Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, O ctober 10, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 85

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

McCaffrey on terrorism, Iraq and WMDs

By Franklin Kanin Senior Staf f Writer

For some students, headlines and news shows — even Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” — are the only insights into the situation in Iraq and the rest of the international arena. Last night, Brown students were given another look into foreign affairs in the form of retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an adjunct professor of international affairs at the United States Military Academy at West Point and a nationally recognized national security and terrorism analyst who commanded the 24th Infantry Division during Operation Desert Storm.

McCaffrey delivered the Stephen A. Ogden Jr. ’60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs in Salomon 101 on Tuesday. In his speech, “After Iraq: How the World Has Changed,” McCaffrey presented his analysis and obser vations on the war on terror, the United States’ “tools to shape the international environment,” the war in Iraq and what he foresees in the future.

He told the audience that he is non-partisan — he has worked for three different presidential administrations, both Democrat and continued on page 4

Yalie to fill post for underclassmen student support in dean’s office

By Michael Bechek Senior Staff Writer

Tahia Thaddeus Reynaga, currently an Old Campus Fellow at Yale University, has been named assistant dean for first-year and sophomore studies, Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron wrote in an e-mail to students Tuesday. She will begin her job at Brown on Dec. 1.

“She has a good feel for students in the first couple years in college,” said Deputy Dean of the College Stephen Lassonde, who served on the search committee. He added that Reynaga was “very energetic, smart and articulate.”

Reynaga will be the first person to hold the title of assistant dean for first-year and sophomore studies. The position was created last spring as part of a restructuring of the dean of the College’s office under Bergeron, who took the post in July 2006.

“We’re down about five deans at the moment, and this will replace one of them,” Lassonde said. He said the dean of the College’s office hopes to announce the hiring of an associate dean for first-year and sophomore studies, to whom Reynaga will report, in the “next several weeks.”

By Robin Steele Arts & Culture Editor

Hip hop artist and “DJ extraordinaire” RJD2 will headline the Brown Concert Agency’s fall show on Friday, Oct. 19 in Alumnae Hall, according to BCA Booking Chair David Horn ’08.

Boston-based rapper Mr. Lif will also perform, and the opening act will be underground hip hop artist Doujah Raze, recently named one of the best unsigned rappers in the country by Rawkus Records, Horn said.

ARTS & CULTURE

INSIDE:

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CAMPUS WATCH

www.browndailyherald.com

tors to contact students and faculty via cell phone, text message, e-mail, fax or landline phone. Hunter said University officials were looking for such a system even before the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April.

In addition to taking part in the emergency alert demonstration, BUCC members discussed the rules governing political speak-

The doors will open Oct. 19 at 8 p.m., and the concert will run from 8:30 p.m. until midnight.

Tickets — which cost $5 for students and $12 for the general public — will be on sale in the Faunce post office from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. next Monday through Friday, as well as at the door on the night of the concert.

“It’s a really great deal for students,” Horn said.

Horn said in previous years BCA tended to focus on one indie rock band for the fall concert, but student feedback indicated that a change was desired. “There’s not enough rap and hip hop here at Brown, so that’s where this show came from — sort of in response to that,” Horn said.

“The fact we’re having three acts is pretty big for us,” Horn said. “I think (this) is going to be the best fall show for all the times I’ve been here.”

This year’s show will once again be in Alumnae Hall, which has a capacity of about 500, rather than the slightly larger Sayles Hall, Horn said.

The fall concert was last held in Sayles in 2004 but “has been moved on an institutional basis since the Sex Power God a couple years ago,” he said.

continued on page 4

continued on page 4

Meara Sharma / Herald

Gen. Barry McCaffrey spoke about the war on terror and the war in Iraq last night in Salomon 101.

At BUCC meeting, U. announces $350,000 to support environmental projects U. to cut carbon emissions nearly 40 percent by 2020

By Isabel Gottlieb Senior Staff Writer

At the Brown University Community Council meeting on Tuesday, Walter Hunter, vice president of administration and the University’s chief risk officer, made an unusual request that everyone present turn on their cell phones. A moment

later, a chorus of phones around the room began to ring. The BUCC members answered their phones to hear a recording of Hunter’s voice say, “This is Walter Hunter. Please let everyone in the room know you got the message by saying, ‘I got it.’

Thank you. You may hang up.”

The unusual flurry of cell phone activity was Hunter demonstrating the University’s new emergency contact system, a system called MIR3 which enables administra-

Khruschev recalls Sputnik’s space legacy 50 years later

By Cameron Lee Staf f Writer

courtesy of nasa.gov

continued on page 6

RJD2 to headline BCA fall show

Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, was launched by the U.S.S.R. 50 years ago.

DUke lax lawsuit The three falsely accused Duke lacrosse players have brought a lawsuit against the city of Durham.

5

CAMPUS NEWS

A holy man A.J. Jacobs ’90 has released a new book about the year he spent living by the rules of the Bible.

The world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union 50 years ago, but the 184-pound sphere’s beeping was more significant at the time for people in the United States than those in the U.S.S.R., concluded a panel of professors Tuesday. The discussion, titled “50 Years in Space: The Legacy of Sputnik in the Age of Putin,” marked the anniversary of the launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957.

The speakers included Professor of Geological Sciences James Head III, Assistant Professor of History Ethan Pollock, Professor of Slavic Languages Alexander Levitsky and Sergei Khrushchev, a senior fellow in international studies at the Wat-

11

OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

Genius and the bard Lindsey Meyers ’09 goes searching for the true Shakespeare in England and finds genius.

son Institute for International Studies and son of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, who oversaw Sputnik’s launch.

Sergei Khrushchev spoke first about his personal experience with Sputnik, recalling the atmosphere of his father’s Soviet Union at the time. “Soviet society was driven by the idea that we have to make our country secure,” he said. “We (lived) under this pressure, that our (lives) depended on one decision in the White House: Would they bomb us or not?”

Khrushchev said when he was 21, he accompanied his father to watch Sergei Korolyov, chief scientist for Sputnik, and his team working on the project. He said Korolyov felt a sense of competition continued on page 6

12 SPORTS

speeding bears The men’s cross country team defeated 42 other squads in the heat of Boston over the weekend.

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

We a t h e r

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

Today

TOMORROW

rain 68 / 52

rain 68 / 51

Menu

Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Couscous Croquettes with Cider Pepper Sauce, Meatball Grinder, Buffalo Chicken Wings with Bleu Cheese Dressing, French Toast, Cheesecake Brownies

Lunch — Chicken Fajitas, Mexican Succotash, Vegan Black Bean Tacos, Steak Fries, Pico de Gallo, Cheesecake Brownies

Dinner — Tilapia Provensal, Asparagus Spears, Orange Jello, Orange Delight Cake

Dinner — Cilantro Chicken, Beets in Orange Sauce, Country Wedding Soup, Italian Bread, Mexican Cornbread Casserole, Herb Rice

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

Aibohphobia | Roxanne Palmer

Nightmarishly Elastic | Adam Robbins

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday,©October 10, 2007 Puzzles by Pappocom

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

C

o s and s wo d Lewis Edited by RichrNorris Joyce r Nichols

ACROSS 1 Move slightly 5 Sticky brand 11 Place for a farm rooter 14 Pacific Coast salmon 15 Like romantic eyes, in old slang 16 Anger 17 Music that goes on forever?

19 Blanc who voiced many a toon 20 Prepared to fly 21 Legal doctrine that bars contradiction of a prior statement 23 Like Tex-Mex cuisine 25 Mardi Gras city’s Amtrak code 26 Intl. defense alliance 29 Between ports 32 __-majesty 35 Cell feature 38 Spam on an office machine 40 Overly 41 Don’t just stand there 42 H as in Hellas 43 Egg opening 44 Frenzied routine 46 Air aid 48 Roughly 49 Horse race pace, perhaps 51 “The __ the limit!”

52 Rhoda’s mom 54 “Love __ you need”: Beatles lyric 57 Hood’s chauffeur 61 Sporty Mazdas 65 March beginning 66 Music performed while facing away from the audience?

68 Previously 69 Part of a human profile 70 “Whatcha __?”

71 Swab’s tool 72 Don’t mind your own business 73 Freelance work may be done on it DOWN 1 “O.G. Original Gangster” rapper 2 __ bene

3 General Mills cereal 4 As far as the eye can see 5 “Yikes!”

6 IM chuckle 7 Walks none too quickly 8 They often clash in Hollywood 9 Lopsided victory 10 Lawmaker of old Athens 11 Music that’s easy to understand?

12 Christmas purchase 13 Cheerleader’s cheer 18 Maiden name intro 22 President when Texas was annexed 24 Sharper-tasting 26 Part of TNT 27 Like a loud crowd 28 Music for a sweetheart?

30 Throws out 31 Taurus or Aries 33 “Stompin’ at the __”: Big Band classic 34 Gets out of Dodge

36 Bit of a cote tale?

37 Brokerage cust.

39 Kindergartner’s snooze 45 Went by horse 47 Frequent “Survivor” settings 50 Grunted in a pen 53 “Tuesdays with Morrie” author Mitch 55 Love, Italianstyle

56 Greater N.Y.C. campus 57 Impact sound 58 “Les Misérables” author 59 Pride of lions 60 Sailed through, as a test 62 Semi-convertible auto roof 63 R&B singer India.__ 64 Harmony 67 Word after no or low

Octopus on Hallucinogens | Toni Liu and Stephanie Le

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Classic How To Get Down | Nate Saunders

xwordeditor@aol.com

10/10/07

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C ampus W atch Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Seligmann ’09 and other former Duke lacrosse players sue Nifong

By Oliver Bowers Campus Watch Editor

Three former Duke University lacrosse players — including Reade Seligmann ’09 — who were falsely accused last year in a rape case that garnered national attention, filed suit last Friday against former district attorney Mike Nifong, the city of Durham, N.C., and police officers and lab personnel involved with the case.

The lawsuit accuses Nifong and city personnel of pursuing an exceedingly weak case in order to bolster the district attorney’s political image in the run-up to a contested Democratic primary, according to an Oct. 5 article by the Associated Press.

The complaint filed by the players called the case “one of the most chilling episodes of premeditated police, prosecutorial and scientific misconduct in modern American history,” according to an Oct. 5 article on Bloomberg.com. In the suit, the athletes claim officials violated their rights under the Fourthand 14th Amendments, according to Bloomberg. These amendments require the state to demonstrate probable cause before issuing warrants and guarantee equal protection under the law.

The lawsuit comes a month after lawyers for the families of the three men met with city officials seeking a $30 million settlement and several judicial system reforms. Among the reforms were the creation of an ombudsman committee to oversee police activities for 10 years and changes to the photo lineup that helped point the finger at the former defendants, according to the AP. The players’ attorneys gave the city a month to respond or face a civil rights lawsuit.

“This is not about money for the boys, though obviously they deserve compensation,” Richard Emery, a civil rights attorney representing Seligmann, told the AP. “This is about sending a message to public officials who only get the message when they have to pay the money.”

The suit does not specify an amount of damages.

