Friday, November 14, 2008 by The Brown Daily Herald

The Brown Daily Herald F riday, N ovember 14, 2008

Volume CXLIII, No. 113

Eight in SDS to face hearing for conduct

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

RISD work fuels debate on expression

SPOTLIGHT

Palin-themed porn provokes controversy

Separation from U. on table for actions at Corporation protest

By Ben Hyman Arts & Culture Editor

By Joanna Wohlmuth Senior Staff Writer

Eight members of Students for a Democratic Society are facing the University’s most severe level of disciplinary proceedings as a result of events that took place during the group’s protest of a Corporation meeting last month. Seven of the students are each being charged with four violations of the non-academic disciplinary code, and the eighth faces slightly different charges, said Carly Devlin ’09, one of the eight students. Proceedings were originally scheduled to begin next Monday but have been postponed to allow for necessary preparation, Devlin said. Students are given time to review evidence against them as well as to submit their own before a disciplinary hearing. As the Corporation, Brown’s highest governing body, held its annual fall meeting in University Hall on Oct. 18, SDS members protested outside for open meetings, community referenda on decisions and control over the body’s agenda. While some members demonstrated on the green, five ran towards University Hall with a ladder, planning to use it to climb into the third-floor meeting. They were stopped by a Department of Public Safety officer before they were able to prop it against the building. While attention was diverted, 20 SDS members attempted to enter the building. Eight made it inside. Two of the charges the students face are concerned with entering University Hall without authorization and with injuries caused by their entrance, said Associate Dean of Student Life Terr y Addison. Addison would not elaborate on the injuries. Neither administrators nor SDS members would comment on what role the charged students played in the protest or what the exact charges are. Alleged violations of the nonacademic disciplinar y code are resolved based on the severity of the charges, said Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn. The highestlevel offenses — those which can result in separation from the University — are settled through either administrative or University Disciplinary Council hearings, depending on the student’s preference. Charged SDS members will have these two options, Klawunn said. “If there has been any physical harm, then they generally go to that level,” Klawunn said. The offense must be “something exceptional” to continued on page 4

ARTS & CULTURE

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Meara Sharma / Herald

Nutritious and delicious: David Gracer prepares to enjoy an insect. The maligned critters are good sources of nutrition.

Bugs: the other other white meat By Chaz Firestone Features Editor

The queen leaf-cutter ant Atta Texana is a very special find. She sees daylight only once a year, counts herself among the largest ants in the animal kingdom and, when

lightly toasted, has a sweet and nutty flavor with a crisp, baconlike texture. David Gracer orders them by the pound and eats them by the dozen. He eats them for taste, for nutrition and for planet Earth. And he wants you to join him.

No significant changes in store for Sex Power God By Nicole Friedman Contributing Writer

With 590 tickets available for Saturday’s Sex Power God dance, some students were willing to wait all night to ensure a spot on the guest list. “I slept an hour,” Julio Reyes ’12 said Wednesday morning after spending the night in Leung Gal-

ler y for a chance to buy tickets. “The floor was too hard.” Reyes, Ora Star Boncore ’12 and Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn ’12 were first in line when tickets went on sale at 9 a.m. for the annual dance hosted by the Queer Alliance. Reyes said he didn’t mind the sleepless night because he heard that “the party is something that you have to experience as a Brown

student.” Part raucous dance party, part rite of passage, the event has raised controversy in past years for the high number of intoxicated attendees receiving medical attention. The dance, QA’s “main and almost only fundraiser for the year,” is a safe space for sexual expression, said Event Coordina-

tor Zachar y Marcus ’10. Free condoms, lubricant, dental dams, glowsticks and pamphlets about sexual health-related topics will be available at the event. “I think having a dance like this and not providing safer sex materials would be irresponsible,” Marcus said. “If another organizacontinued on page 6

Students abroad in Tanzania out of class from strikes BY Jenna Stark Senior Staff Writer

Seven students in the Brown in Tanzania program are sweating out a strike this week after students protesting financial aid policies forced the University of Dar es Salaam, the program’s host school, to close indefinitely. More than 10,000 students have been ordered to leave the major Tanzanian university after many defied government demands to stop their three-day boycott of classes, according to the Citizen, a Tanzanian newspaper. Foreign students will be allowed to remain on campus, Associate Director of International Programs Ned Quigley said. Of the students currently enrolled in the “Brown in Tanzania” program, he said, six are from universities other than Brown. “We are monitoring the situation, and we expect that the students will receive a full semester of academic credit,” Quigley said.

horrific madness Sock and Buskin’s “The Changeling” focuses on lust, greed and pride

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Eat bugs, save the planet Gracer is about the closest thing there is to a professional eater of bugs. When he’s not teaching English at the Community College of Rhode Island,

A student artwork at the Rhode Island School of Design that included a Sarah Palin-themed pornographic video has inspired a public discussion on issues of creative freedom and artistic ethics. Yesterday, 75 RISD community members attended a forum to discuss last week’s unplugging of the video and its implications. The work was part of an electionthemed exhibition curated by a student committee. Painting major Allie Pisarro-Grant, who had originally proposed the exhibition, said she had hoped the show would spark lively conversation. But she had no idea that the work of fellow senior Ben Noam would incite a complex discussion in e-mails, blog posts and, ultimately,

CAMPUS NEWS

Students are demanding that the government drop a cost-sharing policy that requires some students to pay some fees out of pocket. Protesters want government loans to cover 100 percent of tuition and accommodations, the Citizen reported. On Tuesday, Tanzania’s Minister for Education and Vocational Training Jumanne Maghembe said that given the country’s current economic climate, it would be impossible to comply with the students’ demands, according to the newspaper. Heavily armed anti-riot police have been patrolling the main campus of the university to prevent protestors from destroying property. “We hope that the strike will come to a quick close and all students will come back to classes,” Quigley said, adding that the Office of International Programs does not feel that the students’ safety is in “jeopardy.” No students from the Brown in Tanzania program could be reached before press time.

iranian uranium International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Mark Fitzpatrick spoke about Iran

OPINIONS

Courtesy of Natalia Nazarewicz

Students at Tanzania’s University of Dar es Salaam read a notice in advance of a student strike that forced the school closed this week.

From Iraq to the rock Miranda Summers GS reflects on her experience as a Brunonian and Army veteran

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

12 SPORTS

Player of the Week Field hockey’s highest scorer, Leslie Springmeyer ’12, receives Ivy (and Herald) honors

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T oday Page 2

Friday, November 14, 2008

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We a t h e r TODAY

Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim TOMORROW

partly cloudy 60 / 45

partly cloudy 62 / 49

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Creamy Cappellini with Broccoli, Lentil Croquettes with Spicy Raita, BLT Sandwich

Lunch — Chicken Fingers with Dipping Sauces, Vegetarian Grinder, Enchilada Bar, S’mores Bars

Dinner — Portabello Mushroom Stuffed with Quinoa, Salmon Provencal, Basmati Rice Pilaf

Dinner — Salmon Quiche, Cheese Raviolis with Sauce, Grilled Chicken, Chicken Saute with Mustard Sauce

Fizzle Pop | Patricia Chou

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

Epimetheos | Samuel Holzman

Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

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

ACROSS 1 Shopping spot 5 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Smith 10 Gossip, in slang 14 It has 12 territories on a Risk board 15 2000 custodyfight kid 16 Smidge 17 Bottle cap, e.g. 18 Schubert symphony called “the Great” 19 Slap 20 APB words in old France and environs? 23 Revenuer, for one 24 1972 host to Nixon 25 Obeisant bow 28 Vacationing 30 Headgear for a sporran wearer 33 Old anti-Sri Lanka war chant? 35 Symbol of virtue 36 Hugo winner McCaffrey 37 Crew’s propeller 38 Came down 39 November 13th, e.g. 40 Chilly coat in old Myanmar? 43 Was ahead 44 Cold cause 45 2002 National League champs 46 “The Recruit” org. 47 Some layers 48 English monarch’s greeting to old Thailand? 56 It can be ugly 57 Go-getters 58 Poop 59 It’s larger than a radius 60 Wetlands bird 61 Org. with a Hall of Champions in Indianapolis 62 Sibyl 63 Palm products 64 Habiliments

DOWN 1 Like yang: Abbr. 2 Drifting, maybe 3 Yemen’s capital 4 Münchhausen output, so it’s said 5 Literary handle? 6 Straighten 7 High-pitched sound 8 “Toodle-oo” 9 Beastly 10 Tony Manero’s haunt 11 Where the Skunk River flows 12 High light 13 Stovepipes, e.g. 21 Apple on a teacher’s desk, perhaps 22 Of the people 25 Poky one 26 “Dog the Bounty Hunter” airer 27 Hit hard 28 Frighten 29 Draw (out) craftily 30 Kite’s weapon 31 Desired guests 32 “Nutrition that starts with apples” sloganeer

34 Part of MYOB 35 Giving a hard time 40 Like both of Janus’ faces, usually 41 Gray Panthers’ banes 42 “Done!” 44 Martini choice 46 Tree on the Lebanese flag 47 New addition

48 Controversial radio host 49 Whacked arcade critter 50 Sharpen 51 Tranquil discipline 52 Like this ans. 53 Worshipper of the sun god Inti 54 Way off 55 Ruth’s homeland

Alien Weather Forecast | Stephen Lichenstein and Adam Wagner

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Classic How To Get Down | Nate Saunders

xwordeditor@aol.com

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A rts & C ulture Friday, November 14, 2008

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Spoken word artists twist a compelling message ‘I said, do y’all wanna solve this energy crisis?’ By Rosalind Schonwald Contributing Writer

iLL-Literacy and the Hi-Lifes, presented by the Asian American Students Association, brought the house down yesterday evening in Salomon 101. Sure, the house was one-third full and some audience members were studying for midterms, but the performers brought it down nonetheless. iLL-Literacy, a spoken word group, hails from the Bay Area.

