’t sorry that he did it, just terribly sorry that he was caught.”

According to the DePauw, the school’s student newspaper, problems began on Sept. 12, 2006, when national Delta Zeta representatives met with the house to speak about declining membership and plans for a membership

review in November.

Pappas left the house voluntarily in October after Delta Zeta national officials came to the house.

“Four of us sensed (the reorganization) was coming and left in October. … Being on the executive board, I had a deeper insight into the hypocrisy, and I wanted out before it hurt me too deeply,” Pappas wrote.

Last November, national representatives interviewed all 35 members of Delta Zeta. The sisters were encouraged to dress up for the interviews. A few days later, national representatives asked most members to stay in their rooms while slender, conventionally pretty sisters along with imported, good-looking girls from Indiana University’s Delta Zeta chapter welcomed potential members, according to the Times.

On Dec. 2, 2006 — the week before DePauw’s finals — 23 members, including the chapter president, received notification that they had been demoted to “alumna status” and were expected to find alternative housing by Jan. 29.

Pappas said six more girls chose to leave on their own accord “immediately after the axe fell. … From what I understand, it was a painful decision for those who were asked to stay. They wanted to heal their house, but they also felt a deep sense of wrongdoing and felt that leaving was the most poignant form of protest they had available.”

Those evicted were compensated $300 each for housing difficulties.

Though she left early, Pappas wrote she “had to withdraw from classes last semester from clinical depression because of the stress of the collapse of (the) house.” Though she has resumed classes, Pappas wrote that the fiasco was “painful.”

The situation at DePauw has brought the issue of “discrimination based on image” to the forefront, Pappas wrote.

Three sisters at Brown’s Kappa Alpha Theta and Alpha Chi Omega chapters contacted by The Herald declined to comment for this article, saying national leaders of their respective sororities had instructed them not to. Four more did not return requests for comment. Brown does not have a chapter of Delta Zeta.

Courtesy of Vanderbilt.edu Vanderbilt Chancellor and ex-Brown president Gordon Gee announced he and his wife of 12 years, Constance, will divorce.

Former Brown president, first lady seek divorce

BY ROSS FRAZIER NEWS EDITOR

Citing “irreconcilable differences,” former Brown President Gordon Gee — now chancellor of Vanderbilt University — announced Feb. 28 that he and his wife, Constance Bumgarner Gee, will divorce.

“Constance and I have agreed to seek a divorce,” Gee said in a statement to the Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper. “While this is a difficult decision, we remain committed to each other’s happiness and success. I ask that you respect our privacy regarding this issue.”

Vanderbilt spokesperson Mike Schoenfeld told the Hustler the chancellor’s divorce will not affect his career at Vanderbilt.

“It is of course a difficult personal decision for him, but Chancellor Gee is deeply committed to Vanderbilt’s success and is eager to continue building on the extraordinary progress that has occurred over the past six years in every part of our mission,” Schoenfeld said.

Student opinion about the divorce, which was filed Feb. 27 by Constance Gee, vary, but Vanderbilt sophomore America Deupree told The Herald that the common perception on campus is that Gordon Gee called it quits due to the public attention his wife’s antics have attracted to his presidencies over the years.

“I think everyone is kind of wondering what the deal is and whether it’s more her or him,” Deupree said. “I think it’s her because from everything I’ve heard, she’s absolutely nuts — out-of=her=mind crazy. From what I’ve seen of him, he’s always been pretty put-together.”

Gordon Gee, who resigned the Brown presidency Feb. 7, 2000, to take the top post at Vanderbilt, enjoys a much better reputation in Nashville than he did on College Hill. Gee, who is respected and well-liked at Vanderbilt, left Brown after only two years under a cloud of criticism from faculty, students and administrators.

Constance Gee, an associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt, has earned a reputation at Vanderbilt as somewhat of a distraction from her husband’s work — not dissimilar to that earned during the couple’s

time at Brown.

In 2004, Constance Gee signed a letter to her husband protesting a Vanderbilt graduation speech by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Later that year, she lowered the flag at the university-owned mansion, Braeburn, to half-mast after President Bush won reelection.

After the Rice tussle, Gordon Gee told the Tennessean, “I admire the fact that she feels that our relationship is strong enough that she can disagree with me, and I with her.”

Constance Gee has a reputation as a liberal and something of a socialite, the Tennessean reported March 1, while Gordon Gee is a teetotaling Mormon.

A Sept. 25, 2006, Wall Street Journal article reported Constance Gee had been smoking marijuana in the Vanderbilt chancellor’s mansion for what she claimed was an ear ailment. The Journal also reported that board members had questioned the couple’s lavish spending habits, including $6 million spent to renovate the mansion.

After the marijuana incident, some questioned the stability of the couple’s marriage, though Gordon Gee told the Hustler their marriage remained strong.

“We work every day on our relationship, marriage is a long-time relationship, and we work very hard at it,” he said.

According to an Aug. 2, 2000, Village Voice article covering the couple’s abrupt departure after only two years at Brown, similar charges of lavish spending on renovations were leveled while they were at the University.

“The (rumored) $3 million redecoration of the president’s residence went down very badly with the campus. Apparently she made the workmen tear out and redo the work several times,” Associate Professor of Music David Josephson told the Village Voice. “She took the heat for what was perceived, fairly or not I do not know, as an extravagant renovation of the residence.”

According to court filings, the couple married in 1994 in Salt Lake City. They have no children together, though Gordon Gee, a widower, has a daughter from a previous marriage.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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Outreach programs build on existing efforts continued from page 1 high school level, seven at the elementary school level, four at the middle school level and 15 cover K-12 generally. Thirty-seven of the 52 programs are academic, with 19 of those related to science, technology, engineering or math. Eight are literacy programs, another eight are general enrichment programs and three are arts programs.

Though some may assume that the University works mainly with nearby Hope High School, with which it signed a partnership agreement last fall, Gordon said the University is strongly involved in several other schools, including Central High School and the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center — known as the Met — as well as others.

Gordon collected data for his report from department chairs, faculty and students as well as the Swearer Center, he said.

Hired last year to facilitate the University’s outreach to public schools, Gordon said documenting the University’s current involvement in schools was an im-

portant step. But, he added later, “We do want to move in the direction of evaluating outcomes” of those programs.

President Ruth Simmons told the BUCC, “It’s very important that we focus on what we can do that is measurable.” The University should “focus on a set of things we know we can deliver to the schools,” she added.

Simmons mentioned a Hope High student telling her several years ago that he couldn’t study what he wanted at Brown because his high school education did not prepare him adequately.

“That’s a powerful thing for us to begin to try to deal with,” she said.

Emphasizing the programs the University already has in place, Gordon said, “The challenge is how do we build on that work.”

Gordon said he hopes to set up a comprehensive Web site that would provide information about all outreach programs at Brown “in the next couple of months.”

The Web site would provide students and teachers with information about existing outreach programs, Gordon said.

‘Head and heart’ led Simmons to exclude slavery apology continued from page 1 and my heart around that notion,” Simmons said. “I found it strange to even contemplate how one would do that.”

Simmons also said the committee’s recommendation that the University examine investing in hedge funds was “not something that the Corporation took up,” but she did not elaborate.

A committee to investigate possible teaching and research initiatives related to slavery will be announced “in two weeks or so,” Simmons said.

Such an initiative was a central recommendation of the original report, and the University’s response calls for a committee to be formed and to make a recommendation by the fall.

The University is also beginning the process of strengthening the Department of Africana Studies by soliciting suggestions from department members, Simmons said, adding that she met with members of the department on Saturday.

“I expect that we will hear more about this in the coming months,” Simmons added.

BUCC member Kisa Takesue

Interest in Greek and program houses increases continued from page 1 tra week for rush really helped. In the past, it’s been our biggest barrier — getting the word out. Every house had a great rush this year.”

Jonathan Levin ’08, master of Alpha Epsilon Pi, said the house’s membership has increased since last year but noted that it is often “determined by the housing situation for most freshmen — how their units worked out during the year and whether or not those relationships worked out.”

Levin agreed with Connolly that the increase in numbers is partly due to a “good advertising pitch,” which presented a new image of Greek houses. “I think the current trend is that people are realizing

that fraternities are a part of the community in non-stereotypical ways,” he said.

Connolly said the diversity of lifestyles in the Greek houses has helped attract a larger group of students as well. “A lot of times, the Greek system gets labeled and stereotyped, but within the Greek system, each one of the houses are extremely diverse. Each house is so different and attracts a different group of people,” Connolly said. “It would be difficult to not find one for every student.”

Miriam Gordon ’08, president of Alpha Chi Omega, said she hopes the rise in recruitment numbers will help enhance the Greek presence on campus. “I think the increase in numbers shows that

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

more people are interested, and hopefully that bigger increase will attract more people,” Gordon said.