David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Seligmann — who transferred to Brown this year and now plays for the men’s lacrosse team — faced charges after a stripper accused them of attacking her after she danced at a team party. The three players allege in their complaint that authorities bungled the investigation and withheld evidence that supported the athletes’ innocence.

Authorities mishandled the investigation and withheld evidence that supported the athletes’ denials, the athletes said in their complaint.

Nifong was disbarred when the flimsiness of the case came to light. He resigned from office and spent a night in jail earlier this year after a judge held him in criminal contempt for lying about the DNA evidence in the case.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Rumsfeld’s Stanford appointment invokes campus’ ire

By Stefanie Angstadt Staff Writer

The recent appointment of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as a distinguished visiting fellow to Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative-leaning think tank, struck a political nerve among students and faculty on Stanford’s campus.

A Sept. 7 announcement from Stanford declared that Rumsfeld will be joining the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, a research center whose mission is to “recall the voice of experience against the making of war” and to “recall man’s endeavors to make and preserve peace,” according to the institution’s Web site.

As the man in charge of the nation’s defense during the response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rumsfeld’s appointment has generated backlash from students and faculty alike.

According to a Sept. 18 article by The Stanford Daily, angry members of the Stanford community are demonstrating political activism against the former defense secretary with “talk of a mock trial for war crimes, calls for a resolution in the Faculty Senate condemning the appointment and an online petition with 1,305 signatures.”

English Professor Robert Polhemus responded to the appointment by sending a mass e-mail entitled, “Ten reasons why the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld to the Hoover Institution at Stanford as a Senior Fellow is sad, ridiculous and contemptible.” The e-mail gained more than 40 responses overnight, according to the article.

One of Polhemus’ main objections concerns the focus of the task force — terrorism and ideology — to which Rumsfeld was appointed. Polhemus wrote in his e-mail, “Experts from all perspectives are pretty well united in agreeing that Rumsfeld’s policies and leadership have been instrumental in spreading violence, promoting terrorism, and strengthening ideological opposition to the U.S.” “It just galls me that the university can portray to the public that it is honored to appoint Rumsfeld as a distinguished member,” Polhemus told The Herald.

Part of his concern over the appointment arises from Stanford’s association with the Hoover Institution.

Founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, the institution sought to develop a library collection on the causes and consequences of World War I. The institution has been a separate entity from the University since then, with its own mission, administration, budget and research. It aims to influence policymakers, local assemblymen, congressmen, the presidential administration and opinion-shapers such as media representatives and business people, according to Hoover’s Public

Courtesy of defenselinkmil

Donald Rumsfeld’s appointment to a fellowship at Stanford’s Hoover Institution has ruffled feathers across the California campus.

Affairs Manager Michele Horaney.

“Today, it is seen as a resource on campus,” she said.

Polhemus, however, said he believed Stanford should distance itself from the think tank. “The institution has a history of being a right-wing think tank and repository for conservative policy-making. That isn’t Stanford, but in the public mind, it becomes associated with Stanford.”

In the 1960’s, Hoover and Stanford clashed on the issue of Vietnam.

But over the past couple of decades, the two institutions have worked to develop a more cooperative relationship, Horaney said.

Polhemus predicted the appointment will once again threaten this cooperative relationship, causing “much trouble” for both institutions.

The role of the visiting fellow is to bring a “continual influx of expertise and ideas” to the Hoover Institution, according to its Web site. “I have asked (Rumsfeld) to join the distinguished group of scholars that will pursue new insights on the direction of thinking that the United States might consider going for ward,” Hoover Director John Raisian told The Stanford Daily.

Rumsfeld will be part of a task force of 10 to 12 experts that is set to meet five to 10 times this year.

“The task force has a specific mission and a time limit,” Horaney told The Herald. “He will be here only occasionally.”

It is unclear when the former defense secretary will begin his commitment.

A recent New York Times article linked Rumsfeld’s appointment and the defense of free speech with the controversy surrounding Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Columbia. Polhemus disagreed with the comparison. “Unlike in the case of President Ahmadinejad, Rumsfeld’s appointment is not a free speech issue. It’s an appointment.

That’s different,” he said. As opposed to inviting a leader to speak, bestow-

ing a title of distinguished fellow suggests Stanford condones Rumsfeld’s ideology, Polhemus said.

Hoover awarded to Rumsfeld the title of “distinguished” fellow because he has a long association with the institution going back to the 1970’s, according to Horaney. He has served as a member of the Hoover Board of Overseers and as a member of the executive committee of the board.

“From the time he was Congressman to CEO at several companies to his entry into government service, he’s served the institution,” she said.

The past appointments to fellowships at Hoover of Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and General John Abizaid, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, did not garner the same political criticism from Stanford faculty and students.

Polhemus explained the backlash in his e-mail to the Stanford community by stating the previous appointees had “intellectual and academic experience and achievement ... (while) Rumsfeld’s disastrous leadership is (in)famous in the military, the media, the political establishment, and academia alike.”

On campus, student groups, faculty and community members have banded together to form an informal anti-war coalition.

“We consider Rumsfeld to be a war criminal. What we’re upset about is that Hoover is so closely tied with Stanford, that our name is being tarnished by his appointment,” Stanford junior Laura Wadden, who is a part of the coalition, told The Herald.

According to Wadden, the campus reactions to the appointment have been mixed. On the one hand, she said, people are excited for Rumsfeld’s arrival as a chance to learn from his experience. On the other, he is seen as a war criminal and a threat to Stanford’s image.

One of the projects the coalition is developing to protest the appointment is a mock trial that will, Wadden hopes, include real lawyers, real judges and Rumsfeld himself. “We want to invite him to defend himself,” Wadden said.

Page 4

Gen. McCaffrey defends military recruiting continued from page 1 Republican — and views himself as a neutral observer.

America still faces great threats, McCaffrey said in his analysis of the war on terror, especially from “the proliferation of WMD nation states.” In the future, McCaffrey predicted, Iran will go nuclear, and the United States will face a terrorist strike.

In the face of these impending dangers, homeland security has “improved immeasurably” since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, McCaffrey said, though he cited the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina as an exception. Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, “may have been the most shameful breakdown in government competence in the municipal, county, state and federal level we have ever seen,” he said.

The former four-star general called the situation in Iraq “a mess.” Unless there is a significant change, McCaffrey said, the United States will pull out of Iraq within the first year of the next administration — no matter which party wins the presidency.

Despite this prediction, McCaffrey spoke positively of Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, and the soldiers in the

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

armed forces, calling the outcome of the Iraq situation “uncertain” but not hopeless.

Though he said he was supportive of the war in Iraq, McCaffrey called the “concept of going into Iraq ... outrageous” — a remark that received scattered applause from the audience.

His predictions for the future included a dominant U.S. economy, improved relations with China, India, Pakistan and Europe, but tense relationships between the United States and Russia.

He also said he thinks North Korea will “come apart” some time in the future and that the United States will have to deal with the death of Fidel Castro in Cuba and a confrontation with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

McCaffrey concluded his talk with a brief question-and-answer period. Though few questions were asked, they addressed military policies both at home and abroad.

One woman asked McCaffrey about military recruiting in high schools. McCaffrey said though recr uiters rarely target high schools, the defense of the nation is a “shared responsibility” that falls on both Congress and U.S. citizens.

Arguing further in support of recruiting on college campuses, McCaffrey stressed the benefits of

including university-educated “intellectuals” in the volunteer ranks of the armed forces and broader discussions of national security.

In response to a question about the link between Iraq and terrorism, McCaffrey rejected the view that the countr y is a breeding ground for terrorists. He said a small number of terrorists enter Iraq each month, and that it is certainly not a breeding ground.

One student, prefacing his question as “possibly naive,” asked the retired general what right the United States has to go into a country unilaterally. McCaffrey said the United States should not act unilaterally. “The military should be the last choice,” he said.

When asked about what the United States should do in Syria, McCaffrey explained the importance of the politics in the region.

“The Gulf States are crucial,” he said. McCaffrey emphasized the particular importance of Saudi Arabia. The United States must try to “engage the Saudis,” he said.

McCaffrey was introduced by Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98, who protested ROTC — a program McCaffrey supports — on campus when he was a student at Brown. Kertzer said McCaffrey was the first career military officer to deliver the annual Ogden lecture.

RJD2 to headline BCA fall concert lineup continued from page 1 Sex Power God, which was held in Sayles in November 2005, resulted in a significant number of students requiring emergency medical care and attracted national attention when it was featured on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” As part of the fallout from Sex Power God, University officials decided to prohibit loud parties and other rowdy social events in Sayles, and BCA’s November 2005 fall show was relocated from Sayles to Alumnae Hall just days before the event. “(Sayles) is a very important space on campus. There are portraits and ... the organ that are very valuable to the University,” David Greene, thenvice president for campus life and student services, told The Herald at the time.

“It is a good space for speakers, the right kind of dinner and some cultural events, but it is probably not a good venue for large-scale social events. So we have to identify some additional spaces for students to use for that purpose.”

The budget for next week’s show is about $13,000 for talent — similar to the cost of last year’s fall concert — with RJD2 costing $7,500, Mr. Lif $3,500 and Doujah Raze $1,000, Horn said.

Horn added that the Spring Weekend budget will also be the same this year as last year — about $120,000.

Once the fall concert is over, Horn said, BCA will start a push to have both Spring Weekend concerts held outside, in response to student polls from past Spring Weekends. Weather permitting, the Saturday concert is traditionally held on the Main Green, but the Thursday evening concert is usually in Meehan Auditorium. “The major thing that we’ve heard over and over again is that people really hate going to shows in Meehan Auditorium,” Horn said, citing bad acoustics as a key the problems.

Their campaign will reach out to University officials, neighborhood associations, other student organizations and “everyone it takes to hopefully (move the concert outside),” Horn said. Potential problems include the threat of bad weather and possibly disruptive sound checks to be held during the day while classes are held on the Main Green, he noted.

Horn said BCA wants students to take a poll on its Web site starting after the fall show to gauge what students are interested in, how they want their student activity money spent and, specifically, whether they would like the Spring Weekend shows moved outside.

Campus environmental action garners $350k continued from page 1 ers on campus and key University environmental initiatives, notably that $350,000 had been committed to new community environmental projects.

Following the Energy and Environmental Advisory Committee’s recommendations last spring that Brown invest in environmentally-friendly endeavors, Simmons commissioned $150,000 toward projects that will decrease greenhouse gas emissions, raise environmental awareness and change people’s behavior on campus and in Providence. At the meeting, Elizabeth Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration, announced that the Sidney E. Frank Foundation would add a $200,000 gift to that sum, making a total of $350,000 available for environmental initiatives on campus.

The money will support student, faculty and staff projects that deal with sustainability and energy efficiency in the local community. A committee will be formed to oversee the distribution of the funding. “This is a community issue for all of us to weigh in on,” Huidekoper said. “We should advise the administration on how to manage this.”

A University statement about the Sidney Frank gift listed possible energy efficiency projects such as distributing compact fluorescent light bulbs to the local community, education initiatives for students in area public schools to learn about energy issues and climate change and increasing the energy efficiency of low-cost housing.

