Wednesday, April 11, 2007 by The Brown Daily Herald

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDA

Volume CXLII, No. 48

, 2007

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Vice president of El Salvador speaks on ﬁghting poverty

LOT T E RY J I T T E R S

BY CHRISTIAN MARTELL STAFF WRITER

Ana Vilma Albanez de Escobar, the ﬁrst female vice president of El Salvador, spoke about the past, present and future challenges of Central American countries and “how the actions of people in one side of the world impact those on another side” Tuesday in Salomon 101. Her lecture, titled “El Salvador: A Country of Opportunities,” was part of Latino History Month. Escobar and President Elias Antonio Saca were elected in 2004 in an election boasting the highest voter turnout ever in Salvadoran history. Their party, ARENA, won 58.5 percent of the vote — 20 points more than the opposition. Escobar discussed current economic policies undertaken by the Salvadoran government, such as its involvement in the Central America Free Trade Agreement, an expansion agreement between the only Salvadoran airline and Air Canada and the “Plan Puebla

Rahul Keerthi / Herald A student awaits her fate on the ﬁrst night of the housing lottery, held Tuesday night in Sayles Hall.

Former treasury secretary discusses economic polic policymaking

U.’s energy conservation effort set to move forward

BY SIMMI AUJLA METRO EDITOR

Within days, the University’s energy manager, Chris Powell, will present a report detailing plans to cut University emissions, Powell announced Tuesday at a meeting of the Brown University Community Council. If approved, the plan would reduce Brown’s emissions by 2020 to 4 to 18 percent below 1990 levels and by 2050 would further reduce emissions to 75 to 80 percent below 1990 levels. Presenting the plan to the BUCC, Powell suggested the University use more natural gas in place of fuel oil in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, albeit at an added cost of $250,000 to $300,000 annually. Powell also proposed $15 million in renovations to increase the energy efﬁciency of some campus buildings. He also proposed a construction project costing between $12 million and $14 million that would “optimize” Brown’s central heating plant and ramp up the University’s own electricity generation.

Former Treasury Secretary John Snow told a full List 120 Tuesday that despite being the public face of U.S. economic policy, the treasury secretary has less power than many assume. Snow’s talk was part of the Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship Lecture Series, and students in EC 121: “Intermediate Macroeconomics” made up a large part of the audience. A lawyer by training, Snow served as president, chairman and CEO of transportation giant CSX Corporation from 1989 until he was nominated by President Bush to succeed Paul O’Neill as secretary of the treasury in 2003. After nearly three years as a member of Bush’s cabinet, working to implement the president’s policies on taxes and social security, Snow resigned in July 2006. Since leaving ofﬁce, Snow has continued on page 4

BY OLIVER BOWERS SENIOR STAFF WRITER

These proposed renovations would cost a total of $29 million, but the improvements would recover about 10 percent of the cost by 2021, Powell said, largely because producing electricity is cheaper than buying it off of the Providence grid. Additionally, as fuel costs are expected to increase by what Powell described as “a conservative estimate” of 7 percent each year, Powell said the beneﬁts of using natural gas instead of oil-based electricity will add up. “This is very heartening, that a lot of this cost comes back with a 9, 10 or 11 percent return,” said Professor of Physics David Cutts, a BUCC member. He added that Brown should have considered such improvements well before energy conservation became popular. Powell said he expected the cost of the proposed changes should not exceed $250,000 to $600,000 annually. The plan could ultimately come before the Corporation, the University’s highest governing

Panama” initiative, which will allow for energy-sharing between Mexico and Central America. “Today, countries are more interdependent then ever,” Escobar said. “But all these economic indicators mean nothing if we do nothing for our people.” In a country where 30 percent of the population is impoverished, Escobar named poverty as the biggest challenge for her people and creating opportunities and jobs as the main solution. In order to improve the living conditions and overall well-being of El Salvador, Escobar said the government needs to “ﬁght back by sustaining economic growth, which demands competitiveness in an international world” and a focus on education. Escobar outlined four pillars for national education reform — increasing the number of years children attend schools, strengthening math and science curricula, moving towards bilingualism and continued on page 6

Min Wu / Herald

The vice president of El Salvador Ana Vilma Albanez de Escobar delivered a lecture in Salomon 101 Tuesday night.

continued on page 4

Engineers Without Borders plans to build Peruvian health clinic, hourglass BY FRANKLIN KANIN STAFF WRITER

Eunice Hong / Herald Engineers Without Borders is building a large hourglass inBarus & Holley for Oxfam@Brown. The hourglass will be ﬁlled with marbles, and one marble will fall through every three seconds to represent a child dying of starvation.

INSIDE:

3 CAMPUS WATCH

FLAG FLAP Three Yale students accused of burning an American ﬂag have rekindled the debate over ﬂag burning

www.browndailyherald.com

5 CAMPUS NEWS

Engineers Without Borders, a student group at Brown and a chapter of a national organization committed to using engineering in a socially responsible way, received Category III funding status from the Undergraduate Council of Students last month. Engineers Without BordersUSA is a national nonproﬁt corpo-

COURSE BULLETINS HERE A student has produced hard copies off the course catalog for next year after the University said it will no longer print the CAB

ration founded in the fall of 2000 that promotes the “central role” engineers must play “in building a sustainable future.” The Brown chapter of EWB was founded three years ago and legally became an ofﬁcial chapter of EWB-USA in May 2006. Emily Kunen ’08, president of the Brown chapter, said the group has two main goals — “on the one hand, to work on socially responsible engineering projects, but on

11 OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

BE GOOD Natalie Smolenski ’07 explores the meanings of completion and accomplishment and decides that doing good trumps both

the other hand, also educate engineering students and the community about the potential for that type of work.” “There’s a lot of people who just think of engineers as consultants who you assign a task to and don’t really take into consideration the social, political, economic and all other components of the work,” she said.

12 SPORTS

continued on page 4 TRACK OFF AND RUNNING The men’s and women’s track and ﬁeld teams competed at Connecticut this weekend and brought home a pair of second place ﬁnishes

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WE A

Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker

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TODAY

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VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Buffalo Chicken Wings with Bleu Cheese Dressing, Meatball Grinder, Couscous Croquettes with Cider Pepper Sauce, Parsley Potatoes, Apple Turnovers, Magic Bars

LUNCH — Vegetarian Corn Chowder, Italian Sausage Soup with Tortellini, Chicken Fajitas, Vegan Black Bean Tacos, Magic Bars

DINNER — Tilapia Provensal, Herb Rice, Italian Vegetable Saute, Asparagus Spears, Vegan Warm and Spicy Dhal, Orange Jello, Orange Delight Cake

DINNER —BBQ Chicken, Vegan Vegetable and Tempeh Saute, Herb Rice, Corn Cobbets, Stir Fry Vegetable Medley, Orange Delight Cake

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007

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 ��

CR ACROSS 1 Skater Starbuck who was married to Terry Bradshaw 5 Equivocal word 10 Ring punches 14 Have __ of good luck 15 Playwright Clifford 16 Graceful arch 17 Simba’s mate, in “The Lion King” 18 Obstruct, as a copier 19 Beer 20 Stable training 22 Mythical Islamic spirit 23 Former Minnesota governor 26 Nasty habit 27 Send to cloud nine 31 Hawkish god 33 Was on the tube 35 APB letters 36 Alt. spelling 37 School’s second team, and this puzzle’s title 39 Debuting on the market 40 Lodge 41 “She was __ from the low country”: old folk song lyric 42 Brief briefs? 43 Gulf of Tonkin country 45 Ireland, e.g. 47 “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” author 52 Mia and others 55 End results 56 Calculus calculation 57 WWI French soldier 59 European blackbird 60 Bad luck bringer 61 Hi-tech students’ haunt 62 Saarinen who designed the Gateway Arch 63 Grenoble games 64 Démodé 65 “Darn it!”

O S S W O R D

DOWN 1 Co. whose brand names include Band-Aid and Tylenol 2 “__ Ben Jonson”: literary epitaph 3 “Journey to the Center of the Earth” author 4 Jackie’s Ari 5 Desert known for Joshua trees 6 Proverb 7 Red Sea republic 8 HVAC measure 9 Uncommon sense? 10 Honey-do list alternative 11 Business prefix 12 “How’ve you __?” 13 Darned 21 Wall St. watchdog 22 Judge played by Stallone in 1995 24 Cheerios shape 25 Eye part 28 “Girl with a Pearl Earring” painter 29 Signed off on 30 Sails temporarily off course 31 Tel __ 32 Indian royal

33 “Ditto” 34 Stanford-Binet nos. 37 Two-faced god 38 __ the Impaler, who inspired “Dracula” 42 Opened its petals 44 Discount apparel chain 45 ER hookup 46 Incite to attack, with “on” 48 Works very hard

49 Hippy dances? 50 Spanish missionary Junípero __ 51 Groove for a letter-shaped bolt 52 Muslim journey 53 Grammy-winning soul singer India.__ 54 Diner handout 57 Opposite of “fff,” in music 58 Andean tuber

Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Cloudy Side Up | Mike Lauritano

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4/11/07

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

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

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4/11/07

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, APRIL 11, 2007

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U. still a dream at top of Perhaps unintentionally, three Princeton Review survey Yalies ignite ﬂag controversy BY ANDREW KURTZMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

STUDENTS’ “DREAM SCHOOLS”

