THE BROWN DAILY HERALD T HURSDAY A PRIL 26, 2007
Volume CXLII, No. 58
B.B. King to receive honorary degree
Internationalization effort begins to take shape BY MICHAEL SKOCPOL STAFF WRITER
BY MICHAEL BECHEK SENIOR STAFF WRITER
A new center to coordinate the University’s global health activities and an Africa development center are among the projects Brown’s internationalization committee will consider, members of the committee and its working groups told The Herald. The internationalization committee, chaired by Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98, was appointed last October to ser ve as a cornerstone for the University’s official effort to raise its international profile. It has since broken into working groups, three of which — global health; global humanities and curriculum; and language instruction and study abroad — will present their findings to the full committee today. The remaining three — global science and technology; global environment and poverty; and inequality and development — will report on May 10. The groups’ preliminar y recommendations will likely form the core of the full committee’s report, and they provide a first glimpse of the sorts of projects President Ruth Simmons, the provost and the vice president for international affairs slated to be appointed this summer may elect to pursue in coming years. Other recommendations in the working groups’ reports include greater support for Brown’s development studies program, an initiative in the nascent field of international investment, creating a summer institute for international humanities and encouraging more science and engineering students to study or do research abroad.
Blues musician B.B. King and the presidents of three New Orleans universities are among those who will receive honorary degrees this year at Commencement, University officials announced Wednesday. Scott Cowen of Tulane University, Norman Francis of Xavier University and Marvalene Hughes of Dillard University will each receive an honorary degree “in recognition of their determination and leadership following Hurricane Katrina,” according to a University press release. Other honorary degree recipients include sportscaster Chris Berman ’77 P’08, actress Kate Burton ’79, Professor Emeritus of Medical Science Stanley Aronson, Pulitzer prize-winning author Samantha Power and Nobel Prizewinning researcher Craig Mello ’82, who will give the baccalaurewhitehouse.gov
continued on page 6
B.B. King will receive an honorary degree at Commencement on May 27.
Student group stirs up ROTC debate BY ALEX ROEHRKASSE STAFF WRITER
The perennial debate over whether the Reserve Officer Training Corps should have a home on Brown’s campus may be reinvigorated with the creation of a new student group — tentatively called “Advocates for Brown ROTC” — calling for the military program’s reinstitution on College Hill. Jason Carr ’09 and Josh Teitelbaum ’08 founded the group to take steps toward breaking down the
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
campus community’s isolation from what they say is an important social institution. “The military is a big part of society, and as of the moment, Brown has chosen to separate itself from it, and I believe it’s a bad decision on their part,” Carr said. “Brown graduates should be exposed to all walks of life, and exposure to the military can certainly inform Brown students.” Since Brown’s own ROTC program left campus in 1971 over faculty protests of the Vietnam War,
students pursuing ROTC have participated in the Army program at Providence College, the Patriot Battalion, which also serves several other campuses in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Currently, only one Brown student is participating in the Patriot Battalion, according to Lt. Col. Paul Dulchinos, the battalion’s commander and a professor of military science at Providence College. Since a spike of 11 Brown cadets in continued on page 4
Common in many of the reports is the need to better coordinate Brown’s current and future international activities. Assistant Provost Shelley Stephenson, a member of the committee, said the full committee will meet on May 22 to begin producing a final report from the working groups’ suggestions, but no timetable has been set for it to produce the report. Poverty, inequality and development The report of the poverty, inequality and development working group will center on three main recommendations — the international investment initiative, the Africa center and the improvement of development studies — the group’s chair, Professor of Economics Ross Levine, told The Herald. The investment initiative would aim to “establish a ver y prominent reputation for Brown both in terms of teaching and research in the area of international investment,” Levine said. By bringing together scholars and students with a business-centered focus on profitable investing with those concerned about social justice and living standards in developing countries, Brown could potentially be a pioneer in a new field, Levine said. Those two groups rarely interact in modern academia, Levine said, but the working group believes collaboration would allow them to ask, “When is international investment a win-win situation for both recipient communities and busicontinued on page 15
TWC turns 30 years old Coming this fall to the SciLi: DVD rentals Remembering three decades of protest for unity BY IRENE CHEN STAFF WRITER
The Main Green is still a center of small-scale student protest, but 30 years ago a series of student-led demonstrations on campus and a nearly two-day occupation of University Hall compelled Brown to create the Third World Center. Sparked from these calls for racial and ethnic awareness, the TWC today unites students of all racial backgrounds under its roof in Partridge Hall. The center’s name and role on campus have raised questions and caused controversy since it first began in the Churchill House basement in 1976. But this week, the
INSIDE:
7 CAMPUS NEWS
center celebrates three decades of supporting students of color and promoting understanding through programs, lectures, the Third World Transition Program and the Minority Peer Counselor Progam. Born out of protest In 1968, a group of black women from Pembroke College camped out for three days at the Congdon Street Baptist Church to call on the University to raise the number of black students in the incoming class to 11 percent. As a result of this — the first major student protest over race at the University — the number of black students who enrolled at the University the following year continued on page 16
REORIENTATION Students and administrators are optimistic about the restructured Orientation planned for the incoming class of 2011
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BY CAMERON LEE STAFF WRITER
FEATURE
15 CAMPUS NEWS
The Friedman Study Center will become home to a new DVD check-out service, allowing students to borrow movies for 24hour periods. The service will begin by Sept. 5, the first day of classes in the fall. Students will be able to check out DVDs free of charge, said University Librarian Harriette Hemmasi. Though DVDs can only be checked out for 24 hours, there will be no consequence for returning a DVD late. Hemmasi said she hopes students will abide by the 24-hour time limit, despite the lack of consequences for not adhering to the rule. “If (students) check things out and then keep them for a week, that really ruins the program,” she said, adding that the library might look to more strictly enforce the KNIVES AND DONUTS This week’s crime log features a knife theft from the Ratty and a mysterious doughnut-flinger operating from a car on Thayer Street
policy in the future. The initiative will start with about 40 DVDs. The plan is to add about 20 new movies per month to the service, which should house a collection of over 200 DVDs by next May, Hemmasi said. The service will be jointly financed by the Division of Campus Life and Student Services and the University library. A list of all titles owned by the library will be available online, and the movies will also be listed on Josiah, the University’s library catalog, Hemmasi said. Because the service is starting off as a pilot program, its survival and potential growth depend on student feedback, Hemmasi said. Brian Becker ’09, chair of the campus life committee of the Undergraduate Council of Students, conceived the idea for a DVD ser-
24 SPORTS
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continued on page 6 BASEBALL 1ST IN RED ROLFE After Harvard split its doubleheader against Yale, the baseball team found itself No. 1 in Red Rolfe after sweeping Dartmouth
Tai Ho Shin / Herald
The Friedman Study Center will house a new DVD check-out service that will allow students to borrow movies for 24 hour periods.
EDITOR’S NOTE
This is the last regular issue of The Herald until Sept. 5. Check browndailyherald.com for Web updates and look for the Commencement, Summer and Orientation issues on newsstands and on the Web. News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com
TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
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TODAY
WE A
partly cloudy 64 / 47
Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker
T H E R TOMORROW
MEN
SHARPE REFECTORY
THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
rain / thunder 55 / 52
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VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL
LUNCH — Vegan Tofu Ravioli, Meatballs, Grilled Ham and Swiss Sandwich, Canadian Bacon, Sweet Potato Fries, Savory Spinach, Cheesecake Brownies, Pineapple Upside Down Cake
LUNCH — Vegetarian Six Bean Soup, Minestrone Soup, Hot Roast Beef on French Bread, Baked Macaroni and Cheese, Summer Squash, Cheesecake Brownies
DINNER — Sauteed Broccoli with Garlic, Pizza Rustica, Turkey with Sauce, Vegetarian Gnocchi ala Sorrentina, Mashed Sweet and White Potatoes, Stuffing, Chocolate Cake with Frosting
DINNER — Zucchini, Carrot and Garlic Medley, Chicken Tikka, Vegan Curry Vegetables, Coconut Rice, Green Beans with Coconut Italian Bread, Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting
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WBF | Matt Vascellaro
D O K U
Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9. How To Get Down | Nate Saunders
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CR ACROSS 1 River to the Danube 5 Aristotle’s teacher 10 Overt 14 Bad guy 15 Athenian lawgiver 16 It may be hard to resist 17 Sills number 18 Serving at a Devonshire tea 19 Prudent 20 ANTES 23 Throat trouble 24 Word after fire or bake 25 TV monitor 28 Airhead 31 Poe poem 33 “Boola Boola” singer 36 “All My Children” vixen 39 City near Anaheim 40 AUNTIES 44 Sawyer’s bud 45 “Christ Stopped at Eboli” author Levi 46 Just about squeeze (out) 47 Twisty? 50 Thompson of “Howards End” 52 Augusta Aug. setting 53 Hole maker 56 They come out at night 60 ANTIS 64 Where to see some skiers 66 Polish composer Szymanowski 67 Cube maker Rubik 68 __ Skavinsky Skavar, song rival of Abdul Abulbul Amir 69 “I’ll see you in my dreams” song girl 70 Recipe direction 71 Is worth it 72 Krupp Works city 73 Fail miserably, in slang DOWN 1 Doesn’t work
O S S W O R D
2 Wading bird 3 Old source of news 4 Led 5 Attention getter 6 Lomond, for one 7 Healing plants 8 Light truck maker 9 1994 A.L. batting champ 10 Force out 11 Religious request 12 “Which came first?” option 13 Once called 21 Pitch 22 There’s usually one on the 30yard line at the start of an NFL game 26 Swimming hole feeder 27 Knock off 29 Evaluate by experiencing 30 It makes a lot of cents 32 Jordan was once in it: Abbr. 33 Sam Spade’s secretary 34 Scottish landowner
35 Song by the rock band My Chemical Romance 37 Covert fed. group 38 Plot to develop, perhaps 41 Quaint quarters 42 Air France subsidiary 43 Chinese menu assurance 48 Elf 49 Part of a batch, maybe
51 Reclining 54 Alexander and Peter 55 Puts on the staff 57 It comes from the heart 58 Drop by briefly 59 Combination utensil 61 Inks 62 Zip 63 Valley 64 Gloss site 65 Gardner of film
Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon
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Texas Instruments provides free calculators at Hope High
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FBI: Threats against area colleges are ‘not credible’ In response to threats against colleges in Providence and Worcester, Mass., the FBI received Wednesday, Vice President for Administration Walter Hunter e-mailed the Brown community yesterday afternoon to assure students that the Department of Public Safety “does not believe that we are facing any danger.” But Hunter also wrote that the University will ““continue to be on a heightened sense of alert” in response to the murder of 32 students at Virginia Tech last week. “FBI and Providence Police investigators handling this matter have advised us that they believe this threat is not credible,” Hunter wrote in his e-mail to the campus. The Providence Journal reported Wednesday that the threat came from a 43-year-old man, Raymond Ouellette, arrested Saturday in Seekonk, Mass. “During the booking process at the Seekonk Police Station, Ouellette made statements which were potentially threatening to the public. The FBI was notified of the statements for further investigation,” the Seekonk police said in a statement. Before his arrest this weekend, Ouellette had 19 outstanding warrants for his arrest in Massachusetts, the Journal reported. He is also wanted in Florida, the state of his last recorded address. Hunter said the FBI contacted the University earlier this week to alert them to “some possible threats of violence against area colleges.” The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that one college in Providence and several in Worcester were contacted by the FBI. DPS patrols have not increased in response to either the Virginia Tech shooting or the threats revealed today. “We’re just being extra careful,” Hunter told The Herald. But, he added,“We have had more visits from Providence police checking in with us” since the shooting. “When something like (Virginia Tech) happens, you have to be on the alert for copycats,” Hunter said. — Simmi Aujla
BY PATRICK COREY STAFF WRITER
Students at the Hope High School complex have used Texas Instruments calculators this semester for free, thanks to President Ruth Simmons’ ties to the company. Texas Instruments donated 350 calculators to the historically underachieving public high school in late February, said Mark Kravatz, facilitator of school support and community/family engagement at Hope High. Simmons is a member of Texas Instruments’ board of directors. Texas Instruments, a Dallasbased technology company popular for its calculators, has offered free calculators to high schools with poor math records in Texas, said Director of Education Outreach Lamont Gordon ’93. The Hope High program, which aims to improve math proficiency, is the first the company has launched outside of its home state. The program includes five “professional development” days for teachers, Gordon said. On a professional development day, a representative from Texas Instruments performs hands-on, interactive training with teachers while fielding ques-
Proposed Thayer Street Chipotle faces local opposition BY NICK WERLE STAFF WRITER
Chipotle Mexican Grill, a nationwide chain of Mexican restaurants known for huge burritos and natural ingredients, is currently embroiled in a fight to open a new location on the corner of Thayer Street and Euclid Avenue, next to Kabob and Curry. Chipotle’s application for zoning variances, which are necessary to finalize the project, was presented to the Providence Zoning Board of Review in a marathon meeting Tuesday night. The company is seeking relief from zoning ordinances concerning on-site parking and property line setback. The College Hill Neighborhood Association led a group of local property owners opposed to the restaurant at the meeting. Because the meeting ran so long, the zoning board voted to table the issue and discuss it again at its next meeting in May.
The most contentious issue at the meeting was parking for the proposed restaurant. Providence zoning ordinance demands that restaurants have one parking space for every four seats. Since the proposed Chipotle would have 74 seats, the law requires 19 spaces. But the current plan includes no on-site parking. Chipotle Real Estate Manager Brad Toothman, who represented the company at the hearing, claimed the site was too small. David Shwaery, who owns the building Chipotle would be located in and most of the rest of the block, pledged that Chipotle could use the nine spaces behind his Squires Salon, which is next door, after the salon closes at 6 p.m. Toothman said about 45 percent of customers at Chipotle’s locations near other college campuses walk instead of drive, and the company expected a similar proportion of walk-in traffic at the Thayer location, which should justify the lack of
Tai Ho Shin / Herald File Photo
Texas Instruments, of which President Ruth Simmons is a board member, has donated calculators to the Hope High School complex.
tions about the particular needs of certain classes. The school has hired a calculator coordinator to distribute the machines to algebra students and teachers, Kravatz said. Hope High was chosen for the Texas Instruments partnership because of its long relationship with the University. “Hope has been very interested and proactive about trying to reach out to Brown to do work like this,” Gordon said. Unlike the similar programs in
Austin Freeman / Herald File Photo
on-site parking. Opponents of the proposed restaurant argued that parking on College Hill is already extremely limcontinued on page 4
continued on page 4
East Side residents consider plans for Nathan Bishop MS BY NANDINI JAYAKRISHNA STAFF WRITER
Chipotle Mexican Grill wants to open a ocation on Thayer Street.
the Lone Star State, the program at Hope High features participation from Brown students. Hannah Watson ’08 and Cristina Rodrigues ’10 coordinate the program’s 15 student volunteers. Hired by the Swearer Center for Public Service to lead the program, Watson and Rodrigues meet with Brown volunteers once a week and assign them to classrooms at Hope
Two architects presented options for the renovation and reconstruction of a new Nathan Bishop Middle School to a group of nearly 50 East Side residents at a meeting Tuesday night at Martin Luther King Elementary School. The architects are from the firm Architecture Involution Inc., which was hired by the city. Nathan Bishop had been the only public middle school on the East Side when it closed down a year ago following a drop in student enrollment. The East Side Public Education Coalition — a group of parents and residents on the East Side — has been working to bring the school back. The coalition has recently gained the support of Donnie Evans, superintendent of the Providence Public School District.
