Monday, October 27, 2008

The Brown Daily Herald M onday, O ctober 27, 2008

Volume CXLIII, No. 99

ResCouncil to stop using pass-fail in house review

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Simmons tells parents not to worry

i mp r e s s t h e ‘ r e n t s

BY Sydney Ember Staf f Writer

“If you know that, it’s a lot easier to ask for help,” Lassonde said.

Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron called it “proactive outreach.”

This was the first time the Office of the Dean of the College sent e-mails of this nature, and only first-years were contacted.

Lassonde said upperclassmen, who have already been taking college courses for at least a year, are more adept at self-screening.

Five categories of freshmen

Parents and students gathered on the Main Green under a cloudless sky Sunday morning to hear President Ruth Simmons speak about Brown’s commitment to financial aid. The “Hour with the President” was one of this year’s culminating Family Weekend events. Simmons addressed the need for a Universitywide cutback, and in response to a question from a parent, also told the audience of mostly first-year parents that she is planning to talk to the Corporation about reducing her executive compensation for her work.

In the midst of the current economic emergency, many parents and students may be worried about their ability to finance a college education. But Simmons repeatedly stressed Brown’s effort to sustain academic programs and lessen the financial burden for families.

“Regardless of issues we face in the coming years,” she said, “your students will find different opportunities to develop their original ideas, find different avenues for achievement and explore the depths of their talent and character.”

She cited the continued pursuit of new faculty appointments, efforts to improve the New Curriculum by adding courses with a community service component and continued alumni commitment to job networking for graduating seniors as evidence of Brown’s commitment to its students and their future.

Simmons also emphasized the importance of the financial aid program, especially given the current economic situation.

“Our first commitment is to

continued on page 4

continued on page 6

BY Gaurie Tilak Senior Staff Writer

Starting this fall, Residential Council will not make pass-fail decisions during its semester program house review.

The change is part of ResCouncil’s revisions of its administrative procedures for review. The process hasn’t changed substantially in terms of the information houses must provide to ResCouncil, said Mark Fuller, chair of ResCouncil’s program house committee.

“It doesn’t really do anything to say a house passed or a house failed,” he said “So this year we’re trying to make recommendations instead.”

Additionally, the guidelines for house charity projects — which state that all proceeds from fundraising events must go to charity — have been more clearly stated in the form houses submit to ResCouncil. Such guidelines have been agreed upon in the past but not included in the form, Fuller said. The change was prompted by an incident last year in which a fraternity proposed a project and kept some of the proceeds.

In terms of community service, this year’s form requests — but does not require — that each house supply information about service projects continued on page 4

Vegetarian athletes toss pigskin aside

Min Wu / Herald

Rahul Banerjee ‘10 performs with the Badmaash dance troupe as part of SASA’s Roshni Dinner and Dance for Family Weekend.

Dean gives tips to frosh with tough courses

By Emmy Liss Senior Staf f Writer

A few weeks into the semester, Gabriela Garcia ’12 received an e-mail telling her she had chosen an “unusually challenging set of courses for (her) first semester,” and it pointed out campus resources.

The e-mail encouraged Garcia, whose schedule includes CHEM 0330: “Equilibrium, Rate, and Structure,” ENGN 0030: “Introduction to Engineering” and MATH 0090: “Introductory Calculus, Part I” to sign up for

By Seth Motel Staff Writer

chemistr y tutoring, which she said has been helpful.

Garcia is not alone. Because the Task Force for Undergraduate Education has put more of an emphasis on active advising, Deputy Dean of the College Stephen Lassonde said he sent e-mails to 130 first-year students after they had chosen their classes. Certain courses and course combinations caught the attention of the Office of the Dean of the College, and the deans wanted students in these courses to be aware that their schedules would be challenging.

day of the dead

On the football field, outside linebacker John Paul Eberenz-Rosero ’10 is hungry for big hits and tackles.

But off the field, he differs from the team’s other players in an important

In Chuck Norris, Mr. T book, Spector ’09 pities da fool

By Emma Berry Contributing Writer

FEATURE way: He doesn’t eat meat.

The junior football player is one of a handful of Brown athletes who consider themselves vegetarians.

They aren’t alone in the sports world — Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez and former track star Carl Lewis are also vegetarians. Still, vegetarian athletes are relatively uncommon.

“It has definitely affected me in football,” Eberenz-Rosero wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “I always find myself playing a position that I don’t seem big enough to play.”

At 5 feet 11 inches and 190 pounds, continued on page 4

3

ARTS & CULTURE

Min Wu / Herald

An example of an ofrenda, or traditional offering at a Mexican home or cemetery for the Day of the Dead.

a story to remember “The Forgetting Machine“ explores heritage and history in a new production

www.browndailyherald.com

5

CAMPUS NEWS

Freedom Isn’t free Political Theory Project receives $10,000 award from the Atlas research foundation

11

OPINIONS

Ian Spector ’09, whose online Chuck Norris fact generator brought him Internet fame, an appearance on VH1 and a book deal, has a theory about the success of his jokes. “It has nothing to do with Chuck Norris, per se,” said Spector. “People find things funny when you have two things that are asynchronous ... and put them together.”

With his new book, Spector is testing that theor y. While it includes 200 new “facts” about the “Walker, Texas Ranger” star, Spector also includes 200 tidbits about Mr. T, the mohawked star of 1980’s action show “The A-Team.” The book, which includes Spector’s own

The Title makes the man Matt Aks ‘11 wants to see “mavericks” replaced by rational, thoughtful politicians

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

12 SPORTS

content as well as user-submitted facts from his Web site, 4Q.cc, is entitled: “Chuck Norris vs. Mr. T: 400 Facts About the Baddest Dudes in the Histor y of Ever.”

It is set to be released on Nov. 25.

The new book is a sequel to his first compendium of Chuck Norris facts, “The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts About the World’s Greatest Human,” released in November 2007 by Gotham Books.

The book sold well, appearing on the New York Times Bestseller List for four weeks and reaching number one on several of Amazon. com’s lists of top-selling fiction and humor literature. continued on page 6

bears score for parents Football comes back to win big over Cornell, taking the ball to the air

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Monday, October 27, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

We a t h e r TODAY

Epimetheos | Samuel Holzman TOMORROW

rainy 56 / 34

partly cloudy 63 / 38

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Broccoli Noodle Polonaise, Asian Vegetable Blend, Sliced Turkey and Ham, BBQ Beef Sandwich

Lunch — Fried Clam Roll, Manicotti with Tomato Basil, Italian Marinated Chicken, Rice Krispie Treats

Dinner — Vegan Roasted Vegetable Stew, Italian Couscous, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Rotisserie Style Chicken

Dinner — Roast Honey and Chili Chicken, Fettuccini with Baby Greens, Creamy Polenta with Rosemary

Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

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

Alien Weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner

Brown Meets RISD | Miguel Llorente

© Puzzles Pappocom RELEASE DATE– Monday, October 27,by 2008

Los Angeles Times Daily oCrossword Puzzle C r o ssw rd Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Auth. unknown 5 Actor Romero 10 Narrow bed 13 Fishing boat 14 Old Athenian meeting place 15 Disparaging remark 16 1995 Snipes/Harrelson film about a subway heist 18 Ethereal 19 Brand of therapeutic gloves 20 Large swallow 22 Asian holiday 23 First-aid __ 24 Sylvia Plath’s only novel, with “The” 27 Agent, for short 28 Dead-end problem 29 School orgs.

31 Sir Arthur __ Doyle 32 Hot temper 33 Joseph’s wife 34 Commuter’s reading, or word that can precede the first word of 16- and 52Across and 10and 30-Down 35 “CSI” samples 36 Sick __ dog 37 As yet 38 Spoils 39 Con artist 41 Use needle and thread 42 Greets the general 43 Columnist Landers 44 Neon or argon 47 First lady before Mamie 48 Medicinal succulent 50 Reptilian logo brand, once 52 Youngest Masters champ 54 Got up 55 Love 56 Mid-month time 57 Brillo rival 58 Severity 59 Say it isn’t so

DOWN 1 Let in or let on 2 Hangman’s knot 3 “Ripley’s Believe It __!”

4 Russian refusal 5 Foliage that foments feline euphoria 6 Long-necked wader 7 Skyrocket 8 Onassis nickname 9 Big beef over big beef?

10 Price-gouging business 11 Your and my 12 Take a stab at 15 Actress Kellerman 17 Oxen connectors 21 __ Bator, Mongolia 24 Silly mistake 25 Vague emanations 26 Hwys.

27 “What’d I Say” singer Charles 28 Lacking face value, as stock

29 Turkish title 30 Cattle drive VIP 31 Bistros 33 Apples with keys 34 Celestial navigation guide 35 Wall Street index, with “the” 37 Tennis units 38 Extend, as a library loan 40 Napped leather

41 Noisy sleeper 43 Recent Olds 44 Crystal-lined stone 45 Cosmetician Elizabeth 46 Impertinent 48 Bug-eyed 49 Empty space 50 Tax-auditing org.

51 Bronx attraction 53 Despot Amin

Deep-Fried Kittens | Cara Fitz Gibbons

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Deo | Daniel Perez

xwordeditor@aol.com

10/27/08

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

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

A rts & C ulture Monday, October 27, 2008

Page 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

‘Machine’ looks at past

Chorus’ innovative approach to classic impresses

By Susan Kovar Contributing Writer

The Brown University Chorus appeared in top form this weekend, dazzling audiences at Sayles Hall with two feature performances of “Dido and Aeneas” the famous Baroque opera by Henry Purcell.

Kelsey Robbins ’10 and Benjamin Hyman ’11, a Herald arts and culture editor who was not involved with the editing of this review, did remarkably well as

Emma Tai’s ’07.5 “The Forgetting Machine,” investigates the connections between history, memory and time.

In the play, showing until Nov. 2 at the Rites and Reason Theatre, protagonist Grace Chang (Betty Hua ‘12 and Caitlin Ho ‘10) explores the importance of history and her Hawaiian heritage in the poignant production.

“The Forgetting Machine” centers on Chang’s efforts to write a speech that she will give at the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Chang struggles to write a politically acceptable speech that honestly portrays her heritage and the history of Hawaii, including stories that remember the suffering of the state’s indigenous people.

Mr. Yakamoto, the principal of Chang’s school (Teng Yang ’11), pushes Grace to cut out all references to this darker side of Hawaii’s past.

He is concerned that such references would reflect badly on the school and might cause Grace to lose her chance at winning the Dole Pineapple Scholarship, which would enable her to attend college.

As she writes her speech in postSept. 11 Hawaii, Grace observes historical moments that represent the effects of U.S. imperialism. She learns about unjust political consequences, like the 1893 resignation of Queen Lili`uokalani (Kai Morrell ’11) and the racial tensions spurred by U.S. control.