The University held relatively steady in the Princeton Review’s annual “College Hopes and Worries Survey,” in which Brown was ranked as the No. 8 “dream school” by students and No. 4 by parents. Last year, the University was ranked sixth by students and eighth by parents. Princeton Review surveyed 5,854 people — 4,594 high school students applying to college and 1,260 parents. The Princeton Review, best known for its standardized test preparation classes, has conducted the survey since 2002, according to a press release announcing the results. The “dream school” question, which is the focus of the survey and the only write-in response, asks respondents, “What ‘dream college’ do you wish you could attend (or see your child attend) if acceptance or cost weren’t issues?” For the third consecutive year, students ranked New York University first, followed by Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, University of California, Los Angeles and Brown. Among parents, Stanford was first, followed by last year’s winner Princeton, Harvard and Brown. 53 percent of students and parents indicated that their highest criteria for a “dream school” was “college that will be the best overall fit,” while 30 percent said “college with best program for me (my child’s) career interests.” Parents visiting Brown agreed. “Our biggest concern is whether life in college will be comfortable,” said Jean Anderson, whose daughter Elizabeth is deciding among Brown, Columbia and Georgetown. “There’s no sense paying $40,000 a year to be miserable. We want a good academic program but also a friendly atmosphere.” Officials in the Office of Admission were unavailable for comment. Other data from the Princeton

2. Harvard

1. New York University

3. Stanford 4. Princeton 5. Columbia 6. Yale 7. UCLA 8. Brown

Review survey suggests that, as college admission rates drop to all-time lows, applicants are hedging their bets by applying to a wide array of schools. 52 percent of students will apply to five to eight colleges, 21 percent will apply to nine or more, and 26 percent of students and parents indicated that selecting which college to attend was the most difficult part of the application process. The single greatest concern for applicants applying to or attending college was whether they “will get into (their) first-choice college, but won’t have sufficient funds/financial aid to attend.” 65 percent of students and parents indicated that their stress level about the college application process was either “very high” or “high.” Students who have already navigated the college admission process said that while money is important, it shouldn’t be the top consideration. “I think it is very important for upcoming seniors to find a school that is a good fit or the ones that give (students) the most money,” said Anish Mitra ’10. “Although money is certainly an issue, whether or not the school is a better fit for the students should take precedence over financial concerns, because the cost of discomfort is greater than (the cost of) being in debt.” “All other concerns are secondary to the overall goal of maximizing the child’s future income when all costs are taken into account, including tuition. The tuition will pay for itself,” said Jason Carr ’09. “That’s why I chose to attend Brown over Berkeley, which would have been free for me.”

www.browndailyherald.com

BY AMANDA BAUER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Three Yale University students have fanned the flames of a perennial question in American politics — whether burning the American flag should be a crime. The students were arrested April 2 for allegedly setting fire to an American flag at a private home near the New Haven, Conn., campus. The students claim the act was an apolitical “prank.” Court records indicate that the students are charged with second-degree arson, first-degree reckless endangerment, third-degree criminal mischief and second-degree breach of peace. The students were not charged with flag burning, which is not a crime in Connecticut, but rather for the potential damage to persons and property they could have caused. The students’ attorney, William Dow, told the Yale Daily News Friday that all three students — senior Hyder Akbar and freshmen Nikolaos Angelopoulos and Farhad Anklesaria — were released on bail last Wednesday morning. Because Akbar, Angelopoulos and Anklesaria are Pakistani, Greek and British citizens, respectively, the incident has sparked speculation that the arson was political in its intent. Though Akbar was born in Pakistan and his father is a for-

mer governor of an Afghan province, he is also an American citizen. According to the Yale Daily News, Akbar worked as a translator for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Refuting public outcry over what many perceive as a political act, Dow told the Yale Daily News that “there was no political motivation whatsoever. It was a stupid college prank.” Furthermore, he said Akbar claims sole responsibility for the “prank” and that Angelopoulos and Anklesaria were not involved. Akbar has less to lose from the allegations, as Angelopoulos and Anklesaria are not American citizens and could be deported as a result of the charges. Whether or not the flag burning was intentional, it sparked a media firestorm in which commentators said the students’ nationalities suggest the incident was designed to be unpatriotic. “You burn lots of things for pranks, but you don’t burn the American flag. He clearly knew what he was doing. There’s no indication and no proof that he was drunk at the time … and if he was drunk, maybe he was exhibiting his true feelings,” John Fund, a Wall Street Journal reporter, said Friday on Fox News’ “Hannity and Colmes.” “It seems when people go to Yale, they come out thinking America is worse. They come out thinking that America is somehow sinister. I don’t know

what’s going on at Yale, except that these Ivy League colleges, I think, are completely removed from reality,” Fund said. “They’re in their own ivory tower, so to speak, and I think parents who send their kids there sometimes send them at their peril in terms of the values they’re going to learn.” Yale officials declined to comment on whether there would be any internal disciplinary action against the students. “It makes me sick to my stomach to think that someone would burn the American flag,” Marc Suraci, the owner of the house where the flag was burned, told Reuters April 4. “But it gets to another level when it is somebody else’s flag on their own personal property.” New Haven Police Department spokeswoman Bonnie Posick told the Yale Daily News Thursday that the students told the arresting officers that lighting the flag on fire “was a stupid thing to do.” Some, such as Sam Duboff, a Yale freshman, said students speculated the three men’s intoxication precipitated the incident. Dow declined to comment as to whether the students were intoxicated at the time of the incident. Duboff, who is in a class with one of the arrested students, said though Yale students are continued on page 6

Princeton to review legacies’ academic performance BY BRIANNA BARZOLA STAFF WRITER

As a result of a study by its sociologists that found legacy students with lower SAT scores do worse than equally below-average students at prestigious colleges, Princeton University will review the academic performance of its legacy admits, according to a statement from the university’s president, Shirley Tilghman. According to the study, legacy students who are accepted into prestigious universities with below-average SAT scores for that particular institution perform at

a lower level academically than their non-legacy peers with similar scores and credentials. The two sociologists who conducted the study, Douglas Massey and Margarita Mooney, used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen that assesses 4,000 freshmen at 28 competitive American colleges, according to a March 29 article in the student newspaper, Daily Princetonian. The study also includes students’ self-reported SAT scores, which were then compared to the respective university’s average, along with students’ GPAs. Tilghman stated that she found the results surprising and that she asked Princeton Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel “to look at the Princeton-specific data to see if his results accord with what happens at Princeton,” according to the Princetonian. Brown Dean of Admission James Miller ’73 was not available for comment on Princeton’s review, but in a Feb. 23 Herald article he said the Office of Admission has not recently considered ending the practice of giving preference in admission for legacy applicants. “Every legacy student I know does well here and I think that legacies have the backgrounds necessary to be competitive applicants,” said Jake Donoghue ’09, whose mother is a Brown alum and father is a professor of neuroscience at the University. “I don’t think the school should admit students who aren’t qualified

to be here, but I also don’t think that most legacy students have this problem either.” Donoghue added that he is unsure of what to make of the study when looking at Brown. “It seems like the data for the study are statistics that would weigh more at schools like Princeton, Yale and Harvard. I’m not sure how that ﬁts into Brown.” “If the numbers are really that low, then I do think universities should rethink admission policies for legacies, but I do feel like legacy admits are important to the school because it builds up family loyalty to the University,” said Anna Kentros ’09, whose father is an alum. “I know that Ivies do factor in the legacy not only for family tradition but because of funding as well,” Kentros added, “yet it’s because of this funding that other students beneﬁt from lower tuition costs, so it’s helpful to the University and its students.” In the Feb. 23 interview with The Herald, Miller said maintaining alumni support is an important component of sustaining the University. “We and all other private universities rely heavily on the efforts of our alumni to sustain ourselves. We rely on our graduates to staff committees, donate money, recruit students and do a whole variety of things that (alumni of) public institutions don’t do. In turn, I think it’s important for us to continue to have continuity with families,” he said.

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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007

Former treasury secretary discusses U.S economic policymaking continued from page 1 served as chairman of private equity ﬁrm Cerberus Capital Management. Snow’s 40-minute speech focused on the relationship between the treasury secretary and the president, his feelings about media pressure and his relationship with other countries’ ﬁnance ministers. Though journalists often asked him to speak as treasury secretary about federal economic policy, Snow said he could not comment on the policies as his own — his job was to carry out the president’s policies. “If the treasury secretary has one policy on taxes and the president has another, it won’t work,” Snow said. Though it can be easy as treasury secretary to begin thinking “these policies are yours,” Snow said, it isn’t true. “There is one policy and that’s the president’s,” he said. “Once you stray from that, you get in trouble.” Policymakers must be adept at both crafting policy and communicating with the public, Snow said. There is a “dichotomy between talking about the economy the way you need to (as a policymaker) … and the way you have

to (when addressing the public),” he said. For example, he said, the treasury secretary is the only Cabinet member allowed to talk about the U.S. dollar’s strength and foreign exchange rates. But “every treasury secretary tries to avoid directly commenting on the dollar” because “nobody knows where the currency is going,” Snow said. Though many economists have tried to ﬁnd a model to predict how currency exchange rates will vary, none have been successful, Snow said. Still, journalists persist in asking economic leaders questions they can’t answer, he said. Snow ﬁelded students’ questions about Social Security and plans to increase the federal minimum wage following his lecture. Recent plans to increase the federal minimum wage will not affect the economy greatly, he said. “It’ll hurt some teenagers trying to get jobs in the summer,” he said, since higher wages mean fewer workers can be hired. An increase in the minimum wage after 10 years of no such raise is reasonable, he said, noting that “no one’s proposing the minimum wage be $40 an hour.” After the lecture, Snow told The Herald he wished the Bush administration had solved prob-

Courtesy of ustreas.gov Former Treasury Secretary John Snow

lems with the Social Security system. “The legislative strategy was flawed,” he said. The administration became “vulnerable to the charge that we wanted to privatize — we didn’t,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of response from the other side but we made it easy for them to refuse to get on the playing field.” The longer legislators fail to act to fix the Social Security system, the more future generations will lose, Snow said. He estimated that by 2040, the system will be completely useless. Eva Kolker ’10, who attended the lecture, said it was “informative to hear the difference between the academic and policymaking world.”