“I think people are seeing it as a way of participating in a group, and it does provide a good way to hold leadership positions.”

Kappa Alpha Theta has 24 pledges for next year, up from the usual number of 15 to 18 students, said Nicole Villaverde ’07, recruitment chair for Kappa Alpha Theta.

“Definitely, the increasing numbers of people will help increase our image by doing larger events, trying to do things on a larger scale to make people aware that we exist,” she said.

Program houses also benefited from the recruitment boom.

West House, a campus cooperative, has also experienced an increase in the number of applications. “This year we had about 25 to 30 people apply for about 14 spots, so it was a competitive process,” said Hope Turner ’08, housing coordinator for West House. “I think that West House in general has been more active than in the past couple of years from what it was like before.”

Turner said the increase may be thanks to increasing visibility.

“It’s been kind of a hidden program house, but I think it’s becoming more well-known,” Turner said. “I think we can improve our numbers by doing more events to attract more people earlier on in the semester.”

π

’88, associate dean of student life, asked Simmons how the different elements of the response would be funded.

Funds will have to be raised for both the public education endowment and the teaching and research initiative, Simmons said, but waiving tuition for graduate students who agree to serve local public schools is “not really costing the University anything.”

Increasing aid to historically black colleges and universities would also be “not very costly,” Simmons said, because those efforts will likely focus on increasing Brown’s role as a “broker” and a “decision point” for aid going to those schools.

Simmons said commissioning a memorial would be a “onetime cost” to the University, the amount of which would depend on the scope of the project. Increasing dissemination of the report would also be a “one-time cost,” she said, adding simply, “We’ll pay for it.”

The low readership of the report has been a concern of Simmons’, and one the response seeks to address by calling for paper copies to be distributed free of charge — a printed version currently costs

$7.50 — and for an executive summary to be made available.

Simmons told the BUCC that both the report’s 106-page length and “the way it was released” may have contributed to its “limited readership,” adding that she had “advocated for a much shorter report” before its release but that the committee was adamant the report not be shortened.

Toward the end of the discussion, Simmons responded to a question about response to the University’s slavery and justice initiative by acknowledging that some have criticized the effort and that race and the legacy of slavery are divisive issues. But she reasserted that the University has taken the lead in beginning to undo those lingering problems.

“The question for us was whether or not we could find a way … to be inclusive of the truth, embracing all aspects of it, and still come out of it with the capacity to talk across these divisions,” she said.

“We don’t have to worry about the nay-sayers, and we don’t have to worry about the people who are angry,” she added. “When we do (our work) best, we do it in the midst of all that.”

Banner received positively as mock registration ends continued from page 1 supervisor for the Help Desk.

“With the old system, I wouldn’t find out how my request was processed until much later.”

The main complaint expressed by students to The Herald regarded Banner’s user interface.

“The only things I thought were a bit annoying were that after getting an override, you had to re-add the class,” Kotkin said.

“Also, you had to go back to the main menu each time you wanted to do something.”

Mather said she was excited by the positive feedback from participants and that the Banner team is aware of some of the kinks in the system.

“We can’t really change the site design by April,” she said.

“But we’re taking all the student feedback we can get and plan to incorporate it into future plans for Banner.”

A problem encountered by participants in the program was the inability to access Banner through Brown’s wireless network and from local hospitals.

“We found that Brown’s and the hospitals’ firewalls were prohibiting students from accessing Banner,” Mather said. The problem with the wireless network has been fixed, and administrators are working with the hospitals to resolve the issue.

“It’s definitely a fixable problem,” Mather said.

One byproduct of mock registration’s success was to mitigate the concerns of previously skeptical students about Banner.

“A lot of people think Banner is this sort of Big Brother that’s going to limit flexibility and make life difficult for everyone, but it’s not like that,” Kotkin said. “Once people realize that Banner is just as lenient and you can still talk to the professors and get into a class, people won’t be as concerned.”

Kyle Evans ’08 — the first registrant during mock regis-

tration — said she thinks students are too worried about the change, which she feels will be insignificant.

“I don’t think this is going to be that big a deal,” she said. “It’s just the natural evolution of a college. Everyone’s going online, and so should we.”

Evans said she doesn’t think Banner threatens the nature of the Brown curriculum. “This doesn’t seem to pose a threat to the Brown education I value,” she said. “I honestly think students will be surprised when it turns out that the change to Banner is easy and not a problem.”

Lemei was not as optimistic, but said she felt that Banner was a move forward for the University.

“The largest determinant of how Banner will affect the registration process is going to be how professors and students interact,” she said. “This will be more of a transition than a difficulty.”

Thomas Doeppner, associate research professor of computer science and a participant in mock registration, said the restriction override process was important and manageable.

“Obviously there is a greater need for communication under Banner,” he said last week, as mock registration began. “But as long as faculty members are responsible, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Mather said she was pleased with the overall response to Banner and mock registration, and that students shouldn’t have a problem interacting with the system.

“Twenty-seven people took our tutorial, and 24 said it was useful,” she said. “But the system is intuitive enough that even if students wait until the last day, they’ll be able to register.”

Kotkin expressed optimism about Banner’s future.

“I’ve definitely changed my view on Banner since doing mock registration,” he said. “I might even say I’m excited for it.”

CAMPUS N EWS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

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Students to shear for Locks of Love Students can crop their tresses March 22 at the fourth annual Locks of Love fundraiser to make hairpieces for children who have lost their hair due to medical treatments.

Students donating their hair must be able to spare 10 inches and will not be charged for their trim, given by trainees from the Paul Mitchell stylist school. Those without hair long enough to donate can still get a haircut and make a cash donation, said Caroline Landau ’09, the publicity coordinator of the Locks of Love event.

There is no official suggested donation, but donors in the past have given between $5 and $20 each, Landau said. The Brown fundraiser has raised over $7,500 and collected 2,500 inches of hair over the past three years, Landau later wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

The Locks of Love fundraiser this year is partnering with Health Education, which is covering some of the cost of the event, Landau said. Health Education will also run a table with educational information, including nutrition and instructions about how to self-administer cancer exams. Landau said having health information available is an integral part of Locks of Love because “it’s not just about hair, it’s about maintaining a healthy lifestyle while also helping to remedy those who have been affected by illness.”

As in past years, free food will be provided courtesy of Brown Hillel, Health Education, the Program in Liberal Medical Education Undergraduate Senate and the Women’s Peer Counseling Program.

“This event runs on a lot of hard work and dedication, and we want to thank everyone who has made it possible,” Landau said.

Locks of Love is a national nonprofit organization founded in Florida in 1997. Though not officially affiliated with the national organization, the Brown group sends all donations to the national Locks of Love. The organization is a “great way to restore the self-worth” of those who have lost their hair, Landau said.

The fundraiser will be held in Sayles March 22 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Appointments can be made in the P.O. from March 12 to 16 and March 19 to 21 or by e-mailing hair@brown.edu. Walk-ins are also welcome.

— Amanda Bauer

Former prof gets $1.3m from U. over denied tenure A former Brown professor who was denied tenure in 1993 will receive about $1.3 million from the University after the state Supreme Court ruled in his favor Monday, ending a decade-long legal battle over the circumstances of his denial of tenure, the Providence Journal reported Tuesday.

Fred Shoucair, who was appointed an assistant professor of engineering in 1987, sued the University in 1996 over what he claimed were discriminatory and retaliatory reasons for his dismissal, according to the Journal. The court’s ruling requires Brown to pay Shoucair $455,000 plus accumulated interest in back pay and compensatory damages but does not require the University to reinstate him or pay punitive damages.

Shoucair claimed in his original suit that Brown had “tolerated and even condoned” a work environment hostile to his Lebanese heritage and that he was denied tenure because of his ethnicity and because he refused to interview a minority candidate for a position he believed was already filled, according to the Journal.

A 2003 jury sided with Shoucair on the claim of retaliation while rejecting his claims of discrimination. The jury originally awarded him $400,000 in back pay, $175,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages. A later ruling refused to overturn the jury’s award but reduced Shoucair’s back pay award to only $280,000. The Supreme Court further reduced his payment, eliminating $100,000 in punitive damages in Monday’s ruling.

“Brown maintained that, in effect, Shoucair fell short of tenure by virtue of a modern corollary to the venerable ‘publish or perish’ adage — one that assesses professors/researchers on the ability to attract lucrative grants on a regular basis,” said Justice Paul Suttell in his 28-page opinion, adding that the jury instead blamed Shoucair’s denial of tenure on the “retaliatory animus” of his tenure review committee.

Brown spokeswoman Molly de Ramel declined to comment to the Journal on the court’s ruling.

—Scott Lowenstein

Custodial services in dorms planned for Spring Weekend

BY CAMERON LEE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Students may soon be able to enjoy cleaner residence halls on the weekends. Facilities Management will add custodial services in dorms for Spring Weekend and is planning additional weekend coverage, Facilities Management officials told The Herald.

