Monday, February 2, 2009

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 9 | Monday, February 2, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Hundreds meet to talk human rights

Research policy being reviewed

steelers ’ bo w l

by Hannah Moser Senior Staff Writer

Students and health professionals from around the country convened in Andrews Hall this weekend to discuss topics including genocide in Darfur, torture at Guantanamo Bay and how best to advocate for human rights.

About 350 people, from as far away as Stanford University and as nearby as Providence College, took part in the annual student conference of the organization Physicians for Human Rights, which was highlighted by a keynote address from Stephen Lewis, former U.N. special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, and a town hall with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. Following the Saturday morning opening keynote by Lewis, the co-director of AIDS-Free World, an international advocacy organization, students attended a panel on “realizing the right to health,” then broke into workshop sessions in SmithBuonanno Hall and the BioMedical Center that focused on advocacy training and human rights issues in health care and in war.

In a workshop called “Accountability for Perpetrators of US Torture,” Nathaniel Raymond, the director of Physicians for Human Rights’ “Campaign against Torture,” emphasized the part of the physician’s oath that swears to “do no harm.”

Raymond and John Bradshaw, the organization’s chief policy officer, outlined potential methods to hold government officials responsible for detainee abuse at sites like the militar y prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bradshaw pointed out that, a year ago, finding “accountability” for abuses at Guantanamo Bay was an abstract hope for the future. But, he said, if there are going to be attempts to hold government officials to account, they must be undertaken in the next year or not at all. The issue is “completely within the hands” of people who feel strongly about its outcome, he said.

Attendees had the opportunity to present research on a human rights issue at the student expo held in Andrews. Harb Harb, a student at the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine, presented his research on health care accessibility in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a project for which he surveyed 750 Palestinian refugees.

Although “you hear about health care being a right,” Harb said, the situation on the ground many places

inside

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News.....1-4 Arts........5-6 Spor ts...7-9 Editorial..10 Opinion...11 Today........12

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By Sydney Ember Senior Staff Writer

Brown’s policy on conflict of interest in research is under review, Vice President for Research Clyde Briant told the faculty at its monthly meeting in December. The revised policy, which is not yet available, will be brought to the faculty and the Corporation this month.

The review was initiated at the request of the Corporation in light of recent national concern regarding the relationships of researchers and faculty members with industry.

“There’s just no news yet about what it’s going to contain,” said Professor of Philosophy James Dreier, who chairs the Faculty Executive Committee. “I think people are kind of concerned and interested and want to see it, but I don’t know how there could be a specific reaction to it yet.”

He added that he is unsure how Kim Perley / Herald

Students take in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 27-23 Super Bowl victory over the Arizona Cardinals.

See Campus News,

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continued on page 3

‘Stuff White People Like’ founder explains intuitions

By Lauren Fedor Senior Staff Writer

What do sushi, yoga, pea coats, Asian girls and Barack Obama have in common? According to Christian Lander, the provocative and popular blogger-turned-bestselling-author, they’re all “stuff white people like.”

Lander, who was working as a copywriter in Los Angeles when he got the idea for his immensely popular blog and later bestselling

book, “Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions,” spoke on Friday to an enormous crowd in Wilson 102 as part of the ongoing Eureka! Lecture Series. Students filling every space of the auditorium — including windowsills and stairways — listened for more than an hour as Lander explained how a single instant message conversation spurred what has become a pop culture phenomenon.

In January 2008, Lander and

a friend were instant messaging about one of their favorite television shows, “The Wire,” when Lander’s friend said that he did not trust any white people who did not watch the program. The conversation soon shifted as the two began coming up with alternative activities that white people might be doing instead of watching the show. The men offered ideas like going to therapy, watching plays, getting divorced and doing yoga. Lander was so amused by the conversation

that he started a WordPress blog based on it.

Lander continued writing and adding to the blog, and within a few days he had written more than 20 posts. He decided to send a link to his site to some of his friends — mainly students and other graduate-school dropouts. Soon after, he began receiving feedback from his friends, who had shared the site with others. continued on page 2

To Havana and back Students reflect on Cuban experience

year, returning to the United States days before Cuba commemorated the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution. In four

By Sophia Li months the students spent abroad, Features Editor Cuba’s seas swelled with the force of multiple hurricanes, and its peoWhile the stragglers still on campus ple surged with hope inspired by in late December were shoving President Barack Obama. their belongings into Depar ting from Miami at the end of suitcases to catch early FEATURE August, the students flights home, 11 other Brown students were packing their had little idea of what to expect bags, too — to return to the United of a nation so shrouded in mysStates after the inaugural semes- tery: a patchwork of myths about ter of the University’s new study Castro, communism and Cuban abroad program in Cuba. health care filtered through the The students left Havana less continued on page 4 than two weeks before the new

Courtesy of Stephan Meylan ’10

The OIP’s new study abroad program in Cuba offered students a fresh perspective on the long-isolated communist nation.

Arts, 5

Sports, 7

Opinions, 11

prof. art at hillel Professor of Visual Art Leigh Tarentino’s work on display at Hillel

m. hockey loses Men’s hockey suffers losses to Quinnipiac and Princeton

public school woes Boris Ryvkin ’09 wants students to be put first in R.I. public school reform

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

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Page 2

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

Monday, February 2, 2009

“You don’t have to white to be white … you just have to be rich.”

— Christian Lander, blogger and author

Blogger recounts rise to fame continued from page 1 At their suggestion, Lander left WordPress and registered the Web site with the hopes of publishing advertisements and earning some money from the blog’s viewership.

The blog’s notoriety continued to grow, and eventually the site was featured on the blogs of Good Magazine and Comedy Central. Stuff White People Like’s popularity exploded, and the blog soon had more than 30,000 hits.

But the site crashed immediately thereafter.

When Lander called up the site administrators, they told him that he had violated the terms of his contract. They were confused why his site had so many hits. Was it an “adult” blog? they asked. Was Lander running a gambling site?

No, Lander insisted, he was simply posting a blog.

When the site administrators caught on and realized just how popular the blog was becoming, they told Lander he would need to pay thousands of dollars a month to maintain the upkeep of the site.

Lander declined, and moved the site back to a WordPress account.

