Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The Brown Daily Herald T uesday, N ovember 13, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 109

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

How green is Brown?

THE HERALD POLL

Students favor Obama, Herald poll finds

Sidney Frank Hall to become first LEED-certified building

President Ruth Simmons maintains high approval rating

By Taryn Martinez Staff Writer

As the University’s physical campus expands at a rapid pace, the plans for new buildings are energy efficient but do not necessarily meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences will be Brown’s first LEEDcertified building — the building, which opened in 2006, is currently going through the certification process — but the University’s dedication to constructing energy efficient buildings predated the widespread adoption of LEED as a standard, said Kurt Teichert, Environmental Stewardship Initiatives manager.

LEED, the widely accepted benchmark for high-performance green buildings, has four certification levels — certified, silver, gold and platinum — which represent how many “points” a LEED project has earned for meeting standards such as sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. New and

By Isabel Gottlieb and Franklin Kanin Senior Staff Writers

Chris Bennett / Herald File Photo

After it completes the certification process, the Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences will be Brown’s first LEED-certified building.

existing buildings, building shells, schools and homes may all be registered for LEED certification.

In Sidney Frank Hall, for example, energy efficiency measures focused on electronic control systems.

The building’s cooling system uses the most efficient non-ozone depleting chiller plant technology available, Teichert said. Sidney Frank Hall also serves as a chilled water

“core plant,” which feeds a number of buildings in that area, saving effort and energy.

“Free cooling” in Sidney Frank Hall allows outside air that is already the appropriate temperature to flow through the ventilation system without being heated or cooled, Teichert said.

Additionally, lighting occupancy sensors were set up to control the

heating and ventilation systems.

“When the room is unoccupied, it sends a message to the system to scale back the temperature,” Teichert said.

In general, with features like Sidney Frank Hall’s, Brown makes good use of sustainable design principles, said Julia Beamesderfer ’09, continued on page 6

Where religion and politics intersect, Brown students diverge

By Stefanie Angstadt Staff Writer

When Hillel’s Brown Street building first opened its doors in 2004, Brown Hillel staff intentionally refrained from hanging the Israeli flag within its structure, concerned that students would see the flag as a symbol of political partisanship.

Two years later, student leaders to the American flag in the Hillel at Hillel influenced the decision to building lobby. raise the flag for the first time. To While some students oppose the them, the symbol flag’s tenancy, sayrepresented supFAITH ON CAMPUS ing that support por t for Israel for Israel should last in a series on from a standpoint religious life at the University not be inferred by a strictly apolitical of religious identity rather than political partiality. religious organization like Hillel, othToday, the Israeli flag hangs next ers support it, saying support for

Denzel in Providence?

GISP members hope so

by Marielle Segarra Staff Writer

3

METRO

www.browndailyherald.com

continued on page 6

sc u lpt i n g a speech

FEATURE

Hollywood is no stranger to the underdog story: Audiences have watched the little guy triumph over adversity ad nauseum in sports films such as “Remember the Titans,” “Million Dollar Baby” and “Little Giants.”

But 13 Brown students have discovered that Denzel Washington wants to bring attention to a different type of underdog story — and they want to help him with his project.

The Oscar-winning actor is starring alongside Oscar winner Forest Whitaker in the movie “The Great Debaters,” which is loosely based on the true story of the 1935 debate team at Wiley College, a historically black institution. In the movie, the team upsets Harvard’s all-white team to win a national debating champion-

INSIDE:

Israel is important for non-political reasons.

“Currently, we do have the flag up because we stand by Israel,” said Eytan Kurshan ’08, Hillel president.

“The stance of the national Hillel organization is, ‘Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel,’ and we live by

ship. Oprah Winfrey’s production company, Harpo Productions, is working with Washington to produce the movie, which is set to open Christmas Day. The Brown students, led by Jeremiah Kittredge ’08 and Shiyin Wang ’08, designed a Group Independent Study Project to promote the film for the Weinstein Company, which is distributing it. The students have a loftier goal than box office sales, though — they want to use the movie to gain support for debate programs in Rhode Island.

The message of the film fits well with the students’ aims to bolster urban debate across the state, Kittredge continued on page 8

RECYCLE yOUR NIKES A plucky Wheeler School student is leading an effort to recycle old sneakers in Providence.

5

CAMPUS NEWS

Meara Sharma / Herald Sculptor Mark di Suvero delivered the Agnes Gund Presidential Lecture Monday afternoon in List Art Center.

WINTER BREAK WORK Students will eat and sleep in a church downtown for a week in January while doing community service.

11

OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

Free taiwan Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China have always been two countries, six alums and students say.

Brown undergraduates overwhelmingly favor Sen. Barack Obama, DIll., in the 2008 presidential election, according to a Herald poll conducted last week.

37.5 percent of students said they believe Obama would make the best president of the United States, versus 18.4 percent who said they favored Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina came in third with 5.6 percent, and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas led among Republican candidates, with 3.1 percent of the Brown vote.

The Herald poll was conducted from Nov. 5-7 and has a 3.9 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence. A total of 621 Brown undergraduates completed the poll, which was administered as a written questionnaire to students in the University Post Office at Faunce House and in the Sciences Library.

Though 83.4 percent of students expressed an opinion about their favorite presidential candidate, only 5.6 percent said they currently work or volunteer for a presidential campaign.

66.5 percent of students said they support converting some or all multi-user restrooms in residence halls into gender-neutral facilities.

But just 12.6 percent of respondents said they want all bathrooms to be converted, and 53.9 percent said they want some bathrooms to remain single-sex only. 23.2 percent of students said they do not want any bathrooms to be converted.

Currently, over half of the University’s single-use, lockable bathrooms in residence halls are gender-neutral, and some multiuser bathrooms in residence halls have also been converted to genderneutral status. The University is in the process of mapping on-campus bathrooms and deciding which can be designated gender-neutral.

President Ruth Simmons remains highly popular among students, according to the Herald poll. 84.9 percent of respondents said they approve of the job Simmons is doing as president, with 43.2 percent of those students strongly approving.

Just 4.3 percent of students said they somewhat or strongly disapproved of the job Simmons is doing, and 10.8 percent didn’t know or had no opinion. In a Herald poll conducted in January and February, 81 percent of students said they approved of Simmons’ work.

The Undergraduate Council of Students did not elicit the same positive reaction as Simmons. 39.3 percent of students said they somewhat continued on page 4

12 SPORTS

PUCKS a-FLASHING The men’s hockey team went 1-1 at a weekend homestand, downing Colgate but falling to Cornell.

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

We a t h e r

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

Today

TOMORROW

sunny 57 / 34

mostly cloudy 58 / 49

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Pasta Spinach Casserole, Sweet Potato Fries, Grilled Tuna Sandwich with Cheese, Sundried Tomato Calzone, Beef Barley Soup, Vegetarian Lentil Soup, Sugar Cookies

Lunch — Shaved Steak Sandwich, Spinach Strudel, Mandarin Blend Vegetables, Enchilada Bar, Vegetarian Liz’s Great Vegetable Soup, Chicken Gumbo Soup

Dinner — Vegan Vegetable Saute with Tempeh, Sticky Rice, Sugar Snap Peas, Sweet Potato Fries, Sesame Chicken Strips, Boston Cream Pie

Dinner — Roast Pork Ouvert, Stir Fry Station, Baked Potatoes, Carrot Casserole, Brussels Sprouts, Honey Wheat Bread, Boston Cream Pie

Sudoku

Aibohphobia | Roxanne Palmer

Octopus on Hallucinogens | Toni Liu and Stephanie Le

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

Nightmarishly Elastic | Adam Robbins

© Puzzles by Pappocom RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Los Angeles Times Puzzle C r o sDaily s w oCrossword rd Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Cuban coin 5 Goes on a tirade 10 Clock-radio switch 14 Alda of “The West Wing” 15 Dizzying gallery display 16 Mall event 17 City on Lake Erie 19 “Law & Order: SVU” actor 20 Rifle range command 21 Runner sans duds 23 Old-time lighter 27 Always, in poetry 28 WWII arena 29 Halsey’s USN rank 30 Simba’s love 32 New Look designer 34 Dashboard gadgets 37 Egyptian played

by Liz 39 Gospel writer 40 Divisions for the Yanks and Mets 42 Giggly Muppet 44 Remain unsettled 46 Poor sport 48 Takes legal action 50 Actress Talbot 51 Former CIA counterpart 52 Fruit drink named for a vitamin 54 Denver-to-Des Moines dir.

56 Melonlike fruits 58 Restricted pending disciplinary action, in the military 61 Brussels’s land: Abbr.

62 This-and-that dish 63 Agricultural school, jocularly 68 Place for a kid’s house 69 “So long” on the Seine 70 Got on in years 71 Boys, to men 72 Palindromic principle 73 Word that can precede the first word of 17- and 63-Across and 11- and 25-Down

DOWN 1 Butter serving 2 “Evil Woman” rock gp.

3 Actor Mineo 4 Ryan of “Love Story” 5 College cohort 6 GI mail drop 7 “Ixnay” and “No way” 8 Shopworn 9 In an old trunk, perhaps 10 Where billions live 11 Cloud group resembling fish scales 12 Fast on one’s feet 13 Prefix with sexual 18 Carla’s coworker on “Cheers” 22 __ the Red 23 London lockup 24 Total 25 Deceptive device 26 Responses to charges 31 Flaming misdeed 33 Breakfast spread 35 Waiter’s handout

36 Get ready to become a 21Across 38 Last in a series 41 Commenced 43 Planets or peepers 45 Requiring much thought 47 Place for a squirting flower 49 Arctic expedition vehicle

52 Regis and Kelly, e.g.

53 “101” class, briefly 55 Undermine 57 God of Islam 59 Females in the flock 60 Bed size 64 Ho-hum grade 65 Big head 66 Hair styling goo 67 Joseph of ice cream fame

Classic Deo | Daniel Perez

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Classic How To Get Down | Nate Saunders

xwordeditor@aol.com

11/13/07

T he B rown D aily H erald Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 Business Phone: 401.351.3260

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

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

Mary-Catherine Lader, Vice President Mandeep Gill, Treasurer Dan DeNorch, Secretary

By Nancy Salomon & Harvey Estes (c)2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

11/13/07

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

C AMPUS N EWS Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Most of campus registers with emergency database

METRO

Wheeler student’s recycling project kicks into action

By Patrick Corey Staf f Writer

The average Brown student’s weekly recycling bin might contain a variety of empty plastic bottles from Josiah’s, cardboard boxes and probably a large number of aluminum cans. Few would likely contain any type of footwear, but thanks to the environmentally conscious efforts of one local middleschooler, Providence residents and Brown students can now recycle their old sneakers at special bins located around the city.