Facilities Management is currently discussing various possibilities for weekend service with the Office of Residential Life. “One scenario could be just taking the trash out or just cleaning the bathroom,” said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for facilities management.

Although some University buildings such as Faunce House and Manning Chapel are regularly maintained on weekends, residence halls do not currently receive normal weekend cleaning, said Donna Butler, director of custodial services.

Facilities Management has worked with ResLife to target specific weekends when custodial services would be most effective.

Weekend cleaning was added for Parents Weekend last October and will be in place for Spring Weekend next month, Maiorisi said.

Parents Weekend, which was the first time custodial staff cleaned residence halls over the weekend, was a “test run,” Maiorisi said. “Feedback was very positive,” he added.

Facilities Management administrators decided to try to provide increased cleaning services in acknowledgement of the fact that “students are here 24/7,” Maiorisi said.

“We should be providing service as best we can throughout the week,” he said, noting that the decision to provide increased cleaning services over the weekend was not a reaction to residence halls being messier.

Students enthusiastically embraced the idea of increased cleaning on weekends. “It’s definitely something we can use,” said Kari Lisa Johnson ’09. A Diman House resident, Johnson said she found

TimesSelect now free for college students, profs The New York Times’ online premium service TimesSelect is now available for free to anyone with an e-mail address associated with an academic institution.

The service, which provides exclusive online access to op-ed columns and the newspaper’s archives, was made available Tuesday students and others with e-mail addresses ending in “.edu,” according to a Sunday report in Editor & Publisher.

“It’s part of our journalistic mission to get people talking on campuses,” Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, told Editor & Publisher. “We wanted to open that up so that college students and professors can have a dialogue.”

TimesSelect is already free for subscribers to the print edition of the paper and costs online-only subscribers $7.95 per month or $49.95 per year for access to opinion columns, Web exclusives, early access to Sunday Times articles and free articles from the Times’ archives.

The fee-based service had approximately 627,000 subscribers as of a Feb. 21 Times press release.

— Chaz Firestone

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Tai Ho Shin / Herald File Photo Facilities Management and the Office of Residential Life are working to provide custodial services in dorms during some upcoming weekends.

“a red plastic cup sitting on the toilet” last weekend as well as an “interesting” odor permeating the bathroom and “toilet paper strewn about.” She also said it was not uncommon to find vomit in the bathroom on weekends.

Currently, custodial workers are not on duty in residence halls during the weekend, but students can call Facilities Management if their bathroom needs cleaning.

“What happens almost every weekend is somebody gets called in if somebody calls our service response, we go and take care of (the situation) as needed,” Maiorisi said.

Maiorisi said weekend clean-

ing was discussed during contract negotiations with union representatives for Facilities Management workers last October. The issue of overtime pay during weekends came up during the negotiations because Facilities Management “wanted to do a couple different things” with their shifts, Maiorisi said.

A proposal to hire a set of parttime workers for the weekends was rejected in favor of paying existing workers overtime for weekend work, said Karen McAninch, business agent for United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island, who led negotiations for the union last October.

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

A college thesis enters the 2008 race continued from page 1 death in 1972.

According to a March 3 article on MSNBC.com, Clinton’s thesis praised aspects of Alinsky’s vision and leadership style but criticized his overarching vision. In her 2003 autobiography “Living History,” Clinton wrote, “I agreed with some of Alinsky’s ideas. … But we had a fundamental disagreement. He believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn’t.”

In 1993, the Clinton White House asked Wellesley to make the thesis unavailable to the public, spurring speculation among some conservatives that Sen. Clinton’s writings revealed radical or communist sympathies. Accessible to Wellesley visitors since 2001, the paper could become fodder for the senator’s presidential opponents.

A Republican consultant told MSNBC.com that Clinton’s political foes could highlight that while Clinton was writing about Alinksy, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was a prisioner of war in Vietnam.

Could it happen to you?

Many of Brown’s humanities and social science departments provide open access to undergrad-

uate honors theses, mostly for the benefit of future thesis-writers.

Honors theses from roughly a dozen departments — including history, psychology and English — are archived in the John Hay Library and are open to the public.

University Archivist Gerald Gaidmore said he and his staff hope to put abstracts of all the Hay’s theses online by the end of this semester, meaning a former student’s thesis topic could pop up if someone does a Google search for that person.

Kathleen Pappas, coordinating secretary for the Department of Religious Studies, said in the 14 years she’s worked there she hasn’t heard of anyone requesting to read a specific graduate’s thesis with the hope of gaining biographical insight into the writer.

Associate Professor of Public Policy Ross Cheit, who advises public policy concentrators writing theses, said papers in disciplines involving theoretical analysis, such as philosophy and political science, are more likely to generate controversy than the case study analyses public policy concentrators write.

“I can’t think of a thesis we’ve had that poses the Hillary Clinton issue,” he said. “Our program is sort of moderate in its orientation.

How well is the food stamp program implemented in Rhode Is-

land? That’s not going to be a radical thesis.”

U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal ’91.5, RLa., a public policy concentrator at Brown and currently a candidate for governor of Louisiana, wrote his thesis about state health care expenditures.

The Department of Political Science does not have a “systematic” approach to storing honors theses, said thesis adviser Professor of Political Science Linda Cook. Some political science concentrators leave theses with professors, she said, but that is not required.

Similarly, the Department of Philosophy does not store old theses because “there’s just never been any call from anyone to consider whether we should have a (thesis storage) policy,” wrote David Estlund, professor of philosophy and chair of the department, in an e-mail to The Herald. Gaidmore said a few philosophy theses are on hand at the Hay. West said this election season marks the first time he’s heard of a college thesis becoming a campaign issue, but in politics, collegiate behavior is often fair game.

“I always tell my students they should be careful what they do on the weekends,” he said. “You never know 30 years from now who will be interested in it.”

Equestrian team reclaims lead continued from page 12

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points, 321-288, on the year.

Irmak Tasindi ’08 led the team with two blue ribbons. The Istanbul, Turkey, native finished with blue ribbons in both the Fences and Novice Flat competitions.

In other flat classes, Elizabeth Giliberti ’10 took home a blue in the intermediate division. The Walk Trot Canter classes saw point rider Stephanie Syc ’08 and Kristen Beck ’08 finish second in their respective advanced classes, and Lili Birnbaum ’07 take third in the beginner class.

Whitney Keefe, one of the Bears’ top riders, had a challenging start to her day. She finished sixth in her Open Flat class, but bounced back to take first in the Open Fences.

Keefe is now tied with University of Rhode Island rider Amanda Tustian for the lead in the race for first place in the Region 1 open standings. If Keefe can hold onto first place in her next show, she will qualify for the Cacchione Cup, a national championship.

The team’s final show of the regular season will take place on March 17th at the Johnson and Wales Equine Center in Rehoboth, Mass.

— Peter Cipparone

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W ORLD & N ATION WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

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Clinton says she’s ‘very proud’ of gays in military WASHINGTON (Newsday) — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., says she is “very proud” of gays and lesbians serving in the military but believes it’s “for others to conclude” if homosexuality is immoral, as Gen. Peter Pace claimed earlier this week.

On Monday, the joint chiefs chairman told the Chicago Tribune that “homosexual acts between individuals are immoral.”

Clinton was asked about Pace’s remarks Tuesday during an interview to be aired on Wednesday morning’s “Good Morning America.”

She reiterated her stance in favor of overturning the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of not asking gays to disclose their orientation, created by her husband in the early 1990s.

“We are being deprived of thousands of patriotic men and women,” she said. “Great Britain and Israel have integrated gays and lesbians into the armed services (and) we want to turn our backs on people who want to serve our country.”

Bank note with nuclear image stirs controversy in Iran TEHRAN, Iran (Los Angeles Times) — A new 50,000-rial note going into circulation this week was meant to showcase Iran’s technological ambitions and boost national pride just before the Persian New Year next week.

Instead, illustrated with the image of an atom surrounded by a field of electrons over the map of Iran, the bill has proven immensely controversial.

It emerges as world powers discuss the imposition of sanctions on Iran for its nuclear enrichment program and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad requests an audience with the U.N. Security Council in a bid to allay international worries.

Among Iranians it was meant to exalt, the bill elicited mostly worry and anger Tuesday.

“The bank note is a window display of a country just like a business card for a manager,” said Mustafa Hasanzadeh, a 52-year-old Tehran businessman.“This bill is the worst promotion for Ahmadinejad government. If his government wants to compromise on the nuclear issue, this is a disgrace.”

Congress has first non-theist WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — It is a year of religious firsts in Congress: the first Muslim, the first Buddhist (two of them, actually) and, as of now, the first lawmaker to say publicly that he does not believe in any supreme being.