The whole story is presented as one unending scene, where the characters never leave the stage.

This presentation reinforces the fact that elements of the past are always with us, whether or not we choose to remember them. Thus, the play highlights the tension between the need to remember and the desire to forget the horrors of the past.

In the question-and-answer session that follows all Sunday performances at Rites and Reason, director Connie Crawford, adjunct lecturer in theatre, speech and dance, explained the significance of the author’s choice to make the majority of the play’s character’s female.

Donna Edmonds Mitchell, who played Aina, or the land, also contributed to the explanation. “It represents an unspoken culture. Often, in indigenous cultures, women hold power and the men speak, but usually not without going into counsel with the women,” Mitchell said.

Cast members also discussed their reactions to the script itself during the question and answers.

“The first thing that struck me was that it was all about the saddest parts of Hawaiian history. It’s really not all that bad,” Morrell said. “It was hard to balance that with how beautiful Hawaii is.”

“For me, it was a realization that the extent to which I knew about Hawaii was all about luaus, leis and the Dole pineapple. I was very angry that I had never heard of these parts of Hawaiian history before,” Ho said. “It became very important to me to share this other side of Hawaii.”

“I grew up on the Elvis Presley story of Hawaii — one where everybody is happy,” Crawford said. “It is one told all too often. I learned a lot researching about this play. I’m still learning.”

“The Forgetting Machine” runs through Nov. 2.

By Steve Hall

Contributing Writer

REVIEW the two leads, yet the show truly belonged to the entire Chorus.

Throughout the opera, the group performed together magnificently, all parts in meticulously balanced harmony and concluding with an unforgettable finale.

The program opened with a trio of pieces taken from Stephen Chatman’s “There is Sweet Music Here,” all rather short but of surprising difficulty.

Accompanied by the outstanding oboist Jason Smoller ’09, the chorus commenced with these uplifting selections — surprising those in the audience expecting only the somber tones of Dido’s lamenting.

But the mood was short-lived.

As “Dido and Aeneas” began, audience members were soon shown what has become commonly associ-

ated with opera: personal anguish, crushing irony and tragic death.

For this, Robbins was perfectly cast. Her vocal range was impressive in the low, contemplative passages, and the emotive power of her voice wowed audiences.

In the opera’s most famous passage, “Dido’s Lament,” Robbins was particularly stunning, delicately ornamenting the sorrowful melody, yet avoiding the all-too-popular operatic tendency to exaggerate and embellish.

Hyman displayed equal quality as Aeneas, Robbins’ counterpart.

At first note, he appeared calm and composed, yet the understated power of his voice emerged throughout the opera, leaving the audience awestruck by the end.

This refined delivery maintained by both leads was most impressive — neither exaggerated their performance with unnecessar y melisma or forced vibrato. The beauty of both Robbins and Hyman was the simple display of natural talent.

Ultimately though, it was the full chorus that stole the performance. The Brown University Chorus excels at creatively presenting a classical repertoire, often a daunting challenge for student ensembles.

With this weekend’s production, the group enthralled audiences with ease and naturally captured the actions of the drama, and yet

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it still managed to impress with a new and innovative approach.

This creativity was exemplified in the second act’s “Echo Dance,” when a few clever members of the Chorus covertly left the risers and concealed themselves in a nearby stairwell, only to begin repeating the melody from offstage, unseen, to the bewilderment of the audience.

While the 17th-century score calls for an echo-like counterpoint, the chorus’s clever staging literally interpreted the title “Echo Dance” to produce an effect that was both

humorous and riveting.

The experienced direction of Frederick Jodry contributed immensely to the success of the performance.

He was animated throughout the show, rising and falling with each changing scene, yet conducting with an almost familial connection to his singers.

Under Jodr y’s direction and with brilliantly cast leads, the chorus’ superb presentation of “Dido and Aeneas” this weekend exhibited its ability to perform as an outstanding and skilled ensemble.

Page 4

Number of members no problem for houses continued from page 1 undertaken by individuals in the house. In the past, houses have only had to provide information about their house service projects.

Fuller said the information is being requested purely for research purposes.

“It’s just to give us an idea of what sort of community service we have within the Greek program house community,” he said.

If a house has had disciplinary problems prior to the review that have been resolved by Residential Life, then ResCouncil will probably not factor the issues into its review, Fuller said.

“Even under the old pass-fail system, we would not have failed a house that had already solved its issues with the University,” he said. He added that ResCouncil may make recommendations about how to avoid being placed on probation in the future.

Program house forms are due in early November and decisions will be made in December, Fuller said.

In spring 2007, The Herald reported that some houses were having difficulties with the review process because they didn’t have enough members living in the houses. But low membership is not a problem this year.

“The past two years we’ve had the best rush years ever,” said Greek Council Chair Adam Kroll, adding that all of the houses have comfortable membership numbers.

He said the trend extends across all fraternities and sororities.

Sigma Chi “doesn’t expect any problems with the fall review, as we have met all of the requirements put forth by the University,” President Win Bennett wrote in an email to The Herald.

Monday, October 27, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

‘Balancing act’ for vegetarian athletes can be a challenge continued from page 1 Eberenz-Rosero is among the smallest linebackers on the team.

“I find myself having to invest in a good amount of supplements in order to stay on the same level as the rest of the guys, and I’m constantly trying out new things in regards to what I consume,” he wrote.

A lifestyle change Some athletes, like Eberenz-Rosero, have been vegetarians since birth, while others have chosen some form of vegetarianism later in life.

Anna Makaretz ’12, a cross country runner, decided to be a vegetarian when she was 6 years old. Her mother tried to get her to eat chili, but Makaretz was determined to remove meat from her diet after she made a realization.

“Wilbur of ‘Charlotte’s Web’ was the bacon I was eating,” she said.

Rower Greg Stepina ’10 quit meat by going cold turkey eight years ago.

“It was originally a moral decision, and then it basically evolved with my knowledge of the subject to environmental and economic (concerns),” he said.

Some of the athletes who identify as vegetarians occasionally eat fish or other meat due to concerns about health or out of convenience, though opinions differ as to whether “pescetarians” qualify as vegetarians. One benefit of fish, for instance, is its richness of Omega-3 fatty acids, which have numerous health benefits.

Grant LeBeau ’09, a member of the water polo team, had been a vegetarian since he was about 10 years old, but he added fish back into his diet in high school.

“I read an article about linkage between eating red meat and heart disease,” said LeBeau, whose family has a history of heart conditions. “I don’t think it’s ever had an effect on my sports at all.”

Vegetarian athletes, especially those who weren’t raised on such diets, said they have experienced various difficulties in adjusting their lifestyles to fit their athletic commitments. Some coaches have

discouraged them from the practice altogether, while others have made sure their vegetarian athletes saw nutritionists.

Swimmer Victoria Hartman ’12 became a vegetarian a little more than two years ago, despite her high school coach’s criticism of the plan.

“I definitely think I was a little bit weaker at first,” she said, adding that she was soon able to adapt. “(My coach) thought it was going to drastically change my swimming.”

Rugby player Annalisa Wilde ’11 said she tries to silence any doubts about her lifelong diet, which includes eating fish but not other animals, with her physical performance.

“They look at me and they see that I’m strong and I take care of myself,” Wilde said. “I can lift with the best of them.”

Need for vigilance Some of the athletes said they take a multivitamin in addition to monitoring their health in other ways. But despite taking supplements, vegetarian athletes still need stay aware of nutrients, according to experts.

“With regard to macronutrients — carbs, fat, protein — protein is obviously the first consideration,” wrote Assistant Professor of Community Health Joseph Ciccolo in an e-mail to The Herald.

Ciccolo emphasized that vegans — vegetarians who won’t eat any animal products, including eggs and dairy — need to be especially vigilant about maintaining their health.

“Vegans should be advised to supplement their diet with various nonanimal sources of protein, with soy being a readily available option,” he wrote. “Vegans will need to consider iron, zinc, B12, vitamin D, riboflavin and calcium, as these are important for maintenance of health and recovery from exercise.”

Given these health concerns, some coaches said the balancing act between vegetarianism and athletics can be overwhelming.

“In my opinion, it is very tough to be a distance runner and be a vegetarian, as it is tough to get the proper amount of protein and iron, especially if you are eating in a dining hall,” wrote Craig Lake, cross country and track and field coach, in an e-mail to The Herald.

Makaretz, the cross country run-

ner, said Lake urges everybody on the team to take supplements, but she said she hasn’t felt pressured to resume eating meat.

“I don’t think (Lake is) completely happy that I’m a vegetarian,” Makaretz said. “But it was only mentioned partly in passing during my recruiting trip.”

Water polo Head Coach Felix Mercado said LeBeau, his lone vegetarian player, seems to have figured out how to balance his diet with being a top athlete.

“I’m sure Grant is someone who knows his body better than I do,” Mercado said. “He looks very healthy, he trains very hard, in games he has a lot of energy. Obviously he’s doing a good job of taking care of his body.”

Stepina, of the men’s crew team, called his high school teammates’ doubts about his vegetarianism “the story of my life in athletics.”

“I ended up being the fastest guy on my high school team,” he said. “Even then, it was, ‘how much faster could I have been if I had eaten meat?’ ” Culture shifts Men’s lacrosse Head Coach Lars Tiffany ’90 , a former lacrosse player at Brown, said he considered vegetarianism as a student but ultimately was unsure if it would affect his on-field performance. Soon after graduating, Tiffany moved to the West Coast and decided to give up meat after discovering some tips on how to eat healthfully.

Brown, and society in general, has become much more accommodating to vegetarians, he said.

“There is so much more information out there,” Tiffany said. “There are so many more products. The Brown University dining facilities have so many more options now for vegetarians.”

As a coach, Tiffany said he has discussed with a few players how to balance the rigors of the collisionheavy sport with a vegetarian diet, but he said he doesn’t push the issue. Though Tiffany participates in triathlons and other exercise, he still worries that active lacrosse players might lose “a little bit of an edge” if they were to give up meat.

“In the back of my mind, all of the sudden they don’t have a great

year, and I have alumni all over me,” he said.

In terms of feasibility, most restaurants offer vegetarian options, such as salad or various side dishes, that appeals to players. In the quest for protein, many vegetarian athletes rely on tofu, beans and nuts.

Fencer Charlotte Rose ’09 usually maintains a vegan diet, like professional athletes Gonzalez and Lewis, but she said she sometimes has no choice but to eat dairy or fish if her team is traveling.

“There (are) very few vegan options on the highway, but I’m always vegetarian,” she said.

Occasionally, vegetarians find themselves in situations with no vegetarian or vegan option. Rose said she needed to eat omelets when she spent six weeks in Bolivia in high school, while rugby player Wilde adjusted to eating fish and goat during her time in Ghana.

“At that point, you learn you’ve gotta savor everything you can get,” Wilde said.

