The Brown Daily Herald T hursday, O ctober 16, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 92
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Profs: Grad students needed to match faculty growth Corporation Humanities grad to meet this student growth lags weekend behind faculty’s By Anne Simons Senior Staf f Writer
One of the University’s major initiatives of the past seven years has
been increasing the size of the faculty, adding more than 100 professors since 2001. But professors are now expressing concern that the enrollment of graduate students, who assist them in teaching and research, is not keeping pace. “There is a general sentiment that the expansion of faculty is a good thing, but it has expanded
In debate over records, a glimpse back in time
faster than support has been able to keep up with,” said James Dreier, professor of philosophy and chair of the Faculty Executive Committee. “And certainly the number of graduate students is one of the main factors,” he said. In a faculty meeting earlier this month, former FEC Chair Ruth Colwill, associate professor of psy-
chology, expressed concern the University is turning away qualified applicants to its graduate programs at a time when more students are needed. According to information from the Office of Institutional Research, the size of the faculty has increased continued on page 4
A B ridg e t o s o m e w h e r e
By Chaz Firestone Features Editor
When the Corporation convenes this weekend for its annual October meeting, its decisions will impact people from all walks of University life. But anyone anxious to learn more about the proceedings will have to wait nearly a lifetime to properly scr utinize this year’s meeting of the University’s top governing body — the minutes, reports and addresses that comprise the Corporation’s of ficial records are kept confidential for 50 years. The policy of sealing documents for decades after they are recorded has been in place for years and is “a fairly standard archival policy for records of this type,” according to Senior Vice President for Corporation Affairs and Governance Russell Carey ’91 MA’06. That confidentiality is crucial to fostering open discussion and allows Corporation members to speak candidly, said Chancellor Thomas Tisch ’76, the Corporation’s top official. continued on page 8
Min Wu / Herald
After three years of construction, a new bridge now links India Point Park to the Fox Point neighborhood.
See Metro, Page 3
Students behaving better? by Joanna Wohlmuth Senior Staff Writer
The number of alleged violations of the non-academic disciplinary code investigated last academic year was down by half from the year before, according to Associate Dean of Student Life Terry Addison. A total of 453 cases were processed by the Office of Student Life from July 2007 through June
2008, a significant drop after the number of cases spiked to 863 in the previous year. The data include all violations reported to Student Life, including those that did not warrant disciplinary action and those in which the student was ultimately found innocent. Non-academic disciplinary cas-
As institutions that are often stereotyped as hotbeds for leftist politics and liberal lifestyles, art schools are seldom associated with conservative ideologies. But one student initiative at the Rhode Island School of Design seeks to change the way students engage politically on campus. The RISD Conservatives, a group still in early planning stages, aims to provide a space for conservative students amid what it sees as a sea of liberal thinking among peers and professors. One of the group’s founders, RISD senior Alex Fass, said both he and co-founder Zach Brown, a RISD
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by Michael Bechek News Editor
With the ominous economic events of recent months as a backdrop, the Corporation will meet Friday and Saturday with a plan to discuss academic programs, including the state of the undergraduate College, the graduate and medical schools and the faculty. The University’s highest governing body, which last met in May, will focus on academic progress under the Plan for Academic Enrichment in the strategic discussion, attended by all members. The Corporation will hear from Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98, Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P’07 and members of the faculty. Concerns about the prospect of a prolonged economic slump, however, are likely to pervade discussions about the University’s strategic plans. The economy “will be something that will be discussed throughout the weekend,” said Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, senior vice president for Corporation affairs and governance. The tone of the Corporation’s discussions in coming days, he said, will be similar to that struck by President Ruth Simmons in a set of sobering remarks earlier this month. The University should “expect to see little if any revenue growth in the next year,” Simmons said at a faculty meeting Oct. 6. The return on the University’s endowment is expected to be worse than negative five percent for the months July, August and September, she said. The University’s trustees and fellows will hold meetings of the various Corporation committees Thursday
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B r e a d a nd C I R C U S
sophomore, were contacted by the Arlington, Va.-based Leadership Institute, an organization that tries to “identify, recruit, train and place conservatives in politics, government and the media,” according to its Web site. He said that the contact was initiated based on the political views that he and Brown had listed on their Facebook profiles. Brown said the RISD Conservatives aren’t taking any money from the Leadership Institute, but they will probably do so in the future. As far as the group’s agenda, both founders said that the specific activities of the group are uncertain. They’re still searching for an iden-
Postskittles on over to Deep Springs, learns to love the bro and finds the beauty of absurd delights www.browndailyherald.com
continued on page 4
Halfway down the Hill, a few conservatives speak up By Sarah Husk Contributing Writer
Total non-academic violations
Economy, academics on the agenda
Kim Perley / Herald
The Bread and Puppet Radical Theater, a political performance group, put on a show yesterday on the Main Green.
continued on page 11
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METRO
Bridging big city gaps New bridge connects India Point Park to greater Providence and brings back old memories
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OPINIONS
Gossip girl gets heat Sarah Rosenthal ’11 criticizes the show’s blatant disregard of the current economic crisis
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
16 SPORTS
baseball breeds greed Pat Davis ’10 mourns the death of integrity in professional sports and blames high salaries
News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com
T oday Page 2
Thursday, October 16, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
We a t h e r TODAY
Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim TOMORROW
sunny 59 / 39
rain 67 / 45
Menu Sharpe Refectory
Verney-Woolley Dining Hall
Lunch — Zucchini Yianchi, Cheddar Mashed Potatoes, Gyro Sandwiches, Chicken Fingers
Lunch — BBQ Beef Sandwich, Pasta Primavera, Peanut Butter and Jelly Bar
Dinner — Vegetarian Tamale Pie, Grecian Style Beef, Filet of Sole in Lemon Roll-ups
Dinner — Spiced Rubbed Pork Chops, Vegan Paella, Antipasto Bar
Brown Meets RISD | Miguel Llorente
Sudoku Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.
Fizzle Pop | Patricia Chou
Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley
© Puzzles by Pappocom RELEASE DATE– Thursday, October 16, 2008
C r o sDaily s w oCrossword rd Los Angeles Times Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
ACROSS 1 Disturbs 5 Bill Maher’s film debut, in which he played a hack 10 Courtroom entry 14 One of the Baldwins 15 “Appointment in Samarra” author 16 TV’s “My Name Is __” 17 Animal captured in Hercules’ fourth labor 18 Like many notebooks 19 Cinch 20 Swell 23 Where some liberties are taken? 24 Dons 27 Swell 31 Former fillies 34 They may be false 35 Mature 36 Architect __ van der Rohe 37 Ugly, as a remark 38 Fictional dog 39 Sawbones 40 Say 41 Prepares for summer, dog-style 42 Swell 45 “Law & Order” staple 46 Like many assembly instructions on Christmas morning 50 Swell 54 Heroic 56 “In __?” 57 Psych ending 58 Irritate 59 Bête __ 60 19th-century South Seas tale 61 Scottish Celt 62 Ecclesiastical council 63 Gainsay DOWN 1 Crime lord in “Star Wars” films
2 Skin soothers 31 LIII x L 44 Oxidized 3 Get to 32 Garlicky sauce 47 Words Alice 4 Cheapskates 33 Make up obeyed 5 Original 37 William and 48 French flier Mouseketeer __ Harry, to 49 Blind Tracey Camilla 51 “Iliad” setting 6 Black porgy, e.g. 38 “Idiot’s Delight” 52 Beef cut 7 Poker declaration playwright 53 See 10-Down 8 Mars: Pref. 40 “Leaving Las 54 .0000001 joule 9 Family outcast, Vegas” actress 55 Emmy-winning perhaps 41 Nine-digit IDs news anchor 10 Coin replaced by 43 Former Toyota Lindström the 53-Down 11 Portrait ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: alternative, in printing 12 __ of Good Feelings 13 Matterhorn, e.g. 21 Tests for injured pros 22 Cal. column 25 Movie in which the title character says “The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets” 26 Politburo nos 28 Actress Gershon et al. 29 WWI first lady Wilson 10/16/08 xwordeditor@aol.com 30 Copland ballet
Alien Weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner
Free Variation | Jeremy Kuhn
T he B rown D aily H erald Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 Business Phone: 401.351.3260
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Ross Frazier, Vice President Mandeep Gill, Treasurer Darren Ball, Secretary By Donna S. Levin (c)2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
10/16/08
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M ETRO Thursday, October 16, 2008
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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Local Republicans looking to state elections this year By Shara Azad Contributing Writer
Min Wu / Herald
A three-year, $26 million construction project ended yesterday with the opening of the new India Point Park bridge, a pedestrian walkway over Interstate-195.