REVIEW (Judging by their yelps, many audience members did as well.) Its members — Adriel Luis, Dahlak Brathwaite, Nico Car y and Ruby Veridiano-Ching — proved themselves to be word contortionists, bending and stretching the English language to entrance or curse, politicize and disarm. This is a group that defies specific categorization, and instead is evocative of several popular undergrounds. Skinny jeans, baggy pants, pageboy caps and rainbow earrings coexist on one stage. They could be called intellectual hipsters with an ear for hip hop, or rappers who know about poetr y. Regardless of label, this group of twentysomethings was an impressive ensemble of talents and genres, packing uncommon insight with a punch. As the performance began, the lights went dark, and a bizarre, biting sound, probably sampled from a car horn, blasted through. The only illumination was an eerie glow from two strings of green lights. Figures began to gather on the stage as a series of electronically scrambled voices floated through the air. The lights turned on, revealing a band, someone at a mix machine and four people with microphones, one of whom was wearing a moose hat. Veridiano-Ching started a fast rap that turned into a song, with the band starting up behind her. The

rhythm of her words and the music danced together into bullets. “That’s the Bay’s finest. If they had a better venue with better acoustics, it would have been the performance of the year,” said Eli Marienthal ’08.5, who went to high school with several members of iLL-Literacy. It took some coaxing, but the audience eventually started enjoying themselves. After Veridiano-Ching finished her song, the whole group, with the band playing in the background, implored the audience to repeat after them, saying, “AAACHOOO!” Eventually, people stood up, reciprocating the speech. The performers continued shouting encouragement, the guitarist yelling, “I said, do y’all wanna solve this energy crisis? Stand up like there’s fire in your seat!” Many bobbed their heads, and the bold danced with their whole bodies. One person even stood up on the back of his seat — although it turned out he was just tr ying to switch rows. The versatile per for mers switched easily between pieces evocative of rock songs, rap, poetry and even the prototypical spoken word. Yes, there was a guy with giant sunglasses holding a drum. Cary explained to the audience that this section of the performance was prompted when “someone said we don’t do spoken word any more.” Although this segment started as a hilarious mocking of overwrought spoken word per formance, Brathwaite was able to switch from sarcastic melodrama to a real message in a single piece. He started out talking about the origins of English, and managed to turn it into an impeachment of the hypocrisy of censorship. “I wish I could have heard more of the words and lyrics. I really liked the spoken word parts,” said Kai Huang ’11, a member of Brown’s own spoken-word group, Word. “It moved really well. They made spoken word really accessible and really engaging. I was left wanting more, which is good,” said Phil Kaye ’10, also a member of Word.

Min Wu / Herald

Spoken word performers iLL-Literacy and the Hi-Lifes performed last night in Salomon 101.

Courtesy of Julie Andrews

Federico Rodriguez ’09 and Sarah Tolan-Mee ’09 in “The Changeling,” running this weekend and Nov. 20 to 23.

‘Changeling’ is dark, tragic, but romantic By Anita Mathews Contributing Writer

When you walk into a theater to find knives dangling from the ceiling, you know you’re in for a dark performance. Sock and Buskin’s current production of “The Changeling” is just that. Written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley in the 17th centur y, the Renaissance tragedy primarily follows the romantic schemes of Beatrice (Sarah Tolan-Mee ’09), daughter of a Spanish noble in Alicante. Beatrice is in love with one man, Alsemero (Daniel Gonon ’12), and betrothed to another, Alonzo (Lucian Cohen ’09). To resolve this conflict, she hires her father’s disfigured ser vant De Flores (Federico Rodriguez ’09) to murder Alonzo. De Flores complies because he, too, loves Beatrice, but when she offers to pay him in gold, he insists upon a higher price — Beatrice’s virginity. From there, the plot launches on a downward spiral leading to a tragic finale. Spencer Golub, professor of theatre, speech and dance and of Slavic languages and compara-

tive literature, directed the play, which he had not previously seen produced. Golub said he hopes that the audience members will take away “a sense of theatricality” from the production and have their “heads and emotions stretched in different ways.” Golub and his team seem to have gone to great lengths in tr ying to reach this goal. The costumes are bold, the lighting dramatic and the multi-tiered set striking. The staging makes use of the entire theater, exploring various heights, from the catwalks to the aisles, as well as the full depth of the stage. The show creates an atmosphere of what Golub calls “horrific madness,” which corresponds directly with the dark themes of lust, greed and pride central to the play. The production also incorporates an unusual element of sound and song. Whether it is Jing Xu ’10 as Jasperino — producing haunting notes on what looks like the exposed innards of a piano — or soft jazz lilting as a backdrop to a dialogue, “The Changeling” makes music integral to the action. The actors rise to the challenge of performing such a complex

work under unconventional circumstances with precise timing and appropriately melodramatic delivery. They successfully bring to life a difficult script that calls for seamless integration of song and even foreign language into the dialogue. Rodriguez’s portrayal of De Flores is particularly powerful; he skillfully depicts the dark, distorted love De Flores has for Beatrice. Other notable performances come from Ted Cava ’11 as Lollio and Gordon Sayre ’12 as Antonio, two minor characters involved in a subplot that raises questions about insanity, as Antonio and his friend Franciscus (Daniel Ricker ’11) pose as madmen to win the love of Isabell (Erin Adams ’09). With themes of betrayal and madness, and a dark, experimental production, “The Changeling” is without doubt a disturbing show. Strangely enough, that’s a compliment. The show will run this weekend and Nov. 20 to Nov. 23 at Stuart Theatre, with Thursday through Saturday performances at 8 p.m. and Sunday performances at 2 p.m. Tickets are $7 for students and available online.

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Friday, November 14, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Conduct at Corp. protest under review

CCRI prof. advocates for the little in free time continued from page 1 he runs seminars advocating the practice of entomophagy — that’s enta-MOFF-ajee — through the business he runs out of his East Side home. If our mothers turn out to be right about being what we eat, Gracer is surely the creepiest, crawliest arthropod in all of New England. He hides it well, though, as I learned when I joined him at home for lunch on a recent afternoon. Save for the green bug stickers on the bridge of his thick-rimmed glasses, the 43-year-old husband and father seems like a pretty regular guy, or something near enough. He’s pulled out all the stops for our meeting, including a table full of his favorite insect miscellany. He’s laid out his most prized specimen jars, books on creepy crawly cuisine and a box of Larvets — the “original worm snax” and the first insects Gracer ever tasted. Oh, and bugs. Bags of bugs. Jars of bugs. A can of bugs. “Like most canned insects,” he says, “they’re really not great.” Why bugs? Gracer would like to say he doesn’t need a reason, but he’s come up with a few — the most pressing of which is that our lives depend on them. According to Gracer, insects are an “elegant” solution to the global food crisis the doomsayers keep talking about. They have lower environmental footprints than barnyard animals and pack more nutritional bang for their resource-consuming buck. “Insects can out-compete any animal in terms of food,” Gracer says. “Efficiency in feed, land, water, space, time, manpower, machine power, chemistry — it’s all incredibly higher for insects.” Professor Emeritus of Biology and entomologist Douglass Morse says Gracer’s story probably checks out. Insects are “exotherms” and get their heat from the surrounding environment, while the birds and mammals we’re used to seeing on our dinner plates are “endotherms” and have to heat themselves up. “Birds and mammals essentially have internal furnaces,” Morse says. “And it costs a lot of energy to run that furnace.” Gracer pulls out a chart comparing the nutritional value of various insects with more conventional foods like poultry, beef and eggs. The bugs appear to outperform their furrier counterparts almost down the line. “Caterpillar’s not better than chicken in every category,” Gracer says. “Just most of them.” This morsel of information checks out, too. “If you were to compare the bugs with animal products like meat, they would compare very favorably,” says Assistant Professor of Medicine for Research Mary Flynn, a nutritionist and dietician. Flynn says not all the essential

nutrients are available in insects, but they could substitute for meat products just fine. “Could you live on them to grow? Could you live on them to maintain your tissue? Sure,” she says, so long as you supplemented your diet with a sizeable portion of greens. But what really does it for Gracer is that insects are no different from the more conventional Western food sources, a secret many developing nations have known for millennia. “The insect-eaters on planet Earth outnumber the non-insecteaters,” he says. One global problem he sees is that Westward-looking developing countries kick the bug-eating habit once they can afford to, so as not to be perceived as “primitive.” The vicious cycle suppresses acceptance of entomophagy, and Gracer has even given it a name: “acquired food source bias.” Last February, he presented a paper at a United Nations conference in Thailand called “Forest Insects as Food: Humans Bite Back,” where he advocated for greater economic development of insects. He hopes to raise the profile of entomophagy in the developed world to encourage the practice where it is most needed. To that end, Gracer has come up with a few clever lines and marketing gimmicks to make entomophagy more appealing. He points out that insects are the evolutionary cousins of crustaceans, which belong to the same taxonomic phylum, arthropoda. “Insects are to the land what shrimp are to the ocean,” he says, an analogy that inspired the name of his company, “Sunrise Land Shrimp.” He recognizes that it’s no Chicken of the Sea, but it gets the job done. In fact, Gracer’s favorite question to ask prospective bug-eaters is whether they have a shellfish allergy, which would extend to insects and underscores the point that bugs aren’t all that different from regular food. He pauses, looks me in the eye and asks his favorite question. ‘Filet mignon’ Gracer boils a pot of water and fires up the stove. He reaches into his refrigerator, pulls out two freezer bags full of dark lumps and sets them next to the queen leaf-cutter ants on the table. On the day’s menu are the ants, some cicadas and a particularly menacing giant water bug the size of a business card — “we’re going to fillet that one,” Gracer says. He puts five or six each of the cicadas and leaf-cutters in a frying pan to warm them up. Normally he’d roast them, he says, but lately his broiler’s been burning things. The water bug is caked in salt and needs to be hard-boiled before it can be enjoyed. Once everything is prepared,