Generally, the athletes interviewed said their diet doesn’t cause much alienation from their teammates. But many of them said they have grown to expect a certain amount of teasing from their teammates, especially football player Eberenz-Rosero.

“As you would expect, I do get a lot of crap for my diet,” EberenzRosero wrote. “There aren’t many vegetarian football players, but — hopefully — it’s all in good fun.”

Field hockey player Tess Standa ’09 said some people have teased her (“I’ll pay you money to try some,” friends offer), but many others are just curious. Raised as a vegetarian who occasionally ate fish, Standa said she was used to answering questions about her diet while growing up.

She said lunchtime was “weird” when “your hot dog was orange ‘cause it was made of tofu.”

Some athletes, such as Makaretz, said they would consider making changes to their diets if the physicality of their sports demanded it. But for Hartman, the swimmer, abandoning her vegetarianism isn’t an option.

“I would never consider changing back to being an omnivore,” she said.

For many vegetarian athletes, different eating habits simply would be too tough to digest.

Certain course combos draw dean’s attention continued from page 1 received messages: students simultaneously enrolled in CHEM 0330, ENGN 0030 and any math course; students enrolled in BIOL 0470: “Genetics”; students enrolled in language classes that require two semesters for credit to be received, like introductor y courses in Chinese and Arabic; students enrolled in upper-level math courses; and pre-med students enrolled in multiple lab courses.

Lassonde said the intent of the emails was to “reach out to students before they run ashore.”

Though many students had probably already received advice about their courses from their advisers, Lassonde said he has learned from past experience that redundancy is necessary, especially for first-years who are being inundated with resources and information.

The e-mails were meant to serve as helpful reminders of where to turn for guidance, Lassonde said.

About 40 percent of the students who were contacted responded, he said. The responses fell into three

categories: Some students said they had already spoken with an adviser or professor, some thanked him for his advice and said they were doing fine and others acknowledged needing help and subsequently made appointments.

Garcia found the e-mail to be a reassurance that “someone wants you to do well.”

“It makes it seem more normal to need help,” she said. “You don’t feel like, ‘Oh, I’m stupid because I need a tutor.’”

The e-mails reminded students of options such as dropping down math levels, switching from CHEM 0330 to its year-long equivalent and obtaining tutors. Garcia said she might have eventually gotten a tutor, but the e-mail, combined with advice from professors, convinced her to “start off at a good pace and get help early.”

Matt Smith ’12 enrolled in Arabic for the fall semester, taking note that the Course Announcement Bulletin listed it as a two-semester course. When he began the class in September, his professor reminded students that it was the

first semester of a yearlong course.

So when Smith received an e-mail from Lassonde in mid-September, warning him that if he did not take two semesters of Arabic he would not receive credit, he found it “a little strange.”

“If the dean of the College’s office were going to tell me, they should have told me before I signed up for the course,” he said. The e-mail also reminded Smith to preregister for Arabic for the spring semester, which he said would have been a more useful message in late October, rather than “some random date in mid-September.”

“The timing seemed odd, and it seemed redundant,” he said.

The e-mails had to be sent after the deadline for adding classes had passed, Lassonde said, so he could be sure that students were definitively enrolled.

Garcia said she thought the timing was appropriate. Had she received the e-mail earlier in the semester, before she realized what she had gotten herself into, she might have disregarded the extra advice.

C ampus n ews Monday, October 27, 2008

Page 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

N e ws i n B r i e f Free-market group gives to Political Theory Brown’s Political Theory Project was awarded a $10,000 prize last week by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a free-market think tank.

The Political Theory Project will receive Atlas’s 2008 Templeton Freedom Award for Special Achievement by a UniversityBased Center, which includes the prize money.

The Atlas Economic Research Foundation is dedicated to the belief that its “vision of a free society Quinn Savit / Herald can be achieved through respect Professor-at-Large Richard Holbrooke ‘62 for private property rights, limited speaks at Political Theory Project event. government under the rule of law, and the market order,” according to its Web site.

The Political Theory Project was founded by Associate Professor of Political Science John Tomasi in 2003. According to its Web site, the project, whose mission is to “invigorate the study of institutions and ideas that make societies free, prosperous, and fair,” offers undergraduate courses, hosts academic conferences, supports research, secures resources and funding for graduate work and hosts a lecture series through the student-run Janus Forum.

According to Dina Egge, program manager for the political science department, Tomasi was notified of the award via e-mail on Oct. 3.

Atlas announced the award winners on Oct. 20.

Egge said that the $10,000 will be used to finance a variety of programs. Primarily, though, it will go towards funding the Janus Forum, which promotes political discussion on campus. She said that programs such as its lecture series and the forum’s newly formed Brown Political Union will benefit from funding, as will smaller events like its presidential debate-watching parties.

“The broad impact will be for all undergraduate students who participate in Janus activities,” Egge said.

Both the Political Theory Project and the Janus Forum are nonpartisan — the project’s Web site affirms that it is not committed “to any particular ideological orientation” and draws upon ideas from across the political spectrum.

Anish Mitra ’10, the current College Republicans representative to the Janus Forum and a Herald columnist, said that the Political Theory Project’s intellectual approach is beginning to “change the general way of thinking,” and noted recent efforts to establish a single concentration in philosophy, politics and economics.

Sixteen think tanks received Templeton Freedom Awards this year, according to the foundation’s Web site. Awards were distributed among eight categories, each with two winning institutions — one that is older than eight years and considered an “established institute” and one that is not and is considered an “emerging institute.” The Political Theory Project, an “emerging institute,” won in the same category as George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.

— Sarah Husk

Clinton Global, Wal-Mart award Brown

By Matt Klebanoff Contributing Writer

The Clinton Global Initiative University and the Wal-Mart Foundation awarded the University $205,000 at the end of September in addition to giving four awards to Brown students — the highest number given to any school.

Each of the $2,000 grants given to Brown students will help to finance “innovative, high impact commitments to improve communities and lives around the world,” according to a press release from Wal-Mart.

Caroline Mailloux ’08.5 plans to spend her grant to help implement a waste management system in Sikoroni, Mali.

“The community leaders identified trash as being a top concern in the community, so the project focused on partnering with local leaders and extending waste management services to local households,” said Mailloux.

Mailloux said the grant will allow her to purchase more supplies, which the community of Sikoroni needs in order to expand its waste management program.

Emma Clippinger ’09 received a grant in order to support the efforts

of her organization, Gardens for Health International, which teaches communities to grow their own healthy food to help people living with HIV/AIDS in Rwanda.

Mollie West ’09 received a grant to address poverty in Providence.

West is currently developing a local microfinance program that would make loans of less than $5,000 to clients looking to start or expand small businesses.

West said the program will provide loans for “people who want to start small businesses who wouldn’t be able to get loans because of a credit history or because there are certain legality issues.”

Rachel Levenson ’10 also was awarded a grant to help her explore the potential for a community-based health financing program in Sikoroni, Mali.

West was excited to be recognized for her work by CGI U. “To have an external organization from Brown University look at our project, and say, yes, this is a good project, was extremely gratifying and validating.”

Mailloux said receiving the grant was encouraging. “It was a huge relief. It was really exciting to know that the money would be making such a positive impact in

Mali.”

The $205,000 grant awarded to Brown will help to support its partnership with Dillard University, President Ruth Simmons’ alma mater. The partnership is meant to ensure that the New Orleans university will be made more environmentally sustainable.

The grant will foster greater cooperation between the two universities, which would encourage Brown to provide more technical assistance and expertise to Dillard, said Marisa Quinn, vice president of public affairs and University relations.

In the past, Brown has helped Dillard to launch a recycling effort, Quinn said.

“Brown has a recycling effort that’s been in place for more than a decade, so there was an opportunity to link up ideas and expertise here to help them build up their recycling (program),” Quinn said.

Quinn said the precise use of this grant has yet to be decided, but that it is broad enough to support a variety of efforts to develop a more sustainable environment at Dillard.

In a month, after Dillard reviews its goals, Brown will determine the best possible way to support its efforts.

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Monday, October 27, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Simmons tells parents she might take cut in compensation Spector ’09 brings Mr. T into book continued from page 1

continued from page 1 Given the first book’s success, Spector said he was not surprised Gotham approached him about a second book. “I could tell in their heads they always wanted to do the sequel if (the first book) sold well,” he said.

While his Web traffic has died down, Spector said his book has been selling steadily at a pace of 800 to 1,000 copies a week. “That’s kind of been stable since early this year, which apparently is remarkable,” he said.

There are currently 198,000 copies of the book in print, and Penguin recently ordered the printing of 25,000 more.

Spector declined to say how much money he has made from the book but said most of his earnings are going toward his Brown tuition.

The book’s success also led Chuck Norris to file a lawsuit in December 2007 in which he claimed that the book misrepresented him.

The lawsuit was settled in the spring, but Spector said that the publishing company still had to pay “a fortune” in legal fees. The lawsuit also caused the William Morris Agency, the literary agency that first approached him about writing a book, to stop representing him, Spector said.

The cover of the new book includes a subheading listing it as an “unauthorized parody.”

While the new book’s cover depicts Norris and Mr. T locked in hand-to-hand combat, Spector said those who want to know which action star would win in a fight will have to make their own determinations based on the facts presented — the book doesn’t arrive at a definitive answer. While some of the facts are interchangeable, Spector said, the Chuck Norris facts tend to focus on roundhouse kicks, the Wild West and beards, while the Mr. T facts “are more about gold chains and pitying fools.”

“It takes on a much darker and sophisticated tone than the first one,” Spector joked.

Spector said he has enjoyed working on the books, but, he added, “I don’t see a third.”

Instead, he’s working on a Web project with several people that he met through the Brown University Entrepreneurship Program, of which he is co-president. The project is a ranking and social networking site for comedy video.

Min Wu / Herald Simmons addressed financial concerns during a talk to parents Sunday morning.

keep our students here. That’s number one,” she said.

Simmons also spoke about the continued fund-raising effort that allows the University to offer an education to students who otherwise would not be able to come to Brown.

Having students from different backgrounds, she said, enables ever yone to experience new ideas about issues ranging from politics to religion to race.

“This diversity,” she said, “provides a laboratory for living unlike any they are likely to experience subsequently. We hope they take advantage of this opportunity to learn something of the beautiful yet shallow complexity of the world.”

Simmons said, in response to a parent’s question, that she is planning on talking to the Corporation about reducing her own compensation because “it’s ver y important to set the pace” among university leaders on financial initiatives.

Another parent asked Simmons where funds for financial aid would come from as families have less money to pay Brown.

Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 stepped in to say that the University has begun to budget more money for struggling families.

Simmons later said that administrators are trying to examine small, unnecessar y costs.

For example, she said, “I was ver y disappointed to cancel an event that was scheduled for Monday that would have been a really wonderful event.”