One plan for the school would retain most of the existing structure and only demolish the rear portion of the building, which would involve uprooting trees along the back of the building, said architect Scott Dunlap. This option includes only a 4,000square-foot gym, which Dunlap said would be “undersized.” The second option attempts to keep the outside shell of the building but could pose an “educational or functional compromise because (we would be) trying to stack everything in that space.” The third option accepts that the current building will be demolished, Dunlap said. In response to residents’ questions, Dunlap said the architects’ immediate goal is to “decide the basic configuration of the building and not small details, which will continued on page 4
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Student group stirring up ROTC debate continued from page 1 1991, he said he typically graduates only one or no Brown students from the program each year. Nevertheless, Carr said it’s hard to gauge the true interest in ROTC on campus when institutional barriers make participation in the program difficult for Brown students. Carr said he considered joining an ROTC program but chose not to participate in the Patriot Battalion while at Brown because the University does not give credit for military science classes taken at Providence College. For this reason, Teitelbaum said, the primary goal of Advocates for Brown ROTC will be persuading the University to award course credit for ROTC classes. The group held a meeting with Dulchinos Wednesday night to finalize a proposal it plans to present to Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 and the College Curriculum Council. Short of establishing a fullfledged ROTC program at Brown, Dulchinos said, there are other intermediate steps the University can take to support students who want to pursue ROTC. He said he has met with Bergeron and Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73 to discuss the possibility of including Providence College’s ROTC course offerings in Brown registration catalogs or evaluating ROTC participation as a favorable attribute in admission
decisions. Dulchinos said he thinks Brown students have something the military increasingly wants — the ability to think critically and process information creatively. “The biggest thing that (the military is) trying right now is to create adaptive leaders because of the rapid nature of the conflicts at hand, and our enemy is rapidly changing and adapting,” he said. “If you had everyone go through a military academy, you would have a much more rigid and a less openly thinking type of leadership, perhaps because they’ve all gone through one particular chute,” Dulchinos added. Dulchinos said ROTC is a better way to produce officers than through the United States Military Academy at West Point. Teitelbaum also suggested that the military is now taking specific action to create an officer corps that is more diverse. “The Department of Defense had made statements in the last couple of years indicating basically that they are more or less willing … to divert funding from other programs that have been more traditionally quote-unquote successful in the interest of attracting officers from more elite institutions,” Teitelbaum said. Associate Dean of the College Linda Dunleavy said during her two years as Brown’s adviser for ROTC, she’s never had an undergraduate approach her for information, but
she has noticed increased efforts on behalf of the Providence College ROTC program to reach out to Brown students. “They’ve been putting some pressure on various offices to try to see if they can come and actually leaflet on campus and recruit,” she said. Annie Koenig ’08, who participated in a panel debate last week hosted by an international relations seminar she is taking on the U.S. military, said she recognizes the current divide between the military and academia, but she said she doesn’t think ROTC will resolve it because the program is essentially incompatible with the liberal arts university in America. “They’re serving two different purposes. A liberal arts education is to basically learn tools of inquiry and to diversify. What the military teaches you is completely the opposite. It’s a more didactic learning style. It’s officer-led and it teaches you to conform,” Koenig said. Though Teitelbaum said he applauds the general discussion on campus about ROTC, he hopes that by taking action to bring about ROTC’s return, his group can go a step beyond detached dialogue. “I think it will do something very different than just having a series of intellectual discussions on the issue,” he said. “There is a real war going on, and there is no reason for there to be this level of detachment from it.”
East Side residents consider plans for Nathan Bishop continued from page 3 continue to evolve during the design process.” Dunlap did not provide cost estimates for any of the options, saying the plans are still being developed, but he said the firm would try to keep costs as low as possible. Several people present at the meeting said they would have liked a discussion about the cost of different options. “We don’t have the whole picture,” said Michelle McKenzie, an East Side resident. But Dunlap told the residents
gathered that their input was important. “I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” he said. James Jordan, another architect at the meeting, told The Herald the architects do not have a preference in terms of options and that they would let the “cost estimating speak for itself.” The architects hope to have cost estimates once they’ve finalized the components of each plan. Mark Dunham, finance director for Providence public schools, said when the three plans are finalized, they will be submitted to Mayor
David Cicilline ’83, the Providence School Board and the Providence Preservation Society. The mayor and Providence school district will make the final decision regarding the building’s fate. Barbara Feldstein, an East Side resident and Nathan Bishop graduate, praised the architects for taking an interest in the school’s revival. “We took pride in our school and we respected authority. We want a quality middle school for East Side children that we haven’t had in a long time,” she said. “It is very important for Providence.”
Proposed Thayer Chipotle faces local opposition continued from page 3 ited and that Chipotle would only make it worse. CHNA representative Antoinette Breed contended that the planned restaurant, which would replace the currently vacant building on the site, is too large and a better design would be able to accommodate the needed parking. “For a developer to come here … and make the problem worse before there is a solution is unconscionable,” said Grant Dulgarian,
a trustee for Krikor S. Dulgarian Trust, which owns the property on Thayer Street between Meeting and Olive streets. Dulgarian passionately argued that the application should be rejected because Thayer Street needs more retail businesses and fewer eating establishments. In addition to diversifying Thayer’s offerings, a retail store requires less parking. In addition to the parking issue, Breed cited alcohol as a reason to oppose Chipotle. She said the group
is opposed to increasing the number of liquor licenses along Thayer Street. Toothman said Chipotle will not apply for a liquor license for the Thayer location and doesn’t plan to in the future. Chipotle’s corporate Web site states the company looks for locations with “zoning to accommodate restaurant use and allow liquor license (beer and margaritas).” Breed said she thought the company would apply for a liquor license in the future.
Texas Instruments provides free calculators to Hope High continued from page 3 High. In addition to organizing volunteers, Watson and Rodrigues also help the high school students use the calculators to improve algebra skills. Since the program is relatively young, Watson said, “nothing is as in-depth as we would like it to be in the future.” “I think it’s very exciting,” she said, explaining that she has already noticed “students connect with Brown volunteers in a really encouraging way.”
Watson also meets with teachers at Hope High to help develop lesson plans using the calculators. She said, despite the fact that the Brown volunteers are not trained as teachers, they have made strides in winning the trust and respect of students and teachers — necessary for productive work. Watson and Rodrigues will work over the summer to develop lesson plans for next year. While they currently only work in ninth-grade algebra classrooms, they hope to expand the program to higher levels of math and provide calculator
training to those instructors in upper-level courses who would like to participate. The program is currently voluntary for algebra teachers at Hope High, and some are not involved. By working with Hope High students, Watson said she has learned how frustrating simple algebra can be for some. One ninth-grade student, she said, could not multiply one-half by four. Students will use the calculators through the remainder of the semester and then again in the fall, Watson said.
A RTS & C ULTURE THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
The art of refining playmates, courtesy of Khoo ’08 BY DANIELLE SHERIDAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
When most Brown students head to the P.O. to pick up care packages or their weekly subscription to the Economist, Lauren Khoo ’08 discretely slips her copy of Playboy magazine into her handbag. “Pornography really only became a serious source of inspiration for my art in the past year,” Khoo said. “It’s not as though I can ask my friends to pose for me like these girls do.” In her upcoming show “Beleza Roubada,” Khoo’s longstanding fascination with female sexuality comes to the fore. With their bubblegum pink backgrounds, swirling arabesque lines and touches of glitter, her paintings present a distinctly feminine take on sexuality. Tinged with an exotic and Oriental flare, Khoo’s work somewhat resembles Japanese pop art, combining calligraphic contours with various decorative floral patterns and foliage motifs. It is tasteful soft porn with an Asian twist. Considering her upbringing in
conservative Singapore, a country where pornography is still banned and Cosmopolitan magazine only recently hit newsstands, Khoo’s provocative approach to sex may seem surprising. “In Asian families, sex is still very much regarded as a taboo. My intention in the paintings therefore is to shock people back home,” Khoo said. As startling as Khoo’s works may be, they are not as perverse as what one might find in explicit centerfolds of spread-eagled barely legal playmates.
REVIEW Though their poses may initially appear transcribed from porn magazines, Khoo’s figures in fishnets, dangling from acrobatic sex swings and engaging in erotic foreplay, are enfranchised with a certain authoritative power. Promiscuous yet nonetheless in full control of their sexuality, these are women who enjoy sex and are unashamed of making it known. A woman wielding a whip is not portrayed as the kinky object of a
man’s dominatrix fetish, but rather as an autonomous and totemic figure of sexual empowerment. These women are glorified and monumental, owning and commanding the spaces they inhabit. Khoo channels the expressive potential of the nude female form rather than objectifying it for the male gaze. “I have always felt that a woman’s body is the ultimate representation of beauty and strength,” Khoo said. On one canvas, silhouetted bodies engage in some kind of rapturous interaction almost as strippers lathering one in another in baby oil. The lustrously smooth surface of their skin and the seedy nightclub lights give the impression that human flesh has been transformed into bronze. There is an almost statuesque quality to this self-contained figure grouping. A theatrical concoction of male fantasy therefore becomes a timeless celebration of the sexual act where women call all the shots. “Beleza Roubada” opens Monday on the second floor of List Art Center.
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Free Culture Organization seeks to fight RIAA suits BY JAIME ROSENSTEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Rather than a 15-minute in-class speech or a flashy PowerPoint presentation, four students in MC 170: “Open Source Culture” have created a chapter of the Free Culture Organization at Brown for their final project. Seeking to promote the lessons of the course taught by Mark Tribe, assistant professor of modern culture and media, the group is focusing on issues of copyright and intellectual property laws in order to make culture more accessible. The Free Culture Organization has chapters at many schools nationwide, and until this semester, “Brown (was) the only remaining Ivy League without a chapter,” said Christina Ducruet ’08, head of the Brown chapter. The goal of the National Free Culture Organization is “to raise awareness, promote discourse surrounding the ideas of open source culture, looser intellectual property law,” Ducruet said. “All the things that surround this to essentially work towards a freer culture,” she added. But, she said, that doesn’t mean the organization wants to work toward abolishing copyright laws, but rather getting
back to the original purpose of the laws. The Free Culture Organization chapter at Brown hopes to attract students and get them active in the movement, examining restrictions on creativity such as “property over creativity, or ownership over shared creativity,” said Sonya Goddy ’07. But recently, “the purpose changed, largely based on the recent lawsuits of the Recording Industry Association of America,” Ducruet said. The Herald reported earlier this month that the RIAA has targeted 12 Brown undergraduate students for downloading copyrighted music off the Internet. The RIAA has sent pre-litigation letters to the University, warning the students that they had 20 days to settle out of court or else the RIAA reserves the right to subpoena the University in order to extract the students’ names and file lawsuits against them. In protest, the Free Culture Organization at Brown has expressed its outrage by producing a CD of the music the RIAA accused the 12 Brown students of illegally downloading. But due to fear of further legal action on the part of the record industry, members have decided to halt production on the CD.
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B.B. King to receive honorary degree continued from page 1 ate address May 26. Stanley Aronson The dean of Brown’s medical school from its founding in 1970 until 1981, when he was named a University professor, Aronson worked with other physicians and local clergy to establish Hospice Care Rhode Island, the state’s first hospice program, serving as its first president from 1989 to 1991. Aronson has also served as president of the Interfaith Care Ministries and has worked to incorporate hospice and palliative care into the medical curriculum. Aronson is an editor emeritus of the Medicine and Health of Rhode Island Journal. Chris Berman ’77 P’08 P’09 Named National Sportscaster of the Year six times, Berman is one of the most popular and recognizable faces in sports broadcasting. A studio host, anchor and commentator for ESPN, which he joined shortly after his graduation from Brown, Berman has been the face of the cable channel from its quiet inception in 1979 to its current status as the premier 24-hour sports network. Now a nine-time Emmy awardwinner, Berman got his start at WBRU as an undergraduate, where he called basketball, football, ice hockey and baseball games. Known for his enthusiastic play-by-play and characteristic catchphrases, Berman has covered 20 World Series and 24 Super Bowls. Kate Burton ’79 Best known for her role as Dr. Ellis Grey on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” Burton has performed on stage, television and film for 25 years. Nominated three times for Tony awards and once for an Emmy award, Burton has served on the council of the Actors’ Equity Association. She has also served as a visiting professor at the Brown University/Trinity
Repertory Consortium. Burton began rehearsals for her first of 10 Broadway shows, “Present Laughter,” one day after her graduation from Brown and attended the Yale School of Drama. Scott Cowen The 14th president of Tulane University, Cowen led the New Orleans university through the crisis of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, when much of Tulane’s campus was flooded and its students dispersed across the nation. Under Cowen’s leadership, the campus was repaired, and 87 percent of students returned to the university in January 2006. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin appointed Cowen to the city’s Bring New Orleans Back commission with the task of rebuilding the public school system. Tulane has since chartered a K-12 school in the city and created an Institute for Public Education Initiatives to support further transformation of the school system. Norman Francis Currently the longest-serving university president in the United States, Francis became president of Xavier University in 1968. In addition to leading the rebuilding of Xavier in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Francis was appointed by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco as chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. In December 2006, Francis was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. Marvalene Hughes The first woman to serve as president of Dillard University, Hughes is leading the university’s recovery from more than $400 million in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. Before coming to Dillard, which is President Ruth Simmons’ alma mater, Hughes served as president of California State University, Stanislaus, for 11 years.
Riley “B.B.” King King was named the greatest living guitarist by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003. A 14-time Grammy winner, he has won for Best Traditional Blues Album nine times, most recently in 2006 at the age of 80. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987. Since he first began recording in 1947, King has influenced generations of guitarists and has released more than 50 albums. Craig Mello ’82 Mello, a Howard Hughes investigator at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Fire of Stanford University for their discovery of RNA interference, a phenomenon they documented in a landmark 1998 paper that has significantly affected research efforts worldwide. Mello and Fire’s discovery, which revealed “gene silencing,” has allowed researchers to study gene regulation by controlling the expression of specific genes and has therapeutic implications for genetic diseases. Mello, who was a biochemistry concentrator as an undergraduate, is a native of Fairfax, Va., and now lives in Shrewsbury, Mass. He will also deliver the baccalaureate address May 26, the day before the Commencement exercises. Samantha Power Power, a human rights activist, is a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Her book, “A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide,” won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction as well as other awards. Power won the 2005 National Magazine Award for best reporting for an article in the New Yorker on Darfur. Power, who moved to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine, was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School.