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Meara Sharma / Herald

This could be breakfast in 80 years, according to David Gracer. The entomophagy advocate says eating insects could solve the global food crisis. he presents the meal, which he has organized by species on a plate. The queen leaf-cutter is first up. Her wings are tough, I’m told, so I remove them first. Then, down the hatch. Nuts, I think. It’s hard to place, but the paste that fills my mouth after the first bite tastes like a mixture of strongly flavored nuts, maybe almonds. The crisp skin is a little harder to swallow, and feels gritty on the tongue. A glass of water washes it all down. Next is the cicada. This one’s all edible, so down it goes. The consistency is about the same as the ant, but the taste is a lot fresher, like something green. “Grassy, yet smoky,” says Gracer. The wings mostly disintegrate in the mouth, so there’s not much bug left after the first swallow. Finally, I stare down the giant water bug, eye-to-compound-eye. Gracer quickly decapitates it and makes a “squish”-inducing cut down the mid-line. He opens up what appears to be its shoulder, where most of the meat lies in the bug’s large thoracic muscles. The entire bug-worth of meat would probably fit on a penny, but the stuff costs connoisseurs hundreds of dollars a pound on the market. Gracer calls it “the filet mignon of the insect world.” One bite and I can tell why. A pinch the size of a grain of rice delivers an overpowering flavor of a sharp, salty fruit. “Perfumey,” Gracer adds. The rest will be to go. ‘Deck chairs on the Titanic’ Gracer has no illusions about how he is perceived. He was once a guest on a radio show to discuss his eating habits, when a woman called in and asked if he’d ever had sex with a woman. “I have a daughter, and I’m pretty sure she’s mine,” he recalls saying. The woman was incredulous and

asserted that she would never sleep with a man who does such things. “Well, then count yourself lucky that you’re born now instead of 80 years from now,” Gracer recalls telling her, “when you might not have the luxury of those feelings.” Gracer seems at his best when he’s thinking about the future, be it 80 years or just a few months, when he plans to acquire office space and maybe even quit his day job as a professor. “I have big dreams,” he says. “But thus far I am a novelty item.” Among those dreams is developing a line of insect-related products, including bar snacks, protein supplements and “culinary curiosities.” He’s already found some success. On his advice, Wickenden Street’s Blue Elephant now serves crickets and silkworm pupae in many of its dishes, and last February he locked antennae with Stephen Colbert as a guest on “The Colbert Report.” Despite the big plans, Gracer remains grounded in the things he loves best — his work and his family. His wife, Kim, and his five-yearold daughter, Sonia, “don’t eat insects, unfortunately,” but support him in his vision. He’s also nearing completion on a Homeric epic poem 12 years in the making that examines the “spiritual aspects” of evolution and ecology. “Problem-solving in its essence is what drives human endeavor,” he says. “For me, the problems have to do with food production, but much more fundamentally with the connection between humans and the natural world.” But for all the inspiring images and hopeful language, Gracer is cynical about the impact of his passion. “It’s probably too late for humans anyway,” he says. “This is just deck chairs on the Titanic.”

The Herald Grassy and smoky, sometimes tough to chew.

be heard this way, she added. The students have not yet decided what type of hearing they will have, said SDS member Chantal Tape ’09, who is among the students charged. If any student chooses a UDC hearing, such a choice will be the first time a student has done so in at least four years, Klawunn said. The UDC consists of students, faculty and staff. According to University policy, students must be given written notice of the charges and evidence against them at least seven days before their hearing. If students opt for a UDC hearing they must submit a list of witnesses four days before and written witness statements two days before the hearing. A hearing panel consists of administrators, at least one member of the faculty and some students, all of whom are selected from those previously appointed to the UDC. The students have requested to have their cases heard as a group rather than individually because they “made a decision collectively and ... would like (their) hearings to reflect that,” Devlin said. They expect to find out if their request will be granted by the end of the week. Administrators told them that actions could be taken against the organization at a later date but the individual charges will still stand, Tape said. “We believe that the actions that took place were the collective decision of the group and not of any individuals on their own,” said SDS member Julian Park ’12, who is not being charged in the case. “Our decision-making process is (by) consensus. Not a single person blocked what we did” in the protests. Even if administrators do not honor SDS’s request for a group hearing, the students are confident that the evidence against them will not stand. “A lot of people were in the same location and are being charged for alleged actions that took place when we were in the near proximity,” Devlin said. The eight students also raised questions regarding the integrity of the disciplinary process. A letter in Thursday’s Herald pointed out that the deans involved are paid by the Corporation and claimed a conflict of interests. Klawunn said the Corporation is not involved in the matter. “The Corporation approves the policies, but the policies come out of committees of students, faculty and staff,” she said, adding that appeals go to the provost, not to anyone involved in the hearing. SDS members said they are also concerned that the deans involved assume they’re guilty. Devlin said the students were told by Addison, the associate dean of student life, that two of the charges against them were “inarguable — a clear indication of an assumption of guilt on his part.” Though he was unsure of whether that exact language had been used, Addison said he would have been referring to the students’ forced entrance to University Hall and the resulting injuries. “I am not in the position to assess if they are responsible or not,” Addison said.

C ampus n ews Friday, November 14, 2008

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T h e R e al ‘ S ons of T amarkin ’

i n

r i e f

Student volunteers resurrect soup kitchen

Courtesy of the Sons of Tamarkin

The Sons of Tamarkin, which includes Dan Katz GS, Diana Davis GS, Thomas Hulse GS and Joris Weimar GS, took first prize in Microsoft’s fifth annual College Puzzle Challenge.

Iran remains a serious threat, scholar argues By Alexandra Ulmer Staff Writer

The international community’s sanctions aimed at curbing Iran’s uranium enrichment have failed, and Iran is now within months of having enough enriched uranium to create a nuclear weapon, said Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in a speech in the Joukowsky Forum at the Watson Institute yesterday. The talk, called “The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Forestalling WorstCase Outcomes,” focused on the risk of an attack by Iran, an attack on Iran by Israel and what policies could be implemented to avoid either situation. Fitzpatrick, who worked at the State Department for 26 years before joining the British research institute, spoke as part of the “Nuclear Dilemmas in the 21st Century” project organized by Watson. “I harbor no illusions about what Iran’s intentions are,” Fitzpatrick told about 40 people who gathered to hear him. “I don’t know that we can stop Iran.” Every day, he said, Iran produces 2.5 kilograms of low-enriched uranium and is getting “very close” to the 700 kilograms required for a nuclear weapon. “I wouldn’t go the next step and say they want to make a nuclear bomb,” he said. But Iran wants the possibility, he added. Iran’s government maintains the nuclear program seeks to generate electricity, a position Fitzpat-

rick called untenable due to the secrecy and military connections of the program. “Iran is in violation of international law as it continues enrichment,” he said. The international community should attempt engagement with Iran, he said, as well as promote a set of incentives and disincentives. In terms of negotiation, “there is a lot the U.S.A. can put on the table,” Fitzpatrick said, such as an offer to legitimize the Iranian government or lift sanctions. He also suggested the possibility of new sanctions, like an embargo on oil imports, which make up 40 percent of Iran’s consumption. He added, however, that it would require the unlikely cooperation of a dozen countries. “There are people who spend all of their time in D.C. thinking of new sanction ideas.” However, deciding whether Iran is a “rational actor” or whether it has its “sights set” on nuclear capability is crucial in determining policy. “You cannot stop a determined proliferator,” Fitzpatrick said. The biggest risk to be accounted for when assessing policy options is the threat of Iranian anger and expulsion of all International Energy Agency workers from its country, he said. Fitzpatrick said the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran is minor but increasing as the enrichment program nears completion. Bombing would be ineffective, logistically problematic and would require military assistance that Fitzpatrick said the

United States would not provide. Despite Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, he said, there is no link between uranium enrichment and Israel. “I don’t think Iran began its program because of Israel. I don’t think it continues it because of Israel.” Instead, he said, there are strong security reasons for Iran to enrich uranium — especially when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq — as well as a prestige factor. But, he said the threat to Israel “kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” In Iran, Fitzpatrick said, all of the governmental elite support having a nuclear capability. He said there was “no willingness to negotiate in Ahmadinejad” and that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei harbors “a great deal of suspicion of the U.S.A.” President-elect Barack Obama will have the Iranian nuclear problem at the forefront of his agenda, Fitzpatrick said, adding that he agreed with Obama’s decision to engage with the country. The new president, he said, may allow for “new dynamics” with Iran. Other nations should be involved in the negotiation process, Fitzpatrick said, noting that many European countries still hold economic leverage that the United States has already made use of. Patrick Free ‘11 said he didn’t know very much about the issue, and therefore appreciated the examination of the global powers’ role in Iran. Fitzpatrick, he said, “seemed well-informed.”