BUCC discusses energy, Banner at meeting continued from page 1 body, if its total costs reach a certain level. After Powell’s presentation, Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar, who is leading the Banner implementation process, spoke about the new electronic registration system, which will go live for pre-registration in two weeks. Dunbar cited students’ ability to see how many other students are pre-registered for a class before the ﬁrst day of shopping period as one of Banner’s beneﬁts. She added that, though some concerned students will become discouraged when they are blocked from pre-registering for a class, the new system will increase interaction between students and professors as students ask faculty

members to override a course cap or course requirement. Dunbar said students could also beneﬁt from course previews that professors can now post through Banner. John Gillis ’07, president of the Undergraduate Council of Students, raised a concern that because courses will be capped before pre-registration and shopping period demonstrate the level of student interest, students will be discouraged from seeking out the courses most interesting to them. “I’m going to stay in class B, where I deﬁnitely have a seat, instead of shopping class C, which is better (for me),” Gillis said, adding that the students in a class could be determined by “who’s hitting the refresh button quicker.”

Once Banner goes live, there will remain “major IT projects” to be pursued and innumerable updates that students will likely request such as “stronger, more intuitive” search engines and student photos on class lists, Dunbar said. “It inevitably feels like you’re taking a step backward when you put in a new system,” Dunbar said. She added that it “usually takes two to three years” to fully transition to the system as new features are added and problems are resolved. Dunbar added that transferring student academic histories to the system will also be a major project. “Twenty-three years of academic history has to be moved to the system — meaning every A, every drop, every leave of absence,” she said.

EWB, with Category III status, takes on projects E continued from page 1 The group worked on several projects while it was still in the process of joining the national group, and it has now expanded the scope of its projects, working on both the local and international levels. One of EWB’s current projects is the construction of a health clinic in Peru, a joint effort with the EWB chapter at the State University of New York-Binghamton. Chioke Harris ’08, vice president of EWB, said the Peru project is the group’s “ﬂagship” effort. “It’s going to take the most resources, and we’re working with another school on it,” he said. “It’s kind of a big deal.” The group also works on local projects, including work on campus and outreach to students in Providence schools. The group is currently building a large hourglass for Oxfam@Brown, which will be ﬁlled with marbles. A marble will fall through every three seconds to represent a child dying of starvation. There had been another hourglass about 10 years ago, but it

“just sort of disappeared,” said Harris, who is leading the project. “There are no real records of it ever existing. We know the person who built it, but that’s pretty much all we know,” he said. The hourglass, which is being constructed in Barus & Holley, should be complete by the end of the semester. “We have nothing to work with, so we’re starting entirely from scratch and just from what people remember or urban legend,” Harris said. Alex Surasky-Ysasi ’07, who said she has been a member of the group since her sophomore year, said working with EWB adds an element of reality to her study of engineering. “Brown engineering’s pretty theoretical,” she said. “This is real engineering, and this is really helping people. This is what engineering can do. I think that understanding the reality of solving engineering problems on top of helping people is just this amazing space to do good work.” EWB is not just for engineers — the group’s organizers say they

hope more non-engineers will join the group. Non-engineers can provide valuable experience and outlook to the group, Kunen and Harris said. “There is a large part of what we do that not only requires a lot of engineering expertise, but it’s helpful to have people who address the problems in different ways — who look at things and can kind of collaborate with us,” Harris said. “Engineers don’t all think the same way, but it’s kind of nice to have a breath of fresh air.” Many of the projects have aspects that require ﬁelds of expertise outside of engineering. “Like, for the Peru project … it is important that we have people who speak Spanish, and people who know the speciﬁc Peruvian culture, people who are interested in anthropology, international relations or political science,” Kunen said. “You can’t just implement an engineering project and have it work. You have to make sure it’s culturally appropriate.” “Nothing stands on engineering alone,” Kunen added. “That’s why we need other people.”

CAMPUS N EWS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007

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Sophomore prints own course bulletin A sophomore — upset by the University’s decision not to print a Course Announcement Bulletin for the 2007-2008 academic year — has decided to produce his own. The homemade paper listing — which provides the course codes, titles and descriptions of all courses offered at Brown alongside the professor’s name, meeting times and semesters offered — will be available at Allegra Print & Imaging on Waterman Street for $10, “hopefully” as soon as today, said Finn Yarbrough ’09, who compiled the bulletin. Unlike its ofﬁcial predecessor, Yarbrough’s 220-page booklet will not include information beyond course listings, he said. The CAB also provided information about concentration requirements and other University policies. Yarbrough said he is not making any money from the bulletin and was motivated to create and sell the guide by a desire to send a message to the University administration. “It’s primarily to show the University that we want it, we need it and they shouldn’t cancel it,” Yarbrough said of the CAB, which the University did not print this year as part of the transition to the new Banner online course registration system. Students searching for courses using the Banner program — a $23 million system designed to integrate student information from 11 different University ofﬁces, including the registrar’s — rely instead on two Web sites: Banner Catalog and Schedule, with the former listing course descriptions and the latter providing meeting times and instructors’ names. The University did provide students with a printed list of courses for the fall semester that included codes, abbreviated titles, meeting times and professors, but not course descriptions. A printed booklet, Yarbrough said, “is navigated in a completely different way … than a Web page is,” describing Banner’s online system as “inconvenient and counterintuitive.” “You can write in the margins, and you have access to all of the courses without having to know what you’re looking for,” he added. Yarbrough estimated that he spent approximately 50 hours on the project over the last four days. “I pulled an all-nighter to get it done,” he said. Yarbrough said he is unsure how many students will take advantage of his bulletin, noting that the idea of paying for a service the University previously provided for free may be “daunting” to students. At least 30 have already expressed interest, he said. “I feel optimistic about the prospect of 300,” he said. “It’s the price of a meal for being a part of a little piece of history at Brown — the undergraduates printing their own Course Announcement Bulletin.” “People can be part of something very unusual and potentially sensational,” he added. “The more people do it, the bigger statement there is.” — Michael Skocpol

Austin Freeman / Herald

Administrators and students hope to improve the Friedman Study Center by adding more furniture and housing temporary art exhibits there.

Art and new furniture to liven up Friedman Study Center in coming months BY LISA BLUNT CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Students using the Friedman Study Center in the Sciences Library may notice a few aesthetic changes in the coming months. Administrators, with the help of a student advisory group, hope to improve the space by adding more furniture and housing temporary art exhibits there. Collectively known as the Friedman Advisory Board, these students and administrators began working together a few months ago to respond effectively to student needs regarding the library. “We want to make (the center) as good as possible,” said Brian Becker ’09, chair of the Undergraduate Council of Students’ campus life committee. “Thirty-four students came after the opening of the Friedman Center to tell us what they liked or disliked,” said Florence Doksansky, associate University librarian and a member of the advisory group. “We always talk to students first regarding changes to the center,” she said. “We hope we’re accommodating students’ concerns and ideas.” The Friedman Center, which officially opened Jan. 25, is already popular with students. “The colors are bright, the chairs are comfortable, I never have trouble finding a spot to sit, and it’s nice having the snack bar,” said Kimberly Dickinson ’09. “It’s cozy,” said Angela Pullen ’07. Though advisory board members were unsure of the exact num-

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ber of students who use the Friedman Center each night, they have noticed that the number of card swiped at the SciLi has increased signiﬁcantly since it opened. “The center is being heavily used,” Becker said. Some improvements to the study center have already been made since its opening. Twentytwo new computers were recently added to the mezzanine of the SciLi, along with more wingback chairs and footstools. “We’ve added more computers to the mezzanine, added more furniture and seating, plan to add artwork throughout the center and are looking for ways to improve the cafe center and extending cafe hours past 2 a.m.,” Becker said. The advisory committee plans to hang student artwork in the space and may possibly install large whiteboards and markers so anyone can contribute to the Friedman Center’s visual atmosphere. While response to the center’s current decor has been mostly positive, there remain a number of concerns that the group seeks to address. “There were problems with the water pressure in the bathrooms, issues with the amount of cleaning of the bathrooms (and) reserving the study rooms. We’re using student critiques to improve these problems,” Becker said. The group is also concerned the center may be too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. Though heating, ventilating and air conditioning services were consulted, Doksansky said, “Some places will always be cold, like the projection room, because it has

(untreated) glass windows.” Steven Lavallee, co-leader of the University Library’s Gateway Services Department and head of the Friedman Center, said a reservation system for the projection rooms, implemented April 1, now prevents individuals from taking them over. He added that “Friedman etiquette” expects that smaller rooms are used for study space and bigger rooms for projection or group space. As for the bathrooms, Doksansky said staff is available to clean them ﬁve times a day and will extend their cleaning hours during ﬁnals period. “We know this is an issue,” she said. Further improvements to the Friedman Center will not cause the center to close, Lavallee said. “Anything too disruptive happens when students aren’t there (such as) over spring break.” Becker said he expects the improvements will cause little to no interference with student use of the space. Lavallee urged students to make the Friedman Center their own, unique territory. “It’s not (the administration’s) space, it’s your space,” he said. Interim Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Russell Carey ’91 MA’06 told The Herald in February that the Friedman Center is still a work in progress. “As with other projects on campus, we will continue to assess how facilities and programs are working and adjust them as necessary,” he said. “The primary goal of the center was and still is to greatly increase the amount of 24hour study space, and we’ve done that.”

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Three Yalies ignite ﬂag controversy T continued from page 3

Rahul Keerthi / Herald The winners, runners-up and organizers of the Third Annual Table Tennis Tournament — held in Andrews Dining Hall last night — pose after the tournament.