DVD rentals available in SciLi this fall continued from page 1 vice run out of the Sciences Library last spring and has been working to implement the service, The Herald reported in February. UCS pushed strongly for the service, Becker said. Hemmasi said students worked with Associate University Librarian Florence Doksansky; Steven Lavallee, co-leader of the library’s gateway services department and the person responsible for the Friedman Study Center; and Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, interim vice president for campus life and student services. Ultimately, Hemmasi said, she
was the one who made the decision to implement the initiative. “In talking with Russell, I decided that we should move forward with this. We decided that it’s something students actually want,” she said. Hemmasi acknowledged “there had been reluctance in the past to use library funds to buy entertainment material,” but said she felt current movies represent modern culture, thereby providing some educational value as well. “We’re not going to spend all our money (on entertainment),” she said. Though the service will be located in the SciLi’s basement in the Friedman Study Center, Beck-
er had initially proposed that the DVDs be housed in Media Services on the 14th floor of the SciLi. But after discussing his idea with students, Becker said he realized keeping DVDs in the SciLi’s top floor would be inconvenient. Hemmasi agreed, telling The Herald the study center will have “much easier access for students.” Megan Whelan ’09.5 said the prospect of a free DVD service in the SciLi was “exciting.” She seemed doubtful, though, that the service would be popular if its DVD collection remained small. “I think a lot of people have DVDs in their rooms,” she said, adding that students’ personal collections might be larger than the library’s collection, at least initially. Billy Krimmel ’08 said that he would use the service, but not very often. “I use the Internet links,” he said, referring to sites that stream movies online. Becker had originally proposed locating DVD kiosks around campus, which would require a credit card swipe in order to rent the DVDs inside. Hemmasi said there are currently no plans to install these kiosks.
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Task force to accept 4th student member New applications will be solicited later this week for a fourth student member to serve on the Task Force on Undergraduate Education. The decision to allow another student to join the committee, which will undertake a wholesale review of the undergraduate College, was made Wednesday morning by Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron after a week-long discussion with the Undergraduate Council of Students and the current members of the task force. “It’ll likely be a rapid-fire process,” said Rakim Brooks ’09, a task force member who last week was elected as UCS academic and administrative affairs chair for next year. Brooks said he expects applications will be due by Monday, and candidates will be interviewed over the following two days. The task force currently comprises 10 faculty members and three undergraduates and will make recommendations to University officials in the spring of 2008. The decision to add another student was made to ensure student representation on all four of the task force’s subcommittees, each of which will address one section of the committee’s charge, said Sara Damiano ’08, the current UCS academic and administrative affairs chair. “When I heard there were four subcommittees, I was concerned that three students couldn’t adequately represent the students on the task force,” Damiano said. The possibility of a fourth member was discussed at the task force’s first meeting Thursday, and Brooks decided to reopen the application pool to the entire student body after consultation with Jason Becker ’09 and Fiona Heckscher ’09, the other two student members of the committee, Damiano said. Brooks said he, Heckscher and Becker were worried that one of them would have to “double up” their workload and sit on two subcommittees to guarantee student representation throughout the task force. Bergeron’s decision to add another student “allows us to serve the Brown community more effectively (as otherwise) it would have taken more energy than we probably all had,” Brooks said. — Evan Boggs
BY FRANKLIN KANIN STAFF WRITER
The restructured Orientation in store for the incoming class of 2011 has received positive reviews from the students and administrators who have spent nearly three months planning for the new schedule since the changes were announced. Orientation has been shortened
BY TARYN MARTINEZ STAFF WRITER
Imagine seeing a sleek, flattering, unique cocktail dress that’s not only affordable but also fashion-forward. Now imagine that it’s made out of plastic bags, bottle caps and soda cans. Groundwork Providence thinks sustainable fashion isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem, and the environmental advocacy group is willing to prove it. The
non-profit environmental education organization, along with cosponsor climate-neutrality group emPOWER, will present its sixthannual Runway Earth fashion show tonight at the American Locomotive Building in Providence. The outfits are made entirely from recycled or scavenged materials by local designers, including Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students, and will be continued on page 14
continued on page 14
Flex meal plans now more popular among students eating on campus The new Flex Plans introduced by Dining Services last semester are now more popular than traditional meal plans, with 51 percent of the 4,392 students on a meal plan this spring choosing a Flex meal plan. The Flex Plans have attracted 513 new students since last semester and now boast 82 more students than are on the traditional plans. There are 58 fewer students on meal plan this semester than in the fall. “There was a lot more migration (to the Flex Plan) second semester,” said Gretchen Willis, director of Dining Services. “I thought there would be more first semester.” Last semester, 1,724 students were on the Flex Plan, making up
Groundwork Providence provides new take on looking trashy
events will continue through what is now called First Weekend — the first weekend after classes begin — leaving nine days for activities as opposed to six in the past. “We’re very excited about it because it’s a very good opportunity for Steph and I and the rest of the OWC to really take charge of this new mission and make it really
Stuart Duncan-Smith / Herald The new Flex Plans introduced by Dining Services last semester are now more popular than traditional mean plans.
BY ISABEL GOTTLIEB STAFF WRITER
Courtesy of Mollie West A woman models one of the recycled creations at a Runway Earth event last year.
to only three days before classes begin, with programming continuing through the first week of the academic year. It was previously a six-day slate of programming prior to the first day of class. Anna Levine ’08 and Stephanie Syc ’08, co-coordinators of the Orientation Welcoming Committee, said they are excited for the opportunities the restructured Orientation provides the OWC. They said
about 39 percent of the 4,450 students on a University meal plan. Dining Services tracks only overall participation numbers, not how many students switch plans midyear. Willis said students have generally reacted positively to the new meal plan options. “Whenever I ask them, they all seem happy about it,” Willis said. She said she had anticipated even more students would switch to the Flex Plan, but added that she is not disappointed. “It was successful. People don’t like change a lot. Maybe there will be more next semester,” she said. Many students praised the new plan, though several said they had miscalculated how to use their Flex points and meal credits. Some have found themselves with excess
points left as the end of the semester approaches. Nick Young ’09 estimated he has about 150 Flex points and 100 meal credits left. “I will try to spend the credits at (Josiah’s) or the Gate,” he said. Young, who was on the 20-mealsper-week plan last year, said he prefers the Blue Room — which takes Flex points but not meal credits — to the Verney-Woolley Dining Hall or Sharpe Refectory. “I switched as soon as I found out there was a Flex Plan,” Young said. Michael Dupuis ’08 said he has over 200 Flex points left and will try to spend all of them by the end of the year by “buying stuff at Jo’s … like milk or pretzels.” Dupuis said he thinks the Flex meal plans have worked well. “Peocontinued on page 8
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Flex plans popular among students continued from page 7 ple gauge how many points they have left and don’t run out,” he said. Dupuis said he will stick to the same plan next semester — rather than going off meal plan — and will “grab things at the Blue Room more often.” Other students found that they ran out of Flex points more quickly than they had originally anticipated.
Hee Kyung Chung ’09, who is now on the Flex 350 Plan, started the year on the 20-meals-per-week plan. “I changed because I was frustrated with having to spend all my meals,” Chung said. “(The Flex Plan) is a lot better than last year. There is no pressure to spend all the credits in a day. Last year, I would go to Jo’s every night, and it took up a lot of time. I like this a lot more.”
But Chung said she “quickly ran out of Flex points,” mostly due to buying cereal in the Campus Market. “I’m stuck in the Ratty now because I have no points,” she said, adding that she was surprised to recently hear she also has only 39 meal credits left. Nevertheless, she still likes being on the Flex Plan. “Now that I know how quickly Flex points go away, I’ll be more careful,” Chung said.
this summer, visit www.browndailyherald.com for web updates and the commencement, summer and orientation issues
C AMPUS N EWS THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
With either trickle or a splash, colleges outsource e-mail services BY A. KAMYL BAZBAZ STAFF WRITER
Universities in the United States and around the world are steadily abandoning their internal email services and outsourcing e-mail support to large technology companies like Microsoft and Google. Students around the country are finding that the new offerings answer their complaints about low storage space and unreliability — and the service is more or less free for universities. The two leading companies supporting university e-mail service are Microsoft and Google. Microsoft is rolling out its Windows Live Hotmail package with a suite of communication and collaboration features, and Google offers the Google Apps education edition. Almost 300 universities across 15 countries — including India and many in Latin America — are signed up with Microsoft, according to Walter Harp, Microsoft group senior project manager, and the number of universities that have expressed interest is in the thousands. He added that as the “notion of outsourcing e-mail is becoming more mainstream and more accepting,” the number of universities looking for e-mail alternatives will continue to rise. Universities such as Northwestern, Arizona State and Lakehead have signed on with Google’s service, and Ball State and Indiana universities and the University of Pennsylvania have adopted Microsoft’s platform. Both services offer two gigabytes of space to students — more than 40 times what Brown offers now — plus unique features and applications many universities could not offer on their own. In terms of cost, the Microsoft solution only involves buying software, and Google’s service is completely free. Google, for example, offers features such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which allow users to access documents and spreadsheets online and edit them together in real time, eliminating the need to e-mail attachments back and forth. In combination with Google Talk, which allows students to talk with each other at the same time, Google Apps completely changes the dynamics of collaborative group work, said Jeff Keltner, an enterprise specialist for collaboration
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CAMPUS WATCH products with the company. Jeff Rollins, a sophomore at Arizona State University — one of the first universities to outsource its e-mail to Google — said he uses the collaborative features frequently and finds them very helpful when working on group projects such as lab reports. “All you have to do is look up friends in the directory, and they can just start editing it with you at the same time,” Rollins said. Both services allow universities to let their students not only keep their pre-existing e-mail addresses but also keep that e-mail address for the rest of their life. “You can have an e-mail with a school’s domain name forever,” Keltner said. An easy transition? One would imagine the transition to an entirely different email service would be a costly and time consuming venture, but implementation time can be as short as two to three weeks, with little to no cost, Harp said. The rate of transition is completely up to the university itself, and Microsoft is flexible to respond to the school’s wishes, he added. For example, Harp said, “A school in Scotland a year and a half ago went from signing the contract to completely replacing their system in three weeks.” On the other hand, the University of Pennsylvania engaged in a more cautious process. Penn officials “involved their students extensively” and spent six to nine months looking into the program and “going through all our stuff with a magnifying glass. … It was a little bit mind-blowing.” “They know more about our mail system and Windows Live than Bill Gates,” Harp joked. Google can respond in similar fashion, as the transition at Arizona State was completed in two weeks from the day administrators decided to go for it. Rollins works at the computer help desk at Arizona State and said there have been few complaints or issues with the new system. “I was skeptical at first. You think you are not going to have e-mail at all for a month and a half, but that is not what happened at all,” Rollins said. “I was continued on page 13
SuFI hopes for ‘salad by the end of May’ from recently created on-campus garden BY RACHEL ARNDT SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Brown’s Sustainable Food Initiative held a celebration Wednesday for its new student-run vegetable garden at Hope and Charlesfield streets. Students have just begun work on the garden — conducting soil tests, spreading compost and making beds for the plants. About 35 students, University officials and Dining Services staffers attended the ceremony Wednesday. Zak Stone ’09, a member of SuFI, gave a short speech about his excitement over the garden and the importance of creating a connection between food and labor. The garden is a “great example of a student initiative that, through persistence and support, has become real,” said Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, interim vice president for campus life and student services. Carey spoke briefly at the event. SuFI intends to have “salad by the end of May” from the site, said SuFI member Ben Mandelkern ’09, but the rocky soil may make the task difficult. The group will start sowing crops at the begin-
ning of May and four members of the group will be on campus this summer “managing the garden and doing independent research,” David Schwartz ’09, another SuFI member, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. What happens to the crops once they’re out of the ground is still up in the air. The vegetables might be used at student dinners, sold to students or donated to the community, Stone said. Brown has an “interest in promoting and supporting healthy diets,” Carey said, and the University hopes that it will “be able to utilize some of the food that’s grown in the garden.” SuFI has been “trying to get more local, sustainable food in the dining halls,” Mandelkern said. SuFI originally planned to plant the garden along the Walk, the planned walkway that will connect Lincoln Field to Pembroke campus, but the group rethought the location after looking into the start-up costs. Digging up bushes, shrubs and sidewalk would have cost about $30,000, Stone said. “The site would’ve been smaller than we’d originally hoped” along the Walk, Schwartz wrote.
The group’s new garden is about 2,700 square feet with “really rocky” soil, Stone said. The new location is a “calmer area” than the Walk, he said, with the best sunlight and most space the group could find. To choose the site for the garden, members of SuFI went on a tour with Grounds Superintendent Patrick Vetere, who “has been terrific in helping them,” Carey said. The funding for the site itself comes from the Office of the President, the Division of Campus Life and Student Services, the environmental studies department and the Office of the Dean of the College, Stone said. Still, the group must pay for supplies like seeds for the vegetables. “I’m impressed that we could do what we’ve done,” Stone said, explaining that many people thought Brown’s campus did not have enough space for a garden. The students in charge of the garden are a “great group of student leaders,” Carey said, adding that they have been able to successfully “garner the resources” continued on page 21
Food ‘wagon’ rolls onto Thayer frontier BY MEHA VERGHESE STAF F WRITER
When Katherine Aguilar-Juarez’s hobby of cooking collided with her husband’s love of building cars, the result was the Rolling Wagon — a new food truck students often see parked outside the Sciences Library on Thayer Street. The North Providence couple created and now operate the Oregon Trailesque wagon that serves a variety of American and Mexican food. Hever Juarez saw a market for his idea, said his wife Katherine. “He just thought of it at the beginning, thinking that something in this world that everyone wants is food,” she said. He designed and built the unusual food truck with a fellow auto enthusiast. “He’s very unique so he likes everything different,” Aguilar-Juarez said. Still in its first month of operation, the Rolling Wagon serves burgers, sandwiches, quesadillas and hot dogs, among other food items, all priced at $4 or less. Deliberately parked in front of the SciLi, the couple targets college students and also “people who are
fast on-the-go.” The operators of the truck — the Juarez couple and hired help — aim to serve their customers within five minutes. The couple put a lot of effort into their new scheme and are beginning to see their hard work pay off. “We’re getting there, slowly but surely,” Aguilar-Juarez said. “We’re still on a trial basis, seeing what works, what doesn’t work, where should we go.” Creating the Rolling Wagon involved a lot of paperwork and li-
FEATURE censes, Aguilar-Juarez said. “You need a food license, you need to be certified with the Board of Health, there’s a little bit of classes to take — food classes,” she said. The truck’s pioneering design also needed to balance safety with creativity — she said the truck had to pass inspection by both the health department and fire department. After the paperwork and inspections, the couple faced the dilemma of naming their unique food truck. They wanted a name that conveyed both the truck’s
looks and what it served inside, and they ultimately went for something simple. “We figured with the wheels, it’s a rolling wagon,” she said. Some challenges the couple now face are finding adequate parking for their large vehicle — something Aguilar-Juarez said is “very, very tough” — and trying to ensure a constant demand for their product. “It’s good because we have all the Brown University students, but when school’s over, we’re back to a slump down this way … so we have to try and target somewhere else,” she said. The Rolling Wagon rolled out on Thayer four weeks ago, but it had to take a week off because of the recent nor’easter, and it is still building a consumer base. “A lot of people, they come by and they’ve just eaten, so they didn’t know we were here,” Aguilar-Juarez said. But she added that she and her husband are planning a publicity campaign that they think will boost the Rolling Wagon’s popularity. continued on page 21
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Hundreds of universities outsourcing e-mail to Google, Microsoft continued from page 9 really impressed.” Harp compared the transition to a faucet, saying universities can begin small pilot programs and solicit feedback before completely outsourcing their services. “Just like a faucet, if they want to crank it or drip it, they can.” Universities’ concerns Representatives from both Google and Microsoft stressed the importance of flexibility and personalization in offering e-mail services to universities. Both allow universities a range of possibilities, from a simple e-mail package with a few features to a complete integration of e-mail and features into the university’s existing programs, such as Brown’s myCourses or a similar program called Blackboard. “It’s a platform you can do whatever you want with,” Harp said. “You make out of it what you want.” Keltner agreed and said the service has a “robust architecture” that schools can plug into and work with to make it work for them. For example, Gmail, Google’s e-mail system, displays ads on the side of its user interface, and many universities were opposed to solicitation in the context of university e-mail, Keltner said. As a result, Google removed the ads for students at universities’ requests — a significant shift considering a large portion of the company’s revenues comes from ads. Advertising is not the biggest issue for universities, as officials at both Microsoft and Google cited security and a general discom-
fort with outsourcing as principal points of contention. Universities are worried, “Is it safe? Is it secure?” Keltner said. However, by the end of the process, universities realize “data is safer at the Google data center than anywhere else.” Additionally, schools understand they do not always have the financial or human resources to keep up with the latest technology. A company like Google is focused on keeping up with the curve, Keltner said. “We have the energy and money to invest in areas that schools can’t.” Universities’ biggest fear about outsourcing is that they will no longer be in complete control of their e-mail operations. Harp said that, in his experience, comfort level is essential to a successful implementation. Schools worry, “What if I change my mind? How do I back out of this?” Harp said. For that reason, Microsoft works very closely with schools to make sure they are comfortable every step of the way, he added. Keltner explained the issue is not just a comfort level problem, but also an issue of on-campus culture and a resistance to change. For that reason, many of the universities the two companies have dealt with still keep their old email system for faculty and staff. Despite Google and Microsoft’s cognizance of wariness about change, students seem to have things in perspective. When asked how Google Apps improve his life, Rollins, the Arizona State sophomore, responded, “It’s just e-mail.”