But the site’s popularity continued to increase, and by February 2008, it already had hundreds of thousands of hits. At the same time, a New York literary agent who wanted to turn the blog’s content into a book contacted Lander. Talent agencies began calling, and by the end of March Lander quit his copywriting job, signed with the William Morris Talent Agency and began work on his book.

By July 1, the book hit shelves, and by July 14 — less than six

months after the blog’s creation — “Stuff White People Like” had become a New York Times Bestseller.

Since then, Lander has traveled all over the country giving lectures and promoting the book. His travels have taken him everywhere from schools to bookstores to “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” last September.

When Lander was on “Conan,” the other guests included Tim Gunn of Project Runway and Jerry O’Connell, the Hollywood actor.

Lander told Friday’s audience that his appearance with O’Connell was “huge” because, growing up in Canada, O’Connell starred in one of Lander’s favorite childhood television shows, “My Secret Identity.” Lander, who described himself as “kind of a chubby kid,” said O’Connell became “the greatest hero to fat kids on Earth” after appearing in the movie “Stand by Me.” So as Lander prepared for his appearance on “Conan,” he thought about telling O’Connell about how much he loved him as a child. But when the two actually met on the set of “Late Night,” Lander barely got a word in edgewise. According to Lander, O’Connell was “gushing” about how much he loved Stuff White People Like.

O’Connell’s love of Stuff White People Like was most apparent when Lander participated in a book tour event in St. Louis. A woman from the local paper wrote an article about Lander’s visit, and a few days later she sent Lander a link to the story.

He politely wrote back, thanking her for the link, but explaining that he had already seen it — because Jerry O’Connell had sent it to him.

“How strange my life has

sudoku

news in brief

Halftime lingerie show scrapped

Janine Cheng / Herald

Christian Lander addresses students in Wilson 102.

become!” Lander exclaimed as he recounted the story. In less than a year, Lander had gone from instant messaging at work to exchanging personal e-mails with one of his childhood heroes and speaking across the nation.

“I thought it was very clever,” said Annie Matusewicz ’11 about Lander’s lecture. “(His concept is) a funny way for people to think about the culture they associate with.”

But not ever yone loves what Lander is doing. His Web site is full of comments from people who find its content offensive and, in many cases, racist.

Lander said the book and Web site are “more about class than about race,” adding, “you don’t have to be white to be white … you just have to be rich.” His satirical comments are more about upper-middle class interests that are “perceived as white activities,” he said.

Much of Lander’s material comes from the experiences he had as a

PhD student at Indiana University, Lander said. He described his peers as people who were “on a mission to save everything” by “writing papers and presenting them to people who already agree” with them and patting themselves on the back for doing “so much great work.”

These people annoyed Lander, because “ever yone was exactly the same,” he said. “Nobody was mainstream,” but they were all going to the same concerts and coffee shops.

“Everybody was the same but they were rebels who were fighting the system. That’s where I got the subheading ‘The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions,’ ” Lander said.

Yet Lander, who is white, told Friday’s audience that he is no different from the people he pokes fun at.

“I don’t want to imply that I’m different. I went after myself as viciously as possible. I just put myself out there,” he said.

A lingerie fashion show scheduled for halftime during the 2011 Class Board’s Super Bowl-watching party in Salomon 101 was canceled in a game-time decision Sunday night.

The event fell through when about two-thirds of the models dropped out at the last minute, said Neil Parikh ’11, sophomore class president.

At one point, there were 15 potential models slated to appear in the show. They had even held a rehearsal, Parikh said, but as of Sunday morning only six were still willing to participate.

“It wouldn’t be fair” to put on a lesser performance, said Salsabil Ahmed ’11, a class board representative. The Class Board felt they owed it to the models and Brown to put on a good show, she added.

There are plans to revive the idea in the future, Ahmed said. “If we did a separate event, we could really put in all our efforts.”

One possible opportunity would be during Spring Weekend, Parikh said.

The audience in the sparsely populated auditorium let out a collective noise of disappointment when Parikh announced the news at the start of halftime.

Instead of the fashion show, the audience watched the televised official halftime show, featuring Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. The rest of the viewing party went on as scheduled.

— Anne Simons

Human rights conference convenes continued from page 1

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in the world often differs from that ideal.

Whitehouse capped the Saturday evening town hall meeting by again discussing accountability for detainee abuse at Guantanamo Bay. “You don’t expiate a wrong if you don’t confess to it,” he said.

Bradshaw called Whitehouse — a first-term senator from Rhode Island — one of Physicians for Human Rights’ “great allies” and urged the audience members to support efforts to hold government officials responsible.

“We have to re-establish the fact that no one is above the law,” he said.

Marta Galecki, a student at Weill Medical College at Cornell, said she came to meet students who shared her interest in human rights issues.

She attended workshops where she said she learned how to target “significant players” who can help make a large-scale difference, and

an “eye-opening” workshop on the collapse of the health care system in Zimbabwe, she said.

Medical students and physicians, however, were not the only attendees. Chloe LeMarchand ’09, a human biology concentrator interested in global health, said she came to the conference to learn about a range of current human rights issues around the world. “It’s really the stories that touch you,” she said.

Talia Firestein ’09, another undergraduate who attended the conference, said she and LeMarchand learned about “values clarification,” when they evaluated themselves to see where they would stand if they had to make hard decisions. She gave the example of a health care worker in a developing country charged with caring for an entire community but equipped with only a limited amount of a hypothetical HIV vaccine. Would she choose to vaccinate the men — the “breadwinners” — or the women to best prevent spreading the disease to children?

Overall, “it was cool to interact and talk with these people you would never dream of meeting,” LeMarchand said.

Portia Thurmond MD’11, the copresident of the Brown chapter of Physicians for Human Rights, said the University’s “deep history of advocacy” made it a great site for the conference. She said the national organizers of PHR provided the programming, while the Brown chapter worked out the logistics with the help of many volunteers.

Though students had to register for the event, Thurmond said she was “flooded with e-mails” after registration had closed from students who were still interested in attending.

“We’ve just been letting people in anyway,” she said.

Thurmond said one of the conference’s crucial messages was that “you still have the power to do something.”

“In medical school, it’s easy to think in a ver y narrow way,” she said.