The Secular Coalition for America, an association of eight atheist and humanist groups, held a contest in December to identify the highest elected “non-theist” in the land. This week it announced the winner: Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif. Stark, 75, in his 18th term representing San Francisco’s East Bay, issued a brief statement confirming that “I am a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being.”

A number of other Unitarians, including John Adams and Adlai Stevenson, have served in Congress, and Thomas Brackett Reed, speaker of the House in the 1890s, called himself a freethinker. But they all claimed some belief in God, according to Fred Beuttler, deputy historian of the House of Representatives.

“As far as I know, Representative Stark is the first self-proclaimed non-theist,” Beuttler said.

Freshman Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is the first Muslim in Congress. Reps. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, are the first Buddhists.

‘89 video of Giuliani backing abortion airs WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani fielded questions this week about his positions on social issues as a video surfaced showing him professing support for publicly funded abortions during a 1989 speech.

The video clip, posted Monday on YouTube and highlighted by the Drudge Report, shows Giuliani saying that “there must be public funding for abortions for poor women. We cannot deny any woman the right to make her own decision about abortion because she lacks resources.”

In comments to reporters Monday, Giuliani did not mention the video. He also dismissed questions about whether his support for gun control, civil unions and abortion rights will hurt his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination among conservatives.

“Republicans are essentially the party of strong national defense and fiscal discipline,” Giuliani said. “Do we have disagreements on some other issues? Of course. I think those two big themes kind of unite us.”

Sudan rejects Darfur peacekeeper plan

BY COLUM LYNCH WASHINGTON POST

UNITED NATIONS — Sudan’s president has rejected the core elements of a U.N.-backed plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur to help protect civilians from a government-backed campaign of violence.

The move set the stage for a renewed push by the United States and Britain to impose U.N. sanctions on Sudan. Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Emyr Jones-Parry, said Tuesday that he would introduce a draft resolution to the Security Council as early as next week.

President Omar Hassan alBashir wrote in a 13-page letter to U.N. Secretar y General Ban Ki Moon that he wants to renegotiate the terms of a deal to bolster a force of some 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur with thousands of U.N. troops.

The Sudanese leader claims that the plan violates key provisions of last May’s Darfur Peace Agreement between his government and Darfur’s main rebel group.

Ban said Bashir’s letter included “some positive elements” — including support for revived political talks with Darfurian rebels — but it also seems to “challenge” agreements Sudan made

in November to allow U.N. and African Union peacekeepers to protect civilians in Darfur.

U.S. and British diplomats say that Bashir’s letter is another delaying tactic in a four-year-long campaign to prevent the outside world from taking action to halt atrocities in Darfur, and that even Khartoum’s friends on the Security Council are losing patience.

Jones-Parr y expressed confidence that China, a major consumer of Sudanese oil and previously opposed to sanctions, would not stand in the way of additional U.N. measures. But a senior Chinese diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said China “never ever believes” that sanctions will resolve the crisis in Darfur. “Our sense is that we are moving closer toward having our Sudanese friends consider and deploy” that peacekeeping force.

Sudan agreed in November to permit a three-stage transition from the current African Union mission to a larger force of more than 20,000 African Union and U.N. peacekeepers. Khartoum has already begun to raise objections to key elements of the second “heavy support” phase — which involves the deployment of more than 2,250 heavily armed U.N. troops backed by attack he-

licopters and with a mandate to protect civilians.

Bashir wrote Ban that U.N. and African troops have no authority to use force to protect civilians, saying Sudan bears the primar y responsibility for civilians’ security. He refused a U.N. proposal to place the force under the overall command of a U.N. general, demanded that the U.N. dramatically reduce the number of troops it intends to send to Darfur, and called for the elimination of helicopter and air reconnaissance units. “The African Union is mandated to lead a monitoring, not a combat mission,” he wrote.

Bashir’s “efforts to delay and reinterpret the agreement or tr y and limit it simply are not acceptable to the international community.” said State Department spokesman Tom Casey. “I think the patience of the international community is limited, and I think that we unfortunately may be approaching a time when other steps will have to be taken.”

American and British diplomats have been working through the final details of a package of financial penalties, targeted sanctions on a list of individuals and even a possible “no-fly” zone over Darfur if Sudan does not comply with international demands.

DNA trawler nets startling data from the sea

BY RICK WEISS WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — It took some mighty fine nets, but scientists who spent two years trawling the world’s oceans for bacteria and viruses have completed the most thorough census ever of marine microbial life, revealing an astonishingly diverse and bizarre microscopic menagerie.

Countering a long-held assumption that ocean waters are largely sterile, the new report, released Tuesday, reveals an otherworldly world of organismal ferment, including thousands of novel life forms that could help speed the development of new antibiotics and alternative energy sources and clarify the ocean’s role in climate change.

The census — which in a single stroke has doubled the number of known genes in Earth’s biological kingdom — comes from a 21st-century version of Charles Darwin’s 19th-century voyage on the HMS Beagle. Led by a Rockville, Md.based team that circumnavigated the globe on a specially equipped sailboat, the project focused not on the microbes themselves — most of which are too finicky to be kept alive in culture dishes — but on their DNA, easily obtained from cells and later decoded on shore.

Perhaps most exciting, said study leader J. Craig Venter, is that the rate of discovery of new genes and proteins — the building blocks of life — was as great at the end of the voyage as it was at the start, suggesting that humanity is nowhere close to closing the logbooks on global biodiversity.

“Instead of being at the end of discovery, it means we’re in the earliest stages,” said Venter, chairman of the J. Craig Venter Insti-

tute, a nonprofit gene research center. “That is a pretty stunning view.”

Mitchell Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., praised the work as a “remarkable technological achievement.” Microbes account for up to 90 percent of the biomass in the oceans, he said, and control all the major biological and geochemical cycles that keep the Earth’s ecosystems in balance. So it is valuable to learn what those organisms are and where and how they live, he said.

The new findings, described in the March issue of the journal PLoS Biology, build on results Venter obtained during a 2003 test voyage in the Sargasso Sea, which had been considered an especially lifeless body of water. That netted more than 1 million genes entirely new to science — evidence that Earth’s seas harbor microbes far more numerous and far stranger than scientists had imagined.

The latest voyage, on Venter’s 95-foot sloop, Sorcerer II, started in Nova Scotia, passed through the Panama Canal, then tagged the Galapagos, Polynesia, the Horn of Africa, the Caribbean and the U.S. East Coast.

Every 200 miles, the team pumped 200 liters of seawater through a layered filter system that separated viruses and various kinds of cells by size. Tuesday’s analysis covers about one-quarter of the samples — from Nova Scotia to the Galapagos — and only the viruses and smallest cells.

Yet DNA analyses on even that limited sample, conducted on an immensely powerful supercomputer designed for the project by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, tallied genetic cod-

ing for more than 6 million new proteins, doubling the number already tabulated in the world’s genetic databases.

Among them are more than 2,000 “proteorhodopsins,” each of which can convert certain wavelengths of sunlight into biological energy through means wholly independent of photosynthesis, the process used by green vegetation.

That gives scientists a slew of new methods to mimic for getting energy from the sun, Venter said.

Some new genes seem designed to help organisms get energy from carbon dioxide in the air, a tantalizing alternative to the oil and coal that most human technologies rely on. Researchers hope those biological blueprints may show them how to scrub greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Venter predicted that other genes will be found to direct the production of novel antibiotics, because bacteria are prodigious makers of such compounds, which they use to fend off other microbes.

The new data are being shared freely on the Web — an approach many researchers and governments appreciate but that raised alarms in some countries that had considered profiting from the genetic heritages in their territorial waters. Although the Sorcerer team obtained permits for all their collections, there were occasional misunderstandings, Venter conceded — one of which led to a oneweek standoff in French Polynesia during which his boat was threatened by the French navy.

Sogin said follow-up surveys at different depths and locations will surely expand the database greatly.

“As amazing as this inventory is,” Sogin said, “it’s only scratching the surface of what’s really there.”

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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

Both parties work on palatable immigration bills

BY NICOLE GAOUETTE LOS ANGELES T IMES

WASHINGTON — As President Bush uses his Latin American trip to call for an overhaul of U.S. immigration law, GOP lawmakers are working with his administration to draft a proposal that could win enough Republican support to settle the thorny issue.

Republican lawmakers are looking at how to improve the way businesses verify that workers are legal residents, how to set up a temporary worker program, and how to deal with illegal immigrants in the country.

The discussions are taking place as Democrats shift gears on their own immigration legislation to try to win more Republican support. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a conservative who will play an active role in immigration reform, said he sees progress. “There’s a lot of discussion now with the White House about the details ... that give me some optimism that we may be actually able to agree on legislation and that we could get Democratic members to agree to it as well and get it passed by the end of the year,” he said.

Although there is widespread bipartisan desire to repair the

nation’s immigration system, it isn’t clear when a bill will emerge in the Senate. And there is still no agreement on what exactly should be done — an issue that divided the GOP during last year’s debate.