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Groundwork Providence provides new take on looking trashy continued from page 7 worn by local celebrity models. “We ask people not to purchase anything new, just to make new uses,” said Jennifer Cole, executive director of Groundwork Providence and director of the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program. “We want people to realize that not everything needs to go into their trash can when they get rid of it,” Cole said. “It can be used again in a creative way.” The fashion show stresses sustainability as well as the reduction of “trash.” “We want to create things that will last a long time,” Cole said. “We have some really neat vintage pieces in the show that really show fashion keeps coming around and around again. In 20 years, you can just wear it again and be fashionforward.” If the number of designers is any indication, the idea of recycled fashions may be catching on. With over 50 designers participating this year, “we have a record number,” Cole said. “I just kind of sent out word that I needed designers, and everyone responded,” said emPOWER member Mollie West ’09, who is helping to organize Runway Earth. To find models for the recycled fashions, Cole said, “We brainstorm — ‘Who would we like to see in a wacky dress made out of
five bridesmaids’ dresses?’ Most people love it.” Models for the event include Miss Rhode Island 2006 Allison Rogers, Executive Assistant to the Mayor Sam Calise, Director of the Providence Department of Planning and Development Thomas Deller and WaterFire creator Barnaby Evans ’75. “I agreed to participate because I think it is a good, fun way to raise funds for a good grassroots organization,” wrote Brown Resource Efficiency Manager Kurt Teichert, who will be modeling for the event, in an e-mail to The Herald. “I have seen fashion shows like this before at recycling meetings, and I really like the way it brings together artistic talents, creative reuse of materials and the environmental message.” One of the main draws of the show, West said, is the creativity on the part of the designers. “Whenever you create something beautiful out of trash, there’s the awe factor. I think a lot of the audience will be thinking ‘I never would have thought of that,’ ” she said. The fashion show may also get a boost by the current popularity of Project Runway, she said. The outfits fall into a few different categories, including “formal eveningwear, climate-neutral future wear and athletic wear,” West said. With emPOWER’s help this year, Runway Earth will be a car-
bon-neutral event, as carbon offsets will be purchased, West added. The carbon-neutral fashion category, which encourages designers to use as little power as possible when manufacturing their ensembles, is also new. “We have a lot of designs stapled or glued or hand-sewn,” Cole said. West herself designed an outfit for the show — a white tube dress made from recycled plastic. Dresses at past events were created out of old RIPTA tickets and used Hot Topic gift cards, West said, but she wanted to do something simple. Catherine Kim, a designer from RISD, made her two outfits “very wearable —from far away, you can’t really tell if they’re made from recycled materials or not.” Designing for the show, Kim said, was “a great way for creative people to put their work up there and have it be shown, for a great cause too.” In the past, Groundwork Providence’s fashion shows have garnered audiences of several hundred people, Cole said, adding, “We have a much bigger venue this year, so we can hold a lot more” — an estimated 300 people. “This is definitely the funnest event of the year, not just for us, but in general. And that’s what we’re hoping for,” she said. Tickets are available on Groundwork Providence’s Web site, as well as at the door.
Better advising key goal of new Orientation schedule continued from page 7 great,” Levine said. “Not only does it improve year-to-year, but because there are these grand changes being made in terms of length, we have a lot more flexibility, and sort of power over what we’re actually planning.” OWC is planning both large and small events this year, in order to give students who thrive in different social environments more options to settle in on campus. “Someone who might be uncomfortable going, at the dance or festival, up to someone who they don’t know might be more comfortable in a smaller setting with 20 or 30 people where they’re involved in a common-interest activity,” Syc said. “One thing we really need to emphasize is that we’re doing everything we’ve always done, but doing it better, and then we’re adding other things to complement those activities,” Levine said. Associate Dean of the College and Dean of First-Year Studies Steven Cornish MA’70, who is in charge of the Meiklejohn peer advising program, said the changes to Orientation will allow students a better chance to meet with their advisers and prepare for classes. As a result of Orientation starting later, classes will begin a day later, on the Wednesday after Labor Day. The Tuesday after Labor
Day will now become devoted to helping first-years prepare for the semester by meeting with faculty and Meiklejohn advisers on that day, instead of before the weekend, as has been the case in past years. “We think that it’s going to be advantageous to have more faculty advisers on campus to actually participate in the advising process,” Cornish said, adding that, in the past, faculty advisers were sometimes away from campus when they were supposed to be meeting with students before classes begin. “We think (the new schedule) will be advantageous because faculty advisers will be meeting with their advisees right from the getgo,” he said. Karen McLaurin ’74, associate dean of the College and the director of the Third World Center, who was a member of the committee that proposed the revised Orientation schedule, said she thinks shortening Orientation will have a positive effect. In past years, students have not really had a chance to absorb their experiences, she said, so it is good to give them a shorter window to absorb everything. “Also, I think there’s something very festive to be inferred when they call it First Weekend,” McLaurin added. “It’s kind of neat.” The Third World Transition
Program, which had traditionally been held over the weekend before regular Orientation, will now take place the week before Labor Day, which McLaurin said will change the dynamic of the program. “Religious services are part of the weekend, and now we’ll have to rework it, because we start on Tuesday, end on Friday,” she said. “We’ll see how it works, but we’re going into this with an open mind. We’ll try to make everything fit in a comfortable fashion.” The move does give TWTP some extra time this year, which McLaurin said will be helpful. “We’ve gained some additional time because Sunday morning, up ’til 10-11 a.m. are for religious services, and part of Saturday we had students who went for religious services,” she said. Other programs, including Building Understanding Across Differences and the UniversityCommunity Academic Advising Program, will also be moved to the week before Orientation. Cornish said another advantage of the new Orientation schedule is that it makes it easier for parents to bring their children to Brown. “The committee thought it was advantageous to give parents the opportunity to come to campus on the weekend rather than during the week,” he said. “Particularly for parents who would have difficulty getting away from work, or would have to sort of calculate the loss of wages against bringing their kids to campus.” Another key change to Orientation may not be as well received — the introduction of summer reading for the incoming class. Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron has chosen the book “How Proust Can Change your Life” by Alain de Botton, Cornish said. Students will attend a seminar on the book on Labor Day Monday.
C AMPUS N EWS THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
T Thrown doughnut among incidents reported to DPS BY DEBBIE LEHMANN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
The following summary includes all major incidents reported to the Department of Public Safety between April 6 and April 13. It does not include general service and alarm calls. The Providence Police Department also responds to incidents occurring off campus. DPS does not divulge information on open cases that are currently under investigation by the department, the PPD or the Office of Student Life. DPS maintains a daily log of all shift activity and general service calls which can be viewed during business hours at its headquarters, located at 75 Charlesfield St.
CRIME LOG Friday, April 6: 1:46 p.m. Person reported that sometime between 1:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. on this date, unknown persons damaged the windshield and roof of his vehicle on Thayer Street. There are no suspects or witnesses at this time. Saturday, April 7: 3:15 a.m. While on routine patrol, a DPS officer observed a subject being pursued by three others on Thayer Street. Upon further investigation, it was learned that patrons from a nearby business were pursuing the subject because they believed he had attempted to break into the establishment. PPD officers arrived on the scene and took the suspect into custody.
New institutes, exchanges and language instruction among internationalization recommendations continued from page 1 nesses?” “All of this stuff is ver y open from an intellectual perspective,” Levine added. “We don’t know the answers.” The group also recommended creating a center for development in Africa because that continent represents “a particularly challenging case,” and Brown has ties with a number of African universities and research institutions, but its disparate efforts there are not currently well-coordinated, Levine said. The center, which Levine said could be a subset of Brown’s existing Population Studies and Training Center, could bring more faculty with expertise in Africa to Brown. The working group also recommended improving resources for the interdisciplinary development studies program, which Levine called “intellectually very ambitious” and “quintessentially Brown.” Students and faculty have criticized the program in recent years because of its lack of dedicated resources and faculty, a problem that plagues most interdisciplinar y programs at Brown. A revamped development studies program could follow the model of Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship — an interdisciplinar y concentration with administrative support that is prioritized by the departments with which it is most closely associated, Levine said.
Wednesday, April 11: 6:32 p.m. Complainant reported that sometime between 7:30 a.m. on April 10 and 11 a.m. on April 11, unknown persons removed a chef’s knife from his locker in the Sharpe Refectory. The matter is under investigation, and there are no suspects or witnesses at this time.
Global health The global health working group’s report emphasizes better integrating Brown’s existing international health projects and promoting interdisciplinary collaboration, said its chair, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Dan Smith. The group will propose the creation of “some sort of umbrella institute that would be the home for major projects and a coordinating mechanism for existing activities,” Smith said. The institute would not “subsume existing” entities, Smith said, but rather facilitate coordination among them. “It’s not aimed to create another level of bureaucracy, but to create a more centralized approach to things ... to make it easier to manage everything that’s going on,” said Samira Thomas ’10, a member of the working group. The working group’s hope is to foster cross-disciplinary approaches to problems, Smith said, noting that Brown is an ideal school for work “at the nexus between the biomedical sciences and the social sciences and the humanities.” “An appropriate niche for Brown would be to try to better understand the social disparities in health,” Smith said.
Thursday, April 12: 4:41 p.m. PPD and DPS officers responded to the report of a minor auto incident on Power Street. None of the parties involved sustained injuries.
Global humanities The global humanities working group focused on four ideas, said Rey Chow, a professor of modern culture and media who chaired the group.
4:03 p.m. A DPS officer responded to the report of a person exhibiting dangerous and disruptive behavior on Stevenson Field. Upon arrival, the officer found a subject being disruptive in the stands while attending a sporting event. The subject was uncooperative and appeared to be under the influence of alcohol. The subject was removed from the premises. Sunday, April 8: 11:26 p.m. Complainant reported that while walking on Thayer Street, occupants of a vehicle driving by threw a doughnut at her, striking her in the head. DPS officers searched the area for the subjects to no avail. The matter is under investigation. Monday, April 9: 9:33 a.m. A DPS officer responded to a report of a minor auto incident at Lot 76. One of the vehicles involved sustained minor damage, but no injuries were reported.
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International programs run through the Cogut Center for the Humanities, the continuation of the International Writers Project, a new international humanities summer institute and improved coordination of existing humanities exchange programs are the group’s four suggestions, Chow said. Chow pointed to a new international humanities postdoctoral fellowship program that will bring four internationally-minded humanities scholars to the Cogut Center for the first time next year as an example of how the center can cultivate an international focus. The group’s second recommendation focuses on supporting the International Writers Project, which brings writers from around the world to Brown and is “one of the most visible components of Brown’s commitment to global humanities,” Chow said. The proposed international humanities summer institute would provide “workshops, seminars and lectures on diverse topics relevant to humanistic studies by nationally and internationally prominent scholars, in such ways that we can involve the participation of faculty and students from Brown and possibly other institutions,” Chow said. Lastly, she said, the report urges the new vice president for international affairs to centralize information about existing international exchanges and other programs, which “tend to be spread out across campus.” Global science and technology Though the global science and technology working group, which will present on May 10, has not yet settled on a final slate of recommendations. Professor of Physics Chung-I Tan, its chair, said the group is interested in involving more science and engineering students in study abroad and building on overseas collaborations. Tan declined to comment on specific ideas, but working group member Tung Nguyen ’09 said the group has discussed a program that would allow science and engineering concentrators to graduate in five years after spending one of the years doing research abroad. International savvy and extensive research experience would give students an edge in applying to graduate schools, Nguyen said. The committee has said that creating more English-language opportunities for scientific study abroad might also help because science and engineering students often have more concentration requirements, which discourages them from studying a foreign language, Nguyen said. Collaboration with universities in other countries, especially in East Asia, has also been emphasized, Nguyen said. “Duke and MIT and Harvard all have joint programs with foreign universities,” Nguyen said. “We think it’s time that Brown also have those kinds of programs.” The committee is also inter-
ested in attracting foreign scientists to Brown, Nguyen said. This could be accomplished through programs that would bring visiting scholars with expertise in areas of strength for Brown, such as nanotechnology, to campus for a period of a few years, he said. Global environment The global environment working group tried to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Brown’s current environmental efforts, said Professor of Biology Osvaldo Sala, the working group’s chair and director of the Center for Environmental Studies. Environmental issues are a logical focus of Brown’s international efforts because global warming and other global environmental challenges cannot be solved by a single country, Sala said. The group identified five ways for Brown to focus on international environmental issues: research collaborations overseas, bringing visiting scholars with environmental expertise to Brown, sending students overseas on short trips to learn about other countries’ environmental problems, organizing conferences to attract world leaders in the field and developing courses that focus on global environmental problems, Sala said. The group also identified several areas of particular interest for study, including climate change, biofuels and the social and economic determinants of land use. Within these parameters, he said, the group has tried to identify where Brown is already doing a good job, where more resources could be focused and where the University may not be doing anything yet. Two weaknesses the committee has identified are interdepartmental coordination and Brown’s curricular foundation for students pursuing solutions to environmental problems, said group member Elizabeth Dickson ’07. The group also identified specific strengths that could be used to draw foreign students and scholars to campus, such as land-use research, Dickson said. Brown has some of the best technology in that field and could better publicize its strength in that and other areas, she said.