“But it was not a necessar y event,” she said, adding that the funding could be better spent elsewhere.

“I always say that our responsibility to our students is to have a public face that demonstrates that we are concerned about everyone,” Simmons said.

Kathleen Sheehy P’12, mother of Julia Sheehy-Chan ’12, said after the talk that she appreciated Simmons’ comments about the dire financial situation.

“Her sincerity sort of exudes from her,” said Bruce Main P’12, father of Calvin Main ’12.

“It’s comforting and reassuring to know there’s someone at the head of our institution that cares about our children.”

Your neighbors could find out, so you’d better vote

By Shankar Vedantam Washington Post

WASHINGTON — After nearly two years of political jockeying for the presidency, hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising and wall-to-wall campaign coverage in the media, nearly half of all Americans eligible to cast ballots in the presidential election may not bother to vote. Turnout for primaries, as well as local and municipal elections, often runs well below 50 percent.

Several efforts have been made in recent years to boost voter turnout in the United States, which is among the lowest in the democratic world. Campaigns run extensive registration drives and get-out-thevote efforts aimed at supporters, and authorities have eased access to polling places and offered more flexible voting rules.

Three political scientists, however, recently discovered an extraordinarily effective way to get people to vote.

Alan Gerber, Donald Green and Christopher Larimer drew up a list of more than 180,000 voters in Michigan. One group of 99,999 voters was set aside as a control group — these people just voted

as they usually do. The rest were divided into four groups.

Members of one group got a letter each 11 days before a 2006 election exhorting them to vote because it was a civic duty. Members of another group received a letter saying that the researchers were studying their voting habits — the mailing said, “You are being studied.”

The third group got a letter pointing out that whether someone votes is a matter of public record — registrars maintain publicly available lists of those who show up at the polls. (Whom they vote for is a secret.) The letter went on to note whether people in the recipient’s household had voted in the 2004 presidential primary and general election.

The fourth group got a letter showing not only whether they had voted in the 2004 elections but also which of their neighbors had voted. The letter said that after the coming election, the entire neighborhood would receive another mailing that laid out — householdby-household — who had voted.

“These were the most homely pieces of direct mail in the history of direct mail,” said Green, who works at Yale. “They were sheets

of computer paper. They had no graphics and used block courier type. They are the exact opposite of the slick four-color mailings that campaigns send out.”

Homely though they were, the letters had a powerful effect.

The control group’s turnout rate was slightly less than 30 percent.

Among those who received the “civic pride” letter, turnout was 6 percent higher than the control group’s. Among those who were told they were being studied, it was 12 percent higher. Among those who were shown whether they had voted in the previous election, the turnout was 16 percent higher.

And telling people what everyone in the neighborhood had done the previous Election Day — and letting them know that they would be similarly informed about the current election — boosted turnout by 27 percent.

The effectiveness of snitching on neighbors exceeded that of live telephone calls and rivaled that of laborious, face-to-face canvassing, the political scientists wrote in an article published in the American Political Science Review this year.

Direct mail costs peanuts compared with other techniques.

The Michigan experiment was conducted before a primary, but this team and other researchers have demonstrated the same effect in other local and municipal elections and the 2008 Iowa presidential caucuses. Automated calls ahead of the 2008 Michigan primary informing people about their neighbors’ voting history had the same effect.

“Many people are puzzled that we know whether they voted — they don’t know voting is a matter of public record,” Green said.

Although people were generally not annoyed at being shown their voting history, they were occasionally annoyed at having it revealed to their neighbors.

Gerber, who also works at Yale, said campaigns would have to use the technique with caution, because the last thing a candidate wants to do is annoy people who are going to vote for him or her. But Green said nonpartisan groups, even pub-

lic authorities, might consider using the technique to boost turnout, especially in municipal elections that often bring out just 15 percent of eligible voters.

The researchers said they did not set out to get their technique used in campaigns. Rather, they were tr ying to understand why turnout in American elections is so low — when it once used to be very high. (There is also, paradoxically, the opposite mystery: Some political scientists have asked why turnout is as high as it is, given that individual voters have such little effect on the outcome of the election.)

In the 1880s, Green said, turnout used to touch 80 percent. By the 1920s, it was down to 40 percent. The reason, he said, was a number of well-meaning electoral reforms.

Elections in the mid-19th century were festive affairs, and people gathered to carouse, jostle one another and vote. They sometimes cast their ballots on a stage to cheers and jeers. Voting, even their choice of candidates, used to be extremely public.

A series of progressive reforms in the late 19th century turned voting into a private affair. Campaign operatives were kept clear of polling stations. People got to vote in secret, and few knew whether their neighbors voted.

Turnout plummeted.

What this suggests is that, besides civic pride and political conviction, a central reason people vote is that democratic participation is an intensely social act. Politics, candidates and campaigns offer zones of connection with other citizens — even political opponents. It gives millions of people common topics of conversation.

Voting used to be that way, too.

We certainly don’t want to go back to the time when casting ballots involved fistfights and booze, but the Michigan experiment suggests one way we can revive some of the social aspects of voting.

Your vote may count for very little in the outcome of an election, but it may count for a lot in the eyes of your friends and neighbors.

W Orld & n ation Monday, October 27, 2008

Peace Corps exodus leads volunteers to return, go it alone in Bolivia

By Joshua Partlow Washington Post

MIZQUE, Bolivia — For an unemployed man, Cooper Swanson is busy.

One minute he is at the hospital, going over a plan to combat Chagas’ disease.

The next, he is teaching accounting to peasant weavers.

At the Catholic boarding school, he demonstrates PowerPoint software to teen-age girls. At the public high school, he screens a movie he directed about protecting archaeological sites. He worked to open a library.

He served in the mayor’s office. He helped bring the Internet to this village of 4,000 people nearly 8,000 feet up in the Andes.

“I have lots of ambitious goals,” Swanson said.

The Peace Corps’ evacuation of all its volunteers in Bolivia last month forced Swanson, 24, to consider these goals and make a choice: stay with the Peace Corps and finish his term in another country, or leave the organization and return to Mizque. He would not have the salary, health insurance, support network or protection that come with the Peace Corps, at a time of sporadic political violence in Bolivia and just after the government had thrown out the U.S. ambassador.

“It wasn’t even really much of a decision,” he said. In an e-mail to friends and family, he wrote soon after the evacuation: “I am no longer a Peace Corps volunteer.”

The Peace Corps flew all 113 of its volunteers out of Bolivia on cargo planes, and 78 of them later decided to leave the organization. But several of those — more than 15, by some of their estimates — have since returned to the cities and villages of Bolivia to keep working on their own. In the aftermath of the evacuation, a sense of distaste lingers for some. Why, when so many of them felt so safe, were they forced to leave?

“Peace Corps, unfortunately, has become another weapon in the US diplomatic arsenal,” volunteer Sarah Nourse, of Mechanicsville, Md., wrote in a widely circulated e-mail.

The Peace Corps withdrawal “is one more chance for the US to maintain its tough image and hit back, harder.

“More than ever, Bolivia needs living examples of real Americans,” Nourse went on. “They need someone to help, not for financial gains but because the task exists and because it’s the right thing to do.”

President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961 to “promote world peace and friendship ... under conditions of hardship if necessary.” Since then, 190,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries.

Today, there are about 7,800 Peace Corps volunteers. Evacuations are relatively rare but not unprecedented.

This year, in addition to Bolivia, the Peace Corps suspended programs in Kenya and Georgia for safety and security reasons. The organization is already back in Kenya and hopes to return to Georgia and Bolivia when appropriate, officials said.

Swanson, the son of musicians from Raleigh, N.C., and a graduate of North Carolina State University, had been in Bolivia since August 2006. About 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept.

11, he received a text message on his cellphone. It was the Emergency Action Plan, again. Twenty times over the past 21 months, the Peace Corps had initiated its emergency plans in response to violence or political dis-

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Joshua Partlow / Washington Post

After the Peace Corps volunteers were pulled out, Cooper Swanson, a native of Raleigh, N.C., returned on his own. turbance. Usually, it involved staying put and calling in to headquarters regularly. But twice, Swanson had been “consolidated” with other volunteers in another city to wait out an intense period. And this week had been particularly intense.

That Tuesday, in the lowland region of Santa Cruz, the heart of the fierce opposition to President Evo Morales, protesters had clashed with police and sacked government offices, including the national telephone company, Entel. The next day, Morales declared U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg a persona non grata, only the sixth such declaration in U.S. diplomatic history, and accused him of conspiring with the opposition, a charge Goldberg and the U.S. government denied. On Thursday, two days later, supporters of Morales marching in the far northern region of Pando came under attack, and as many as 18 of them were killed, according to the Bolivian government.

Still, Swanson did not want to leave. His small town, in a central mountain valley, was quiet, as always.

The violence seemed isolated and distant from the cobblestone streets of Mizque, set amid the hills of scrub brush and cactus, dotted by thatched roof adobe huts. He had work to do, and the best weekend of the year lay ahead: the town’s biggest festival, with bullfights and parades around the tree-shaded central plaza. “I obviously had no plans of going anywhere,” he said.

But the Peace Corps instructed him to leave as soon as possible for Cochabamba, the regional capital and home of Bolivia’s Peace Corps headquarters. A commercial he saw on television as he was leaving — an attack on Goldberg for meeting with an opposition governor — left him with a feeling that this “consolidation” might be different. “At that moment, I was like, `We’re not going to be here much longer,’ “ he said.

When the Peace Corps’ Bolivia director, Kathleen Sifer, spoke to the worried group Sunday morning at a hotel, she was already speaking in the past tense, Swanson said: “You were all great volunteers.” They would be leaving for Lima, Peru, she said. In an hour. Some volunteers, Nourse recalled, “just started bawling.”

The Peace Corps, which started in Bolivia in 1962, has run into controversy in that country in the past.

The Bolivian government expelled the Peace Corps in 1971 after a fictional movie depicting volunteers sterilizing Bolivian women aroused widespread anti-American sentiment. The organization did not return to the country until 1990, and volunteers stay away from family planning programs, Swanson said.

In February, an American Fulbright scholar said a U.S. Embassy security official had asked him for the names and addresses of any Venezuelans or Cubans living in Bolivia. The official also allegedly asked Peace Corps volunteers for similar information. The State Department called the requests inappropriate and denied using the programs to gather intelligence. But Morales publicly condemned the security officer, and Bolivian officials have widely repeated the accusation that the Peace Corps is involved in intelligence gathering.

This time, the volunteers’ departure, and subsequent suspension of the program, was strictly based on safety concerns and was not retaliation for the ambassador’s expulsion, according to Peace Corps officials.

The volunteers left “due to increasing civil unrest, including blockading of major transportation routes, and escalating violence against Bolivian citizens,” said Peace Corps spokeswoman Josie Duckett. The program does not anticipate sending volunteers to Bolivia until next fall at the earliest, Duckett said.