Monday, February 2, 2009

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS news in brief

Mysterious e-mail frightens MCAT-takers At least four Brown students scheduled to take the Medical College Admission Test Saturday morning received an e-mail on Friday erroneously telling them the exam had been cancelled.

“Please be aware that due to unforeseen circumstances we have been required to reschedule your pending Prometric exam,” the e-mail read in part. The message was sent just before noon Friday from the address “DoNotReply@ prometric.root” with the subject line “Pending Prometric Exam” ­— Prometric is the testing service provider that administered Saturday’s test in Warwick.

“Prometric will schedule your exam to the next available date. An e-mail confirmation will be sent with the new exam details within the next 48 hours,” the e-mail continued.

When Andrea Jones ’10 saw the e-mail, she called the Association of American Medical Colleges, which she said had no record of a cancellation at Prometric’s Warwick location.

Jones, a chemical engineering concentrator, was told “the email must have been sent in error,” she said.

“I think it affected ever ybody who was going to this site for a couple of days,” said Michael Li ’10, who took the MCAT on Saturday after also receiving the e-mail.

Li said that after the examination he talked to a site director who told him that “three or four people ended up not showing up” for the MCAT. Li knew of three other Brown students, including Jones, who had received the e-mail.

All three showed up for the exam, he said.

Jones said she was told that the e-mail “was sent to people taking every test” and was not restricted to the MCAT. Prometric representatives could not be reached for comment by press time.

The company offers academic, governmental and corporate testing and will next offer the MCAT on Mar. 28.

— Ben Schreckinger

Page 3

“They kicked to the end.”

— Silcia Pimentel, on dedicated Kick-a-thon-ers.

BTV makes a comeback with ‘soft launch’

By Shara Azad Staff Writer

After nearly two years off the air, Brown Television will begin broadcasting again tonight.

The student-run television station will resume broadcasting Monday through Thursday from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Initially, its content will consist mainly of footage of campus events filmed by BTV members, but in coming weeks station managers hope to debut new, student-generated programs, students involved with the BTV said.

“It’s impossible to come back the way we want to come back” — with only student-generated content — “this soon,” said David Notis ’10, the station’s executive producer. Instead, students involved with BTV are calling this week’s debut the station’s “soft launch” — an opportunity to demon-

strate that it has the infrastructure in place to broadcast and lay the groundwork for a wider variety of content to air soon.

In the meantime, BTV will feature footage generated by its members of events like Janus Forum debates, theatrical productions and other campus happenings ­— including a documentary with footage of election night celebrations on campus produced by Roman Gonzalez ’11, the station’s manager and programming director.

Students founded BTV in 1987 under the leadership of Doug Liman ’88, who is now a successful filmmaker best known for directing the 2005 blockbuster “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and directing and producing “The Bourne Identity.” But the channel slowly “faded away” after his graduation as the staff shrank in size and the station was poorly maintained, Notis said. Finally, in 2007, the station

stopped production entirely. Notis and Jad Joseph ’10 then took charge of the organization.

Since then, BTV has been working to “build up its infrastructure,” Gonzalez said. The staff has grown to consist of about 28 committed members, who are now trying to make BTV “a big presence on campus” once again, Notis said.

The station is holding a party Friday to celebrate its return to the airwaves and promote the BTV Web site, which is “a big component” of the new BTV, Gonzalez said. In the future, BTV hopes to have streaming video on the site, in recogntion, Notis said, of “how hard it is for college students to find a block of time to watch.”

For now, BTV will be available via Internet Protocol Television, better known as IPTV, and, for a short time, on cable channel nine. The nationwide shift from analog to digital television

broadcasting, currently slated for Feb. 17, will knock BTV off of the residence hall cable system, which the University may scrap entirely at the end of the academic year, The Herald reported in October.

BTV’s main goal, Notis said, is to feature mostly student-produced programs, for which the group will provide high-definitioncameras and microphones. BTV has already received 16 student-written pilots in a recent competition. The station will help produce the winning script for broadcast on BTV. In addition to collaborating with other students, BTV plans this semester to feature a program called “Campus Now,” which Notis said is basically “a highlight reel of Morning Mail.” It also plans to broadcast “BTV Retro” — shows that aired in the early days of BTV — according to Gonzalez.

U. reviews policy on Kicking for a cause research ethics

By Heeyoung Min Contributing Writer

continued from page 1 the new policy will affect professors and researchers because, as far as he knew, the revisions were not complete.

The conflicts of interest that have received the most national attention have had to do mainly with research that was funded by pharmaceutical companies, Dreier said.

Last September, The Herald reported that Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Martin Keller was targeted in an investigation regarding his study on antidepressants in children.

The current policy — available on the University Web site and last revised about three years ago, according to Dreier — states that “a potential financial conflict of interest exists when an investigator’s significant financial outside interest could lead an independent observer to reasonably question whether the design, conduct or reporting of research might be influenced by the possibility of personal gain.”

“If somebody from the federal government — say someone from the Senate committee — says, ‘What is Brown doing to make sure this kind of terrible stuff doesn’t happen,’” said Dreier referring to the Senate Finance Committee that investigated the

Keller incident, “they’ll have a good answer.”

But Dreier said he can only speculate about what the changes may be.

“I would assume there might be some tightening of some of the restrictions on what kind of research could be funded by whom,” Dreier said. “And if things aren’t disclosed, what kind of steps should be taken to make sure that the funding for us doesn’t influence the research.”

Many faculty members had concerns about the current conflict of interest policy, Dreier said.

For example, he said, faculty members are required to fill out an annual disclosure form indicating potential conflicts of interest regarding funding, stock holdings and institutional relationships, and some faculty consider it “unfair” that they have to disclose that information Despite the suggestion in December that the policy would be ready later this month, Dreier said he does not know when to expect the revision.

“All I can say is that I think it’s supposed to happen this semester,” he said.

Briant declined to discuss the revision in an e-mail to The Herald.

“You should know that the new policy is still very much in draft form at this time,” he wrote.

Martial arts enthusiasts converged on Sayles Hall Saturday to complete 1,000 kicks — more than some do in a lifetime — but not in preparation for competition.

Brown Taekwondo and Master Park’s Champion Taekwondo Center hosted their annual Kick-a-thon to raise money for the Tomorrow Fund, a non-profit organization that supports children with cancer and their families.