The flurry of backstage activity reflects a concern among lawmakers that they get the legislation right, said Angie Kelley, of the National Immigration Forum. “The stakes are so very high,” she said. “This is a critical domestic policy issue and I don’t think it’s too much to say the eyes of the nation are on lawmakers. Simplistic sound bites like, ‘Deport everybody’ are not going to fly this time around.”

In Guatemala on Monday, Bush said finding a position that “most Republicans are comfortable with” would provide the key to success. He said it was important to take the time to do that.

“The initial stages of getting a bill that meets objections is timeconsuming, but it is worth it and necessary in order for us to be able to address the concerns,” he said.

Last year, the Senate passed broad immigration legislation that Bush largely backed. But the House passed its own enforcement-only bill.

Some observers warned that the White House initiative has potential risks.

“The White House is involved at a level they haven’t been in the past,” said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Is it a risky strategy? Of course.

It could result in greater polarization instead of a bigger bipartisan majority. But if it works, it will be a major coup.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, the lead Democrat on Senate immigration legislation, also moved to bolster bipartisan support with a decision Friday to abandon a draft under discussion in favor of the bill the Judiciary Committee passed last year, 12-6, with backing from four out of 10 Republicans on the committee.

The committee bill included increased border security infrastructure and staffing,a mandatory worker verification program that all employers would have to use within five years, tough restrictions on the legal immigrants and asylum seekers, fewer restrictions on family visas, more job-based visas, a guest worker program and a way to allow eligible illegal immigrants to continued on page 9

LCD flat-screen TVs on downward pricing trend

BY DAVID COLKER LOS ANGELES T IMES

If you’ve been waiting for fast-falling prices of LCD flat-screen TVs to flatten out, you can stop. Now’s the time to buy.

Or maybe not.

Prices have been basically stalled since the retail wars of the 2006 holidays, when LCD TVs, once luxury items, went almost mainstream. But prices will probably plunge again by the end of the year.

A 42-inch set currently selling for an average $1,877 could be going for $1,175 — a drop of more than 35 percent — just in time for the winter holidays, the iSuppli research group said Tuesday. Already, at some discount and membership stores, you can find an off-brand 42inch LCD set for under $1,000.

“I have a 20-inch LCD set across from me that was $1,500 just four years ago. Now I could get it for $149,” said Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group. “The prices have fallen faster than any consumer electronics item in years, with

the exception of DVD players.”

If the price falls as much as expected this year, the average 42inch LCD set will cost only about $80 less than a plasma flat-screen of the same size. For years, plasma was the undisputed flat-screen king, largely because the technology was far cheaper. But now LCDs could rule — especially among the environmentally- and weight-conscious.

“LCD TVs use a lot less electricity,” Doherty said. “People who consider themselves green tend to buy LCD. And the weight of two 37-inch LCD TVs are about equal to that of one plasma set the same size.”

Right now, LCD sets have 22 percent of the market. The iSuppli group predicts that will rise to 51 percent in 2009.

This year, the number of raw LCD screens — each of which contains a liquid crystal gel divided into hundreds of thousands of individual pixels — shipping from factories will reach 75.2 million, up from 52.7 in 2006, iSuppli said.

And the price of the screens to TV manufacturers is forecast to fall 17

percent in just the first half of this year.

That will likely to be passed onto shoppers. At the stores, competition is fierce.

“At the beginning of 2006, we were seeing 42-inch LCDs at about $3,500 or $4,000,” said Ross Rubin, an analyst with the NPD Group.

“But they were from just a handful of manufacturers. By the end of the year, many more manufacturers were offering LCDs and there was very aggressive retail discounting during the holidays.”

What’s good for shoppers, though, doesn’t necessarily make manufacturers and retailers happy.

In December, “some of the 32inch brands were as low as $500,” said Riddhi Patel, an analyst with iSuppli. “That’s an awesome price for the consumer but it was hard on everyone in the TV supply chain because it was such a low profit margin.”

Since then, LCD prices have stayed nearly the same, or gone slightly up in some cases.

But if the experts are right, it’s only a rest period between rounds.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Viacom sues Google, YouTube for alleged copyright infringement

BY DAWN C. CHMIELEWSKI, MEG JAMES AND THOMAS S. MULLIGAN LOS ANGELES T IMES

With a $1 billion lawsuit, Viacom Inc. is aiming to upend Google Inc.’s plan to change the way people watch TV and movies.

Viacom, which owns MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures, sued Google in federal court Tuesday, accusing the Internet company of “brazenly exploiting” the power of the Web to make easy money off Hollywood’s hard work.

Google’s YouTube video-sharing service has “deliberately chosen not to take reasonable precautions” to stop users from posting unauthorized clips of shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “South Park” and movies such as “An Inconvenient Truth,” the suit says. “YouTube profits handsomely from the presence of the infringing works on its site.”

Viacom isn’t the only old-media company with that opinion. Several book publishers and news agencies have sued Google for alleged copyright infringement, though none has Viacom’s deep pockets or fighting instincts.

Until recently, Viacom was one of several companies struggling to reach deals that would allow them to share in the YouTube advertising revenue that their shows generate. NBC Universal last month sent a letter warning that Google should better protect copyrighted material.

“Everybody recognizes litigation is not a particularly desirable business outcome,” NBC Universal General Counsel Richard Cotton said in an interview before

the Viacom suit was filed. “What you have is everybody going the last mile to try to find a constructive business solution. But I guess what I would say is this is the last mile.”

Viacom’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York, seeks at least $1 billion in damages for 150,000 alleged copyright law violations. A Viacom spokesman called that “a very conservative estimate.” Under copyright law, Viacom could win $150,000 per “willful” infringement, meaning that penalties on the more than 150,000 alleged violations would approach $23 billion.

Google attorney Glenn Brown said the company was confident about its case.

“More importantly, we’re proud to continue giving creators a place to post and discuss their videos, whether it be a family’s home video or a company like the BBC or any of the other big professional media companies to partner with us to host their content,” he said.

The Mountain View, Calif., company has become both friend and foe of TV networks, newspapers and other traditional media companies. They crave the traffic Google can direct to their Web sites but fret that it’s making so much money off their material.

“Google has said its mission is to be able to provide quick access to all of the world’s information,” said Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff. “Much of the world’s information is copyrighted. So unless there is a resolution to this question, they can’t succeed.”

It was clear Google was in for a fight when it bought YouTube — paying $1.6 billion — in Novem-

Tru Story flips for March Madness continued from page 12 draft Chances are most people have not seen much of players like Georgetown’s Jeff Green or Georgia Tech’s Thaddeus Young, or even North Carolina’s Brendan Wright, a guy who stars on an ACC powerhouse that gets coverage on ESPN. Last year, the tournament gave pro fans a look at top prospects such as Rudy Gay and Adam Morrison, while less well-known players such as Tyrus Thomas and Joakim Noah made a name for themselves. If there is one good thing about the new NBA rule that forces players to spend a year in school before they can declare for the draft, it’s that by the time players like Durant and Oden are in the pros, they will already be stars with familiar games and skill sets.

Young kids playing really, really hard Watch a Knicks-Celtics game and then watch an NCAA tournament game. Here’s what you’re probably thinking: “Mardy Collins, Nate Robinson, Renaldo Balkman, Channing Frye and Jerome James vs. Sebastian Telfair, Alan Ray, Ryan Gomes, Brian Scalabrini and Michael Olowokandi might be the most pathetic group of NBA players I’ve ever seen on the floor at the same time,” followed by, “Wow, are these guys even trying?” With the exception of Rudy Gay, college players go all out, playing 40 minutes of the most passionate basketball you’ll ever see.

ber. TV networks, movie studios and record labels were already complaining about the Web site’s failure to block pirated videos.

YouTube launched in December 2005 with home videos of its co-founder’s cat. Audiences began to flock to karaoke bits and online confessionals, then figured out that they could share and watch snippets from thousands of TV shows, music videos and movies. The site became perhaps the Web’s largest collection of buzzworthy TV highlights.

The site’s traffic rocketed to more than 34 million U.S. visitors in February, up from only 4 million a year earlier, according to Web research firm ComScore Networks. Networks and producers were happy to be along for the ride, until it became part of an emerging Internet behemoth.

“When YouTube was a fun start-up that wasn’t monetizing the content, I was fine with it,” said Ben Silverman, executive producer behind such popular shows as “The Office” on NBC and “Ugly Betty” on ABC. “But the moment they sold themselves for $1.6 billion and became a service that was making money off other people’s content, the game changed.”

Viacom contends that since YouTube has successfully screened pornography from the videos its users contribute, it should be able to police the site for copyrighted material. When Viacom asked Google to take action, “they kept saying, ‘It’s difficult,’ ” Viacom spokesman Carl Folta said. “If it’s difficult, shut your site down until you get it right.”

