Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, S eptember 24, 2008

Volume CXLIII, No. 77

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

In debate over Obama’s past, U. history revisited School reform was overseen by Brown

By Michael Bechek News Editor

Justin Coleman / Herald

A member of SDS, soaked in fake blood, represents the child of an Argentinian leftist allegedly ordered killed by the CIA in 1978.

SDS protests CIA, Raytheon recruiters Group simulates dead bodies

By NICOLE DUNGCA Staf f Writer

Protesting the presence of representatives of the CIA and defense contractor Raytheon to recruit on campus, members of Students for a Democratic Society simulated dead bodies in the back of Sayles Hall

during Tuesday’s crowded Career Fair.

About seven protesters covered themselves in fake blood and held the names of people said to have been killed in connection with either the CIA or Raytheon. About 16 others handed out literature to passersby at the fair, which was sponsored by the Career Development Center. Five lied down near the adjacent booths of the two organizations, slightly obstructing the paths of students

and creating some traffic in the back of the room, while two others were positioned near the entrance of the hall.

Protesters passed out small slips of paper that said “Raytheon Kills” because it produces weapons and is the fifth-largest military contractor in the world. The paper also declared the CIA to be “a human rights abuser” because of its “long history of illegal continued on page 8

Houston wins MacArthur ‘genius’ grant

By Sarah Husk Contributing Writer

Professor of Anthropology Stephen Houston, an expert in Mayan civilization, has been awarded a prestigious “Genius” grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the organization announced Tuesday.

Houston, the Dupee Family

professor of social science, was one of 25 MacArthur fellows announced this year. In addition to bragging rights, the grant comes with $500,000 — paid in installments over a five-year fellowship and with no specific stipulations as to how the money must be used.

Focusing primarily on the iconography and inscriptions found in artifacts from the ancient Mayan

civilization, Houston examines illustrated or inscribed archaeological objects with other pre-Columbian texts written by the Mayan peoples as means of exploring the political and social aspects of the culture. Drawing from these sources, Houston has been able to, as the foundation stated on its Web site, “reconstruct the political and social continued on page 9

With an eye toward environment, some profs. going paperless

By Kelly Mallahan Contributing Writer

In the rush of shopping period, students in political science courses may not have noticed anything missing on the first days of classes. But since the department committed to becoming greener, professors are handing out fewer printed syllabus to their students.

Both convenience and concern for the environment have motivated a movement from traditional paper resources to electronic ones. The University’s online programs, like MyCourses and Online Course Reserve Access, have helped to facilitate this trend.

According to Professor of Political Science James Morone, chair of the department, the introduction of MyCourses was a major factor in the political science department’s shift away from paper.

“We were thrilled when that system came in,” Morone said. The De-

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partment of Political Science began posting syllabi on MyCourses “maybe two years ago,” and since then has instituted a departmental policy not to give out paper copies, he added.

“Brown as an institution really helped us go paperless,” Morone said.

For his department, moving syllabi online was a decision largely motivated by the environment.

“I think the faculty were delighted because of the environmental factor,” Morone said. “We have a green political science department.”

For other professors, the decision to use more online resources has been motivated by convenience.

Associate Professor of History Tara Nummedal eliminated paper course packets in her classes and “switched entirely over to OCRA last spring.”

“There are a lot of reasons to put readings online,” she said, and hers were not primarily environmental.

what rankings?

Freshmen around the country say U.S. News and World Report can influence them — to a point.

www.browndailyherald.com

In the early part of 1995, Vartan Gregorian, the president of Brown, flew to Chicago to meet with the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school reform initiative to which he had just awarded $49 million of a large gift he had helped arrange. When he arrived, the board was excited to introduce the man it had selected to be its first president — a young lawyer named Barack Obama.

“They had said to me beforehand,” recalled Barbara Cervone, the national director of the Annenberg Challenge, who accompanied Gregorian on the trip, “‘You’re not going to believe this guy.’ ” Gregorian and Cer vone were

impressed by the charismatic attorney and law school professor, who would chair the board meetings — which included presidents of major universities and foundations — for the next five years.

“At the time, he was seen as a really bright, community-centered ... engaging, personal guy,” said Cervone, who oversaw the Chicago project and similar ones nationwide from her office at Brown between 1995 and 2000. Touted by some board members as a “rising star,” she added, Obama also brought an understanding of the minority experience in the city. (In fact, Gregorian had specifically urged the challenge’s early leaders, in choosing the board of directors, “to engage people who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago,” according to a 1994 letter.)

The case of the school reform continued on page 6

Bank bust changing plans Lehman collapse yields uncertainty

by Colin Chazen Senior Staff Writer

For weeks now, a Brown alum working at Lehman Brothers’ Tokyo office has been living in an apartment with no furniture. Lehman’s bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history, had left his job in limbo and his fate uncertain.

“I have been living in the eye of a hurricane, witnessing a global financial meltdown from within,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald — insisting, like many interviewed for

this article, on anonymity. “I had no idea whether my company would survive or if my employment would be sustained.”

Closure came Monday when Nomura Holdings, Japan’s largest securities company, purchased Lehman’s Asian assets and said employees would keep their jobs. After days of watching “worried, confused” co-workers “scramble to meet with headhunters,” he wrote, the alum found out about the deal and about his job from Bloomberg News.

Lehman’s bankruptcy has proved especially frustrating to its employees and former interns, many of whom are Brown alumni and students, becontinued on page 4

T H e S uit e lif e

Han Xu / Yale Daily News

Yale seniors Simone Berkower, left, and Yoojin Cheong were housed in a hotel while their dorm was renovated.

See Higher Ed, Page 3

continued on page 4

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CAMPUS NEWS

not technically a bike Student keeps his 12-foot canoe in storage in a bike room for special occasions.

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OPINIONS

The Final Challenge Students say goodbye to Spike’s by consuming copious quantities of hot dogs.

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

12 SPORTS

Soccer Shutout UCLA and Penn State unable to score against goalie Brenna Hogue ‘10.

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

We a t h e r TODAY

Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim TOMORROW

rain 67 / 54

sunny 67 / 49

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Beef and Broccoli Szechwan, Spinach Strudel with Cheese Cream Sauce

Lunch — BBQ Beef Sandwich, Bruschetta Mozzarella, Fresh Sliced Carrots

Dinner — Pork Chops with Seasoned Crumbs, Macaroni and Cheese with Avocados and Tomatoes

Dinner — Baked Sesame Chicken, Egg Foo Young, Jamaican Pork and Apricot Saute

Free Variation | Jeremy Kuhn

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

Epimetheos | Samuel Holzman

Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday,©February 2008 Puzzles by20, Pappocom

Los Angeles Times Crossword Puzzle C r o sDaily swo rd Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 “Green Eggs and Ham” pusher 4 Popular pop-up fare 9 Cut off 14 “Movies for movie lovers” network 15 Naturalist John et al.

16 Crème de la crème 17 H+, for one 18 Republic east of Vanuatu 20 Nourish 22 Leeds lav 23 The Panthers of the Big East 24 Info for some agents 29 Fusillade 30 “Now I’ve __ everything!”

31 Farmer’s place?

32 Card often swiped 34 Belt out 36 Narrow inlet 37 Under-the-gun spot 41 Deodorant option 43 François’s friend 44 Took from the deck 46 Purged 47 Band improvisations 49 Windy City paper, familiarly 51 Botanical swelling 55 Resistance following Saddam’s downfall 58 Selene’s counterpart 59 L.A.-to-Tucson dir.

60 Burn in a big way 61 Two-time U.S. Women’s Open winner 65 Victoria’s Secret offering 66 At a standstill 67 A nurse might take it 68 Put down 69 Inclinations 70 Go over the limit 71 Bighorn female

53 Country singer DOWN 38 “A Jug of Wine 1 Doesn’t tip Tim ...” poet 2 Biology 101 54 Sailor’s OK, and 39 “Home protozoan a phonetic hint to Improvement” 3 __ Laboratories, this puzzle’s star company that theme 40 Shore flier introduced 56 Some OKs 42 More of a Tylenol 57 She played June character 4 Voltage letters in “Walk the Line” 45 Gets the 5 Jury’s 61 Triangular sail message determination 62 French article 48 Pipsqueak 6 Classic action 63 Mil. mess 50 Move about toys workers excitedly 7 Colorful birds 64 Rare color?

52 Empower 8 FICA stipend 9 Baseball ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: commissioner since the ’90s 10 On cloud nine 11 Napa bigwigs 12 LAX update 13 Hi-__ graphics 19 Dreidel, for one 21 High-note hitters 25 Famous 26 Luke’s sister 27 Award named for a Muse 28 Ben-Gurion lander 33 “The War of the Worlds” foe 35 “Lyric Pieces” composer 37 Muslim pilgrim 2/20/08 xwordeditor@aol.com

Alien Weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner

Brown Meets RISD | Miguel Llorente

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

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H igher e d Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Report finds decline in teaching green

BY Zunaira Choudhary Staff Writer

In a recent study, researchers at the National Wildlife Federation found surprising results when they examined the developments in sustainability across America’s college campuses: more environmentally sustainable practices in campus facilities management and growth planning have not been mirrored in classrooms nationwide. Surveying 1,068 institutions of higher learning, including Brown, the study found that students today are less likely to be environmentally literate than their recent predecessors.

Green investments need to be coupled with an “infusion” of sustainability teaching across all disciplines, said Julian Keniry, senior director of campus and community leadership at the federation and one of the authors of the report, Campus Environment 2008, released August 21. She said the lack of improvement in the academic and curricular aspects of campus sustainability efforts is troubling, adding that while sustainability is “fundamental to every major,” many are barely touching on the topic.

According to the report, conserving energy was the most widely held performance objective across campuses in 2008 and the movement to reduce emissions was called the “most promising” trend. On the other hand, the curricular component was unexpectedly “slipping” as the percentage of students taking courses

Kim Perley / Herald

Michael Glassman ‘09 and members of emPOWER meet in Macmillan 115. pertaining to the environment fell from eight to four percent in the last seven years.

Keniry said the poor showing by the academic programs could be explained by the lack of incentives presented to faculty. She suggested that sustainability teaching be tied to opportunities for tenure, and pro-

posed a “swapping time” for faculty to exchange ideas on curricular development. Professors are not given the support or “relief time to reconsider courses,” she added.

At Brown, the environmental studies program encourages “projcontinued on page 4

Rankings’ role in selection ambiguous Freshmen say they don’t buy into the ‘beauty contest’ Sydney Ember Contributing Writer

Danielle Kolin knows what it feels like to be number one. Along with the rest of the freshmen at Harvard University, she can claim that her school sits atop the most recent U.S. News and World Report list of America’s Best Colleges.

Across the United States, a swath of new college freshmen have descended on the country’s esteemed campuses, and their preconceptions about the college experience will be confirmed or disproved in the coming months.