The event also drew participants from the Rhode Island Taekwondo Center, the New England Olympic Taekwondo Team, the New England Sports Association and the Rhode Island State Taekwondo Association.

About a third of Brown’s 72-member taekwondo club participated in the event, said Michelle Ramadan ’10, the club’s president. “It’s a great cause that provides both financial and emotional support.”

The taekwondo club first kicked for a cause to send money to regions affected by the 2005 tsunami. In the years following, all proceeds from the fundraiser supported the Tomorrow Fund, a decision influenced by the club’s personal connection to cancer.

Instructor and coach Master Sung Park ’96 lost his mother to cancer fifteen years ago, “around the same

time” that the Kick-a-thon now takes place, said club publicity chair Caitlin Feehery ’10. “Instead of mourning this time of the year, he decided to be active to help people in similar situations.”

Last year the Kick-a-thon raised about $8,000, about a third of which came from the pockets of Brown students. Participants spent winter break this year soliciting money from sponsors, including fellow students, relatives and community members.

This year they upped their goal from $6,000 to $10,000, Park said, but the donations won’t be totaled until next week. “Of course it’s hard with the economy. But if it’s tough for everyone, it’s that much harder on those families” with sick children.

As sponsors cheered them on from the sidelines, participants — many of them small children — kept on kicking, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“They had a very, very short break,” said Park.

“It’s good to feel as a parent that my son is five, and he’s already capable of helping people,” said Silcia Pimentel of her son Jomar Pimentel, a R.I. Taekwondo student. “This is a great way to teach your children from a young age about helping others.”

“Some kids are injured, and they’re here,” she added. “They kicked to the end.”

Page 4

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

Monday, February 2, 2009

“The significance of race in Cuba today is huge.”

— Stephan Meylan ’10

Students recount Cuban experiences continued from page 1

American media.

“A lot of what we get here is so polarized,” said Erika Nyborg-Burch ’10, one of the 11 students.

“I knew very few people who had been to Cuba,” she said. “The few pictures I had seen were basically just of Havana, some pictures of the old cars.”

Stephan Meylan ’10 agreed, despite having travelled previously in the Caribbean. “There’s this big dark hole in the center of the Caribbean,” he said. “I knew nothing about it, and going there was the only way to remedy the situation.”

The window into Cuba afforded

by Brown’s new program is an opportunity that few American college students have. There are only a handful of U.S. study abroad programs in Cuba, said Kendall Brostuen, director of the office of international programs.

“It’s not something that you can get from watching documentaries.

You need to actually be there,” Brostuen said. “They’re seeing a country at a pivotal time in its history.”

Hope, and storms The program participants were not in the United States during one of the semester’s most momentous events: the election of Barack Obama.

Many of the students voted in the election at the U.S. Interests Section, an office which represents the American government and its citizens in Cuba, Nyborg-Burch said.

But being in Cuba during Obama’s election gave the students a different lens on its significance.

“In Cuba, there were a lot of expectations about Cuba and the future

of the relationship between Cuba and the U.S.,” said Adrian Lopez-Denis, the program’s director and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History.

There’s “a huge amount of hope down there,” Meylan said, “about the change he could represent for Cuba and for the U.S.” Meylan said Cubans perceived Obama as a representative of the American people rather than part of the U.S. government. Meylan said the prevailing opinion he encountered was, “Obama is the American people, and he’s going to fix Cuba, as soon as he fixes the American economy.”

There was “a huge amount of general social empathy between the Cuban people and us,” Meylan said of the group.

Meylan recounted his conversations with Cubans. “Your people, my people, we’re the same people,” he recalled thinking. “Just because our governments don’t agree doesn’t mean that we’re at odds.”

“In the case of Cuba in particular, it was significant on many, many levels,” Lopez-Denis, who is Cuban, said. “The significance of race in Cuba today is huge.”

Lopez-Denis said the Afro-Cuban population has felt empowered by Obama’s victory.

“They see kind of an opportunity for their own aspirations to be heard and to be part of the political discourse in Cuba,” he said.

Even as the program’s participants witnessed Cubans’ hopes for a shift in relations with the United States, they confronted the challenges of studying and living abroad.

During Hurricane Ike, the students were evacuated to the Hotel

Courtesy of Stephan Meylan

“Cuba’s a complicated place (and) hard to explain,” he said. “I’d rather show it to people.”

Nacional de Cuba, a stormy start that suspended classes for the first week.

While the students remained safe, the destructive force of the hurricane was apparent. They heard about other provinces where people lost their homes, Courtney Smith ’10 said. “It really affected the country’s economy and food production,” she added.

Meylan said the students’ safety was a priority to Cubans. If anything had happened to the American students, he said, Cubans could have been considered responsible.

“We’re at the National Hotel of Cuba,” Meylan said. “Nobody else in the city has power. As tourists, why are we treated in such a way?”

In addition to the dynamics of power between foreign tourists and local Cubans, the students encountered other incidents that challenged their own beliefs and expectations.

“You have this idea that the revolution addressed issues like sexism, racism,” Smith said. But the “shortcomings of the revolution,” she said, became immediately apparent after their arrival.

Meylan said he felt very visible in Havana because of his ethnicity. “Because I’m white, blond and clear-eyed, people would send me to the front of lines, which I didn’t understand,” Meylan said. “I was very uncomfortable.”

Living and learning As the students adjusted to their new environment, they found shelter, as well as isolation, from their surroundings in the residence that they shared. “We were essentially an American enclave on top of an apartment building,” Meylan said.

Meylan and Smith said the closeknit community that resulted from living together provided a network of support that helped them adjust to all that they saw and experienced.

Smith said she appreciated “being able to debrief” about their experiences.

But Meylan pointed out that the immersion afforded by a homestay would have allowed him to progress further in his Spanish skills. “I’ll have to say that my Spanish didn’t improve as much as it could have,” he said.

Though Meylan said “standard

Cuban living conditions” could have been a “disconcerting” experience for his fellow students, NyborgBurch said she enjoyed the halfweek she spent living with a family in San Cristobal, a small town in the province Pinar del Rio. “I had worked on some organic farms this past summer, and I was interested in learning about Cuban agriculture,” Nyborg-Burch said.

The program’s on-site director, Lopez-Denis, connected her to a family he knew.