Since Oct. 28, the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John has served the roughly 200 people who have come to its soup kitchen. The soup kitchen had closed in May when its head director, Tom Veronneau, decided to move on. “No one wanted to take responsibility of organizing it,” said Megan Smith ’10, a coordinator for student group Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere. But for the next month or so, Veronneau has agreed to come back until new leadership can be found, Smith added. Open every Tuesday from 4 to 5 p.m., the revived soup kitchen is a joint effort of HOPE, the Homeless People’s Action Committee, the Rhode Island School of Design and Providence College, among others. For the past three Tuesdays, members of the Providence community have joined together and cooked meals for St. John’s soup kitchen, which is near Kennedy Plaza. Smith said that preparing all the food takes about three hours, and some of the food is donated from Brown’s dining halls. She added that the funding is provided by private donations, but it is not enough to keep the kitchen open seven days a week. Although HOPE did have a hand in making the reopening of St. John’s soup kitchen a reality, the main driving force behind the program is HPAC, according to Smith. HPAC committee members are formerly or currently homeless individuals taking a stand to help the homeless. Barbara Kalil, a member of HPAC, recounted how HPAC began, while eating a sloppy joe at St. John’s. One rainy Saturday, she said, she and other individuals from a homeless shelter decided to protest, motivated by their shared disappointment that there weren’t enough shelters to accommodate the rising number of homeless people. “We were a discontented group,” Kalil said. HPAC has taken other initiatives in addition to the St. John’s soup kitchen to fight the rising rate of homelessness. Recently, the hypothermia shelter at the Mathewson Street Methodist Church has been open to keep the homeless out of the cold. HPAC has also been looking into buying foreclosed houses that each are being sold for $1 so that they can be transformed into places in which people can stay. — Tasnuva Islam

Why are 700 high school students on campus? Opening ceremonies will take place tonight for the Brown University Simulation of the United Nations, which will continue Saturday and Sunday. Students from high schools across the country will take on the role of representatives of the globe’s nations in committee meetings. They will also be able to sit in on International Relations classes and will be treated to tours of campus during their visits. — George Miller

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For this year’s Sex Power God, some students wait all night for tickets continued from page 1 tion were to just throw an event and say, ‘Oh look, this is sexually free,’ I think that just that in and of itself is not a safe space. A safe space has a lot of other things that are well thought out about it.” No Department of Public Safety officers or security will be allowed inside the dance itself. Approximately 20 students will be acting as party managers and will be stationed in and around the dance, wearing spiky plastic wristbands for identification. They have been trained by the Student Activities Office to manage the event and to watch specifically for any warn-

ing signs of non-consensual sexual activity, Event Coordinator Aida Manduley ’11 said. Alcohol will not be sold at the dance. Students who are visibly intoxicated will be turned away, Marcus said. SPG has had problems with safety and security in the past. The dance gained national recognition when footage taken at the 2005 dance was aired on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” That same year, 24 students required medical attention at the dance and numerous students tried to break into the event. Since then, event coordinators have worked with the administra-

tion to make changes to the dance, including moving it from Sayles Hall to Alumnae Hall, creating a guest list rather than giving out tickets and hiring extra security from Green Horn Management. In 2006, after many of those changes were implemented, 14 students were treated by Emergency Medical Services at the event. Last year, only five students across campus required treatment the night of the dance. “The measures that we’ve taken and the steps that we’ve put in place have been ver y effective,” said Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student ser vices.

Because “there were no issues of concern after last year’s event,” Klawunn said, no new safety measures have been implemented for this year’s dance. Despite improved safety, the party has not become tame, Marcus said. “I don’t think it’s lost its spirit at all. I think it’s become safer and I don’t think there’s a reason to be ashamed of safety,” he said. The dance will feature music with a “techno, house-y feel,” Marcus said. Two songs played during the dance will be original compositions by Jonathan Gordon ’11, the winner of a contest QA held this year to feature student music. Manduley said that while stu-

dents should feel welcome to take risks with their clothing and “not just wear the old under wear you wear all the time,” the event is not “a naked party.” “You are there to create whatever you want SPG to be,” Manduley said. “We just provide the space, the safety and regulation and atmosphere for that, and you just do whatever you want with it.” QA sold a limited number of $20 tickets on Wednesday and Thursday. As of Thursday afternoon, about 100 tickets remained for sale Friday morning. The dance will be on Saturday from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. in Alumnae Hall.

At RISD, controversy over Palin porno art installation continued from page 1 yesterday’s forum. “I think that I and the other people who were part of the selection committee figured that this was the work that would be talked about the most,” Pisarro-Grant told The Herald Wednesday. “I certainly didn’t expect anything to be censored.” But whether or not the work can properly be said to have been censored remains a matter of interpretation. Painting Department Head Dennis Congdon said at the open forum that he feared the video could be seen from the street by unsuspecting passersby, potentially exposing the school to legal action. Congdon said he was also concerned that the presence of the hardcore porn video in such a public space could negatively influence the working environment. After speaking to Pisarro-Grant, and hoping to protect his students’ and his faculty’s hard-won control over the space, he unplugged the video component of the work. The exhibition occupies the lobby gallery of Memorial Hall, a recently

renovated RISD facility that houses the Painting Department offices as well as numerous studios. The show features around 20 works that, either directly or obliquely, address the 2008 election. Noam’s piece sits at the center of the lobby. A video monitor on a pedestal originally played the pornographic film “Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?” on loop. Boxes advertising blow-up Sarah Palin “running mates,” some still carrying their price tags, were hanging from the pedestal. The blowup dolls themselves were arranged around it, all wearing brown hair extensions and pink sunglasses — one was suspended from the ceiling, some stood, a couple lay on the floor. Responding to concerns about treatment of the video, a RISD spokeswoman said Wednesday that the school is “not in the practice of censoring art.” “Obviously, as an art school, we believe that students are entitled to artistic freedom and expression within the law,” Senior Press Officer Jaime Marland said. The ensuing debate within the RISD community questioned the ap-

propriateness of Congdon’s actions as well as the judgment that Noam and Pisarro-Grant had shown in exhibiting a work that many considered artistically unworthy of the furor it caused. “I’m kind of wishy-washy about the situation because I think we should be able to put up whatever we want,” said sophomore Hannah Tarr, a liaison between the department and RISD’s student government. “But I look at this piece and I don’t like it at all.” “The piece wasn’t very intelligent,” said senior Hannah Black, also a department liaison. But, she added, “the faculty shouldn’t have the right to censor a piece on the basis of its intelligence.” Others held that considerations of the piece’s success or failure were irrelevant — what mattered was students’ freedom to explore and make mistakes. “I do not believe that it is the place of the faculty, or the student body, to decide whether a piece of work ‘deserves’ to be shown or seen, granted the work is not compromising the direct rights or safety of others,” senior Maria Salas, a liaison to the painting

department, wrote in a Nov. 6 e-mail to painting students and faculty. But senior Aaron Perry-Zucker, a graphic design major, said on Wednesday that most students don’t see censorship as the central issue. “It’s about what as artists our responsibilities are in terms of releasing things into the world,” he said, adding that he thought the painting department’s public discussion was an appropriate step. The forum held Thursday was attended by RISD President John Maeda and General Counsel Steve McDonald, who presented the numerous legal issues involved, including potential infringement of copyright protections and exposure of minors to obscenity. Noam, the artist, read a prepared statement describing the “guilt” he had felt about the work, and a discussion ensued on artists’ responsibility — if any — to the public and on possible changes that the community could make as a whole. Pisarro-Grant said on Wednesday that Noam’s piece was one of only two that she and her curating committee of four artists (including Noam) accepted on the basis of a proposal, rather than a finished product. She said the group worked with Noam to help develop his idea. Installation of the show began Monday, Nov. 3, and continued into Election Day, with Noam’s piece the last to go up, late in the day, before the 6 p.m. opening. Tarr said she heard some students speculating that the work had deliberately been installed after most of the faculty had left for the day, but PisarroGrant said that the Tuesday afternoon setup “happened for a couple of reasons, mostly because (Noam) wasn’t going to get the materials in time.” The video itself had only just become available on Nov. 4, at which point Noam paid for and downloaded a copy online. Burning the video to disc took most of the day, Pisarro-Grant said, and the late setup had “nothing to do with” any attempt to conceal the work from the professors. Because of a graduate student critique scheduled for Tuesday night, however, no painting faculty attended the opening, and Congdon said at the discussion that he only saw Noam’s work the next day. “The piece by Ben could be seen outside,” Congdon said in the discussion Thursday, and he found it “alarming” and “troubling” that people walking past the building could potentially be exposed to material they weren’t prepared to see. Congdon said he spoke to Pisarro-Grant about his concerns, and they came to the decision that the monitor should be left off and could be turned on by visitors interested in watching the video or by classes critiquing the work.

Ben Hyman / Herald

The Sarah Palin-themed work in question

The next day, though, Congdon arrived at Memorial Hall to find the video still playing, and removed the extension cord powering the monitor. He worried that Noam’s piece might endanger the department’s control over the lobby and another gallery in the building. “We lobbied hard for those spaces,” he told the group of students and faculty gathered under the Tap Room’s high wooden rafters for yesterday’s discussion. “We argued that they could be curricular,” and an “integral” part of the painting program. He said he hoped the forum might lead towards a plan for managing the space. Complicating the matter were two incidents of vandalism that took place after the video was shut off. All but one of the blow-up dolls have been deflated or torn apart, Pisarro-Grant said. At the forum, one student admitted to having deflated two of them herself because she sensed the work had become something to interact with. In his statement, Noam said he had accepted all of these unintended changes to his piece. “I do not want to set a precedent of changing my artwork,” he said. During the discussion, participants generally agreed that the problem boiled down to access — the work had been exhibited in a space for which it was inappropriate, and future curatorial agreement forms might be revised to outline responsible use of the space more explicitly. Segregation of potentially offensive work behind screens or curtains with warning signs is common practice in art museums and galleries, and several speakers wondered why such measures had not been in place for the Nov. 4 show, and whether they might be feasible in the future. Students also expressed interest in holding more frequent forums on their exhibited work, including panel discussions for each gallery show. “This idea at the end, that every show should have a discussion about it, is a good one,” said Alex Griffith, a RISD senior.