At NBC, executives have strug-

gled to decide how to deal with YouTube. A year ago, the “Lazy Sunday” skit — a satirical rap about cupcakes and the “Chronicles of Narnia” — found its way onto YouTube and reintroduced NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” franchise to millions of young viewers.

The leak triggered conflicting impulses within NBC. It wanted to use the emerging technology but couldn’t let copyright infringement go unchallenged.

NBC decided to play along with the online video start-up, if only to gauge YouTube’s promotional potential. Perhaps this online community attracted by videos of toilet-trained cats, skateboard antics and karaoke could be harnessed to lure young viewers to professionally produced new shows like “Heroes” or “The Office.”

The video-sharing site reaped only $15 million in revenue for 2006 — roughly the same amount broadcast networks typically collect in advertising in one night.

But TV executives resented that their shows had helped make multimillionaires of YouTube’s young founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim.

They also feared that YouTube would disrupt their advertising business by becoming the gatekeeper between online viewers and TV programming.

NBC went full-circle: from demanding the removal of “Lazy Sunday” and other NBC clips, to striking a broad promotional partnership, to once again considering legal action.

The company declined to comment Tuesday.

Legal analysts said the case would test the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 law

that shields Internet service providers from liability for material their users post online. To qualify, service providers must remove unauthorized material when notified of its presence by copyrighted holders.

YouTube has long maintained that it is protected because it immediately removes copyrighted video when notified.

“We feel it’s a very clear law,” said Glenn Brown, Google product counsel. “It makes clear that sites like YouTube basically enjoy this safe harbor, providing they make this removal process easy for content owners to make a choice about what they want to do with their content.”

But Greg Gabriel, a Santa Monica, Calif., entertainment lawyer, said YouTube was stretching the boundaries of the safe-harbor provision, which was intended to protect Internet service providers that wouldn’t know that infringing materials were on a Web site unless notified. “This is where YouTube is in trouble,” he said. “You can’t even log onto YouTube’s Web page without seeing a halfdozen infringing clips.”

The stakes are incredibly high in the fight, said Annette Hurst, a San Francisco lawyer who represented Napster creator Shawn Fanning. The outcome could tilt the balance between allowing technology to flourish and protecting the creative community’s interests.

“Google is probably the only company that could have bought YouTube,” she said. “They had an already-existing business model not premised on infringement.

And they were the only ones who could afford to take a risk.”

Congress works on immigration bills continued from page 8 gain legal status.

Kennedy and his partner on the bill, Sen. John McCain, RAriz., had disagreed on labor protections in a new bill they were writing. With presidential politics increasingly likely to distract from and possibly distort debate, Kennedy chose to take up last year’s committee bill.

Tom Trudeau ’09 and Trick Daddy luv’ da’ kids.

π

The administration has been talking to Republicans across the political spectrum on immigration. They have two basic aims. One is to increase the number of Republicans backing immigration reform. The other is to hedge against the effect of a Democratic-controlled House.

Last year, Senate Republicans knew that any bill they passed would go to the House — filled

with lawmakers hawkish on immigration — and take on more conservative language. Now, any bill that emerges from the Senate could well move to the left in the House.

That dynamic is a factor as the Republicans discuss their core elements of reform: border security, a temporary worker program that does not lead to citizenship, and worker verification.

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 10

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

The sum of Simmons’ gift Though we’re still not quite sure what prompted President Ruth Simmons to contribute $20,007 to the 2007 senior gift campaign — we still wonder if a verbal typo was involved in the 900 percent boost — her generosity is inspiring to us.

With last year’s senior gift at about $19,000, Simmons gift already puts the class of 2007 well past its immediate predecessor.

The 1,549 students in the class of 2006 donated an average of roughly $12.17 per student to the Brown Annual Fund. Surprisingly low.

It seems reasonable to expect each member of the graduating class to donate at least $20 to the Annual Fund upon graduating.

When $20 can’t even cover dinner and a movie or a decent case of beer, we suspect seniors can make a small sacrifice to give back to Brown. For all that Brown provides students in their four years on College Hill, $20 is a fair parting gift to help current students form their own memories of Brown.

As crucial as $100 million gifts are to any modern university’s success, a contingent of alums who consistently and happily donate small amounts are just as valuable. The Annual Fund, toward which the senior class gift goes, is a particularly important part of Brown’s fundraising operation because money donated to the fund can be utilized immediately to address any campus need.

For example, if 1,500 seniors donate $20 each, the $30,000 raised could theoretically support 13 first years’ exemption from work-study requirement that comes with a financial aid package.

Or it could fund a dissertation fellowship for a graduate student or 10 UTRAs for undergrad researchers.

Of course, without the generosity of Warren Alpert and Sidney Frank ’42, the University would not have made the rapid improvement it already has. But while small $50 and $100 donations won’t fund capital projects, they add up to provide for student services and financial aid for students trying to determine whether they can afford Brown.

Financial aid might be need-blind, but it’s far from all-encompassing. Simmons has said she believes making Brown more affordable for middle class students will be among the University’s most significant challenges in coming years. An extra $1,000 to a student like that makes as much of a difference as an extra $1 million does to the Plan for Academic Enrichment.

Encouraging seniors to donate small sums to the University before walking through the Van Wickle Gates is especially important given Brown’s comparatively small pool of alums. If we’re really the happiest students in the nation, we must be enjoying the time we’re spending here.

If the University can find a way to tap into seniors’ enthusiasm for Brown before they disperse around the world as young alums, it’s also more likely they will continue to do so again 10 and 20 years down the road.

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

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

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Steve DeLucia, Sophie Elsner, Designer Ayelet Brinn, Ted Lamm, Cece Matheny, Copy Editors Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Oliver Bowers, Zachary Chapman, Chaz Firestone, Kristina Kelleher, Debbie Lehmann, Scott Lowenstein, James Shapiro, Michael Skocpol Staff Writers Susana Aho, Taylor Barnes, Brianna Barzola, Evan Boggs, Irene Chen, 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

LETTERS

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

Zapendowski ’07 wrong on free will To the Editor: Two thoughts regarding the column by Herald Opinions Editor Michal Zapendowski ’07 (“I had no choice but to write this column,” March 9).

First, Zapendowski cites Libet’s 1980s experiments and claims “Libet was able to tell what they were going to do before they themselves knew” and that this implication is “tremendous.” This seems like a stretch to me. Libet was able to tell what they were going to do before one part of the mind knew it (the conscious part), but he wasn’t able predict the actions of the subconscious mind. Another possible conclusion is that the choices we make may originate in our subconscious, but they are still choices that we (our minds) make.

Second, Zapendowski spends some time discussing how monotheistic faiths deny the existence of 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.”

This may be true, but in order for Zapendowski to use a statement like this in an argument against free will, he would have to first show that there exists a god and that such a god is omniscient. He does neither, and so he can make no conclusion regarding the existence of free will based on the beliefs of monotheistic faiths.

Andrew Chin ‘08 March 12

Domestic assault needs intervention To the Editor: In his recent column (“Stop and think,” March 12) Adam Cambier ’09 presented two unfortunate incidents of “profoundly stupid men doing profoundly stupid things in an attempt to play the hero” in the context of mistakenly perceived domestic abuse.

Though not explicitly, he suggests that we should be extremely hesitant to become involved in perceived domestic assault because it’s likely that we’re just being paranoid.

Several hours after reading Cambier’s piece, I sat in my seminar on intimate partner violence listening to story after story of women whose repeated beatings at the hands of their partners were consistently ignored by those who heard and saw them. I stopped and thought to myself: Who should I be more concerned about — a few vigilantes whose misguided attempts to save an imaginary victim went awry, or the thousands

of real victims whose calls for help are ignored?

The actions of the two men Cambier discussed were definitely over-the-top and, I admit, slightly comic — and I tend to agree that people should refrain from using swords or taxis as weapons. But at least they thought to do something. The apathy of Kitty Genovese’s neighbors 43 years ago is not a relic of the past. Reluctance to report or intervene in domestic violence persists among the public to this day.

Rather than having a good chuckle about the misguided actions of a few well-intentioned individuals, it seems more appropriate that on the anniversary of Kitty Genovese’s death we consider the long way we have to go in the protection of victimized women.

Jess Ratner ’08 March 12

Goss ’06 important to science and society program To the Editor: While I appreciate the attention given to the new Science and Society concentration (“Science and society to graduate first concentrators,” March 12), I wanted to mention a student not mentioned in The Herald’s article who was very influential in the development and progress of the concentration over the past few years.

Last spring, Adeline Goss ’06 and I both graduated with a concentration in Science and Society. I met Addie through her work with the concentration and I know

that if she had not dedicated her four years at Brown not only to her own scholarship but to the future of the concentration, other students would not have been able to follow in her footsteps.