And while most matriculating freshmen interviewed for this article may have ended up choosing to attend the most highly ranked college from those to which they were accepted, almost all maintained that ranking systems had no significant impact on their decision.

“Rankings themselves are very unimportant,” Kolin said, adding that she hasn’t observed much discussion of rankings among her Harvard classmates.

Most students interviewed emphasized the arbitrary nature of college rankings systems, saying they focused instead on schools’ general reputations or their gut instincts.

“How can you differentiate between schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Brown,” said Esther Zuckerman, a freshman at Yale, “besides the fact that Yale’s the best?”

Indeed, though interviewed students denied the importance of rank-

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ings in the college selection process, many admitted turning to rankings for mere personal edification.

“I looked at rankings after I got in,” said Matt Smith ’12, who was accepted to Williams College — ranked first among liberal arts colleges — but decided to attend Brown. “It was more of an ego thing than anything else.”

This is no surprise, said Daniel Weiss, president of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and a strident opponent of the ranking systems used by publications like U.S. News and Forbes, which he equates to a “beauty contest.”

“Rankings provide information that people think is useful,” Weiss said.

They play to “a weakness in our culture, which is we’re always looking for a quick-and-easy answer. And so everybody wants a David Letterman top-10 list as opposed to a substantive understanding” of what is important to a college experience.

Methods for ranking the country’s top universities and colleges tend to be complex, and are highly varied across different systems. Factors that influ-

ence ranking systems range from measures of student selectivity to financial resources to student evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com. The algorithm used by U.S. News prioritizes peer assessment, which accounts for 25 percent of the ranking’s weight.

This survey enables the presidents, provosts and deans of admissions to “account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching” among peer institutions, according to the U.S. News Web site.

“The reputational ranking as I see it is also silly,” Weiss said, lending support to the sentiment shared by many current college freshmen interviewed that rankings don’t actually matter.

But the system used by U.S. News — the “pioneers” of college rankings — has more comprehensive faults, said Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University. Vedder helped design the recent Forbes college ranking list. “It’s almost like evaluating a restaurant on ingredients used in making the food rather than continued on page 4

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Yalies housed at four-star hotel At Brown, falling victim to a housing crunch usually means living in a larger room at best and in a kitchen at worst. But for 15 lucky ladies at Yale, renovations on their assigned campus residence provided them with a month-long stay at the four-star Omni Hotel.

Although the hotel is located outside of the Yale campus, it is safe to say that the 15 students living there have had it pretty good over the past month. The so-called “Omni 15” enjoy such perks as complimentary weekday breakfasts on the top floor of the hotel, a wide variety of cable channels (including HBO) and chocolates placed daily upon their delicately made beds.

The group — four juniors, 11 seniors and one graduate resident fellow — was supposed to move into Yale’s Weir Hall at the beginning of the academic year, but because of delayed renovations on the building, the 15 female students were temporarily housed in the hotel. Last Saturday, they moved back into their assigned dorm.

“We tried to provide the students with a living situation that reflected that which they would have had at the college,” said Gary Haller, master of Jonathan Edwards College, a residential college that includes Weir Hall. “This included a personal single bed, access to laundry service and access to wireless Internet access.”

Haller added that the costs for putting the students up at the Omni Hotel were covered by a Yale office that manages facilities and construction, which was adamant about providing the 15 students with the same amenities offered at the college.

Marisol Ryu, a junior in the group, said three of the other Omni students are, in fact, her actual suitemates, so to an extent, her living situation turned out as it should have.

The Yale Daily News reported Sept. 3 that the hotel, in cooperation with Yale, also offered a shuttle to and from the hotel and an escort service that the students were allowed to use until 2 a.m.

For Ryu, the move back to Yale’s campus housing last Saturday was bittersweet. She said her newly renovated room in the college is gorgeous.

“Though I miss the perks of the Omni, I am excited to be back in my college,” Ryu said.

—Vinny Locsin

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Freshmen weigh benefits of college rankings continued from page 3 how the food tastes to the customer,” Vedder said.

Vedder is part of a group of academics who are trying to change the way people use rankings. In the Forbes ranking system he worked on, Vedder employed more personal criteria such as student opinion on class instruction, the success of graduates, average student debt, graduation rate and academic success measured by rewards, prizes and fellowships granted to students and professors.

“We think our rankings are more based on outcome and sort of what consumers are interested in rather than on what university presidents think of the reputation of a school or ... on how much money they spend compared to other schools,” Vedder said.

Still, Vedder defended the general worth of college rankings because they provide a bottom-line measure of colleges’ relative performance to people who do not have a widespread knowledge of these institutions.

Rebecca Gotlieb, a freshman who chose Dartmouth, ranked 11th on last year’s U.S. News list, over UC Berkeley, ranked 21st, said that rankings were only important to the extent that they lined up with her perception of a school’s prestige. “Rankings, by nature, are just a quantifiable assessment,” she said.

But some students did look carefully at rankings when making their decisions, though not in the way Vedder and other leaders of these ranking systems intend. “I feel like I looked at all the rankings that were available

to me out of curiosity,” said Laurie Schleimer ’12, though she admitted that they were irrelevant in her ultimate decision to attend Brown.

Others, like Sam Barasch ’12, looked at rankings because “they told me who I was better than, and who was better than me.”

Several freshmen said a school’s actual number on a list was secondary to a school’s academic reputation or the feeling they got when they visited a school.

Although most students agreed that the rankings made sense, almost all felt, like Keeley Jacobs, a freshman at Davidson College in North Carolina, that “it’s less about the ranking and more about the fit.”

Daniel Ma ’12 agreed: “It really just came down to stuff that rankings couldn’t really tell you.”

One ranking that seemed to influence many at Brown was the Princeton Review’s placement of Brown at number two on the list of schools with the “Happiest Students.”

“One statistic I can say is accurate is that Brown is one of the happiest campuses,” Jeffrey Blum ’12 said.

Beth Slattery, a college counselor at Harvard-Westlake School in North Hollywood, Calif., acknowledged that many students do use rankings as a guide even if they are unwilling to admit it. But she emphasized the importance of feeling right at a campus.

“I would, by and large, say if a kid is using rankings as their primary criteria, I think they’re less likely to be happy,” Slattery said. “I think a kid who’s worried about fit is more likely to be happy than a kid who’s worried about rankings.”

Job market uncertain amid financial crisis continued from page 1 cause the company has remained largely mute about the fate of its assets and jobs.

A Brown senior who worked at the company this summer said he received an offer for a full-time position earlier this month but has had no official contact with the company since then. “I did hear that Barclay’s is expected to honor (Lehman’s) summer offers,” he said, referring to the British bank’s agreement to buy some of Lehman’s operations.

However, he said he was not sure he still wanted that job. “I’m definitely not as excited about working there in the current environment as I would’ve been about working for a healthy Lehman,” he said.

The Career Development Center does not have exact figures regarding the number of alumni and students that work for Lehman Brothers. Director Kimberly Delgizzo said only that Lehman and Brown have “a strong relationship.” The company has been in contact with the University about recruitment and the fate of those students who received job offers, but has yet to make any definite decisions, she added.

“Lehman is optimistic at this point, but we don’t know,” said Barbara Peoples, senior associate director of the CDC. “There’s all this uncertainty,” said Graham Neray ’09, who said he has decided to focus more on finding consultant work because of the crisis. “It doesn’t make any sense to go into an industry that is in shambles.”

Brett Finkelstein ’09, who worked as an intern at Goldman Sachs this summer, was optimistic about find-

Decision to use OCRA not necessarily sign of professors’ enviromental concern continued from page 1 Nummedal said that she made the decision because putting readings online is easier for her. “Once I scan a PDF, I always have it. I don’t have to reassemble the course packet every year.”

Nummedal said other professors in the history department were also reducing paper use in their classes, by having students turn in homework and papers via MyCourses or e-mail, and using online correcting tools to grade and give comments.

Morone said students seem increasingly able to deal with these paperless methods. “In the last two years we’ve seen a student population that is more comfortable online,”

he said.

“A lot of faculty are switching over to OCRA, but I’m not sure if it is environmental or if it has more to do with convenience,” Nummedal added.

Although putting readings and syllabi online likely has some effect on actual paper use at Brown, it is unclear how large the impact is.

Both Nummedal and Morone were optimistic that at least some paper is saved through these programs.

Although many students will print out online readings, using the same amount of paper as a course packet would, OCRA “gives students who are environmentally conscious an option not to use paper,” Nummedal said.

But Michael Glassman ’09, a member of the environmental advocacy group emPOWER and former Undergraduate Council of Students president, said he doubts the shift to online resources is making much of a difference.

“Paper use is not really one (of the issues) that I’ve heard students getting excited about,” Glassman said.

He added that the movement away from paper is “technology-driven and not necessarily the result of groups on campus” advocating paper reduction.

“I think the impact would be … pretty miniscule” relative to “other things that Brown could be focused on such as retrofitting buildings,” he said.

www.browndailyherald.com

ing financial work. “We’ll all eventually get a job,” she said. “The industry moves in cycles. They’ve had to deal with this before.”

Delgizzo said it is still too early to tell how the current financial crisis will affect students’ job prospects for next year. “Things are evolving day-to-day,” she added.

No companies have yet contacted the CDC about paring down their recruitment efforts, but some have stopped doing on-campus interviews or changed which positions they are hiring for, Delgizzo said. Last week, Morgan Stanley canceled its posting on the CDC’s Web site for a Sales and Trading Full-time Analyst and replaced it with a Sales and Trading Fixed-Income Full-time Analyst position.

The CDC sent an e-mail to the senior class last Tuesday about the financial situation, encouraging students to use the CDC’s resources, because “for some of you, these developments will necessitate an unanticipated change in your career planning.” The center has seen an increase in the number of students and alumni seeking career advice in the past week, and has met with many students who were thinking about finance and are now looking at consulting jobs, Delgizzo said.

While this may be difficult year for financial hiring, a lot could happen between now and next fall, Peoples said. “We are 11 to 12 months out right now from when full-time offers would start,” she said.

The Brown senior who was worried about his full-time offer from Lehman said the upside of the company’s bankruptcy is that it happened when it did.

“All things considered, the timing

was about as good for me as it could have been,” he said. “A few weeks earlier and I would not have had the great experience I had this summer and the job offer I put on my resume.

If it had happened in December, I might have accepted a job at a firm that ceased to exist.”

He said he is applying to several other jobs and trying to keep his options “as open as possible.”

The restructuring of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley last Sunday into bank holding companies may pose an additional challenge to job applicants. Because holding companies are subject to greater regulation and required to maintain higher deposits than investment banks, the roles of whole categories of finance jobs may be eliminated or reduced.

Professor of Economics Ross Levine, though, believes the investment banking profession will outlast the crisis.