W orld & n ews Friday, November 14, 2008

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Palin and fellow governors team up for future of GOP By Robert Barnes Washington Post

Courtesy of NASA

A team of scientists believe they have photographed Fomalhaut b, a planet orbiting a star 25 light years away.

On the final frontier, another planet found By John Johnson Jr. Los Angeles T imes

Reaching a milestone in the search for Earth-like planets, two teams of astronomers say they have parted the curtains of space to take the first pictures of planets beyond our solar system. The first team, led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a picture of a giant planet orbiting the star Fomalhaut 25 light-years away. “It’s almost science fiction,” said Berkeley astronomer Eugene Chiang. “I didn’t think this day would occur until years from now.” Paul Kalas, the lead astronomer for the Berkeley team, said he “nearly had a heart attack” when he found the new planet, tentatively named Fomalhaut b. “It’s a profound and overwhelming experience to lay eyes on a planet never before seen.” The other effort relied on the giant Keck and Gemini telescopes in Hawaii to image three planets surrounding the young star HR8799, 130 light-years away — about 800 trillion miles. Scientists compared the imaging of these so-called exoplanets to taking a picture from Los Angeles of a firefly buzzing around a searchlight in New York. “We’ve been trying to image planets for eight years with no luck, and now we have pictures of three planets at once,” said Bruce MacIntosh, an astrophysicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and one of the leaders of the effort. Both discoveries were revealed Thursday by the journal Science and presented at a news conference at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters in Washington. “These two papers will represent a milestone in the field that people will look back on years from now,” said Benjamin Zuckerman, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of the Keck-Gemini team. Finding other life-sustaining planets like Earth has been a dream of scientists and authors for centuries. Over the past decade, astronomers have found more than 300 exoplanets, but they have all been detected indirectly, by the slight

wobble their gravity causes in their parent stars. The big problem in actually seeing the planets is that their faint reflected light is easily overwhelmed by the glow of their parent stars. The two teams used different techniques to solve the problem. Berkeley’s Kalas relied on Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, fitted with a coronagraph to screen out the star’s light, to tease out the Jupiter-size planet Fomalhaut b. The planet’s existence had been suspected since 2005, when Kalas studied a picture of a dust ring around the star. He noticed the inner edge of the ring was sharply defined, raising his suspicions that there was something hiding in there with a lot of gravity. Planets tend to sweep their orbits clean, either by ejecting pretenders or smashing them to dust. When he studied a new picture, taken in 2006, he found an object in the dust belt. Comparing the two pictures, he determined that it was orbiting the star. “The gravity of Fomalhaut b is the key reason that the vast dust belt surrounding Fomalhaut is cleanly sculpted into a ring and offset from the star,” Kalas said. “We predicted this in 2005, and now we have the direct proof.” The planet would not be capable of supporting life as we know it. At 11 billion miles from its star, about three times as far from its sun as Pluto is from ours, it would be too frigid. Fomalhaut b, at between one and three Jupiter masses, is the lowest-mass planet yet found outside our solar system, Chiang said, bringing the day closer when researchers might be able to find Earth-like planets. The new planet has some surprising characteristics. For one thing, it is bluish, rather than the redder hue scientists expected. “Both discoveries are causing us to re-question what a planet is,” Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said at the NASA news conference. The second team, which included researchers from Lawrence Livermore, UCLA, and the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada, took its photographs in infrared light. Two breakthroughs made the

discovery possible. First was the use of adaptive optics — a set of optical techniques that correct for the interference of the Earth’s atmosphere, which bends and twists incoming light. In recent years, adaptive optics has become so sophisticated that ground telescopes can make pictures nearly as eye-popping as the Hubble Space Telescope. Because the mirrors of Gemini and Keck are so large, 26 and 32 feet across, respectively, they can gather even more light. Scientists estimate that the three planets are roughly seven to 10 times the size of Jupiter, just under the 13-Jupiter-mass limit that scientists believe separates planets from brown dwarfs, which are failed stars. Like Fomalhaut b, they are far from their parent star, ranging from 24 to 67 astronomical units. An astronomical unit is the distance of the Earth from the sun, about 93 million miles. It wasn’t their distance from HR8799 that enabled the researchers to spot them. It was their youth. They are only about 60 million years old. That means they are still glowing from their formation, generating enough heat that they can be seen in infrared. “Seeing these planets directly — separating their light from the star — lets us study them as individuals and use spectroscopy to study their properties, like temperature or composition,” MacIntosh said. It appears all three planets have complex atmospheres, with dusty clouds that trap radiating heat, the scientists said. Not everyone was ready to pop champagne corks. Alan Boss, a physicist with the Carnegie Institution for Science, said he needed more evidence to be convinced. “Only time will tell,” he said. European planet-hunters using the Very Large Telescope in Chile made claims a couple years ago that they had imaged exoplanets, but those claims were disputed by scientists who believed the objects were brown dwarfs. The twin discoveries mean researchers have now found alien planets whose orbits are close to (the wobble technique) and far away from (direct imaging studies) stars outside our solar system. That still leaves a vast area in between, where any Earth-like planets probably would reside.

MIAMI — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s star-turn news conference here at the Republican Governors Association meeting quickly got very crowded, as 12 of her colleagues joined her onstage. It sent an unmistakable message: that if the nation’s GOP governors are going to take the lead in their dispirited party, there is going to be more than one voice at the head of the pack. Palin seemed unperturbed about sharing the wealth, although what had been billed as roughly 20 minutes of questions for the 2008 vice presidential nominee dwindled to four queries, each of which she answered with a version of expressing her happiness to simply be a team player. “The media likes to focus on us as individuals, but the Republican Governors Association is a group,” Palin said. “I’m proud to be a part of this team.” It’s a team with an abundance of people volunteering to serve as captain, particularly with no clear front-runner to become the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2012. Palin is the hands-down celebrity in the group, but there are plenty of other governors — Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, South Carolina’s Mark Sanford and Florida’s Charlie Crist, to name just a few — who also see a road for themselves to the White House. The results of last week’s elections mean that for the first time in 14 years, Republicans will not control either the White House or Congress. Those gathered here, at least, believe the path out of what one described as the “wilderness” will be forged by governors. “I really feel there’s a yearning for the Republican leadership you see on this stage,” said the association’s chairman, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. “The kind of leadership provided by Repulican governors, not necessarily what’s been displayed in Washington, D.C.” Perry was blunt in his criticism of the party led by a fellow Republican from Texas. “Americans have lost confidence in their national Republican leaders after years of pork-barrel spending and special interests calling the shots in D.C., massive government bailouts,” he said. “The election results at the federal level were no surprise to those of us at the state level. “The Washington values displayed by our national leaders simply don’t reflect the values of the Republican Party.” He was effusive in praise for Palin and her “unashamed embrace of bedrock conservative principles.” But the governors also seemed

leer y of establishing Palin at the center of their efforts. According to network exit polls, 60 percent of last week’s voters thought Palin lacked the qualifications to become president, while 38 percent said she was qualified. And she is while enormously popular with conservative Republicans, the Washington Post-ABC News poll showed her favorable ratings among all voters falling from a high of 59 percent the weekend after the Republican convention to 46 percent just before Election Day — with an unfavorable rating of 51 percent then. At a meeting with reporters Wednesday night, a couple of governors hedged when asked if Sen. John McCain had done the right thing in picking Palin. John Huntsman Jr. of Utah said McCain’s instincts “have always served him very well” throughout his career. And Pawlenty, who was one of the finalists for the No. 2 spot on the ticket, said simply that McCain had said he would pick someone ready to be president, “and we’re going to have to defer to his judgment and that process.” Still, there is no misapprehension among the governors that far fewer cameras would have been aimed at the podium Thursday if Palin were not on stage. After a week of television interviews in which she defended herself against anonymous charges from within the McCain campaign that she was ill-prepared and even a drag on the ticket, Palin told reporters she had no interest in rehashing the campaign. Asked why she had held no news conferences during the election season, Palin responded, “I don’t even want to talk about strategy within a campaign that’s over.” Later she gave a casual and at times humorous valedictory to her colleagues about the race and their shared future. She said she had “managed to fill up the time” since she had last met with them. “I had a baby, I did some traveling, I very briefly expanded my wardrobe, I made a few speeches, I met a few VIPs, including those who really impact society, like Tina Fey,” Palin said. “Aside from that, it was the same-ol’, same-ol’.” After ward, Palin told her colleagues it was a “hard and honorable defeat” and she took pride that “tens of millions of Americans shared our convictions.” “But for us it was not our time, it was not our moment,” she said. She wished President-elect Barack Obama well and called his election “a shining moment in American history.” “Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and our country,” she said.