India Point Park Bridge open for biz By Simon van Zuylen-Wood Senior Staf f Writer
India Point Park is quickly reasserting itself as a major part of the Fox Point cityscape. On Wednesday morning, community members and local politicians officially ‘cut the ribbon’ on the India Point Park Bridge, a pedestrian walkway linking the Fox Point neighborhood to the park over Interstate-195. An eight-foot-wide bridge was demolished in September 2005 in order to build the newer one. The walkway is now 48 feet wide, and features squeaky-clean concrete and built-in benches and will soon have small grass lawns. The bridge’s construction cost $9.5 million, according to a Rhode Island Depar tment of Transpor tation press release, but RIDOT Deputy Chief Engineer Frank Corrao said the state has spent $26 million on the project since 2005. The walkway was “designed to soften the visual appearance of a conventional concrete bridge,” Corrao told The Herald. “We’re referring to it as a destination — as a linear park,” he said. The original pedestrian bridge was built in 1971 to re-integrate the Narragansett Bay waterfront with the rest of the Fox Point neighborhood — located to the south of College Hill— after the construction of Interstate-195 split up the two areas. Even though India Point was less green grass and more rusty train tracks, long-time Fox Pointers like David Senna and John Britto feel nostalgia for what India Point was like before the
highway. “We used to slide on cardboard boxes down the hill,” Senna said. “After they put in the highway, it divided the city.” Britto told The Herald “the whole Fox Point has been improved,” but maintained, “we liked it better before the improvement — our memories are (of) how it was.” According to “The Creation of India Point Park,” a 2002 essay by Francis Betancourt, India Point became a prominent Atlantic trading post in 1680 and gained its name in the late 18th century, when John and Francis Brown’s mercantile trade with the East Indies “produced a booming waterfront.” The Great Hurricane of 1938, according to Betancourt, damaged India Point waterfront, and furthered its devolution into an industrial scrap-heap. In the time between the Great Hurricane and the installation of I-195 in 1966, India Point piers were a means to certain commercial ends and an obstacle to city development, and certainly could not be considered a park of any kind, Betancourt wrote. “There used to be a scrap iron yard right after the Second World War,” Senna said. “They used to lower (iron) onto ships and send it to Japan.” Senna recalled times when he and his friends leaped off an “improvised diving board” from an old boat dock next to a clam processing plant. Despite the nostalgia, Senna is happy with the progress of the Park and the new bridge, though he labeled it as “prime graffiti land
now,” an easy target for “some fool” who would surely prey on the fresh concrete soon. Britto said the park was now “something to come to,” but spoke fondly of India Point’s old identity: “unlowered” boats, railroad tracks and a patchy ballfield where pebble basepaths served as infield to an outfield of steel scraps and link-chain. “That little park we claimed also,” Britto said. “We learned all the bad hops.” But Britto, who called India Point Park “gentrified,” said there was work to be done before the old guard of Fox Point could really be united with the area again. “We had a big Cape Verdean sector in Fox Point,” he said. After I-195 was built through Providence “they got displaced.” Friends of India Point Park cochair David Riley told The Herald that progress in building the bridge was possible because of an improved working relationship with the “600 Pound Gorilla,” the Department of Transportation. For example, the RIDOT, compromised with activists to build around an old oak tree that was said to impede progress on the newly opened pedestrian bridge, Riley said. Though the role of the park in Fox Point life has changed since the original bridge’s construction, long term residents and city officials agree that the new bridge will serve to better unite the city and the Bay waterfront. “On the most basic level (the bridge) reconnects the park with the city,” said John Schenck, an India Point Park Steering Committee member.
As the presidential election draws near, the College Republican Federation of Rhode Island and the Brown Republicans are focusing on local politics. The federation, a conglomeration of Republicans from the state’s colleges and universities, has been “working hard in Rhode Island to get Rhode Island Republican candidates elected” to local offices, Brendan Boyle, chairman of CRFRI wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “A number of our members ser ve as campaign staf fers for Rhode Island candidates,” he said. But the group has not been canvassing locally for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain because it believes its efforts will prove futile, Boyle wrote. “Senator McCain is not going to win in Rhode Island,” he wrote. But he added that the group is campaigning in the battleground state of New Hampshire. “We bring our members and our volunteers up to New Hampshire, where our hard work can reap some benefit,” Boyle said. “We have actually spent time canvassing in New Hampshire for McCain,” Ryan Bilodeau, former chairman of the Federation wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Bilodeau, a senior at the University of Rhode Island, told The Herald in an e-mail that the group’s efforts might make an important difference in a tight election. “It’s a bad year for Republicans, but Mc-
The Herald. A bridge (to somewhere) for your mind.
Cain’s independence streak and Obama’s lack of experience may allow McCain to pull it off,” Bilodeau wrote. Sean Quigley ’10, president of the Brown Republicans and Herald opinions columnist, said the lack of a mass effort in campaigning for McCain by Rhode Islanders might have something to do with the candidate himself. “McCain is a good, neutral candidate,” Quigley said. “But (former governor of Massachusetts Mitt) Romney had a pretty good infrastructure, and that doesn’t exactly translate after (he lost).” McCain won the Rhode Island Republican primary in March, capturing 65 percent of the votes to Romney’s 4 percent. Quigley said he was the only Brown student canvassing for McCain in January. Quigley also attributed the relative inactivity of Brown’s Republicans in the presidential campaign to the group’s small size. Since both Brown and Rhode Island are leftleaning, the Brown Republicans — with 15 active members — is a fairly small organization that does not have enough manpower to organize large groups to canvass or phone bank, he said. But in spite of its size the group has not been entirely dormant. Quigley said it has helped broadcast the presidential debates, including the third and final one between the candidates last night. The Republicans are also bringing conservative activist David Horowitz to campus today and have participated in walks and fundraisers for candidates in Senate races.
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Grad students keeping apace overall continued from page 1
Kim Perley / Herald
Ripped condom wrappers and tossed-aside Solo cups decorate Wriston Quadrangle.
Non-academic discipline violations drop sharply continued from page 1 es involve a hearing before either a dean, an administrator, a University disciplinary council, a University administrative hearing officer or the student-led Peer Community Standards Board. The 2006-07 academic year “was an outlier in terms of the numbers being so dramatically high,” Addison said. “It wasn’t a question of enforcement or anything the University did.” The drop is mostly accounted for, Addison said, by a sharp decrease in copyright infringement and illegal file-sharing offenses — which were thought to cause the surge of cases the year before. Many students may have stopped illegally downloading music and video files after recognizing the severity of repercussions, begun using alternatives such as Ruckus or have become better at avoiding detection, Addison said. “I hope students understand that it may not be worth it to sit in their room and download a season of ‘Heroes,’” Addison said. “They might do it 10 times and there would be no consequences but maybe the 11th time someone notices.” There is also a sense among University personnel, Addison said, that the class of 2011 is a “less alcoholconsuming and a more focused group,” resulting in fewer violations of that sort. The latest report of non-academic violations, released Monday, does not include a case-by-case description of the most serious cases, as reports in years past have. That change was designed to protect students’ confidentiality, Addison said. There were 177 cases in the 200708 academic year that warranted disciplinary proceedings, 128 of which were handled by dean’s hearings, according to the report. Dean’s hearings resolve cases such as underage drinking, harassment, behavior of a guest and damage to University property and can result in sanctions ranging from a warning to deferred suspension.
Breakdown of nonacademic violations .ON DISCIPLINARY $ISCIPLINARY
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Minor and first violations, such as false fire alarms, theft and noise violations are handled by the peer standards board. Of the 34 cases heard by the board, 28 resulted in reprimand, four in no finding of a violation, one in no action taken and one in probation. Though not included in the report, 276 non-disciplinary violations were investigated, and most had to do with illegal file-sharing, Addison said. All but eight resulted in warnings. The most serious offenses, including those that may warrant suspension or expulsion from the University or permanent record notation, such as physical assault, sexual misconduct and possession or provision of drugs — are resolved through administrative hearings. Last year, three of these cases led to probation, seven to suspension and one to deferred suspension, according to the report.