I wanted to acknowledge Addie as the very first concentrator in Science and Society.

Emma Zuroski ’06 March 13

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O PINIONS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

PAGE 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

The conservative Brown student body JOEY BORSON OPINIONS COLUMNIST A long time ago, in a high school far, far away (or, well, about six years ago in Pennsylvania), a history teacher tried to explain the difference between “liberal” and “conservative.” Conservative, my teacher said, meant “resistance to change,” and liberal should conversely be equated with a “willingness to change.” Now, over the years — and over many political science and history courses — I’ve learned that those definitions are, of course, not nearly that simple, but that general schema continues to hold a fair bit of currency with me.

And when I came to Brown, a supposed “bastion of liberalism,” I assumed to find an open-minded student body, willing to challenge the status quo and evaluate the world with open eyes. On many issues, and for many people, that’s very true — generally speaking, our school is a tolerant place, and the occasional “intellectual diversity” skirmishes notwithstanding, very willing to consider new ideas and perspectives.

But when it comes to our own internal school affairs, we’re a reactionary, highly conservative student body — utterly resistant to change.

Need an example? Consider the Banner debate. Or the changes to Orientation. Or for those who remember, last year, when the plus/minus trial balloon was shot down by the Undergraduate Council of Students

with a very large piece of rhetorical field artillery.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I want to add that I served as a student representative on the Orientation review committee, which recommended the plan that will be the nucleus of Orientation 2007.)

Indeed, when it came to any large change regarding school administration that affected undergraduates in the seven-and-a-half

es were secretive or hidden. Furthermore, in nearly all cases, there has always been some form of institutionalized student input into the processes.

I don’t even think that the resistance is due to the content of the changes. I’m pretty sure that most of us recognize that it’s time for Brown to have a computerized registration system — and filling out add/drop or concentration forms on double or quadruple

Resistance toward the slightest modifications of the status quo stems from a feeling among many of us, including, I’ll admit, myself, that we were “promised” a certain set of procedures when we matriculated, and it would be wrong for those rules to change once we have arrived. semesters that I’ve been at Brown, the reaction has always been swift, decisive and almost always uniformly negative. Why? It hasn’t been about process. While many of these changes were proposed in small committees or done by offices that students rarely come into contact with, very little criticism has ever been about the fact that chang-

carbon paper leads to far more trouble than it’s worth. Are Banner, Orientation and the addition of pluses and minuses fundamentally flawed? Of course, any new policy has its problems. But those problems aren’t insurmountable, nor do they explain the hostility of some toward these changes.

Instead, this resistance toward the slight-

est modifications of the status quo stems from a feeling among many of us, including, I’ll admit, myself, that we were “promised” a certain set of procedures when we matriculated, and it would be wrong for those rules to change once we have arrived. Brown’s a system, and we’ve all figured out the best ways to game it.

Those feelings make perfect sense. But there are times when the system is broken, and change is absolutely necessary. Replacing 1940s technology with 1990s technology is one step, modifying Orientation to respond to substance abuse problems is another. And perhaps, as the “New” Curriculum nears its 40th year, students should seriously consider whether, and how, it should change. The new Task Force on Undergraduate Education is a good step, and I’m encouraged by the interest so many students have shown in its mission.

So what should Brown students do to truly earn the “openness to change” reputation that the rest of the world equates with our fair school? We need to learn to genuinely consider proposals that impact our schools and our academics — and the administration needs to include students in the decision-making process. But more than that, we must recognize that, just as with the outside world, change at Brown is not always bad, and defending the status quo at all costs doesn’t always make sense. We wouldn’t accept it with the rest of the world — and we shouldn’t accept it on College Hill.

Joey Borson ’07 hasn’t changed his morning routine in eight years.

Don’t let Giuliani ‘clean up’ America

BY KARLA BERTRAND OPINIONS COLUMNIST So former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has officially entered the presidential race.

Upon hearing his name, many think of “America’s Mayor” in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. Others may conjure up memories of the reduced crime rate, or of blatant First Amendment violations. But there is one insidious phrase which is most commonly used of Giuliani’s time in office, and it is that aspect I wish to discuss here.

The catchphrase is “clean up.” “Oh, he really cleaned up the city,” people rave. Let us parse that innocuous little term a bit. To clean something up is to rid it of filth, dirt and other such undesirables. What disgusting scourge did Giuliani oust from New York City? Homeless people. At first blush, this may seem desirable. But Giuliani did not rid us of the plagues of homelessness, hopelessness and abject poverty. Instead, he rid us of having to see the people suffering from such afflictions. He encouraged the arrests and relocation of the homeless on petty charges, while simultaneously and dramatically cutting funding and staffing for programs intended to ameliorate their condition.

By 2000, it ought to be noted — after seven years of Giuliani’s tender care — the homelessness rate in New York was higher than it had been since the economic recession in 1989. Though the homeless had largely disappeared from sight due to street sweeps, their number had steadily increased due to Giuliani’s policies. According to the Village Voice, he consistently “cut or stymied funding for homeless services, welfare, food stamps, food pantries, hospitals, health care and prescription-drug programs, AIDS services, low-income housing, day care, neighborhood parks, after-school and recreation programs, seniors’ programs, small museums, small cultural and arts programs, libraries and legal services for the poor.”

He reduced capital spending on affordable housing by over 40 percent, cut creation of apartments for homeless families by 75 percent, downsized the staff of the Department of Homeless Services by half and transferred the vast majority of public homeless shelters into private hands.

So how did Giuliani deal with the problem that he was exacerbating? He chose to do so by essentially criminalizing homelessness.

He reinterpreted a sanitation department regulation banning the abandoning of cars and the like on city streets to apply to people living in cardboard boxes — other laws,

being put into a shelter — for it is not simple recalcitrance. Homeless shelters are often dirty, crowded and dangerous. Those who seek a haven there face the prospect of battery, robbery, rape and infection within their walls; shelters also teem with the mentally ill, due to the dismantling of social and medical services meant to help them. Little wonder, then, that many prefer the dubious safety of the streets to such an atmosphere. Giuliani underscores his utter lack of comprehension and empathy by public remarks like this one, reported in the New York Times, “Streets do not exist in civilized societies for

But Giuliani did not rid us of the plagues of homelessness, hopelessness and abject poverty. Instead, he rid us of having to see the people suffering from such afflications. such as those prohibiting camping in parks without a permit, were applied towards the same goal. Giuliani charged street patrols with paying “special attention” to such terrors as “prostitution, homeless people, noise complaints, panhandling, public drinking, squeegee men and graffiti” — and ordered the arrest of any homeless person who refused to be placed in a shelter on such specious charges as disorderly conduct, trespassing or impeding the flow of pedestrian traffic. He even attempted to pass legislation that would put children in foster care if their parents did not fulfill certain “workfare” requirements.

Giuliani clearly never stopped to consider why someone would refuse to be “helped” by

the purpose of people sleeping there … Bedrooms are for sleeping.” The right to sleep on the street, he declares, “doesn’t exist anywhere. The founding fathers never put that in the Constitution.” The workings of his mind are simply unfathomable. Does he honestly believe that anyone wants to sleep on the streets in sub-zero weather, at the mercy of the elements, without such basic amenities as a toilet or washbasin, their desperation and humiliation exposed to every passerby?

The question is not of the “right to sleep on the street” but rather of the responsibility of the government to provide a safety net, a viable alternative to that last resort — a duty at which the Giuliani administration has patently and deliberately failed.

Giuliani did not care about the misery of the homeless — only the distaste of the affluent. As a city official explained to the New York Times, “I think most citizens of the city, if they are walking in the park and they see some unknown figure sleeping in a cardboard box, they don’t feel very secure.”

Well-to-do people, Giuliani’s actions boldly declare, should not have to deal with unsolicited people trying to wash their windshields or sell them wilted roses at traffic lights.

They should not have to step over the bodies of their less fortunate brethren sprawled sleeping in stations or huddled shivering on metal subway grates. They should not have to be panhandled daily and forced to look into the scruffy face of the Other. It’s simply uncivilized.

I’m not trying to be sanctimonious here.

It is uncomfortable. It makes me feel awkward and guilty and conflicted and helpless.

But the solution is not arresting people for loitering who literally have nowhere to go, or prodding them awake with batons and demanding that they “move along.” Silly as metaphorical battles with abstractions sound, surely a “War on Homelessness” is better than a “War on Homeless People.”

Now, homelessness may not be “your cause.” But even if you are not passionate about this issue for its own sake, some vital insights into Giuliani’s character can be gleaned by the examination of his behavior. Presented with a social problem, he responded by valiantly protecting the sensibilities of the privileged by persecuting and prosecuting the powerless. He kicked people who were down and then arrested them for having the gall to lie there winded — and all this in the name of “quality-of-life improvements.” I shudder to think of what he would do if we voters allow him the opportunity to “clean up” America.