The American and Bolivian governments seem to agree that the evacuation was necessary.

“The less presence of the United States in Bolivia, the better,” Juan Ramon Quintana, Bolivia’s minister of the presidency, said in an interview.

“We believe the security policies of the United States have damaged the constitutional rights of the students of the Peace Corps, by tasking some of them to do intelligence work.”

After the volunteers flew from Bolivia to Peru, they gathered at a resort outside Lima to mull over their futures. At one meeting, the volunteers were asked how many planned to return to Bolivia. About half the group members raised their hands, according to participants. A Peace Corps security official “strongly discouraged” the volunteers from returning, said Aaron York, 26, a volunteer from Washington state.

York, who coached basketball and worked with children in a small community in the Tarija region, decided to return on his own.

“I’ve never felt safer in my life than I was here,” he said. “I needed to be back here. ... There was no time to say goodbye to everyone, to achieve any kind of closure, in my service, in my life here, and I really felt like I needed that.”

Alana Liskov, 24, decided against returning home to Silver Spring, Md., partly because her work remained at a critical juncture. She had ordered four computers and a printer so her town of La Merced, population 266, could have a computer lab, and she needed to pay for them.

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U.S. forces stage raid inside Syria BEIRUT, Lebanon — U.S. forces ferried by helicopter crossed five miles into Syria on Sunday and launched a commando raid near the Iraqi border that left at least eight people dead, Syrian news outlets and sources reported.

Syria has long been a conduit for foreign fighters attempting to slip into Iraq to attack U.S. troops. American officials say that military action inside of Iraq has reduced their number. And tense relations between Syria and the Iraqi government have improved enough that earlier this month, Syria sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time since the early 1980s.

But U.S. officials charge that militants still are able to operate openly in Syria, and that the government in Damascus, the capital, needs to do more to rein them in. They accuse fighters who filtered across the Syrian border of fomenting trouble recently in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, and of an attack in May that killed 11 Iraqi policemen.

Details of the attack Sunday were sketchy. A military officer in Iraq confirmed that U.S. forces conducted a raid into Syria, but declined to provide more information. In Washington, D.C., several military representatives asked about the operation did not deny that a raid had taken place. Although they would not confirm the attack, they used language typically employed after raids conducted by secretive Special Operations forces.

— Los Angeles Times

Group swamps swing states with movie on radical Islam WASHINGTON — A New York-based organization has sent copies of a movie about Islamist extremism to more than 28 million houses and religious institutions in presidential election battleground states over the past several weeks.

The 60-minute documentary-style production, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” includes images of terrorist attacks from around the world, historic footage of Nazi rallies and modernday scenes of Muslim children reciting poetry that celebrates suicide bombings. The costs of producing and distributing the film, through mass mailings and newspaper inserts — an effort that one Muslim advocacy group estimates at $50 million — were paid by the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit group that says it is seeking “to educate Americans about issues of national security to influence voters.”

Members of several Muslim groups have condemned the film, saying it is inflammatory and that it could incite violence against them.

“It’s a mind-boggling massive campaign. When you send material like this almost exclusively to presidential swing states that sends a message that you are trying to influence the election,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. “It’s inappropriate as a nonprofit for the Clarion Fund to do.”

The council filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service last month, accusing the group of promoting the candidacy of Sen. John McCain over Sen. Barack Obama’s. Federal election and tax laws prohibit nonprofit organizations from promoting specific candidates.

— Washington Post

Obama up by 8 points in Virginia WASHINGTON — Barack Obama has opened up an eight-point lead over Republican John McCain in Virginia, and the Democrat is entering the final week of the campaign with several core advantages when it comes to turning out his supporters, according to a new Washington Post poll.

By wide margins, Virginia voters think that Obama is the candidate who would do more to bring needed change to Washington, who understands the economic challenges people are facing and who is the more honest and trustworthy of the two rivals. Still, there remains widespread apprehension over whether the Democratic nominee would make a good commander in chief.

McCain’s path to the White House is very difficult without Virginia’s 13 electoral votes, and Obama now leads the senator from Arizona 52 percent to 44 percent in the new poll.

In a Washington Post-ABC News Virginia poll taken late last month, Obama clung to a slim 3 percentage-point edge among likely voters. As an example of the gains he has made since that poll, Obama is now tied with McCain among college-educated white men, overcoming what had been an almost 30-point deficit for the Democrat.

A Democratic presidential nominee has not carried the state since 1964, but Obama has amassed what Virginia Democrats see as the most comprehensive political organization in modern times for a statewide campaign.

Obama has opened almost 50 offices, dispatched more than 250 paid staffers and recruited thousands of volunteers to knock on doors and call voters across the state. The poll indicates that Obama’s staff and volunteers have made staggering gains in reaching out to Virginia’s 5 million registered voters. More than half of all voters surveyed said they have been contacted in person, on the phone or by e-mail or text message about voting for Obama, far more than said so about McCain.

— Washington Post

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Football victory leaves Bears revved up for the season Volleyball splits games, shows effort continued from page 12

able to mount a successful drive, and the punt from kicker Robert Ranney ’08.5 was returned 20 yards to the Brown 34. This time, the Big Red found the end zone in just four plays, with the touchdown coming on a 16-yard pass from quarterback Nathan Ford to receiver Jesse Baker.

The turning point for Bruno came early in the second quarter.

With the Big Red facing a thirdand-1 at the 18, the defense came up with a stop to force fourth down.

Despite being in field goal range, Cornell opted to go for the first down, and defensive back Russell Leedy ’11 read Ford’s play fake and brought down the quarterback on his rollout to the left, giving the Bears the ball on downs.

On the ensuing drive, the offense finally got going, in large part due to the play of receiver Bobby Sewall ’10. Dougherty completed four passes to Sewall, including completions of 17 and 26 yards, and Sewall added a run for a first down in a fourth-and-1 situation. Though the Bears couldn’t get into the end zone, they got on the board with a 21-yard field goal from Ranney to cut Cornell’s lead to 7-3.

The Bears got the ball back quickly, thanks to tackle Jake Powers ’09. On first down, with receiver Stephen Liuzza lined up as quarterback for the Big Red, Powers broke through the line and wrapped up Liuzza for a six-yard loss. Powers then tipped Ford’s pass at the line on second down to force Cornell into a third-and-16, which it was

Soccer shuts out Cornell continued from page 12 three games.”

Thompson led the Brown attack with six shots, two of those on goal.

Paul Grandstrand ’11 came back from a loss to Hartwick to pull off a shutout, moving his record to 3-3-0.

The Bears out-shot the Big Red 16-6 and had a 14-3 advantage in corner kicks for the game. However, Bruno was unable to score off of any of the corner kicks.

“There’s definitely still room for improvement on offense,” said captain Dylan Sheehan ’09. “We had 15 corners and didn’t really generate any opportunities off of them. We wanted to work on first contact. We were pretty poor in that area.”

The Bears travel to Penn next Saturday, where they face a tough Quaker team in a must-win game for Brown to keep its Ivy League title and NCAA tournament hopes alive. Brown pulled off a 3-0 win in its last meeting with Penn in Providence.

unable to convert.

The offense rode the wave of momentum in a big way. On the first play of the drive, Dougherty went over the top to Sewall along the left sideline for a 52-yard touchdown pass to give the Bears a 10-7 lead.

“That over-the-top play was big,” said Head Coach Phil Estes. “When our receivers started making some big plays, all of a sudden we started to get our momentum back.”

Sewall led all receivers with 11 catches for 181 yards and two touchdowns on the day, with 128 of those yards coming in the second quarter.

After the defense forced the Big Red to punt again, the Brown offense went back to work. Running back Dereck Knight ’08.5 kept the drive alive with a 3-yard plunge on fourth-and-1 from the Cornell 40.

On the next play, Dougherty found Farnham over the middle for a 28yard gain, eventually setting up a 22-yard field goal for Ranney to give Bruno a 13-7 halftime lead. After the Big Red gained 119 total yards of offense in the first quarter, the Brown defense allowed just nine net yards in the second quarter.

On its first two drives of the second half, the offense looked out of sync, but once again the team got a spark from a big defensive play.

Cornell looked to be in position to regain the lead with a first down at the Brown 19, but on a keeper by Liuzza, linebacker Miles Craigwell ’09 jarred the ball loose, and Leedy dove on the ball, coming up with his second big play of the game. After two completions to tight end Colin

Cloherty ’09, Dougherty dumped the ball over the middle to Farnham, who cut to the outside and fought his way to the Cornell 20 for a 42-yard pickup.

“We knew their defensive backs were weak, and they like to play a lot of man-to-man,” Dougherty said.

“We like our match-ups whenever anyone tries to play man-to-man with us.”

On third-and-goal from the 8, the Bears caught a break with a defensive pass interference call in the end zone. On the ensuing first down from the 2, Bruno showed off the versatility of its receivers. With Sewall lined up at quarterback, the offense ran a draw play to Farnham, who found a hole in the line and ran into the end zone for his third rushing touchdown of the season, giving Bruno a 20-7 lead with 14:52 remaining in the game.

On the next drive, the defense continued to stymie the Cornell offense. On first down, running back Randy Barbour was taken down by linebacker Jonathan May ’09 and tackle Joseph McPhee ’09 for a 1-yard loss, and on second down May laid a big hit on Baker to force a third-and-9. After an incomplete third-down pass, the Big Red punted again.

May led the Brown defense with eight tackles on the day, while Craigwell was close behind with seven tackles, including two tackles for losses and a forced fumble. The defense made eight total tackles for loss, including sacks by linebacker Steve Ziogas ’09 and lineman Wale Adedokun ’09, and held Cornell to just 52 yards on the ground.

“They did a good job,” Estes said of the defense. “They wrecked that o-line, and they did their job today.”

On their second drive of the fourth quarter, the Bears turned to Knight, who gained 31 yards on six carries on the drive. Knight finished the game with 80 yards on five carries.

“The last two weeks, Dereck has completely taken over the fourth quarter,” Dougherty said. “When you have teams down and you’re able to eat up that fourth quarter clock, you’re going to win a lot of games.”

But the big play, once again, came from Bobby Sewall, who turned and caught a lofted pass from Dougherty at the 5, then bounced off his defender to get into the end zone for a 32-yard touchdown, putting the final score at 27-7.

“It’s at the point where I just throw it up and he’ll go get it,” Dougherty said. “I don’t even have to worry about who’s on him, or what the coverage is like.”

After his miserable first quarter, Dougherty settled down and turned in a strong performance, completing 20 of 37 passes for 285 yards.

The win gives Brown its first 3-0 Ivy start in team history, but the Bears will face a tough test when they travel to Philadelphia next weekend to take on Penn, the only other undefeated team in Ivy play.

“This win means we’re 3-0 in Ivy League play,” Estes said. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to win it.