Escobar discusses Salvadoran economy, education reform in campus speech continued from page 1 providing students with access to technology before they graduate high school. Though most of these initiatives are still in the development stages, Escobar said she met with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to ask for Microsoft’s support in the technology initiative. During the question-and-answer session after her lecture, Escobar ﬁelded questions about gang violence, other leaders in Central America and more personal questions, such as the challenges she faced as a Latina in a senior elected position. When asked about the role of gender in politics, Escobar said “it was never an issue in El Salvador that a woman was running for the position (of vice president).” However, when she was ﬁrst approached by Saca to be his running mate, she was worried that it may have been a political move to garner more votes on his part. She decided to run when he told her she would have real responsibilities if elected. “Saca really does believe in women,” she said. She

said there are currently 25 women in top political positions under Saca’s administration. For Escobar, who grew up with four sisters, gender was never an issue. “I do not remember our parents ever treating us any different. We were all expected to become independent individuals that did not need anyone else to support ourselves,” Escobar said. Escobar said she grew up in a “privileged home,” where her parents paid considerable attention to her education, and she learned to treasure the things her parents gave her. She said she decided to go into politics to give her people the same kind of opportunities that her parents had given her. “As agents of change, we cannot afford to ignore the present problems around us. I could not have reached my fullest potential while there were other Salvadorans that did not have what I had,” she said. During her three-day stay in Providence, Escobar said she met with Gov. Donald Carcieri ’65, possible investors in El Salvador, heads of textile companies and other entrepreneurs and political ﬁgures, but

she noted that “the visit to Brown was the highlight of my trip.” Arranging Escobar’s visit was not an easy task, according to Latino History Month Programmer Andrea Lopez ’08. “Bringing a vice president to Brown was difficult because of minor details and logistics, but in the end, it all fell together,” she said. The speech was made possible by Jeffry Esquivel ’09, who met Escobar at a Rhode Island Latino Scholarship reception last year. He made her formal introduction for the speech and served as the main link between her and the Latino History Month planners. “This year we wanted to reach out to the Providence community and thought it would be great to bring an important figure from Central America because of the large population of (people from there) in the city,” Esquivel said. “Brown is committed to an international initiative that will provide students with first-hand knowledge and contact with the people that are dealing with the issues that they learn about in their classes,” said President Ruth Simmons, who attended the lecture.

discussing the flag burning on campus, they “aren’t taking it as seriously as the media are portraying it. … People are thinking of it more as a big mistake.” Duboff said the alleged crime is not the flag burning itself, but the destruction of private property. “The issue here is that it was on private property, which is a separate issue from flag burning,” he said. “I think that it’s still unclear as to whether it was an intentional act of flag burning. I think that the real issue here is that they went onto a property to burn something, whether it was a flag or not.” William Palmer, a Yale junior, told The Herald that students generally don’t consider the act political in nature. “I understand why people would think of it as having political implications, but it was really just a bad accident,” he said. “The whole point of the story is that it could have been a blanket hanging from the pole,” and that media sources who are portraying it as such are just “egging on the issue.” “I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about burning flags. I don’t think it should be made illegal,” Palmer said. “It (was) really just a bad accident that happened. … It was political by accident,” he added. Posick, the police department spokeswoman, said officers first encountered the three students at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning. The students had flagged down a patrol car, saying they were lost and needed directions back to campus. When the police officers later returned to see if the students found their way back, they discovered that a flag hanging from the front of a house was on fire, Posick said. Though the alleged arsonists in this case may not have had political intent, the nationwide

press has again raised the controversial issue of whether burning the American flag should be made unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that restrictions on expressing extremely unpopular opinions — even those hostile toward the government — are protected by the First Amendment, said Peter Stone, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. In several cases, such as Texas v. Johnson, the Supreme Court overturned both state and federal laws outlawing flag burning, Stone said. “The First Amendment says that you must protect even unpopular ideas,” Stone said. “If you have regulations for demonstrations, those regulations must apply to all demonstrations. … There cannot be restrictions on the content” unless it endangers people or property, Stone added. As the issue is being debated on the nation’s airwaves, it is also a topic of discussion on College Hill. “I think it’s disrespectful, and that there are better ways to protest against the country,” Julie Siwicki ’10 said. “But I think that freedom of expression is more important than outlawing flag burning.” “I think it’s right if you are a citizen, but it’s definitely not allowable if you’re not, because burning a flag is such a powerful symbol of hatred, of disagreement,” said Gabriel Heidrich ’10. “If you were burning a gay rights flag, it would be the same thing. … The flag represents a specific group of people and a specific ideology.” Edward Tang ’09, a Canadian citizen born in Hong Kong, offered another view. “I understand the act being considered a crime in terms of it being arson, but I don’t understand why it should be a crime because it’s a flag,” Tang said.

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Stem-cell transplant can halt diabetes, say researchers (Los Angeles Times) — Researchers have demonstrated for the ﬁrst time that the progression of Type-1 diabetes can be halted and possibly reversed by a stem-cell transplant that preserves the body's diminishing ability to make insulin, according to a study published Wednesday. The experimental therapy eliminated the need for insulin injections for months or even years in 14 of 15 patients who were recently diagnosed with the disease. One subject, a 30-year-old male, hasn't taken insulin since his stem-cell transplant more than three years ago, according to the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study suggests a new avenue for treating the intractable disease, in which the immune system destroys insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Without insulin, patients can't metabolize sugar and run the risk of developing nerve damage, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure and blindness. After the stem-cell treatment, “patients are absolutely medication-free — they're off insulin,” said Richard Burt, chief of the division of immunotherapy at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and senior author of the study.

Google project maps Darfur crisis WASHINGTON (Los Angeles Times) — Google Inc., whose motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” has launched an initiative designed to highlight some. A scan of the globe using the Google Earth satellite mapping program shows a large swath of Central Africa trimmed in orange. If you zoom in, the words “Crisis in Darfur” appear, along with icons of flames marking 1,600 villages destroyed in fighting between government militias and rebels that has led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people. The Google Earth feature, unveiled Tuesday, is a collaboration of the Internet company and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which hopes technology unavailable during past humanitarian crises can drive home the suffering in the isolated Darfur region of Sudan. “This project will enable vast numbers of people worldwide to locate and visualize with great specificity both the events in Darfur and the millions of individual victims of those events,” said the museum’s director, Sara Bloomfield.

Ethiopian clan says casualties from recent fighting total more than 1,000 ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Washington Post) — A particularly brutal episode of fighting in the Somali capital of Mogadishu killed more than 1,000 civilians and injured more than 4,000, according to a report by one of the city's largest clans, which was targeted in the violence. The most recent casualty total is five times that of a tally released last week by a Mogadishu human rights group. None of the casualty figures from the recent violence could be independently verified. The new report estimates that more than half the city's population of about 2.5 million fled as fighting escalated late last month between the Ethiopian-backed transitional government and an urban insurgency comprising disaffected clan militias and remnants of a popular Islamic movement that the Ethiopians, with tacit U.S. support, ousted in a December military offensive. Somalia's seaside capital has been the scene of persistent bloodshed since the transitional government took hold, and the insurgency has appeared to grow stronger. But even in a city as routinely violent as Mogadishu, residents deemed the four days of fighting that began late last month the worst in recent memory.

Birkhead is biological father of Smith’s baby (Los Angeles Times) — Larry Birkhead, the former boyfriend of Anna Nicole Smith, is the biological father of the Playboy playmate's 7month-old daughter who might inherit a fortune, it was announced Tuesday. The revealing of the DNA test results, carried out under the authority of the courts in the Bahamas, is the latest step in the saga of Smith, the former model and cable television star who died Feb. 8 in a Florida hotel at age 39. “I told you so,” Birkhead said after a hearing to determine who is the father of Dannielynn, born in September in the Bahamas. He flashed a huge grin and thrust his arms into the air in victory. Howard K. Stern, Smith's last companion and the person identified as the father on Dannielynn's birth certificate, was gracious after the results were released. “I'm obviously very disappointed,” he told reporters during a nationally televised news conference.“My feelings for Dannielynn have not changed. In addition to deciding who will raise the child, there is also the question of Smith's estate, which could reach hundreds of millions of dollars. Before she died, Smith had been fighting for a share of the estate of her husband, Texas oilman J. Howard Marshall II, who died in 1995. That case is pending in federal court in California.

House panel subpoenas Attorney General Gonzales BY DAN EGGEN WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Tuesday to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, demanding that the Justice Department turn over hundreds of pages of new or uncensored records related to the ﬁrings of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The subpoena is the ﬁrst served in connection with the dismissals, and it escalates the legal confrontation between Democrats and the Bush administration, which has resisted demands for more documents and for public testimony from White House aides. It comes just a week before the embattled attorney general is scheduled to testify before the Senate, a hearing widely considered crucial to his attempt to keep his job. House and Senate committees have authorized a series of subpoenas in recent weeks as part of

their investigations of the prosecutor firings, but have not issued one until now. “We have been patient in allowing the department to work through its concerns regarding the sensitive nature of some of these materials,” Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., the judiciary panel's chairman, wrote Gonzales in a letter that accompanied the subpoena. “Unfortunately, the department has not indicated any meaningful willingness to find a way to meet our legitimate needs.” The administration immediately signaled that it might oppose the demand. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that the administration would like “to reach an accommodation with the Congress” but may fight the subpoena if an agreement cannot be negotiated. “Much of the information that the Congress seeks pertains to individuals other than the U.S. attorneys who resigned,” Roehrkasse

said. “Furthermore, many of the documents Congress is now seeking have already been available to them for review. Because there are individual privacy interests implicated by publicly releasing this information, it is unfortunate the Congress would choose this option.” Seven U.S. attorneys were ﬁred Dec. 7, and another was dismissed earlier in the year, as part of a plan that originated in the White House to replace some prosecutors based in part on their perceived disloyalty to President Bush and his policies. The uproar over the removals has grown amid allegations that GOP lawmakers had improper political contact with prosecutors and claims by Democrats that the ﬁrings may have been an attempt to disrupt public corruption investigations. The subpoena issued Tuesday demands that Gonzales turn over continued on page 8

Kerry, Gingrich clash over global warming BY ADAM SCHRECK LOS ANGELES T IMES

WASHINGTON — Three weeks ago, presidential hopeful-turneddocumentary ﬁlm star Al Gore brought some Oscar-winning glamour to Capitol Hill as he testiﬁed about the perils of unchecked global warming, an issue gaining traction with both lawmakers and the public. On Tuesday, two other prominent politicians — one a former presidential nominee, another toying with the idea of becoming one — faced off before a packed house in an opulent Senate hearing room to discuss the same topic. During their two-hour debate, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., agreed that climate change is a real concern that demands urgent action. Their disagreements came on the question of what to do next.