from 573 to 689 since 2001, or about 20.2 percent. Overall graduate enrollment kept apace, increasing from 1,414 to 1,700, or about 20.2 percent between 2001-02 and 2007-08. Grad School officials said enrollment numbers for this year are still unclear. Thus, the overall statistics demonstrate the Grad School’s growth rate is keeping pace with the increase in professors. But the numbers also suggest certain academic fields are hurting more than others. Enrollment of graduate students studying within the humanities has remained almost constant, despite the fact that there have been 44 new faculty added over the last seven years, according to the OIR. The sciences seem to be making up for the deficit, with the life sciences showing a 47 percent increase in grad student enrollment but only a 23 percent increase in faculty since 2001. The physical sciences and the social sciences show a closer correlation between Grad School enrollment and faculty growth rates. In the physical sciences, there was a 20 percent increase in grad students, about the same as the 18 percent increase in professors. The social sciences show a slightly larger discrepancy — an 18 percent increase in grad student enrollment but a 13 percent increase in professors. Graduate students’ sources of funding may account for part of the difference in growth rates between the life sciences and humanities. Peter Weber, professor of chemistry and chair of the department, said it is more cost-effective for the University to add science grad students because their support comes primarily from external funding. Humanities students require more internal support. In the philosophy department, Dreier estimated that since 2001 there has been a net addition of five professors, which the OIR numbers indicate is coupled with a decrease in philosophy grad students. Dreier said he thinks the lower number of grad students has led to graduate seminars of lesser quality because there aren’t enough students to foster the best discussion possible. Science professors, however, apply for grants for specific research projects involving graduate students, Dreier said. A shortage of graduate students means that departments won’t be able to take full advantage of the grants they are awarded, he said. Weber said he has had to pull graduate students out of research projects to make them teaching assistants for CHEM 0330: “Rate, Structure and Equilibrium.” The department’s priority has to be the safety of the undergraduate chemistry students, he said, which requires a certain number of supervising grad students. The chemistry department has tried to be “creative,” making some students “half TAs,” he said, allowing them to continue doing some research. But when students are pulled off research projects, the success of the projects they were working on
Levels of graduate students and faculty (UMANITIES
3TUDENTS
&ACULTY
,IFE 3CIENCES
0HYSICAL 3CIENCES 3OCIAL 3CIENCES
/VERALL
Source: Office of Institutional Research
is put “in doubt,” he said. There are inherent problems with the numbers from the OIR. The information fails to make the distinction between master’s and doctoral students and is a year behind the numbers for faculty growth, with the last available data referring to grad student enrollment in the 2007-08 school year. The Grad School has been making efforts to keep better track of enrollment. It now tracks student enrollment with a “graduate student census which is linked to Banner,” said Sheila Bonde, dean of the Graduate School. The system, which she said is too new to have influenced the information from the OIR, will give ever y department access to information that tracks students’ progress and will allow the Grad School to make predictions about funding and other issues, she said. Both Dreier and Weber cautioned against trusting the statistics without context. The fact that current numbers don’t differentiate master’s and doctoral students, Dreier said, is an important distinction to make, given that master’s students cycle through departments much faster than doctoral candidates. Weber used his own department, chemistry, to show subtleties the OIR’s numbers cannot. In the chemistry department, he said, many senior faculty have recently retired and must be replaced by new, younger professors. Unlike senior faculty members, who do not conduct much lab research, these younger professors come in with big research ideas and ambitions, he said. Thus, even if there were no net change in the number of professors in the department, the research ambitions of these new professors would still create an increased demand for graduate students to assist them, he said. Senior professors, who already have achievements under their belt, can sur vive a gap in graduate student availability, he said. But for young professors, research productivity is necessary to build a reputation, he said. So the
Thanks for reading.
Steve DeLucia / Herald
availability of graduate students to assist in research is a “career maker or breaker,” Weber said. The department has already lost new professors who decided that they would not be able to succeed in their research goals at Brown, he added. To hire a talented professor but not provide him or her the resources necessary for success is “unethical,” Weber said. The Grad School needs to increase admissions and improve the support to graduate students so that the University can attract the best candidates possible, Dreier said. But, it is “heading in the right direction,” he added. The Grad School is currently looking into how to further boost enrollment, but it is a complicated matter, Bonde said. Growing the Graduate School population is a “complex and longrange process,” Bonde said. “The notion of growth is something that was ... supported and endorsed by the president and the Corporation,” she said. The planning for growth “is not only underway now but has been happening since the inception,” of the Plan for Academic Enrichment, she said. One of the issues with growing the Grad School is the need to continue the University’s 2006 commitment to provide doctoral students five years of guaranteed support. The high cost of that commitment means the University must be prepared to pay for any grad students it takes on. “The budgeting of that and the planning of that means we are looking at growth, but supported growth,” Bonde said. The Grad School must look at growth to “respond to need and capacity,” she said, particularly in research areas. It is important to ensure that incoming students will have the financial support they need and that those students will be of a high enough quality that they can effectively contribute to the University, she said. Growth isn’t something that “just happens overnight,” Bonde added.
C ampus n ews Thursday, October 16, 2008
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Bone marrow drive pulls in 59 in first day The University’s two-day Bone Marrow Registration Drive began Wednesday in Sayles Hall with eager volunteers and plenty of pizza for students, faculty and others. The drive, which registered 59 people at Brown yesterday, said state program director Nicole Rubeira, will run again today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Unlike a blood drive, in which donors give on site, prospective bone marrow donors simply register in a database and undergo a cheek swab to determine their tissue type. Registrants may be contacted months or years later — until they turn 60 years old — when a patient with matching typing is in need. Since many minorities die from a lack of potential matches — as human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing is determined by heritage — Brown’s racially and ethnically diverse student body is crucial for the registry, said Professor of Medicine Edward Feller, the drive’s faculty coordinator. “You have the capacity to save someone’s life in a tangible way,” said Rachael Venn ’10, leaving Sayles Hall after registering. Feller said he experienced the life-saving power of donation firsthand. When his wife’s leukemia stopped responding to chemotherapy, the only option for survival was receiving a transfusion of peripheral stem cells. Thanks to a young woman identified in the registry — with whom she is now very close — Feller’s wife is alive and well today. Eden Tanenbaum ’10, who registered yesterday, also offered a personal story for her participation. “Bone marrow allowed my best friend’s father to live for three more years” after a battle with lymphoma, she said. Another student, Nat Rosenzweig ’10, said that “whenever there is a drive, I try to participate.” Rosenzweig was so enthusiastic, in fact, that shortly after he started filling out forms yesterday, he realized he had already joined the registry two years ago. Feller said he hopes the drive will “increase consciousness around the Brown campus” about the importance of joining the registry. Those who register today will be rewarded with snacks and prizes — like gift certificates to Starbucks and Trinity Brewhouse — as instant incentives to do a good deed. — Beatrice Igne-Bianchi
Locally grown food has its day, yesterday By Alexandra Keegan Contributing Writer
Corn shucking? A “Fall Dinner Special” of locally grown food? The Community Harvest program is the driving force behind these events yesterday, which aimed to promote sustainable food initiatives. The celebrator y day kicked off with the annual corn shucking competition held on Wriston Quadrangle. “Many students were involved in helping us get 2,000 ears of corn shucked in only an hour and a half,” Gina Guiducci, administrative dietitian, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “We are also composting the husks,” she added. For supper, students flooded Sharpe Refectory to enjoy a locally grown dinner. The meal was complete with several entree options, soup and bread tables, a nacho and salsa bar and milkshake and dessert tables. The Verney-Woolley Dining Hall had a similar menu, Guiducci added. “Vegan Vegetable Stew, Stuffed Acorn Squash, Stuffed Chicken, Fresh Baked Scrod and lots and lots of vegetables” were just some of the options available. “They were selected because the major ingredient in each of these menu items was locally produced,” Guiducci wrote. Students appeared to enjoy the meal, and the Ratty was crowded until 7:30 p.m. Adam Pliskin ’12 said, “The meal was delicious! There was stuf fed chicken and pumpkin ravioli. It really hit the spot, and the pie — oh, the pie!” “I respect the gesture they were trying to make in supporting local farms,” Kate Carbone ’12 said. Louisa Paine ’12 agreed. “I liked the great effort they made to bring
Min Wu / Herald
Chloe LeMarchand ‘09 lends a hand in the Sixth Annual Corn Shuck Off on Wriston.
in new and fresh food,” she said. One of the dinner’s main goals was to bring more attention to the Community Har vest program. “Since the growing and harvesting season is nearly over for the state of Rhode Island,” Guiducci wrote, this event was “sort of our last hoorah before we head into ‘After the Har vest’ type programs.” Brown Dining Ser vices’ Community Har vest program began in Fall 2002 and, in 2005, partnered with the student-run Sustainable Food Initiative to provide more nutritious, locally grown food and increase environmental and local agricultural awareness.
The Community Har vest program is responsible for the Wriston farmers market; fair-trade coffee, tea and chocolate; and biodegradable to-go containers. It also hosts tours of local farms and sponsors food drives as part of its “After the Har vest” program, according to its Web site. Yesterday also marked the initiation of the V-Dub’s trayless dining policy. The transition seems to have gone smoothly. “I think it worked really well, and I think it’s great Brown is tr ying to be environmentally friendly,” Sophie Kainen ’12 said about the new no-tray system.