It doesn’t mean we’re going to lose it. We’re in control of our destiny, is what it means.”

Field hockey loses to Big Red, 2-4 continued from page 12 nell to just a 7-4 advantage in shots and prevented them from taking another penalty corner in the first half. Bruno tied the score at 21:42 on Brown’s only penalty corner of the half. Leslie Springmeyer ’12 pushed the ball in to the top of the circle, Michaela Seigo ’10 stopped it and Hyland found the back of the cage, continuing a recent string of successful corner conversions.

“Our kids have really taken a mentality of, every attacking corner we have, we’re executing,” Harrington said.

It looked like the game might go to halftime tied, but Cornell took advantage of Bruno’s defensive breakdown to take the lead with 2:24 left in the half. Kelley Kantarian took the ball up the left side of the field before passing to Catie De Stio, who was streaking to the right post. De Stio lifted a shot to the upper right corner of the net.

“I think it was just a little bit of a breakdown in communication,” Hyland said. “They had really fast forwards, but we (couldn’t) let that get us down…. I think we came

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back with a really good attitude of being ready to take them on in the second half.”

The Bears came out strong to open the second half, but they were not able to tie the game. Kantarian scored at 14:25 to expand Cornell’s lead, but Harrington said the Bears were not fazed by the deficit because they are confident in the team’s growth.

“Believing in our improvement, believing in each other and believing in themselves, there was a confidence that they were going to find a way… and work as hard as they could to scrap back into that game,” she said.

Just 3:42 after Cornell had scored, Brown answered on another penalty corner. Situated at the right post, Kit Masini ’12 redirected a pass to the middle of the field, where Tacy Zysk ’11 knocked it home to close to within 3-2.

“We didn’t give up,” Hyland said. “We kept hounding them and hounding them. Tacy found the back of the cage, and it really brought our morale up. (We thought), you know what, we can do this.”

The Bears almost did tie the score, getting a golden opportunity with four penalty corners in a row with less than nine minutes remaining. Brown got several shots off but could not find the cage.

“We kept getting corner after corner,” Hyland said. “We didn’t let it out of the circle. It just was frustrating to not capitalize on any of them when that’s what we’re really good at.”

Kantarian added another goal with 42 seconds left to seal the 4-2 victory for Cornell. The Big Red held a 13-7 advantage in shots in

the final period, but the Bears won the penalty corners, 5-4, fulfilling a team goal. Washburn made 11 saves, while Zysk led the offense with three shots, but Harrington reserved her strongest praise for the defense, including center back Sara Eaton ’09.

“She allows us to put the ball in to the inside pocket outletting it out of our backfield,” Harrington said. “When that ball gets put in to her, she can receive it under pressure and get around people, or if the opponent steps towards her she can distribute it back to the outside…. She’s been really helping us work the ball out of our backfield and link the ball from our backfield to our midfield, and even pushing up a lot and creating some attacking opportunities in our attacking end.”

Another key to the defensive effort was the heady play of the forwards.

“Our front line, especially in the second half, was just relentless on tackling back and really trying to cause their side backs to turn the ball over,” Harrington said. “Our forwards participated in helping us win the ball back in our midfield, and then breaking hard and wide quickly to help (the) counterattack.”

Hyland and Harrington both said that playing so well against a strong Cornell team only adds to the team’s growing confidence.

The Bears will travel to Worcester, Mass., on Wednesday to take on the Holy Cross Crusaders (5-10) in their final non-conference game of the season.

“We’re going to keep our attitude up,” Hyland said. “This isn’t going to faze us at all. Holy Cross doesn’t know what’s coming.”

continued from page 12 in the third game to pull away with a 25-22 win, the Bears were not fazed in the fourth game, when the offense picked up again and ended the match with a 25-19 win.

“We came out really strong in the first two games,” Yess said. “Columbia came out strong in the third game, but we adjusted to their hitters in the fourth.”

There were plenty of standouts in this game, including Yess, who recorded a double-double with 14 kills and 11 assists. Megan Toman ’11 also had a strong offensive game with a team-high 17 kills, along with 14 digs, three assists and two service aces. Captain Natalie Meyers ’09 was solid as usual with 40 assists. “(Our win) started with the defense,” Yess said. “Everyone did her job.”

With one win under its belt, the team traveled to Ithaca to face off against the Big Red. Brown opened the match strong as the team won six consecutive points to separate itself at 11-5, a lead the defense kept until the very end. The Bears won the first game, 25-18.

But the Big Red fought back in the second game. The two teams traded points, but a few critical errors cost the Bears the second set, 25-21. With the match tied at 1-1, Cornell continued its strong play in the third game, jumping on an early 7-3 lead.

But the Bears bounced back and the two teams fought for the lead for the rest of the game. Bruno had its golden chance when it played for match point with a 24-23 lead, but Cornell’s Emily Borman tied the match with a kill to even the score.

The Big Red then got a break when the Bears committed an attacking error.

With the match slipping away to Cornell, Yess came up with a huge kill to tie the game once again at 25-25.

However, the Big Red returned with a kill of their own to take back the advantage. In the last point played, the Bears surrendered the game with a ball handling error, and the Big Red took the third game 27-25. The Bears recorded a higher hitting percentage in this game, .412 to Cornell’s .286.

But the unfortunate errors in overtime cost the Bears the game.

Down by one game, the Bears fought tenaciously for a comeback in the fourth. But Cornell came out on top again with a narrow margin, 25-23, for the final win.

“We played with good intensity,” said Head Coach Diane Short of the match against Cornell. “We had some ball-handling at bad timing (during the match).”

Yess, who recorded another double-double, with 14 kills and a teamhigh 16 digs, echoed Short, saying that, “We played really hard but it was just one of those games.”

The other two hitters, Toman and Brianna Williamson ’11, recorded 17 and 15 kills, respectively. Meyers lead the team with 54 assists, a season high.

The team will be on the road again next weekend as it faces off against Dartmouth and Harvard, two teams the Bears have already played at home this season. In their previous encounters, the Bears edged Harvard 3-1 but lost to Dartmouth 1-3. “(In the home game), Dartmouth adjusted to us and we didn’t adjust to them,” Yess said. “Both teams have styles similar to us, so it would be close matchups.”

Monday, October 27, 2008

Page 9

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Campaign finance gets new scrutiny as spending rises to record heights

By Matthew Mosk Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama’s record-breaking $150 million fundraising performance in September has for the first time prompted questions about whether presidential candidates should be permitted to collect huge sums of money through faceless credit card transactions over the Internet.

Lawyers for both the Republican and Democratic parties have asked the Federal Election Commission to examine the question, pointing to dozens of examples of what they say are lax screening procedures by the presidential campaigns that permitted donors using false names or stolen credit cards to make contributions.

“There is so much money coming in, and yet very little ability to say with certainty that you know who is giving it,” said Sean Cairncross, the Republican National Committee’s chief counsel.

While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent only about 1 percent of Obama’s staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat’s fundraising juggernaut.

Concerns about anonymous donations seeping into the campaign began to surface last month, mainly on conservative blogs. Some bloggers described making their own attempts to display the flaws in Obama’s fundraising program, donating under such obviously phony names as Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and reported that the credit card transactions were permitted.

Obama officials said it should be obvious that it is as much in their campaign’s interest as it is in the public’s interest for fake contributions to be turned back, and said they have

taken pains to establish a barrier to prevent them. Over the course of the campaign, they said, a number of additional safeguards have been added to bulk up the security of their system.

In a paper outlining those safeguards, provided to The Washington Post, the campaign said it runs twice-daily sweeps of new donations, looking for irregularities. Flagged contributions are manually reviewed by a team of lawyers, and either cleared or refunded. Reports of misused credit cards lead to immediate refunds.

In September, according to the campaign, $1.8 million in online contributions was flagged, and $353,000 was refunded. Of the contributions flagged because a foreign address or bank account was involved, 94.1 percent were found to be proper. Onetenth of one percent were marked for refund, and 5.77 percent are still being vetted.

But clearly invented names have been used often enough to provoke an outcry from Republican critics.

Donors to the Obama campaign using false names such as Doodad Pro and Good Will gave $17,375 through 1,000 separate donations, with no sign that they immediately tripped alarms at the campaign. Of more concern, Cairncross said, are reports that the campaign permitted money from 123 foreign nationals to enter its accounts.

Obama officials said they have identified similar irregularities in the finance records of their Republican rival, Sen. John McCain. “Every campaign faces these challenges — John McCain’s campaign has refunded more than $1.2 million in contributions from anonymous, excessive, and fraudulent contributors — and we have reviewed and strengthened our procedures to ensure that the contributions the campaign accepts are appropriate,” said Ben LaBolt, an

Obama spokesman.

McCain’s contributor database shows at least 201 donations from individuals listing themselves as “anonymous” or “anonymous anonymous,” according to Obama’s campaign. In one particularly embarrassing episode, the McCain campaign mistakenly sent a fundraising solicitation to the Russian ambassador to the United Nations.

Rather than relying primarily on a network of wealthy and well-connected bundlers — as candidates have since President Bush pioneered that technique in 2000 — Obama also tapped a list of 3 million ordinary donors, many of whom gave in increments of $25 and $50.

WORLD & NATION Obama’s success with these kitchen-table contributors has set up one of the most lopsided financial advantages in modern presidential campaigning.

During the first two weeks of October, Obama spent four times more than McCain, including for an unprecedented $82 million saturation-advertising campaign that blanketed the airwaves in key battleground states.

Campaign finance experts have already classified this contest as one of the transformational elections that will dramatically change the way politicians pay for campaigns in coming cycles.

“It’s the model of the future,” said Rick Hasen, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School. “Gone will be the $2,300-a-plate dinner. That will be replaced by the $30,000-a-plate dinner, the kind of select event Obama had hosted by folks like Warren Buffett.

And the rest will be the micro-donors — entirely Internet-based.”

Hasen said the 2008 campaign is a mirror of other races that led to major shifts in fundraising. The Wa-

tergate scandal of the early 1970s led Congress to create a public financing system for presidential bids. Ronald Reagan harnessed the power of directmail solicitation in 1980. In 1996, political parties opened the door to runaway donations in the form of unregulated “soft money.”

One immediate result of Obama’s fundraising showing this fall is that it may render obsolete the current system of public financing for presidential campaigns. Because McCain opted into the system, he was limited to spending the $84.1 million provided to his campaign by the Treasury once he claimed the GOP nomination. Obama, who chose to remain outside the system after initially suggesting that he would participate in it, is expected to raise and spend at least three times that amount in the general election campaign.

Obama’s advantage, said FEC Chairman Donald McGahn, makes it likely that Congress will rethink the program.

To many, Obama’s fundraising success is good news — it shows that a White House bid can be financed largely without donors who have ulterior motives or agendas, and diminishes the role of the special interests and large institutional givers that were once the backbone of presidential fundraising.