Huidekoper also announced that the University will reduce its carbon emissions by 38 to 42 percent by the year 2020, reducing significantly the approximately 73,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide Brown emitted last year. However, the decrease will be based on last year’s total square footage of campus buildings, Huidekoper said, and will not restrict University growth and building. “I wouldn’t want to be the one to limit

the future growth of Brown for any concerns,” Huidekoper said.

The student and faculty representatives to the BUCC had many suggestions for increasing the University’s energy efficiency, including community-based projects in conjunction with the Swearer Center for Public Service, changing parking laws so people do not have to move their cars during the day and building showers for faculty members who bike to campus.

The demonstration of the new emergency contact system was the other surprise of the meeting. In the past, administrators relied on bulk e-mails to send a campus-wide message, but Hunter said that method is not perfect because e-mail can take “quite a bit of time” to reach all students, faculty and staff. The new MIR3 system catalogs contact information for each student so that it can automatically send an emergency message, contacting students through multiple modes if necessary.

Hunter said MIR3 was ultimately chosen because, unlike similar systems, it has the ability to send text messages to students. “Text messaging is the preferred method of communication used by students on campus,” Hunter said. MIR3 also allows students to text back to indicate, for example, whether they were able to evacuate a building or whether they need help.

An e-mail was sent to all students in late September requesting they supply their cell phone numbers in case of an emergency. So far, Hunter said, 1,856 students had indicated they would be willing to supply their numbers, while 65 said they would not and 63 responded that they did not have a phone.

The University is also planning to install a campus-wide siren system to be used in cases of extreme emergency. For example, Hunter said, the siren might notify the campus of a tornado or a shooter but probably not a hurricane or a blizzard. Hunter said discussions are currently under way

with the College Hill Neighborhood Association, the Providence Police Department, the city government and other area universities regarding the siren’s implementation.

Finally, Michael Chapman, vice president of public affairs and University relations, and Tim Leshan, director of government relations and community affairs, reported on the complicated set of rules governing political speakers on campus with regard to the University’s nonprofit status. The issue is particularly relevant given the approaching 2008 election.

American politicians and political candidates are permitted to speak on campus, though they may not encourage listeners to vote for them or donate to their campaigns. Leshan said the receptions that commonly follow University-sponsored lectures and allow for more intimate conversations with the lecturer would probably be prohibited and seen as too political by the Internal Revenue Service.

Students, faculty and staff are also not allowed to raise money for political purposes in any venue of the University, using University resources or acting as a representative of the University, Leshan said.

This raised many questions among the BUCC members. Simmons wanted to know if making a personal donation to a political campaign from a computer on campus would be problematic. When Leshan suggested that, according to the IRS, such activities should probably be done off campus, Simmons replied, “I live on campus.”

A student asked, “What is the difference between Fred Thompson giving a policy talk and having a chat over cookies?”

Other BUCC members worried about the specifics of using University space to organize political groups, such as student groups that have formed in support of presidential candidates. Leshan said a student group may use University facilities to plan a campaign rally but may not hold a rally in University buildings.

C ampus n ews THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 5

New focus on upperclassmen in dean’s office

Author Jacobs ’90 spends year living the Bible

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

By Emmy Liss Contributing Writer

Upperclassmen are receiving more attention this year as Karen Krahulik, an associate dean who formerly oversaw academic dishonesty, now serves as associate dean for upperclass studies. The role has never before existed in the Office of the Dean of the College.

According to Krahulik, the position was created in May as a result of the “fresh eyes” brought to the office by Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron. Krahulik said Bergeron observed a lack of centralized resources for juniors, seniors and the departments and faculty who work with them. The idea behind Krahulik’s role was “to bring all related issues from junior and senior year under the rubric of one position,” Krahulik said.

Many of the areas Krahulik now oversees were previously scattered throughout the Dean of the College’s Office, which made resources less accessible to upperclassmen.

She now runs the independent concentration program, aiding students with proposals, assisting with advising and making sure students are meeting requirements. She also works in a similar way with students in dual-degree or five-year programs.

Krahulik’s responsibilities include working with Department Undergraduate Groups to help them secure substantial funding and spend it appropriately. She aids concentration advisers, but said her job is to “enhance” what they already do, not alter their jobs. Krahulik is also now the point person for bringing information to curriculum review groups, which simplifies a formerly convoluted process that involved various offices.

Krahulik and Bergeron are working on improving the senior capstone project, and encouraging more students to complete

By Sophia Li Contributing Writer

Min Wu / Herald

Associate Dean for Upperclass Studies Karen Krahulik intends to centralize resources for juniors and seniors at the Office of the Dean of the College.

one. Bergeron sees these projects as important because they are “an acknowledgement of what you have created with the open curriculum,” Bergeron said. She said the “curriculum values independent thinking and independent work,” and added that administrators need to “think about how that kind of work could shape senior year.”

Over the summer, a letter was sent to all rising seniors urging them to consider doing a capstone project. Krahulik said she felt the letter was a starting point in discovering “how we can communicate with students about available options.” Both deans said students were unaware of the variety of projects available to them. The letter was a way of “articulating that this is a possibility,” Krahulik added.

Capstone projects encourage students to think about options other than the traditional honors thesis, Bergeron said. A capstone can be anything so long as there is an “intellectual or dialogical component.”

In order to define the capstone

project, Krahulik’s office must first determine “what people are already doing,” she said. Her goal is to help students and faculty “get clarity on what kinds of final projects do qualify,” she added. She wants to encourage students to “be creative” and think about “what pertains to (their) academic interests,” she said.

Krahulik wants to make it feasible for students to do a capstone project, since junior year can be a pivotal decision-making time. In the future, the letter encouraging capstone projects will also be sent to incoming juniors as Krahulik begins to think about “how to best time initiatives in order to inspire” students, she said.

By the time senior Jay Levin ’08 received such a letter, it was too late to begin a capstone project. “I had already made up my mind that I wasn’t doing a thesis or anything,” he said.

Krahulik said that as with any new position, this year is a “work in progress” and she is seeking feedback, particularly from upperclassmen.

From shunning mixed-fiber clothing to stoning adulterers, A.J. Jacobs ’90 decided to do it all when he spent a year attempting to follow every law set out in the Bible and then write a book about his experiences. Released on Tuesday, “The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible” chronicles Jacobs’ difficulties adhering to laws written in a very different era.

“I grew up in a very secular home, with no religion at all,” Jacobs said.

“But I was interested in religion and the huge role it plays in world affairs.”

Jacobs said he wanted to “dive in headfirst” to understand the Bible and its relevance to his life. But his “journey of learning and adventure” also had a second objective.

“I wanted to show in an entertaining way that you can’t take the Bible too literally, or you’re doing a disservice to it,” he said. “When you read the Bible, you have to pick and choose the parts that are good about compassion, and avoid the parts about hatred, like condemning homosexuality.”

“There’s a phrase — cafeteria religion — which is used as a disparaging phrase, meant to apply to people who pick and choose parts of the Bible they want to follow. I say there’s nothing wrong with cafeterias — including the (Sharpe Refectory).

Occasionally I would find good food at the Ratty. It’s all about picking the right foods and not the ones about intolerance.”

To show how outdated some Biblical laws are, Jacobs tried to follow every law in the Bible to the letter.

Drawing inspiration from verses like Ecclesiastes 9:8, “Always be clothed in white...” Jacobs wandered

the streets of New York City in white clothes, sandals and a walking stick.

He stopped shaving and grew a full beard.

Jacobs came upon some unexpected opportunities in following a few of the Bible’s more outdated traditions. He found the modernday equivalent of a “biblical slave” in Kevin Roose ’09.5, who had contacted him in search of a job. Roose became Jacobs’ personal intern for the summer of 2006.

“I would spend a lot of time at Kinko’s, a lot of time fact-checking, a lot of time in the Jewish book section of the New York Public Library,” Roose said.

Roose also assisted Jacobs in his new lifestyle. “I had to find out whether crickets were kosher, I had to bake Ezekiel bread, (which is) the only recipe in the Bible, so I baked it for A.J. and his family.”

Roose said he accompanied Jacobs to Union Square Park to conduct a fruit sacrifice in compliance with Proverbs 3:9, “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops.”

“We set up a little altar of rocks in the middle of this busy park and offered (the fruit) up to God,” Roose said.

Jacobs and Roose also ventured to Times Square to honor the biblical commitment to clothe the naked. “We found the Naked Cowboy and gave him a shirt to wear,” Roose said.

Despite Jacobs’ amusing anecdotes, Roose said he doesn’t think the book will offend believers.

“I think it’s got a respectful tone that I think is new to a lot of books about people of faith. I think it appeals to a broad range of people and a lot of different types of people on all sides of the spectrum are going to find A.J.’s story compelling.” continued on page 6

Pre-law advising restructured after Dean Ashley’s departure

By Joanna Wohlmuth Contributing Writer

Linda Dunleavy and Andrew Simmons, associate deans of the College, officially assumed their positions as pre-law advisers this semester.

Perry Ashley, the former executive associate dean of the College and previous head of the University’s PreLaw Office, left that office on June 30. The office was then restructured to include fellowship, pre-med and pre-law advising under Dunleavy and Simmons.

Dunleavy has been at the University since 2003 as a fellowship adviser.

Simmons has been at Brown since 2005 as a health careers adviser. Both said they appreciated the value of their previous advising experience in transitioning to pre-law advising.

“Being involved in any type of elaborate admissions process, as I have, is very helpful,” Simmons said.

All three processes the new deans now oversee are application-based and generally require reviews of transcripts and recommendation letters, making the relationship between the adviser and student very similar in all three cases, Dunleavy said.

Both Dunleavy and Simmons continue to advise students on fellowships and pre-med, respectively,

but share responsibility for pre-law advising. “It is nice and unusual to share a program,” Dunleavy said.

The two work together closely to plan the pre-law program by coordinating information sessions and forums, developing materials for handouts and the Web site and discussing challenging questions that may arise during the advising process.

Dunleavy and Simmons met many times with Ashley over the spring semester last year to discuss pre-law advising, and both emphasized the central role he played in preparing them for their new positions, as well as the support he continues to offer them. Ashley helped make the transition as smooth as possible, Simmons said.

Though the office now has two deans, both Simmons and Dunleavy said they were trying to follow Ashley’s example for running the office.

Both deans said they are adapting well to their new roles. “(When) you sit down and start doing something, that’s when you start to learn. It’s an ongoing process through working with students,” Simmons said.

At Ashley’s suggestion, Dunleavy and Simmons attended the National Pre-Law Adviser Conference over the summer, where they were able to develop a network of fellow prelaw advisers and learned about the

pre-law advising process.

Ashley is on leave until June 30, 2008. He said he will meet with President Ruth Simmons later this semester to discuss returning to the University, though not in his former position as the pre-law adviser. “I care a great deal about Brown students, and may be in the position to advise them again in another capacity, although I don’t know at this point,” Ashley said.