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Banks rush to hoard cash as credit card defaults rise By Zachary Goldfarb Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Consumers are increasingly unable to pay off their credit cards, forcing banks to hoard cash to protect against future losses and lend to fewer people, according to reports yesterday from several of the nation’s largest banks. These financial disclosures showed a spike in credit card loans going bad, putting further pressure on already-stressed balance sheets. J.P. Morgan Chase said the number of credit card loans in default rose 45 percent in the third quarter from the comparable period a year ago and predicted that default rates would sharply accelerate through 2009, with 7 percent of credit card loans going bad. “We have to be prepared that it gets a lot worse,” J.P. Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said about the overall economic outlook. Capital One, a credit card lender and bank based in McLean, Va., announced rising default rates and delinquencies in its portfolio of credit cards and auto finance loans Wednesday. The company said 6.34 percent of credit card loans went into default last month, up from 5.96 percent of loans in August. The company has said it expects default rates to rise to 7 percent next year. The deterioration in consumer credit, the latest downturn to whack Americans after the housing slump and mortgage meltdown, threatens one of the linchpins of the U.S. economy. Over the past 10 years, credit card debt has gone up 75 percent as Americans’ real wages and savings rate have stayed flat. That means Americans have been spending beyond their means — and fueling economic growth with borrowed money. Now, the housing crash, financial downturn and contracting economy have made it more difficult for Americans to settle their bills, setting off a downward spiral. As people fail to pay off their credit card bills and other loans, banks must put away money to cover expected losses. So banks lend less. Americans who tended to rely on loans to fuel their spending must cut back, readjusting their spending habits to conform with what they earn. “Given that the savings rate has been minuscule, there’s no reserves in the tank for the consumer to tap his savings to support his spending,” said Scott Valentin, a financial services analyst at investment bank Friedman Billings Ramsey in Arlington, Va. But consumers have been driving about two-thirds of the U.S. economy. Overall, the rate of credit card loans going bad increased 54 percent in the second quarter of 2008 from the same period in 2007, according to Federal Reserve data, the latest available. A report this week from Innovest, a research firm, said banks and other credit card lenders could record nearly $100 billion in losses because of bad loans through the end of next year. Innovest said financial firms could be reaching a “tipping point”
The Herald. Too big to fail.
at which years of growth in credit card debt starts to decline. Traditionally, consumers having difficulty paying credit card bills could transfer balances to new credit cards with lower rates. But now that may be tougher. A recent Federal Reserve survey showed 65 percent of credit card issuers had tightened standards in the past three months, up from 5 percent from the comparable period a year ago. Credit card issuers are lowering credit limits on existing cardholders and issuing fewer cards. “There’s a complete freeze of lending to low-income, high-risk borrowers as banks try to stabilize their balance sheet. They’re not going after anyone with moderately shaky credit. They’re even being cautious with people who have great credit,” said Gregory Larkin, a senior analyst with Innovest. Credit card debt is not the only area showing weakness. Defaults on auto loans are also rising fast. “Even somebody with great credit is going to have an extremely difficult time getting a loan if they don’t have a down payment,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. Credit card debt is especially worrisome for banks because it is not backed by real assets, such as home mortgages and auto loans. But that has meant credit card issuers routinely have been more cautious. Nancy Bush, who runs the independent firm NAB Research, said it was unclear whether the government’s announcement this week that it will invest up to $250 billion in banks to stabilize balance sheets and spur lending will make much of a difference in the consumer market. “The people with a lot of debt who need the money are not going to get it. Is the Treasury now trying to encourage lending to these same sort of substandard customers?” Bush asked. In reporting sharply lower profits for his company earlier this month, Bank of America chief executive Kenneth Lewis called lending conditions “a damn disaster.” Lewis added, “We are making every good loan we can find,” but “it’s not going to be pretty for awhile.” At J.P. Morgan Chase, the percentage of loans going bad was only a part of the gloomy picture in its quarterly earnings report Wednesday. The bank said profit dropped 84 percent, to $527 million (11 cents per share) from $3.4 billion (97 cents) a year earlier. Revenue fell to $14.7 billion from $16.1 billion. J.P. Morgan, the nation’s largest bank by market capitalization, acquired struggling Washington Mutual last month. Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, Wednesday said it was boosting its reserves by $500 million to cover losses, to total $8 billion. Wells Fargo said it made a third-quarter profit of $1.6 billion, down 25 percent from the year earlier. The bank has weathered the economic downturn well so far and has announced that it is buying Charlotte-based Wachovia Corp., which was brought low by the mortgage crisis. The stock market, in what was an overall rout of shares, walloped J.P. Morgan and Capital One but left Wells Fargo untouched. J.P. Morgan shares fell $2.22, or 5.45 percent, to $38.49. Capital One fell $6.71, or 15.1 percent, to $37.76. Wells Fargo fell 17 cents, or 0.51 percent, to $33.35.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Corp. to look at U. finances continued from page 1 and Friday before regrouping for a strategic discussion Friday afternoon in MacMillan 117 — which will be attended by the whole group, as well as about two dozen members emeriti of the Corporation. On Saturday morning, before decamping from College Hill, the Corporation will meet in University Hall to take formal votes on any points of action and to take care of regular matters of business, such as the formal acceptance of large gifts to the University. Several of the committees are expected to submit reports to the general body at this weekend’s meeting, including the Budget and Finance Committee, whose conclusions may have important implications for the University’s immediate plans. With a growing financial aid budget and major elements of planned physical expansion yet to be completed or even funded — including a $70 million “Mind Brain Behavior” building — the Corporation may need to address some tough questions about spending priorities. Friday evening, members of the Corporation will be invited to tour the recently refurbished Pembroke Hall, which will be re-dedicated at a ceremony as the new home of the Cogut Center for the Humanities. Pamela Rosenberg, director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and a member of the Cogut Center’s advisory board, will speak, Carey said. Following the dedication, Corporation members and other invited guests will attend a dinner about the University’s recent expansions in financial aid allowances.
On guard for protestors While its meetings are closed, members of the Corporation will not be surprised if some uninvited guests demand their attention, said Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, senior vice president for Corporation affairs and governance. SDS, the left-wing group that executed a takeover of a board meeting of the Rhode Island Public Transportation Authority last month, has said it will protest the Corporation’s lack of transparency this weekend. Corporation members are “certainly aware” of the students’ plans, Carey said. “We take appropriate precautions to ensure that (the meetings) remain closed,” he said. Last month, about 50 students demonstrated in front of University Hall, demanding more community involvement in the Corporation’s decisions. The group members have said they also want access to the minutes of those meetings, which under present rules are classified for 50 years. Corporation members will also be invited to tour the renovated J. Walter Wilson, in which workers have been toiling through the night recently to complete in time for their arrival. The retired members of the Corporation, who will not attend the Saturday business meeting, have a luncheon scheduled with Vice President for International Affairs David Kennedy ’76, according to Carey.