“The job situation is uncertain, but many troubled assets will be sold and many financial firms will be restructured,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “Investment banking will survive, though some of the activities like securitization will be a smaller component.”

Despite the uncertainty he faced over the last few weeks, the alum in Tokyo regards it all as a learning opportunity.

“Some would see this experience as something to curse, but I’ve enjoyed it very much,” he wrote. “How often does one get to experience such an educational experience and witness a once-in-a-lifetime event like this from the front row? I joined this firm to learn, and that’s all I’ve been doing.”

U. rated behind Ivy peers on sustainability programs list continued from page 3 ect-based learning” to help students build skills that can be applied to programs and policies in their careers, said Kurt Teichert, the University’s environmental stewardship initiatives manager. Teichert said that while most of the science disciplines incorporate sustainability studies into their curriculum, more widespread integration is possible and “there is always room for improvement.”

Teichert said that the methods used by reports like the NWF’s can be “tricky” and don’t focus as much on the programs that “have been in place for decades,” adding that “Brown has a high standard” concerning sustainability practices and teaching. Brown was not among the U.S. colleges commended for their programs in sustainability.

Some of Brown’s Ivy League peers were , however. Princeton was acknowledged for its “environmental or sustainability goal-setting,” while Harvard, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania all received citations for their efforts to improve transportation.

Salve Regina University in Newport was commended as a school dedicated to making advances with “energy efficiency, conservation, and renewable energy.” A university-wide conversion to fluorescent light bulbs in the last decade, the purchase of hybrid cruisers and the transition to tray-less meals are among some of the university’s efforts to conserve, said Jameson Chace, assistant professor of biology and a member of the environmental advisory committee at Salve Regina. In addition, dining

services at the university serve only food that is grown within a 200-mile radius.

In 2007, Salve Regina set the broad goal of establishing an “environmentally literate and responsible community” through raising general awareness about sustainable practices and integrating sustainability into academic programs and research, according to an April 26, 2007 official statement. However, incorporating sustainability into curricula is a challenge, said Chace, who teaches a course at Salve Regina called “Humans and their Environment.” Even though instruction on sustainability isn’t reaching enough students, adapting curricula is difficult because many professors prefer to take “total ownership of their courses” and are suspicious of intrusions on the independence of their instruction, he added.

Brown’s support of sustainability is exemplified through the funding of student-led projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions, said Julia Beamesderfer ’09, a member of the energy and environmental advisory committee and the student group emPOWER. Funds from the Community Carbon Use Reduction at Brown program have led to “creative and innovative” endeavors that will have an impact in the Providence area, she said.

Project 20/20, supported by the program, involves replacing the incandescent light bulbs of middle and low income households in the Providence area with compact fluorescent bulbs, a change which has simultaneously “promoted awareness and reduced electric bills,” Beamesderfer said.

C ampus n ews Wednesday, September 24, 2008

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Northern climates felt a world away Who knew that Northern temperatures had the power to influence so much more than our apparel choices? According to a new study by Brown researchers, the weather up north can affect conditions even in southeast Africa.

The study, published in Science Express by Jessica Tierney ’04 GS in conjunction with researchers from Brown, the University of Arizona and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, counters scientists who believed climate in this part of the world was determined by the low pressure system around the equator known as the inter-tropical convergence zone, according to the study.

Researchers extracted sediment containing tens of thousands of years of climate record from southeast Africa’s Lake Tanganyika. To determine rainfall variation, Tierney, a graduate student in the geology department and the study’s lead author, studied the composition of leaf wax remains in that sediment using a method that “Brown geology has pioneered,” she said. Tierney used the equipment in the Netherlands to perform temperature analyses. The study found that major shifts in temperature and rainfall in the North Atlantic were frequently followed by major shifts in southeast Africa’s climate. Because tropical conditions largely determine climate in the rest of the world, it is surprising to find variations in the Northern Hemisphere contributing to tropical climate, Andrew Cohen, professor of geosciences, ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona and an author of the study.

The study found relatively abrupt climate changes, but these findings do not imply that modern global warming could result from purely natural forces, said Cohen, adding that climate trends are “currently outside natural bounds.”

The study does not relate to current conditions but should be viewed as a piece of climatological history that provides context for modern trends, Tierney said. Because of the study’s focus on the relationship between two regions and its expansive timescale, it neither supports nor refutes arguments in the debate over global warming, Cohen said. At most, it serves to “put the modern changes in perspective,” Cohen said.

Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences James Russell and Associate Professor of Geological Sciences Yongsong Huang also contributed to the study.

— Ben Schreckinger

Program to fund students’ summers abroad A new program in the Office of International Affairs will give 10 students scholarship money and an opportunity to connect their studies at Brown to the global community.

The office’s Web site describes the three components, spanning two years, that will make up the new International Scholars Program.

During the summer of 2009, selected students will use up to $5,000 in scholarship money for an international experience that could encompass language study, research, public service, an internship or another project of the student’s design.

During the 2008-09 school year, the students will prepare for their international experience by taking certain classes, consulting a faculty mentor and participating in monthly dinner seminars.

Finally, during the 2009-10 academic year, the students can apply for another $1,000 to fund a capstone project related to the time spent abroad. This project could be public service, publication of a paper, research, or another project the student designs.

“There’s a huge appetite for going abroad on the Brown campus,” Director of International Affairs Vasuki Nesiah said. For some students, however, she said time abroad was time away from academics rather than an integrated part of the studies. Nesiah said the program was created to help students integrate their curricula in Providence with their experiences overseas, and to get Brown faculty more involved in students’ experiences abroad.

Nesiah said the project has been in the works since January. The creators sought feedback during the spring and finalized plans for the program over the summer. It was announced to Brown students during the first week of classes.

Because the summer abroad is not intended to provide academic credit, students do not have to go through a lengthy approval process to study in some countries, though Nesiah said they need to prove the location is safe. Students who feel their summer activities should merit academic credit may fill out an additional application.

Zina Miller ’02, a visiting fellow in international studies, has received between 10 and 20 queries about the program in the last week, most of which have been logistical.

Elizabeth Adler ’11 is in the process of applying. While researching a potential semester abroad in Nepal, Adler came across a grassroots NGO in the Lalitpur district of Nepal called the Society for Health, Environment and Women’s Development. If she is awarded one of the 10 scholarships, Adler said she wants to help coordinate a women’s health camp that delivers care to an underserved population. She said she would like to look at the factors that create barriers to providing communities with health care and use the data she collects to analyze and create a sustainable project for the society to implement.

“I think it’s really easy to take your classes as isolated units,” Adler said, adding that she is excited Brown has started a program that will help students integrate international experiences with what they really want to do.

— Hannah Moser

Two guys, up the dorm without a paddle

By Connie Zheng Staff Writer

Stored inside one of the bicycle rooms in Vartan Gregorian Quad is a vessel more than twice as long as any bike and more than three times as heavy. It has weathered Tropical Storm Hanna, seen the underbelly of the Providence Place Mall and is just as at home on the Providence River as it is on a bubbly brook in the woods.

Approximately 12 feet long and

FEATURE over two and a half feet across, Axel Tifft’s ’10 fiberglass Riverjammer canoe comes complete with a wood and imitation-wicker bench and a length of white rope for the bowline. He also keeps two well-worn wooden paddles, two blue flotation devices and another piece of rope in his dorm for when he and a friend (it takes two to carry the boat from land to water) feel the urge to canoe.

The canoe has come a long way since Tifft first brought it up to Brown University in September 2007. Tifft was then living in Grad Center and kept it padlocked against the hinge of his window outside his room in Tower A. Visible only from Power Street, it stayed partially hidden, its bow just touching the grass and its hull tucked inside a nook.

Tifft initially brought the canoe from his home in New York in order to satisfy his craving for boating. After joining the Brown Outing Club his freshman year, Tifft found that the BOC eschewed the river for the mountains, he said. Though he could have stayed with the BOC and tried to encourage more activities on the water, he said, he brought his canoe from home instead.

“Shame on me,” Tifft said with a grin.

Since last fall, Tifft and a willing companion have manually transported the canoe down Power Street to the waterfront downtown, from where they begin their two- to four-hour journeys. They usually paddle down the Providence River, sometimes to the abandoned railroad drawbridge across the Seekonk River.

While the physical demands of canoeing add to the commitment Tifft and his accompanying journeyman du jour must exhibit, the most exhausting leg is the journey from land to water.

“You always have to keep into account when you’re taking it out that you need to take it back uphill,” Tifft said. He is considering remedying this struggle by attaching the canoe to a longboard and dragging it up and down the steep hill, hopefully shortening what he says are typically 15- and 25-minute trips downhill and uphill, respectively. “I’m as skinny a white boy as they come.” Nat Brown ’10 didn’t canoe much before coming to school.

One of Tifft’s roommates, Brown has joined Tifft on four canoeing trips since Tifft brought his canoe to school. He was with Tifft when the two of them found themselves caught in the turbulent waves of Tropical Storm Hanna two weeks ago.

The duo was paddling directly underneath I-195, sheltered from the rain but not from the pounding waves, which hit the canoe on the side “one too many times,” Brown said. Once they realized they would be unable to brave the storm in a heavy two-person canoe, Tifft said, they docked and then “made a run for it.”

“We were a little close to swamp-

Connie Zheng / Herald

Axel Tifft ‘10 and Matt Brown ‘10, with the accessories from Tifft’s canoe.

ing,” said Tifft, who admitted that his canoe is not an “oceangoing vessel.”

Mini-hurricane aside, Tifft and his friends have had few mishaps on the water.

Forrest Miller ’10, who canoed with Tifft in the spring of 2008, said his experience canoeing down the muddy Providence River with Tifft has shown him some of Providence’s “cool, secret” things.

Under a bridge across the Providence River, he said, local artists erected installations of plaster faces, with pieces of crisscrossing wire forming patterns on the underside of the bridge. Half a mile down from the Providence Place Mall, Miller said, abandoned objects — such as fire hydrants and lampposts — lie rusting in the water. Miller and Tifft have also ventured beneath the food court of the mall, where they were noticed

by local skateboarders and mall denizens alike.

“It was really weird to see people eating their teriyaki chicken and looking down at you,” Miller said.

Tifft said he is willing to let any friends — and even strangers, one of whom has expressed interest, he said — use the canoe, as long as they ask first. He said he would also let the BOC borrow the canoe if it wanted to.

“I’m 100 percent down to let other people use it,” Tifft said. “But if you put a hole in it or sink it, you buy me a new one.”

Tifft and Brown both said that canoeing requires little specialized knowledge outside of being weather savvy and learning a few steering tricks. However, Tifft added with a laugh, “You should be able to swim.”

Page 6

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Obama’s school reform effort owes much to College Hill continued from page 1 effort in Chicago, which met with both successes and failures, has long been of little interest to those outside the field of education reform. But since Obama’s rise to prominence, the project has garnered renewed interest.