“I got to meet most of the people who lived in the village,” NyborgBurch said. “I got to help them farm.

We planted tomatoes, and every morning I had fresh cow milk.”

“They were incredibly gracious and welcoming,” she added. “It’s a different dynamic meeting someone for coffee or meeting someone in a class than living in a house ... and trying to fit yourself into their schedule and their way of life,” she said.

“The things that you can learn from the life of a family are really hard to teach,” Lopez-Denis said.

But he said the constraints of partnering with Casa de las Americas, the research institution where the program participants studied, would not allow the students to spend the entire duration of their trip living in Cuban homes. He called the shared residence a “safe haven” that helped the students cope with the intensity of Cuban life.

Lopez-Denis said he and the OIP are considering arranging short home-stays like Nyborg-Burch’s, but added that nothing is definite.

“This is an evolving situation where basically we learn from the experiences,” Lopez-Denis said.

The limitations on the participants’ immersion in Cuban life extended to their academic lives as well. They took four pre-designated classes at Casa de las Americas, rather than at the University of Havana.

“We were led to believe at the beginning that we’d have a full complement of Cuban students with us in every class,” Meylan said. But, Nyborg-Burch added, the Cubans in their classes were mostly older and often could not attend class because of their jobs.

It felt like “the classes were really for us, the American students, and they were really just sitting in,”

she said.

Nyborg-Burch said the Brown students initially were not integrated into the “student culture” because they were not studying at the University of Havana. “It was a longer adjustment,” she said.

Lopez-Denis hopes to address this concern next fall by creating a “hybrid” structure in which students will take courses at Casa de las Americas and be able to sit in on classes at the University of Havana.

Lopez-Denis emphasized the importance of being able to meet Cubans of their age who shared their academic priorities “in a safe space.” But, he said, “this is very preliminary.”

‘A complicated place’ For the 11 students, readjusting to the United States and Brown has been a simultaneously overwhelming and relieving process, whether braving Providence’s cold and icy weather, engaging the social atmosphere of a campus with thousands of students or having the luxury of choosing from among the ample offerings of the Blue Room and Thayer Street.

“It’s exciting, but it’s also kind of intimidating at times,” NyborgBurch said.

But through the first handful of weeks back on campus, the program’s participants have continued to take advantage of the bonds they have built with each other. “It’s kind of nice to have people who are coming back from the same place that you’re coming back from,” NyborgBurch said.

Meylan said that before he left for Cuba, some people he told about his study abroad program refused to believe him.

“They would tell me that I was not going to Cuba because that was illegal,” Meylan said. “That just pointed to the lack of knowledge and understanding about the actual Cuban-American relationship.”

Lopez-Denis said he hoped the study abroad experience had contributed in some small way to improving the relationship between the United States and Cuba. “Cuba’s a complicated place (and) hard to explain,” he said. “I’d rather show it to people.”

Arts & Culture The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, February 2, 2009 | Page 5

‘Hope’ poster designer has Providence roots

By Rosalind Schonwald Ar ts & Culture Staff Writer

Shepard Fairey, best known for his four-toned Obama “Hope” poster, has a connection to College Hill that extends beyond matching liberal ideologies and pop-culture nonconformity.

With his first major museum exhibition, “Shepard Fairey: Supply and Demand,” set to open at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art this Friday, Fairey, a 1992 Rhode Island School of Design graduate and street artist, has once again brandished his invisible hand, coloring the pop-fabric of Providence.

Murals have been popping up across Providence in recent weeks, despite inconsistent degrees of permission. An image in Fairey’s style appeared on a building on Westminster Street recently and was later removed, and AS220’s Dreyfus Building on Washington Street now sports some of his images on an outer wall. These works have prompted irritation from some property owners, support from Fairey’s fellow liberals and, perhaps, inspiration in young, likeminded iconoclasts and rebels.

“Obviously the one on Wesminster he probably didn’t (have permission) because someone’s already taken it down,” said Joel Martinez, an employee of Washington Street restaurant Local 121.

“The one at AS220, they were probably like, ‘That’s cool.’ If I had a house and he came and did some ar twork on the side, I probably

wouldn’t take it down,” Closer to the Brown campus, Fairey arranged a mural in Nice Slice this past week. The image in this space seems to have more significance — and more permission — than some of Fairey’s other recent works around Providence.

Nice Slice owner Alfred Read, a RISD graduate, worked with Fairey when both were at RISD and describes himself as an “early supporter” of Fairey’s iconoclastic work. As a result, Read is familiar with Fairey’s process. He told The Herald that Fairey’s images tend to be modular — the artist creates the work in advance and assembles it on location.

Read is also familiar with the thematic threads that run through Fairey’s work.

“Traditionally society accepts people like Henr y Ford as figures of great importance, significant contributions and role models, but there are other not quite fully realized iconoclasts such as Angela Davis, who have shaped the way a lot of people think and need to be recognized for this,” Read wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “These iconic type figures, such as equal right activists, musicians, artists … are maybe the people we should be putting on our dollar bills and including more prominently in our culture.”

The image inside Nice Slice features a gigantic face of Angela Davis, surrounded by other portraits.

Read explained that the collage-like continued on page 6

Courtesy of Alfred Read

Shepard Fairey installed a mural of Angela Davis in Nice Slice.

Kim Perley / Herald

The Brown/RISD Hillel gallery hosted two assistant professors’ work focusing on geometry.

Hillel features professors’ geometric art

By Anita Mathews Ar ts & Culture Staff Writer

The newest exhibits on display in the Brown/RISD Hillel gallery space feature the work of Assistant Professor of Visual Art Leigh Tarentino and RISD Assistant Professor Graham Day Guerra. Both shows opened on Jan. 23 and will

run through Feb. 4.

Tarentino’s exhibit, called “Recent Work,” consists of watercolors, digital prints and oil paintings.

A common theme woven through all the works is the use of fine lines in symmetrical arrangements. Her subject matter draws on urban symbols — traffic signs, telephone poles and the like — but almost

always represents them monochromatically. Tarentino wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that she made this artistic choice to place “more emphasis on the geometr y and linear quality of the composition, and to achieve a particular kind of dreamlike ambience that is distinct continued on page 6

Page 6

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

A rts & C ulture

Monday, February 2, 2009

“It showed how people respond to an icon.”