In broad terms at least, the two men hewed to predictable party lines. Gingrich called for tax breaks to promote greener technology and expressed faith that a free market could reduce greenhouse gases. “Rewarding entrepreneurship, investing in science and technology, reshaping the market with incentives are the fastest ways to get to change,” he said. But Kerry dismissed the notion that polluters would sufﬁciently reduce emissions on their own. Greater oversight is necessary, he said. “There is no single environmental crisis that has ever been met in the United States, or anywhere that I know of, voluntarily,” he said. “The bottom line is that we’ve got to set a standard.” Backed by growing evidence of potentially dire consequences from a warmer planet, Democrats in Congress are attempting to refocus attention on the politically

and economically contentious issue. Tuesday’s debate was sponsored by the nonpartisan John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress at New York University. Lionized by many conservatives for wresting congressional control from Democrats in 1994, Gingrich has been back in the spotlight in recent weeks, fueling speculation that he might jump into an already crowded race for the GOP presidential nod. Kerry’s star has dimmed since he lost the White House to President Bush in 2004, and he has remained largely quiet in the aftermath of criticism for a “botched joke” about Iraq he made before the 2006 election and his subsequent decision not to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. But he and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, have written “This Moment on Earth,” a newly pubcontinued on page 8

Woman sets off bomb outside Iraqi police station BY ALEXANDRA ZAVIS LOS ANGELES T IMES

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The young applicants gathered early Tuesday outside a police station northeast of Baghdad to ﬁnd out who had clinched a coveted job on the force. But they were not the only ones who knew this was the day the selection would be made. Shortly after 8:30 a.m., a woman shrouded in black appeared among the more than 200 men milling outside the concrete blast walls of the station in Muqdadiya. Before anyone could question her, she detonated the explosives hidden under her gown, killing as many as 19 people and injuring 33, police and witnesses said. As the smoke and dust settled, a horriﬁc scene was revealed: writhing bodies, severed limbs and charred, bloodied survivors screaming on the ground. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the mostly Sunni town, a rare case of a bombing carried out by a wom-

an. It also came at a time of growing friction within the embattled minority that dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein. A number of Sunni Arab clans and local insurgent groups have turned against the militants of alQaida in Iraq, whom they once harbored, accusing the foreigndominated network of indiscriminate attacks against Iraqi civilians. Sunnis are joining the police in areas where they once refused to cooperate with the Iraqi government. As the toll of Tuesday's attack sank in, survivors expressed outrage that they had been left standing outside a police station that is the target of frequent mortar and rocket attacks, was overrun once by insurgents and already was targeted by one suicide bomber. The dead were among at least 55 Iraqis reported killed in violence Tuesday. In Baghdad, U.S. attack helicopters blasted gunmen holed up inside buildings in some of the most intense ﬁghting in the city since the start of a secu-

rity crackdown nearly two months ago. At least 13 people were killed and dozens wounded, including 16 U.S. soldiers. Saleh Dari was on his way to open his shop in Muqdadiya when he saw a huge ﬁre ball in front of him and then heard the massive explosion. “Things started ﬂying all over. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” he said. “I saw tens of bodies writhing. Some were burned, some lost more than half their torsos, some had torn limbs, but all of them were moving and screaming their last breaths.” Iraqi police and army recruits are frequent targets of Sunni Arab insurgents seeking to force out U.S.-led forces and overthrow the Shiite Muslim-dominated government. Muntadhar Hameed knew the risks but said jobs are scarce in the agricultural hub 60 miles from Baghdad. So he joined the scores of applicants vying for 350 spots continued on page 8

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Woman sets off deadly bomb outside police station continued from page 7 in the Muqdadiya police force. “I don’t have any degree or diploma, so this was the only road left for me,” he explained from a bed in the overwhelmed hospital, where relatives searched for loved ones and the ﬂoor was slick with blood. Hameed said he had been standing with friends, eagerly discussing how much money they would earn. Others milled around, some clutching folders of documents or casually chewing sandwiches and drinking sodas. Out of the corner of his eye, he said he spotted the female bomber and brieﬂy wondered what she was doing in a crowd

of men. “All I know is that I was standing in one spot but suddenly found myself in another, surrounded and covered with blood and body parts,” he said. He lay there, amid chaos and gunﬁre, for what seemed like an eternity before rescuers scooped him up and rushed him to the hospital. “I don’t know about the fate of my friends,” he said. Many victims were ripped to pieces, making it difﬁcult to give an accurate casualty count, said Amir Nsayif, a guard assigned to protect the facility. Blood spattered the walls, concrete blast barriers and documents carried by the applicants. Later, the horror turned to anger.

“I thought the police would have secured the area before requesting that we come to review the status of our applications,” Hameed said. Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, a spokesmen for the Interior Ministry, which oversees police, promised there would be an investigation. While suicide attacks are common in Iraq, very few are conducted by women. In November 2005, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque rammed an explosives-ﬁlled vehicle into a U.S. convoy. At least one other female suicide bomber has struck in Iraq, and an Iraqi woman caught with an explosives belt was convicted in the bombing of three hotels in the Jordanian capital.

Besieged Imus says he shouldn’t be ﬁred BY PAUL FARHI AND FRANK AHRENS WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — As skittish advertisers began to pull out and calls for his resignation reverberated, embattled shock jock Don Imus Tuesday continued his campaign of contrition over his racially and sexually insensitive remarks, even while insisting that he shouldn’t lose his national television show and syndicated radio program. Imus, who last week called the Rutgers University women’s basketball players “nappy-headed hos,” said on his morning show Tuesday that he will seek a meeting with the team. His on-air slur has mushroomed into widespread condemnation, fueled round-theclock news coverage and resulted in a two-week suspension of his show, carried on MSNBC and CBS Radio. “I don’t deserve to be fired,” Imus said Tuesday during his show. “So, I should be punished, and I’m being punished and not insignificantly, by the way. I’m not whining, because I don’t feel as bad as those kids feel.” Imus’ comments came a few hours before an emotional news conference by the Rutgers team. Her players seated next to her, their faces fixed with grim expressions, Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer told the assembled reporters, “We have all been physically and emotionally spent and hurt” by Imus’ remarks, which she called “deplorable, despicable and abominable and unconscionable.” The team’s players said they would meet with Imus. Three advertisers, office-supply chain Staples Inc., Bigelow Tea and Procter & Gamble, said late Tuesday that they would stop placing ads on the show out of dismay over Imus’ comments. Any further defections could significantly erode economic support for a program heard in about 70 radio markets, including Washington. CBS Radio, which syndicates Imus, has not announced how it will fill the time slot when Imus’ suspension begins on Monday. MSNBC said it would program expanded news coverage during the time. Imus has gone past the edges of propriety many times during his long career, but nothing has approached the storm that now hovers over him. As early as 1982, former Imus employer WNBC in New York promoted him and co-worker

Howard Stern as radio bad boys. The pair blazed a trail for a generation of shock jocks, including Doug “Greaseman” Tracht, who was fired from Washington’s WARW in 1999 for uttering a racist remark on-air, and Opie and Anthony, a New York duo that was fired in 2002 for a stunt involving a Virginia couple allegedly having sex in a Manhattan church. Over the past decade, however, Imus has crafted a radio show that has become part of the political and media establishment while maintaining an inflammatory edge. The list of Imus’ guests is a who's who of the media and political elite, including former senator Bill Bradley, Tom Brokaw, James Carville, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Rudy Giuliani, conservative commentator Laura Ingraham, Sens. John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and John McCain, Dan Rather, NBC News anchor Brian Williams, New Yorker writer Ken Auletta and Washington Post reporters Howard Kurtz and Dana Priest. He also has become a must-stop for many authors promoting their books. Tuesday, a number of those guests distanced themselves from Imus. “The comments of Don Imus were divisive, hurtful and offensive to Americans of all backgrounds,” said presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who recently promoted his book on Imus' show. “With a public platform comes a trust. As far as I'm concerned, he violated that trust.” The controversy follows years of incendiary statements by Imus and members of his on-air team, much of which attracted little attention from the news media or civil rights activists . In March, Imus’ executive producer and longtime sidekick Bernard McGuirk said that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., was “trying to sound black in front of a black audience” during a recent speech on civil rights in Selma, Ala. McGuirk added that Clinton “will have cornrows and gold teeth before this fight with Obama is over.” In a November broadcast, Imus referred to the “Jewish management” of CBS Radio as “money-grubbing bastards,” according to the Forward, a Jewish daily newspaper. Imus has endured barbs from critics in the past. But this time, Imus may have picked the wrong