While flipping through National Geographic Kids, Andres Salmeron, a seventh grader at the Wheeler School, saw an advertisement for the magazine’s effort to break the Guinness World Record for the longest chain of shoes. After breaking the record, he read, the shoes would be donated to the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program, which turns recycled shoes into playing surfaces for kids.

According to the National Geographic Web site, it takes between 2,000 and 2,500 pairs of old sneakers to create a basketball court.

Actress Cameron Diaz and several members of the U.S. women’s national soccer team have been among the celebrities donating to the project, according to the Web site.

Salmeron said the ad for that project inspired him to organize a sneaker drive in Providence, after which he would send his collection to National Geographic Kids. He said that he set a goal for Rhode Island — the smallest state in the union — to make the largest contribution to the national effort.

To get started, Salmeron said, he called City Hall and Brown’s Center for Environmental Studies, explaining his project and asking to put collection bins outside their locations. Both were happy to help, Salmeron said. So far, those are the only two bin locations available, though he plans to set up additional bins at the Brown Bookstore and the State House.

Patti Caton ’92 MA’02, administrative manager at the Center for Environmental Studies, said the Center publicized Salmeron’s effort with a blurb about him in its newsletter.

“It’s really wonderful that he’s taken the initiative to do something like this,” she said.

Salmeron said he has collected 15 pairs of shoes so far, but he was confident that the final count would be higher. As more people learn about the project and more bins are set up, donations should start to increase, he said.

The National Geographic deadline for donations to the project is Jan. 22, 2008, and Salmeron said he plans to send whatever he collects before that deadline.

Salmeron made it clear that, even as a seventh-grader, for him this project is not about the fame — the Guinness World Record is secondary to “raising awareness about recycling,” he said.

“I’ve always been interested in the environment,” Salmeron

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

said. He cited the book “50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth” and former Vice President Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” as works that inspired his passion for environmentalism.

After the project is over, Salmeron said he hopes Rhode Islanders will continue to recycle their sneakers. The Rhode Island Resource Recover y Corporation, the company that owns the Johnston Landfill — home to Providence’s trash — recycles sneakers throughout the year, Salmeron said.

“I’d really like Rhode Island to start being more environmentally conscious,” Salmeron said.

By Anna Millman Staff Writer

Many students could have been blissfully unaware that a tropical storm was barreling down on Rhode Island at the beginning of November. But thanks to the University’s new emergency contact system, members of the Brown community were given advance warning about the high winds and rain that accompanied Tropical Storm Noel’s brush with New England 10 days ago.

In addition to a campus-wide e-mail warning about the storm, two e-mails were sent by the University in recent weeks urging students and staff to submit their contact information to Brown’s new emergency database system, which will be used to contact members of the community in the event of a crisis. The system is part of a wider campus effort to introduce new safety measures, including a

series of sirens.

The database system has been in discussion since early last year. The idea of developing a way to contact members of the Brown community quickly became more of an issue after the April shootings at Virginia Tech University.

“We started before Virginia Tech, but certainly after Virginia Tech it was even more apparent to us that something was needed,” said Vice President of the Administration and Chief Risk Officer Walter Hunter.

So far about 3,600 undergraduates — 60 percent of the College student body — have registered their cell phone numbers in the database, as have 62 percent of staff, Hunter said.

Though ideally all students would register their cell phone numbers, Hunter said that as long as most students have registered, emergency notifications should be effective. “When these (text) messages go out, the area

Chris Bennett / Herald

Vice President for Administration Walter Hunter

gets pretty well saturated, even if not everyone gets the call at the same time,” Hunter said.

Some students expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of the new safety measures. Ulises Gutiercontinued on page 6

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Poll finds students have few sexual partners continued from page 1 or strongly approved of the job UCS is doing, down from 46 percent who approved last spring. 29.1 percent of students say they disapprove of how UCS is handling its job, and 31.6 percent said they didn’t know or had no opinion, compared to 34 percent last semester who gave the same answer.

42.2 percent of students said they had no opinion of how Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron is handling her job, while 26 percent said they approved and 31.8 percent said they disapproved.

Though Brown students may have a reputation as apathetic college sports fans, 52.7 percent of respondents said they have attended a Brown varsity sports game this semester, versus 47.2 percent who said they have not.

Asked how many sexual partners they have had this semester, 44.8 percent of respondents said they have had one to two partners this fall, 3.7 percent said they have had three or four sexual partners and 1.3 claimed five or more. 43.3 percent of students said they have had zero sexual partners so far this semester.

In response to a question asking what substances poll-takers have used in the past month, 77.8 percent of students said they drank alcohol. 32.5 percent of respondents said they used marijuana, and 17.6 percent said they used tobacco. 2.3 percent said they used cocaine and 2.1 percent said they used amphetamines. 17.9 percent of respondents said they used none of the listed substances.

Responding to the chronic parking crunch on College Hill and the

upcoming destruction of the parking lot outside the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center to make room for the new Nelson Fitness Center, the University has indicated it may build off-campus parking lots and run a shuttle service from there to campus.

Of the 11.4 percent of students surveyed who said they keep a car on campus, 39.8 percent said they would use such a service if it was the only option available, while 41 percent said they would find another way to park their cars on campus.

Only 3.6 percent of students said they would be dissuaded by such measures from actually bringing their cars at all. The margin of error for that question was 10.7 percent at 95 percent confidence, due to the smaller number of respondents who said they currently have a car on campus.

herald poll res u lts 1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Ruth Simmons is handling her job as president of Brown University?

Strongly Approve: 43.2 percent Somewhat Approve: 41.7 percent Somewhat Disapprove: 3.5 percent Strongly Disapprove: 0.8 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 10.8 percent 2. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Katherine Bergeron is handling her job as dean of the College?

Strongly Approve: 6.8 percent Somewhat Approve: 19.2 percent Somewhat Disapprove: 23.3 percent Strongly Disapprove: 8.5 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 42.2 percent 3. Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Undergraduate Council of Students (UCS) is handling its job?

Strongly Approve: 6 percent Somewhat Approve: 33.3 percent Somewhat Disapprove: 21.9 percent Strongly Disapprove: 7.2 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 31.6 percent 4. Do you support the conversion of multi-user bathrooms in residence halls to gender-neutral status?

Yes, I support converting all bathrooms: 12.6 percent Yes, I support converting some bathrooms: 53.9 percent No, I do not support converting any bathrooms: 23.2 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 10.3 percent 5. Which of the current 2008 presi-

dential candidates do you believe would make the best President of the United States?

Barack Obama: 37.5 percent Hillary Clinton: 18.4 percent John Edwards: 5.6 percent Dennis Kucinich: 4.5 percent Ron Paul: 3.1 percent Mitt Romney: 2.7 percent Bill Richardson: 2.6 percent Joseph Biden: 2.4 percent Rudy Giuliani: 1.8 percent John McCain: 1 percent Mike Gravel: 0.6 percent Fred Thompson: 0.5 percent Tom Tancredo: 0.3 percent Duncan Hunter: 0.2 percent Christopher Dodd: 0 percent Mike Huckabee: 0 percent Other: 2.3 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 16.6 percent 6. Are you currently involved with or working/volunteering for a presidential campaign?

Yes: 5.6 percent No: 93.6 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 0.8 percent 7. Have you attended a Brown varsity sports game this semester?

Yes: 52.7 percent No: 47.2 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 0.2 percent 8. Do you keep a car on campus?

Yes: 11.4 percent No: 88.4 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 0.2 percent 9. If you answered yes to the previous question, would you use

an off-campus parking lot with shuttle service to campus for car storage if that were the only option available to you? (The margin of error on this question is 10.7 percent, versus 3.9 percent for the rest of the poll.)

Yes: 39.8 percent No, I wouldn’t bring a car at all: 3.6 percent No, I would find another way to store my car: 41 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 15.7 percent 10. How many sexual partners have you had so far this semester?

0: 43.3 percent 1-2: 44.8 percent 3-4: 3.7 percent 5-6: 0.5 percent 7 or more: 0.8 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 6.9 percent 11. In the past month, which of the following substances have you used?

Alcohol: 77.8 percent Marijuana: 32.5 percent Tobacco: 17.6 percent Cocaine: 2.3 percent Amphetamines: 2.1 percent Prescription painkillers not prescribed to you: 1.8 percent Psychedelic mushrooms: 1.8 percent LSD: 1.3 percent Ecstasy (MDMA): 1 percent Nitrous Oxide: 0.3 percent Heroin: 0.2 percent Opium: 0 percent Phencyclidine (PCP): 0 percent Other: 1.1 percent None of the above: 17.9 percent Don’t Know/No Answer: 1.6 percent

methodology Written questionnaires were administered to 621 undergraduates from Nov. 5 to 7 at the University Post Office in Faunce House in the morning and afternoon and at the Sciences Library at night. To ensure random sampling, pollsters approached every third person and asked if they would like to complete a poll. The poll has a 3.9 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence, except for the ninth question, which was asked only of people who said they keep a car on campus, and has a 10.7 percent

margin of error with 95 percent confidence.

The sample polled was demographically similar to the Brown undergraduate population as a whole.

The sample was 48.8 percent male and 51.2 percent female. First-years made up 24.5 percent of the sample, 27.9 percent were sophomores, 23.7 percent were juniors and 24 percent were seniors. 68.8 percent of respondents identified themselves as white, 7.8 percent identified as black or African-American, 8.1 percent Hispanic, 17.2 percent

Asian, 1.0 percent American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.5 percent Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 2.1 percent identified with a racial group or ethnicity not listed and 1.9 percent chose not to answer.

The sum of the percentages add up to more than 100 percent due to respondents who identified with multiple ethnic or racial groups.

Senior Staff Writers Isabel Gottlieb ’10 and Franklin Kanin ’10 coordinated the poll. Herald section editors, senior staff writers and staff writers helped conduct it.

thanks for taking the poll

C ampus n ews Tuesday, November 13, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

i n

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GISP proposes new concentration in sustainable energy

i e f

By Catie Straut Contributing Writer

Chris Bennett / Herald

The Swearer Center for Public Service sponsors the Winter Break Projects.

Through Winter Break Projects, students immerse themselves in community issues In the middle of January, while their classmates are still lounging at home, 35 students will return to downtown Providence for a week, cooking and living together while investigating local community issues.

The Break Projects, started in 1989, were “ahead of the curve” in their time, said Alan Flam, senior fellow at the Swearer Center for Public Service. When Flam arrived at the center in 2000, it was ready to give up the program because of the costs associated with sending students all over the country — to Indian reservations, Appalachia and elsewhere. Flam argued to keep the program, and since 2000, the projects have been locally based.

This year’s participants will be split into six groups of four to six students, each focusing respectively on prison, homelessness and poverty, affordable housing, environmental justice, education or domestic violence. These groups will work with local organizations related to these issues over the course of the week.