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As SDS campaigns for open records, a look at history continued from page 1 “For any board, whether it is an industrial corporation, a not-forprofit, or a university, to have a full and open discussion of critical issues ... requires some confidentiality for some period of time,” Tisch said. “It’s a very elemental principle of governance in any operation that there has to be opportunity for full and free discussion.” But members of Students for a Democratic Society have recently criticized the policy through letters to the Corporation and a public march. They argue it suppresses student voices and limits Corporation accountability. “We have no possible way of knowing what is going on in these meetings,” SDS member Ellen Pederson ’12 said. “These decisions could be ver y real for us and we’ll have no idea until they’re upon us.” One reason SDS is pressuring the University to release the records immediately after the meeting is so that the community can hold referenda on the Corporation’s decisions. The group has also demanded that the meetings be open to anyone who wants to participate. “It’s our school. It should be up to us how it’s run,” said SDS member Sophia Lambertsen ’11, a former Herald staff writer. “It’s not the Corporation members whose education is going to be compromised.” Carey said the Corporation is reviewing its policies with a focus on “issues of representation and membership,” but affirmed that the meetings have always been private and will continue to be that way. “The corporation meeting is closed,” he said. “And it’s going to remain closed.” But each time the Corporation closes a door, it opens a window: With each new set of records made confidential, a past set is made public. The arrival of the Corporation this fall offers a new glimpse 50 years back in time. U. Hall ‘Confidential’ The year was 1958 and the Uni-
versity was under the leadership of President Barnaby Keeney, who was three years into his 11-year term. The quadrangle that would later bear his name had opened one year earlier. That year, 33 trustees and nine fellows met from Oct. 10 to 11 — nine trustees and three fellows couldn’t make it. According to that meeting’s minutes, marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” the first order of business that Saturday was to re-elect Chancellor Harold Tanner 1909, whose term had just expired. The motion passed without fanfare and with the concurrence of the fellows and the trustees, who act as a bicameral governing body and must agree on Corporation decisions. The Corporation then heard reports from a number of committees, including a budgetary update by the treasurer and Investment Committee and a request for a roof by the Hockey Rink Building Committee. The proposed rink — now Meehan Auditorium — was originally going to be open-air, but the committee had recently learned that a roofless rink would be unplayable most of the year. The committee’s cheekily glum update announced “there is ver y little to report and all of it is discouraging.” The highlight of the meeting seems to have been Keeney’s presidential address, for which the fellows voted to “express gratification for the enlightenment and inspiration it has given the entire Corporation.” One of the key points of his speech was an assessment of the University’s progress toward its goals for the Bicentennial Fund, an ancestor of the Campaign for Academic Enrichment that was to raise $30 million by 1964, Brown’s bicentennial. At the time, the fund was behind schedule and Keeney conscientiously pointed the finger at himself. “The Bicentennial Fund has not gotten off to a very good start. My own inexperience and a lack of clarity about what had to be done have been largely to blame,” he said. continued on page 9
Thursday, October 16, 2008
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Debate over Corp. records mirrors a past discussion continued from page 8 “Because 1964 seems so far off, a sense of urgency has been lacking, and the goal is so large as to seem almost indefinite.” Yesterday, Tisch said it is this sort of candor that is essential to Corporation meetings but would be jeopardized by direct public access. It wasn’t always this way. The first Corporation record from 1764 — or “the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-Four, and Fourth of the Reign of His Most Sacred Majesty George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great-Britain, and so forth” — is simply the charter establishing the University. Records from the following years are only a few pages each, and consist mostly of filling vacancies and appointing officials, such as James Manning, the University’s first president. The second year’s record contains instructions on procuring a University seal — “busts of the King and Queen in profile, face to face.” The record from 1767 logs the payment of Manning’s 25-pound salar y, and 1768’s record mentions that a telescope and microscope had been ordered. But two centuries later, the Corporation’s reams of records are rife with examples of members speaking under the assumption of confidentiality. In the 1958 report of the Executive Committee of the Bicentennial Development Program, Chairman D.G. Millar ’19 points to a number of “symptoms” that account for the fund’s slow progress, including “a seeming lack of urgency on the part of Bicentennial Program workers.” The same year’s report of the Lectureships Committee, delivered by C.A. Robinson, Jr., recounts “a Colver lecture by a famous Princeton mathematician whose name I forget on a subject which I was unable to pronounce.” But perhaps the most striking example are remarks by Keeney about the role of students in the governance of the school that echo today’s debate. “Many good students have assured views on ever y question whether they know anything about it or not. How much should we listen to them when they tell us what to do?” he said. “I think that we should listen with great care, but we should ourselves decide whether to pay attention or not, since they have hired us to develop them.” “Just as a doctor can ser ve his patient by listening to his complaints, so a faculty can help a student by listening to his views,” Keeney continued. “One of the ironies of education for democracy is that frequently it is best presented in an authoritarian manner.” Open records: too much or not enough? In 2008, some SDS members feel Keeney’s analogy is flawed and his view of the Corporation is dangerous. “When I go to the doctor, I say, ‘This hurts, something’s wrong with me,’ I don’t stand around the hospital and hope someone comes and does something for me,” said Atilio Barreda ’12, of SDS. Pederson agreed. “They’re not the doctor. They’re the person
who sits in the room across the hall from the doctor and looks at a computer,” she said. Though he praised Keeney for helping to “give birth to the modern Brown,” Tisch himself said the Corporation’s current philosophy doesn’t quite align with Keeney’s view. Instead, Tisch said the administration values student voices and actively seeks them out. “Students are fundamentally responsible for shaping their education and have things to contribute to the community,” he said. “There are more avenues for student voices and inputs to the governance of the University than in virtually any other community like Brown.” SDS has demanded fur ther student influence, either through student members of the Corporation or the dissolution of the Corporation entirely. Though they are adamant that records be opened, that reform “wouldn’t be good enough at all,” Lambertsen said. In the view of SDS members, issues of transparency are part and parcel with improving access and representation. “By locking their doors to us, they’re not working in anyone’s best interests,” Lambertsen said, adding that she questions the Corporation’s authority, not its members’ intentions. “I don’t think that the worr y is that they’re bad decisions,” she said. “It’s that they’re making decisions they don’t have the right to make.” Tisch said such a scenario would not lend itself to proper governance and could devolve into a fight over inclusion and jurisdiction. “I don’t want to diminish the sense of student voices, but you could say as well, ‘Have the faculty on the Corporation,’” he said, adding that he thinks limits have to be defined somewhere. “The drawing of the lines is the critical point.” Tisch also emphasized that the lack of a student presence on the Corporation “doesn’t mean the Corporation shouldn’t be accessible and accountable,” he said. “The decisions of the Corporation are put under scrutiny ever y day.” But Lambertsen said the University should be run through a “par ticipator y democracy” that includes anyone affected by the decisions. “We want ever yone to have control of the school.” She and other SDS members plan to protest this Saturday’s meeting outside of University Hall, and Lambertsen said they “expect to be accepted with open arms and open doors.” Lambertsen wouldn’t say what SDS would do if that expectation is not met, but Tisch said he hopes the demonstration will be civil. Last month, SDS members took over the monthly board meeting of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, protesting fare hikes and proposed ser vice cuts. “Students, like all of us, have the right to express themselves,” he said. “Hopefully there’s the recognition that there are constructive ways of doing it.” But Tisch is unlikely to be surprised by any action taken by SDS — he has considered a few possibilities. Recalling an incident last spring when a lecture by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was interrupted by pastr y throwers, Tisch asked with a smile, “Do I deser ve a pie?”
Courtesy of the University Archives
Five Corporation members look over a blueprint. Records from 1958 are only now being released.
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
A sparring match in debate, but no knockout By Dan Balz Washington Post
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — John McCain threw everything he could at Barack Obama here Wednesday night. Down in the polls and with time running out, McCain took every opportunity to put Obama on the defensive, looking to turn a race that has been slipping away from him back in his direction heading into the final 20 days. It was what many of his supporters, including running mate Sarah Palin, had urged him to do, and McCain responded with vigor and seeming enthusiasm. Obama was repeatedly forced Wednesday night to explain himself. But he did not lose his cool under his opponent’s persistent criticism, parrying time and again with measured explanations designed to take the sting out of McCain’s charges with voters who may still be making up their minds. This debate may have been McCain’s strongest performance of the three, but it was also an example of how Obama has used the encounters to try to show that he has not only the knowledge of the issues, but also the temperament and the judgment voters are looking for in a successor to President Bush. In the end, given the overwhelming desire for change in the country, that may be enough to keep him in the driver’s seat. McCain will have to continue to press his case relentlessly in the final days to change the shape of the campaign. In the past two weeks, the race has taken an ugly turn — whether in television commercials, the remarks of the candidates or, in particular, the comments of their surrogates or supporters. On Wednesday night, much of that came into play in the hall at Hofstra University, where CBS’s Bob Schieffer guided the two candidates into a direct confrontation over what has been said. That produced a debate that not
only dealt with the deep philosophical differences between Obama and McCain on the economy, government, health care and energy, but also brought to the table Obama’s association with 1960s radical William Ayers and a little-known group called ACORN that has been accused of voter fraud in several states. McCain accused Obama of failing to repudiate some of the worst attacks leveled by Democratic allies, pointing to comments over the weekend by Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who compared McCain to segregationist George Wallace and warned that McCain and Palin were empowering the kind of sentiment that led to violence during the civil rights movement. “Senator Obama,” he said, “you didn’t repudiate those remarks. Every time there’s been an out-ofbounds remark made by a Republican, no matter where they are, I have repudiated them.” Obama said the comparison with Wallace was inappropriate, but he also fired back at McCain, saying that at GOP rallies, “when my name came up, things like ‘terrorist’ and ‘kill him,’ ... your running mate didn’t mention, didn’t stop, didn’t say, ‘Hold on a second, that’s kind of out of line.’ ” Obama challenged the suggestion that he had spent time “palling around with terrorists,” opening up a discussion of Ayers, who was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that carried out domestic bombings during the Vietnam War era. “He engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group,” Obama said. “I have roundly condemned those acts. Ten years ago he served and I served on a school reform board that was funded by one of Ronald Reagan’s former ambassadors and close friends, Mr. (Walter) Annenberg. ... Mr. Ayers is not involved in my campaign. He has never been involved in this campaign. And he will not advise me in the White House.”