Ashley added that he is very pleased with the number of law schools recruiting at Brown this fall, even though most schools were aware of the changes occurring in

the advising office.

Ashley declined to comment on the reasons he went on leave this year. In February, The Herald reported that Ashley was fired from his position as part of a restructuring of the Office of the Dean of the College.

“When I left at the end of June, I felt very confident about Dean Dunleavy and Dean Simmons taking over,” Ashley said. “I have heard from many Brown students and they seem to be pleased with the new system.”

Christopher Keys ’08 and Anton Brett ’09, presidents of the Pre-Law Society, were both enthusiastic about

working with the new deans.

“We are happy with the transition and I don’t think anything was lost in it. It was a worrisome transition but we have been impressed,” Brett said.

“We will be unable to gauge the big changes for two or three years.”

Deans have worked closely with the Pre-Law Society in the past, and Dunleavy and Simmons have been very proactive about communicating with the society to get information to students.

Simmons will be holding a question and answer session at the PreLaw Society’s general body meeting on Oct. 15.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Biblical year latest experiment for Jacobs ’90

Profs reminisce on Sputnik’s anniversary

Page 6

continued from page 5 Jacobs’ mission didn’t end with the laws of the Bible. He assembled a “spiritual advisory board” of priests and ministers to guide him on his spiritual journey. Jacobs recalled the words of one of his advisers in particular.

“He said that there are two ways you can view the world — as a series of rights and entitlements, or a series of responsibilities. In biblical times, they viewed it as the second,” Jacobs said, and compared this perspective to the John F. Kennedy quote, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

Jacobs also set out to explore different religious traditions, visiting communities of Hasidic Jews, Amish and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

To learn about other perspectives, Jacobs visited the Creation Museum — which takes a literal approach to Genesis — in Kentucky.

“They have animatronic dinosaurs and animatronic cavemen because they believe they existed at the same time,” he said.

The museum also housed a recreation of Noah’s Ark. The model was detailed to the extent that it included vents “to get rid of fumes from manure while out at sea.”

“From their perspective, we’re all descended from these two people, Adam and Eve, over 6,000 years (ago),” Jacobs said. He said as he tried to grasp this point of view, he experienced a strong feeling of kinship with other humans.

“It was an insight into why they would be attracted to that point of view,” he said.

Some of Jacobs’ explorations into the Bible were more lighthearted.

Realizing how frequently singing and dancing were mentioned in the Bible, Jacobs “did some biblical dancing” and played a 10-stringed harp.

“As a secular person I tended to focus on ... guilt and sin. But there is much joy in religion as well,” he said.

Jacobs mentioned the Sabbath as a more serious biblical tradition that he found enjoyable. “I’m a workaholic, always checking my e-mail,” he said. Calling the Sabbath a “wonderful tradition,” he said he enjoyed having a day to relax with family and friends so much that he plans to continue to observe the holiday.

Jacobs described his year of biblical living as “paradoxically liberating.”

“This was an experience where you had freedom from choice,” he said. “It’s interesting because I went to Brown because I loved ... the freedom of choice. I loved to explore, and people at Brown are so adventurous and full of curiosity.”

Explorations in Providence constituted some of Jacobs’ most memorable experiences at Brown, he said, such as walking on coal and attending a Wiccan festival. Jacobs applied his knowledge at the Brown TV station, where he was involved in a number of shows, including “Beyond Brown,” a show about places, events and activities in Providence.

Jacobs graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. “There were a lot of Fortune 500 companies hiring philosophers,” Jacobs joked.

“I found a little bit of trouble finding a job ... I could somewhat put a sentence together, so I began freelance writing.”

After writing for a small newspaper in California, Jacobs eventually moved back to New York City, where he worked for the New York Observer. He moved on to write for Entertainment Weekly and then for Esquire magazine, where he is currently editor at large.

Jacobs started using experimental lifestyles as the basis for stories long before he wrote “The Year of Biblical Living.” For an article in Esquire, Jacobs outsourced his life to a team in Bangladesh that took his phone calls, responded to his e-mails and even argued with his wife for him. For an earlier book, “The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World,” he read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A-Ak to Zywiec. “It keeps my life fascinating,” Jacobs said.

At the end of a bizarre year, Jacobs reflected on how living biblically affected his lifestyle. “I was (thankful) for everything, like the fact that my socks don’t have holes in them. I tried to focus on the 100 little things every day that go right instead of on the flip side that go wrong.”

“As he stopped gossiping, as he gave to the needy and followed the compassionate parts of the Bible ... I saw his personality change, his thought-life change,” Roose said. “I think A.J. would say that if you start to change your behavior, it tends to change your personality.”

Jacobs said that at the end of the year, he “wasn’t Gandhi or even Angelina Jolie.” All the same, he discovered he could integrate some aspects of the Bible into his lifestyle.

Some of the ancient book’s laws, Jacobs said, were “wise” — even “wonderful.”

continued from page 1 with American scientists working on similar projects to reach space.

“It was Korolyov’s personal race,” Khrushchev said. “He wanted to be the first.”

But Khrushchev downplayed Sputnik’s significance for the Soviet people, saying it was an expected success for the Soviet Union, though a shock to the United States.

“It was Americans who made all of the publicity of this,” he said.

“Then it was the beginning of (the space) race. It was only on one side — the American side. My father didn’t want to spend too much money. He had a different priority, to make life better for the people.”

Head spoke next, saying his childhood growing up in Washington, D.C., paralleled Khrushchev’s in many ways.

“We were fearful of Communism from an ideological standpoint,” he said. “We were also worried from a nuclear holocaust standpoint.”

Head played an audio clip of the beeping noise emitted by Sputnik heard around the world upon its launch. He said the world was shaken after Sputnik’s launch, pointing in particular to President Kennedy’s push, announced soon after Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space in 1961, to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

The launch had significance for Brown as well, Head said — the rapid growth of the United States’ space program and increased national defense funding more than doubled the size of the University’s science program and were a primary factor in transforming Brown from “a sleepy little Ivy League college” into the research university it is today.

Head also noted that Sputnik changed the way humans look at Earth. He said that in the 50 years that have passed since Sputnik’s launch, nine countries have launched satellites — though he had to be corrected when he accidentally listed the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist in 1991, as one of those countries.

Head concluded by displaying a sample of moon rock.

“We did get to the moon as human beings,” he said. “We’re in space to stay.”

Pollock, speaking next, did not have personal stories to tell of Sputnik — he said he wasn’t alive

in 1957. Instead, he drew on his knowledge as a scholar to put the event in historical context.

“Sputnik has been called the shock of the century,” Pollock said. “(Nuclear physicist Edward) Teller said the United States has lost a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor. My question is why we were so shocked.”

Pollock attempted to answer that question by pointing to a tendency by many in the United States to attribute Soviet scientific achievements to flukes, espionage or the product of ex-Nazi scientists, but never to the communists themselves.

A further reason for the shock, Pollock said, was that the assumption that democracy was the ideal environment for science — an assumption held since the end of World War II — was being challenged. “(It was) the real beginning of the sense that nuclear bombs could be dropped on American soil,” Pollock said.

The Soviets celebrated the 1961 flight of Gagarin rather than the 1957 launching of Sputnik. “Sputnik was part of a secret military project, which did not produce a hero like Gagarin,” Pollock said. “Korolyov was secret to the public. ... In 1961, the Soviets could now celebrate a hero. Sputnik was one step along the line in launching a man in space, much like in the U.S. rocket launches were along the line of landing a man on the moon.”

Levitsky, the final speaker, recounted his childhood in Prague, explaining how he was an avid reader, particularly of Soviet works about moon landings, which captured his imagination. “I felt my worldly troubles were to be erased if I were to somehow go into space and try to see some new, more exciting things,” he said.

He said the Sputnik launch was life-changing for him. “It has in fact given me hope,” he said, “that man can indeed reach into space.”

Levitsky credited Sputnik with inspiring him in part to publish his latest work, “Worlds Apart,” an anthology of pieces that tap into “Russia’s dream to fly.”

The panel concluded with a question-and-answer session with members of the audience.

“It’s really cool to see that professors ... have their classes but that they can also come together on something that is of personal interest to them,” said Daphne Beers ’08 after the event.

Reynaga latest addition to dean’s office continued from page 1 Lassonde, who was dean of Yale’s Calhoun College before beginning his job at Brown July 1, said he knew Reynaga “professionally” though “not very well” from their time at Yale. He said he had heard through colleagues “how good her work was,” and that he encouraged Reynaga to apply for the position at Brown.

The search committee interviewed eight candidates for the position and brought four of them to campus for further consideration, Lassonde said.

Reynaga’s work will largely address sophomore studies and programming at Brown, Lassonde said, an area that the dean of the College’s office plans to “direct attention to” in the immediate future.

According to Yale’s Web site, Reynaga, who graduated with her B.A. from Yale in 1998, is also an assistant staff writer for corporate and foundation relations in the university’s development office.

Reynaga could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening at her listed phone number in the Yale directory.

thanks for reading

w orld & n ation Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Nobel Prize in physics awarded to digital data storage scientists

By Shankar Vedantam The Washington Post

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday honored two scientists whose discovery revolutionized digital data storage, awarding the 2007 Nobel Prize in physics for work that allows millions to sway to music on their iPods and to store a lifetime’s photographs on palmsize devices.

Peter Gruenberg of Germany and Albert Fert of France were recognized for their independent discover y of giant magnetoresistance — an exotic phenomenon whose practical applications became ubiquitous in everyday life in less than two decades.

Among the results: The palmsize external hard drive that can hold a good chunk of your local library. The iPod that allows you to carry a thousand songs in your pocket. The computing revolution that allows your laptop to hold more information than a 19th-centur y warehouse.

The Europeans will share about $1.5 million, a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars in wealth they have to helped create in Silicon Valley and around the world.

“It feels great,” said Gruenberg in an inter view after he won the prize. As usual, Nobel Prize winners were alerted Tuesday half an hour ahead of the rest of the world by the academy in Stockholm. When

the call came, Gruenberg said, the voice on the other end of the line was extremely faint. He strained to understand what he was being told.

“When I heard the word, ‘Stockholm,’ I thought, ‘That’s it! I have won the prize!’ ’’ he recalled. Gruenberg and Felt had long been tipped to become Nobelists.

Their discovery that ultra-thin slices of metal have different electrical properties in a magnetic field not only changed the musical and computing habits of the entire planet but also altered the very landscape of how people think about information, and the ways in which music, movies and ideas can be shared.

Packing information into evermore-compact spaces is at the heart of the success of devices such as the iPod. That success would have been impossible without the scientific discovery honored Tuesday.

The phenomenon of giant magnetoresistance, or GMR, is one of those ideas that seems impossible until someone shows how it can be done, and then it seems obvious.

Hundreds of laboratories and companies today are expanding on Fert and Gruenberg’s idea, with results more striking than anything they had originally visualized.

Scientists such as Xiaoguang Zhang, a senior researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in continued on page 8

Two more killed in private security shootings

By Tina Susman and Christian Berthelsen Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Guards from a private security company opened fire Tuesday on a car that they said ignored commands to stop, killing two women and unleashing new Iraqi rage toward the convoys that protect many foreigners here.