— Shepard Fairey, artist

Artist’s murals shock continued from page 5 facade of the mural, which features several small pictures, was meant to evoke the posters of a political campaign, where images and ideas are superimposed on one another. Sometimes one image must be ripped away to make room for change.

Read was familiar with Fairey’s artistic history as well. “In 1989 he started a social experiment with a sticker,” he said. “It showed how people respond to an icon, even if they don’t know who it is.”

Fairey’s Web site, obeygiant. com, features a manifesto written

by Fairey in 1990 to describe his reasons for the sticker experiment and his exploration of the human response to images. Fairey wrote that he wants viewers to question their surroundings and their rela-

tionships to image. The manifesto is written in extreme and absolute terms. “The paranoid or conservative viewer,” warns Fairey on the site, “may be confused by the sticker’s persistent presence and condemn it as an underground cult with subversive intentions.”

It is ironic, Fairey continues, that people respond to his stickers and his guerilla works of art with horror and disdain, considering the constant bombardment of commercial images that per vade society.

Fairey’s anti-establishment art, however, seems to be rapidly becoming a part of the commercial tapestr y that he strives to defy.

His “Hope” poster was a staple of Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign, and, as of Jan. 18, hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Galler y in Washington.

Courtesy of Alfred Read

A mural on the wall of AS220 in Downcity features Stephen Fairey’s signature “OBEY” tagline.

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Brown and RISD profs’ work on display continued from page 5 from everyday reality.”

“The thread that runs through all of my work,” writes Tarentino in the artist’s statement available at the exhibit, “is about transforming elements of an archetypal modern American landscape into a fantastic imaginary world.”

Indeed, Tarentino’s work renders the familiar and mundane in a novel way, while still retaining characteristics recognizable to the viewer.

Employing spatial and proportional distortions, Tarentino links

isolated fragments of city landscapes with telephone and electrical wires in a neat and graphic manner.

She wrote in the e-mail that she was seeking to create “patterns from randomness.” Her digital prints achieve this combination, playing with reflection and symmetry by showing the same vignettes — full of unrelated urban elements — from varying perspectives.

Tarentino’s work aims to highlight the “unnoticed backdrop of daily life,” according to her artist’s statement, but some works in the show achieve their goals better than others. The oil paintings are striking and convey a fantastic mood, while the digital prints are harsher and in some ways less aesthetically pleasing. The prints are better admired from afar, where the composite effect of large-scale symmetry is more obvious.

Overall, however, Tarentino’s work shows great attention to detail, allowing for representations that both stay true to her everyday subjects and depict them in unconventional ways.

Guerra’s charcoal drawings revolve around the play of light. He contrasts graded softness of the illuminated human form with the sharpness of stadium lights. In depicting fetus-like skulls and arena light fixtures side-by-side, Guerra juxtaposes the primordial and the technological. The drawings show incomplete human bodies that repeat in overlapping patterns. The result is a series of images in which bodily elements look authentic when separated, but when grouped in each of Guerra’s works make for a surreal sum of parts that is far from human.

Both artists show an interest in both the progressive and the quotidian, and though their portrayals are quite different, both send the message that there is much to be admired in the seemingly mundane.

SportsWeekend The Brown Daily Herald

Amid pomp, exciting football

So I was watching NBC last night — got to see a ton of yellow flags, thoroughbreds and Danica Patrick in the process — when, all of a sudden, a football game broke out.

It’s hard to say exAlex Mazerov actly when Maz’s Minute Super Bowl XLIII turned from a snoozefest of Arizona Cardinals penalties, dropped passes and largely uninspired commercials (more on those later) into one of the greatest NFL championship games of all time — Commissioner Roger Goodell went so far as to proclaim it even better than last year’s epic Patriots-Giants duel.

But the turning point was probably when Cards wideout/freak-ofnature Larry Fitzgerald hauled in a six-yard pass from Kurt Warner with 10:33 left in the fourth quarter for just his second reception of the game.

Fitzgerald, whom the Pittsburgh Steelers secondary had completely shut down until that point in the game, finally turned from a nonfactor into the “meast” (short for half-man, half-beast for anyone who doesn’t read kissingsuzykolber.com) we’re so accustomed to.

He grabbed another Warner pass out of the air two plays later for an 18-yard gain, then a six-yarder on the next play. After a completion over the middle to running back Tim Hightower got the Cards to the Pittsburgh one-yard-line, Fitz reeled in a touchdown pass over Ike Taylor to bring his team to within six.

Later in the fourth, after a safety netted the Cards two more points, Fitzgerald made what was this close to being the game’s biggest play when, in classic Larry Fitzgerald fashion, he caught a pass from Warner on a post route over the middle, turned upfield and zoomed 64 yards to the end zone, watching himself on the Jumbotron the whole time — 23-20 Cardinals after the extra point.

But it wasn’t enough, as just over two minutes later Steelers receiver and soon-to-be-named Super Bowl MVP Santonio Holmes made a spectacular catch on his tip-toes in the right corner of the end zone to give the Steelers the lead for good and their NFL-record sixth Super Bowl victory — obviously the play of the game, though the clearly freaked-out stagehand who juggled Bruce Springsteen’s recklessly thrown guitar at the beginning of the halftime show and just continued on page 8

For m. hockey, another tough weekend on ice

By Dan Alexander Sports Staff Writer

The men’s hockey team (2-15-4, 2-10-3 ECAC Hockey) was the only team in the nation that hadn’t given up a shorthanded goal all season when the puck dropped against Quinnipiac (14-10-2, 7-5-2) on Friday night. Twenty-four minutes into the game, Brown had given up two shorthanded goals and was on its way to a 5-1 loss to the Bobcats.

Brown’s struggles continued the next night when they fell by the same score to the No. 9 Princeton Tigers (15-6-0, 9-5-0).

Quinnipiac and Princeton were the only two ECAC teams that the Bears had yet to face in a league game heading into the weekend.

Quinnipiac scored the first goal of the game while Brown had a oneman advantage. Mike Atkinson of the Bobcats stole an errant pass at mid-ice and charged down the right side. Atkinson dished the puck off to Eric Lampe on his left. Lampe deked goalie Dan Rosen ’10 before shooting the puck past him for the game’s first goal.