RISD starts conservative group continued from page 1 tity — whether to be an advocate for conservative political candidates, a social group for like-minded students or something in between. The founders say that the group, intentionally titled RISD Conservatives as opposed to RISD Republicans, aims to be as inclusive as possible within conservatism. Brown said that the students who have expressed interest have different ideological viewpoints and specific interests, from abortion to the role of central government. Brown said that he envisions the RISD Conservatives as a sort of “support group for the few conservative kids at RISD.” He sees the group as a statement to the rest of the student body: “Here we are. We’re conser vative, and we’re not crazy.” “As soon as I got to RISD, I didn’t really have that many like-minded friends,” Fass said. “You can’t let it out … it builds up tension.” The fledging organization, not yet a formally recognized group on campus, still has a few kinks to work out, like securing an adviser and solidifying membership. According to Fass, a professor has recently informally agreed to advise the group, though Fass declined to release his name. Though
not conservative himself, Fass said this professor is “the kind of guy who wants all views to be heard.” Originally, the group wanted to find a conservative adviser but couldn’t find any on RISD’s faculty. Once they broadened their search to include professors who may not be conservative but value differing viewpoints, they were more successful. “There’s literally no conservativeminded professors,” said Brown, who self-identifies as a conservative libertarian. “There’s all of these organizations ... for diversity ... but there’s no diversity of thought.” Fass sees an association between the RISD student body and a pervasive liberal viewpoint. “They’re young. They’re artists. It comes with the territory,” he said. Brown said he didn’t buy the idea that “somehow being leftist is an artist thing.” Calling himself a “kind of radical,” he said that the majority of the student body will “follow whatever Al Gore and Michael Moore tell them to believe.” A more technical problem for the group, said Fass, was finding time amid a hefty course load. Campus groups, Fass said, “don’t all have staying power,” mainly due to students’ intense schedules. But, he said, “that’s just RISD for you.”
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Thursday, October 16, 2008
Vermont’s defense disposes of field hockey continued from page 16 the backfield, and we actually followed our game plan pretty well for that,” she said. Vermont started quickly, taking 11 shots in the first half, but Brown goalkeeper Lauren Kessler ’11 made six saves. The Catamounts found the back of the cage only once, when Kessler saved a shot by Maegan Luce, but Megan Maynard knocked home the rebound at 11:28. The Bears failed to test Vermont goalie Kristen Heavens, finishing the first half without a single shot. Sacco credited Vermont’s suffocating back line. “We had some great opportunities where we got the ball up to that end of the field, but their last line of defense was really good at shutting down any of our attacking opportunities, (so) we couldn’t get to their goalie,” she said. But the Bears remained confident heading into halftime down by only one goal, Springmeyer said, and she quickly rewarded their optimism. Just 37 seconds into the second half, Springmeyer stole the ball and tied the game. “They were trying to transfer in the backfield and I disrupted it, and kind of took the defender 1-v-1,” she said. “The goalie came out on me, and my original shot wasn’t a good one, but I thought in my head, this goal is going in. I didn’t want to let my team down, so I lifted it over the goalie, and it luckily went in.” The goal could have marked the turning point for the Bears, but instead the Catamounts seized
the momentum and charged to victor y. Vermont regained the lead only 2:22 later when Joanna Berger slipped behind the Brown defense, took a long pass from Lauren Burke, and fired a shot past Kessler. Maynard added her second goal 2:20 later to produce the final score. “They were pressuring us very hard in our defensive end,” Sacco said. “We were trying to get the ball outletted out, and they just kept pressuring any of the opportunities that we tried to take. Eventually they got through to the cage and were able to get some shots off.” The Bears didn’t give in, taking nine second-half shots, but Heavens made five saves to protect Vermont’s lead. Kessler made two more saves to finish with a total of eight, while Springmeyer led Brown with six shots. “We never stopped fighting, which is a common theme with our team,” Springmeyer said. “We never give up, and I think that’ll definitely help us with the rest of our season.” The Bears will need all of their fight on Saturday when they travel to New Jersey to take on Ivy League power Princeton (9-2, 3-0 Ivy), looking to improve on their 0-3 conference record. Though the game promises to be a challenge, Springmeyer said it would be a big lift to beat such a prestigious program. “If we beat Princeton it would pretty much make our season,” she said. “We have a good amount of days to prepare for it, and hopefully we’ll come out strong.”
W. golf to play at Sacred Heart Invitational soon continued from page 16 nity to improve upon her solid opening round score. With temperatures in the high eighties, Robinson was forced to withdraw after passing out briefly during the final round. “I’ve been sick and had a fever and a sore throat, so I think it was a combination of being sick and not drinking anything in the heat because my throat hurt,” Robinson said. “I passed out for a second and woke up right away, it wasn’t too bad. But I felt really bad that because I couldn’t finish (and) ever yone’s scores had to count. I was upset I couldn’t contribute and help the team.” Robinson and the rest of her Brown teammates will have the
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chance to bounce back from their difficult Virginia trip when they compete at the Sacred Heart Invitational on the 26th and 27th. The tour nament will be the Bears’ final competition of the fall season. “We are ver y excited for our last tournament because finally all eight of us get to travel together. It’s hard this year with different people traveling each week so we look forward to when we can all be together,” Guarascio wrote. “We are looking to end the fall season strongly just like we started it at Dartmouth with our 3rd place finish … I have a good feeling about the Sacred Heart Invitational, I think we’ll all play and score to our best ability.”
Aboubakare Davis ’10: Spirit of the game sisters unite for Bears continued from page 16
continued from page 16 out losing a set. Stewart prevailed in the finals against her teammate, by a score of 4-6, 6-4, 6-1. Bianca Aboubakare and her sister, Carissa Aboubakare ’12, teamed up to win the No. 1 doubles flight. Though they had played doubles together growing up, it was the first time that the sisters had paired up as Bears. “This tour nament was supposed to be a test for them because we knew they were good, but we hadn’t seen them against outside competition before,” Assistant Coach Cecily Dubusker said. “You can’t train the kind of chemistr y they have,” she added. Bianca Aboubakar e also reached the finals for the No. 1 singles flight, but came up just shor t of victor y. After defeating Yale’s Janet Kim, the 2007 Ivy Player of the Year, in the semifinals, Aboubakare lost to Lana Krasnopolsky of Boston College, 6-4, 6-2. Head Coach Paul Wardlaw has high hopes for this season, with young talent like Herzberg, Stewar t and the Aboubakare sisters joining experienced players like Finkelstein, “Our goal is to win the Ivies,” he said. The Bears will play next in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association East Regionals, a five-day tournament beginning on Oct. 24 in Philadelphia. Wardlaw said that like last weekend’s tournament, the Regionals “will be a good early-season test.”
tions. Meanwhile, ESPN spends six hours a day discussing Chad Johnson’s latest gimmick or the fact that T.O. wants the ball more (18 throws weren’t enough?). Players frequently drone on about how blessed they are (yeah, because God really had it in his design for you to get that big interception. Maybe he was betting the under?), yet they carry themselves with a completely undeser ved sense of entitlement. It’s about honor and character. It’s about selfrespect. And it’s about respect for others. In the end, Manny is just another overpaid athlete who has been deluded into thinking that he actually deserves everything he has, and who makes an embarrassingly small effort to help others, whether through charity or simply by becoming a worthwhile role model. He embarrasses himself,
he embarrasses fans of the game that he is so fortunate to play, and he represents a systemic and probably irreversible compromise of many of the sacred values that sport is supposed to represent. But we cannot absolve ourselves of blame. It is we who continue to cheer for players like Ramirez, Owens and Ocho Cinco. It is we who so easily forget their past sins solely to embrace their on-field accomplishments. And, ultimately, it is our values and the values of those not yet old enough to understand things like honor and dignity, those who are so easily shaped by the sports figures of the day, that are destroyed by our undying and indiscriminate applause.
Pat Davis ’10 is microwaving some popcorn and watching “Rudy” tonight.
E ditorial & L etters Page 14
Thursday, October 16, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
S t a f f E d i to r i a l
Turning the page We’ve got it easy. The editors here in our pleasant offices on Angell Street and the reporters all over College Hill work hard to make this paper for you, ever y day. We have a business staff selling and processing ads, photographers running between events to capture the best shot, copy editors studying and applying the elements of style and columnists, well, thinking really hard about stuff. We like to think that the final product is more than just an educational exercise for us — something that’s informative and interesting for you. We’ll leave that evaluation to you, dear reader. At the end of the day, whatever the paper looks like, we’re all doing this as a complement to our college education — and not (yet) for our livelihood. Not expecting to get paid, we’re shielded from the market forces, largely internet-related, that are unleashing havoc on this industr y. Forty years ago, M. Charles Bakst ’66, a former Herald editor-inchief, graduated and was able to go to work at the Providence Journal. Today, though, the industry is firing, not hiring, with the Journal recently buying-out and firing dozens of full- and part-time employees. Craigslist and its kin have in effect sounded the death knell for the 20th centur y’s model for profitable newspapers — and if the economy continues spiraling downward, many papers as we know them may cease to exist. So yeah, we’ve got it comparatively easy. What’s an aspiring journalist to do? Many of us have are considering journalism as a career because we think there’s something inherently appealing about truth. We don’t want power, or wealth, or fame. We just want to promote fairness and accountability, to give a voice to both or all sides on ever y issue and, as Bakst said in an inter view with The Herald this week, “to cut through the sound and fur y, to speak truth to power.” Is this too idealistic? Bakst told our reporter that turbulent economic and political circumstances make hard-hitting journalism ever more important. But in order to get by working in this industr y, he joked, “it wouldn’t hurt to marr y someone wealthy.” So, anyone ready to get hitched? Newspapers across the countr y are tr ying to adapt by embracing new technology and media — and, in the case of the Wall Street Journal, marr ying into the Murdoch empire. We just hope there’s a way for the talented reporters of our generation to live up to the model of Charlie Bakst: wise, humble, insightful and deeply dedicated to our community.