The shootings in Baghdad’s Karada neighborhood, coming less than a month after Blackwater USA guards were accused of shooting to death as many as 17 Iraqis in the capital, brought an immediate response from Iraq’s government.

“The Iraqi government is about to take strict measures to safeguard the lives of our people,” said the government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, who said no country should permit companies to “mess around” on its territory. “Iraqi people are equal to those of any other nation.”

Salih al-Fyad, an Iraqi lawmaker and a member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party, said the shooting would make it more difficult for the Iraqi government to accept the continued operations of foreign security companies in Iraq.

“I think the Iraqi government will have clear and specific demands regarding the work of these companies,” he said. “The demands are increasing to lift the immunities and hold these companies accountable.”

A spokesman for Unity Resources Group, a security company whose head office is in Dubai, United Arab

High court throws out CIA abduction case

By David G. Savage Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — In a victory for the Bush administration and its use of the “state secrets” defense, the Supreme Court refused Tuesday to hear a lawsuit from a German car salesman who said he was wrongly abducted, imprisoned and tortured by the CIA in a case of mistaken identity.

The court’s action, taken without comment, was a setback for civil libertarians who had hoped to win limits on the secrecy rule, a legacy of the Cold War. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the so-called state-secrecy privilege has been invoked regularly to bar judges or juries from hearing claims of those who say they were beaten, abused or spied on by the government during its war on terrorism. Administration lawyers have argued successfully that hearing such claims in open court would reveal national-security secrets.

Civil libertarians complained Tuesday that the government was using the secrecy defense to cover up its own wrongdoing. They also said broad use of the rule was further damaging the nation’s image, already sullied by international condemnation of the “extraordinary rendition” program of arresting terrorism suspects and transporting them to foreign countries for interrogation.

“In a nation committed to the rule of law, the government’s unlawful activity should be exposed, not hidden behind a ‘state secrets’ designation,” said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, which had urged

Page 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

the high court to hear the case of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent.

The White House said it would make no comment on the court’s decision. Although the Bush administration never has acknowledged el-Masri’s account publicly, the German government has said that the United States admitted it made a mistake.

The Supreme Court dismissed el-Masri’s appeal in a one-line order, but it might consider the statesecrets rule in a future terrorism case. In late November, the justices are to hear a challenge to the administration’s continuing detention of several hundred men at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They also are likely to act on other appeals that raise the secrecy rule in cases challenging the warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

The state-secrets rule dates to a 1953 case involving the crash of B-29 bomber. When the widows of three crewmen sued and sought the official accident report, the Air Force refused, saying the plane was on a mission to test secret electronics equipment.

The court ruled, in U.S. v. Reynolds, that the need to protect the nation’s security outweighed the widows’ claim. Recent disclosures show the justices apparently were misled. When the accident reports were declassified, they revealed that the plane had been poorly maintained and that it did not contain military secrets.

Since that first case, the “state secrets” privilege has been invoked by every president a few times per year to shield certain evidence from being disclosed in court.

In recent years, the secrecy rule has been used more often and more broadly, said American University law professor Amanda Frost. “Before, it was used to limit discovery.

Now, they seek an immediate dismissal of the complaint,” she said.

For example, administration lawyers have said judges cannot hear challenges to the warrantless wiretapping of Americans because doing so would expose secret details about the program run by the National Security Agency.

Civil libertarians had hoped the Supreme Court would reconsider the secrecy rule in el-Masri’s case because U.S. officials had acknowledged privately that he was innocent.

A car salesman from Germany, el-Masri went on a holiday trip to the Balkans in the last days of 2003. He was stopped at a border crossing in Macedonia, and his passport was taken. He said he was questioned intensely and accused of associating with Islamic radicals.

According his complaint, he was blindfolded, taken to an airport and stripped of his clothes by a team of men who wore masks and were dressed in black. They drugged him and chained him inside an airplane, and he was flown to Afghanistan, the complaint claims. He was held there in a CIA-run prison for five months.

Then intelligence agents concluded they had the wrong man. He was not Khalid al-Masri, a wanted terrorist and a member of the Hamburg cell that organized the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. continued on page 8

Emirates, said its guards were involved in Tuesday’s shooting. The spokesman, Michael Priddin, said United Resources, which has operated in Iraq since 2004, would work with Iraqi authorities “to find out the exact facts behind the incident.”

A company statement said Tuesday’s shooting occurred after a car failed to heed warnings to stop approaching a Unity convoy.

“The first information that we have is that our security team was approached at speed by a vehicle which failed to stop despite an escalation of warnings which included hand signals and a signal flare. Finally, shots were fired at the vehicle and it stopped,” the company said in a statement.

The company is run by former Australian army personnel and was investigated last year in connection with the shooting of a 72-year-old agriculture professor, according to Australian media. The Australian foreign ministry at the time said the professor, Kays Juma, was shot because his vehicle failed to stop at a checkpoint in Baghdad.

Some witnesses agreed that a flare was fired, but at least two said guards fired into the vehicle after it had been partially disabled by warning shots. One witness said the car, which carried at least three women and one child, had rolled to a halt when the women inside were shot.

The incident was likely to heighten pressure on the Iraqi government to crack down on private security details. The Iraqi government has accused the Blackwater guards of

firing without cause Sept. 16, and al-Maliki has said the company is unfit to operate in Iraq.

The Karada incident was seen

by Iraqis as another case of locals paying the price for the foreign presence in Iraq.

“I saw two foreigners step out of their SUVs just 10 meters away from the victims’ vehicle after it had come to a stop, and then they opened fire,” said the owner of a plumbing supply store near the scene. He asked that his name not be used for security reasons.

He and others interviewed about two hours after the 1:40 p.m. shooting described a chain of events that began when a convoy of four SUVs came down a street at high speed, moving between cars in a zig-zag fashion.

The convoy overtook a white, 1990 Oldsmobile driven by a thin woman in her 60s. Witnesses said a younger, heavy-set woman sat in the passenger seat. A woman and child were in the back.

A 27-year-old laborer who would not give his name said one guard fired at the Oldsmobile’s radiator in an apparent attempt to force it to stop after it had come within a few yards of the convoy. The car continued moving, dragging the radiator along the ground, he said.

“Then, two guys came out, approached the vehicle and shot for almost 10 seconds before returning to their SUVs and fleeing,” he said.

“The woman in the back started continued on page 8

Republicans take aim at Democrats on economy

By Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz The Washington Post

DEARBORN, Mich. — On a day when the stock market hit a record high, Republican presidential candidates gathered here Tuesday for a group defense of low taxes and free markets and warned that Democrats, particularly Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, pose the greatest danger to the nation’s future prosperity.

Former senator Fred Thompson finally joined his rivals in a televised debate Tuesday afternoon, adding his voice to the chorus singing the praises of free trade, a reduction in regulation, private health care and reduced government spending. Like the others on the stage, he made his points by taking aim at the opposition party.

“When the Democrats start targeting the rich guy, if you’re a middle class guy, you ought to run to the other side of the house because you’re going to get hit,” Thompson said. The former “Law & Order” star appeared nervous as the debate began but seemed to grow more comfortable by the end of the twohour event.

“I’ve enjoyed watching these fellas,” he said when asked if he enjoyed himself. “I gotta admit it was getting kinda boring without me.”

The week-long spat between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani spilled from the campaign trail onto the stage, with each accusing the other of failing to keep taxes low and control spending.

Romney accused Giuliani of supporting a commuter tax in New York, prompting an annoyed Giuliani to retort that “the point is that you’ve got to control taxes. But I did it; he didn’t ... Under him, taxes went up 11 percent per capita. I led; he lagged.”

Romney refused to let the jab go by without a response, saying “It’s baloney. Mayor, you’ve got to check your facts. ... I did not increase taxes in Massachusetts.”

Clinton, D-N.Y., the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, became a repeated target throughout the debate, as the leading Republicans competed to demonstrate their readiness to challenge her in a general election contest.

Giuliani accused Clinton of weakness by failing to answer a question at a Democratic debate about the use of military action to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capability.

“Well, you’ve got to answer the question. The answer is: Yes, we would.

Iran is a greater danger than Iraq.”

Giuliani also charged the Democratic frontrunner with economic pessimism, saying she favored “endless ways to spend” taxpayers’ money and of threatened the U.S. health care system with her reform proposal. In a quip toward the end of the debate, he said, “I think there’s a looming problem with Canada that you missed. If we do Hillary care or socialized medicine, Canadians will have no place to go to get their health care.”

Romney was even more aggrescontinued on page 8

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Magnetoresistance discovery garners Nobel prize continued from page 7 Tennessee, described that original discovery as path-breaking.

“It really freed the minds of physicists,” Zhang said.

Although giant magnetoresistance does sound a bit like one of those mutants in the “X-Men” movie series, it actually describes a phenomenon at the junction of electricity and magnetism: When two layers of a metal such as iron are separated by a thin layer of another metal such as chromium, the application of a magnetic field can change the resistance of the structure — which determines how much electricity will flow through it.

Data in computer hard drives and iPod players are magnetically stored. Computer manufacturers have built GMR devices that “read” this data: As the mechanical reader “head” using GMR technology moves over the data, the magnetic field alters the resistance within the head, thereby controlling the flow of electricity. This in turn is translated into the ones and zeroes of digital information that processors turn into images, music or vast databases.

Without giant magnetoresistance, a lot of information could still be packed into a tiny space, but it would be unreadable. Effectively, GMR technology provides a sort of magnifying glass that allows electronic devices to read very tiny letters.

Venkatesh Narayanamur ti, dean of the school of engineering at Harvard University and a professor of physics, said Fert and Gruenberg’s discover y had led to a wide range of applications.

“If you can change the electrical properties of materials, that has important implications for a whole

bunch of applications,” he said.

Gruenberg and others credited American Stuart Parkin at IBM’s research labs in Silicon Valley for translating the European scientists’ research into practical applications. Some had expected Parkin to share the Nobel with Fert and Gruenberg.

“We have high expectations, and we are disappointed he was not considered with the other two, but the award was given for the raw discovery, and they did that,” said Mark Dean, Parkin’s boss and vice president for research at IBM. “We are very proud of Stuart,” Dean added. “We believe he was the key to identifying the materials and structures that made this understanding of the science practical. ... Without his work, we would not be sitting here with the capacities we have today.”

Dean said GMR technology has been central to allowing the computer industry to make dramatic leaps forward each year in the storage of data.

“The raw understanding of how nature works is a great thing,” Dean added. “The application of that knowing how nature works in the creation of something my mother can use is another great breakthrough — and as significant.”

Fert is a professor at the University of Paris-Sud, in Orsay, France. Born in Carcassonne, France, he is married and has two children. Gruenberg, 68, was born in Pilsen in what is now the Czech Republic. Now a German citizen, he works at the Institute of Solid State Research, which is part of a scientific facility known as Research Center Juelich in western Germany. He is married and has three children.

www.browndailyherald.com

Iraq shooting intensifies controversy continued from page 7 screaming. She had two kids with her, I think.”