“When you have that many contributors,” McGahn said, “it does in a weird way cleanse the system.”

Bradley Smith, a former FEC chairman, in an essay in Sunday’s Outlook section of The Washington Post, agreed that Obama’s effort would “put to rest all the shibboleths about campaign finance reform — that it is needed to prevent corruption, that it equalizes the playing field, or that tax subsidies are needed to prevent corruption.”

There are already signs that run-

away fundraising efforts built on small donors have the potential to create an entirely new set of problems.

Scott Thomas, another former FEC chairman, said the potential for these types of security breaches has been looming for more than a decade, since the commission first allowed donors to contribute with a credit card.

“The problem itself has been lurking,” Thomas said. “What’s changed is the sheer volume of donations. At some point that causes enough of a clog that campaigns cannot do all of the vetting and research that would be necessary to figure out if they’re looking at a real name.”

How the FEC might attempt to tackle these problems remains unclear. Both parties have filed formal complaints calling on the agency to investigate their rival. Only McCain will automatically be subjected to an audit, because his campaign accepted funds from the Treasury. There is no requirement that Obama’s books be audited, and FEC-watchers predicted that it could be tough to find the four votes needed to approve an audit, given that the panel comprises three Republican and three Democratic appointees.

Under current law, there is also very little policing of small-dollar contributions. The false donations uncovered by news outlets or by rival campaigns have all involved more than $200, because those contributions must be disclosed in published reports. The campaigns are not required to share any information about donors who give less than $200. And they are not required even to keep records of donors who give less than $50 — they can even give cash.

“Maybe the answer is to revisit (those disclosure thresholds), given that the levels were put in in the ‘70s, long before the Internet,” McGahn said. “This may bring it to the fore.”

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Monday, October 27, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Staf f Editorial

Fall and family The delightful weather we had on campus for the Family Weekend reminds us how the fall at Brown can be a beautiful time of tradition and transition for students and their parents.

As the leaves turn in the autumn, Family Weekend is an ideal time to celebrate traditions at Brown. This year was no exception.

There were spor ting events to watch, cultural per formances to enjoy, Open Houses to attend and speakers to hear. And there were the delights of the season: the crisp air, the color ful foliage and the blue sky.

If Family Weekend was filled with traditional activities, the coming of winter also signals a time of transition. Each year at this time we proverbially turn over a new leaf, as the fall involves changes that invariably lead to new beginnings.

Thus even as we greeted the New England fall, we also harbor hopes and anxieties about the future. First-years anticipate the challenges of the college years to come. Sophomores puzzle over their concentrations. Juniors plan summer internships.

And seniors face their fears about life after Brown in a time of economic turmoil.

However, as we collectively look for ward to the future, the fall is also traditionally a time to gaze back on the past. Like Tom Hank’s Joe Fox tells Meg Ryan’s Kathleen Kelley in “You’ve Got Mail,” people love the fall because it makes them remember their childhood. While we may not have felt the need to buy “school supplies” or “send” a “bouquet of newly sharpened pencils” as Joe Fox does, the combination of beautiful fall weather and parents on campus put many of us in the frame of mind to wistfully ‘remember when.’

Whether we walked with our parents or saw others do so, Family Weekend has the capacity to instill nostalgia in us all. Students can recall their childhood days, whether it was eating caramel apples, car ving pumpkins or playing outdoors in the golden days of the fall. And many parents remember when their children were more without pressing adult needs and problems.

Even if you did not watch Brown beat Cornell or listen to Jane Pauley speak this weekend, we hope you take advantage of what Brown brings to the season. It is time to enjoy in the amusements of fall during this season of tradition and transition in our lives.

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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P ete fallon

Letters MSFC coverage ignored related events To the Editor: While I applaud The Herald for covering important and creative efforts by Brown’s Medical Students for Choice to promote safer sex on campus (“Trick or treat! Here’s a condom,” Oct. 24), the article failed to mention the context of MSFC’s event. They were not selling condom-grams all by themselves, but rather as part of Students for Choice’s Love Your Body Day, an annual event promoting positive body image and healthy sexuality with representation from many groups and organizations both on- and off-campus. Held in conjunction with W Week this year, tables included Women Peer Counselors, the Queer Alliance, FemSex, MSex, the Sexual Assault Task Force, Health Services and Health Education, Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island, the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, Megan Andelloux (formerly of Miko Exoticwear) and of course the

aforementioned Medical Students for Choice as well as undergraduate Students for Choice, who organize and lead the event every year.

Medical Students for Choice was certainly a fun and successful part of Love Your Body Day this year, but failing to even mention anything about the many tables surrounding them last Wednesday gives a wholly inaccurate picture of their efforts. The many other groups also promoting their important issues in interesting and innovative ways deserve coverage too, as does the fact that it was Love Your Body Day, which is a popular event at Brown every year. In the future, please take the time to look around.

Lily Shield ’09 President, Students for Choice Former Herald Opinions Columnist Oct. 27

photo Meara Sharma Min Wu

Photo Editor Photo Editor

post- magazine Matt Hill Rajiv Jayadevan Arthur Matuszewski Colleen Brogan Kelly McKowen Patrick Martin-Tuite Bob Short Monica Huang Kristen Olds

Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor From the Hill Editor Film Editor Music Editor Layout Editor Layout Editor

Julien Ouellet, Rachel Isaacs, Designers Rafael Chaiken, Ellen Cushing, Frederic Lu, Lauren Fedor, Copy Editors

Correction

Colin Chazen, Hannah Levintova, Brian Mastroianni, Franklin Kanin, Night Editors Senior Staff Writers Mitra Anoushiravani, Colin Chazen, Chaz Kelsh, Emmy Liss, Brian Mastroianni, George Miller, Melissa Shube, Anne Simons, Sara Sunshine, Gaurie Tilak, Caroline Sedano, Jenna Stark, Joanna Wohlmuth, Simon van Zuylen-Wood Staff Writers Zunaira Choudhary, Leslie Primack, Connie Zheng, Christian Martell, Alexandra Ulmer, Lauren Pischel, Samuel Byker, Anne Deggelman, Nicole Dungca, Olivia Hoffman, Cameron Lee, Debbie Lehmann, Sophia Li, Seth Motel, Marielle Segarra, Kyla Wilkes, Juliana Friend Sports Staff Writers Peter Cipparone, Nicole Stock Business Staff Maximilian Barrows, Thanases Plestis, Agathe Roncey, Allen McGonagill, Ben Xiong, Bonnie Kim, Cathy Li, Christiana Stephenson, Corey Schwartz, Evan Sumortin, Galen Cho, Han Lee, Haydar Taygun, Jackie Goldman, Jilyn Chao, Kathy Bui, Kelly Wess, Kenneth So, Lee Chau, Lyndse Yess, Margaret Watson, Matthew Burrows, Maura Lynch, Misha Desai, Stassia Chyzhykova, Webber Xu, William Schweitzer Design Staff Jessica Calihan, Amy Kendall, Joanna Lee, Rachel Isaacs, Angela Santin Ceballos, Marlee Bruning, Rachel Wexler, Maxwell Rosero, Katie Silverstein, Shara Azad, Jessica Kirschner, Jee Hyun Choi, Heeyoung Min, Andrea McWilliams, Anna Samel Photo Staff Alex DePaoli, Eunice Hong, Kim Perley, Quinn Savit, Justin Coleman Copy Editors Rafael Chaiken, Ellen Cushing, Younhun Kim, Frederic Lu, Lauren Fedor, Madeleine Rosenberg, Kelly Mallahan, Jennifer Kim, Tarah Knaresboro, Jordan Mainzer, Janine Lopez, Luis Solis, Ayelet Brinn, Rachel Starr, Riva Shah, Jason Yum, Simon Leibling, Rachel Isaacs

An article in Thursday’s Herald (“Want to buy a U. building? That’ll be $10, thank you,” Oct. 23) stated that the University will provide $1 million each towards defraying the costs of transporting of 127 and 129 Angell Street. The University plans to provide $1 million total in moving costs.

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O pinions Monday, October 27, 2008

Page 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

A new Keynesian consensus beckons? boris ryvkin Opinions Columnist Memories of the Great Depression were fresh in Britons’ minds as they went to the polls in the 1945 parliamentary elections. Clement Attlee’s Labour Party swept into power with over 300 mandates and quickly set about planting the foundations of what became the deepest, most entrenched welfare state in Western Europe. Copper, coal, steel, rail and the Bank of England were nationalized. The National Health Service was introduced. Post-war food rationing was kept to curb consumption, while a labyrinth of labor protections helped to artificially maintain full employment.

The philosophical foundation of Britain’s resurgent statism came from the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes. Writing during the Great Depression, Keynes argued that government must act to increase aggregate consumer demand for goods and services during an economic downturn through spending and taxation, even at the cost of budget deficits.

In Attlee’s Britain, since economic planning and state intervention had beaten the Depression and won the Second World War, the public believed they would most certainly win the peace. For the next 25 years, few among the political elite questioned Keynesian wisdom, and a bipartisan consensus emerged supporting bigger and bigger government.

Things came to a head during the Winter of Discontent in 1978 when Britain, suffering from high inflation and unemployment, faced a tidal wave of trade union strikes and

recurrent shortages of basic services. Margaret Thatcher’s conservatives won the 1979 election, the economy changed course for the better, and the Keynesian consensus died … or did it?

When I read the statements and hear the speeches of our two presidential candidates, it is difficult to escape the thought that Keynesianism has made a comeback.

Why aren’t the candidates being honest with the American public and acknowledging that bad government policy, not deregulation,

with unaffordable mortgages face foreclosure and significant sunk costs. Meanwhile, falling housing prices mean banks can neither recoup their losses nor lend reliably to creditworthy businesses and individuals.

Why is this story not being told? Why are we still hearing the nonsense of greedy Wall Street suckering the victims on Main Street?

More importantly, why aren’t we seriously debating how to end the Fed’s monopoly over the money supply?

The candidates are working overtime to

Why aren’t the candidates being honest with the American public and acknowledging that bad government policy, not deregulation, is the chief reason we are in this mess? is the chief reason we are in this mess?

I don’t hear the candidates discussing the artificial housing bubble caused by the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates by 5 percent between 2003 and 2004, which not only gave questionable consumers access to a sea of easy credit, but incentivized banks to lend beyond their available asset reserves.

When the Fed started increasing rates a year later, the seeds of disaster were sown.

Now, the bubble has burst. Homeowners

show the public they are ‘doing something.’

The Fed did do something after the 1929 stock market crash. It cut the money supply by a quarter over three years, which led to an interest rate spike and reduced national income — this action is considered by a growing number of economists to be what actually triggered the Depression.

The politicians then stepped in. Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley tariff reduced market competition and increased prices for consumers just

as the country slipped into recession. FDR’s New Deal extended the disaster by several years and installed some of our most burdensome social welfare programs. Haven’t we learned anything?