Each group is responsible for its own agenda, with some surveying several organizations’ work and others spending all week focusing on one group, said Darshan Patel ’09, who is co-coordinating this year’s projects with Rachel Page ’07.5. Historically, Patel said, groups have formed long-term relationships with local organizations through the projects.

Last year, for example, the immigrants’ rights group, of which Patel was a member, spoke to the Guatemalan consulate in Providence, participants in a local ESL program and members of the hotel workers’ union.

At an orientation meeting Sunday, participants met in their small groups and did group-building exercises, Flam said.

Participants will eat and sleep in the Beneficent Congregational Church downtown, but they will need to shower elsewhere, Patel said.

A $75 fee for participants covers food, transportation and housing.

The immersion aspect of the week is an important part of the experience, Flam said. Frequently, he said, people involved in the issues the groups are concerned with will be invited to speak informally with the participants after dinner.

— George Miller

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As “going green” grabs headlines and Al Gore wins a Nobel Prize for his efforts to raise awareness about climate change, a group of Brown students are concerned the University is not adequately preparing students for environmental work.

Brown does not offer engineers and environmental science concentrators the interdisciplinar y education in sustainability necessary to prepare them for future work in environmentally-related fields, according to those students, who submitted a Group Independent Study Project proposal to the College Curriculum Council last week in hopes of eventually creating a new interdisciplinary concentration in sustainable energy.

The group, led by Chioke Harris ’08 and Natalie Wilhelm ’10, is composed of seven students, most of whom are engineering concentrators. Harris said the idea began as a collaborative effort between Engineers Without Borders — of which Harris is president — and emPOWER to incorporate both groups’ work in energy, climate change and the environment.

Now that sustainable energy technology and energy conservation have garnered widespread awareness, Brown should have organized, dedicated resources in the field, Harris said.

Though there are efforts within several departments to address these issues, such as courses in sustainable design and environmental studies, the GISP members said they would like a degree program or set of courses that provides an integrated and complete education in sustainable energy.

“There (are) sor t of images associated with people” in each department, Harris said, adding that by being separate from other departments they hope to “create something that’s fresh.”

Officially called “Integrating Energy Science and Education,” the GISP will study economic and sociological factors that affect energy deployment, sustainable energy technologies and philosophies of technical education as they explore creating the new concentration.

Beyond learning about the fundamentals of education and the science of specific sustainable energy technologies, the GISP will also look at energy use in the developing world, incorporating study in

international relations, sociology, economics, public policy and political science. “We wanted to reach out beyond just the engineers,” Wilhelm said. “(There are) other things beyond the pure science aspect of sustainability, which is why we’re taking the multidisciplinar y approach,” Wilhelm said. Harris said he hopes that they will “lay the foundation” for a concentration that, if created, will be a “melding” of several departments and will be organized somewhat like the Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship program.

The students will work with Senior Research Engineer Christopher Bull as faculty advisor. “It’s helpful to have a faculty, especially an engineering faculty ... (to be) on

board for future classes,” Wilhelm said.

But for the most part, the students will work independently. “We will be teaching ourselves,” Harris said.

“We have a really smart group of people,” Wilhelm said. “It’s really cool to be working with such a smart group of kids ... I’m going to be learning a lot, probably more than any other of my classes next semester.”

Though the College Curriculum Council has yet to approve the GISP, the students are optimistic.

But for a concentration to ultimately be created, Harris said, community support will be needed. “(We are) hoping that people will smile on our interest in interdisciplinary study,” he said.

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Politics and faith are a thorny mix for some groups Emergency system raises privacy concerns continued from page 1

continued from page 3 rez ’07.5 said he sees two problems with the instant notification system: first, that most students turn their cell phones off during classes, and second, that a substantial number of students do not have cell phones.

“I know a lot of people who don’t have cell phones, so at that point, you’re only notifying a subgroup,” Gutierrez said.

Overall, Hunter said he was pleased with the response so far.

“I’m sure that people’s awareness of the kinds of things that can happen on a campus is why there’s been receptivity to providing the University with cell numbers,” he said.

The database was created in cooperation with MIR3, a company that specializes in emergency notification systems. According to the severity of the situation, emergency notification can be sent in e-mails, text messages or over the phone, Hunter said. The president of MIR3 told the New York Times on Sept. 28 that the MIR3 system is in place at 70 universities and colleges.

The database works by automatically accessing a student or staff member’s contact information in the Brown directory — including e-mail addresses, Brown-owned land-line phone numbers, Browndistributed cell phone numbers for some staff members and other pertinent contact information. The e-mails sent by Hunter’s office in recent weeks were intended to gather information that the University did not yet have, such as cell phone numbers and non-Brown land-line phone numbers for students living off campus.

Hunter said that in addition to the e-mails, the administration is considering various other methods of gathering cell phone numbers, including collecting the information on routine forms, providing incentives and even contacting students’ parents.

“We might follow up with students who have not registered by contacting their parents, urging them to urge their children to send their cell numbers to us,” Hunter said.

Several students were surprised to hear of the database system.

“Maybe I deleted (the e-mail),” said Jessica Vosburgh ’07.5, adding, “I hadn’t heard of it, but I would be

fine with it.”

Though the University already has most student contact information on file, some students expressed concern about privacy — particularly earlier in the semester, when cell phone numbers provided by students as part of the new database were visible to any staff, faculty or students searching for an individual on the University’s Web site.

“At first it was frustrating because they hadn’t made access to that info (personal cell phone numbers) private, so they could be accessed by anyone (within the Brown community), but now they’ve changed that,” said Adam Hoffman ’10. “I suppose in principle, at least, it’s good to have.”

Students also expressed concern that the database could be distributed for solicitation, though most said such a situation is unlikely. “There’s definitely worry that (the database) could be used for something else, that cell numbers could be used for solicitation,” said Michele Baer ’10.

Baer noted that when she attempted to register her cell phone number with the database, it was already there — possibly because of forms she filled out during Residential Peer Leader registration.

Hunter emphasized that access to the database will be limited to the Department of Public Safety, Environmental Health and Safety, Student Life and Computing and Information Services and that the information will not be distributed in any way.

The system has already been used to send out e-mail alerts, Hunter said, mentioning the tropical storm warning e-mail sent on Nov. 2.

Cell phone calls and text messages will only be used in a case of extreme emergency, such as a natural disaster or the presence of a gunman, Hunter added.

So far, most students said the new security measures have had little impact on their lives. “I guess because I’m on my way out already, I don’t think about it, and I’m not anticipating any emergency,” Gutierrez said, adding that he can see how the system might make underclassmen feel safer.

“Overall, I guess it does make me feel safer,” said Victoria Hsu ’09.

“I guess I should register.”

that,” Kurshan added.

Though Hillel is apolitical, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has prompted political dialogue and activism among many Hillel participants, Kurshan said. “When it comes to speaking about Israel, Hillel tries to bring people together from all viewpoints.

Ultimately, what Hillel is trying to do is not spread a particular viewpoint, but engage people in conversation,” he said.

Carly Edelstein ’08, chair of Hillel’s social justice committee, said that most people in Hillel are proIsrael, but warned that “while being pro-Israel tends to be considered a Jewish view, this is not true for everyone.”

“You can relate to Israel culturally, religiously, politically — it’s not a black and white issue,” Edelstein said. “I don’t think I could generalize about one political tendency here.”

For some participants in Hillel, as for members of other student religious or political groups, religion informs politics.

“Often, the goal of Hillel’s programs is to get people thinking about these issues as Jews, and how their understanding of Judaism applies to whatever they’re talking about,” said Danielle Levine ’09, Hillel’s vice president for campus relations.

“Religion informs the conversation for certain people more than others,” added Kurshan.

The story behind the Israeli flag in Hillel’s lobby suggests that certain religious conversations are inevitably infused with politics, and that religion often plays a role in shaping political dialogue.

For Spiritual Youth for Reproductive Freedom, politics and religion merge in discussions about a woman’s right to choose. “We talk about women’s reproductive choice in two contexts: political and moral,” said Herald Senior Staff Writer Kristina Kelleher ’09, who interned for the organization with two other Brown students. In the political sphere, the

group often talks about the legal restrictions placed by government on a woman’s right to choose. In the moral realm, the group discusses various religious viewpoints and the plurality of circumstances under which various religions consider abortion to be morally acceptable.

“Anywhere that life and quality of life are in question, politics and religion intersect,” said Christina Cozzetto ’10, co-president of Brown Students for Life. “Taking care of those less fortunate than you are, for instance, is a big focus of members of the Catholic community,” she added.

Lamia Khan ’08, who serves on Brown’s Multi-Faith Council, said that as a Muslim, religion and politics particularly merge for her on poverty and human rights issues. “Broadly speaking, an important theme in Islam as in any religion is to act justly in all situations, whether it means treating those around you with dignity and respect or working to promote justice and equality among all people on a broader social level,” Khan said.

Sometimes, religious groups hold events specifically to highlight the intersection of religion and politics. The Brown Christian Fellowship brings pastors and other speakers to campus who “frequently talk about the intersection of religion and politics,” said Joshua Marshall ’08, the longeststanding member of the group.

“We have to be wary on the institutional level for reasons evidenced by our history, but on a personal level, yes, religion and politics go hand in hand,” Marshall said.

Political and religious organizations on campus also partner for events. The Brown Democrats and Hillel partnered for last year’s Human Rights Film Festival and the Dems co-sponsored with Brown Students for Israel an Oct. 19 lecture by New Republic editor-at-large Peter Beinart, “Why Liberal Values are Moral Values.”

“We have similar interests — but also, a lot of Democrats are Jewish,” explained Dems President Gabriel

Kussin ’09.

Hillel leaders noted that Hillel has also partnered with the College Republicans for various events and lectures, and President of Brown College Republicans Marc Frank ’09 serves on its board.

Frank estimated that Brown’s College Republicans has a higher percentage of religious individuals than Brown’s student population as a whole. “About half have fairly strong religious principles that lead to explain why they are Republicans,” Frank said.

By contrast, Kussin said that for the three years he has been involved with the organization, the Dems have never framed political issues in terms of religion. But “we’ve framed them in terms of morality and values, which may be indirectly shaped by religion,” he said.

“When (the College Republicans) have formal discussions, I wouldn’t say that as an organization we frame issues through religion, but individual members do,” Frank said.

Most students involved with political and religious student organizations agreed that diversity in participants’ faith contributes positively to political dialogue.

Both Frank and Kussin said individual members’ varied religious experiences add to the richness of political discussion and can help strengthen political arguments formulated within their groups. “Because we have such a wide range of religions in our group, we can’t base our arguments on just one principal,” Kussin said.

“Political and religious discourse are tricky for the same reason,” Hillel President Kurshan said. “So the question becomes, how do you engage people with completely different viewpoints while still incorporating those who want to speak about the issue that don’t have experience in it?” But the intersection of politics and religion, he said, is inevitable.