Monday, February 2, 2009 | Page 7

The Bears evened the score under a minute later when Eric Slais ’09 found Assistant Captain Jordan Pietrus ’10 in the middle of Quinnipiac’s defensive zone, directly in front of the goalie. Slais passed from the right point to Pietrus.

“I got it and turned on it as fast as I could and shot,” Pietrus said.

Pietrus fired a shot from within 10 feet of the goal and beat the goaltender to tie the game at 1-1.

The first period ended with the score at 1-1, behind strong play from Rosen, who was 13-for-14 in the net.

“I thought they took it to us in the first period,” said Quinnipiac Head Coach Rand Pecknold. “I thought they outplayed us.”

Brown Head Coach Roger Grillo agreed, saying the “first period was solid.” But Grillo added, “We shot ourselves in the foot in the second.”

Quinnipiac’s first of four secondperiod goals came when Mike Atkinson of the Bobcats deked Rosen to the right before coming back to continued on page 8

Justin Coleman / Herald

Men’s hockey extended its losing streak to three games Saturday against a tough Princeton squad.

W. hockey defeats Quinnipiac and Princeton

By Andrew Braca Spor ts Editor

With under a minute remaining in overtime on Saturday, the women’s hockey team was clinging to an improbable 1-1 tie with Princeton. The Tigers were tied for third place in ECAC Hockey, had the benefit of a home crowd and were out-shooting the Bears by a factor of nearly 4-1.

Bruno had been mired in its defensive zone for much of overtime, but the team was finally able to bring the puck down the ice. Nicole Brown ’10 took a shot that Princeton goalie Kristen Young saved, but Jenna Dancewicz ’11 got the rebound and took a shot that Young was not able to glove, leaving the puck to fall to the ice.

“I hit it again, and it went underneath the goalie,” Dancewicz said.

“It was awesome.”

The goal gave Brown a surprising 2-1 win over Princeton. Coupled with a 3-0 road win over Quinnipiac on their home ice at the TD Banknorth Sports Center the previous night, the win secured the Bears’ (5-16-1, 4-11 ECAC Hockey) first four-point weekend of the season.

Captain Nicole Stock ’09, a Herald sports staff writer, saved 72 of the 73 shots she faced, while Dancewicz and Brown tallied four points apiece.

“It was really nice to have the kids come together,” said Head Coach Digit Murphy. “I felt that there was a lot of team chemistry this weekend. They really were focused, and it was nice to see.”

Against Quinnipiac (3-21-4, 2-104), Brown roared out of the gate, taking a 1-0 lead just 3:40 into the game on a power-play goal by Nicole

Brown.

“It was good for our confidence,” Murphy said. “We historically haven’t played well in (Quinnipiac’s arena), and to get on the scoreboard early … the kids started to believe in themselves.”

The score remained 1-0 for the next 37 minutes, thanks largely to the efforts of Stock and a strong penalty kill that denied the Bobcats on each of their seven power plays.

But the Bears came out energized in the third period, and Andrea Hunter ’10 gave Bruno a two-goal cushion just 1:08 after intermission.

“We talked about it in the locker room — we need(ed) to put another one in and deflate them a little bit and make sure we didn’t just sit on the 1-0 lead, and I think that was really important,” Stock said.

Nicole Brown extended the lead with 5:13 remaining in the game on another power-play goal. The Bobcats turned up the intensity, unleashing 14 shots in the period, but could not get past Stock, who turned aside all 30 shots she faced to earn her first shutout of the season.

Bruno faced an entirely different challenge in Princeton, N.J. The Tigers outshot the Bears, 43-12, but were never able to take control of the game. Both Dancewicz and Murphy cited Stock as the key factor in the upset, but they also praised a defense that played better than the stats showed.

“It wasn’t only Nicole — our whole defensive corps did a really good job of being patient and composed and putting the puck into smart places,” Murphy said. “The kids played with courage. Princeton was definitely a better team.

They came at us with everything

but the kitchen sink, but it seemed like Stock was able to see mostly everything.”

“I have to give a little bit of credit to the team in front of her that allowed her to see it (and) cleared (rebounds) to the corners,” Murphy added Stock echoed that sentiment.

“We played good defensive hockey,” she said. “It made my job a lot

easier.”

The Tigers took a 14-2 advantage in shots into the first intermission, but the game remained scoreless after one period. Finally, consecutive Princeton penalties gave Brown a lengthy 5-on-3 advantage 6:25 into the second period, and the Bears took advantage. Eighteen seconds continued on page 8

Page 8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S ports W eekend

Monday, February 2, 2009

“Everybody makes the playoffs.”

— Matt Vokes ’09, assistant hockey captain

M. hockey falls to Quinnipiac, Princeton continued from page 7 his left and backhanding a goal in traffic. The shorthanded goal gave Quinnipiac a 2-1 advantage.

“We gave up the (second) shorthanded goal and we were too mentally weak to recover from it,” Rosen said. “We spiraled downhill.”

Quinnipiac’s Bryan Leitch, the nation’s leader in assists and points, assisted the next three goals in the second period. The first was a rocket that Dan Henningson fired from the right point over Rosen’s right shoulder 5:38 into the period, while the Bobcats were on a power-play.

The next goal came with under five minutes left in the frame, when Leitch slid the puck between two Bears in front of the goal to David Marshall, who one-timed it home to give the Bobcats a 4-1 lead.

The final goal was Jean-Marc Beaudoin’s backhand that beat Rosen glove-side low. The Bears couldn’t come up with a goal of their own in the second period, and when the frame ended, Quinnipiac was ahead, 5-1.

“We’re like two different teams.

You never know which is going to show up,” Rosen said. “We came out first period and played as good as we have all year and came out in the second and played as bad as we have all year.”

Rosen left the ice at intermission with 24 saves on the night, including his 2,000th career save.

Mark Sibbald ’09 replaced him for the final period, and was five-

for-five in the net.

Brown took its home ice again the following night to face No. 9 Princeton. The Tigers came into the game amidst a slump, having fallen to their last four ECAC opponents, including a 3-1 loss to Yale the night before.

The Tigers beat the Bears 4-1 earlier this season in the Showcase at Meehan, but the first meeting was not counted as an official ECAC game.