Unknown to most members of the Brown community, even those who are familiar with the senator’s early career, is that the challenge grant Obama directed before his political career took off owed its existence to the efforts of Brown figures — Gregorian and an influential professor of education.

The history of the initiative has been revisited in recent months for clues about Obama’s leadership ability and of his views on education. It has also been looked to by some, especially his detractors, for information about the senator’s relationship with the 1960s radical William Ayers, the former Weather Underground member who became a leading figure in the city’s school reform battles and co-authored Chicago’s grant proposal for the challenge.

Many documents from the chal-

lenge — meeting minutes, budget proposals and written correspondence — remain on file at Brown’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform. While they are short on details of Obama himself, they shed some light on his early professional work and represent a previously unknown tie between the University and the presidential contest.

U. president organized effort Billionaire publisher Walter Annenberg appeared at the White House alongside President Clinton in 1993 to announce a $500 million gift to bolster school reform efforts in cities across the country. But behind the scenes, Cervone recalled, were Gregorian and then-Professor of Education Theodore Sizer — who had been consulting with Annenberg and his wife, Leonore, for more than a year about making a large gift to public education.

Annenberg and Gregorian were old friends from their shared time at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1970s, she said, where Annenberg was a trustee and Gregorian was first a dean and then provost.

After the gift was announced, Gregorian served in the role of pro

bono adviser to the philanthropist on the implementation of the enormous public education gift, which was to be handed out to deser ving collaboratives in cities that had promising reform efforts already underway. But as evidence of the degree to which Annenberg delegated this responsibility to Brown’s president, all correspondence with the grant seekers in Chicago, including the original proposal, was addressed to Gregorian.

The Illinois governor, Chicago mayor and various foundations also wrote to Gregorian to recommend the proposal — critically, in fact, since the $49 million would have to be matched two-to-one with public and private money.

The proposal to create the Chicago Annenberg Challenge described two main principles that would, and did, guide school reform in Chicago over the next six years. The first was giving more local control to individual schools and making decisions from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

The second was forming partnerships with community organizations like museums and symphonies to create enriching experiences for

students.

Neither, however, resulted in improved test scores — leading many to conclude that the challenge, for all the money spent on 210 different city schools, was a failure. Indeed, in an article about Obama’s views on education earlier this month, the New York Times referred to the Annenberg Challenge as having “barely made a dent.”

Cervone argued evaluation using test scores for a program like the Annenberg Challenge was “a fool’s errand,” and that a respected research group had found some improvement in students’ work in participating schools. Still, the consensus that one of the only major efforts Obama has led was a failure has at times given political ammunition to his opponents.

Questions on Obama’s past In recent months on the campaign trail, there has been almost as much media buzz about Obama’s relationship with Ayers as there has been about the challenge itself.

The senator’s opponents wonder not just whether Obama worked with Ayers, but whether he also shared some of the former radical’s

Michael Bechek / Herald

The original grant proposal opinions.

At a televised primar y debate in April, Obama was dismissive of questions about Ayers, saying he was simply “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.” The fact that records of the Annenberg Challenge show Obama knew Ayers at least as early as 1995, and attended at least four meetings with him, was seized on by bloggers, pundits and others as a sign that Obama was not telling the whole truth.

“This is a professional relationship that they had, and a political relationship,” said Steve Diamond, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law who has written extensively about the Annenberg Challenge on his blog, Global Labor and Politics, in an interview.

He said he became interested in the topic because the reporting on Obama and Ayers’ relationship was not accurate, and that it was “up to voters to decide whether (the relationship) is a cause for concern.”

Diamond, who says he does not plan to vote for Obama but is “definitely not a conservative,” first started looking for records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge by looking at copies of the records from Brown, which he said initially provided the Internet community with the only real facts anyone had bothered to look up about the project.

Diamond dismissed, however, the efforts of some more hostile commentators to exaggerate the relationship between Obama and Ayers. There is “conspiracy thinking” on both the left and right, he said. “They’re drawing political conclusions that are probably unsustainable.”

In Chicago, a larger media fray was touched off this summer when Stanley Kurtz, a writer for the conservative National Review, reported that he had been blocked from accessing records of the challenge at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where Ayers is a professor of education and where the bulk of the records on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge are kept.

Kur tz’s column touched of f rumors that the Obama campaign was interfering with the records, building up so much political interest in the matter that television cameras descended on the quiet Chicago library when the university announced shortly thereafter that the records were accessible once more.

For whatever reason, perhaps because there are fewer records at Brown than there are in Chicago, the Annenberg Institute has been spared the same fate, said Mike Grady, deputy director of the institute. Only a handful of visitors have inquired about the documents in the last year, he said, although the institute has posted a press release on its Web site indicating that the records are in fact public, to stay any rumors to the contrary.

W ORLD & n ATION Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Hurricanes stir new discussion on long-held embargo against Cuba

By Joshua Partlow Washington Post

LOS PALACIOS, Cuba — A pair of devastating storms have prompted new calls for the United States to end its long isolation of Cuba, including from hard-line exile groups that are pushing for the Bush administration to loosen restrictions they had long favored.

For the first time in the 47-year history of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, Washington has offered direct aid to the island’s Communist government, long dominated

by Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raul, who is now nominally in charge. The offer marks a slight softening of the Bush administration’s policy toward Cuba, motivated in part by a new generation of Cuban Americans who think a more open approach to the island during a time of political transition could help bring about a lasting change in government.

But even the most hawkish Cuban exile groups are pushing the Bush administration to go much further.

Traditionally a voice for greater isolation of the Castro government, the Cuban exile lobby has asked Congress to lift the four-year-old rules that limit Cuban Americans to sending $300 every three months to immediate family on the island and to making just one trip to Cuba every three years. Some have even proposed a temporary suspension of the trade embargo, a cause taken up by a few members of Congress.

So far, though, the Cuban government has rejected the U.S. offer, preferring instead to rely on relief aid that arrives daily by the planeload from Russia and other more sympathetic countries. The Cuban government has mobilized the military to help in the reconstruction effort, including here in this hardhit stretch of western Cuba, while legions of volunteers are working to

pick coffee beans and other crops to salvage this year’s harvest and repair damaged homes.

“I will not be surprised if we’re looking at a major immigration crisis in the next few months,” said Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of the Miami-based Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, an organization that promotes closer U.S.-Cuba relations, who visited the island after the hurricanes. “We’re talking a situation that is very critical for the Cuban people.”

The question of who should help the Cubans in times of need and to what degree has shaped Cuba’s relationship with the United States for decades. The severe damage done by the storms appears now to be changing the debate. The hurricanes, which hit the island one after the other in just over a week, damaged an estimated 500,000 homes and ruined 30 percent of the nation’s crops.

Four days after Gustav struck Cuba on Aug. 30, the U.S. government offered to send an assessment team to the island and $100,000 in emergency funding for humanitarian groups. The Cuban government has estimated that the damage from the two storms totals $5 billion, and it dismissed the offer as too paltry to be serious.

But on Sept. 13, six days after Hurricane Ike barreled into the island of 11.4 million people, the Bush administration raised its offer to $5 million, which U.S. officials called an unprecedented proposal of direct aid to the Cuban government. In the past, U.S. aid to the island has been channeled through nongovernmental relief organizations. The Bush administration has authorized an additional $8 million in private U.S. donations to be distributed in that way.

The Cuban government requested building materials instead of the blankets and “hygiene kits” the aid included, said Jose Cardenas, the U.S. Agency for International De-

velopment’s acting assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean.

“These people are in dire need,” he said. “We certainly hope that they would just accept it and get this stuff to the people who need it.”

In an attempt to fulfill the request for building materials, the U.S. government on Friday proposed sending 8,000 “shelter kits,” which include zinc roof sheeting, lumber, tools and wire. Cardenas said the value of the aid is $6.3 million. So far, the Cuban government has not responded.

But Fidel Castro, who because of illness handed over official power to Raul in February but remains highly influential, has signaled that the Communist Party would reject the U.S. aid on principle.

“Our country cannot accept a donation from the government that blockades us,” he wrote recently in Granma, the party’s daily newspaper.

“The damage of thousands of lives, suffering, and more than $200 billion that the blockade and the aggression of the Yankees has cost us — they can’t pay for that with anything.”

Despite the offers, many Cuban exiles who favor more contact with the island have sharply criticized the Bush administration.

“A whole group that you could consider extreme right-wing a year ago is now in favor of two very important changes,” said Alfredo Duran, a Miami lawyer and a member of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, a moderate exile group that favors dialogue with the Cuban government. Referring to proposals to lift restrictions on remittances and travel to Cuba and the fuller debate emerging among Cuban exiles around the embargo itself, Duran said: “A lot of people in the past would not even talk about it. They basically shunned the issue.”

Last week, El Nuevo Herald, a traditionally hard-line Spanish-language continued on page 9

Sept. 11 mastermind exasperates judge

By Josh Meyer Los Angeles Times

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — The world’s most notorious jailed terrorist calmly stroked a foot-long gray beard as he sat comfortably in a military courtroom and peppered questions at the U.S. Marine Corps colonel who serves as his judge.

What, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed demanded to know, were Col. Ralph Kohlmann’s religious affiliations? His views on torture?

For a while Tuesday, Mohammed turned the tables on his captors and made the military judge justify his competency to preside over the trial of five accused Sept. 11 plot leaders.

Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the suicide hijackings, spent more than an hour putting Kohlmann through his paces in the hightech, high security courtroom that the Pentagon built on the naval base here for the controversial war tribunals.

Glaring and poking an occasional finger in the air, Mohammed demanded that the judge explain his views on such hot-button issues as religion and torture. He was frequently unsatisfied, and hit Kohlmann with a barrage of follow-up questions and sarcastic political commentary be-

Page 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

fore the judge shut him down and threatened to revoke Mohammed’s court authorization to act as his own lawyer in the case.

But before that, the former al-Qaida operations chief, now paunchy, bespectacled and wearing flowing robes and a black turban, had the run of the courtroom without ever bothering to get up from his chair. He was conducting the “voir dire” process that is designed to allow the defense to examine a judge’s competence and impartiality.

Throughout his questioning, and the rest of the day’s marathon legal proceedings, Mohammed sat behind the first of five massive tables, one for each of the accused men’s legal teams, his first position befitting his status as the de-facto courtroom leader and spokesman for the group. At one point he demanded that the judge explain how he could ensure a fair trial, both as a Christian and a member of a U.S. military that has declared war on his organization, al-Qaida.

“The government considers all of us fanatical extremists,” Mohammed said. “How can you, as an officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, stand over me in judgment?”