victims at the wrong time. The Rutgers slur was directed against blameless and generally unknown young women who had just played for a national championship. The story was picked up by media outlets facing the news vacuum of a long holiday weekend. Finally, the evidence was easily veriﬁed by video-sharing Web sites. “Chatter on the Web makes outrage spread farther, faster and hotter than ever before,” said Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, who appeared on Imus’ show several times during the 1990s. In May 2000, Imus was under a lesser attack from critics, who called his show racist and took out an ad in the New York Times criticizing him. As that controversy crested, Page went on Imus’ show and asked half-jokingly: ““Am I your last black friend in America?” During that appearance — Page’s last on the show — the columnist asked Imus to take a pledge swearing off racially and otherwise offensive humor. “I, Don Imus, do solemnly swear that I will promise to cease all simian references to black athletes,” Imus said. Further, Page urged Imus to swear off “homophobic epithets ... xenophobia ... no more mocking Indians as Gunga Din,” and so forth. Both Imus and Page chuckled through much of the pledge. “I am very disappointed about him going off the wagon,” Page said Tuesday. He said Imus’ suspension is merited, “but he’s still getting special treatment because he’s worth a lot of money to these companies,” meaning CBS Radio and NBC Universal, which owns MSNBC. “It’s easy for me to say I won’t be on his show again — I haven’t been asked back,” Page said. “But I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I went on again.” Imus’ pledge, which was quickly broken, was written by Brooklyn author Philip Nobile, a longtime critic of the radio host. The shock jock’s suspension and excoriation are sweet vindication of a decade-long quest — almost: “Only if he's ﬁred,” Nobile said Tuesday. “The fact is, Imus is a skinhead in elite-media dress,” said Nobile, who once appeared on the Imus show. “It is the shame of elite journalists and politicians to enable him to thrive on his bigotry schtick.”

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007

House panel subpoenas Attorney General Gonzales continued from page 7 the requested material by 2 p.m. Monday, according to a copy released by the House committee. It seeks full copies of some documents that were censored when they were previously released to Congress. One key example is a chart compiled by D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ then-chief of staff, that in March 2005 evaluated all 93 U.S. attorneys. A copy turned over to Congress was blacked out except for information on the eight prosecutors who were eventually fired. The committee also wants hundreds of pages of Justice Department documents that congressional staffers have been allowed to examine without taking notes, as well as any other records related to the firings. The administration characterized the subpoena as unreasonable and focused on information not germane to the U.S. attorney dismissals. “I think the Justice Department has been working very hard to be fully responsive to the request, as the president asked them to do,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. The issuance of a subpoena is the first step in a long process that has rarely reached a clear legal conclusion in the past, according to experts. If the administration refuses to comply with the subpoena, the judiciary committee could issue a citation for contempt of Congress, followed by a similar citation from the full Congress. That would then require the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — a former Gonzales aide — to empanel a grand jury to consider criminal indictments. In almost all cases, administrations have chosen to fully or substantially comply with such requests before the start of criminal

proceedings. In 1998, for example, a GOP-led House committee issued a contempt citation to thenAttorney General Janet Reno for refusing to turn over internal Justice Department memos. Justice offered a staff briefing on the documents, and the full House never acted on the citation. “I’m not sure how the administration could win on this claim, in terms of keeping those documents,” said Martin Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who worked in Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002. Gonzales is scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has retreated from public view since last week to take part in intensive preparations for the testimony. Senate Democrats also took another step Tuesday to expand the scope of the probe beyond the U.S. attorney dismissals themselves. Wisconsin’s two Democratic senators, Russell Feingold and Herb Kohl, joined other members in demanding records and other information about a federal public corruption case in that state, according to a letter they sent to Gonzales. A federal appeals court in Chicago last week ordered a former Wisconsin state employee released after overturning her conviction. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also wrote to a senior Justice Department official Tuesday requesting information showing “any political pressure” by the Justice Department or White House on the Minneapolis U.S. attorney's office. Three senior prosecutors abruptly relinquished their management positions there last week, saying they could no longer work with the new U.S. attorney, Rachel Paulose, a former Gonzales aide who is the nation’s youngest chief federal prosecutor.

Kerry, Gingrich clash over global warming continued from page 7 lished book about the environment, and Tuesday’s event offered the senator a high-proﬁle opportunity to ﬂesh out his views. For Gingrich, who has said he will not decide on whether to run for president until September, it was the latest in a series of public appearances, some apparently aimed at bolstering his image. In a video on YouTube, Gingrich apologizes in English and Spanish for equating bilingual education with “the language of living in a ghetto.” He has publicly acknowledged having an extramarital affair in 1998, even as he was criticizing President Clinton for similar behavior—a confession that earned him praise from the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a leading Christian conservative. In a recent appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” he even urged Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to consider resigning. But despite his history as a conservative standard-bearer— his 1994 “Contract with America” played a critical role in ending the Democrats’ decades-long control of Congress — Gingrich has dis-

tanced himself from those on the right who are skeptical about climate change. His own book about the environment, “A Contract with the Earth,” is due out in November. “There is a consensus that for the last 100 years the planet’s gotten somewhat warmer. The second consensus is that humans have contributed to that,” he said. At one point during the freeflowing debate, in which the moderator barely intervened, Kerry asked his opponent what his message would be to Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the Senate’s most vocal critic of global warming, and others who doubt that the climate is changing. “The evidence is sufficient that we should move toward the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading of the atmosphere,” Gingrich responded, noting that environmentalism is a touchy issue for conservatives. “I think there has to be, if you will, a green conservatism. There has to be a willingness ... to have a dialogue about what's the most effective way to solve it rather than to get into a fight over whether or not to solve it.”

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W. track eases into outdoor season with 2nd place at UConn continued from page 12 able, the team shined through the frigid temperatures. “(The coaches told us to) try to forget about the fact that it was only 35 degrees out and try to ignore the wind,” Ferjan said. “Go for the win. The times were not that important because of the conditions.” Sprinter Akilah King ’08 picked up where she left off last year in the outdoor season where she scored in both the 200 meter and 400 meter events at the Heptagonal Championships. King ran to a third place ﬁnish in the 100-meter dash with a time of 11.99 seconds.

Despite the strong performances on the track, the Bears are missing one of their most dominating competitors. The winner of the 400-meter run at Indoor Heps this year, Nicole Burns ’09, was unavailable to run this weekend. “We are hurt by the fact that one of our star runners, Nicole Burns, has a calf strain, and we do not know if she will be back any time soon,” Lake said. “This could really hurt us at the Ivy League Championships, and others will need to step it up.” Others did step up in the ﬁeld events at UConn. Tiffany Chang ’08 and Cassandra Wong ’10 ﬁnished second and third in the jumps with

scores of 11-feet, 5.75-inches and 10-11.75 respectively. King claimed third in the triple jump with a jump of 37-6.75, and teammate Rikki Baldwin ’07, a four-year contributor to the volleyball team making the transition to track, added to the score by coming in fourth in the event with a leap of 35-6. Shannon Stone ’10 made it three straight for Brown with a fi fth-place jump of 35-3.75 to round out the scoring. Stone also landed a fi fth-place finish in the long jump behind Scott, who placed fourth in the event with a distance of 17-4. Danielle Grunloh ’10 notched a fourth-place finish and personal best in the discus with a throw of

Equestrian stamps ticket to nationals continued from page 12 Zone 1, Region 1 representative in the all-around competition on April 1. “A lot of people on the team really look up to Whitney,” said Liz Giliberti ’10, “especially with how hard she works and her dedication to the team. It’s great that she’ll be able to represent Brown individually and in the Cacchione Cup.” Brown finished the show with 41 points, second only to Mount Holyoke College, which recorded 48. Stonehill College and Dartmouth, the show’s respective thirdand fourth-place finishers and final two competitors, earned 32 and 31 points. The most vital contributions to the win came from Giliberti. The first-year captured blue ribbons in

the Intermediate Flat and Intermediate Open classes, giving the Bears 14 points. Giliberti was pleased with her performance. “It was a good feeling,” she said. Scanlon said she appreciated Giliberti’s outstanding results. “That was what we really hoped for,” she said. “Liz is a really strong rider that I thought could possibly lift us up, and she did. And she had a good draw, which allowed her to showcase her talent.” After Giliberti started off the show on a high note, her classmates stepped up as well. Rachel Grifﬁth ’10 took second in Novice Fences, and Emma Bogdonoff ’10 took third in Novice Flat. Other high ﬁnishers were Stephanie Carmack ’08 and Leona Rosenblum ’09 with fourth places in Walk Trot and Walk Trot Canter, respectively.

Early success snowballs for m. track at UConn event continued from page 12 in sight pushing him to his 9:22.99 time. The next closest ﬁnisher was teammate Neil Hamel ’07 at 9:47.63. Jacob Nettleton ’08 had a bronze in the 5,000-meter run in 15:21.96. In the ﬁeld, Mike Woods ’09 placed third in the pole vault, soaring to a height of 14-feet 5.25-inches. Bryan Powlen ’10 pulled double duty on the day, placing third in the shot put with a 51-foot 6.25-inch throw and second in the discus with a 148-foot 9-inch toss. Sam Urlacher ’09 grabbed third in the javelin, throwing 174-2. Although the times were not indicative of the team’s talent, Lake said, the team will put in more

work between now and the end of the year. “In terms of the season, we have less than four weeks to go to prepare for the Ivy League Championships, which is the only important team meet for the season,” Lake said. “This is the pinnacle and main focus for us as a team.” A pit-stop on that journey will be the home-opener this weekend at the Brown Invitational. The Bears will also relish another rare perk — home ﬁeld advantage. “It is always nice to have meets at home because we don’t need to travel far and can get some extra rest,” Tabib said. “The goal is to improve on what we have been doing all season.”