Curriculum, language instruction and study abroad The final working group — charged with reviewing the international aspects of Brown’s curriculum, its foreign language offerings and its study abroad programs — had “a slightly different mandate ... more of a fact finding mission,” said Susan Alcock, a professor of classics who is one of the group’s co-chairs and also director of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. “Brown is very active in the international sphere, but it has not been capitalizing on those strengths,” she said. “Everyone’s sort of doing their own thing.” Brown could present itself in a more welcoming manner to international students, she said. Brown’s Web site “assumes you know where Rhode Island is,” she added. Brown could also do a better job teaching students about certain areas of the world, she said. Area studies like South Asian studies and Middle East studies are currently weak at Brown, due to a lack of dedicated resources and course offerings, said Alcock and her co-chair, Associate Professor of History Kerry Smith. The University must also centralize its support systems for international students and foreign visiting scholars, they said. In study abroad programs, the group found that Brown already stacks up well against its peers, even though it is “probably not generating enough” non-traditional opportunities, such as internships and volunteer service abroad, Alcock and Smith said. Though the percentage of undergraduates enrolled in language classes favorably compares with peer institutions and has increased by 40 percent over the last 15 years, the sharply rising enrollment numbers have strained certain programs, like Arabic and Chinese, Alcock and Smith said. The group thinks language enrollment could further expand if more concentrations incorporated some kind of language requirement. Alcock said the group’s efforts have produced extensive information about Brown’s offerings. “I think the new vice president is going to have very rich material to work with here at Brown,” she said.
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After 30 years, TWC remembers its legacy of protest continued from page 1 increased by 300 percent. After the first landmark protest, a series of successes followed. In the summer of 1969, the Transitional Summer Program, which became the Third World Transition Program in 1975, began introducing students of color to Brown. Another form of support for minority students came in 1973 when a group of black students founded the Minority Peer Counseling program. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the threat of budget cuts led to further racial tensions on campus. A coalition of black, Asian and Latino students occupied University Hall in 1975 to urge Brown’s administration to focus on increasing financial aid for students of color, to honor the promises it made after the 1968 protest and to create a center where students of different ethnic backgrounds could meet. The 1975 protest dominated the campus for weeks. About 75 percent of the student body boycotted classes for a week. On April 25, 1975, the University committed to increasing the number of black students by 25 percent, launched a committee to review minority affairs at Brown and opened a center for minorities on campus the following year. The Third World Center was born. After settling with the Univer-
sity, a student leader of the protest announced to the crowd, “Our voices will not be silenced from now on. … The University has now heard us. … University, we are watching you.” A legacy of resistance “I do tend to romanticize the way the students came together in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,” said Karen McLaurin ’74, associate dean of the College and director of the Third World Center. These protests shaped the mission of the TWC and influenced the students who utilize the center. “I think that things have grown and changed since the mid-1970s, and I do think that we currently have a cross-cultural body of students that come together for different causes,” McLaurin said. “But whether that constituency would take it to the streets … anything’s possible.” Now, McLaurin said, the campus climate is different. “When I look back at those folks in the ’70s, you have to realize that they were in the basement of the Churchill,” McLaurin said. “Students of color have become a growing population, even today. Last year we thought we had the largest minority class, but it looks like next year, it’s going to be the largest matriculating class of minority students.” As more minority students enrolled at Brown, students of differ-
ent racial backgrounds came together to call for equality. In 1985, the Third World Coalition, made up of 350 black, Asian and Latino students occupied the stairs of the John Carter Brown Library demanding that the University resolve the issues of racial inequalities it had promised to address in the previous protests of 1968 and 1975. Students chose the John Carter Library because it owns the documents of Brown’s slaveholding founders, and they claimed black students on campus also had a history in the University’s founding. In response, the University relocated the TWC to its current location in Partridge Hall in 1987, creating more space for students of color on campus. But in the wake of these successes, there was a sudden explosion of racial tensions in 1989 — racial slur incidents, hate crimes and even a supposed “chapter” of the KKK at Brown. Posters that read “Keep white supremacy alive!!! Join the Brown chapter of the KKK today,” first appeared in Andrews Hall on April 29, 1989. In an interview with the TWC, one student recalled seeing that someone had scratched out the words “men” and “women” on the Andrews bathroom doors and replaced them instead with “whites” and “niggers.” McLaurin believes racial issues still appear on campus today, but the administration and campus community are more prepared to
handle situations that may occur. “The minute the word got out that this was taking place over in Andrews, the president (Vartan Gregorian) immediately went over to Andrews and made it clear that this behavior was clearly unacceptable,” McLaurin said. “I think this still does happen today, but less frequently. I think we are better equipped to address those types of behavior today.” The community today Today, the TWC seeks to extend its mission beyond support for minority students. McLaurin wants the campus to view the center as for the whole campus, not simply students of color. “We should be perceived as a resource to this campus, and I hope that that is the perception and the message that has gotten out there,” McLaurin said. Some of the unease and confusion surrounding the Third World Center is due to its somewhat controversial name. Some students dislike the negative connotation of the phrase “Third World,” but the center’s name is based on the 1961 book “The Wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon, who called upon his readers to join together against the powers of colonialism by creating a “Third Way” separate from the “first world” of the United States and Europe and the “second world” of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. “Even people in the thirdworld community, when they first joined, didn’t want to be labeled ‘third world,’ ” said Krishika Acharya ’07, who co-coordinated South Asian Awareness Week. “There is an initial hesitation because of the meaning of ‘third world’ now versus what it actually means.” Jennifer Soroko, assistant director of the Third World Center, believes there is a misconception about what the TWC does because of its name. “This whole ideology of creating a new world — it’s kind of a utopia of diversity. … I think that is what is trying to be captured here,” she said. “The original idea of banding together a group of countries that was left out of this dynamic is really powerful. Because that’s what the TWC does, just tries to band together people from different places,” Acharya said. Liliana Ornelas ’07 has been involved with the TWC and its programs since her sophomore year as an MPC. “I think that the TWC
has kind of been my experience at Brown,” she said. “It was the environment that I needed to grow. The work that I’ve done here has definitely been a lot more valuable than anything I could’ve learned in a classroom.” Acharya has had a similar positive experience with the TWC. “It was only after I became an MPC and became a part of that family that I really felt like I really belonged at Brown,” she said. When asked if students might someday join together for protests like those that created the center, Ornelas said today there are new ways of effecting change. “While we fantasize about the walkouts of ’68, we need to take that, learn from it and then see what else we can do that would be a lot better today,” she said. “How can we get together and talk about this and produce something that’s actually going to produce an effect and something that other classes after us will benefit from?” Ornelas said the TWC needs to reach out to the rest of the University. “I think that a lot of the programming that comes out of the TWC brings up issues that other people wouldn’t talk about,” Ornelas said. “In that way we educate the campus on issues that aren’t really talked about.” Even if the ways of creating dialogue are different today, the racial issues facing students may not be all that dissimilar from those that faced students in the past. “There’s never an end point,” Soroko said. “I think it’s always going to be a dialogue. … It’s everevolving.” Ornelas believes Brown’s current challenge is recruiting a more diverse faculty, but that the TWC has made great strides in creating a supportive community for students. “Brown takes the lead in the kind of resources students of color have, and that’s something that we don’t appreciate that much,” Ornelas said. Soroko said in the short time she’s worked in Partridge Hall, she’s seen the center’s impact on students’ lives. “They all come together and this is the place where it all happens,” she said. This Friday, students will convene for the TWC 30th anniversary block party between Angell and Waterman streets and a panel discussion with the TWC directors past and present in Smith-Buonanno 106.
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Scientific panel urges end to junk food in schools WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — A prestigious scientific panel Wednesday urged the government to ban soft drinks, sugary snacks and other junk food from schools, saying the typical fare available in vending machines, at snack bars and at class birthday parties is contributing to the growing obesity of America’s children. The report by the Institute of Medicine, which Congress requested, said less-nutritious items should be replaced with healthier stuff such as fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products. It emphasized adding snacks with more whole grains and less sodium, saturated fat and added sugar. Federal officials recently proposed raising the nutritional standards for school lunches or breakfasts, but the recommendations issued yesterday are the first national attempt to address the healthfulness of so-called “competitive” school foods — snacks and drinks that often are sold to raise money for schools.
New Hampshire set to allow civil unions for gays HART’S LOCATION, N.H. (Washington Post) — The champagne is on ice at the Notchland Inn on Route 302. Proprietors and longtime partners Ed and Les are ready to raise their glasses to New Hampshire later Thursday when the state is set to pass a broad civil-union bill granting gay and lesbian couples virtually all the same legal rights as married heterosexuals. Supporters and opponents of the measure agree that it will be approved, and last week Gov. John Lynch, a moderate Democrat, said he would sign it. When he does, it will make New England the first region to have every state granting a measure of legal rights to same-sex couples. Even as the bulk of the country has passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and civil unions, New England has stubbornly gone its own way. Gay rights advocates say the latest milestone is especially significant because it comes in comparatively conservative New Hampshire, where polls have shown locals growing more tolerant of samesex unions after watching neighboring states pass similar laws without major social fallout. “New Hampshire is probably the most important piece of the puzzle,” said Les Schoof, the former general manager of the American Ballet Theatre who opened a mountain inn here in 1993 with his partner, state representative Ed Butler. “People in the rest of the country think about New England as the Socialist Republic of Vermont or those crazy liberals in Massachusetts. But they know that people in New Hampshire don’t just jump on the bandwagon that easily.”
Rosie O’Donnell is leaving ‘The View’ (Newsday) — So, Ro, what’s the real story? Amid some high drama and conflicting claims — all perfectly in character, by the way, with this nearly yearlong run — Rosie O’Donnell Wednesday announced the end of a tenure on “The View” that was marked by controversy and its stepsister, high ratings. As always, there was controversy, too. O’Donnell staged her dramatic exit on the show itself, telling viewers that ABC “wanted me three more years, I wanted one year,” while also addressing her sometimes combative helpmates. “I love you guys,” she said. Her last day will be in June, and she said she will also make occasional special appearances. O’Donnell and “The View” officially parted ways just a day and a half after she gave a hugely controversial lunchtime address at an awards ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York on Monday. Before an audience composed of industry leaders and teenage girls — some of them recipients of the so-called Matrix Awards handed out by Women in Communication — O’Donnell used several scatological terms, while grabbing her groin at one point, as a rude gesture to her pet nemesis, Donald Trump (who was not present). Cindi Berger, the public relations representative for both O’Donnell and Barbara Walters, part-owner of “The View,” heatedly denied that the Matrix Award comments had anything to do with O’Donnell’s abrupt announcement. “ABC certainly knew what they were getting when they got Rosie,” Berger said Wednesday in a call from “The View” while the telecast was in progress. “They wanted her for three years, and she would absolutely not commit for three years.” Trump, meanwhile, held several interviews — including one with Newsday — in which he insisted that O’Donnell’s comments led directly to her firing, and that he had learned of ABC’s decision as early as Monday.
good luck with exams and have a great summer
U.N. report paints deadly picture BY TINA SUSMAN LOS ANGELES TIMES
BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Iraqi government has refused to provide the United Nations with civilian casualty figures for its latest report on the hardships facing Iraqis, the U.N. said Wednesday, but numbers from various ministries indicate that more than 5,500 people died in the Baghdad area alone in the first three months of 2007. The numbers, provided to the Los Angeles Times by employees in government ministries, could not be independently verified. At a news conference to unveil the U.N.’s 10th report on the human-rights situation in Iraq since August 2005, the spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, Said Arikat, said the government had given no “official” reason for not issuing casualty figures. But Ivana Vuco, a U.N. human-rights officer, said government officials had made clear during discussions that they believed releasing high casualty numbers would make it more difficult to quell unrest. “We were told they were concerned that people would misconstrue the figures to portray the situation very negatively, and that would further undermine their efforts to establish some kind of stability and security in the country,” Vuco said. “However, we are trying to stress our point of view, which is that transparency is the key to establishing security.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government rejected the report for its criticisms of the country’s judicial system, saying it “lacks accuracy” and balance. Among other things, the U.N. said some prisoners in Iraqi detention facilities faced torture, were forced into confessing to alleged crimes and were denied adequate
access to lawyers. U.S. Embassy officials also faulted the findings, saying its criticism of the legal system in particular contained inaccuracies. American officials also defended al-Maliki’s decision to withhold casualty figures. “There were sometimes concerns with political motivations” in the release of statistics, one U.S. Embassy official said, referring to the sectarian and ethnic polarization plaguing al-Maliki’s government. The prime minister’s aim is to have “one voice” from the government delivering numbers that have been consolidated and verified, to prevent such things as double-counting, the official added. The criticisms of the U.N. findings come at a time of growing public impatience with a U.S.-Iraqi security program that has failed to quell violence, despite the addition of thousands of troops in Baghdad and neighboring provinces. Arikat refused to offer any U.N. estimate and said it was too early to judge the success of the security plan, but he made clear that violence remained out of control. “There’s insurgent violence, there’s criminal violence, there’s military violence, there’s all kinds of honor killings and so on,” he said. “Violence has many tentacles. It’s like an octopus.” In its previous report, issued in January, the U.N. said 34,452 civilians had died in violence last year, a figure it based on information from government ministries, hospitals and medical officials. The Iraqi government put the 2006 death toll at 12,357. The medical journal Lancet estimated in October that more than 600,000 Iraqis had died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. The numbers obtained by the Times indicated that civilian
deaths numbered 1,991 in January, dropped to 1,646 in February — the month the security plan began — then rose to 1,872 in March. Such numbers appear to mirror the recent rise in bombings targeting crowded public areas that U.S. and Iraqi military officials have acknowledged. The January U.N. report did not include a monthly breakdown of civilian deaths but estimated that 4,731 civilians died in Baghdad in November and December 2006. That would represent a higher monthly average than the figures obtained Wednesday. But officials providing the figures to the Times, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to release numbers, said the true count for the first three months of 2007 could be far higher. The trend they indicated was similar to that suggested by www. icasualties.org, which monitors civilian and military deaths in Iraq and bases its count on news reports. It estimates that 4,766 civilians died nationwide from January through March: 1,711 in January, 1,381 in February and 1,674 in March. For the same time period of 2006, the Web site put the total at less than half that: 2,179. Among the U.N. report’s other findings: More than 200 academics have been killed since the start of the war for sectarian reasons or because of their largely secular views and teachings; detainees in Iraqi government-run prisons frequently have been tortured or forced to confess to alleged crimes; and at least 40 women in the Kurdistan region have died this year in suspected “honor killings.” Such deaths, many of them from burning, followed family members’ accusations of immoral conduct involving the victims, the report said.