“Religion teaches certain values, and political parties are collections of values,” Kurshan said.

Sidney Frank Hall is Brown’s first LEED building continued from page 1 an organizer of the student environmental group emPOWER. “Brown standards and objectives have been very close to a lot of those LEED guidelines,” Teichert said, “particularly around indoor environmental quality and energy and environment.

It’s just a matter of going through the process.”

So if the University’s building requirements are so similar to LEED standards, why aren’t more of Brown’s buildings certified?

“I think that LEED’s ratings system provides a really good set of goals and guidelines for developers in the sustainable design process, but as far as after you construct the green building, actually applying for the LEED certification is pretty costly,” Beamesderfer said.

Though implementing LEED strategies is expensive, the University is often willing to make expenditures for energy efficient measures that are cost-saving in the long run, sources said. But gaining LEED certification requires an up-front application fee and consultant fees between $25,000 and $100,000, wrote Vice President for Facilities Management Stephen Maiorisi in an e-mail to The Herald.

Keeping track of LEED points and guidelines also takes time and effort away from the actual construction

effort. “The general number is that there’s about 150 hours involved in paperwork that you wouldn’t otherwise be doing if you weren’t actually submitting for the standards,” Teichert said. In short, applying for actual LEED certification may not be worth the cost of registration and upkeep, Beamesderfer said.

“I tend to wonder what the benefits are of getting a building officially certified,” she said. “Some concern is, ‘Is that money being well spent?

And could it be better spent by using it to further the building?’ ” Also, if LEED certification is the ultimate goal in constructing a building, other aspects of sustainable building may suffer, Teichert said. “If LEED is used as the objective, and there isn’t specific attention paid to the energy aspects of the building, you can create a LEED-certified building but not do much to control energy emissions,” he added.

In place of LEED standards, Facilities Management followed and continues to observe a set of design guidelines related to high performance building for all projects, Maiorisi said.

“MacMillan Hall was one of the buildings in the ’90s where we were very aggressive in energy and environmental design,” Teichert said, noting that the Urban Environmental Lab and some newer dorms also use energy efficient heating and cool-

ing systems or lighting. The UEL, for example, uses superinsulation, passive solar heating and includes a solar greenhouse. “We adopted a lot of those principles before LEED was even used,” Teichert added.

The University’s design guidelines — which include using certified-sustainable wood products when possible and a daylight dimming compensation system to dim lights when sufficient natural light is available — typically lower energy consumption 30 percent below code requirements, according to Maiorisi.

The Energy and Environment Advisory Committee, comprised of students, faculty and administrators, recently recommended that high performance buildings be “up to 50 percent better than code if financially viable,” said Chris Powell, director of sustainable energy and environmental initiatives .

Though many University buildings lack LEED certification, Brown’s own energy efficiency standards are solid, Teichert said.

Beemsderfer noted the inevitable importance of sustainable design in terms of the University’s future.

“Places like Brown are constantly growing, and if we don’t take (sustainable design) into account, it’s going to be really harmful to us in the long run,” Beamesderfer said. “I think sustainable design in general is going to play a huge part.”

W orld & n ation Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Giuliani plans a risky strategy

By Katie Thomas Newsday

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — It is an audacious gamble. Can a presidential candidate risk losing several early primary states, on the wager that he will win when it really counts — in more populous states that vote a few weeks later?

Republican Rudolph Giuliani is betting that the answer is yes.

Two of his top advisers laid out the strategy Monday, arguing that traditional make-or-break states such as Iowa and New Hampshire matter less than big states that are voting earlier this year, such as Florida, New York and New Jersey.

“There are multiple paths to victory,” said Michael DuHaime, Giuliani’s campaign manager, adding that the team has a “long-term” plan. With so many populous states voting early, “it is impossible to think that it will be over after only three states vote,” he said.

Giuliani’s aides have long argued that the primary calendar favors the former New York mayor, with his moderate views that play well in larger states. In a teleconference, DuHaime and strategy director Brent Seaborn outlined a scenario that focuses on the delegates a candidate can win, not the momentum he gains by winning early.

An example of this is Florida, which votes Jan. 29 and holds 57 delegate votes. Giuliani is leading most polls there by at least 12 points. By contrast, New Hampshire -— which will vote no later than Jan. 8 — has only 12 delegates. Other large states vote Feb. 5, a date Giuliani’s campaign

hopes to win big.

The teleconference might have been an attempt to keep expectations low in Iowa, where Giuliani is third in most polls, and New Hampshire, where he is in second place behind Mitt Romney.

Political observers said they’re skeptical that the plan will work.

“Normally that’s just a bad strategy,” said Stu Rothenberg, an independent political analyst. Traditionally, “the early contests define the field, create expectations. And if you don’t play, you’re irrelevant.”

Two outcomes, in particular, could put a Giuliani win in jeopardy: if he fails to place second in Iowa or New Hampshire, or if one candidate wins several early states, analysts said.

“If someone else, like a Romney, is able to take all of those earlier primaries, that might well improve (Romney’s) chances in Florida,” said Merle Black, a professor of government at Emory University.

Romney spokesman Kevin Madden clearly agreed, comparing Giuliani’s lead, described by the campaign as “momentum-proof,” to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny: “None of them exist.”

Madden argued that Giuliani’s national lead is because of his name recognition and that it will shrink as voters get to know other candidates.

Analysts say the plan is also risky because no other Republican candidate in recent history has lost the early states and gone on to win the nomination. In 1992, Bill Clinton lost several early states but came in second in New Hampshire — where he declared himself the “Comeback Kid” and went on to win Georgia.

Musharraf’s troops falling short against Islamic insurgency

By Griff Witte and Imtiaz Ali Washington Post

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Across much of Pakistan on Monday, the government was firmly in command — squelching protests, blacking out television stations and picking up dozens more political prisoners to add to the thousands already in jail.

But in vast stretches of the country’s rugged and wild northwest — heartland of the Islamic extremist insurgency — President Pervez Musharraf’s army did not have any more control than it did when the military-led government imposed emergency rule nine days ago. In some areas, it had less.

While Musharraf has justified emergency rule by arguing that he needs a free hand to battle groups including the Taliban and al-Qaida, local officials, residents and analysts say that so far, at least, the government’s troops remain on the defensive against extremist forces, which have been gaining territory for more than a year.

“For us, it does not make a difference whether it’s democracy, emergency or martial law,” said Maulana Siraj Uddin, spokesman for a radical cleric who has seized control of much of the scenic Swat Valley. “But I can tell you that our mujaheddin are fighting from the core of their hearts, and we have made spectacular progress in the last week.”

Fighters loyal to the cleric, 32-year-old Maulana Fazlullah, have in recent days overrun three additional police stations and now

Hidden costs nearly double wars’ price tag

By Josh White Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The economic costs to the United States of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far total approximately $1.5 trillion, according to a new congressional study that estimates the conflicts’ “hidden costs” — including higher oil prices, the expense of treating wounded veterans and interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars.

That amount is nearly double the $804 billion the White House has spent or requested to wage these wars through 2008, according to the majority staff of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee.

Its report, titled “The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,” estimates that to date the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the average U.S. family of four more than $20,000.

“The full economic costs of the war to the American taxpayers and the overall U.S. economy go well beyond even the immense federal budget costs already reported,” said the 21-page draft report, obtained Monday by The Washington Post.

The report argues that war funding is diverting billions of dollars away from “productive investment”

by American businesses in the United States. It also says that the conflicts are pulling reservists and National Guardsmen away from their jobs, resulting in economic disruptions for U.S. employers that the report estimates at $1 billion to $2 billion.

The report estimates that the

Page 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

cost to the average family could more than double, to $46,300, over the next 10 years, with estimated economic costs reaching an estimated $3.5 trillion if the wars continue apace.

The committee, which includes House and Senate members from both parties and is chaired by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is expected to present the report Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill.

Democratic leaders plan to use the report as evidence that the wars are far costlier than most realize and that a change of course could save taxpayers billions of dollars in the coming decade.

“What this report makes crystal clear is that the cost to our country in lives lost and dollars spent is tragically unacceptable,” Schumer said in a statement Monday night.

Members of the committee’s minority staff could not be reached for comment.

War funding experts said that the committee raises viable arguments but that some of the numbers should be met with skepticism. For example, it is difficult to calculate the precise impact of the Iraq war on global oil prices, and it is speculative to estimate how much the war will cost over time, as situations change daily on the battlefield.

Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International) and a member of the National Security Council staff under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter, said he agrees that the war is far costlier than the publicly stated price tag

but said some of the report’s measures are problematic. He said he thinks it would be hard to show that the Iraq war has caused oil prices to skyrocket or oil producers in the Middle East to falter, and he said he does not think there has been a closing-off of U.S. investment because of the war.

Oil prices have more than tripled since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the report notes, to a peak of more than $90 per barrel. “The war in Iraq is certainly not responsible for all of this increase,” the report states, but it estimates that declining Iraqi production “has likely raised oil prices in the U.S. by between $4 and $5 a barrel.” The report added that “because of the many factors affecting oil markets, this should be seen as a highly approximate estimate.”

Hormats said he agrees with the report’s finding that the United States is dangerously increasing its reliance on foreign debt and that Americans will be paying the price for generations. Hormats, author of “The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars,” said that in every other major war, the United States has financed the conflict.

“The wars will cost a lot more than the appropriated sums, and it’s certainly true our children will be paying for this for a long, long time,” Hormats said. “I’m very critical of the way they have financed the war, but I always hesitate to try to quantify any of these things, to make these numerical continued on page 8

roam unhindered through much of the valley, once known to tourists as “the Switzerland of Asia.”

A militar y spokesman confirmed that the group had recently forced local security officials to flee several areas. But as of Monday, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said, the army had taken control of operations in the valley, and he hinted that it was on the verge of launching an operation to stop the losses.

“We don’t want these militants to be terrorizing the people. So they’ll be taken to task, that’s for sure,” he said.

To date, it has more often been the other way around, with extremist fighters inflicting damaging defeats on the Pakistani military.

In the tribal areas that border Afghanistan, insurgents have virtually free rein, using the territory as a base from which to mount attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond, according to military analysts.

When the army has tried to conduct operations in the tribal areas, it has paid a heavy price.

In August, for example, Taliban fighters commandeered an entire army convoy, taking 250 soldiers hostage without firing a single shot.

The Taliban held the troops for more than two months. They were released the day after Musharraf imposed emergency rule, when the government acceded to Taliban demands and freed nearly 30 of the group’s fighters, including several who had been involved in planning suicide bombings.

Advisers to Musharraf have conceded that the main reason he suspended the constitution, fired most of the Supreme Court and declared an emergency was that the court was about to rule him ineligible for another term as president.

But Musharraf himself has explained his actions in terms of the widening war against extremist groups in Pakistan, insisting that the countr y would spiral out of control unless the government did everything it could to counter the threat.