Mohammed, 43, also asked Kohlmann whether he was part of

an American “extremist sect” such as those led by Christian evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

And he wanted to know the details of Kohlmann’s Marine training and his knowledge of waterboarding and other coercive interrogation tactics that the CIA has admitted using on Mohammed after capturing him in Pakistan in 2003.

At first, Kohlmann gamely answered the questions. He said he is not particularly religious despite having attended some Lutheran and Episcopalian services in the past. And he explained that the line between acceptable interrogation and torture is impossible to quantify without seeing the details.

Interspersed among Mohammed’s questions were increasingly rambling political statements about U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prejudice of Christians and Jews against Islam and even the writings of Richard Nixon. Some of them prompted a government censor to cut off his microphone, citing national security concerns, and the judge eventually to loose his patience.

“I will not allow you to act in a manner that is disrespectful to this court. ... Do you understand me clearly?”

Kohlmann told Mohammed.

Wo

r l d

i n

Br

i e f

Gunman kills 10 students, self in Finland’s second rampage in year BERLIN — A student chef in Finland killed 10 of his classmates in a suicidal shooting rampage at a vocational college Tuesday, a day after police questioned him about violent videos he had posted on the Internet, Finnish authorities said.

It was the second school massacre to devastate the Scandinavian country in the past year.

Police said the gunman, identified as Matti Juhani Saari, walked into a classroom during an exam and opened fire with a .22-caliber pistol. Wearing a ski mask and dressed in black, the attacker roamed the corridors of Kauhajoki School of Hospitality for more than an hour, witnesses said, stalking students and setting off explosives that burned some of his victims beyond recognition.

The shooter “did not say anything, and once the bullets started to whiz by, I started running for my life,” Jukka Forsberg, a janitor at the school in western Finland, told reporters.

The attack ended when the gunman shot himself in the head. He was flown to a hospital and declared dead a few hours later, officials said.

Finnish authorities said that Saari, a second-year culinary student, had last week posted the YouTube videos in which he filmed himself firing a handgun at a shooting range and making oblique threats.

“You will die next,” he said as he pointed the gun at the camera during one sequence. A message with the YouTube video said: “Whole life is war and whole life is pain. And you will fight alone in your personal war.”

Police said they questioned Saari on Monday about the videos but allowed him to keep his gun. Saari had been granted a temporary firearms license in August, and police officials said they decided they didn’t have enough evidence to take action.

“Naturally, we will now investigate the police operation to see if mistakes were made,” Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said at a news conference.

— Washington Post

Abortion rates decline though racial disparities persist, report finds Although the overall U.S. abortion rate is at its lowest level since 1974, the drop has been far more dramatic for white women than for black women, who in 2004 had abortions at five times the rate of whites, according to a report released Monday.

The abortion rate for Hispanic women was about three times the rate of whites.

The Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based research group that supports abortion rights but whose numbers are generally respected by anti-abortion groups as well, analyzed 30 years of data since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

The analysis found that the differences partly reflected different pregnancy and childbearing patterns.

Black women had high rates of unintended pregnancy, 70 percent, compared with 49 percent across all racial and ethnic groups. About one-half of unintended pregnancies in the United States end in abortion, the report said.

Hispanic women had higher pregnancy rates and higher birth rates, in addition to higher abortion rates, than whites.

Abortion rates are falling for blacks and Hispanics, but far less than for whites.

The increasingly minority face of abortion has more to do with income than race or ethnicity, said Claire D. Brindis, a professor of pediatrics and health policy at the University of California, San Francisco and co-director of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“Many of these women are low-income women, who tend to have a higher rate of unintended pregnancy,” said Brindis, who was not associated with the report. “Often times, living in poverty, they experience so many other challenges in their lives that they don’t always know that they’re eligible for family planning services or have transportation to services.”

But Day Gardner, founder and president of the National Black Pro-Life Union in Washington, D.C., disagreed, blaming the high rates on the number of innercity clinics that perform abortions.

“It doesn’t have as much to do with poverty as that the abortion facilities are there, ingrained in the neighborhoods,” she said. “We as a community don’t talk about this. ... This is a silent killer among us.”

The report also found that abortion rates for teenagers dropped from 33 percent in 1974 to 17 percent in 2004.

The drop in teenage pregnancies began before the emphasis on abstinenceonly education, according to the report. It attributed the decline in part to a more effective and widespread use of contraception.

The drop in teenage abortion rates has been accompanied by a rise in teenage births, the report found. It attributed the rise to a greater societal acceptance of unwed mothers, more difficulties in obtaining abortion services in some areas and changing attitudes toward abortion.

More than one-half the women obtaining abortions in 2004 were in their 20s, and 60 percent already had children, according to the report.

— Los Angeles Times

The Herald A bailout for your mind.

Page 8

Some students take fliers, one joins protest continued from page 1 detainment and torture of civilians and overthrowing of democratically elected governments.”

During much of the four-hour fair, students attending the fair passed by a male student in a white T-shirt and blue jeans lying next to a pool of fake blood as they filed into Sayles.

Behind him, a cardboard sign read: “Child of Argentinian leftist killed in a CIA-ordered explosion with Raytheon radar detonator, 1978.”

SDS members demonstrated inside Sayles for about 25 minutes before administrators and police officers asked the protestors to clean up the corn starch they had used in a demonstration and get up off the floor, citing health and safety concerns.

“They clearly made their point, but at what cost?” said Terry Addison, associate dean of student life. “They certainly have the right to protest — no one denies that — but it causes others to be unduly disrupted.”

The SDS protest was largely aimed at the University, attempting to dissuade the CDC from inviting the companies back to campus, said Michael da Cruz ’09, a member of the activist group. The CIA had an information session early this week, and Raytheon representatives said more employees would come to the school later this month.

“We’ve asked the CDC multiple times to stop inviting these companies that are widely regarded as gross human rights violators,” da Cruz said. “We think Brown’s better than that.”

Last year, the group sent an email to the CDC and dropped off a letter at its main office, asking them to stop inviting the companies, da Cruz said. “If they come and talk to us after this, we’re more than happy to talk with them,” he said. “Hope-

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

fully, at some point they’ll get tired of us protesting and they’ll be willing to talk with us.”

Kimberly Delgizzo, director of the CDC, said she never received the letter and vaguely recalls reading an e-mail about a protest. In a brief interview after the career fair, she refused to comment on whether the protest would affect the relationship between the University and the targeted companies, but justified the center’s reasons for allowing the companies to recruit.

“We at the CDC have an obligation to welcome recruiters who may be of interest to our students,” she said. “Our students have a diverse range of interests.”

SDS members also wanted to reach out to students, especially those interested in working for the two companies, SDS member Alexander Wankel ’11 said. “We just want people to be aware of all these human rights issues associated with these organizations,” he said.

Student reactions were mixed.

While many stopped to read the cardboard signs and accepted the literature describing problems with Raytheon and the CIA, several gave the protesters little more than a second glance as they stepped over and maneuvered around them to pass.

Some seemed slightly annoyed.

As Michelle Moses ’09 accidentally stepped into a pool of the dyed corn starch, she grimaced. The protest was inconsiderate to some of the students, she felt.

“We’re here trying to network and advance our career, and something like this really makes me lose my focus,” she said.

She also doubted the effectiveness of SDS’s approach. “I don’t think it will be discouraging any of these companies from coming back,” Moses said.

The protest did not seem to dissuade many from speaking to the

recruiters at both companies — students continued to line up at both the CIA’s and Raytheon’s booths even as the protesters lay next to them.

“Nobody seems to be paying attention,” said Rajiv Jayadevan ’09, editor of The Herald’s post- magazine.

Jayadevan had spoken with a recruiter for about 10 minutes at the CIA booth, next to a female student lying motionless and clutching a sign that read “Iraqi civilian killed

by Raytheon missile on crowded marketplace, 2003.”

Recruiters from both organizations declined to comment.

Still, some students said they supported the protest. After Baba Doherty ’12 walked by Sayles, he was so moved that he began helping hand out literature. He said he was disappointed by some of the apathy he saw.

“At Brown, sometimes people are so accustomed to weird sights and sounds that they’re almost oblivious when it comes to a really important issue,” he said.

Addison, who said he has dealt with SDS protests in the past, said Tuesday’s was the “most elaborate” he had seen, but doubted that it was more effective than others.

“What it probably did was tick a lot of people off,” he said. “Not necessarily the people who they were targeting, but the people around them who weren’t targets at all, but were inconvenienced.”

Marcus Chang, a recruiter from the Greenwich County Day School, said he was not particularly bothered by the protest even though an SDS member was lying directly in front of his booth.

He added the protest probably helped both Raytheon and the CIA. “I would have never known that the CIA was here if they weren’t protesting,” he said.

CIA recruiters pitch jobs in security to students

By Simon van Zuylen-Wood Senior Staff Writer

Integrity and identity were the main themes at a CIA information session Monday night in Wilson 101. The more than 50 students attending — who were carded at the door for Brown IDs — heard a recruitment pitch for overseas and domestic work that stressed stricter requirements than Brown students may be used to.

Two sub-divisions of the agency, the National Clandestine Service and the Directorate of Intelligence, were represented. National Clandestine Service, created in 2005, is responsible for collecting human intelligence. It often works with other agencies overseas, according to an agent who called himself Nolan, but would not reveal his last name for personal safety reasons. Nolan, who uses a ‘cover’, or fake identity, during overseas work, said most jobs in NCS required covers.

Employees working overseas (possibly in espionage) could be assigned “any possible cover based on what your mission might be,” Nolan said. “Your name doesn’t change, your family doesn’t change but you have to work for someone else (such as an intelligence agency overseas) and you have to be comfortable with that.”

Nolan said that no one is allowed to know the real job of a CIA officer working overseas. “You have to tell (family and friends) that you are someplace else,” he said.

Another agent, who called herself Rose, represented the Directorate of Intelligence, which she said analyzed the intelligence the NCS collected from Washington. Rose stressed the importance of full disclosure when filling out an application. Applicants

cannot have consumed any recreational or medical drugs (without prescription) in the past year; any applicants who have been involved with child pornography need not apply; applicants cannot have worked for the Peace Corps five years prior to application, in order to ensure that peacekeeping and intelligence staff are not considered to be working together.

Henry Chien ’09 said that he was considering applying, even though he admitted: “some of the rules I’ve broken already.”

All three representatives at the meeting were candid about job details, emphasizing the agency’s demand for secrecy. Another agent, introducing herself as Jean-Marie, said applicants with blogs were strongly discouraged from posting details about the agency once immersed in the application process. And at the event Monday night, photographs were prohibited to ensure the safety of the agents.

Nolan stressed the importance of a CIA job in ensuring national security. He told the crowd “you should be able to go to school and live your life,” adding that in order for that to happen, “people get stopped every day from coming over here (to the U.S.) and doing things.”

Jean-Marie added that being committed to the job was crucial, as some aspects don’t necessarily resound with everyone’s ethical code.