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Friday, November 14, 2008

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Global economic summit to have full agenda Mazerov ’10: Count on By Anthony Faiola and Glenn Kessler ’81 Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Nations are close to adopting a series of measures aimed at combating a global recession and laying the groundwork for a broad reconstruction of the international financial system, as world leaders arrive in Washington for a major economic summit this weekend. Among the most notable measures would be the creation of a new body to supervise the regulation of global financial institutions. The “college of

supervisors” would bring together international regulators to coordinate oversight of the world’s 30 largest financial institutions, according to officials familiar with the plans. The new body would be designed to add an extra level of scrutiny to the way banks are monitored and to catch excessive risk-taking of the sort that contributed to the current economic crisis. The United States, European countries, Japan and major developing nations are also close to a deal to create a new “early warning system” to detect weaknesses in the global financial system before they reach epic

proportions, according to diplomatic sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans were still being worked out. Meanwhile, with international calls for greater transparency growing, U.S. officials say the Federal Reserve will soon announce the creation of a clearinghouse system to help standardize and limit risk on some of the opaque and exotic financial derivatives that helped bring down Wall Street’s investment banks. Even five of the world’s wealthiest hedge-fund managers said Thursday that they would support oversight of their industry.

Swimmers look to make a winter splash continued from page 12 ’11 won a gold medal in the foil, while Scott Phillips ’11 won a bronze medal and Adam Pantel ’10, who competed in the 2008 NCAA Championships, earned a medal with an fifth-place finish. On the women’s side, Deborah Gorth ’09.5 and Francesca Bartholomew ’11 each won bronze medals in the saber and foil, respectively, to lead the way for Bruno. This season, the Bears will expect big accomplishments from Randy Alevi ’10, who won the women’s saber at the IFA Championships and finished 14th at nationals last season, as well as Pantel and Adam Yarnell ’10, who each qualified for nationals last season. Men’s Hockey After compiling a 6-21-4 record in 2007-08, the men’s hockey team, under the leadership of Head Coach Roger Grillo, is off to a 0-3-1 start this season. Key returning players include honorable mention All-Ivy selection Ryan Garbutt ’09, who tallied 11 assists and a team-leading 12 goals last season, and captain Devin Timberlake ’10, who finished last season with seven goals and 10 assists. So far this season, the Bears have gotten strong play from assistant captain Matt Vokes ’09, who leads the team with five assists through the first four games, and Sean McMonagle ’10, who scored a goal to force a 2-2 tie with St. Lawrence last Saturday, and is coming off a 2007-08 season in which he notched six goals

and seven assists. The Bears will also look for big production from assistant captains Jordan Pietrus ’10 and Aaron Volpatti ’10, as well as goalie Dan Rosen ’10, a third-year starter between the pipes. Women’s Hockey After finishing with a 5-19-5 record in 2007-08, the women’s hockey team, under Head Coach Digit Murphy, has shown promise so far this season, and is off to a 1-4-1 start. Anchoring the team is goaltender Nicole Stock ’09, the captain and a Herald Sports Staff Writer, who was named to the AllECAC second team last season after compiling a .924 save percentage. The team looks to have a strong freshman class this season, as Paige Pyett ’12 scored a pair of goals in a 4-1 win over Union, and Skyelar Siwak ’12 has also scored two goals on the season. Other key returning players include assistant captain Andrea Hunter ’10, who finished last season with five goals and nine assists, and Sasha van Muyen ’10, who added three goals and nine assists last season. The season thus far has included the win over Union, a 2-2 tie to St. Cloud State, and a hard-fought 3-2 loss against St. Lawrence. Squash After a 6-11 finish last season, and a 14th place finish at Team Nationals, the men’s team will look to improve this year. Key returning players include Evan Besser ’11 and Herald Sports Columnist Pat Davis ’10, who

each went 2-1 at Team Nationals. The women’s team will look to improve from last year’s eighth place finish at Nationals, and the season will begin at Harvard on Nov. 21. Swimming and Diving The men’s swimming and diving team will begin competition on Nov. 22, and will be led by Dan Ricketts ’09, who qualified for the Olympic Trials last year in the 100 Fly and 100 Free. Other key returning swimmers include Ryunosuke Kikuchi ’11, who posted fast times last year in the 500 and 1000 Free, as well as Sam Speroni ’11, who established himself as a strong distance swimmer by posting the team’s second-fastest time in the 1650 Free. The women’s team will feature such swimmers as Kelly Wisinger ’11, who earned a ninth-place finish in the 200 Back at last year’s Ivy Championships, Bailey Langner ’10, who finished 12th at that same meet in the 200 Breast. Their season will begin on Nov. 23. Wrestling This year’s squad will include Matt Gevelinger ’09, who qualified at 184 lbs. for the NCAA Championships last season. Other key returning wrestlers include Chris Musser ’09, Tom Fazio ’09, Mark Bloom ’10 and Branden Stearns ’09. The season will begin this weekend at the Binghamton Open, and the team’s first home match will come on Jan. 9 against Rutgers.

Springmeyer ’12 Herald’s Athlete of the Week continued from page 12 moment from this past season? My favorite moment from this past season was my first goal against the University of Maine. We were tied at the time and I received a perfect pass from Sara Eaton (’09). When I knocked it into the goal, I turned around and saw Michaela Seigo (’10) running towards me to hug me in celebration. Even though we lost the game, I’ll always remember that moment when I look back on my first collegiate goal. How important was it for the team to end on a win? Before the game our head coach (Tara Harrington ’94) really emphasized the need for us to play for each other, not ourselves or our coaches or anyone in the stands. Each of us knew that our team deserved an Ivy win and we played that way. Our team had been on an upward trend from the beginning of the season, so I have no doubt that we will be strong next season. Ending on a win will also motivate us throughout the off-season to train and prepare hard for next

season, so we can secure more wins in the future. How were you able to make such an impact on the team as a freshman? Were the adjustments from high school difficult at first? The transition from high school to collegiate field hockey was challenging at first, mostly because of the higher paced game and elite skill. However, I played for a club team, the Spirit Eagles, throughout high school, which prepared me well for the collegiate game. The reassurance that I had played with and against elite players in the past helped me get over the fact that I was one of the youngest players on the team and gave me confidence to execute on the field. You recorded the most points in a season for a rookie since 1996. How do you plan to continue that production into next year? As soon as I told my club coach that I was accepted into Brown, he challenged me to find my place on

the starting line-up and become the all-time leading scorer by the end of my four years. I am not the type of player who is solely concerned about the number of goals I put in the net, so having his voice in my head serves as my motivation for stats. I hope to continue to fill my role on the team as my game improves with one year of experience behind me. Was the team pleased with the way the season ended? Like I said before, we all believed we deserved an Ivy win to finish off our season. We lost many games by one goal or even worse, in overtime, but our team was consistent in our ability to fight. We never handed the game over to our opponent easily and I think our whole team was excited to finally win with a good lead. Of course, winning always feels great, but I think giving our seniors a win for their last game on Warner Roof made it even more rewarding. Springmeyer and the rest of the underclassmen will be back next fall, looking to build on this season’s success.

Colts, Redskins to win continued from page 12 bok for all their unsold “Johnson” jerseys. Ocho Cinco decided not to pony up, but he will be allowed to have his new name on his jersey next season. 2009 can’t come soon enough for this franchise. Denver at ATLANTA OK, how about some real analysis for this one? Looking like a steal as the third pick in this year’s draft, Falcons Quarterback Matt Ryan has turned a woeful squad that went 4-12 in 2007 into a real playoff contender in 2008. Ryan’s been almost perfect at home this year — he’s completed 70 percent of his passes for 902 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions — in leading his team to its best start through nine games since 2004. On Sunday, Broncos QB Jay Cutler’s Vanderbilt smarts under center won’t quite make up for his team’s slumping and injuryplagued running game. Baltimore at NEW YORK GIANTS You know those Citizen EcoDrive watch commercials? “Unstoppable, Eli Manning is,” they say. I always used to snicker: just put some linebackers in his face and he’ll be dead like a fake Rolex. But now, with his team the defending champions and with a reasonable chance to repeat this season, my snarkiness has turned into a kind of spiteful respect. Minnesota at TAMPA BAY When Gus Frerotte is your quarterback, you know you’re in trouble. Oakland at MIAMI Nothing this year was more painful to watch than the September press conference during which resident lunatic/Raiders owner Al Davis acted like the 1970s relic that he is and used an overhead projector to explain why he’d fired (now former) Head Coach Lane Kiffin. The dysfunctional Raiders — whose owner probably still uses the telegraph — are 1-4 since then. Nice going, Al. CHICAGO at Green Bay Kyle Orton’s actually a decent quarterback? Who knew? Houston at INDIANAPOLIS Oh, how the tables have turned. After winning five straight AFC South titles, the Colts are now four

games back of the division-leading Titans. The Colts should be fine this week, though. They’re 13-1 all time against the Texans. History has to be good for something, right? St. Louis at SAN FRANCISCO I’m kind of hoping the 49ers win this one in a blowout just so new Head Coach Mike Singletary doesn’t need to drop his pants during his halftime speech again as a motivational ploy. Arizona at SEATTLE Every time people have high expectations for the Cardinals — which happens at the beginning of pretty much every season — they end up in the NFC West doghouse. Granted, their division is despicably weak this season, but can this perennial loser of a franchise that’s won just two playoff games since 1947 really keep this run up for much longer? TENNESSEE at Jacksonville The Madden Curse actually worked out quite well for the Titans. Kerry Collins, who took over for former Madden cover boy Vince Young, is suddenly looking like MVP material. Tennessee’s won every game that Collins has started, and they’re running away with the AFC South. SAN DIEGO at Pittsburgh C’mon LT! I need some fantasy points from you this week. Dallas at WASHINGTON (Sunday night) Call me a homer, but I think my Redskins pull this one out, so long as power back Clinton Portis makes it into the game (he’s a game-time decision right now with an MCL sprain). Besides, I already made one mistake picking Dallas this year when I drafted Tony Romo in the second round of my fantasy draft. CLEVELAND at Buffalo (Monday night) Wow, bet ESPN wishes it could have this one back. I’ll be watching “Heroes” instead. Heck, even “How I Met Your Mother” would be better than this slopfest.