In making his case, he highlighted Swat, saying an emergency declaration allows the army greater latitude to fight in an area where curbing militancy is normally left to local police.

Since the emergency declaration, much of the government’s energy has been devoted to cracking down on mainstream political opponents, not militant forces. That could change if the army launches an offensive in Swat.

But it is not clear whether even the army will have much impact.

Over the past year, Fazlullah’s black-turbaned Islamic fighters have established their own state amid the towering peaks of the Hindu Kush, turning the picturesque valley into a battleground.

Unlike the tribal areas, which are officially semiautonomous and in practice have never been under the central government’s control, Swat is part of Pakistan’s so-called settled areas. The government is continued on page 8

Writers’ kids, bearing a striking resemblance

By Lisa de MoraLes Washington Post

LOS ANGELES — Nothing warms the heart like the sight of little children being put to work carrying picket signs outside the gates of movie studios to give Hollywood writers the much-needed cute factor as they enter their second week of revolt.

“Residuals Took Out My Tonsils,” said a sign carried by a precocious moppet at one of the entrances to the Fox lot Monday morning. The Writers Guild of America began its strike a week ago after bargaining reached an impasse over residuals from DVD sales and Internet downloads.

“I’ve known a lot of spoiled brats in my day, but these guys take the cake,” read another sign carried by a redheaded cherub and bearing snaps of the likes of CEOs Leslie Moonves of CBS, Jeff Zucker of NBC Universal, Bob Iger of ABC-parent Disney and Peter Chernin of Fox-parent News Corp.

All around Los Angeles, children of Hollywood writers marched with signs on sticks bearing grown-up messages such as “I Learned to Share When I Was in Freaking Diapers!” and “Residuals Paid for My Birth” and “If Daddy Doesn’t Get Back to Work Soon I’ll Have to Attend Public School.” Okay, we made that last one up.

Children were picketing because their schools were closed and nannies got the day off in observance of Veterans Day. Not that the tots weren’t getting an education.

For instance, kids picketing at NBC Universal studios got an important civics lesson when a cop started slapping picketers with jaywalking tickets if they entered a crosswalk while the red hand was flashing but declined to ticket drivers who took left turns into the crosswalk filled with picketer-pedestrians — a major no-no here — even when picketers helpfully pointed out the law-breaking drivers to the cop, according to the Los Angeles Web site Defamer.

Universal Studios will be the site of Tuesday’s Writers Guild of America West Coast bash: Bring a Star to Strike Day. Meanwhile, showrunners fought for bragging rights as to which series was least prepared to end original episodes soon.

The early front-runner is “Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence, who made sure the media knew he’d fended off efforts to get him to tweak the last episode written before the strike to make it series finale-ish.

“I will use all my leverage to end this show properly, even if it means I have to do all the voices myself and call people up to read it over the phone,” he reportedly said at a New York Comedy Festival event over the weekend.

Other shows, “Heroes,” “Pushing Daisies” and “Men in Trees” among them, caved to pressure from The Man to provide alternative endings to whatever episode they were wrapping up right before the strike broke out, to function as a season finale if needed.

Page 8

Musharraf falling short against Islamic insurgency continued from page 7 supposed to rule there. But in 70 villages throughout the valley, Fazlullah’s extreme interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, is the only law that matters.

Suspected criminals are publicly flogged. Soldiers are beheaded, their bodies dumped in the streets. Extremist fighters direct traffic and run the hospitals. The white flags of the Taliban flutter above government buildings. Education for girls is discouraged, music is banned and barbers have stopped shaving beards.

“Government institutions are completely nonexistent in our whole area,” said Rahmat Din, a valley resident. “Fazlullah has appointed representatives in almost all villages under his control for dispensing speedy justice and helping solve the people’s problems.”

For many residents, that’s just fine.

“He is fighting for the introduction of sharia, and nothing else, and we are ready to sacrifice ourselves and our sons on his order,” said Mohammad Rehan, a 34-yearold volunteer in Fazlullah’s army, which numbers in the thousands and is headquartered just a couple of miles from the valley’s main town, Mingora.

Fazlullah rallies his supporters through fiery broadcasts on a pirated FM signal, which has

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

earned him the nickname “Maulana Radio.” Earlier this year, he spoke out against the evils of television, and local residents responded by setting thousands of TVs ablaze.

In sermons that echo for miles, he also calls on Swat’s residents to rise up against Musharraf and his international backers, especially the United States.

“The mission of Fazlullah in Swat is the same as that of the Taliban in Afghanistan and other mujaheddin in Waziristan,” said Shah Abdul Aziz, a former member of Parliament. “All of them have taken up arms for the same task of fighting against the puppets of the United States and introducing the system of Islamic laws.”

Throughout the northwest, the war against the insurgents is unpopular. Many Pakistanis consider it America’s war, though on either side, it’s Pakistani blood that is spilled.

Analysts say they fear that while emergency rule may give Musharraf more power to use the army to put down the insurgency, it will backfire when it comes to changing minds.

“The mullahs’ main slogan is enforcing sharia, and that is popular with the populace,” said Ghulam Cheema, a retired army colonel. “The army, in their heart of hearts, can’t fight such a slogan.”

GISP argues in favor of ‘master debaters’ continued from page 1 said. Kittredge and Wang both debated in high school and have great faith in the power of debate, Wang said.

“It’s an incredibly trajector ychanging activity,” Kittredge said.

“Research has shown that it raises GPAs astronomically, raises literacy scores by multiple grade-levels within a couple of months, makes people more effective citizens and is a pipeline to a lot of very important professional careers for people who wouldn’t have access to them.” He added that many lawyers and politicians, including two-thirds of Congress, debated at some point.

Kittredge and Wang help coordinate the Rhode Island Urban Debate League — an organization including high schools in Providence, Woonsocket and other cities — in which they set up and coach debate leagues.

The league, a partnership between the Swearer Center for Public Service and the public schools of Rhode Island, is a part of the larger National Association of Urban Debate Leagues, which works to expand debate initiatives in 19 cities across the country.

The duo formed the project because they think they can use the film to advance the causes of the nonprofit organization, Kittredge said.

“It’s a really excellent movie to do cross-promotion with,” he said.

The students are hoping to use the film’s media buzz to generate interest in debate and its benefits, Wang said.

“The social mission really compels me,” he said.

Though the project is officially overseen by Professor Emeritus of Engineering Barrett Hazeltine, other faculty have provided significant support, Wang said.

Among the GISP’s faculty advisors are Danny Warshay, adjunct lecturer in engineering, and Alan Harlam, social entrepreneurship program director, Kittredge said. They have also received help from the NAUDL Deputy Director Eric Tucker ’02.

The students split the group into four subcommittees, with one focusing on online promotion, one on writing, one on outreach to lawyers and education networks and the last on media promotion, including YouTube videos.

Michael Morgenstern ’08 is in charge of the media committee and is busy obtaining real-life footage of urban high school debaters who have overcome the odds.

“We are following around some Providence debaters and trying to tell their story,” Morgenstern said.

The students are currently following 16-year-old Providence resident Esaie, who has witnessed the

power of debate in his own life. Since becoming involved with debate, the former drug user and gang member has turned his life around, now going from school to basketball, to the library and then home, Morgenstern said.

Through his turnaround, the teen gained the respect of the community, Morgenstern said. “Everyone around him idolizes him,” he said.

The YouTube video will include the film’s trailer with additional documentary footage.

Though the Rhode Island and National Urban Debate Leagues reap benefits from the project, the relationship is symbiotic, Morgenstern said. The students gain leadership experience in the field, Weinstein and Harpo production companies essentially gain a promotion team and the nonprofit urban debate leagues are able to bring debate to underprivileged students everywhere, Morgenstern said.

The students are trying to recruit Washington to visit campus, but details are still up in the air, Kittredge said. They are primarily hoping the movie performs well at the box office and spreads knowledge about urban debate, he said.

“Debate teaches you how to think,” Kittredge said. “For people who are not reading at their grade level and often not going to school, it’s really life-changing.”

Hidden costs nearly double wars’ price tag continued from page 7 judgments.”

The committee estimated that injuries due to the wars could add more than $30 billion in future disability and medical care costs, including billions in lost earnings for veterans who cannot work because of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Although war costs have risen each year and the fiscal 2008 funding request is the highest so far, the direct and indirect costs of Iraq and Afghanistan are much lower than the costs of World War II and are just passing those of the Vietnam War. World War II is estimated to have cost $4.9 trillion in today’s

dollars. According to Congressional Research Service reports, the Vietnam War cost $600 billion in today’s dollars and the 1991 Persian Gulf war cost $80 billion.

The economic difference is also sizable, Hormats said, as the annual cost of today’s wars is less than 2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, a fraction of the cost of World War II. The nation’s economy is so large that it “disguises the costs and doesn’t impose any hardship on the American people,” allowing the government to sidestep normal budgeting processes, Hormats said.

He said the country has borrowed all the money it has needed for the wars because taxes have been

lowered and the wars have been funded largely by supplemental appropriations, with few budgetary sacrifices.

Jason Campbell, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who maintains the think tank’s “Iraq Index,” said it is clear that the costs of the Iraq war are higher than what Congress has appropriated but said it is often hard to quantify. But he said he is unsure whether the costs of both wars total $1.5 trillion.

“It’s much higher than other estimations I have seen,” Campbell said.

“A lot of it is debatable, but there are costs that will in the near future be attributable to Iraq that haven’t been accounted for yet.”

Independent panel to reconsider sentencing for crack cocaine convictions

By Darryl Fears Washington Post

WASHINGTON — An independent panel is considering reducing the sentences of inmates incarcerated in federal prisons for crack cocaine offenses, which would make thousands of people immediately eligible to be freed.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets guidelines for federal prison sentences, established more lenient guidelines this spring for future crack cocaine offenders. The panel is scheduled to consider Tuesday a proposal to make the new guidelines retroactive.

Should the panel adopt the new policy, the sentences of 19,500 inmates would be reduced by an average of 27 months. About 3,800 inmates now imprisoned for possession and distribution of crack cocaine could be freed within the next year, according to the commission’s analysis. The proposal would cover only inmates in federal prisons and not those in state correctional facilities, where the vast majority

of people convicted of drug offenses are held.

By far the largest number — more than 1,400 — of those who would be eligible for sentence reductions were convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which has jurisdiction over Northern Virginia and the Richmond area, according to an analysis done by the commission. Nearly 280 inmates convicted in federal courts in Maryland would be eligible, as well as almost 270 prisoners found guilty in the District of Columbia.

The commission is taking up one of the most racially sensitive issues of the two-decades-old war on drugs.

Jurists and civil rights organizations have long complained that the commission’s guidelines mandate more stringent federal penalties for crack cocaine offenses, which usually involve African Americans, than for crimes involving powder cocaine, which generally involve white people. The chemical properties of the drugs are the same, though crack is potentially more addictive.