“We do manipulate people (during recruiting),” she said. “If someone says they like tennis, I say ‘Great, so do I!’ They’re like little lies.”

Nolan spoke with pride about his job, saying “I am a CIA undercover officer because I believe in America.”

Neel Odedara ’09, who is thinking of applying to be an analyst for the Directorate, said “I have a much greater appreciation for what they do.”

W. golf makes a point of ending strong continued from page 12

The Brown Daily Herald

...too big to fail.

totals to 165 and 169, respectively.

“Every one of the girls’ focus and concentration was much better on Sunday because they were all so focused on improving,” Griffiths said.

“Julie is one of our most talented athletes, and while she had a rough first day she did a great job of really turning it around on Sunday.”

While the Bears’ team score improved from Saturday to Sunday by a notable five strokes, the team did not achieve its goal of breaking 320 on either day of the tournament. However, Sunday’s score of 325 showed that the goal is definitely within Brown’s reach.

“We all had respectable scores, and to get to from 325 to 320, basically each person needs to improve by only about a stroke,” Carly Arison said. “So we’re confident if we keep working hard we’ll be right where we want to be.”

The Bears will have another chance to show their improvement this weekend, when they take on one of their biggest challenges of the fall season at the Yale Intercollegiate.

“Yale has one of the toughest courses in college golf,” Griffiths said.

“Your course management has to be on, so we’ll be working hard on our course management and scoring all week to make sure we’re ready.”

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Reil ’09: Spitz’s mustache Ike whips up Cuban embargo discussion explains his heroism continued from page 7

continued from page 12 Spitz probably knew he could swim faster without that ’stache, but he chose to win his medals with it, something I am sure we will never see again.

What it all boiled down to was the few minutes we spent talking about each of these three athletes (sorr y Hulk, not you). When we

spoke about Phelps, we were briefly describing the awe we felt for his achievements, but we quickly moved on to Bolt, and then to Spitz. Though it was amazing what Phelps did, Bolt and Spitz not only inspired the same awe, but made us laugh like we were being tickled by little bunnies with carrots in their paws. (Are they paws? I am not a biologist.) Isn’t that so much cooler?

Archaeologist Houston wins McArthur genius grant continued from page 1 structure of Mayan civilization.”

A little over a week ago, Houston said, he received a phone call from the foundation with the news that he had been selected as a MacArthur Fellow.

“It didn’t really seem quite real,” he said, adding that he felt “stunned disbelief” after putting the phone down.

“I thought I was hallucinating,” Houston said, until the FedEx package arrived several days later bearing the official letter.

He is still unsure what to do with the grant money, he said.

“I’m too busy teaching right now,” he said, his courses including ANTH 1650: “Ancient Maya Writ-

ing” and ANTH 2501: “Principles of Archaeology.” He said it was a shame that the news had to come in the middle of a busy academic year, adding that in addition to teaching commitments, he is running an archeological dig and writing several papers.

One of the most prestigious grant programs in the country, the MacArthur Fellowship recognizes top thinkers in a variety of fields and provides them with funding to take their research in a direction of their choosing.

In 2006, alums Jennifer Richeson ’94, a social psychologist, and Sarah Ruhl ’97 MFA’01, a playwright, also won grants. Professor of English and writer C.D. Wright was honored in 2004.

newspaper in Miami, published an editorial supporting a proposal by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., to lift the restrictions on remittances and travel for six months. Even in “normal times,” the editorial read, the measures were “highly unpopular.”

“Now, they offend intelligence and sensibility,” the paper said.

“That absurd strategy does not benefit North America’s best interests nor puts pressure for the return of freedom to Cuba.”

The Cuban American National Foundation, historically the most powerful Cuban exile organization, still supports the embargo. But it is now actively campaigning to elimi-

nate the travel and remittance restrictions, and recently sent a letter to President Bush urging him to waive them. The president of the foundation, Francisco Hernandez, said the Cuban government is taking advantage of the storms to win international political support while the Bush administration is “tying the hands of its friends, the Cuban American community.”

“We all have, down here in Miami, a terrible sense of frustration at this administration at this time, because we are wasting the greatest opportunity for those who want freedom and democracy in Cuba to help and to be agents of change in Cuba,” said Hernandez, who took part in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and described the current U.S. policy as an “even bigger mistake.”

Meanwhile, Russia has sent planeloads of supplies to help storm victims, while Brazil and Spain have also contributed. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, a close Cuban ally, visited Havana this week and is expected to give a lucrative aid package.

Havana, the seaside capital, was largely spared the brunt of the storms. But many important industries suffered serious losses.

The winds flattened fields of sugar cane, the coffee harvest was hurt badly, and tobacco-curing sheds collapsed. Millions of acres of crops were damaged in the storms.

The destruction left an estimated 200,000 people homeless and left others facing severe damage and long delays in the arrival of building supplies to repair what remains.

Hogue ’10 takes on ‘the big dogs’ continued from page 12 tri-captain Lindsay Cunningham ’09 said. She added that Hogue’s work ethic is the “main reason” for the team’s present record.

Hogue’s focus and perseverance, which make her stand out on the soccer field, may also serve her well in a very different, arguably more competitive field: medicine.

A neuroscience concentrator, she jokes that, “unfortunately,” she is another med school hopeful.

While she spends less time in the library and more time on the road than the average pre-med student, she still manages to get the job done in the classroom.

“We have no access to a computer (on the road) and very little amount of time to do work. But in a way it helps because there is no wiggle room. You know you have to do work now or there won’t be another time,” she said.

Hogue, who started playing soccer at age six with her twin sister, said academics were always a priority in her household. “My parents stressed academics, soccer too, but academics always came first,” she said.

She added that in high school, she wasn’t sure if she was cut out for college ball, but always aimed for it. “I came on an official visit, and knew this was it,” she said. “I

was like, ‘Absolutely — I want to go to Brown.’ ” The California native said that, aside from Brown’s liberal education, its east coast location was a huge selling point. “I’ve never lived outside California, so I was looking for a totally different experience,” she said.

The Bears haven’t made the NCAA tournament in years, but Hogue said that the team has the potential to do so this season, after already proving their ability to compete with the “big dogs.” And with Hogue in net for the Bears, there is a good chance that she’ll be keeping those “big dogs” on a short leash.

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Staf f Editorial

Accountable academics As students at Brown, we have grown accustomed to having professors and peers illumine our lives with insight and understanding. From the classroom to the gym and from the Ratty to the Main Green, we have all grown intellectually through our interactions with other members of the Brown community.

Given the importance of this interaction, we expect professors to enrich our understanding with academic insight supported by unimpeachable scholarship. And we anticipate that our peers will be academically responsible as well.

Consequently, it’s troubling to learn that Martin Keller, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior, has been accused of suppressing the link between the antidepressant Paxil and suicidal tendencies among adolescents in a drug study. Moreover, the fact that Keller may have taken money from GlaxoSmithKline, Paxil’s maker, without disclosing the amount is problematic to the Brown community and to the country more generally.

While we do not pre-judge the allegations against Keller, we do believe that his actions directly affect the integrity of the University.

What we do and who we are as a university is predicated upon an implied social contract of intellectual trust and personal reliability. As students, we expect our professors to act with integrity just as our professors demand that of us.

And the obligations we owe to each other extend beyond Brown to the community at large.

It is a troubling reality for students to realize that the work of their professors, let alone their peers, may lack integrity. After all, we understandably want our academic experience at Brown to enrich us. So students reject the prospect of anything that might undermine that experience.

And they demand the bona fides of the information shared in lectures, seminars and even day-to-day conversation.

Indeed, they recognize that the credibility of this information is the currency that underlies all the intellectual exchanges we make.

However, as we consider the broader implications of the Keller allegations, we do think it is important to remember that professors are accountable for the honesty of their intellectual work and discourse as well.

We suggest an edit to our academic code. The Academic Code as presented on the University’s Web site, states that in the case of “Misrepresentations of facts, significant omissions, or falsifications in any connection with the academic process ... students are penalized accordingly.” This code should be applied to both professors and students. For insofar as the Brown community is fostered by a direct dialogue between students and faculty, a demand for academic integrity should be imposed on all members of the University.

T he B rown D aily H erald Editors-in-Chief Simmi Aujla Ross Frazier

Executive Editors Taylor Barnes Chris Gang

Senior Editors Irene Chen Lindsey Meyers

editorial Ben Hyman Hannah Levintova Matthew Varley Alex Roehrkasse Chaz Firestone Nandini Jayakrishna Scott Lowenstein Michael Bechek Isabel Gottlieb Franklin Kanin Michael Skocpol Ben Bernstein James Shapiro Benjy Asher Amy Ehrhart Megan McCahill Andrew Braca Han Cui Katie Wood

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production Production & Design Editor Steve DeLucia Asst. Design Editor Chaz Kelsh Copy Desk Chief Kathryn Delaney Copy Desk Chief Seth Motel Graphics Editor Adam Robbins

Business Darren Ball General Manager Mandeep Gill General Manager Shawn Reilly Office Manager Alex Hughes Sales Manager Lily Tran Sales Manager Emilie Aries Public Relations Director Jon Spector Accounting Director Claire Kiely National Account Manager Ellen DaSilva University Account Manager Philip Maynard Recruiter Account Manager Katelyn Koh Credit Manager Ingrid Pangandoyon Technology Director photo Meara Sharma Min Wu

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Joanna Lee, Anna Migliaccio, Jessica Calihan, Chaz Kelsh, Steve DeLucia, Designers Luis Solis, Tarah Knaresboro, Jordan Mainzer, Janine Lopez, Copy Editors Michael Bechek, Gaurie Tilak, Melissa Shube, Night Editors Senior Staff Writers Colin Chazen, Sara Sunshine, Melissa Shube, Anne Simons, Gaurie Tilak, Mitra Anoushiravani, Chaz Kelsh, Emmy Liss, Max Mankin, Brian Mastroianni, George Miller, Caroline Sedano, Jenna Stark, Joanna Wohlmuth, Simon van Zuylen-Wood Staff Writers Sam Byker, Debbie Lehmann, Sophia Li, Noura Choudhury, Joy Chua, Cameron Lee, Christian Martell, Anna Millman, Evan Pelz, Eli Piette, Leslie Primack, Marielle Segarra, Catherine Straut, Allison Wentz Sports Staff Writers Peter Cipparone, Han Cui, Lara Southern, Nicole Stock, Katie Wood Business Staff Stephanie Cheung, Veronica Yu, Jay Guan, Jennifer Chang, Jamie Phinney, Anna Reisetter, Kartika Chourdhury, Serena Ho, Akshay Rathod, Galen Cho, Maryrose Mesa, Van Le, Maura Lynch, Grant LeBeau, Jacqueline Goldman, Dana Feuchtbaum, Geraldo Guanaes, Lauren Presant, Lindsay Walls, Lucy Wang, Ruyi Jiang, Saul Lustgarten, Diego Gomez, Laura Sammartino, Ava Amini, Charley Chen, Lee Chau, Rory Stanton, Oliver Bowers, Katherine Richards, Alison Greenberg, Lilia Royanova Design Staff Shara Azad , Marlee Bruning , Jessica Calihan, Jeehyun Choi , Rachel Isaacs, Amy Kendall, Joanna Lee, Andrea McWilliams , Heeyoung Min, Max Rosero , Angela Santin, Anna Samel , Katie Silverstein, Rachel Wexler Photo Staff Oona Curley, Alex DePaoli, Erik Maser, Kim Perley, Quinn Savit Copy Editors Ria Ali, Paula Armstrong, Kim Arredondo, Ayelet Brinn, Aubrey Cann, Rafael Chaiken, Stephanie Craton, Erin Cummings, Julianne Fenn, Jake Frank, Anne Fuller, Josh Garcia, Jennifer Grayson, Rachel Isaacs, Joyce Ji, Jenn Kim, Tarah Knaresboro, Ted Lamm, Alex Mazerov, Lisa Qing, Alex Rosenberg, Madeleine Rosenberg, Elena Weissman, Jason Yum

C arly H U D E L S O N

Letters Editorial on SDS fails on several points To the Editor: Yesterday’s staff editorial on Students for a Democratic Society’s action at RIPTA’s board meeting (“Slowing the bus down,” Sept. 23) was poorly researched and contained many inaccuracies about the action and the people who conducted it.