Alex Mazerov ’10 cannot play with them, cannot win with them, cannot coach them!

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Friday, November 14, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S t a ff E d i t o r i a l

Diamonds and coal A diamond to Professor of Computer Science Michael Black, whose new program can discern the shape of a person’s body based on his or her clothes. With Sex Power God this weekend, though, it would have been more helpful to design a program that could imagine all those naked people wearing more threads. Speaking of SPG, coal to chaste Brown students, who according to the most recent Herald poll, mostly plan to square dance this weekend. Squares. A congratulatory diamond to “The Sons of Tamarkin,” the puzzle-busting grad students who beat out the country’s smartest math whizzes. We’ll see you at Squared Power God. Cubic zirconium to Harvard, which this week announced spending cuts. Sadly, it seems you’ll have to postpone plans for that lunar campus. A diamond to the RISD student who stole a blow-up doll from a controversial art installation involving the infamous “Nailin’ Paylin” porno, claiming she sensed that the doll should be interacted with. Now all she needs is $150,000 worth of blow-up clothes. And coal to RISD Painting Department Head Dennis Congdon, who feared unsuspecting passersby might see the installation. We’re sure Hans, the unsuspecting pizza delivery man, would be deeply offended. A diamond to David Gracer, the entomophagist (bug eater) who insists that while humans should have been eating bugs to help save the planet for a long time, at this point, it’s “just deck chairs on the Titanic.” What, so no more Real Food movement?

P ete fallon

Letters

A diamond to stoners everywhere. Our story this week on the decriminalization of pot in Massachusetts was the most popular on our Web site. We should have given you more credit. We assumed you only did the sudoku and didn’t actually read the articles. The Herald regrets the error.

Student punishment and the SDS story

Coal to soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., for claiming that blogs lead to misinformation. Wait, why should we listen to a documented baby-eating Marxist?

Years ago, the first massive campus antiwar demonstrations took place, and like so many others, I was swept up in the excitement of Students for a Democratic Society actually doing something, reaching out to all sectors of my campus at the University of Illinois (somehow, I was chair of the big public event to “speak out”). Around that time, the same SDS chapter demonstrated against “parietals,” the rules on times when female undergrads had to return to their dormitories at night or face disciplinary charges. Brown students started with a parietal demonstration the following year, and then the antiwar movement began to grow here as well. That connection, between student empowerment and campus antiwar (including antidraft) sentiment, made SDS unique and important in many places. We learned, in the process, that many professors and some administrators agreed that the war was monstrous in all its effects, and that sweeping changes were needed in campus life. But someone had to actually push the changes to make the University a better place — and

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To the Editor:

that was ourselves. At Brown, the New Curriculum and the diversification of the student and teaching populations (among other changes) owe more to 1960s student pressures than any other factor, something that today’s students would do well to consider. Did we SDSers 40 years ago make mistakes? Oh yes, and they cost our movement dearly. But we were not wrong in seeing the efforts of ourselves and others in empowering students to be crucial in the democratization of our campuses. In that light, the current disciplinary actions threatened by the University against SDSers for presenting a thousand signatures aimed at accountability and transparency at the Oct. 18 Corporation meeting are entirely mistaken. (I regret that I was out of town during this event.) Brown owes a debt to its young idealists, and the benefit of the doubt is the simplest form of payment. Paul Buhle Senior Lecturer in American Civilization Nov. 13

SDS members deserve punishment To the Editor: In response to SDS’s recent letter (“SDS members should not be charged,” Nov. 13), I would like to ask these students what type of fairness they are looking for. While I appreciate that SDS advocates on behalf of fellow Brown students, I do not agree that their act of civil disobedience should go unpunished. Living in a democratic society requires obeying all of the rules, even the ones SDS does not agree with. When they break those rules, punishment is justified. If they truly want a fair, unbiased judicial proceeding — as they

claim — they should ask the University to press criminal charges and to drop the non-academic hearing. I doubt that they will, and assume the real point of their letter was just a noisy request for leniency. If so, when they go through the disciplinary process they would be best served not questioning the legitimacy of the proceeding, but requesting mercy from the benevolent leaders of Brunonia. I’m certain they will be more respectful of SDS than SDS is of them. Neal Cohen ’10 Nov. 13

C o r r e c t i o ns A letter in Thursday’s Herald (“SDS members should not be charged,” Nov. 13) incorrectly listed Brent Mylrea ’11 as a signatory. Mylrea was not involved with the letter. An article in Thursday’s Herald (“Triumphant, Brown’s ‘Sons of Tamarkin’ crush brainiacs, Nov. 13) was accompanied by a photo of the wrong mathematicians. The correct photo is on page five of today’s print edition. C O R R E C T I O N S P olicy The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. C ommentary P O L I C Y The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only. L etters to the E ditor P olicy Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed. advertising P olicy The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

O pinions Friday, November 14, 2008

Page 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Reflections on being a veteran at Brown BY MIRANDA SUMMERS Guest Columnist Like many Brunonians, I came to Brown concerned about my ability to fit in because of something in my background. Six short months before sitting in graduate student orientation, I was in Iraq. The preceding months had been full of transitions. I missed the challenge, hard work, and tight camaraderie of the Army. Could I find that at Brown? Brown has a reputation for being anti-military. It also has a reputation for being open-minded. I was about to find out which held more truth. Sometimes I’d sit on the steps of Faunce House and the masses of students with heavy backpacks looked strikingly similar to the soldiers I’d just left. The arbitrary nature troubled me. These two groups of people, disparate now, might have grown up down the street from each other or attended the same high schools. Small influences and small decisions had added up, and now these two groups of 18-22 year olds were in very different places. Indeed, there was little to explain how I ended up with a foot in each world. I was raised by liberal academics who taught me to act nonviolently. It took an airplane crashing into the Pentagon, four miles away from me, to convince me that I was sick of other people fighting for what I believed. I dropped out of college and joined the Army. At the time, I got the good end of the deal. After a year, I went back to college, paid for by the Army. It seemed impossible that I would leave for more than my monthly drills. America is structured so we can’t go to war without the National Guard or the draft. I felt America would not allow its youth to be sent to an

unjust war What a difference two years can make. Packing up my dorm room in the middle of my senior year of college, knowing that I would soon be in combat, I faced questions that every soldier has heard as a result of two unpopular wars. Even at an elite school, the level of ignorance stunned me. “They can’t deploy you, you’re in college.” “You’re a girl! They can’t send you to Iraq!” and the hardest to respond to, “I thought only poor people

that the educated or middle class didn’t do. When I got to Brown, I anticipated more questions like the ones I’d left. With the liberal reputation, I didn’t know what to expect. I did not, to my relief, encounter unreasoned hatred or blatant disregard for my choices. I did encounter a prevailing unawareness about the military, an disconnectedness to our country at war, or misunderstandings about why people join. I struggled to explain it. At times I felt isolated. Who could understand the

Who could understand the problems that I was having with the Veterans Affairs Administration or how I felt when I saw a friend’s name in the casualty column of the newspaper? were in the Army.” When had America developed a warrior class? When had joining the military, possibly one of the most physically, emotionally and morally grueling means of service to society, become something we pushed off to the racial minorities and economically unprivileged? I thought of my generation as one that believed in service. This service, one that at some level protected our rights, had become something

problems that I was having with the Veterans Affairs Administration or how I felt when I saw a friend’s name in the casualty column of the newspaper? I began to look past the stereotype that Brown was anti-military and found another tradition. There was the WWI arch on Thayer or the memorials in Manning and University Halls. I found the letters that President Faunce had sent to the Brown men in WWI, lauding

their service. Brown was home to the first Naval ROTC unit in the country. The RUE program was started especially to help veterans go back to college. The number of Brunonians in the military wasn’t a small minority: 500 had died in combat, over 300 living Brown alums chose military service after graduation, and over 60 members of the faculty and staff are vets. Nor are students necessarily anti-military. The more I spoke about my service, the more support I found. The number of student veterans is small, but many of our fellow students are involved through their families and friends. Some are interested in joining or want to know how to support troops even if they don’t support the war. On Tuesday, there were at least 50 people on the Main Green for Brown’s Veterans Day Observance. I was not surprised by how large the turnout was. For those at Brown who are involved in or support the military: You are not alone. I don’t expect everyone to pat me on the back. If I could ask anything, I would like people to appreciate that in America, military service is a choice. Like so many students who have lived overseas, I have a deep appreciation that a place like Brown can exist. Differences of opinion are welcomed and expressing them does not threaten your safety. We don’t have a draft and we don’t have universal conscription. I love that we have the freedom to choose between school and war. People like me volunteer to serve so those protesting on the green won’t be forced to. I want to protect that choice. Indeed, it’s what I believe I’m in the Army to fight for.

Miranda Summers GS is a master’s student in the American Civilization department.