Nearly 86 percent of inmates who would be affected by the change are black; slightly fewer than 6 percent are white. Ninety-four percent are men.

The commission’s proposal does not change sentencing recommendations for powder cocaine.

Created in 1984 to bring more consistency to sentencing in federal courts, the commission has reduced sentences and made such decisions retroactive for offenses involving LSD, marijuana cultivation and the painkiller OxyContin. But none involved such a large number of inmates or so controversial a drug, or have had such racial implications.

The Bush administration opposes the new plan, arguing that it would overburden federal courts and release potentially dangerous drug offenders.

In a letter to the commission, Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher wrote that the release of a large number of drug offenders “would jeopardize community safety and threatens to unravel the success we have achieved in removing violent crack offenders from high-crime neighborhoods.”

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

W. hoops deficient defensively in opening games continued from page 12 Though Burr called two timeouts during the run to try and let her team regroup, the Bears could do little to slow the Providence offense, and the Friars took a 39-23 halftime lead. In the second half, the Friars extended their lead to 30 midway through the half and cruised to the finish.

Burr mentioned that the team’s youth on offense contributed to its lack of firepower, but she said the “biggest number that sticks in my mind is 79 points.”

One bright spot from the game was the play of guard Shae Fitzpatrick ’10, who led the team with 16 points. Burr said the sophomore’s play “got us through some tough periods,” and Fitzpatrick said that igniting the offense in the team’s opener was enjoyable.

“When you’re in a drought then if you knock one down you get the crowd into it, and we had a pretty good crowd tonight,” Fitzpatrick said. “It’s fun, it’s a great feeling.

And then you get a stop and everyone’s getting energized.”

In its trip to Hamden, Conn. on Sunday, Brown faced another athletically gifted opponent that it had trouble containing from the opening tip. The Bears fell behind 14-2 in the early going behind strong play from the Bobcats’ two preseason All-Conference picks, Erin Kerner and Monique Lee. Brown bounced back from its slow start but could not close the deficit. The Bears faced a 38-21 halftime disadvantage despite a deep three-pointer from Fitzpatrick at the end of the half.

Quinnipiac closed out Brown by

dropping 47 points in the second half.

“On defense, we’re not working as a team and we’re not getting back in transition as a team,” O’Neal said.

“Everything is individual right now.

If someone gets beat we have to rotate. Once that gets fixed we’ll be better.”

O’Neal acknowledged that having a strong defense is integral to having a successful season.

“I’ve been on a lot of Brown basketball teams and (two years ago) we won the league championship, and we had a great defense then,” O’Neal said.

Fitzpatrick emphasized that defense will be a focal point for the rest of the season.

“We’re all about defense,” she said. “We work on it in practice every day, and we know what we need to get better at. We want that to be our staple because you can’t always control the offense, but you can control the defense.”

Despite the rough weekend, the team knows that some weaknesses can quickly be turned into strengths. Due to its aggressive style, Brown shot 29 free throws against Providence, but made only 48 percent from the line. The team jumped to 16-for-25 for 64 percent from the charity stripe against Quinnipiac, and O’Neal said the team has even more room for improvement.

After “a long week of practice,” according to O’Neal, the team will play the host in the first round of the University of Vermont Tournament on Saturday, then face either St. John’s University or North Carolina State University on Sunday.

First win of year is big one for m. icers continued from page 12 tie the game.

In the third period, the Bears dominated the puck possession, out-shooting the Raiders 17-7 and scoring three unanswered goals.

“We played to our strengths well. We’re a little bit more physical than we’ve been in the past, and we have good team speed, and we used it well,” Grillo said. “We were forechecking well and had good possession.”

The next game told a different story, though, when Cornell scored three power play goals en route to a 4-1 victory over Brown.

Despite a 9-4 shot advantage in the first period, the Bears were unable to score. But Brown also killed two Cornell power plays to keep the score even.

In the second period, Brown capitalized on its first power-play opportunity of the night, when Garbutt scored a goal from the right face-off circle, assisted by Sean McMonagle ’10 and Chris Poli ’08.

The Big Red benefited from two power plays of their own in the second period, finding the back of the net at 12:25 and again with 24 seconds left in the period, to grab a 2-1 lead heading into the final frame.

In the third period, Brown dominated Cornell on shots on goal, by an advantage of 14-6, but could not get the equalizer, despite several great opportunities.

“We had a couple great scoring chances, and we didn’t put it home,”

Page 9

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Grillo said. “I felt like we dominated play for the most part on Saturday night, but ended up on the back end of a loss.”

With 3:44 left in the game, the Big Red once again took advantage of another Brown penalty to add another goal, and the final goal came two minutes later with an empty net.

“We took too many dumb penalties,” Muncy said. “When we’re playing five-on-five, we’re great, but when we’re down a man it’s hard to get any momentum.”

Brown will look to rebound from the loss when it faces St. Lawrence University and Clarkson University, both ECAC opponents, on the road this weekend.

“I think we have a pretty nice squad,” Grillo said. “Our consistency’s got to be there, and we need to play with a greater sense of urgency.

But I’m pleased with the attitude, and we’ve come a long way in the mentality aspect.”

Season ends on loss for w. soccer continued from page 12 Captain Julia Shapira ’08 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, “I have never felt prouder than walking, flanked by my family, onto Stevenson Field for my last game. ... That was the perfect close to my four years as a member of the women’s soccer team.”

The loss prevented the Bears from bettering last year’s conference mark of 3-2-2. For the year, Jamie Mize ’09 led the team in points with three goals and two assists. Shapira also had three goals on the season, and forward Lindsay Cunningham ’09 had two goals and

three assists.

After a slow offensive start to the season, the Bears saw improvement as the year went on. The team finished the year with only 18 goals, but Brown only scored one through the first six games of 2007. The Bears also remained in the Ivy League title chase for most of the season. With two weeks left in the season, Brown was tied for second in the league.

The highlight of the season was a 1-0 double overtime victory against the University of Pennsylvania, the eventual Ivy League Champion. It was Penn’s only loss in the conference this year.

“It was an amazing team victory,” Shapira wrote of the victory over the Quakers. “Everybody’s consistent hard work finally paid off.”

Looking ahead, Pincince was enthusiastic. “I’m excited about the spring already,” he said, referring to when workouts and training sessions will start up again. According to Pincince, the strength of the program is with next year’s junior and sophomore classes, who were able to get valuable playing experience this year after injuries kept veteran players out.

“One of our goals will be to be in the top half of the Ivy League,” he said.

Volleyball hangs tough, loses two continued from page 12 ’11 was close behind with 12. Rachel Lipman ’08 and Natalie Meyers ’09 both had 13 digs, and Meyers added 43 assists and three block assists to her stats as well.

On Saturday, Brown gave the Quakers a run for their money. The Bears scored three unanswered points to start the first game. After Brown’s fourth point, Penn finally answered back, but the Bears were already on their way to victory. They led the rest of the game, the final score being 30-20.

Though the Bears started off slow in the second game and went down 5-0 before calling a timeout, they not only bounced back to catch up, but quickly gained the lead after the break. The rest of the game was back and forth in scoring until the

end, when Brown finished ahead 30-23.

It wasn’t until the third game that the Quakers finally pulled it together. Penn tweaked its lineup, and Brown didn’t adjust quickly enough to keep its two-game winning streak intact.

“In those kinds of games, we need to adjust during the match,” said Head Coach Diane Short.

Though they were unable to put together a run and take the lead, the Bears trailed closely behind the Tigers and the game was tied 12 times over the course of the battle.

But in the end, the Quakers kept the lead, winning their first game of the day 30-23.

“In the third game we got a little complacent,” said Lizzie Laundy ’08.

“We weren’t playing as hard … and they ended up putting more balls

away.”

Brown started the scoring in the fourth game, but Penn quickly retaliated, initiating another backand-forth game that kept up a frenetic pace until the final whistle. The teams were tied at 17-17 and again at 26-26, but after a Brown timeout, the Quakers put Bruno away and finished the game off 30-27.

“Losing the third game was a crucial loss — after that, we ended up playing catch up,” Laundy said.

In the fifth and final game, Penn rode its wave of momentum from the previous two game wins. Brown crawled within one point at 12-11, but the Quakers led the rest of the game, topping it off with three kills to win the game, 15-12.

Brown will play its last game at the Pizzitola Center tonight, where it will host Yale at 7 p.m.

Football fairest game of them all continued from page 12 from gorging their nine-figure payrolls by the luxury tax MLB imposes on them to create a soft salary cap.

In reality, these teams pay the slapon-the-wrist fine and just keep dishing out the checks. How is a team like Tampa Bay, with a $24.1 million payroll, supposed to compete with the big spenders when the entire team makes less money than Alex Rodriguez?

At one end you have the NFL, a paragon of equality. At the other, MLB, where whoever has the biggest market has the best shot at winning. Ignoring the socialist-capitalist undertones of the comparison, it would seem that the NFL is hands down the fairer of the two, right?

Then why is it that every year there are teams in the NFL that win or lose over 80 percent of their games, but some of the best teams in baseball win barely over 60 percent? The best baseball team ever in the modern era, the 2001 Seattle Mariners, won 71.6 percent of their games (116-46), while just last season the San Diego Chargers won 87.5 percent of their matches (14-2) and nobody said anything. Never

mind what the 2007 Patriots might be doing.

One could argue that the number of games played in a season is the cause for the disparity. If a football team plays only 16 games but a baseball team plays 10 times that many games (162), then baseball teams would tend to regress to the mean in terms of performance.

Shiny statistics sound nice, but I don’t buy into that argument. I think the reason for less differentiation among MLB teams than NFL teams is a direct result of the game of football being fairer. By fairer, I mean that the outcome of the games better reflect the skill of the teams. In baseball, great players have an on-base percentage somewhere in the ballpark of 37 percent. That means that the vast majority of the time they come to bat (63 percent or so), they fail. Mediocre batters, on the other hand, still tend to reach base about 29 percent of the time. In football a star quarterback like Peyton Manning completes 64 percent of his passes. Not-so-great quarterbacks still manage about 55 percent.

Ben, I get that you have a calculator, stop throwing numbers at me! Okay, maybe I did get a little

stat-happy there. Here’s the point: In MLB, great and mediocre players fail the majority of their opportunities, whereas great and mediocre players in the NFL succeed at their job the majority of the time. So, setting some of the greater complexities of the games aside, it’s harder to get a hit than it is to complete a pass.

Maybe baseball is a harder game to play. Maybe if the NFL had 162 game seasons, team records would better resemble those of teams in MLB. Yet, the fact that some NFL teams consistently dominate while others are dominated might indicate that there is less randomness in the games. In other words, the fact that a team can dominate, with each team’s resources being equal, might be the strongest sign that the game reflects skill. The relative records of teams can be misleading in terms of identifying the health of the game.