The plumbing shop owner estimated the car was about 30 feet from the SUVs when the guards fired the fatal shots.

Witnesses said the driver was shot in the face and head and was virtually unrecognizable because of her injuries.

Drag marks on the ground showed the path of the car after its radiator had been shot out and indicated the car had moved about 50 feet after the initial shots.

The Associated Press identified the victims as Marou Awanis, 48, and Geneva Jalal, 30.

The foreign security companies contracted by the State Department, including Blackwater, Triple Canopy and Dyncorp International, enjoy immunity from prosecution in Iraq under an order issued by former U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer III. At least three investigations are underway in connection with the September Blackwater shooting, and the Iraqi-led probe concluded Sunday that the shooting was unwarranted and the guards involved

should be prosecuted in Iraq.

Some media reports indicated the government plans to demand $8 million in compensation for each of the families of victims in the Sept. 16 shooting. The government spokesman, al-Dabbagh, said nothing had been decided and that money was not the issue. “It is not a matter of compensation but rather the penalties that this company must pay for violating the law and human rights,” he told Arabiya TV. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Tuesday he was not aware of any demand being received by U.S. officials.

German detainee’s suit rejected continued from page 7 American officials did not apologize to el-Masri for the mistake or return him to his home. Instead, he was dropped from a truck on a hillside in Albania. From there, he returned to Germany and contacted a lawyer.

Two years ago, German chancellor Angela Merkel said after a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that U.S. officials “admitted this man had been taken erroneously.” In January this year, German prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA

agents for their roles in the abduction and alleged abuse of el-Masri.

In 2005, el-Masri filed suit against then-CIA Director George Tenet and the private contractors who flew him to Afghanistan. He sought damages for his “unlawful abduction, arbitrary detention and torture by agents of the United States.”

In response, administration lawyers said the law suit needed to be dismissed without a hearing so as “to protect classified intelligence sources.” A federal judge in Alexandria, Va., agreed and threw out the law suit.

This decision was upheld by the U.S. appeals court in Richmond, Va. In their appeal, ACLU lawyers said it made little sense to use secrecy as a reason to throw out a case whose facts had been broadcast and discussed throughout the world.

“This is a sad day,” said Ben Wizner, an ACLU lawyer for el-Masri.

“By denying justice to an innocent victim of this country’s anti-terror policies, the court has provided the government with complete immunity for its shameful human-rights and due-process violations.”

GOP debate in Mich. targets Clinton continued from page 7 sive in challenging Clinton’s health care plan, though in broad outlines it resembles the measure approved in Massachusetts while he was governor.

“The way we improve something is not by putting more government into it — of course, that’s what Hillary Clinton wants to do,” he said.

“Hillary care is government gets in and tells people what to do from the federal government’s standpoint.”

Answering a question about taking military action against Iran without consulting Congress, most of the candidates took a hard line, with Arizona Sen. John McCain said that while getting the approval of Congress is always best, “If the situation is that it requires immediate action to ensure the security of the United States of America, that’s what you take your oath to do.”

Romney offered a legalistic answer likely to invite criticism, saying that “You sit down with your attorneys and tell you want you have to do, but obviously the president of the United States has to do what’s in the best interest of the United States to protect us against a potential threat.”

The debate was sponsored

by MSNBC, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal and moderated by “Hardball” host Chris Matthews and CNBC host Maria Bartiromo.

The candidates included Thompson, Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo and California Rep. Duncan Hunter and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Its purpose, according to the sponsors, was to focus the candidate’s attention on economic

issues. Dearborn, Michigan was “the perfect backdrop to address the concerns of a rapidly changing workforce,” said Michigan GOP chairman Saulius “Saul” Anuzis.

But the candidates frequently addressed the questions more globally, vigorously defending free trade agreements that they said provide American companies expanded opportunities to sell their goods and services abroad.

“We can’t say, because these agreements weren’t perfect, because they have problems, because they have issues, we’re going to turn our back on free trade,” Giuliani said.

Many of the candidates even found kind words for organized labor, praising the work of unions.

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback fondly recalled his mother’s membership in the Postal Worker’s Union.

“She called herself a postal packin’ grandma for a good period of time,” he said. “And it helped her on health care.”

Asked to name a good union, Romney quickly offered the carpenters union, and then prompted chuckles when he added: “I’m probably not going to name specific bad unions.”

Huckabee urged his party to pay more attention to issues of economic insecurity and to confront the reality that many Americans do not believe that international trade agreements have been good for the country.

“This party is going to have to start addressing it or we’re going to get our britches beat next year,” he said.

Thompson’s par ticipation in the debate did not substantially change the dynamic from that of past events. But questioners targeted him with the most questions and even quizzed him on the name of the Canadian prime minister. (He answered correctly, quickly giving Stephen Harper’s last name.) He was the subject of some jibes, however.

Romney said the series of six debates reminded him of Thompson’s “Law & Order” television series.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Field hockey still winless on season continued from page 12 improvement over the course of the season, but it’s offense has been dragging.

“I think in the first half of our season we were building up our defense, but now we’ve established that. Our defensive play has gotten better,” Dhir said. “Now we need to go forward and make our attack better. We had a lot of opportunities around the cage. ... Now, we just need to finish.”

But the final score shows the Bears still have plenty to work on.

“After the game, one of our seniors, Sandhya Dhir, had talked

about continuing as a group for us to work on playing with passion and confidence and strength for the entirety of the game,” Harrington said.

“I think that’s something that we’re going to continue to work on. ...

We’re going to go forward and strive to make improvements, continue to work hard (and) stay positive.”

Brown returns home for the first time in 24 days on Saturday to face the Princeton Tigers (6-4, 3-1 Ivy) on Warner Roof at 12 p.m. The team will then travels north to Cambridge, Mass., on Sunday to take on the Boston University Terriers (10-4) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I think it’s a big weekend,” Harrington said. “It’ll be nice to be back here at Brown. We’ve been doing a lot of traveling in the last few weeks.

There are going to be a lot of alumni here this weekend. It’s also a weekend where we’re honoring the 24year coaching career of the former head coach, Carolan Norris.”

Norris stepped down over the summer to become an associate athletic director for administration in the athletic department.

“There’s going to be a lot of support and a lot of energy around this weekend. Our kids love to play at home, so I think that it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Harrington said.

Volleyball’s Ivy slump continues after losses continued from page 12 atop the Ivies with a 4-0 league mark, was another close one on the scoreboard, with Brown losing 30-27, 30-27, 30-23. But Dartmouth controlled most of the match, often going on five- and six-point runs in each game.

In the second game, down 26-19, Brown went on a 6-0 run of its own, with three consecutive kills from Alzate. But the Bears couldn’t keep up the momentum, eventually falling 30-27.

One of the main differences in statistics between Brown and its opponents this weekend could be seen in the hitting percentages. Harvard and Dartmouth put up percentages of .241 and .321, respectively, while Brown did its best work against Dartmouth, only mustering a .198.

“We really need to work at terminating the ball and hitting the ball for kills. We seem to be hitting at

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

people a little more than we need to,” Short said.

Short added that setter Natalie Meyers ’09 was playing well and setting the ball quickly so Brown hitters could face opposing blockers one-on-one.

“When you have a single block, you really need to put the ball away,” Short said.

Meyers had double-doubles in both games, finishing with a seasonhigh 57 assists and 17 digs against Harvard. She added 32 assists and 12 digs against Dartmouth.

“She did a great job reversing the flow and mixing up our shots,” Williamson said. “This weekend she was absolutely exceptional.”

Meyers had a slightly different take on the weekend. “It was pretty frustrating. We did play better against Dartmouth, but they were just the better team,” Meyers said.

“We started out with leads on teams and just couldn’t finish. Our coach

said we need to get a killer instinct and mentally finish.”

On the defensive side, Dartmouth’s middle blocker, Jess Thomas, had 20 kills against Brown, which Alzate attributed to a lot of short, power tips the team is not used to from Ivy League middles.

“They were able to use their middle a lot more,” Alzate said. “She knows how to move the ball around... and we’re still pretty young and making silly mistakes. I hope with more practice we’ll get out of these lulls.”

Bruno will have to put up some blocks of their own next week when they face UPenn and Princeton, who boasts the Ivy League leader in kills, Lindsey Ensign. Ensign has already racked up 236 kills on the year.

“Our goal is to play progressively better. If we do that, we will get some wins,” Short said. “We’ve been beating ourselves.”

The Bears return home on Oct. 19 against Columbia.

XC enjoys strong showing at NE Championship last weekend continued from page 12 personal best by 50 seconds and John Loeser ’10 (25:57) and John Haenle ’11 (26:03) both shaved 40 seconds off their previous times on the course.

Carr ying on the weekend’s string of personal best times, several members of the women’s cross-country team delivered solid performances in the New England Championships as well.

The Bears chose to race only their freshmen runners, but still managed to place 15th overall in the varsity race. The upperclassmen used this weekend as an opportunity to rest for upcoming

races.

Caitlin Clark ’11 finished first for the Bears with a personal best of 19:25, beating her previous best by 45 seconds.

Shortly following her were Megan Fitzpatrick ’11 (19:32) and Cara Harrison ’11 (19:55), both also setting personal bests.

“On the women’s side, we held out our top runners and will race again at (Pennsylvania State University) this coming Friday,” Lake wrote.

After the Penn State race, both teams will compete at the Ivy League Heptagonal Championships on Oct. 26, in Van Cortlandt Park in New York City.

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Staf f Editorial

Welcome, RJD2 We’ve got to hand it to the Brown Concert Agency — they’ve scored another stellar lineup for their fall concert. And this time, the organizers have switched up genres entirely, showcasing a heavy-hitting cast of hip hop and rap artists instead of the standard indie-rock centered lineups.

That electronica and hip-hop outfit RJD2 will headline the show is a welcome shift after appreciated but predictable bands like Ok Go, the Walkmen and the Wrens. Alongside Boston-based Mr. Lif and the emerging underground artist Doujah Raze, the show is slated to be memorable, indeed.

Though BCA hardly operates on a shoestring budget, they certainly stretch every penny. This show’s talent will cost $13,000 — and RJD2 alone will cost $7,500 — figures that pale alongside the Spring Weekend budget, which last year was pegged around $120,000.

BCA told The Herald that the genre jumping was in response to student feedback that not enough rap and hip hop acts were coming to the University. If only other student groups were as receptive to feedback and, more importantly, as efficient in applying it.

Deflating grades As Princeton administrators applaud their aggressive anti-grade inflation policy and Harvard remains ridiculed for graduating an absurdly large proportion of its senior class with honors, it’s clear grade inflation remains a prickly problem in higher education.

Since April 2004, the share of A’s in undergraduate courses at Princeton has dropped by 6.4 percent, to 40.6 percent. (The Princeton policy ultimately aims to establish a standard by which A’s constitute less than 35 percent of grades for undergraduate courses and less than 55 percent for junior and senior independent work). Meanwhile, at Brown last year, A’s constituted 49.5 percent of grades — up almost 10 percent over the last decade.