France’s 3rd-place candidate refuses to endorse rivals, leaving nearly 7m voters up for grabs BY JOHN WARD ANDERSON WASHINGTON POST
PARIS — Francois Bayrou, the centrist candidate who placed a strong third in the first phase of France’s presidential contest last weekend, on Wednesday delivered a fierce condemnation of the two front runners — Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal — and said he would not endorse either in a runoff vote on May 6. The decision by Bayrou, who has promoted himself and his Union for French Democracy party as “a third way” to bridge the traditional left-right divide in French politics, leaves his bloc of 6.8 million swing voters up for grabs. That will heighten the already intense competition between Sarkozy, of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement candidate, and Socialist Royal, with just 12 days remaining in the campaign. Sarkozy won the first round of the election last Sunday with 31.2 percent of the vote, compared to 25.9 percent for Royal and 18.6 percent for Bayrou. Surveys since then give Sarkozy a two- to eightpoint advantage over Royal in the final round among voters who have made up their minds, with about 11
percent undecided. Instead of trying to play kingmaker and throwing his support to one or the other, Bayrou attacked both during a much-anticipated news conference, saying Sarkozy’s authoritarianism would “fracture the social tissue” of France while Royal would wreck the economy. “Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal, in the eternal face-off between the eternal right and the eternal left, will not repair the problems,” Bayrou said. France’s “crisis in democracy, crisis in the social fabric and crisis in the economy can only be repaired together. … Everywhere in France you meet with misery.” “Nicolas Sarkozy, by his proximity with the business world and the media, and through his taste for intimidation and threats, will concentrate power as it has never been concentrated before,” to the detriment of the country’s poor, Bayrou charged. But Royal’s socialist economic program “multiplies the intervention of the state and perpetuates the illusion that it’s up to the state to do everything, and that it can do everything … This program is exactly the opposite of what we need.” Though both sides got a thrash-
ing, political analysts said Bayrou’s neutrality was a greater blow to Royal, who had publicly reached out to him in recent days and could have used an official endorsement to sway voters in her direction. Twelve candidates contested Sunday’s first round, and considering the political leanings of the nine other contenders in that race, the electoral mathematics for the final balloting is slanted in Sarkozy’s favor. And while Bayrou himself is neutral, at least 11 people associated with his party in France’s legislature have pledged their support to Sarkozy. “It hurts her more, definitely,” said Nicole Bacharan, a political analyst at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. Royal “tried to get his endorsement and she made it very clear that she needed Bayrou’s support.” In his news conference, Bayrou also announced that he was forming a new party, tentatively named the Democratic Party, to consolidate his supporters into a new and lasting political force. He said the party would contest all 577 seats in the French National Assembly in legislative elections on June 10 and 17. His existing party has 29 seats in the Assembly.
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W. crew back in striking distance continued from page 24
watch for the herald’s commencement, summer and orientation issues on campus newsstands and on the web
Championships. “Eastern Sprints is exciting because we get to race all the crews we’ve already raced, see some new crews and see all the progress everyone has made over the course of the season,” said Devorah West ’07. According to Head Coach John Murphy, only 12 teams are selected for the NCAA Championships out of 87 Division I programs. The team ranked highest by the selection committee in each of the five regions (New England — which is Brown’s region — Mid-Atlantic, South, Central and West) receives an automatic bid, while the remaining seven bids are selected at-large by the committee. Murphy is cautiously optimistic about Brown’s chances to qualify. “I think we’re good,” he said. “It’s something I worry about all the time. I don’t assume we’re going to go. I think we have a pretty good chance of going, but there’s no guarantee. Last year, a number of teams that had been to all the other championships didn’t get selected, (University of) Michigan, Harvard and (University of) Virginia, which was kind of a shock.” If Brown is selected, the team will have a chance for its first national title since 2004. The Bears previously won the NCAA Championships in 1999, 2000 and 2002. Last year, the Bears came heartbreakingly close to winning the title before falling to the University of California-Berkeley.
Brown and UC-Berkeley ended the championships tied in the standings. The tie-breaker to determine the national champion was which boat was faster in the varsity eight grand final — UCBerkeley nipped Brown by twotenths of a second in that race. Murphy was guarded when asked whether he had learned any lessons from the defeat. “Yeah, but I’m not going to tell,” he replied, laughing. Murphy and some of the rowers agree that there is an expectation to continue the success of the program, but they said they felt the desire to win did not create a pressured environment. “There’s a certain responsibility that goes with (having a history of success),” Murphy said. “When these alums come back, you want them to be proud of (the team). I think every sport has that every year. You’re entrusted with a certain responsibility to do a good job and I’m aware of that.” Co-captain Elizabeth Fison ’07 agreed that the team is not under any undue pressure. “I think that we always hope to do well, and we just have to try our hardest,” Fison said. “There’s always pressure, but we try to just focus in on doing what we can.” Though the Bears haven’t struggled this season against any of their opponents, they have faced some challenges that have made them stronger as a team. Lousy weather, which affected every school on the East Coast, made it difficult for Brown to practice over
the past month. “It was tough,” Murphy said. “We were trying to rack our brains to think of things to do to keep them sharp when we couldn’t go on the water. We work inside, but it was tough because at this time in the year, you need to row in the boat to get better, and we weren’t able to.” The Bears also had to replace a strong class of seniors who graduated after last year’s near-miss in the NCAA Championships. Murphy downplayed the impact of losing last year’s group of rowers, noting that it “goes with the territory.” He said he is happy with how this year’s team has steadily improved and grown to replace them. “This group, right from the start, has stepped up to take their places,” he said after the April 13 meet against Boston University. “They’ve worked very hard. They’re continuing to improve each week, so I’m very pleased.” Murphy was reluctant to compare his current team to Brown teams in the past, however. “It’s so hard to compare teams,” he said. “I think about lessons learned from previous teams, but I never try to compare them. If we could line them all up and go back in time and race them, it would be interesting, but I try not to think about it. I want each group to be individuals and their accomplishments will always stand. I don’t want to think they’re greater or lesser. I want to just deal with the current team.”
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Spring sports wildly successful in ’07 continued from page 24 play in 2007. On April 15, the defending Ivy League champion won the New England Golf championship in impressive form, winning a sudden death hole to capture the crown. This year, Haertel finished second at the Ivy League Championships, and helped guide Brown to a second-place finish. Best resiliency The baseball team lost eight of its first nine games, but rebounded nicely once league play started. Now, the Bears sit at 11-5, good enough for first place in the Red Rolfe Division of the Ancient Eight. Brown has had a lot of help from tri-captain Devin Thomas ’07
and Jeff Dietz ’08, who have a combined 14 home runs and 81 RBIs.
Dartmouth and top 50 teams Cornell, Columbia and Harvard.
Toughest schedule There has been absolutely no rest for the women’s lacrosse team this season. The Bears started the 2007 campaign by playing two perennial Atlantic Coast Conference powers: the University of North Carolina and the University of Maryland. Those teams are ranked third and fi fth nationally, respectively. In the non-conference schedule, Brown has played the University of New Hampshire, Boston College and Temple University, all of which are ranked in the top-50. In conference, the Bears have squared off against No. 4 the University of Pennsylvania, No. 19
Best marathon The men’s lacrosse team has bounced back after a rough 2006, but it lost a heartbreaker at Dartmouth, 9-8 in four overtimes. After falling behind 8-5 going into the fourth quarter, Thomas Muldoon ’10 scored three minutes into the period, then captain David Madeira ’07 scored twice to tie the game. Neither team could tally in the first extra session. Or the second. Or the third. Finally, with only 1:09 left in the fourth overtime, Dartmouth’s Brian Koch sent a shot past Jordan Burke ’09 to give the Big Green a sudden death victory. The total game time was 74:51.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
Baseball in Rolfe lead as Harvard falters continued from page 24 now 11-5 in the Ivy League (16-17 overall), pounded out 27 hits over 18 innings against the Big Green who dropped to 3-13 in Ivy play. Brown got an early lead in the top of the first after Matt Nuzzo’s ’09 RBI single. But the Big Green scored two runs in the bottom of the frame with the help of three errors. In the second inning, Brown took a commanding 5-2 lead, with Thomas two-run double being the big blow. Tri-captain Bryan Tews ’07 and Robert Papenhause ’09 both added RBI singles in the fi fth to give Brown more breathing room. The Big Green, with only five hits in the game, put up a small rally in the seventh but could muster only a single run on an RBI groundout. The Bears got off to another quick start in game two, scoring single runs in the first and third innings before exploding for four in the fi fth, when Thomas hit his second two-run double of the day. Dartmouth finally got on the board in the bottom of the fi fth and then, in the sixth, threw up six runs to take a 7-6 lead. In that inning, “the defense just fell apart,” Drabinski said, and the Big Green sent 11 batters to the plate. But the Bears responded in a big way in top of the seventh, when Thomas hit his eighth home
run of the year to lead off the inning. The Bears then scored four more runs, stringing together another four hits to go with an error and a walk. Tri-captain pitcher Ethan Silverstein ’07 entered the game and threw two scoreless innings before closer Rob Hallberg ’08 finished in the ninth. “Silverstein coming in and shutting them down and calming us down — that was key,” Dietz said. Overall, Drabinski said he was happy with how the Bears looked as they head into the season’s final series. “I thought we swung the bats exceptionally well today,” he said, and he “had no problem” with the pitching. But he was a little concerned about his defense. After committing six errors in Sunday’s doubleheader against Harvard, they committed seven total yesterday. “We didn’t play great at all defensively, and we made a lot of routine plays a lot harder than they should have been,” he said. This weekend, the Bears — tr ying to make the championship for the first time since the league went to a two-division format in 1993 — will face a Yale team that has been inconsistent all season. It was clearly evident yesterday: After Har vard ace Shawn Haviland threw a complete-game onehitter against the Bulldogs in the first game, the Bulldogs explod-
ed for eight runs in the first inning of game two and ended up with a 13-0 victor y. “We’re definitely going to respect them,” Drabinski said. “They’ve got Marc Sawyer and Ryan Lavarnway, two of the best hitters in the league.” As of Monday, Sawyer and Lavarnway were batting .391 and .459, respectively, in 37 games this season, with 14 homers between them. Drabinski and his players said they were going to tr y to ignore what Har vard does this weekend, which might be for the best. Thomas expects the Crimson to “take care of business” against the Big Green, and in terms of the pitching rotation, Harvard might be in a better position than Brown. Except for Haviland, Harvard will have its rotation pitching on regular rest, while the Bears will try to have Dietz and Cramphin throw on Sunday, their second straight starts on short rest. Dietz and Cramphin threw 7 and 7 1/3, respectively, innings last Saturday, and both threw six innings today. Fortunately for the Bears, Dietz didn’t seem overly concerned about the situation. “Whatever I’ve got to do,” the right-hander said. “We just got to win.” Brown is at Yale on Saturday, and then hosts the Bulldogs at Murray Stadium at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
‘Wagon’ rolls onto Thayer Street continued from page 9 “Hopefully once we do get established, we’ll have the posters and the phone numbers up if (customers) really do want to get a hold of us,” she said, adding that customers will be able to call in their orders for pick-up or to simply locate the truck once it begins settling on alternate sites. The owners are also trying to sell their food in different places and at different events, “We’ve been on Broad Street and we’re also trying to get into festivals and events,” Aguilar-Juarez said. She has also been talking to Providence officials to see if the couple can bring the Rolling Wagon to WaterFire. Though the couple is busy trying to increase the demand for their services, they aren’t worried about
competitors such as the Chinese Food Truck, which has been a staple in front of MacMillan Hall for the past few years. The Chinese Food Truck “is small enough that (it) can come here at lunch time and park,” Aguilar-Juarez said. In contrast, the Rolling Wagon usually spends the whole day in one place because of the difficulty in finding a big enough parking space. She also noted that the two trucks serve markedly different yet popular cuisines. Even though it has been challenging, the couple are happy to be rolling around Providence doing something they enjoy. “I love to cook,” Aguilar-Juarez said, and her husband, who drives the Rolling Wagon, is already planning to build another food truck, but this time “a smaller one,” she added.
SuFI inaugurates on-campus garden continued from page 9 for the garden. The primar y goals of the garden are production, education, community and “movement,” Schwartz wrote. “We hope to actually grow a substantial amount of food,” Schwartz wrote. “We’ll be donating a portion of the produce to people in need through local hunger relief organizations. We hope to sell certain niche products like Mesclun mix to Dining Ser vices.” The group will work with professors to integrate the garden into
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classes. The group is also “exploring a partnership with Brown/Fox Point Day Care … to collaborate in experiential learning projects for the preschoolers,” Schwartz wrote. “This site will also serve to anchor and catalyze the larger movement to create a more sustainable and just food system at Brown,” Schwartz wrote, adding that throughout Rhode Island, colleges are demanding more “ethical choices” from their dining services. “The idea is to see how it goes,” Carey said. If the garden is successful, it will probably expand, he added.