The editorial accused Providence SDS of “badly treating a group of people who are at least trying to do some good” while failing to note that SDS peacefully attended RIPTA board meetings this summer; has had ongoing conversations with the RIPTA managers, drivers, and riders; and has done extensive research about the RIPTA deficit. Our action did not come out of the blue; our strong tactics came after a long period of trying many non-disruptive ways of having our voices heard.

The Herald also failed to point out that the protesters at Monday’s meeting were not just SDS members, nor were they only from Brown. The Gray Panthers, a Providence senior advocacy group, the Olneyville Neighborhood Association, Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless and Direct Action for Rights and Equality were also present in solidarity. Ideally every RIPTA rider who is facing hardship as a result of these decisions would have been able to attend, but many of those people work, making the noontime Monday meeting rather inaccessible.

The Herald wrote in its editorial, “SDS members will not make the decisions that affect thousands of people.

The board will; no protest will change that.” Brown’s student newspaper is free to assert that real democracy cannot happen within the public transit system, a utility

that hundreds of thousands of Rhode Islanders depend on. However, we envision a society where people have a say in the decisions that affect them, and are willing to fight for this ideal.

In conclusion, SDS would like to again urge The Herald to stop accusing its members of hoping for arrests. This is the second time this false accusation has occurred (“Seven Brown students arrested Thursday,” March 20 web update), and demonstrates not only an unfair bias, but faulty research. Our desire not to be arrested didn’t, however, stop Providence Police from illegally detaining a participant without charges.

In addition, to correct Tuesday’s article about the action (“Angry SDS riders take over RIPTA meeting,” Sept.

23), there was no chant consisting of the phrase “Who’s RIPTA? We are RIPTA!” Rather, the chant was, “Whose RIPTA? Our RIPTA.”

Alexander Campbell ‘10 Alex Tye ‘10 Daniel Patterson ‘12 Mael Vizcarra ‘09 Sopheya Lambertsen ‘11 Olivia Ildefonso ‘09 Carly Devlin ‘09 Will Lambek ‘09.5 Lily Axelrod ‘09 Evan Owens-Stively Providence SDS Sep. 23

Corrections Due to an editing error, a jump headline for a story in yesterday’s print edition (“Keller’s findings on Paxil disputed by doctors, FDA,” Sept. 23) indicated faculty believe the University should engage in a discussion of the chair of the psychology department’s ethical practices. In fact, the professors said such a discussion should focus on the chair of the psychiatry department. The psychology department chair’s research ethics have not been brought into question, and The Herald sincerely regrets the error.

In a recent Herald article, (“Health Services hires sexual assault staffer,” Sept.18) Gail Cohee, director of the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center, was stated to have questioned the sexual assault statistics released in 2006 by the Department of Public Safety. However, Cohee was not interviewed for last Thursday’s story. She was mentioned in reference to a Oct. 26, 2006 Herald article in which Cohee said that more incidents of sexual assault may have occurred than were reflected in University statistics.

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.

C ommentary P O L I C Y The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

L etters to the E ditor P olicy Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed. advertising P olicy The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

O pinions Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Page 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Our intrepid columnist heads to Spike’s in search of gastric glory

BY KEVIN ROOSE Opinions Columnist I’ve never been particularly seduced by hot dogs. Sure, a greasy Ballpark is fine at the baseball stadium, but given the choice, I’ll take almost any other foodstuff over the standard-issue wiener. So when I heard that Spike’s, the legendary Thayer Street hot-dog emporium, was shutting its doors for good on Sept. 28, I was surprised to find myself feeling gloomy.

Spike’s, of course, is home to the Spike’s Challenge, a fabled eating contest that has tempted me ever since I arrived at Brown.

The rules of the challenge never seemed all that forbidding: Finish six hot dogs in an hour and a half without vomiting, and you win. The prizes aren’t much — a Spike’s t-shirt, your Polaroid on the wall — but anything containing the word “challenge” is catnip to a redblooded American male, and unless I acted quickly, I’d never get the chance to conquer this Iditarod of gluttony. And so, one night last week, a group of brave friends accompanied me to Spike’s, where we pledged to take the Spike’s Challenge one last time to see, once and for all, whose gastrointestinal fortitude reigned supreme.

Dog #1: Our quest gets off to a rocky start when David Hess ’11 asks the guy behind the counter for “an order of the Challenge.” The Spike’s worker, a goateed bruiser with the personality of a barbed-wire fence, sneers back: “You want to do the Challenge, I take it?”

Semantics aside, the first hot dog goes down smoothly. It’s juicy and plump, with a large, salty bun, and the ketchup and mustard give it a burst of tangy crispness. Not bad.

“How many calories do you think we’re going to eat tonight?” asks Joe Lerman ’11.

UCS President Brian Becker ’09 grimaces.

“We don’t speak of that number.”

Dog #2: A few strategies are emerging.

Personally, I belong to the just-get-it-over-with camp, but a few of my friends are taking it slow (something about digestion). Hess is dipping his buns in water before eating them — a tactic he cribbed from a hot-dog eater named Kobayashi, who is apparently some kind of authority on these matters.

“I feel great,” says Jason Bertoldi ’10, tuck-

emitted a little sigh after polishing off his third dog, but no one else is slowing down. President Becker is slathering Russian dressing on his fourth, preparing it for consumption.

Bertoldi smiles confidently as he jams number three down his throat.

“I feel like Usain Bolt over here.”

Dog #4: Have you ever smelled a hot dog?

Like, really let the foul, unrepentant meatiness of the thing invade your nose? The stench of my fourth frank transports my brain to a slaughterhouse, and I’m picturing a pile of blood-soaked trimmings being shaped into

We pledged to take the Spike’s Challenge one last time to see, once and for all, whose gastrointestinal fortitude reigned supreme. ing away his second dog. “I could eat 30 of these.”

Dog #3: At the halfway point of the Challenge, a series of dull rumbles begin to spread through my lower intestines. I’m feeling full, and it’s not the hot dogs’ fault. It’s the buns — huge, buttery baguettes that extend a good two inches on either side of the wiener. Eating six of these buns is going to be the equivalent of taking down an entire loaf of Pepperidge Farm soaked in corn oil.

I think I’m the only one struggling. Hess

this stick of nondescript meat. Bile is rising in my throat.

“I’m getting light-headed,” says Hess, who is slumped catatonically over the table. “This is disgusting.”

Dog #5: I quit. I can’t take it anymore. I’m being waterboarded with cholesterol. What do I have to do to make this torture stop?

Surrender my bike lock combination? Give out my e-mail password? I’ll do it all.

The guy behind the counter smirks as I confess my failure. Lerman quits before dog

number five arrives. Hess is dry-heaving.

The only two still eating are Becker and Bertoldi.

“I think my stomach is bleeding,” Hess says.

“If there’s less blood in your stomach,” says Bertoldi, shoving his fifth into his mouth, “that’s more room for hot dogs.”

Dog #6: I take a break from suppressing my own vomit to watch Bertoldi and Becker finish their final hot dogs, completing the Spike’s Challenge with panache. It’s been 45 minutes, which means that these two men have eaten six large rolls and more than a pound of meat in half the time allotted to them. Becker even dared to order bacon on his sixth. I am in awe.

“This is terrible,” says Bertoldi, releasing a belch that smells like a locker room. “I feel so, so ill.”

It might not have been pretty, but he’s done it — he’s gone up against College Hill’s biggest gustatory test and emerged a winner.

He collects his free t-shirt from the snarling mastodon behind the counter and poses for a picture in front of the American flag hung in the window.

As Bertoldi mugs for the camera, ketchup plastered to his chin, I feel another round of rumbles starting up in my gut. It’s dyspepsia, most likely, but I prefer to think of it as patriotism. Watching my friend claim this most American of victories from an iconic Providence institution, I can’t help smiling. I know it’s been said before, but for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.

Kevin Roose ’09.5 is Brown’s newest vegetarian.

When green isn’t green (and when it is)

BY Joshua kaplan Opinions Columnist Green is catching on. Corporations of all kind are jumping to make themselves green or at least appear green. Greenwashing — the perception but not actuality of being green — is getting plenty of attention. But there is another problem getting a lot less attention — the determination of what is and isn’t healthy for the environment.

Let me start with a rather unusual but straightfor ward example. Paul McCartney is a prominent advocate of the environment, so he got himself a hybrid. But being a celebrity who did a US concert tour sponsored

by Lexus, he received a $158,000 Lexus LS 600h for free. And he received it almost immediately; it was shipped in the hold of a cargo jet from Japan to Britain. That works out to driving the car around the world 300 times. That car could run on nothing and never make up for its carbon debt. So on the whole — anything but green.

Of course most of us don’t have hybrid sedans shipped half way around the world in the hold of a cargo jet. But at around $5,000 a piece, some Americans are starting to install home wind turbines. Which is a good thing — sometimes.

For the many city dwellers becoming interested in wind turbines, they’re likely to do more harm than good. While much of the countryside provides strong, consistent winds, urban environments, with their varying roof heights and obstructed air paths, provide choppy inconsistent winds that result in little electrical generation. A recent

British study found that the construction and transportation of wind turbines for urban use could lead to negative carbon savings.