Unions key to ensuring social justice BY Will Emmons Lily Axelrod Alex Tye Dani Martinez Baird Bream

We in Student Labor Alliance believe that as a society we should make a moral commitment to wages and benefits that respect all workers as human beings, regardless of what their bosses can get away with. Furthermore, we believe that since people spend the majority of their waking lives in the economic sphere, basic democratic principles demand that people should have a voice on the job.

hiring union labor hurts non-unionized workers, the opposite is true. Whether or not a worker is in a union, she directly benefits in terms of wages and benefits from the presence of a union in a local industr y. If the union is run out of the market, the wages of all employees in that industry suffer. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all ships. While Ryvkin is correct that only a small

Guest Columnists In his recent column (“Trade union protests at Brown,” Nov. 10) attacking the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Sheet Metal Workers International Association’s protests at Brown, Boris Ryvkin ’09 argues that “unions exist to protect workers who cannot effectively compete on a level playing field in the open market. Their wages and benefits are artificial.” Ryvkin believes workers are only entitled to a living wage, a say over their working conditions, decent health care and sick and vacation time if the market determines that this is the case. If workers attain these rights through collective bargaining or through social legislation, then Ryvkin views them as illegitimate. If the last month has taught us anything, it is that the unregulated market is neither the most effective nor the most just way to distribute resources. Just because a firm can pay its employees a pittance and provide little or no benefits while its CEOs receive millions, does not make these practices right.

We believe that since people spend the majority of their waking lives in the economic sphere, basic democratic principles demand that people should have a voice on the job. In accomplishing these goals, trade unions and other popular forms of organization are essential. While Ryvkin harangues unions for undermining policy reforms, it is important to note that union activity in the United States is directly responsible for such important reforms as ending child labor and establishing the minimum wage and Social Security. Furthermore, though Ryvkin claims that

minority of the American workforce is unionized, he does not seem to understand why this is this case. Over the past 30 years we have seen union density plummet under a right-wing ideological and economic assault on organized labor, and the tearing down of important New Deal social programs the unions helped build. This assault has taken place under both Republican and Democratic

administrations — remember that Clinton pushed for NAFTA and gutted welfare — and has led to the greatest level of economic inequality since the Gilded Age and left 47 million Americans without health insurance. Despite Ryvkin’s dubious claim that “emerging industries provide acceptable enough job packages to make unions unnecessary,” economic trends of the past 30 years have shown that we need unions and other civil society organizations working in tandem with an active public sector to build and ensure a participatory and socially just society. While electing a president who has pledged to pass pro-union legislation is a step in the right direction, the most proworker administration cannot do anything unless people are organized for reform. That is why we in SLA stand in solidarity with the IBEW and the Sheet Metal Workers in demanding that Brown use union contractors for its construction projects. As a prestigious university, Brown is in an excellent position to show leadership in the area of workers’ rights. In these trying times in which even Alan Greenspan has conceded that unregulated markets can have disastrous results for public welfare, it is even more important that we do so.

The Student Labor Alliance wants you to come chill with them, Thursdays at 9 p.m. in the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center.

S ports W eekend Page 12

Friday, November 14, 2008

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

My Week 11 NFL picks Devoid of any original ideas that would be even somewhat interesting to the 10 Brown students who actually read the sports page, I decided, since it’s a Friday, to hark back to my days as an idealistic high school journalist and Alex Mazerov write a good oldMaz’s Minute fashioned picks column. Winners are in CAPS. NEW ORLEANS at Kansas City Mad props to Herm Edwards for going for two and the win last week when his Chiefs trailed the Chargers by one with less than a minute remaining. Alas, they didn’t convert and ended up losing 20-19. But when your defense is beat up and unlikely to survive any overtime assault, and your team is 1-7, what’s not to lose? Unfortunately, Edwards’ “cojones grandes,” as Stephen Colbert would say, won’t be enough to save the Chiefs this week either. Detroit at CAROLINA Does this one even need an explanation? PHILADELPHIA at Cincinnati Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the season has been being denied the opportunity to see Chad “Johnson” Ocho Cinco wear a jersey with his new government-approved surname on the back. The Bengals’ touchdown celebration extraordinaire legally changed his last name from Johnson to Ocho Cinco in August, but the NFL wouldn’t let him wear “Ocho Cinco” on the back of his uniform unless he compensated Reecontinued on page 9

Winter sports teams just heating up By Benjy Asher Sports Editer

Women’s Basketball The women’s basketball team, led by Head Coach Jeannie Burr, will try to improve upon its 2-26 record

Springmeyer ’12 racks up field hockey Ivy honors By Nicole Stock Sports Staff Writer

Leslie Springmeyer ’12 of field hockey had a big week, named Ivy League Player and Rookie of the Week on Wednesday and given Honorable Mention All-Ivy honors on Thursday. Springmeyer had seven points in the Bears’ 4-1 victory over Yale in their final regular-season game

ATHLETE OF THE WEEK last Saturday. In the Bears’ last five games, Springmeyer recorded 14 points, tallying at least one point in each of the last five games. Springmeyer finished the season as Brown’s leading scorer with 21 points (12th all-time at Brown), while being the first rookie to have over 20 points in a season since Kim Rogers ’00 had 28 points in 1996. For her exceptional play this season, Springmeyer is The Herald’s Athlete of the Week. Herald: When did you start playing field hockey and why did you start playing? Springmeyer: I started field hockey clinics in fourth grade and competed on my middle school’s team in fifth. Our middle school had a well-renowned coach who formed

o r t s

In B

r i e f

W. rugby wins NRU championship

As the fall sports season winds to a close, we now turn our attention to winter sports at Brown. Here’s the scoop on what we can expect from Brown sports this coming winter. Men’s Basketball The men’s basketball team will have a lot to live up to following an impressive 2007-08 season, in which the Bears set a school record as they went 19-10, and finished second with an 11-3 mark in Ivy League play. This season, the Bears will take the court without the first-team AllIvy backcourt of Damon Huffman ’08 and Mark McAndrew ’08 or former Head Coach Craig Robinson, who took the head coaching job at Oregon State. Robinson’s replacement, Jesse Agel, will lead a team that includes honorable mention All-Ivy forward Chris Skrelja ’09, who averaged 8.4 points and a teamhigh 6.7 rebounds last season. He will be joined in the frontcourt by Scott Friske ’09, who notched four double-digit scoring games last year, and Matt Mullery ’10, who made 10 starts for Brown last season and turned in three double-digit scoring efforts. The Bears will also rely heavily on Peter Sullivan ’11, who is coming off of a strong freshman season, during which he averaged 8.8 points per game and led the team in scoring on two occasions. Also expect increased playing time for guard Adrian Williams ’11, who averaged 4.6 points off the bench in his freshman season, including three doubledigit scoring performances.

Fencing The fencing team is off to a strong start this season, after an impressive showing at Smith College’s “Big One” tournament. Jonathan Yu

Last weekend, the women’s rugby team traveled to Bowdoin College to compete in the Northeast Rugby Union Championships. In the opening round, the Bears dominated Dartmouth, 44-15, to advance to the championship game. Captain Nina Safane ’09 led the way with three tries; Ploi Flynn ’09 scored twice for the Bears; and Blaine Martin ’11, Yadi Ibarra ’09, Naomi Oberman-Briendel ’10 and Captain Whitney Brown ’09 each added a score of their own in the rout. In the championship match, Bruno got an opportunity for revenge as it faced the tough Army squad which it lost to two weeks ago on Brown’s home turf at the New England Rugby Union Championships. This time around, the Bears got the better of their rivals by a score of 24-15. Army got off to a quick 10-0 lead, but the Bears battled back behind scores from Michelle Un ’11, Alex Hartley ’10 and two conversions from Martin to take a 14-10 halftime lead. In the second half, Hartley added her second try of the game, and Martin followed with a score of her own to give the Bears a commanding 24-10 lead. Army managed to cut the score to 24-15 with about five minutes remaining, but Brown refused to give them any comeback opportunity and hung on for the victory. With the win, the Bears regained their No. 1 national ranking, and earned a No. 4 seed in what will be the team’s third trip to the National Championships.

continued on page 9

— Megan McCahill

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Chris Skrelja ’09 averaged 8.4 points and 6.7 rebounds per game last season.

(1-13 Ivy) from 2007-08, but it will be difficult after the departure of last season’s captain and leading scorer, Ann O’Neal ’08. In order to be more competitive this season, the Bears will need consistent production from guard Sadiea Williams ’11, who finished second on the team with 7.2 points per game in her freshman season and averaged a team-high 4.8 rebounds. The offense will expect help from Christina Johnson ’10, who recorded the team’s only 20-point effort of last

season when she scored 20 in a 6561 win over Howard. The team will also look to Ashley Alexander ’10 and Shae Fitzpatrick ’10, who last season averaged 6.8 and 6.3 points per game, respectively.

H ail to th e chi e fs

athletes into skilled field hockey players, most of (whom) excelled in high school and college. Why did you pick Brown to play field hockey? Do you have any siblings that also played? My sister, Sara Springmeyer (’08), graduated from Brown last year, and she is the one who initially got me interested in Brown. She played on the field hockey team as well during her first two years here. I formed a relationship with the coaches afterward, but initially chose Brown for the school itself. Fortunately, I found myself playing on a field hockey team made up of girls that I love. Do you have any superstitions? I am very superstitious. I wore the same pair of socks on game day throughout the season, warmed up in a pinnie (never with my uniform top underneath), ran out to the field with my stick in my left hand and water bottle and uniform in my right — basically I do a lot of little things to mentally prepare myself for the game. Courtesy of Sarah Huebscher

What has been your favorite continued on page 9

The 2008 NCAA champion women’s crew team (juniors on the squad are pictured here) met with President Bush this week in honor of their victory. The team also met with the president at the White House last year.