Karla Bertrand ’09 objects to “cleaning up” her room on moral grounds.

S PORTS W EDNESDAY WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2007

Tru Story flips for March Madness If there’s one thing Brown has taught me, it’s that everyone has their own tastes.

Some people enjoy tennis, I used to think some girls were “universally attractive,” and I just read that NASTom Trudeau CAR gets the Tru Story second-highest television ratings of any sport in the country. To each his own, I guess.

But, IMHO (that’s “in my humble opinion,” which I saw in a Yankee chat forum and have embraced as my baby) subjectivity goes out the window for March Madness.

If you don’t love the tournament and embrace it as the best thing in sports, you’re wrong. Here’s what I love about the NCAA tournament: Cinderellas Every single year, a Cinderella emerges and squashes the dreams of a powerhouse. Is there anything more beautiful than watching five future pros crying their eyes out as thousands of stunned fans wonder what went wrong? The only downside is the obligatory “Who will be this year’s George Mason?” conversation, along with the fact that the longer Cinderella lasts, the more likely it is we’ll have a less-thancompetitive game late in the tournament.

Pools The games alone are exciting, but add a little dose of pride and a bigger dose of cash prizes, and you’ve got one spicy-meat-a-ball.

Pools make uninspiring 12-seed vs.

5-seed match-ups so much fun to watch because every single game matters.

Guard play The adage that great guard play wins the tournament doesn’t come out of nowhere. There is a reason that a wingman like Kevin Durant of Texas gets infinitely more touches than a center like Ohio State’s Greg Oden does. NCAA teams tend to pack into tight zones and force guards to either break down the zones off the dribble or shoot lots of three-pointers. I respect a good low post game, but I’d rather watch someone come off screens and shoot deep threes or a lightning quick point guard take it to the rack.

No. 18 m. lax rings Bellarmine 9-8 for third straight victory

BY JASON HARRIS SPORTS STAFF WRITER

In its second consecutive nail-biter, the men’s lacrosse team pulled out a comeback win against Bellarmine University at home Tuesday.

Neither team led by more than two goals at any point, and in the end the Bears outlasted the Knights 98 to record their third consecutive victory and move to 3-1 overall.

The Bears were led by tri-captain and attackman David Madeira ’07, who scored five goals and added an assist in his second game back from a knee injury. Though Madeira is still not completely healthy, he ran circles around the Bellarmine defense, weaving between two defenders before bouncing in his third score.

At another point, he got through four different Knights before being knocked down and stripped in front of the net.

Two of his goals came in manup situations off feeds from attackman Jack Walsh ’09. “Jack threw some really good passes,” Madeira said. “He is really good at what he does.”

His final two tallies came on passes from fellow tri-captain Alex Buckley ’07. In both cases, Buckley drew two defenders as he attacked the cage, leaving Madeira open in the middle for shots that he rifled past the Bellarmine goalie.

“Most of the credit goes to (Assistant Coach Jon Thompson),” Madeira said. “We used a scheme that the University of Maryland used against Bellarmine. We took advantage of the way their defense was sliding, and teammates just found me in the middle.”

Head Coach Lars Tiffany ’90 said the intangibles Madeira brings to the team are almost as important as his performance on the field. “David Madeira is a very talented lacrosse player and a leader,” Tiffany said. “With him, we are not only a better team scoring goals, but emotionally as well.

Aaron Eisman / Herald File Photo Tri-captain David Madeira ’07 scored five goals and added an assist in men’s lacrosse’s 9-8 win over Bellarmine University.

He leads us by example.”

Despite Madeira’s brilliant play, Brown found itself in a 60minute dogfight. Ahead only 2-1 after one quarter of play, Brown had multiple scoring opportunities in the period. The Bears credited Knights’ goalie J.C. Hutchens for keeping his side in the game. “(Hutchens) played really well, so the game was closer than it should have been,” Madeira said.

With six minutes to go in the game after a giant hit from Buckley helped the Bears maintain possession of the ball, they were able to tie the game for the first time since early in the third quarter. Attackman Kyle Hollingsworth ’09, who had been relatively quiet to that point, took the ball behind the Bellarmine net, came around the side and beat Hutchens.

continued on page 9

With the game tied, the Bears stepped up the pressure on the Knights. “I am really proud of the way we rode,” Tiffany said. “We were tough and gritty.”

Tiffany cited two enormous hits by midfielder Mike Cummins ’08 and one from midfielder Thomas Muldoon ’10 as evidence of the physical play his team employed down the stretch.

Offensively, most of Bellarmine’s success came in the transition game off faceoffs. But Tiffany said he was not too concerned with his team’s play in that area.

“Give credit to the Bellarmine faceoff,” Tiffany said. “(Bellarmine midfielder Bobby) Snider is excellent.”

Despite Brown’s struggle with faceoffs all game, Buckley pointed to a win by faceoff specialist Nic

Bell ’09 late in the fourth quarter as a key to the victory. The successful re-start came after Hollingsworth’s goal and helped prevent an immediate Knight counter-attack, something that had allowed Bellarmine to keep the game close throughout the afternoon.

After Bell’s face-off win, Brown’s game-winning goal started with a daring decision by its last line of defense. Goaltender Jordan Burke ’09 received the ball from one of his defenders off of a turnover and proceeded up the field.

He took on two defenders near midfield and was knocked to the ground, but Burke impressively retained possession and dumped the ball off to a teammate. “‘Oh, God,’ was my initial reaction,” Tiffany said. “But Jordan has been in that situation a lot of times. He is crafty and finds a way to elude opposing players. He had the poise and presence to move the ball up.”

Brown worked the ball into Hollingsworth’s stick behind the net again. In a similar fashion to the goal he scored minutes earlier, Hollingsworth came around the cage and deposited the winner into the back of the net with 3:08 remaining, dodging numerous Knights in the process.

Afterward, Tiffany praised Hollingsworth’s improved play this season. “Kyle stepped up and made big plays when we needed them,” he said. “In the fall, Kyle began developing into a man, accepting responsibility for his play.

There is a direct correlation between this change and him stepping up and making plays late.”

Buckley said off-season work has allowed Brown to pull out close games early in the season.

“We have been building this since the fall,” he said. “When we are in a tight situation, we know we can be successful.”

The Bears will hit the road again on Saturday traveling to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Sacramone ’10 sweep leads gymnastics team to victory

The three-point line I’m not trying to brag, but I once made 12 threes in a row. It’s not a very difficult shot to make, and if someone catches fire, the three-ball can carry an inferior opponent to victory. My favorite tournament team was the 2001-02 Indiana team. They were un-athletic, slow and relied on Jarred Jeffries to get every single rebound and make every single defensive play, but they had a bunch of trey-poppin’ farm boys who could rain threes. The farm boys got hot and gave Maryland a run for their money in the championship game.

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PAGE 12

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Jacob Melrose / Herald File Photo In a win over Southern Connecticut State University, Izzy Kirkham-Lewitt ’10 earned second-place in the bars with a 9.225 and third-place in the floor with 9.5.

After four straight losses to Ivy League opponents, the gymnastics team earned its first victory in three weeks Sunday. Brown defeated Southern Connecticut State University by 185.225-183.750, thanks in large part to Alicia Sacramone ’10, who took first place in every event.

The Bears outperformed the Owls in the vault to begin the meet.

Sacramone won with a score of 9.725, and both Jennifer Sobuta ’09 and Alanna Kwoka ’10 earned scores of 9.425 to tie for third place.

Brown’s next event, the uneven bars, was an even greater success, with the Bears finishing in the top four spots. Sacramone took another victory with a score of 9.675. Izzy Kirkham-Lewitt ’10 received a 9.225 for second place, Sobuta received a 9.200 for third place, and Hannah Goldstein received a 9.175 for fourth place.

Sacramone added the beam to her ever-growing list of wins as she earned a score of 9.725. She followed this strong performance with another first-place finish on the floor, taking the event with a 9.875.

Kirkham-Lewitt received a score of 9.500 to place third.

After Sacramone’s dominating wins in all four events, it came as no surprise that she placed first in the all-around with 39.000 points.

Sacramone is now ranked 76th nationally.

Sobuta finished second in the all-around with 37.600 points, and Kwoka totaled 36.850 points for fourth place.

The Bears will host the University of Pennsylvania on Sunday in their last home meet of the season, and they look to avenge a 191.550186.975 loss from two weeks ago.

The meet begins at 1 p.m. in the Pizzitola Center.

— Erin Frauenhofer Equestrian extends Region 1 lead with one show remaining After reclaiming the Region 1 lead from the University of Connecticut on Feb. 24, the equestrian team wasted little time increasing its advantage this weekend at Connecticut College’s Mystic Valley Hunt Club. The team racked up 34 points on Saturday and increased its lead over the second-place Huskies to 33 continued on page 6