Yanks aren’t armed for success in 2007 continued from page 12 urai suicide, no lie — and ran Jaret Wright out to the mound. After only one good year, Wang is now expected to be an innings-eater who will give the overburdened Yankee bullpen a breather every fi fth day. If the Bombers’ infielders keep fielding grounders like they’ve been rubbing John Kruk’s greasy mullet for good luck, things could get slippery for Wang when he returns. It’s too much to expect of the kid, and starting the season on the disabled list (hamstring) doesn’t exactly foreshadow a repeat of last year’s performance. As opposed to the youth-infused rotations of the Mets and Red Sox, there is a well-defined ceiling with the one through five starters in the Bronx because Philip Hughes was

left off the roster. Combine that ceiling with the fact that the rotation isn’t that good to begin with, and you have the makings of a pinstriped catastrophe. Assuming that the Yankees’ powerful offense is able to carry them into the playoffs — far from certain in a stacked AL East — I can’t see them making it past the ALDS. Championships are won by great pitching, and aside from the Hammer of God — Mariano Rivera — the 2007 New York Yankees just don’t cut it. Until Roger Clemens comes back for the 14th time, John Sterling can save his voice this year.

Chris Peterson ’07 and Shane Reil ’09 rub John Kruk’s mullet for good luck before exams.

Mount Holyoke is an equestrian powerhouse, Scanlon said, and the location of the event also contributed to the Lyons’ victory. The horses used in the show were those that Mount Holyoke practiced on throughout the year. “It’s hard not to have a homecourt advantage,” Scanlon said. “Mount Holyoke knew what the ring was like, and they’d ridden all the horses.” On April 21, the team will ride in the All-Ivy Competition in Etna, N.H., which it expects to use as preparation for nationals. Brown is the only Ivy League team to ever qualify for the national show. “We’re looking forward to AllIvies,” Giliberti said. “We’re not going to rest on our laurels, we’re going to take the opportunity to practice as much as we can.”

134-feet, 2-inches and pulled double duty on the afternoon, scoring a fi fth-place finish in the shot put with a 40-10.5 throw. The hammer throw was also a point-scoring event for the Bears. Molly Hawksley ’09 placed fourth with 153-feet 7.5-inches, followed by Samantha Kuo ’09 in fi fth in a 146-9, a personal best. Although the competition this weekend was an important benchmark for the team in this outdoor season, it has a long road to Heps

in May. “On an individual level, we are hoping to get as many NCAA Regional qualiﬁers as possible,” Lake said. “We are in the NCAA East Region, and there are four regions in the nation. The Regional meet is where you qualify for Nationals. We are hoping to raise the bar of expectations and get this program to the top of the Ivy League and onto a national level.” The Brown Invitational will be held Saturday at Brown Stadium.

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 10

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

A national firestorm Last week on his morning radio show, Don Imus made several tasteless remarks about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. In what he has since said was an attempt at humor, Imus called the women players “nappy-headed hos” and referred to them as “rough girls” with “tattoos.” These remarks came the day after Rutgers’ Scarlet Knights, a team with eight black players, lost to the University of Tennessee in the National Championship game. Whether Imus’ remarks were racist, thoughtless or just plain stupid is not worth arguing at length. Regardless, his words were insulting and have, rightly, led to an apology to the women players and at least a shortterm consequence for Imus himself, being suspended from his job. Yet more disappointing than Imus’ reprehensible comments is the nonstop media sensation his idiocy has created. News outlets across the country have ceaselessly debated for two days whether Imus’ remarks were racist, whether the two-week suspension Imus received was long enough and whether Imus is actually sorry about what he said. For the better part of an hour Tuesday, CNN aired the press conference Rutgers held condemning Imus. The press conference’s speakers — including the university president, athletic director, women’s basketball head coach and a few players — each took turns expressing their own disgust about Imus’ comments and then praising the incredible accomplishments of the women on the team. Given the hurtful and unprompted nature of Imus’ comments, these reactions are to be expected. It’s the media obsession that — while it may be a predictable feature of infotainment news — is surprising. The media hysteria following this incident has been overwhelmingly mindless and wholly unproductive. Discussions about Imus’ psychology do nothing to further America’s stunted and flawed dialogue about race. Rather, the attention of CNN and other networks has effectively aided Imus in creating controversy where none exists. Talking heads like Imus — and most of the news ‘personalities’ who filled airtime by discussing this issue all week — make a living by stirring up controversy and riling up viewers. Imus’ own show relies on his penchant for saying illogical things that spark sometimes amusing, often inane, listener reactions. Without sparking discord, Imus might be out of a job. Instead of investigating why what Imus said was wrong, why his comments were grossly inaccurate or why such underlying racism still exists in the minds of many Americans, television news media fell over each other to see who could condemn Imus the loudest. The accomplishments of the young women on the team are apparent to anyone remotely familiar with women’s basketball or the Imus spat, but sustained attention simply serves to exacerbate their situation as victims of racism. Heather Zurich, a sophomore on the team and a white woman, said at the press conference that the comments were impossible to ignore not simply because of their degrading nature but because of the ensuing aftermath. She said, “Besides the fact that the comment was something we didn’t want to ignore, it was kind of hard. The media was calling our houses, our cell phones, following us around campus. We went home for the weekend and you couldn’t ignore the issue. The media wanted to know our opinion, so it was kind of hard to ignore.” Unfortunately, this story has become about much more than race. It has become a competition to generate the most publicity and attract the most attention at the expense of the women on Rutgers’ basketball team.

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CORRECTION An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“W. tennis swept off the court by Princeton and Penn,” April 10) incorrectly stated that Kathrin Sorokko ’10 and Brett Finkelstein ’09 lost the third doubles match to Princeton on April 6. The pair won their match 8-6. That same article incorrectly referred to Daisy Ames ’07 as the team’s captain. The women’s tennis team does not have an official team captain. CORRECTIONS POLICY The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. COMMENTAR Y POLICY The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed. ADVER TISING POLICY The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

O PINIONS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 11

Achievement deceives: Doing good is the true crown of all endeavors NATALIE SMOLENSKI

OPINIONS COLUMNIST

As Herald coverage begins to revolve around thesis work and the stresses of graduating seniors, many students face the expectation of achieving something called “completion.” As March melts into April, which blooms into May, we smell in the air and see in the colors of the sky beginnings and endings — signposts demarcating points along the oldest cycle of decay and renewal. We begin projects, and we ﬁnish them. We embark upon ventures that come to an end. We pass from one stage of life to another. Yet when we speak of “completion” in our society, we rarely have in mind its transience. Rather, completion is understood as the foundation upon which we build something called “achievement.” When we speak of what we have achieved, we almost always hearken back to an effort we have made, the result of which we can be proud. Many of us make lists of our achievements to show to others — employers, admission committees, people we admire or seek to please — hoping that by these achievements we shall be judged and valued. The endeavors we complete do, on the whole, deﬁne us — through them we develop a sense of social usefulness and belonging — we carve out a “niche” in which we feel we have earned the absolute right to exist. Yet this ethos carries on its back a distressing incarnation: When a person who has “achieved” more than we have begins to encroach upon the niche we have so painstakingly constructed, we often begin to feel

as though our very existence is redundant, its value signiﬁcantly compromised. In a culture where respect must be earned, we strive to earn it by proving our ability to do what no one else can. Each of us strives to be unique and exemplary not only for the possibilities of innovation and advancement present in well-developed, divergent thinking but also as a means of selfpreservation. I would venture to say that behind the drive toward knowledge and stimu-

important “roles” to play in society — niches to fill which will justify our years of struggle. Yet most of us are perceptive enough to realize that everything from sociological distribution curves to our biological makeup regulates the distribution of intellectual and creative gifts and talents as well as practical advantages like certain ethnic affiliations, physical attractiveness and financial prowess. Though proud of our accomplishments, many of us are haunted by the ghost

The cycles of development and decay that regulate our lives indicate the permanence and primacy of only one process: doing good with love and compassion for others. lation that propels us to become productive members of society lies a barely perceptible fear borne out of simple insecurity. The shadow of the word “achievement” is therefore “worth.” In a meritocracy, we grow up believing that worth must be earned. At Brown, the hard work we put into completing projects and courses of study convinces us that we have indeed earned a certain amount of worth. We begin to understand ourselves as individuals with

of the question: What if my background was different? In demonstrating the extent of their individual achievement, members of our society strive to elevate their own agency, prove their worth and — most fundamentally — justify their existence. It is my sincere hope, however, that a student’s understanding of the order of things will transcend this formula during his or her four years at Brown. To begin with, some questions do not have

answers: The reasons we were born into certain circumstances will forever remain a mystery. Second, hard work proves nothing and justifies nothing. In the words of the great poet Gibran Khalil Gibran, “You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.” The question of personal worth, so important to a society used to defining concepts in terms that also describe commodities, is beyond the scope of any answer. In the final analysis, we cannot use a specious criterion like achievement — the precursor to utility — to evaluate the meaning of completing a project or course of study. Rather, the cycles of development and decay that regulate our lives indicate the permanence and primacy of only one process: doing good with love and compassion for others. This doing transcends the dichotomies of work and rest, of importance and inconsequentiality, even of craft and arbitrariness. Whatever we have that can do good for others is a gift that reaches beyond ourselves. What lacks quantity is limitless and within the reach of all. As the cycle of this academic year comes to a close, I relish in the transformation that completion entails. At the same time, I am coming to understand on a profound level the unchanging, joyful servitude and love of others, which links together people of all ages and places. Inhabiting such a state on a continuous basis is not an achievement. It is simply the couch on which we all — knowingly or not — sit. As time, with its many beginnings and ends, passes around us, it is my sincere hope that we all come to meet, as naturally as the spring now arrives, in that sacred place.