ALEX YULY
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C o r r e c t i on s A photo accompanying a sports article in last week’s Herald (“Equestrian starts strong,” Oct. 8) was incorrectly credited. The photo is courtesy of Amy Lowitz ’09. In a story in Tuesday’s Herald, (“Alum’s film brings real camera to virtual world,” Oct. 14), the company that owns SecondLife was referred to once as Linden Research. It is actually called Linden Lab. Also, the story reported that the Internet was created during Jason Spingarn-Koff’s ’96 undergraduate years. In fact, the Web was created then. Due to an editing error, the story also incorrectly named the age of users on SecondLife. Users must be 18 and older, not 13 and older. 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 Thursday, October 16, 2008
Page 15
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Tightening the belt BY TYLER ROSENBAUM Opinions Columnist I am no economist, but dire predictions of economic meltdown and eventual depression seem more and more realistic as each day brings a new, sickening drop in the world’s stock markets. “How low can it go?” is now a desperate, all-too-familiar refrain. Though these economic circumstances are frightening, some might be tempted to ignore the threat. In many ways, Brown is somewhat isolated from the world at large. So the stock market falls. The midterm is still on Friday, right? The Ratty is still open until 7:30? And as pointed out in a recent letter to the editor (“Yes, let’s be realistic,” Oct. 9), Brown is exceptionally well endowed when compared with most other colleges and universities. But that is no reason to rest on our laurels. Yes, we may have around $3 billion, which is certainly a hefty sum. But those billions are not stashed away in burlap sacks in President Ruth Simmons’s basement. A large portion of those funds are currently tied up in the stock market and cannot easily be liquidated. In fact, the oft-invoked $3 billion in Brown’s endowment does not take into account the hundreds of millions of dollars of debt the University took on to finance the various construction projects it has undertaken over the past several years, when the returns on the endowment in the stock market outweighed any interest on new debt. Given the country’s (and thus the University’s) current financial straits, it is important
that we conscientiously prioritize. With that in mind, it was heartening to read that President Simmons and the Corporation have been taking care to factor growing uncertainties into their thinking and, more importantly, into the University’s budgets. In her “Remarks on the Current Financial Environment” to the faculty on Oct. 6, Simmons acknowledged the difficult question that no one wants to ask: “What gets cut?” The president was, of course, necessarily vague. After all, she cannot make the budget
employee compensation, it’s hard to see what will give. All kinds of politicking between the faculty, the administration, the Corporation and the University Resources Committee will no doubt decide the eventual fate of the budget. But student input should be decisive in these matters, as we are the University’s raison d’etre. When giving input, students should not simply provide a laundry list of things not to cut. That is not productive. No budget cut will be acceptable to everyone at Brown.
No budget cut will be acceptable to everyone at Brown. Prioritization means singling out areas that should have their budgets maintained and, more importantly, identifying areas that should not. alone. And we are still don’t know what the full ramifications of the financial system’s collapse will be. In the end, Simmons assured the faculty that Brown’s focus on financial aid, academics and research would not be diminished. When you add in commitment to faculty and
Prioritization means singling out areas that should have their budgets maintained and, more importantly, identifying areas that should not. Simmons was correct in noting that Brown’s educational mission is paramount, and that Brown must continue to focus on
academics. Class sizes, teaching quality and course offerings should not be adversely affected by the economic slowdown. Ideally, the progress on these fronts begun by the Plan for Academic Enrichment will continue. On the other hand, perhaps some of the University’s capital expansion projects could be postponed. Do we really need a new dorm? Perhaps not. Given the prevalence of cell phones, landline telephone service to the dorms really ought to be cancelled. The drive to morph our college into a gigantic research university might well become the latest casualty of the recession. Undoubtedly, there will be opposition to any of the measures I have proposed. But there should be a dialogue. The University Resources Committee and the Corporation will have tough decisions to make in the upcoming months, and they should not have to make those decisions in a vacuum. The Brown student body should articulate its opinions on this matter in a way that facilitates widely agreed upon compromises. In the end, none of this may end up being necessary. Conceivably, good financial management on the University’s part could render such prioritization moot. Such a desirable outcome is by no means assured, however, and the University’s $750 million budget is something best not left to chance. In a spirit of prudence and of thankfulness for the latitude our endowment gives us in these times, we should be prepared for the worst.
Tyler Rosenbaum ’11 wonders what Ruth is hiding in those burlap sacks.
Lifestyles of the (formerly) rich and famous BY Sarah ROSENthal Opinions Columnist From “Dynasty” to “Beverly Hills 90210.”, from “Dallas” to “The O.C.,” American TV has a long tradition of focusing on how hard it is to be young, white, rich and beautiful in America — and that’s not even including reality shows like “My Super Sweet Sixteen” and “The Hills.” To find out how hard the financial crisis was hitting these poor little rich kids, your intrepid columnist did some significant research and discovered that though the stock market is in a permanent free-fall, people are losing their homes and unemployment numbers are at a record high, on TV, there are no victims in sight! For those of you who are lucky enough never to have wasted 45 minutes watching the show “Gossip Girl,” it follows a group of underfed, over-privileged New York City private school brats that includes queen bee Blair, her rival Serena, their friends/ boyfriends Nate and Chuck and their “poor” classmates Jenny and Dan — where poor means living in Brooklyn. These teenagers’ parents all have an unlimited supply of money with which they can buy their offspring an unlimited amount of clothing, gadgets and multi-course meals at fancy restaurants, alcohol included. Apparently, despite their evident financial sophistication, none of these parents invested anything in the stock market. Though the characters attend prestigious prep schools, the one time we see them doing anything resembling schoolwork is when
Dan finds not one but two literary giants to tend to his budding artistry and guide him on his way to Yale. Dan is such a creative thinker that he creates a character exactly like his classmate Chuck Bass and names him “Charlie Trout.” The Pulitzer Prize winner who has nothing better to do than edit Dan’s stories complains that “these are all about a sheltered young man with girl troubles who lives with his daddy in Brooklyn” — a perfect description of the show, as it turns out. Nowhere in the New York City of “Gossip Girl” do we ever get a glimpse of the era-
the grim Commerce Department figures on unemployment and consumer goods came out. On Sept. 26, federal regulators seized Washington Mutual and sold it to JPMorgan. On Sept. 29, the day the episode aired, the bailout plan failed and the Dow dropped 777 points. The big drama in “Gossip Girl’s” New York City that week? Jenny messed up Blair’s seating chart so that Serena was sitting in the front row at the fashion show! OMG! TV schedules are set far in advance, and if executives had realized we would be facing what Warren Buffet is calling an “economic
Even escapist fare can’t credibly escape the reality of the nation’s economy. defining financial crisis that has affected even the most posh of neighborhoods. Let’s recall what happened in the week before the episode I watched, “The Serena Also Rises,” aired: On September 22nd Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs converted from investment to commercial banks. On September 25th,
Pearl Harbor,” perhaps they would not have loaded up on so many TV shows like “Privileged,” “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and “The Rachel Zoe Project.” Even the “reality” shows are set so far from what anyone else would call reality, it’s stunning. The truth is that even escapist fare can’t credibly escape the reality of the nation’s
economy. Panic and anxiety penetrate the country’s wealthiest enclaves. According to an American Express Publishing and Harrison Group survey, nearly half of all respondents with income over $250,000 a year said they worry about running out of money, and 71% of those same respondents say that the real estate and banking crises have affected their sense of financial security. As Ned Lamont, the Democratic former Senate contender from Connecticut, said of the damage the financial markets have wreaked on the hedge-fund rich town of Greenwich, “This is our Katrina.” It’s hard to tell what’s tackier: Lamont comparing the plight of hedge fund billionaires with that of poor Louisianans stuck in the Superdome without food or water, or Blair calling the girls at her school spoiled because they care more about Serena’s appearance in a tabloid than Blair’s offer of fashion week tickets. (Yes, that’s why they’re spoiled.) I believe it is Lamont by a nose, because at least Blair isn’t reminding us that we do have to feel bad for these people. It would be a lot more fun to watch greedy titans of finance go down if everyone else wasn’t going down with them. For now, we’ll just have to settle for shaking our heads when one of the girls on “Privileged” forgets that she lent one of her twelve diamond tennis bracelets to a friend. May we all have such problems in the future.