Golden Boy: 4 years at The Herald continued from page 24 seamless transition. I started collecting baseball, basketball and football cards when I was about three years old, and I would feverishly look at the back of the cards and memorize all of the stats. This may be a precursor to why when I see certain athletes that I know here at Brown, I have the propensity to walk up to them and start rattling off stats. To those of you that I have done that to, I am sorry. If I made you feel uncomfortable in any way, I am also sorry. This also could be why Sports Staff Writer Chris Mahr ’07 and I have epic battles in which we try to stump the other one on which obscure college some very marginal player attended. Anyway, Elena told me to stop by The Herald in a few days so I could meet the sports editors and figure out what to do. When I got to The Herald about a week later, she introduced me to former ESPN “Dream Job” contestant Maggie Haskins ’04.5, who was the sports editor at the time. Maggie suggested I write columns, so I spent the rest of the year writing about whatever crossed my mind. The first article I ever wrote was a feature on soccer captain
Adom Crew ’04. I was really nervous about it because I wanted everyone at The Herald to respect my writing. Crew was the captain of the soccer team, and I was this measly freshman who really had no idea what he was doing. Though I was fairly terrified when I went to interview Crew at his Brook Street house, he was very nice. After I finished, he even said to me, “You’ll make a good reporter before you’re outta this place.” The first column I wrote was on the baseball playoffs. I got the very creative alias of Justin Goldman: Sports Guy. Looking back on it now, the column was pretty mediocre — not much depth and a lot of really short and cliched sentences. When the year was over, I went back to my native Philadelphia for the summer. When summer was nearing its close, I got an e-mail from Chris Hatfield ’06 about working for the paper the next year. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought about working there anymore. I never really thought of myself as a good writer, but it felt nice to be contacted. Granted, at that point in time, there were fewer people writing for the sports section than there are President Bush supporters at Brown, but it
still felt nice. That fall, I still wrote columns, but I covered the women’s soccer team and also helped cover the men’s soccer team. I learned I was a halfway decent reporter and actually enjoyed doing it. I continued to cover teams through my senior fall. I learned a lot about player/reporter relationships and journalism in general. Though I often complain about coming to The Herald, it really has shown me a lot about writing and reporting. My column has gone through a lot of aliases in my time here — from Sports Guy to guest columnist to Gold Standard to Goldmember to Golden Boy. I have also covered many teams here, including men’s soccer, women’s soccer, equestrian and men’s and women’s swimming. The athletes and coaches I have gotten to know have truly been a pleasure, and they have played a substantial role into molding me into the person that I am today. I really am truly grateful to the three or four people who read my stuff, as well as to the people I have wor worked for and with. I know the paper and the sports section lies in great hands in the future. To everyone at The Herald, I wish you guys the best, and I think this is a good way to go out.
www.browndailyherald.com
E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
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THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
STAF F EDITORIAL
Diamonds and coal 500 diamonds to Sigma Chi — though now that we think about it, we’re going to have to take 400 of them back. It’s too bad. We would have liked to see you try to seduce first-years with 15,000 cans of Natty Light. A slightly baffled diamond to outgoing UCS President John Gillis ’07. We’ll miss you and your late-night phone calls next year. Michael Glassman ’09 will have to work on his goofy smile and dashingly disheveled look to follow in your footsteps. A cubic zirconium to Banner. We’re constantly amazed that an online registration system has sparked enough outrage and confusion to fuel roughly 20 pages of newsprint and at least three editorials in a single semester. If this week passes without a hitch, we hope all you campus agitators out there come up with a new gripe in time for the fall-semester news cycle. A diamond to our upcoming feat of physical strength against the College Hill ’Dependent. We plan to win using the brute force of irony — the only language you people understand. A thankful diamond to scoops and the people who send them our way. Student moles, helpful administrators and anonymous letter-writers all over campus, we salute you. A cubic zirconium to the Department of Public Safety. Flying donuts, missing PAW prints cards, lobster thefts and friendly fighting make the crime log consistently entertaining … if only the chief and his minions would answer our calls. A diamond to the Friedman Study Center. Even if calling it the Frisc hasn’t caught on quite as fast as we would have liked, we’re glad that our 5 a.m. visits mean we miss the crowds. Rest in peace, CIT. Coal to all the work we’ve been avoiding and now have to confront as reading period begins. Didn’t shopping period just end? A diamond to Store 24 for sustaining us for a semester. We may consider petitioning you to carry our beloved POM, but for countless 2 a.m. runs to stock up on Red Bull, Doritos, ramen, gummy bears and the occasional hip-hop album, we are eternally grateful. And while we’re on the subject, coal to the College Hill Neighborhood Association’s attempts to prevent Chipotle from opening on Thayer Street. You don’t understand — we need the late-night sustenance! Dunkin’ Donuts, Antonio’s, Nice Slice, Au Bon Pain and Store 24 get pretty boring pretty fast. … Plus, the margaritas would be nice. A diamond to our dedicated staff for a semester of blood, sweat and series commas. You’ve intrepidly stalked University officials for comment, sat through awkward spontaneous opera, refrained from drunkenly poking administrators on Facebook and made outstanding mix CDs. But really, we love you and we couldn’t do it without you. Thanks for making these 58 issues of The Herald pretty sweet.
T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Editors-in-Chief Eric Beck Mary-Catherine Lader
Executive Editors Allison Kwong Ben Leubsdorf
Senior Editors Stephen Colelli Sonia Saraiya BUSINESS
EDITORIAL Lydia Gidwitz Lindsey Meyers Stephanie Bernhard Stu Woo Simmi Aujla Sara Molinaro Ross Frazier Jacob Schuman Michal Zapendowski Peter Cipparone Justin Goldman Sarah Demers Erin Frauenhofer Madeleine Marecki
Arts & Culture Editor Arts & Culture Editor Features Editor Features Editor Metro Editor Metro Editor News Editor Opinions Editor Opinions Editor Sports Editor Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor
PHOTO Eunice Hong Christopher Bennett Jacob Melrose
Photo Editor Photo Editor Sports Photo Editor
General Manager Mandeep Gill Executive Manager Darren Ball Executive Manager Dan DeNorch Laurie-Ann Paliotti Sr. Advertising Manager Office Manager Susan Dansereau PRODUCTION Design Editor Steve DeLucia Copy Desk Chief Chris Gang Graphics Editor Mark Brinker Graphics Editor Roxanne Palmer Web Editor Luke Harris POST- MAGAZINE Hillary Dixler Melanie Duch Taryn Martinez Rajiv Jayadevan Mindy Smith
Managing Editor Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor
Jihan Chao, Steve DeLucia, Designers Lauren Levitz, Joy Neumeyer, umeyer, Lucy Stark Stark, Copy Editors Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Oliver Bowers, Zachary Chapman, Chaz Firestone, Kristina Kelleher, Debbie Lehmann, Scott Lowenstein, James Shapiro, Michael Skocpol Staff Writers Susana Aho, Taylor Barnes, Brianna Barzola, A. Kamyl Bazbaz, Evan Boggs, Aubry Bracco, Caitlin Browne, Irene Chen, Joy Chua, Patrick Corey, Nicole Dungca, Catherine Goldberg, Isabel Gottlieb, Thi Ho, Olivia Hoffman, Nandini Jayakrishna, Tsvetina Kamenova, Franklin Kanin, Andrew Kurtzman, Cameron Lee, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Anna Millman, Joy Neumeyer, Nathalie Pierrepont, Alexander Roehrkasse, Jessica Rotondi, Marielle Segarra, Robin Steele, Nick Werle, Allissa Wickham, Meha Verghese Sports Staff Writers Benjy Asher, Andrew Braca, Han Cui, Amy Ehrhart, Jason Harris, Kaitlyn Laabs, Eliza Lane, Kathleen Loughlin, Alex Mazerov, Megan McCahill, Marco Santini, Tom Trudeau, Steele West Business Staff Dana Feuchtbaum, Kent Holland, Alexander Hughes, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Viseth San, Kaustubh Shah, Jon Spector, Robert Stefani, Lily Tran, Lindsay Walls Design Staff Brianna Barzola, Jihan Chao, Aurora Durfee, Sophie Elsner, Christian Martell, Matthew McCabe, Ezra Miller Photo Staff Austin Freeman, Rahul Keerthi, Tai Ho Shin Copy Editors Ayelet Brinn, Catherine Cullen, Erin Cummings, Karen Evans, Jacob Frank, Ted Lamm, Lauren Levitz, Cici Matheny, Alex Mazerov, Ezra Miller, Joy Neumeyer, Madeleine Rosenberg, Lucy Stark, Meha Verghese
JASON LI
LETTERS
Writing Fellows call for administration’s support To the Editor: Over the past 20 years, the Writing Fellows program, directed by Rhoda Flaxman, has helped countless Brown students become better writers. The program reaches nearly 3,000 students per year and has become a model of effective peer tutoring for dozens of colleges around the nation. Unfortunately, cutbacks recently enacted by the Brown administration have threatened the continued success of the Writing Fellows program. The administration has decided to eliminate the position of program coordinator, a job expertly performed by Wendy Sheridan for the past several years. Without the program coordinator, the program cannot run effectively. Removing the program coordinator will force fellows — who are undergraduate students — to shoulder various administrative duties, detracting from our primary responsibility: to respond meaningfully to our peers’ papers. Though the administration has repeatedly voiced a commitment to writing instruction, they have refused to provide the necessary support to keep the Writing Fellows program viable. We are further dismayed by the manner in which these cutbacks were enacted. The administration excluded the Writing Fellows and students who use the program from the decision-making process, despite the fact that we are the ones who will be affected the
most by the cutbacks. We worry that disregard for undergraduate input has slowly become endemic to University Hall. Please voice your support for the Writing Fellows program, by directing your comments and concerns to Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron and the Office of the Dean of the College, which, according to its Web site, “promotes the active involvement of students in their own educations.” Liat Berdugo ’08, William Bostwick ’07, Jason Chen ’07, Shannon Chow ’07, Pat Clark ’07, Kailin Clarke ’07.5, Nathan Driskell ’09, Jessica Fredston-Hermann ’08, Alex Forte ’09, Gabrielle Fuentes ’08, Hannah Goldstein ’08, Kate Hammond ’08, Fiona Heckscher ’09, Andres Idarraga ’08, Jonathan Jui ’07, Rachel Kapelke-Dale ’07, Jessica Kerry ’08, Vani Kilakkathi ’08, Annie Koo ’08, Sarah LaBrie ’07, Christine Laquer ’07, Aidan Levy ’08, Jaya Mathur ’07.5, Caitlin McKenna ’09, Max Neuman ’08, Carrie Petri ’07, Amelia Rosenman ’08, Rebecca Russo ’08, Andrew Shield ’07, Nicholas Swisher ’08, Laszlo Syrop ’08, Ila Tyagi ’09, Nicholas Van Sant ’07, Kumar Vasudevan ’08 Writing Fellows April 25
Student life dean clarifies U. protest policy To the Editor: In light of yesterday’s letter to the editor that raises questions about students’ right to protest (“SDS members want freedom to protest,” April 25), I wanted to clarify for all students that University policy allows and encourages protest as a means of expression within the University. Students are not violating the standards of student conduct by engaging in a protest on campus. Protests or demonstrations cannot, however, infringe upon the rights of others — including the rights of others to peaceful assembly, orderly protest or the free exchange of ideas — and cannot interfere with the rights of others to make use of or enjoy the facili-
ties or attend the functions of the University. Students engaged in a protest or demonstration are expected to respect the rights of others and to comply with the Standards of Student Conduct. This would include cooperating with any reasonable requests by a University staff member, including a Department of Public Safety officer. You can find more information about the Standards of Student Conduct at www.brown.edu/ randr. J. Allen Ward Senior Associate Dean of Student Life April 25
CORRECTION An article in the Oct. 5, 2006 Herald (“Federal human trafficking bust implicates downtown establishment”) incorrectly identified Central Rhode Island Therapeutic Massage in Johnston as an entity that was implicated in a federal investigation in 2006. In fact, the establishment was not part of the federal investigation described in the article. 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 THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
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U. failing in New from Iraq: results of the “surge” and an Iraqi poll Middle East MICHAL studies I was shocked by Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron’s response to Professor of Anthropology William Beeman’s lament that the administration has not done enough to raise Middle East studies at Brown to a respectable level over the past 30 years (“Frustrated with Middle East studies program, longtime prof. leaves Brown,” April 24). To back up her claim that there has been progress, she cites that “there’s been attempts ... to look into the teaching of Farsi” and that one new Arabic teacher has been hired in the past year. Attempting to look into something is not considered progress, especially since my Arabic class is bursting at the seams at about 23 students and Farsi is not being taught next year. And what about the previous 29 years? The administration should at least admit that its inability to retain Middle East studies faculty and to boost course offerings is a failure on its part. Why don’t they care that the Middle East studies program is in shambles? The University’s number one priority should be to create a solid Middle East department with great faculty and resources. Consider what Beeman was able to create in a very short time given the resources at the University of Minnesota — including establishing a Persian program and hiring 5 new faculty members. The University should admit that it has failed and promise the student body that it will do better. Anat Mooreville ‘07 April 24
ZAPENDOWSKI OPINIONS EDITOR
Since President Bush announced that he would be sending in a “surge” of troops to stabilize the situation in Iraq, two important pieces of information have come out of that country: civilian casualty statistics being compiled by Iraq Body Count and the results of an annual Iraqi poll carried out by the BBC. The proverbial “facts on the ground” should give both pro-war Republicans and anti-war Democrats time for pause. For the anti-war left, facing up to reality means acknowledging that bringing American troops home precipitously is likely to result in civil war and genocide in Iraq. In the BBC poll, which included 2,212 respondents in 450 different locations across the country, only 35 percent of Iraqis said they wanted American forces to leave Iraq — with the remaining 65 percent preferring that the foreign troops remain until the security situation in their country is stabilized. This speaks to how terrified Iraqis are of what would happen if our troops were to simply pack up and leave, with no stable military force remaining in Iraq except for armed ethnic militias. Certainly, it is Bush and the Republicans who will be held responsible for the ultimate outcome in Iraq — leaving anti-war protesters free to chant “bring the troops home” and let the other side take the blame for any bloodbath that could result. However, before rallying around these protesters, liberal Americans should ask themselves: Are we willing to watch on television while men, women and children are massacred in a fullblown ethnic civil war, a direct result of American military action? Of course, the Catch-22 is that simply leaving our soldiers in harm’s way will not guarantee that Iraq will become a stable country. That’s why prowar Republicans also need a wake-up call to reality — which for them means realizing that our president has no strategy for how to fix the funda-
mental problems in Iraq. According to the BBC poll, a majority of Iraqis today lack confidence in their own government. This lack of public support, combined with a complete inability to stand on its own two legs without the U.S. military propping it up, would suggest that the third consecutive “national unity” government to be formed in Baghdad by our occupation has failed. Iraq’s Shi’a prime minister — Nouri al-Maliki — is deeply unpopular among Sunnis and Kurds, demonstrating that he is not in any way the type of leader who could lead Iraq beyond its ethnic impasse. His failure mirrors that of his predecessor, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Jaafari’s predecessor, the U.S.appointed Iyad Allawi, only succeeded in unifying Iraqis against his own government. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any leader who could rebuild unity in a deeply divided Iraqi society without using the tactics employed by Saddam Hussein. Even support for the abstract ideal of “national unity” has been collapsing rapidly in Iraq, reflecting the collapse of three consecutive “national unity” governments. In 2004, only the Kurds (18 percent of respondents) wanted Iraq to be divided along ethnic lines — in 2007, 42 percent of Iraqis prefer this type of solution, while 57 percent believe it to be inevitable. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Figures compiled by Iraq Body Count show a dramatic, temporary fall in the death toll in Baghdad between January and February of this year, from 1,584 civilians killed (an annual rate of over 19,000) to 446 (an annual rate of about 5,000). This means that the president’s strategy — increasing the number of U.S. troops in Baghdad — has temporarily reduced the level of violence in the city. The temporary — and partial — success of this “surge” has given Iraqis some breathing room to begin finding permanent solutions to their ethnic problems. It is not surprising, given how quickly the idea of “national unity” is losing ground in Iraq, that a faction in the Iraqi Parliament, led by Ayatollah al-Hakim, is calling for a division of Iraq along federal lines, with oil wealth being shared. The United States should fall behind this idea of division, which is gaining support among the Iraqi public and would mean a decisive change in
our failed strategy in that country. As the 2008 election draws closer, our time in Iraq is running out. What better way to bring peace to Baghdad than to divide the city along the Tigris River and allow Sunni and Shi’a families to migrate peacefully to the side where they feel safest? A river would act as a tangible, military barrier to separate the militias on the two sides even after American forces had left. What better way to break the ethnic deadlock that has paralyzed the Iraqi government and parliament than to split these up along federal lines — with local governments and local parliaments for Iraq’s three major ethnic regions? Is there anything — other than the deadlock in Baghdad — preventing the Shi’a South of Iraq from developing an effective and democratic government, just like the Kurds in the North? And who is more likely to defeat the insurgency in Sunni Anbar Province — a foreign occupier backing a Shi’a-dominated government or Sunni generals with the backing of a Sunni government and parliament? For those who would argue that Arab culture doesn’t support democracy, I would offer in rebuttal the fact that a majority of Iraqis (53 percent) continue to support the idea of a democratic government even in this dark moment, while only a small minority (26 percent) would favor a return to “a government headed by one man for life.” Even at this low point, only 36 percent of Iraqis say that their lives are worse than they were under Saddam — and even among that 36 percent, a third seem to dread the idea of returning to his style of rule. It seems that even Arabs prefer to govern themselves, rather than being forced to bow to the will of a brutal dictator — something that might come as a shock to so-called “cultural relativism” theorists. We owe it to Iraqis to build their democracy within an institutional framework that acknowledges their deep ethnic divisions, instead of trying to paper them over. We owe Iraqis a choice that involves neither genocide nor perpetual occupation.