What I wouldn’t do for the following threepart statement from one of the candidates: First, admit that government intervention and misguided policy caused the crisis.

Next, acknowledge that the bailout and similar schemes to socialize market losses will only prolong the agony by stalling the housing bubble’s natural deflation and prevent the most efficient liquidation of bad assets. Finally, accept that it is better to do nothing and let the economy adjust naturally.

The seriousness of the financial situation demands clarity and honesty irrespective of election necessities. John McCain is on record as saying the Treasury Department ought to buy up bad mortgages to shore up housing values. He also wants some federal officials fired and a new stimulus package. This begs the question: how much more money will be pumped into our sinking ship before it is all said and done?

Barack Obama sees the financial bailout as a mere “first step.” To go into further detail would be akin to beating a dead horse. With congressional supermajorities guiding his statist agenda, our harvests will be bitter for quite some time.

Does a new Keynesian consensus beckon?

All indications suggest the affirmative. The public has turned to the state to bail it out. The parties are trying to out-intervene one another in their responses. The candidates systematically feed the electorate disinformation. How I wish this all to be just a passing phase!

Boris Ryvkin ’09 wants to be a robber-baron.

The maverick

BY MATT AKS Opinions Columnist One of the candidates currently seeking the presidency has branded himself as a “maverick.” In fact, he’s even gone so far as to claim he is the original maverick (sorry, Tom Cruise).

The maverick, we are told, exercises independent judgment. He is not afraid to stand up to large special interest groups, lobbyists, pundits and even members of his own party.

When something needs to be said, the maverick says it. The maverick is not concerned with political expediency — only with “putting the country first.”

At first, this sounds nice, even admirable.

But there are some drawbacks to maverickness.

The true maverick operates from an ideologically neutral position. Some politicians brand themselves as defenders of the middle class or proponents of limited government.

The maverick does not allow his brand to be burdened by those sorts of principles. This explains why the maverick can flip-flop on issues with major ideological implications (i.e. the Bush tax cuts).

Many people find it attractive that the maverick is not beholden to ideology. I, for one, do not. A politician’s political ideology tells us how he or she will approach unforeseen problems.

The maverick is less concerned with developing a coherent governing ideology, and more concerned with fighting entrenched power simply for the sake of it.

It can be difficult to hold the maverick

accountable. The primary measure of a true maverick is not what he has accomplished.

Rather, the maverick wants to be measured by which powerful opponents he has taken on.

Yet the maverick can claim to be opposing anyone at any time: members of his own party, special interests, the media, Wall Street, Washington, northeastern liberal elites, antiAmerican members of Congress, socialists and even domestic terrorists.

It’s not, “What have you done for me lately?” It’s, “Who have you opposed lately?” For instance, the maverick vehemently opposes

The maverick wants us to trust his personal judgment. If the maverick shows calmness, poise and presence of mind, then it might make sense to elect the maverick. But if the maverick is erratic, and known for a bad temper, then it’s reasonable to have some second thoughts.

In opposition to the maverick, I’d like to propose an alternative political brand: the rational compromiser. Sure, it doesn’t evoke the same gut reaction as the maverick, but hear me out.

The rational compromiser has an ideology

The maverick is less concerned with developing a coherent governing ideology, and more concerned with fighting entrenched power simply for the sake of it. earmarked spending, but he seems to have forgotten that earmarks only account for about one percent of the federal budget.

The maverick can get a little self-righteous.

But who can blame him? After all, he’s the only one who hasn’t been corrupted by power, corrupted by greed, brainwashed or manipulated.

The maverick is on a perpetual crusade.

— but the important point is that the rational compromiser is up-front about it. He is very clear about the priorities that he consistently looks to uphold. And he wants to communicate the considerations that led him to those priorities in the first place.

The rational compromiser understands the complexities of individual identity. It is

less important for the rational compromiser to group and label his opponents, and more important for him to find whatever common ground might exist.

This explains why the rational compromiser has had some sketchy friends. But keep in mind that despite his unseemly associations, the rational compromiser has never — not once — replicated the actions or attitudes of these associates.

The rational compromiser has some advanced academic experience. In other words, he has had practice conversing with the types of experts who are crucial to the policymaking process. He knows how to question those experts, and he knows when and how to defer to them.

At times, the rational compromiser might seem too aloof or emotionless. But it would be a mistake to assume his steadiness implies a lack of passion. If you look just a little closer, you’ll see the passion, courage and conviction.

In America today, the maverick is a wildly successful political brand. Yet a politician who branded himself as “the original rational compromiser” would probably be laughed at.

I’m not saying that my descriptions of these two political brands correspond perfectly to the two candidates in this year’s election. But nowadays, it seems that brands (more than ideas) are key to winning elections. And if that’s the case, then we need to seriously rethink what we look for in a political brand in this and future elections.

Matt Aks ’11 apologizes for all the gendered pronouns in this column.

S ports M onday Page 12

Monday, October 27, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Big Red makes small showing against Bruno Saturday Strong effort,

but a loss, for field hockey

By Benjy Asher Sports Editor

At the end of the first quarter, the football team trailed Cornell 7-0, after the offense had gained just nine total yards while failing to get a single first down. The 27 Bears turned Brown 7 Cornell it around, though, and dominated the final three quarters to come away with a 27-7 victory.

On the first play from scrimmage, from the Brown 22-yard line, receiver Buddy Farnham ’10 got open in the right slot. The throw from quarterback and co-captain Michael Dougherty ’09 sailed off Farnham’s fingertips. Dougherty got off to a slow start, completing only one of his six pass attempts in the first quarter.

“We had the wind going against us in the first quarter, which was causing a few of my balls to sail,” Dougherty said. “After that, we got into a rhythm and spread them out a little bit.”

On Cornell’s first drive, the Big Red offense converted three third downs to move the ball to the Brown 33 before the defense came up with a stop through a pass deflection by safety Christopher Perkins ’10, a tackle by lineman David Howard ’09, and then an incomplete pass on third down.

But the Brown offense was uncontinued on page 8

By Andrew Braca Assistant Sports Editor

a .143 in the first game and a matchhigh .424 in the second game. The combination of tough defense and strong offense proved to be too much for the Lions and both games ended lopsidedly 25-14 in the Bears’ favor.

Although the Lions came back

The field hockey team fought hard to take co-Ivy League leader Cornell to the wire but fell short in a 4-2 loss on Satur2 Brown day on Warner Roof. The loss 4 Cornell to the Big Red (10-4, 5-0 Ivy) leaves the Bears winless (0-5) in Ivy play and drops their overall record to 3-11. Still, they view it as an encouraging performance despite the loss.

“I’d definitely say it’s disappointing, but it was another great day for us morally,” said Katie Hyland ’11.

“We all stayed in it mentally and physically, (but) we just came up short.”

The Bears had trouble kick-starting their offense in the first half, but they used a suffocating defense to stay close with only a 2-1 deficit at halftime, and then turned it up in the second half.

“We weren’t generating in the first half as many attacking opportunities that we wanted to generate, but we were playing good defense, playing smart and communicating well,” said Head Coach Tara Harrington ’94. “In the second half, we played good defense and we were able to win the ball, and then we were able to connect it to our attack and start generating much, much more attack.”

Cornell struck early after a penalty corner. Brown goalkeeper Caroline Washburn ’12 stopped the initial shot, but the rebound bounced right to Sara Sanders, who knocked it home to give the Big Red the lead just 2:27 into the game.

But the Bears rallied to control a defensive half. Brown limited Cor-

continued on page 8

continued on page 8

Justin Coleman / Herald

Bobby Sewall ’10 made 11 receptions for 181 yards and two touchdowns to lead the football team to a 27-7 win over Cornell.

Once again, volleyball splits but plays strong in loss

By Han Cui Assistant Sports Editor

The volleyball team (11-9, 3-5 Ivy) has had three consecutive weekends when it has followed a Friday night win with a Saturday loss. The latest split came last weekend on the road against Columbia (6-12, 0-8 Ivy) on Friday and Cornell (7-11, 6-2 Ivy) on

Saturday. But unlike the previous two splits, in which the Bears attributed the losses to their own poor performances, the players felt they played well against the Big Red, and the loss was due to “ball handling mistakes that can be easily corrected,” according to hitter Lyndse Yess ’09.

The weekend started strong for the Bears in their first away Ivy

League match against Columbia.

Brown’s defense returned to playing at its true level in this match, after a disappointing performance in the same match against Princeton on Oct. 18. The Bears’ defense held the Lions to a negative .025 hitting percentage in the first game and a zero percentage in the second. On the offensive end, the Bears clipped

M. soccer bounces back with win over Cornell

By Katie Wood Assistant Spor ts Editor

Coming off of two consecutive losses, the men’s soccer team (9-4-1) pulled off a 2-0 win against Cornell (1-12-1) on Saturday night at Stevenson Field.

5 Brown This is the program’s sev0 Cornell enth consecutive win over Cornell dating back to a 1-1 tie in 2001. Despite the wind and light drizzle, the Bears moved to 3-1 in the Ivy League and share possession of second place with their next opponent, Penn.

The team got off to a quick start with several great looks on goal in the game’s opening half, as Brown outshot Cornell, 10-3, with a 6-0

advantage in corner kicks. Darren Howerton ’09 scored the game’s first goal in the 35th minute when he sent a shot from the left side past the outstretched arms of the Big Red goalkeeper. Howerton’s goal was unassisted.

The goal was Howerton’s first of the season, adding to his six assists on the year. He currently is tied for second with Jon Okafor ’11 in total points on the team with eight, behind Rhett Bernstein ’09, who has 10.

“We came out and played well,” said David Walls ’11. “We created a lot of chances and scored. It was a perfect response to what we needed after two losses.”

Brown headed into the half with a goal under its belt, the first goal

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the team has scored in the first half since a 1-0 win over Bryant on Oct. 7. The Bears built off their offensive momentum and continued it into the opening minutes of the second half.

With several flip-throws from Howerton, Bruno had some great opportunities to score. Early in the second half, T.J. Thompson ’10 broke away from the rest of the pack and missed a chance as Cornell’s goalie made a great stop to keep the game close. The team failed to connect on any of the excellent looks but kept on pushing for another goal to put the game out of reach for the Big Red. Iain Eldredge ’10 scored his second career goal in the 65th minute from the top of the box to put the Bears up 2-0. Okafor recorded the assist, his second of the season.

“Lots of players are getting some playing time, giving 100 percent effort in practice,” Walls said. “Ever ybody is contributing and pulling in the right direction.

Many others like Iain are working hard for the team. That’s what we’re going to need for these last continued on page 8

Justin Coleman / Herald

Darren Howerton ’09 notched his first goal of the season in the men’s soccer team’s 2-0 win over Cornell.