Companies are adapting to the home market by infusing artistic elements into their turbines. The New York Times reported a few weeks ago on a San Francisco resident who installed two turbines atop his roof and now his envious neighbor is thinking of following suit. Upsettingly, innovations like urban wind turbines are a growing “green”

In a world filled with renewable energy, mercury would not be a concern with regard to incandescent bulbs. However, with half of the countr y’s power coming from coal-fired power plants, the situation is the reverse.

Over the entire lifetime of a compact fluorescent bulb, an incandescent bulb would have spewed out 9.65 mg more of mercur y into the atmosphere as an effect of the mercur y in coal. Even if you vaporized the mercur y from the compact fluorescent, it is still better

At around $5,000 a piece, some Americans are starting to install home wind turbines. Which is a good thing — sometimes. trend that isn’t green at all.

On to a much more mundane purchase — compact fluorescent light bulbs. They use about a quarter of the electricity of their traditional incandescent counter parts. However, crucial to their operation is a small amount of ver y environmentally unfriendly mercur y. This is a great example of how it can be difficult to determine whether or not something is eco-friendly.

for the environment.

No matter how you slice it, compact fluorescent light bulbs are greener with regards to electricity and mercur y.

On the hybrid car front, there’s a statement I hear every so often that Hummers are in fact more environmentally friendly over their entire lifetime than Priuses. This comes from a lengthy report by CNW Marketing Research, which had such assumptions as

the average Hummer being driven 379,00 miles over its lifetime and only 109,000 for the Prius. If you change around the miles driven, and well you should — the Prius’s hybrid technology has a 150,000-mile warranty in California — then so do the conclusions. The only world in which a Hummer is green is an imaginar y one.

The study and its rebuttals bring up the point that it’s not always easy figuring out what is and isn’t green. Sure, a Hummer outgreening a Prius strikes most of as absurd — but what about the diesel sipping, non hybrid 65mpg Ford Fiesta ECOnetic?

Well frankly, no one in the general public has any idea and that’s the problem.

The Prius puts out slightly more carbon dioxide per mile, but the average consumer couldn’t even begin the calculations to account for all of the construction, components, and transportation of the two cars. As consumers, we could never really determine whether either car was more eco-friendly, no matter how many studies are published.

Unlike with the Hummer and the Prius, common sense and limited knowledge of cars will be useless.

Determining if something is truly green can include obvious examples like shipping a hybrid via cargo jet, to far more complicated matters of car comparisons and wind turbines. The latter comparisons involve complex and extensive assumptions and analysis that can be rebutted a week later with no consumer any wiser. Next time you read about some new eco-friendly innovation, make sure you keep this in mind.

Joshua Kaplan ’11 is waiting for his windpowered Hummer.

S ports W ednesday Page 12

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

W. golf lands in 11th place at Princeton Invitational Phelps v. Spitz:

By Megan McCahill Sports Editor

The women’s golf team got off to a slow start at the Princeton Invitational on Saturday but bounced back quickly, putting together a solid final round on Sunday to finish 11th overall at the tournament.

“Princeton’s course was a tough one for a young team,” said Head Coach Danielle Griffiths. “You have to have good placement off the tee, and your short game and course management have to be on. It was a great learning experience for us.”

On Saturday, the Bears were led

by Carly Arison ’12, whose 80 was the team’s lowest first-round total.

Sarah Guarascio ’11 and Heather Arison ’12 both finished the day at 83, Megan Tuohy ’12 carded an 84 and Julia Robinson ’11 came in at 89.

“I wasn’t very happy with my play,” said Carly Arison. “I had trouble with my drive and I know some other girls struggled with their own games. But that happens in golf, and we just had to stay positive and get ready to play better the next day.”

Heading into Sunday’s final round, Bruno’s overall score of 330 left the Bears sitting in 12th place in the 15-team tournament. Disappointed by their start, the Bears were determined to make up some ground and show improvement in

Cheer for the everyman

the final round.

“As a team we just focused on putting the first day behind us and remembering that we had a new day and we knew we could improve,” said Heather Arison.

On Sunday, nearly all the Bears lowered their scores from the day before. Heather Arison took charge for the Bears, lowering her score by an impressive seven strokes en route to carding a 76 that gave her a two-round score of 159, the lowest individual score on the team, for the tournament.

“The greens were really fast and I struggled with my putting on the first day,” she said. “But all the practice we’d had on the short game during the week definitely helped me turn it around on the second day. I still left a lot of shots out on the course, which was frustrating, but that’s just golf. Overall I was happy that I improved from the first day.”

Robinson also showed drastic improvement on Sunday, dropping seven strokes off of her Saturday score, as she came in at 82 on Sunday for a total of 171. Guarascio also knocked a stroke off of her opening day total, finishing the final round at 82 for a final score of 165. Carly Arison and Tuohy both shot 85 on Sunday, bringing their tournament

Herald File Photo

continued on page 8

Several members of the women’s golf team stepped up their play on Sunday to lead the Bears to an 11th place finish at the Princeton Invitational.

give my team a whole lot of credit, especially the defense who worked their butts off. My saves were recorded, but I owe my success to the team.”

While she’s created a lot of buzz this season, just one year ago she was supporting her team from the sidelines after dislocating her knee for the second time. It wasn’t until this summer that she stopped worrying about her knee, she said, never showing her teammates her mind was on anything other than the game.

“As with every injury, coming back is always scary. Especially for a goalie, there is so much possibility for injury, but she was really calm about it,” Kim said. “If anything, her injury gave her even more motivation.”

Hogue’s determination to get back on the field after her injury inspired her teammates.

“Her comeback was not much of a surprise to me at all,” forward and

Generally, the most important conversations of our lives take place at barbecues. Ever yone knows that.

Everyone also knows why steroids made Hulk-a-mania awesome, while making Barr y Bonds look like a t o o l . Yo u Shane Reil Sports Columnist could clearly see the juice leaking out of the Hulkster’s bicep ever y time he flexed, but it was cool because he wasn’t even real.

Bonds was, for a little while.

So what do steroids, the Hulkster and barbecues have in common? Well, other than me shooting up steroids before power-bombing the Hulkster through the wooden table for drinking all the ketchup at the BBQ while no one was looking? Who drinks ketchup? Anyway, it’s simple. This weekend I had a conversation with my buddy Paul and his dad around the grill about two awesome athletes: Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz. It actually had nothing to do with steroids, but something closely related.

(Got you!)

In brief, although Phelps’ million-dollar skivvies, hi-tech sports goggles, little rubber hat and delicious 12,000 calorie per day training regimen make him a pretty nasty swimmer, Spitz had long hair and a moustache. Whereas the media decided to run features on Phelps which portrayed him as something eerily close to a scientific experiment (measuring his wingspan, shoulder to waist ratio and lauding his fish-like flippers), Spitz looked like my next-door neighbor Dale.

Lastly, Spitz gave us all the feeling that, as pretty normal guys, we could achieve something that was hardly normal at all. Clearly I would not win seven gold medals at one Olympics, but I could hope for at least four or five.

Watching Phelps, I was not inspired in quite the same way. See, I am only five foot seven. Also, my hands are not as big as Frisbees. I do have double-jointed fingers, but unfortunately God stopped there, leaving me without triple jointed knee-caps and disjointed ankles that allow my feet to move as fast as boat propellers. My shoulder-towaist ratio is just enough to make me ridiculously attractive, though it falls short in preparing me to flee from oncoming dolphins.

Truthfully, the whole discussion really got me thinking. It seems the further our technologies advance, and the more athletes continue to evolve, the less we are able to really relate. It was so cool that Michael Phelps won eight gold medals, and watching made me ver y proud to be an American.

However, I was most excited to see Usain Bolt slow just short of the finish line and turn around to taunt the dudes behind him. It was just as I would have done had I hit a mammoth homer off of one of my housemates during night whiffle ball. Something about making fun of losers just makes me feel more like a human. Just the same, Mark

continued on page 9

continued on page 9

Club tennis emerges victorious from Battle of the Sections

By Nicole Stock Sports Staff Writer

The club tennis team is currently ranked No. 1 in New England after an exciting first place finish in the second annual “Battle of the Sections” on September 14-15 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in N.Y. Other teams representing New England at the tournament were Boston College and Ivy foes Yale and Harvard. Brown faced Georgetown in the finals, crushing them by a score of 30-7, which was the largest margin of victory for the Bears in the entire tournament.

Last year, Brown won the USTA

New England finals and also finished 10th at Nationals out of 75 teams. As a result, this year Brown was ranked third in New England coming into the “Battle of the Sections.” The Bears are lead by men’s captains Alex Baker ’09, Matt Doup ’11 and Sam Miller ’11 and women’s captain Tina Herrero ’10.

“Having ended on a high note last year we had high expectations, but never thought that we would win,” said Baker.

Harvard, the perennial powerhouse, appeared to be the Bears’ toughest opponent, but in shocking fashion BC ended up being the crucial match for Bruno. Brown met BC

in the quarterfinals of the tournament and the match did not disappoint. Heading into the final mixed doubles match, Miller and Aggeliki Tsoli GS had to win their final set to even the entire match.

After doing just that, Miller and Tsoli headed into a super tie-break, which would be taken by the first team to attain seven points . This team would advamce to the semifinals against Harvard. Tied at six and rallying, the Bears finally pulled it out, advancing by the narrowest margin possible.

“Tsoli, who is the No. 1 women’s player for Brown, pulled us through a lot of matches this weekend,” said

Herrero.

It was smooth sailing from there for the Bears, as Bruno cruised through the Harvard match to meet Georgetown in the finals. In the finals, Brown took care of business once again, earning them a guaranteed seeded spot at Nationals in April.

“We went in with the attitude: have fun and do as well as we can,” Herrero said.

The Bears are focused on the next two weekends, as the team works to improve and secure their ranking. Looking even further ahead, the Bears hope to compete in a USTA tournament in November as a warmup for Nationals.

From her perch, Hogue ’10 shuts out ‘the big dogs’

By Heeyoung Min Contributing Writer

Herald File Photo

Women’s soccer goalie Brenna Hogue ’10 was named the Ivy League Player of the Week after shutting out No. 1 UCLA and No. 11 Penn State.

Last week, when soccer tri-captain Brenna Hogue ’10 had two shutouts and a total of 30 saves against No. 1 UCLA and No. 11 Penn State, she proved she’s one of the nation’s best goalkeepers.

“This is unbelievable. She’s performed as high as any goalkeeper could perform,” midfielder Melissa Kim ’10 said. “She’s very intense, but she’s pretty calm about how good she is.”

Since her outstanding performance at the UConn Classic two weekends ago, Hogue has been named Ivy League Player of the Week, ECAC co-Defensive Player of the Week, and both the Women’s Team’s Player and Goalie of the Week in Soccer America magazine.

True to her teammate’s words, Hogue is modest and composed when it comes to discussing her string of recent awards.

“We went into the tournament knowing it would be really hard. I