Michal Zapendowski ’07 wishes he, too, were being offered a choice for 2008 that went beyond those options.
Israel is an American value BY ADAM AXLER AND PRATIK CHOUGULE GUEST COLUMNISTS
Few topics in our contemporary international landscape evoke such vehement emotion as the State of Israel, its history, its policies and its relations with the world community. For some, the conflict between Israel and its neighbors is the return of a people to their historical homeland and the violent rejection of that return. For others, the issue is an oppressed people struggling for self-determination. By no means do we claim that the foreign policy of Israel — or any other country — is angelic. Our goal is neither to condemn nor to defame, but to illuminate the modern role of the State of Israel and its importance to the United States. As both a Republican and a Democrat, we acknowledge imperfection and mistakes but join in recognizing Israel’s right to defend its existence and its value to American interests. The only democracy in the Middle East, Israel grants full rights of citizenship and provides substantial benefits to ethnic and religious minorities. The Israeli Parliament, or Knesset, has several Arab members and does not impose military service requirements on its Arab citizens, who have a significant stake in the Israeli economy. According to Efraim Karsh, a professor at King’s College London, access to basic human necessities in the West Bank and Gaza has improved markedly since 1967, including running water (16 to 85 percent of homes), morality rate (fell by twothirds) and electricity (20.5 to 92.8 percent of homes). This has occurred in spite of the desire by most Israelis to relinquish the territo-
ries and limit their role in day-to-day Palestinian life. Israeli technicians were among the first to develop cell phones, Intel’s Pentium processors, pacemakers and computer motherboards. Israel’s irrigation techniques are recognized across the globe, and observers regularly visit the state to study its advances in agriculture. Israel has been an asset for peace in the region and desires basic respect and tolerance for its existence and rights of self-defense. Most Israelis, including the current political leadership, recognize the injustice and longterm impossibility of occupying another people. At the same time, Israel’s continued military presence in the Palestinian territories is not a choice but a necessity based primarily on security concerns. Pullouts from Amona, parts of Hebron, Gaza and northern Samaria were supported by a majority of the Israeli public, despite the potential risks to Israeli civilians and infrastructure caused by such withdrawals. Israel also unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, hoping this would facilitate peace on its northern border. Israel’s security fence is based in necessity, specifically its need to thwart terror attacks and prevent civilian casualties on both sides by reducing the need for military incursions. Though tthere may be concerns about the impact of the security fence, the route of the fence has been altered numerous times by the Israeli Supreme Court in response to Palestinian petitions to ensure that it affects the lives of West Bank residents as little as possible. These actions have not been met with reciprocity from the Hamas-led government. Instead of working to engage Israel and restart a process toward a sustainable peace, it has responded with violence and provocation. Since
Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that Hamas and other Palestinian militants have used that land to fire over 1,200 rockets into cities and towns in southern Israel, and these attacks continue today. The Hamas-led government has again declared its refusal to recognize both Israel’s right to exist and past agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It has also declared that unless Israel completely withdraws from all territories in six months, it is prepared to launch a massive violent uprising similar to the Intifada of 2000-2004. At the same time, the Palestinian people are facing a non-payment crisis, reduced social services and economic stagnation as a result of endemic corruption in the Palestinian Authority (currently, the Palestinian territories are still the largest per capita recipient of foreign aid in the world). Israel’s security concerns were also tried during the recent conflict in Lebanon. Hezbollah, financed and supported by Iran and Syria, launched an attack across an internationally recognized cease-fire line and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Following the shelling of towns 20 kilometers inside its borders, Israel responded by targeting Hezbollah strongholds inside Lebanon. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported that, over the course of the conflict, Hezbollah launched 3,970 Katyusha rockets and Fajr missiles into northern Israel, reaching as far as 40 miles south of the Lebanese border and forcing 1 million Israelis into bomb shelters. Israel was caught between a rock and a hard place: respond with overwhelming military force and cause a morally unacceptable number of civilian casualties, or respond weakly and abandon the captured soldiers and
the integrity of Israel’s borders. The Israeli military attempted to craft a middle ground, limiting bombing to areas they deemed essential to degrading Hezbollah’s military capacity and recapturing the soldiers. Whatever one thinks about the specific tactics, the Israeli military did make a genuine effort to reduce civilian casualties as much as they thought possible. The U.S. Congress acknowledged the legitimacy of Israel’s response — the Senate, with a 98-0 majority, passed Resolution 534 “condemning Hezbollah and Hamas and their state sponsors, and supporting Israel’s exercise of its right to self-defense,” and the House passed a similar measure 410-8. Israel’s importance to U.S. strategic and economic interests should also be underscored. Israel has the distinction of voting with the United States consistently in the United Nations, standing firm with America after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and providing the United States tens of thousands of jobs through aid provisions, resulting in nearly 100 percent of American aid to Israel being spent in the United States, according to the Middle East Quarterly Quarterly. Israel’s collapse or regional destabilization would damage American security interests, and the right of Israelis and Palestinians to shape their futures without coercion is an important objective in line with U.S. foreign policy. Though the process toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians will require difficult decisions on both sides, a democratic and secure Israel has a right to exist and defend itself as it works toward peace with the support of its American ally. Adam Axler ’08 and Pratik Chougule ’08 are vice presidents of the Brown Democrats and the College Republicans, respectively.
S PORTS W EEKEND THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2007
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As Harvard falters, baseball sweeps Dartmouth to take division lead Baseball can clinch Rolfe division, playoff spot against Yale this weekend BY STU WOO FEATURES EDITOR
Jacob Melrose / Herald File Photo
Jeff Dietz ’08 pitched six strong innings for Brown in yesterday’s doubleheader against Dartmouth. Dietz, who was pitching on short rest, only gave up two unearned runs.
The baseball team was on the field in Hanover, N.H., late Wednesday afternoon, shaking hands with the Dartmouth squad it just swept when the news started floating around — Harvard, which had started the day tied with Brown for the Red Rolfe Division lead, had split its own doubleheader against Yale. With just four games left in the season, the Bears were now alone in first place. But tri-captain catcher Devin Thomas ’07 said there were no cheers, slaps on the back or celebrations of any kind. After all, the Bears’ one-game lead — thin enough already — will be on the line this weekend against a hardhitting Yale squad that needs to sweep the four-game series for any shot of making the playoffs.
And Harvard will have a fourgame series of its own against an anemic Dartmouth team that lost all four of its games against Brown this year by a combined score of 49-15. Still, there was some satisfaction with the situation. “Obviously — I’m not going to lie — I’m glad (Harvard) had at least split,” Head Coach Marek Drabinski said by phone from the team’s bus last night, as the Bears traveled back from New Hampshire. “More importantly, I’m really proud of our guys for doing what we had to do. We’ve been talking about that all along, controlling our own destiny.” Brown did that yesterday thanks to the usual strong work of its top two starting pitchers, Jeff Dietz ’08 and James Cramphin ’07. Though coming off just three days’ rest and backed by a shaky defense, the duo combined to allow just four earned runs in the 7-3 and 12-7 victories. The Bears, continued on page 20
Spring semester in sports After near-miss in 2006, w. As the semester comes to a close, The Herald sports staff takes a look back at the triumphs, feats and surprises of the Brown athletics teams in the spring of 2007. Ivy’s fastest female Sprinter Thelma Breezeatl ’10 better get used to the puns made from her last name — she’s been breezing by the competition ever since she first stepped on the track during the indoor track season. At the University of Connecticut Spring Outdoor Invite on April 21, the freshman broke the school record in the 100-meter dash, with a time of 11.82 seconds. She was also the 60-meter dash champion at the Indoor Heptagonal Championships. Best spear thrower If, for some reason, you need someone to chuck a javelin really, really far, then your man is Paul Rosiak ’07. The senior member of the track team hurled the spear an astounding 219-feet 9inches to win the javelin event at the University of Connecticut Spring Outdoor Invite on April 21. The effort currently ranks him first in the Ivy League by over 17 feet. Best comeback Things weren’t looking good for the women’s tennis team at the beginning of the season as
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THURSDAY, AY APRIL 26 AY, BASEBALL: at Holy Cross M. & W. TRACK: at Penn Relays
FRIDAY, AY APRIL 27 AY, M. & W. TRACK: at Penn Relays
SATURDAY, AY APRIL 28 AY, BASEBALL: at Yale (DH) M. CREW: at Dartmouth W. CREW: at Yale with Columbia (Derby (Derby, Conn.) FOOTBALL: Brown-White Spring Game, 1 p.m., Brown Stadium
it chased its first winning Ivy League mark since 2003. In April, the team was on a four-match losing streak. But the Bears stepped up big time and won their next four matches against Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth and Harvard. Brown finished its regular season with a 4-3 record in league play. Most dominant team The women’s crew is always at the top of the national rankings, and this year is no different. The team has climbed to No. 2 in the nation and has not lost a varsity eight race all season. Most consistent team The men’s crew has spent much of the year ranked in the top three nationally and is vying for the national title. This season, the team has fought through difficult weather conditions that have limited practice space and still had impressive wins against Boston and Northeastern universities. The team has an important showdown against Dartmouth this Saturday. Coolest customer Larry Haertel ’08 of the men’s golf team was extremely competitive in 2006, and he has done nothing but increase his level of continued on page 19
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M. GOLF: at URI Northeast Collegiate Invitational (Portsmouth) M. LACROSSE: vs. Cornell, 1 p.m., Stevenson Field W. LACROSSE: at Princeton SOFTBALL: vs.Yale, 1 p.m. Softball Field (DH) M. & W. TRACK: at Penn Relays W. WATER POLO: at Eastern Championships (Princeton,, N.J.)
SUNDAY, AY APRIL 29 AY, BASEBALL: vs. Yale, 1 p.m., Murray Stadium (DH) SOFTBALL: at Yale M. & W. TRACK: at Brown Springtime Invitational, Brown Stadium W. WATER POLO: at Eastern Championships (Princeton,, N.J.)
crew back in striking distance BY ANDREW BRACA SPORTS STAFF WRITER
The women’s crew has been on the top of its game this season. It is currently ranked No. 2 in the country, behind only the University of Southern California. Previously, the Bears held the top ranking for much of the season. They haven’t lost a single race since the varsity four race March 24 against Princeton, and they have won 21 of 22 races this season. Next month, Brown will try for its fi fth NCAA Champion-
ship in the past nine years. That being said, the Bears have a lot of work left to do before the NCAA Championships. Brown has its last dual meet of the season this Saturday against Yale and the University of Tennessee on the Housatonic River in Derby, Conn. Then Brown will compete in the Eastern Sprints on May 13 in Camden, N.J. The event is fun for the rowers but is crucial in determining which teams qualify for the NCAA
4 years at The Herald
When I first arrived on campus in the fall of 2003, I was just like any other freshman. I really had no idea what I wanted to do at Brown. I went to the Activities Fair and found myself overwhelmed by the realm of possibilities. Every time I turned around, I Justin Goldman was bumping into Golden Boy someone who would say, “Hey, have you thought about joining such-and-such group? It will really change your life.” As I wandered through the highly crowded and nicely decorated Olney-Margolies Athletic Center, I remember a really tall, really attractive girl catching my eye. She introduced herself and told me her name was Elena Lesley ’04 and that she was an editor at The Herald. I had some journalism experience — I worked for my high school paper covering a variety of things and I eventually became the managing editor. But I didn’t know if I wanted to get on that grind again. She asked me what I was interested in writing about, and I quickly responded that I wanted to write about sports. They say sports writers are nothing but depressed athletes, and that could not be truer in my case. I was a pretty good basketball player and sprinter and thrower in high school, but genetics prevented me from pursuing those dreams on the next level. For as long as I can remember, sports were really the only thing that I understood. I figured that I wanted to stay close to sports in any way I could, and I figured that writing about them as opposed to playing them was a fairly continued on page 21
continued on page 18
Courtesy of Mike Braca ’73 P’10
The women’s crew has continued its dominance this season. The team is primed to make a run at the national championship.
M. crew bounces back against Northeastern BY STEELE WEST SPORTS STAFF WRITER
The seniors on the men’s rowing team were given an emotional send-off last weekend, securing wins in three of four races. The No. 7 varsity eight stormed home in a time of 5:33.7 to finish 8.8 seconds ahead of former-No. 13 Northeastern University on a slack tide. The performance was a great relief to co-captain Dave Coughlin ’07 in the wake of last week’s disappointing loss to Harvard. Coughlin emphasized the critical nature of a strong rebound performance. “It was a good step in the right direction. We are right where we want and need to be, but the biggest challenges of the season are still ahead of us,” he said. Once again, the junior varsity
dominated its opponents to finish 7.4 seconds ahead of the third varsity and a massive 14.7 seconds ahead of the Northeastern junior varsity on a slight incoming tide. The third varsity boat’s deT feat of the Huskies’ junior varsity was firm evidence of the depth of the squad, a fact not lost on Ed O’Neal ’08. “To be able to beat the NU (second boat) says a lot about our depth,” he said. The freshman boat bounced back from its nail-biting defeat at Harvard last week to record a comfortable 5.4-second win over a competitive Northeastern freshman boat, and continues to stake its claim for a strong seeding come the Eastern Sprints. Overall, co-captain Ben Harrison ’07 was pleased with the team’s
effort against Northeastern. “It was a really exciting race for us. We have a new lineup and Northeastern put us under a lot of pressure,” he said. “We responded well as a group and were able to move away in the second thousand.” Looking ahead, though, Harrison was circumspect. “Obviously, we have some big challenges ahead of us, namely Princeton and then the Eastern Sprints,” he said. The weekend’s wins will do more to restore the squad’s confidence after being toppled from its lofty No. 3 by the Crimson. The Bears’ next race should not provide any major challenges, as Brown faces a struggling No. 25 Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H., this Saturday. The following weekend, Brown races Princeton in New Jersey.