Sarah Rosenthal ’11 went to a New York City private school where she actually went to classes and did homework.
S ports T hursday Page 16
Thursday, October 16, 2008
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Vermont overpowers field hockey
Honor: A lost art?
Poske, the top-seeded player in the flight, whom she defeated by a score of 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-1. Herzberg then cruised through the next three rounds without dropping a set, including a 7-5, 6-1 win over Jessie Rhee of Yale in the final round to win the flight. Emily Ellis ’10 won three straight-set matches to reach the finals of the No. 7 flight, where she faced Anna Dushkina of Purdue. She looked to be in trouble after a 3-6 loss in the first set, but Ellis rebounded to win the next two sets to take the match. In the No. 8 flight, Catherine Stewart ’12 and Brett Finkelstein ’09 both reached the finals with-
Electrifying, amazing, game-changing, future Hall-of-Famer: these are all words and phrases commonly used to describe Los Angeles Dodgers left-fielder Manny Ramirez. But, instead using Pat Davis all of those Sports Columnist exceedingly complimentar y (and often sycophantic) adjectives, Fox analyst Tim McCarver recently chose another: despicable. Why? Well, because, in fact, the manner in which Ramirez conducted himself throughout his career in Boston, but especially in the months leading up to his trade to Los Angeles, was despicable. Yet Ramirez is neither the root of the problem nor the path to the solution; he is merely a symptom, the latest manifestation of the crumbling of the moral, ethical and honor-abiding code that sport, especially baseball, used to embody. Let me give you a little background on Ramirez’s story. Manny Ramirez is widely considered to be one of, if not the best, hitters in Major League Baseball. A quick rundown of his accomplishments: Ramirez is a 12-time all-star, nine-time Silver Slugger, has a career .593 slugging percentage (eighth all-time), and 527 career home runs, with an additional 27 in the postseason, more than any other player in MLB postseason history. With his incredible production, however, comes what most people refer to as “Manny being Manny,” which includes disappearing into the Green Monster mid-inning to use his cell phone, refusing to slide on close plays, complaining about Red Sox management, and more recently, jogging out ground balls, rolling around on top of the ball in left field like a four year-old, and getting into physical altercations with both teammate Kevin Youkilis and a Red Sox press secretary. To some extent, Manny’s previous antics were acceptable, even mildly amusing. But the metaphorical line was crossed when he stopped running out ground balls or actually focusing while fielding — when he failed to show even the baseline level of respect for the game of baseball itself, or for his fellow players. I would have thought that a contract worth $20 million per year would be enough to get him out of bed every morning and do his job with some dignity. But it doesn’t stop with Manny. Long gone are heroes with true character like Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente, and Cal Ripken, Jr., replaced by self-involved caricatures like Ramirez, Terrell Owens, Adam “Pacman” Jones, and Chad “Ocho Cinco” Johnson. The list of torch-bearers, names like LaDainian Tomlinson, Brian Westbrook and Derek Jeter, grows frighteningly small. The sad truth is that, in today’s world, the “good guys” receive no recognition, while the most entertaining and often least worthy shine in the spotlight. Nobody cares about guys like Jason Witten, who shows up to work every day and does his job right (and happens to be the best tight end in the league), and also works very hard with multiple charitable foundations. Nobody cares because he doesn’t complain, he doesn’t yell at his quarterback in full view of the fans, and he doesn’t have any fancy end zone celebra-
continued on page 13
continued on page 13
By Andrew Braca Assistant Sports Editor
A game-tying goal right out of the gate in the second half wasn’t 1 Brown enough for the Vermont 3 field hockey team to avoid a 3-1 loss to Vermont on Sunday. Leslie Springmeyer ’12 scored 37 seconds after halftime, but a defensive breakdown cost Brown the game, 3-8, as the Catamounts (7-6) scored two goals in the next 4:42 to ruin a decent effort by the Bears. “Obviously, we weren’t happy with the result, but we weren’t extremely disappointed by our play, either,” Springmeyer said. Victoria Sacco ’09 said that the Bears executed well for most of the game. “We really were focusing on our outletting and our passing through continued on page 13
Justin Coleman / Herald
Despite a valiant effort, the women’s field hockey team fell to Vermont this weekend in a 3-1 loss.
W. golf, rusty after week off, takes 13th in Richmond By Megan McCahill Spor ts Editor
Returning from their first week off of the fall season, the women’s golf team was a little rusty at the University of Richmond Spider Fall Invitational on Monday and Tuesday, placing 13th in the 14team field, and shooting a 666, their highest team score of the season. “I’m not sure why we had some difficulty this weekend…I didn’t think the course was that difficult either. I felt we really could have taken advantage of it and I was disappointed that we couldn’t get past some of our mental blocks or whatever it was that affected our scoring,” wrote Sarah Guarascio ’11 in an e-mail to The Herald. Brown got off to a slow start in Monday’s first round, as the team shot a 329 and sat in 11th place at the end of the day, despite a solid round from Guarascio, who led
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the Bears on the day, shooting a five-over par 77, good for 14th place individually after the opening round. “I was really happy with how I played my first round on Sunday. I finally got in my old rhythm that I’ve been trying to get back for so long,” Guarascio wrote. “My ball striking was solid so that is what helped me out.” Julia Robinson ’11 was just a few shots over Guarascio’s pace, carding an 80 on the day, while Heather Arison ’12 shot an 81. “It was a beautiful course and I think we all really liked it,” Robinson said. “But in golf you just can’t predict how you’re going to play or what’s going to happen. I didn’t play well at first, but I was happy that I was able to turn it around and finish my round strong.” Finishing up open round scoring for the Bears were Kendalle Bennett ’10 and Carly Arison ’12, who both finished at 91.
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M. water polo finishes with perfect record For the first time in program history, the men’s water polo team finished with a perfect record in the CWPA Northern Division, when they downed Connecticut College by a score of 17-7 to finish with a 7-0 record in division play. Corey Schwartz ’11, Grant LeBeau ’09 and Robbie Yass ’12 led the way for Brown with three goals each, while Max Lubin ’12 turned in a solid effort in defense with four saves. The Bears will try to carry the momentum into the weekend, when they will travel to California to take on Loyola Marymount and the Claremont colleges. — Benjy Asher
sch e dul e THURSDAY, OCT. 16
SATURDAY, OCT. 18
M. TENNIS at New Haven, all day
M. WATERPOLO vs. Loyola and Martmount, at Los Angeles,11:30 a.m.
FRIDAY, OCT. 17 W. VOLLEYBALL vs. Penn, 7 p.m.
FIELD HOCKEY at Princeton, 12 p.m.
“Golf’s definitely a game of ups and downs,” Heather Arison wrote. “Some days you play great and other days you just don’t and that’s just kind of how it goes.” Tuesday’s final round proved to be one of the better days for most of the Bears, as nearly ever y player improved on her opening round score. Heather Arison dropped a stroke off of Sunday’s round by shooting an 80 on the final day, which gave her a total score of 161 and a 40th-place individual finish. “I was proud of Heather for being so consistent and staying steady for our team,” Guarascio wrote. Carly Arison and Bennett also saw significant improvement from their opening rounds, as Arison shot an 83 (174) and Bennett carded an 87 (178). Unfortunately for Bruno, Guarascio was unable to improve upon her impressive round from the day before, as she
shot a final round 87 to finish the tournament at 164. “I was really happy for Susan and Carly though because they both came back on Monday and improved tremendously from their first round scores,” Guarascio wrote. Carly Arison attributed her second day improvement to putting in some extra time on the driving range after Sunday’s opening round. “On the first day I was swinging awful, and I lost confidence in my swing,” Carly Arison wrote. “After the round, I went to the range, and Coach (Danielle Griffiths) helped me figure my swing out so I could hit it a little better. On the second day, my drives improved, but my irons were off, but my short game somewhat salvaged the round.” Unfortunately for the Bears, Robinson never got the opportucontinued on page 13
W. tennis dominates in invitational in Flushing By Dan Alexander Contributing Writer
The women’s tennis team had a strong weekend at the United States Tennis Association National Tennis Center Women’s College Invitational at the NTC in Flushing, N.Y. After not winning a single flight at last year’s tournament, the Bears looked completely dif ferent this time around as they reached six flight finals and won four of them. “We pretty much, like, dominated, as a team,” Bianca Aboubakare ’11 said. In singles play, Cassandra Herzberg ’12 won the No. 2 flight. She sur vived a tough match in the opening Round of 16 against Wake Forest’s Sierra