I guess what I’m tr ying to say is that competition doesn’t indicate fairness.

Ben Singer ’09 learned how to use a calculator while writing this article.

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Staf f Editorial

Safety in numbers?

Starting next semester, certain male students will begin receiving piles of free condoms in the mail. No, they’re not part of a Netflix-like service for sexually active men, they’re participants in Project CARES, or Condom Accessibility and Responsibility for Every Student. The study seeks to encourage safe sex on campus — an ambitious undertaking when condom usage rate among 18- to 25-year-olds nationally is just 50 percent, according to Health Services staff.

It’s hard to say whether the free delivery will affect students’ habits, or if what Project CARES learns about the University’s current condom distribution and students’ behavior will lead to increased condom use among sexually active Brown students. Students have long appreciated RPLs’ supply of condoms in freshman dorms, offered through an honor-system at a price of $0.15 each. But maybe, as ProjectCARES study director Ben Colburn ’10 suggests, those condoms should be entirely free of charge or supplied in less “stigmatizing,” less public locations.

Unsafe sex undoubtedly happens just as often — and maybe more — among upperclassmen whose hallways are not adorned with free condom dispensers. We’ve all sat through awkward sex ed classes and uncomfortable parental lectures, but Colburn said he thinks Brown students don’t put their knowledge to use, having unsafe sex instead. There’s a good chance he’s right.

Our relatively small campus often gives students an illusion of safety that extends to our attitudes toward sex. Many students probably wouldn’t consider a “random” hook-up all that random if the guy or girl in question was a friend’s unitmate, or had taken a class with a roommate one semester.

But just because you have at least one Facebook friend in common, is a onenight stand really any less random? The slight comfort of going home with someone who is an acquaintance does nothing to protect against the fact that students are still at risk no matter how well they know their partner.

One in three sexually active people contract a sexually transmitted infection by age 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Though we may like to think otherwise, Brown’s student body is likely no different. Health Services educator Naomi Ninneman told The Herald in September that Brown’s population probably reflects national trends.

Health Services does not release any statistics related to STI incidence among students, but Health Services Director Edward Wheeler said STI testing among students has increased in the 22 years he has worked there.

In the calendar year 2006, Health Services administered 1,001 chlamydia tests, 865 gonorrhea tests, 241 syphilis tests and 600 HIV tests. The test numbers are significant: while a few conscientious students may get tested for assurance’s sake, most of us only get tested for sexually transmitted diseases after engaging in risky behavior.

If Project CARES succeeds only in collecting information about sexual health from a meaningful sample population of students, it will nonetheless bring fresh attention to the need for Brown students to observe what they learned in middle school health class and practice safe sex — which, frankly, not enough students currently do.

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

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roxanne palmer

L e tt e r s UFB’s Critical Review decision upheld in appeal To the Editor: On Sunday, Nov. 11, we, in accordance with Article IX of the constitution of the Undergraduate Finance Board, gathered to hear the Critical Review’s appeal of UFB’s decision to not fund a printed version of the Review. This appeal process for UFB provides an opportunity for a student organization to be heard by student representatives from the Undergraduate Council of Students, the Student Union (comprised of major programming student organizations) and the Student Activities Advisory Board (comprised primarily of at-large representatives from student organizations).

Our decision was communicated in person to the leadership of the Critical Review and UFB, but we also felt it important that the student body be informed of our decision.

First, and most importantly, we fully support and recognize the importance of the stated mission of the Critical Review — a student-run means of disseminating student reviews of courses and professors.

After significant deliberation, we have decided to uphold UFB’s decision. We also believe that the current Web interface for the Critical Review, while functional, is not as useful to students as it could be. UFB has expressed willingness to consider funding for an improved Web-based system. The appeals board has made the decision to uphold UFB’s decision on the premise that UFB will provide reasonable resources to enable the Critical Review to be successful as a webonly resource.

For the following reasons the appeals board felt that a Web-based system would better meet the goals of the Critical Review than the print edition: • The funding requested in the appeal would provide 1,000 copies, which would still require the majority of students to use the online version.

• A Web-based system could be easier to access, more comprehensive and more user-friendly.

• It is our opinion that the Web-based system of the Critical Review is more environmentally friendly, while not undermining the mission of the group.

• The model exists for a successful and entirely

Web-based review system at other universities.

• Student initiatives, such as Mocha, have effectively used Web-only systems to serve students.

• We discussed whether temporary funding was needed to facilitate the Critical Review’s transition to Web-only but felt that UFB had given the Critical Review ample opportunity to make this change.

Issues relating to the internal organization of the Critical Review also factored into the decision, primarily that tasks including distribution, advertisement and recruiting currently all fall to the editors. If this responsibility was to be delegated to members not in charge of content, the group could better focus on simultaneously distributing information to the student body and producing the best material possible. The model of separating production and content is employed successfully by many groups, including other campus publications and theater groups, to name a few. The Critical Review currently only reviews 40 percent of Brown classes, and by spreading responsibility, the organization could launch an effort to garner more support and participation from academic departments.

As part of our process, we felt it important that the hard work and dedication of the current leadership of the Critical Review be recognized and supported. As such, we do not expect the Critical Review to undertake the development of a plan for its future success on the Web without help. Lauren Kolodny ’08, vice president of UCS, and Ricky Gresh, director of student activities, have committed to working with the Critical Review through this process, and Lauren has also committed to asking the Office of the Dean of the College to work with us to ensure the continuation of this important student-run service.

Wendy Chen ’09 Miles Hovis ’08 Lauren Kolodny ’08 Alex Rosenthal ’08 Neil Vangala ’09 Clay Wertheimer ’10 Nov. 11

C o r r e ct i o n An article in Monday’s Herald (“Orthodox Jews combine secular and religious life at U.,” Nov. 12) incorrectly stated that 5.6 million people are part of the Orthodox Jewish community in the United States. In fact, 5.6 million is the figure for the overall Jewish community nationally, of which roughly 8 percent identifies as Orthodox.

C O R R E C T I O N S P olicy The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

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O pinions Tuesday, November 13, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 11

Stagnant social movements RENATA SAGO Opinions Columnist

Finding a social cause to support has become as trendy as trapeze dresses and skinny jeans.

I was once eager to be a socially conscious hipster, engaging in conversations about systemic oppression and the need for “this” and “that” kind of reform. After this year’s Activities Fair the system administrator sent me bi-weekly reminders that my inbox was full — flooded with e-mails from social organizations in which I expressed interest. While I receive hourly Facebook notifications about being invited to join a group or attend an informational meeting for a cause, I have grown disillusioned with the many uninformed and impractical approaches taken toward social protest.

Lately it seems as if social causes are like firms within a competitive market, especially on college campuses. Social issues are plentiful — some more acknowledged than others.

In an effort to fulfill their duties as ideal citizens, young, rebellious and optimistic students search for causes to support. Highly-involved students organize groups, promote community outreach, hold fundraisers and even wear designated colors for causes.

We have all seen — and may even be — these individuals, the cosmopolitans with an ardent desire to incite change in this chaotic society. They are the organizers, the dreamers.

These individuals are impassioned, devoting endless hours to pertinent social issues. We deem them socially conscious, lured by their inimitable fervor. They are laudable and impressive. I wish there were more individuals

like them. I question, however, the motivation in becoming attached to causes. I believe much appeal toward social protest is fueled by two quite convincing voices: the feeling of obligation and emotional clout.

Just as the affluent donate money to private charity organizations, so do everyday people subscribe to “save” the starving children in those late-evening infomercials or drop a few

him from the rest of the world: he is wealthy and he is perfect — whatever that means to you. Surrounded by rampant poverty and systemic oppression, this man does not directly identify with a social issue. He is conscious of his relation as a rich man to poor people; yet, he has neither experienced nor been around poverty. He feels obligated to donate a fraction of his wealth. It is not because he fully under-

Just because you wear black for the Jena Six, red for Burma or pink for breast cancer does not mean that you are socially conscious. coins in that homeless man’s cup — we are in some way driven to recognize and become involved in an issue that may not necessarily be directly relative to us. Without a doubt, all issues are relative to us in some way, for we are all members of society. Yet, it is evident that consciousness about one’s position in society holds one to certain obligations — actions deemed important by society and one’s inner emotions.

Let us consider an unreal situation in which a man has two characteristics that differentiate

stands poverty as a social issue; it is because he is aware of his relationship to poverty.

No, I do not feel that people should only support causes that are relevant to them. I do, however, believe that protest is more poignant, fruitful and substantive when individuals approach causes that relate to them. A prerequisite for supporting a social cause is understanding the cause — and not the “I’man-expert-on-this-cause-just-because-I-readextensive-information-about-it-on-Wikipedia” kind of understanding. It requires a special

sort of understanding, one that stems from experience, from internalizing the issue. Feeling obligated to support a cause could be a factor in determining how to approach a social issue. It should not, by any means, be the deciding factor.

I have grappled with the “trendy-ness” of social activism, wondering if it is a class phenomenon. Could it be that at elite institutions — Brown, for example — where a majority of students come from privileged backgrounds and are very conscious of their position in society must find ways to understate their wealth, to quell their feelings of guilt by contributing to organizations and joining causes that they know little about? This is problematic, yet necessary. I question where the funding for many programs would come from if it were not for philanthropists with a vested interest in social welfare but little connection to those at the bottom of the social strata.

My problem with the social cause trend is its shallowness. Just because you wear black for the Jena Six, red for Burma or pink for breast cancer does not mean that you are socially conscious. The best way to support a cause is to take the time to understand it, to relate to it or see how others relate to it. How can we deem ourselves socially conscious when we are unaware of our own position in society?

I do not believe in “finding” a social issue to support. To me, that sounds as ridiculous as “finding” oppression or “searching for failure.”

I do not believe in attending an Activities Fair where I am pitched ideas about which social support group to join. Social causes are ubiquitous. Understanding is not. Instead of finding a cause, let us try to understand a cause.

Renata Sago ’10 is working on being a socially conscious hipster.

Despite PRC fantasy, Taiwan is absolutely independent

BY RICH HSIEH, JOHNNY LIN, SARA LIN, PETER CHAI, ZOE TSENG AND ABRAHAM YOUNG Guest Columnists Taiwan is not (and has never been, not even for a day) a part of the People’s Republic of China. Period. On that same note, the People’s Republic of China is not a part of Taiwan. Period. Perhaps that’s easier to understand.

Recently, the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party in China concluded with a reshuffling and an election of new leaders to China’s powerful ruling elite, and the predictable trumpet-tooting nationalistic message, somehow, “the Taiwan issue is an internal issue,” was reiterated once again.

Of course in his closing remarks, President Hu Jintao also mentioned China’s movement “towards democracy” — a democracy with one party and a democracy like that in Hong Kong, where leaders are ceremoniously voted for by the people but ultimately chosen by the Party itself.