So is Brown contributing to a flood of congratulatory grades that, according to Princeton’s Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel, if “left uncontrolled — devalue the educational achievements of American college students”?

While Brown, like any university, has an obligation to safeguard the meaning of American college students’ educational achievements, it’s also in the University’s interest to help propel students to competitive graduate school or professional environments — all of which require impeccable grades.

Of course, at Brown we don’t even have the standard measures of grade performance: pluses and minuses, GPAs or class rank. In an academic environment that disregards many quantitative measurements of achievement, it would seem sacrilege for Brown to fret over grade distribution — especially when the same energy could be dedicated to maintaining a high standard for teaching methods and evaluative practices among University faculty. Perhaps in an era of unparalleled competition among high school and college kids, the principles of the New Curriculum are the best solution.

Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron may have even said it best: “Grading may not be the best measurement.”

T he B rown D aily H erald Editors-in-Chief Eric Beck Mary-Catherine Lader

Executive Editors Stephen Colelli Allison Kwong Ben Leubsdorf

editorial Arts & Culture Editor Lydia Gidwitz Arts & Culture Editor Robin Steele Campus Watch Editor Oliver Bowers Features Editor Stephanie Bernhard Metro Editor Simmi Aujla Metro Editor Sara Molinaro News Editor Ross Frazier Opinions Editor Karla Bertrand Opinions Editor Jacob Schuman Sports Editor Peter Cipparone Sports Editor Erin Frauenhofer Sports Editor Stu Woo Asst. Sports Editor Benjy Asher Asst. Sports Editor Amy Ehrhart Asst. Sports Editor Jason Harris photo Christopher Bennett Rahul Keerthi Ashley Hess

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pete fallon

Letters Democracy starts here? Burma protests aren’t pointless To the Editor: Rachel Forman ’09’s Oct. 4 letter to the Editor, “Forman ’09 questions impact of ‘red day’ for Burma,” was harsh and cynical in its criticism of the demonstrators who wore red last Friday in protest of the violent crackdown going on in Burma. According to her, their strategy was “pompous and self-important,” and most of them were probably just doing it to be sociable, anyway.

Forman is correct that hundreds of Brown students in red T-shirts cannot really demand anything of the governments in Burma or China, even if the students are joined by a former head of state, a former U.S. senator, a few international diplomats and faculty and staff of the University. However, in her rush to criticize her schoolmates as pompous and “delusional,” Forman overlooks the myriad ways that the demonstration might have produced results. For starters, it might have encouraged more students to learn about the situation.

The viewers of Providence’s NBC affiliate might have done the same after watching that channel’s coverage of the demonstration.

Additionally, in regards to the remark about China that prompted Forman’s letter: one need not look beyond our borders to understand that the force of international opinion can affect internal politics. This is what I think the leader of the Brown demonstrators, Patrick Cook-Deegan ’08, was getting at when he wrote,

“China must wake up and recognize that they are going to be held accountable for what goes on in Burma” (”Boycott China to free Burma” Oct. 2); I do not think he was claiming to have special power to rouse the Chinese government.

Finally, Forman is wrong to assert that “Burma doesn’t know we exist.” On the contrary, though their Internet connections were recently pulled by the government, the protestors in Burma have been sustained in small part by the knowledge that people all over the world are paying attention to the Burmese struggle, and that, unlike the Burmese, these observers and activists have some sanctioned pull with their respective governments. Many Brown students can be counted among those supportive outsiders.

In our desire to avoid the embarrassment and futility of self-congratulatory political posturing, we should not forget that just doing something, even if as small as demonstrating on College Hill, is often a very good start, and can aggregate into the provocation for something larger, like the diplomatic action that Forman rightly encourages. For that reason, among many others, I offer my strong appreciation and respect to the students, faculty, and community members who demonstrated at Brown for the cause of liberty in Burma.

David Wishnick ’07 Oct. 4

post- magazine Hillary Dixler Melanie Duch Taryn Martinez Rajiv Jayadevan Sonia Kim Matt Hill

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Philip Maynard, Brianna Barzola, Steve DeLucia, Designers Ayelet Brinn, Catherine Cullen, Gabriella Ra’anan, Sara Slama, Copy Editors Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Irene Chen, Chaz Firestone, Isabel Gottlieb, Nandini Jayakrishna, Franklin Kanin, Kristina Kelleher, Debbie Lehmann, Scott Lowenstein, Michael Skocpol, Nick Werle Staff Writers Amanda Bauer, Brianna Barzola, Evan Boggs, Aubry Bracco, Caitlin Browne, Joy Chua, Patrick Corey, Catherine Goldberg, Olivia Hoffman, Jessica Kerry, Cameron Lee, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Anna Millman, Marielle Segarra, Matt Varley, Meha Verghese Sports Staff Writers Andrew Braca, Han Cui, Kaitlyn Laabs, Kathleen Loughlin, Alex Mazerov, Megan McCahill Business Staff Diogo Alves, Emilie Aries, Beth Berger, Steven Butschi, Timothy Carey, Jilyn Chao, Ellen DaSilva, Pete Drinan, Dana Feuchtbaum, Patrick Free, Sarah Glick, Alexander Hughes, Claire Kiely, Soobin Kim, Katelyn Koh, Darren Kong, Christie Liu, Philip Maynard, Ingrid Pangandoyon, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Viseth San, Paolo Servado, Kaustubh Shah, Saira Shervani, Yelena Shteynberg, Jon Spector, Robert Stefani, Lily Tran, Hari Tyagi, Lindsay Walls, Benjamin Xiong Design Staff Brianna Barzola, Chaz Kelsh,Ting Lawrence, Philip Maynard, Alex Unger, Aditya Voleti, Wudan Yan Photo Staff Stuart Duncan-Smith, Austin Freeman, Tai Ho Shin Copy Editors Ayelet Brinn, Rafael Chaiken, Erin Cummings, Katie Delaney, Jake Frank, Jennifer Grayson, Ted Lamm, Max Mankin, Alex Mazerov, Ben Mercer, Ezra Miller, Seth Motel, Alexander Rosenberg, Emily Sanford, Sara Slama, Jenna Stark, Laura Straub, Meha Verghese, Elena Weissman

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O pinions Wednesday, October 10, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Building a mystery: Examining the Nelson Fitness Center BEN BERNSTEIN Opinions Columnist

Back in the olden days of Sept. 2004, while you were listening to a new rapper named Kanye and preparing to kick Bush out of office, Brown alumnus Jonathan Nelson ’77 was getting ready to spend some serious dough.

President Ruth Simmons announced at the 2004 convocation that Nelson, along with two other alums, would be shelling out 20 million bucks for a new fitness center to sit alongside the shabby Olney-Margolies Athletic Center and its ugly neighbors, the Pizzitola Center and Meehan Auditorium. Three years later, Kanye and Bush are still here, but the Nelson Fitness Center is probably three years away from completion. As the Corporation finalizes the plans for the center in the next several weeks, two questions must be answered: Why the long delay? What problems still plague the Nelson plans?

A Herald editorial in 2005 (“An exercise in planning,” Oct. 26, 2005) chattered excitedly about the “Nellie,” which would open in 2008.

Today, the estimated opening date is sometime in 2010 and construction hasn’t even begun.

What happened? In 2004, Brown held a contest to see who would design the Nelson Fitness Center, and the winner was the architectural firm SHoP (Sharples Holden Pasquarelli).

According to Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president, “hundreds of thousands of dollars” were spent on the SHoP plan before the University changed its mind. Oops. The Corporation wanted something different. And after the demise of the Smith Swim Center, they

wanted a pool as well.

Now we have a new architectural firm, Robert A.M. Stern, and a new plan that will cost, according to the Providence Journal, at least $25 million more than the original $20 million price tag. Spies called the money spent with SHoP “lost, but not wasted,” pointing out that without the failure of the SHoP plan, we wouldn’t be in the great position we are in now. This kind of argument can, of course, be used to justify any mistake, such as the wrong turn that leads you to some delicious hole-in-the-wall restaurant,

tice, using the current OMAC track requires dodgeball or sometimes dodgejavelin skills to rival Vince Vaughn. The track is also dark and depressing. Also endorsing an elevated track is Michael Goldberger, director of athletics, who sees the Nelson Fitness Center as a vital addition to the Brown community. By giving more space to both athletic teams and and community joggers, the elevated track kills two birds with one fitness center.

As anyone who’s ever tried to park near campus can attest, Brown has a serious parking

As the Corporation finalizes the plans for the center in the next several weeks, questions must be answered: Why the long delay? but when the mistake costs that much money, you must really get it right the next time.

The first step in getting it right is improving the new plans for the Nelson Fitness Center.

One simple way to accomplish this is to add an elevated jogging track to the Nelson Fitness Center. Peter Mackie ’59, a recent inductee to the Brown Athletic Hall of Fame, told me, “Few people realize just how many students, staff and alumni need a place to walk or jog and most of them are stuck walking in circles around Meehan or OMAC.” Indeed, with pickup basketball games and frisbee, baseball and track prac-

problem, which the Nelson Fitness Center will only exacerbate. Built in the current OMAC parking lot, the Nelson Fitness Center will eliminate hundreds of spots. Thus we are adding a great new reason to go to the athletic center, while simultaneously making it incredibly difficult to park anywhere nearby. It’s as crazy as it sounds. “I wish we could say we have a solution to that,” Goldberger said, pointing out that many alumni and Providence residents attend athletic events now, but “if it’s not convenient, they simply won’t come.”

It turns out the University had a possible

answer. Mackie says that “there was a plan for a parking facility attached to the east side of OMAC,” but Brown chose instead to go with a plan for satellite parking lots with shuttles. The University must present a parking plan to the city soon, and reconsidering a garage, possibly on Lloyd Street, should be one.

Considering the scope of this venture, it is very disappointing how little coverage there has been of the Nelson Fitness Center, the processes behind its planning and the decision to change architecture firms. Searching the Herald archives, the first mention of the change in architects is an Oct. 25, 2006 correction, and never has more than a sentence or two been devoted to the change or the new plans.

When I asked students, “Why are we adding another athletic center next to the OMAC?” the response tended to be “We’re adding a new athletic center?” or “I don’t know.” (One freshman answered me, “What is an OMAC?”) I hope that our various publications can answer these questions, put pressure on the administration and corporation to publicize their plans for the Nelson Fitness Center and provide the constructive criticism a project of this magnitude deserves.

The Nelson Fitness Center could be a huge boon. With several dance, yoga and spinning studios, new workout equipment, basketball courts, a juice bar, a new swim center and a speaking venue that won’t be as miserable as Meehan, there is the potential to radically improve the University. However, with a track record of delay, lost money and second guessing, it is time to get it right by adding a track, parking and getting the job done soon.

Ben Bernstein ‘09 writes a regular column on campus issues. If there is an issue you would like to bring to his attention, email benjamin_ bernstein@brown.edu.