Natalie Smolenski ’07 likes holidays.

A new look at economic philosophy BY MATT PREWITT COLUMNIST ABROAD

TEL AVIV, Israel — When people discuss economic inequality, they reveal a set of personal preferences reﬂective of their ideal society. For some people, absolute wealth trumps inequality. They would have us simply add up all the wealth in a society and use that as a yardstick for its prosperity. On the other extreme are people who believe that equality is always more important than wealth. Most of us fall somewhere between these bookends. There is a crucial idea implicit in the the argument of each side — that relative weath is enormously important to people and a huge component of their subjective wealth (how wealthy they feel). The economist Benjamin Friedman champions this point in his books. He argues that peoples’ economic contentment is linked far more closely to their relative wealth compared to their peers — and to their own former situation — than to any absolute, immutable yardstick. Let us forget, for a moment, about growth over time (which can keep everyone reasonably content if it is rapid and uniform). Barring that rosy scenario, subjective wealth is a positional good. Positional goods are things that by deﬁnition, not everyone can have equally — such as leadership roles and admission to top universities. Some observers like to point out that the average American is richer, in some sense, than feudal barons and kings of medieval

times who couldn’t afford airplane rides, iPods, electricity and other modern amenities. But this argument is mildly absurd, because our subjective wealth is largely determined not by what we have, but by what people have in the house next door or the country next door. For this reason, I think most rational con-

So inequality, in some sense, enhances the wealth of the rich and degrades the wealth of the poor. This paradigm also adds to the myriad reasons why people in societies with perfect wealth redistribution can become apathetic about prosperity. In such societies, historical or hypothetical, people stand to beneﬁt from wealth only materially,

Ultimately, economics is a tragic science. It can help us better understand natural forces, but its study doesn’t hold the key to a better, happier society any more so than the study of geology. sumers would trade in their Armani suit for Men’s Wearhouse if it meant everyone else’s clothes were magically reduced to simple rags. This isn’t because people are spiteful. It’s because many objects derive part of their value from their function as status indicators.

not positionally. This line of thinking suggests that even in the most materialistic societies, people may not actually be seeking material goods. In the great capitalist orgy that is the American metropolis, people probably aren’t really ﬁghting over cars and penthouses per se —

they’re fighting to get to the top of the heap. In a truly ideal society, everyone would have a wealth of positional goods. Everyone would function at his or her full capacity with an intact ego and a sense of accomplishment. This suggests that we should nurture a plurality of values. Perhaps, if we all wanted different positions, we could all have them. In practice this may be impossible, except perhaps in a small, controlled unit, like a tribe or the crew of a ship. People need their values to be validated by others — and this is precisely the function of money. Everyone wants reassurance that their role in society is desirable. One of the most powerful ways of finding this precarious peace of mind is to see lots of other people clamoring to fill your shoes, and that is exactly what happens if you have a lot of money. This is all related to basic features of human nature, and it explains why prosperous societies are often still unhappy. The positional goods conundrum is the dagger in the heart of idealistic economics. That is why, ultimately, economics is a tragic science. It can help us better understand natural forces, but its study doesn’t hold the key to a better, happier society any more so than the study of geology. Meanwhile, anti-materialists and proponents of equality are chasing a red herring. The insatiable consumer who lurks within all of us doesn’t just want things — he wants other people to also want them and be unable to obtain them. Matt Prewitt ’08 wants you to know that his milkshake brings all the girls to the yard, and they’re like, it’s better than yours.

S PORTS W EDNESDAY WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2007

PAGE 12

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Yanks aren’t armed for success in 2007

Emily Cole / Herald File Photo Whitney Keefe ’08 qualiﬁed for the Individual Open Fences competition at the IHSA National Horse Show in early May.

Equestrian earns trip to nationals BY PETER CIPPARONE SPORTS EDITOR

After this weekend’s Zone 1 championship, the equestrian team is riding high. In its Saturday show in South Hadley, Mass., the team earned a trip to the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association national show by ﬁnishing in second place. The team will travel to Spring-

field, Mass., for nationals, which will be held May 3-6. The Bears will be part of a 20-team field and are competing as a team at nationals for the fourth time in the last 10 years and the first time since 2003. “I think the seniors are really happy to finally get there,” said Head Coach Michaela Scanlon. “But the only way you get to nationals is to have depth … every member of

the team contributed, so everyone’s excited to go.” In addition to the team berth, Whitney Keefe ’08 qualiﬁed for the national Individual Open Fences event. She will be competing separately for the Cacchione Cup, which will pit Keefe against 29 IHSA region winners. Keefe qualiﬁed to be the continued on page 9

Okay, so I know the first part sounds a bit crazy, but the way the Yanks’ starters have opened the season, they THE REIL DEAL might be in some HavChris Peterson trouble. and Shane Reil ing gone once through the rotation, every one of New York’s starting five failed to make it out of the fi fth inning. Not to mention that, as of Tuesday morning, the Bombers were 10th in the American League in ERA and 13th in K/BB ratio. Toss in a defense that’s been uglier than Joakim Noah (eight errors, tops in the big leagues), and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Contrary to what baseball pundits said prior to this season, the Yankees’ starting rotation is not very good. Mike Mussina, the closest New York can get to an ace, pitched well in 2006. But that was a contract year. Mussina’s 2004 campaign yielded 12 wins and a 4.59 ERA, and in 2005 he registered just 13 wins with a 4.41 ERA. Expect his numbers to be much closer to these in 2007. After Mussina, the Yankees’ rotation is full of question marks. Andy Pettitte’s left elbow is actually trying to escape his skin — we saw it on the Internet, it was gross — and he’s coming off a mediocre 2006 season, in the weaker National League, no less. Although Pettitte did have a good second half, his numbers against the American League raise concerns. In four games against AL opponents

last year, he allowed two base runners per inning pitched, failing to record a single win. Put Raggedy Andy next to opening day starter Carl Pavano, and you’ve got an injury prone 1-2 punch whose odds of making it to the end of the season are slimmer than Jessica Alba. Things are just as bleak at the back end of the rotation. Japanese import Kei Igawa, who had a reputation for making Japanese hitters miss, seems to be just as good at missing the strike zone. Igawa piled up 12 walks to go with his 19 strikeouts during spring training. Matt Clement and A.J. Burnett are perfect examples of just how far good stuff will go in the AL East without the control to back it up. While Darrell Rasner and his 5.06 career ERA will keep ChienMing Wang’s seat warm, Yankees fans will eagerly await Wang’s return to the hill. Unfortunately, there are plenty of reasons to believe that Wang will not repeat his stellar 2006 season, the ﬁrst of which is durability. The reason why Wang didn’t start the fourth game of the 2006 Divisional Series in Detroit was — as Joe Torre later admitted — because the skipper had serious questions about the youngster’s ability to throw on three days’ rest, based on his history. Instead of taking a chance with Wang in an elimination game, Torre commited seppuku — Samcontinued on page 9

W. track eases into outdoor Early success snowballs for season at Connecticut m. track in UConn event BY SARAH DEMERS ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

BY SARAH DEMERS ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

The women’s track and field team made the most of its holiday weekend in Storrs, Conn. The Bears battled eight other teams to a second place finish on Saturday. Brown finished only behind the host University of Connecticut, and the day proved to be a strong outing for the squad. Many used the event as a training run for the team’s outdoor home meet, the Brown Invitational this weekend. Brown finished with 141.5 points, behind the Huskies with 224 but well ahead of the University of Rhode Island and Harvard. “Although it was a scored meet, we did not go after points or try to win the meet by doubling and tripling our athletes,” said Director of Track and Field Craig Lake. “The weather was horrific, and the goal was to simply compete hard and do the best we could. It was a pleasant surprise to finish second … without really trying.” Two of the Bears’ most reliable runners throughout the season, Smita Gupta ’08 and Naja Ferjan ’07, highlighted the day with wins in their respective events. Gupta earned gold in the 1,500-meter run, finishing in a time of 4:41.59, and Ferjan blazed to a victory in the 800-meter run in 2:12.06. Five Bears competed in the 800, which served as a major scoring bonanza for Brown. It raked in 25 points from that race alone. Though the weather was miser-

The men’s track team plowed through the nine-team field to finish second at the University of Connecticut Saturday despite the cold temperatures and whipping winds. The Bears, with 105 points, posted a stellar second-place finish behind the hometown Huskies and just clear of the University of Rhode Island at 97. “It is our goal to get tougher and more competitive,” said Director of Track and Field Craig Lake. “So this weekend, even in bad conditions, it was good to see some solid performances. Times in some of the events were out the window, as it was cold and windy, which affects the distance events a great deal.” Despite the skewed times, many standout feats peppered the day. Sean O’Brien ’09 picked up a win in the 800-meter run with a time of 1:55.16 and was followed closely by Christian Tabib ’07, who logged a fourth-place finish in the event in 1:57.10. Kevin Cervantes ’10 also placed fourth in his race, the 400meter run, in 50.79 seconds. Matthew Jasmin ’09 had a third-place finish in the 110-meter hurdles in a time of 15.43 seconds. Brown fared well in the longer running events as well. Duriel Hardy ’10 blazed to a fourth-place finish in the 1,500-meter run with a time of 4:01.75. Nick Sarro ’08 had a big day in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, racing to a first-place finish despite having no competition

continued on page 9

Courtesy of Dan Grossman ‘71

Smita Gupta ’08 (left) won the 1,500-meter run, and Nick Sarro ’08 (right) took the 3,200-meter steeplechase at Connecticut this weekend.

continued on page 9