Perhaps a definition of democracy is what China is really seeking, and it need only to look towards its neighbor across the Taiwan Strait to understand what democracy is. Emerging from one of the world’s longest periods of martial law, Taiwan has peacefully transitioned from a country where speaking Taiwanese meant imprisonment, to a fullydemocratic country which today reaches out through humanitarianism to the far reaches of the world. Further, Taiwan does this even though it is subject to China’s bullying every

day: because of China’s veto power, there is no United Nations or World Health Organization membership for Taiwan, whereas other countries like North Korea and Sudan, whose modern day atrocities are well-documented, have been members of these organizations for years.

Taiwan controls its own military, runs its own democratic politics, has its own laws, culture, language and history for its 23 million citizens, maintains its own diplomatic rela-

bury the emergence of democracy on a tiny island nation where many of its inhabitants still remember being unable to speak their native tongue for fear of arrest. These are the citizens of a country that refused to let democracy fall even when during its first democratic elections, China fired missiles into Taiwan’s commercial ports in an attempt to intimidate the citizens of Taiwan. And of course, the Chinese are wont to remind the people of Taiwan that the number of ballistic

Let the people of a country that stands up to China determine their own place in the international community, free of China’s missiles and doublespeak. tions with countries, and just as America is its own country, no external country controls any of the aforementioned components of Taiwan.

How does China still have the nerve to say that Taiwan is a part of China, or that Taiwan is an “internal affair?” This is the rhetoric that has been piled upon Taiwan in an attempt to

missiles pointed at Taiwan increases every day with a recent count at nearly 1,000. To Taiwanese people, that’s 1,000 missiles pointed at our parents, our grandparents, our cousins, and our friends.

So let us choose for ourselves. Let us, our parents, our friends and our grandparents

choose. The Taiwan issue has long been overshadowed by China’s insistence and propaganda that it is an internal affair to be decided by the Chinese. Let the people of a country that stands up to China determine their own place in the international community, free of Chinese missiles and China’s doublespeak that tries to force and seduce blind eyes over the world. And let the United States, in true form, uphold its values and support the successful democracy that is Taiwan, instead of appeasing China and feeding the fantasy of the PRC-Emperor’s new clothes. Just because the Communist Party continues to say Hong Kong “has retained” its democratic freedoms under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, does not make it so. Just because the Communist Party says the next reincarnate of the Dalai Lama must be approved by the PRC, does not make it so. Just because the Communist Party says that the Falun Gong is an evil, harmful religion deserving of persecution, does not make it so. Just because the Communist Party still insists the Tiananmen “incident” was not a massacre of its own citizens but an overblown uprising instigated by students, does not make it so.

To any logical mind holding the true facts, Taiwan is absolutely no “internal affair” of the PRC Communist Party, so let us all speak out against the fallacies of regurgitated rhetoric like Demafeliz’s, and ensure that Taiwan does not end up a character in China’s fictional fantasy.

Rich Hsieh ‘03, Johnny Lin ‘10, Sara Lin ‘03, Peter Chai ’06 MD ‘10, Abraham Young ‘05 and Zoe Tseng ‘06 co-authored this column.

S ports T uesday Page 12

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Fair ball I was watching New England pummel the Washington Redskins a few weeks back when my mom called me up on the phone.

“I don’t understand how you think this game is fairer than baseball,” she demanded, eager to dampen my vicarious glee.

“The Patriots are Ben Singer just beating up evHigh Notes eryone.”

While she may have been a total downer, my mom raised an interesting question.

How do we measure fairness across professional sports?

For the sake of argument, let’s take baseball and football. In my opinion, these two sports exemplify both ends of the fairness spectrum.

On one end, you have the NFL. The league is the strongest of any American sport in terms of television ratings, and each of the 32 teams in the NFL operates under the same salary cap. Though there are certainly ways to manipulate the cap, for the most part it does a very good job of ensuring that all teams operate using the same amount of money to pay their players. Hence, teams that spend wisely and can identify and develop talent thrive. Additionally, revenue sharing, or the practice of splitting up the money gained through television contracts equally among all teams, ensures that no team gains an unfair financial edge.

Now let’s look at football’s little brother, baseball. It’s number two on the ratings chart, which isn’t too shabby. It’s got some revenue sharing policies of as well. However, the absence of a hard salary cap renders any revenue sharing moot. In theory, big markets like Los Angeles, Boston and New York should be dissuaded continued on page 9

M. hockey beats Colgate, falls to Cornell

By Benjy Asher Assistant Sports Editor

A dominant third period gave the men’s hockey team a 5-2 win over Colgate University on Friday night, but penalties plagued the team Saturday in a 4-1 loss to Cornell.

The Bears now have a 1-2-2 overall record and are 1-1-2 in ECAC Hockey after their only two home games of the fall semester.

In Friday’s game, Brown and Colgate headed into the third period with the score tied at two, but forward Aaron Volpatti ’10 made a play to give the Bears the lead with 12:01 remaining in the game. Taking a pass from David Robertson ’08, Volpatti beat his defender and buried a shot in the right corner of the net for his first goal of the season, giving the Bears a 3-2 lead.

With 6:15 left in the game, Sean Muncy ’09 scored a wraparound goal to increase the lead to 4-2, and in the final minute of the game, Brown took advantage of an empty-net situation when Ryan Garbutt ’09 put in a goal to make the final score 5-2.

“When you jump up by a goal, the pressure shifts,” said Head Coach Roger Grillo. “We had some opportunities, and we capitalized on them. That was the difference in the game.”

Brown struggled early on against Colgate. Just 8:22 into the game, David McIntyre beat goaltender Dan Rosen ’10 to put the Raiders up 1-0. But 4:31 later, defenseman Paul Baier ’08 sent a wrist shot toward the net and it got past the Colgate goaltender to tie the game.

Early in the second period, the Bears found themselves on a power play and they did not let the opportunity go to waste. Only eight seconds into the power play, for ward Devin Timberlake ’10 found the back of the net, assisted

By Peter Cipparone Spor ts Editor

deflected a shot from teammate Jason Fredricks into the goal to

With a 16-player roster that incudes only one senior and two juniors, the women’s basketball team knew it would have to battle inexperience as it opened the season. In its first two games, this weakness was apparent as Brown (0-2) lost to Providence College 79-45 in its home opener Friday night, then fell to Quinnipiac University 85-41 on Sunday.

Captain Ann O’Neal ’08 said the team should improve its inconsistent play once it gets deeper into its schedule.

“We were outworked and lost confidence, which is unacceptable,” she said. “I just think time will help everything because the freshman are gaining experience and improving every day in practice. It’s good for them to hear that we have confidence in them.”

Giving up a game average of 82 points in the two losses, Brown pointed to the defense as the culprit for the blowout losses. “(The defense) is pretty much what (Head Coach Jean Marie Burr) has gone berserk about in the locker room,” O’Neal said.

In Brown’s 17th meeting with its crosstown rival, Providence opened with a 10-1 run to take a comfortable lead just less than five minutes into the game. Brown played the Friars evenly over the next six minutes as the teams each scored nine points. But the visitors mixed in free throws, layups and a 3-pointer by guard Catherine Bove to take a 32-12 advantage with 5:19 left to play in the first half.

continued on page 9

continued on page 9

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Paul Baier ’08 scored the men’s ice hockey team’s first goal in Friday’s victory over Colgate.

by Muncy and Robertson, to give Bruno its first lead of the game.

Then, with 9:52 remaining in the period, Colgate’s Peter Bogdanich

W. soccer stumbles at finish, falls to Big Green

By Christina Stubbe Sports Staff Writer

The women’s soccer team ended its season on Saturday evening with a 1-0 loss to Dartmouth, extending a winless streak against the Big Green that stretches back to 1995.

An early goal decided the game, even though Brown outshot the Big Green, 15-10 on the night. Head Coach Phil Pincince described the game as “an outstanding Ivy battle,” but the loss left the Bears with a losing Ivy League record at 3-4 (6-10-1 overall).

On a frigid night at Stevenson Field, Dartmouth struck just 4:49 into the first half. Melisa Krnjaic connected with the ball after it bounced around the 18-yard box, hitting a low drive across the box and into the left side of the net. The Brown defense otherwise had a strong game, and goalkeeper Steffi Yellin ’10 made six saves.

After the early goal, it was an even match. The Bears had multiple opportunities to get the equalizer, but never finished off any of their scoring opportunities.

It was an emotional night for many of the players as the Bears said goodbye to seven seniors.

Before the game, younger players decorated the locker room and hallways for the departing players. The

Volleyball battles Tigers, Quakers, but can’t steal wins

By Whitney Clark Sports Staff Writer

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Bridget Ballard ’10 and the women’s soccer team finished the year with a 3-4 conference mark.

seniors and their parents were then honored in a pregame ceremony, and all seven started the game.

“I’m really happy for what they’ve done for the program,” Pincince

Bumpy opening for w. hoops

said. “A tribute goes out to those seven seniors and what they have accomplished.” continued on page 9

Though Saturday was Senior Day for the volleyball team, the Bears weren’t doing much celebrating after taking on the two top-ranked teams in the Ivy League. Brown played undefeated Princeton on Friday and league runner-up the University of Pennsylvania on Saturday. Brown dropped both matches to fall to 7-16 on the year, 5-8 in the Ivy League.

In the first game, Princeton came out hard, but Brown held its own.

The Tigers started the scoring, but the Bears kept the game close and even pulled ahead by four points for a score of 23-19. However, Princeton crept back, stealing the lead with five straight kills to go up 28-27. The Bears kept within reach, but Princeton finished the game off 32-30.

Princeton again started the scoring in the second game, but as in the previous game, the Bears refused to let that stop them from putting up a good fight. Brown stayed within reach of the Tigers until 9-9, but after that Princeton consistently held a significant lead, winning the game going away, 30-21.

“There was a clear trend this weekend that we were really strong

the first games, but maintaining that over the course of the match was really hard to do,” said Julie Mandolini-Trummel ’08. “That was one of the most frustrating parts of the weekend.”

The third game was similar — Princeton stayed in front for most of the game, and Brown never threw in the towel. After a long rally halfway through the match that eventually materialized into a Princeton point, the Bears immediately retaliated, putting them within three. Brown continued to play from behind but closed within two points toward the end of the game at 26-24. However, the third game ended like the others, with the Bears falling to the Tigers, 30-25.

“I just feel like this entire weekend, the last thing we were going to do was give up and roll over, we were going to fight until the end.

I know none of the seniors would have been satisfied unless they had done everything that they could,” Mandolini-Trummel said.

Even though it was senior day, a group of underclassmen rallied the Bears. Megan Toman ’11 led the team with 16 kills, while Danielle Vaughan continued on page 9