On Shakespeare and the nature of genius

BY LINDSEY MEYERS Columnist Abroad OXFORD, ENGLAND — Anyone who has ever read a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel or watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie knows that our British cousins enjoy a good mystery. So it should come as no surprise that some Brits are joining forces with a group of Americans to reprise an old mystery, one that explores the enigmatic nature of genius itself.

What I refer to is the efforts of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition to raise doubt about the authorship of William Shakespeare.

British academics, actors and even the former director of the Royal Shakespeare Theater have signed the Coalition’s “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” that questions Shakespeare’s identity. In doing so, this trans-Atlantic group joins such past luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud and Sir John Gielgud in doubting whether Shakespeare actually wrote the works that famously bear his name.

Like all true skeptics, these most recent Shakespeare doubters do not claim to categorically prove their assertions. They do not definitively disprove Shakespeare’s authorship. Nor do they establish that another writer, such as my new local favorite, the Earl of Oxford, authored these works. Thus, they offer no dramatic climax solving this mystery, no final act revelation that the butler did it.

Instead, they seek to create reasonable doubt about whether Shakespeare wrote the works traditionally credited to him.

They ask why there is no conclusive evidence of Shakespeare’s authorship during his lifetime, or proof that he ever obtained a patronage, let alone received payment for his works. They also inquire why there are only non-literary documents pertaining to Shakespeare, such as the bequest of a “second best bed” to his wife, a legacy that prosaically does not even mention his plays and poems. Admittedly, there are no smoking guns in these

university education or access to the books necessary to become an autodidact of such astonishing erudition. In short, it beggars the imagination to suppose that the extraordinary sophistication of Shakespeare’s works somehow arose from the ordinary intellectual circumstances of his life.

Naturally, there are many who disagree with Shakespeare’s doubters. In fact, the books written on this subject probably could

Just as we cannot know the agony and euphoria of romantic love without having been in love, it seems that genius is an impenetrable mystery for all but the lucky few who are geniuses. arguments, no “if the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit” facts. Indeed, Shakespeare’s bequest to his wife might be proof positive of his wickedly funny genius.

Still, one does join the Shakespeare doubters in wondering how a commoner from an illiterate family in the then-provincial town of Stratford could write what many regard as the greatest literature in the English language.

This mystery is compounded by the doubter’s assertion that Shakespeare did not have a

fill a small library. Importantly, though, there are also skeptics of another sort who question why any of this matters. Some say that we will never be free of the literary hegemony of dead white males unless Shakespeare is relegated to the dustbin of history. Others assert that Shakespeare lacks currency in an age of text messaging when utilitarian abbreviations such as “lol” or “bff” render the beauty and grammar of Elizabethan English a charming, if difficult to understand, anachronism. And

still others claim that the question of who wrote Shakespeare’s works lacks intellectual interest, since authorial intent is irrelevant in literary analysis.

However, the controversy regarding Shakespeare’s authorship has proved remarkably resilient to marginalization in this or any manner. One reason why is that it appeals to our enduring fascination with genius. While we can recognize genius in others, understanding its mysterious laws of inspiration is quite a different matter. Just as we cannot know the agony and euphoria of romantic love without having been in love, it seems that genius is an impenetrable mystery for all but the lucky few who are geniuses. So, when we look at the life of Shakespeare, we may peer at a veil that our ordinary intelligence can wonder about but never see behind.

Thus, some doubt whether a man of ordinary circumstances such as Shakespeare could be a genius because they scoff at the idea that genius can overcome human limitations. However, was it any more improbable for Shakespeare to be a genius than it was for Beethoven to write the Ninth Symphony while deaf or for Mozart to compose musical masterpieces as a child?

Perhaps the nature of genius lies precisely in its ability to overcome normal human limitations. If so, the implausibility of Shakespeare’s authorship might confirm, rather than refute, his genius. The enduring mystery of the nature of genius should enliven our appreciation of Shakespeare, whether or not he actually wrote the works attributed to him.

Lindsey Meyers ’09 is sleuthin’ it up with our British cousins.

S ports W ednesday Page 12

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Volleyball lacks killer instinct in two losses

By Amy Ehrhart Assistant Sports Editor

Blown leads and spotty hitting were some key factors in another competitive but disappointing weekend for the volleyball team. After losing in four games at Harvard (30-28, 30-24, 26-30, 30-18) on Friday, the Bears were swept by Dartmouth the next day. Brown slipped to 0-3 in the Ivy League, and 2-11 overall, after the losses.

“On Friday, it was a tough loss for us,” said Head Coach Diane Short.

She said the team’s energy “was not as positive as it could have been,” especially after the team’s mistakes.

“Saturday, our energy was much better,” Short added.

Against the Crimson, the Bears held leads in the first and second games, but they could not maintain either. The Bears were especially frustrated with their second game, when they squandered a 14-8 lead.

“We were right there, but at the end of games, they would get a crucial string of points,” said Brianna Williamson ’11.

But several Brown hitters put up double digits in kills in the Harvard match. Megan Toman ’11 led the team with 18 kills, while Williamson had 14. Kiana Alzate ’10 threw down 10 and Danielle Vaughan ’11 had seven kills to go along with six blocks.

The match against the Big Green, continued on page 9

By Elisabeth Avallone Contributing Writer

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Katie Lapinski ’08 had 39 digs over the span of two matches this weekend but the volleyball team dropped both games.

M. golf stuck in middle of pack at MacDonald Cup

By Christina Stubbe Contributing Writer

The men’s golf team finished in 13th place in the two-day MacDonald Cup at the Yale Golf Course on Oct. 6-7, shooting a team score of 614.

The Bears began strongly, playing well on Saturday, but a disappointing Sunday score of 313 led to a drop in the final rankings.

Texas Christian University won the 26-team tournament with a score of 573, edging host Yale (578).

M. cross-country runs away with New England Championship

On Saturday, Brown shot 301, good enough to end the day in a tie for sixth place. It was an encouraging day, because the Bears were bouncing back from a rough performance at the Adams Cup two weeks ago, when they finished in 15th place.

“The first day we made a lot of improvements,” Chris Hoffman ’09 said.

Defending New England Champion Larry Haertel ’08 led the team on Saturday, finishing the day in

fifth place individually with an evenpar 71. Hoffman also had a strong day, carding a 75.

Mark Dee ’11 had a promising collegiate debut, shooting 78.

“As far as I can remember, that is the best a freshman had done in his first tournament,” Hoffman said.

On the second day of the tournament, Brown slipped, shooting 313.

Only one golfer, John Giannuzzi ’10 (84-78-162), was able to better his first-day score.

Still, there were some strong in-

dividual showings. Haertel finished ninth with a two-day score of 146 (71-75). Hoffman turned in Brown’s second-best performance, shooting 80 on Sunday to place 61st with a total score of 155.

The Bears are now preparing for their end-of-fall tournament, the ECAC Championship on Oct. 13-14 at the Shelter Harbor Country Club in Charlestown, R.I. After that competition, the team will scale back practice for the winter and resume the season in the spring.

Roughly 300 runners from 43 different schools anxiously stood on the starting line of the New England Championships in Boston on Saturday. Twenty-four minutes and 54 seconds later, Christian Escareno ’10 finished with the head of the pack, leading the men’s cross country team to a first-place finish at Franklin Park.

Despite gruelingly hot temperatures the Bears finished with four runners in the top 20. Escareno finished third, Ryan Graddy ’08 placed ei ghth with a time of 25:24, followed shortly by Ari Zamir ’08 in 16th place (25:37), and Stephen Chaloner ’09 in 20th place (25:47).

“We went in wanting to win the men’s New England Championships and we did just that,” wrote Head Coach Craig Lake in an e-mail to The Herald. “I was most impressed by our depth and our younger guys really stepping it up. We had a number of guys run personal bests of 30-45 seconds ­— which is phenomenal.”

Escareno, who also led the Bears with his 12th-place finish at the Iona Meet of Champions on Sept. 22, had his best finish of the season, trailing only Boston College’s Patrick Mellea and Timothy Ritchie.

“I love racing more than anything else in life, and having a go against 300 other runners, on one excessively hot day, was pure bliss,” wrote Escareno in an e-mail.

“In the end, many of our men did not have a good day, but we still beat 42 teams for the win. It makes me wonder what we would be capable of if we all had one perfect day,” she said.

The men’s sub-varsity team also won its race. Leading the pack was Sam Sheehan ’11, who won the subvarsity race (25:45) while also beating a personal best by 45 seconds.

Colin Brett ’10 (25:57) bettered his continued on page 9

After second-half lapses, field hockey stays winless

By Andrew Braca Sports Staff Writer

Sometimes the box score lies. The field hockey team (0-10, 0-3 Ivy League) surrendered four secondhalf goals to Columbia (5-5, 1-2 Ivy) in a 4-0 loss on Saturday in New York.

Still, the loss wasn’t nearly as lopsided as the margin made it look.

“I think we played really well in the first half and in parts of the second half,” said forward Sandhya Dhir ’08. “When we didn’t play (in the second half) the way we usually play ... that’s when they scored the goals.”

The Lions parlayed advantages of 19-12 in shots and 16-8 in penalty corners into their first victory over Brown since 2000. Head Coach Tara Harrington ’94 said those stats overstated the gap between the teams.

“I thought we played a pretty tight first half with Columbia,” she said.

“We started off the second half a little flat. We sat back and watched a little bit. They came down right away and got a quick goal. That kind of

changed the tempo of things, (and) they got two (more goals) really quick.”

In the first 35 minutes, Columbia outshot Brown 9-1 and had seven penalty corners, but goaltender Lauren Kessler ’11 stonewalled the Lions with six saves to keep the game scoreless heading into halftime.

“A lot of the action took place in the midfield, and it was really kind of back and forth,” Kessler said. “It was very controlled. The kids felt very confident in what they were doing.”

Things fell apart quickly for the Bears in the second half. Columbia opened the scoring just 1:15 into the second half when Liz Reeve took a pass from Julia Garrison and fired a shot past Kessler to the back of the cage.

Garrison then scored twice on corners at 45:44 and 49:17 to give the Lions a commanding 3-0 lead.

Megan Davidson capped the scoring at 59:43 by collecting a rebound and beating Kessler, who finished with nine saves.

Dhir attributed the Lions’ breakout more to shoddy play on the Bears’ part rather than Columbia improving its performance.

“That’s happened at times when we weren’t playing with passion and the confidence that we had played with before,” she said of the secondhalf collapse. “It’s not like all of the sudden Columbia started playing really well. It’s that, at times, we couldn’t do the things we needed to do. Had we played consistently from the first half of the game to the end, I think we would have won.”

The only upside for the Bears in the second half was that the offense perked up to outshoot the Lions, 1110, and draw eight penalty corners, as many as they had drawn in total the past four games. Katie Hyland ’11 and Tacy Zysk ’11 paced Brown with three shots each, but Columbia goaltender Gena Miller preserved the shutout with six saves.

Even though it gave up the four goals, Brown’s defense has shown continued on page 9

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Tacy Zisk ’11 threw three shots on goal against Columbia, but none went in, and the field hockey team lost to the Lions.