The Tigers controlled the action early in the game, scoring two goals before Brown even took a shot.

Brown players spent 10 minutes in the penalty box during the first period alone, giving the Tigers two five-on-three opportunities and five power-plays.

One of the five-on-three opportunities led to a goal by Jody Pederson midway through the first period to put the Tigers ahead, 2-0. Princeton lined up shot after shot, gathering each rebound before Pederson finally beat goalie Mike Clemente ’12 top shelf with a slap shot.

Clemente was the third Brown goalie to see the ice this weekend.

“We’re trying to find a guy who wants to step up and be the guy,” Grillo said. “We’ve got three good goalies who’ve all played well at times. We’re just looking for some consistency.”

When the first frame ended, the Bears had gotten off four shots to Princeton’s 18.

“The first period we took too many penalties and dug ourselves

Justin Coleman / Herald

“We’re trying to find a guy who wants to step up and be the guy,” Head Coach Roger Grillo said.

a hole,” Grillo said. “I thought we played pretty well in the second and third but just couldn’t capitalize.”

The Tigers outshot the Bears in the middle period by a more modest margin of 16-12, but still netted another two goals. Mark Magnowski added another goal and assist in the second period.

The third started out 4-0, Princeton. Bobby Farnham ’12 prevented the shutout 2:30 into the final period off an assist from Jack Maclel-

lan ’12.

Maclellan controlled the puck at the bottom of the left faceoff circle.

“I was just yelling to him, ‘Pass it out,’” Farnham said. Maclellan found Farnham at the top, and Farnham one-timed the puck into the back of the net for Brown’s only goal.

Princeton made it a four-goal game again when Magnowski added his second goal of the night with under eight minutes remaining,

Women’s hockey snaps losing streak in OT continued from page 7 later, Dancewicz found the back of the net to give her team the lead.

“It definitely lightened up our mood,” she said. “It’s always tough when you’re tied, because whoever scores the first goal has the momentum and gets fired up, so it was really good.”

But the Tigers kept plugging away. With 10:16 remaining in the game, Princeton finally tied the score when the rebound bounced to unguarded Tiger Katherine Dineen.

Murphy said she was nervous about how her team would react after Princeton tied the game, but she was impressed with the way the young group of defenders buckled down for the stretch run.

Erica Kromm ’11, Samantha Stortini ’11, Jacquie Pierri ’12 and Paige Pyett ’12 “really played very gritty and very hard, and that was the stor y of the game,” Murphy said.

Both Stock and Dancewicz said that the players thought they had a good chance of winning the game heading into overtime, but it was the Tigers who took control early

in the period. They kept the puck in the Bears’ defensive zone for most of the period and took four shots on goal, but Stock made four saves to keep the game going.

Finally, the Bears got the puck out to Princeton’s side of the ice and took it to the net.

“Jenna Dancewicz was, at some level, just a rabid dog — she didn’t give up on it,” Murphy said.

The Bears escaped Baker Rink with a 2-1 win. The four-point weekend pushed the Bears up from four points beneath the Bobcats to a tie for 10th with Quinnipiac. The loss dropped Princeton from a thirdplace tie to fifth.

The overtime win was Bruno’s first in ECAC play since a 3-2 victory over Princeton in the 2004 ECAC Quarterfinals.

“It was nice to finally be the winning team in overtime and not go home dejected,” Murphy said.

The Bears will continue their road trip next weekend with rematches against No. 9 Dartmouth (14-6-2, 11-3-2) on Friday and Harvard (10-7-3, 10-4-2) on Saturday.

“We seem to play well on the road, so hopefully we can keep it going in their house,” she said.

making the final score 5-1.

The two losses moved Brown back to the bottom of the ECAC standings, as Colgate picked up a win against Clarkson on Friday night. Both Colgate and Brown have just seven points.

“There’s no trophy for the regular season,” Assistant Captain Matt Vokes ’09 said. “Everybody makes the playoffs. We’re going to fix some things and stick together so we can get some wins.”

Super Bowl exceeds expectations continued from page 7 barely managed to hang on provided us with a close runner-up.

As for the commercials, the enduring memory from this year’s Madison Avenue throwdown may well turn out to be an advertisement than many viewers could have easily missed, one that I at first thought was the result of an NBC screw-up. I am of course speaking of the widely hyped onesecond ad from Miller Brewing Co. in which a delivery man whips up his arms and screams “High Life!” — the result of a shoot that apparently lasted 17 hours.

The diet soda hater in me also enjoyed the Pepsi Max ad where we see guys who have just been whacked with golf clubs, bowling balls and thousands of volts of electricity shake it off with a cool “I’m good.”

The punch line: “Men can take anything … except the taste of diet cola.”

Justin Coleman / Herald

The women’s hockey team won two road games over the weekend.

Alex Mazerov ’10 agrees with John Madden: “That was a real super Super Bowl.”

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 10 | Monday, February 2, 2009

e d i to r i a l

Desperate measures

The recent downturn on Wall Street has caused many universities to mind their budgets and tighten their belts. President Ruth Simmons’ e-mail specifically addressing the crisis estimated a 28 percent decrease in the University’s endowment, shrinking it to a projected $2 billion dollars by the end of June.

Over the past few months, our increased attention to financial matters in all areas of the University has alerted us to some of the charges incurred by students which we think are counterproductive, even in light of Brown’s dire financial situation.

We believe one of Brown’s primary goals, for the sake of attracting applicants and establishing a base of loyal alumni, should be to create an environment where students have personal choice and a feeling of fair treatment. In that spirit, we’d like to suggest that the University reevaluate some of its more questionable, albeit gainful tactics.

We appreciate Brown’s difficult financial position, especially given its endowment’s modest standing relative to peer institutions. But we wonder whether students should bear the brunt of its efforts to close the gap. Many of the University’s policies diminish the student experience. Under the recently instituted payment structure for studying abroad, for example, Brown requires that students pay full tuition in order to receive credit internationally. Given that almost no programs abroad are as expensive as Brown, students often have to pay thousands of dollars in excess of foreign tuition.

Brown’s more creative fundraising techniques don’t all take place overseas.

Locally, the Brown First policy forces student groups to solicit Brown Dining Services and Graphic Services for their catering and printing needs before they’re allowed to work with businesses not affiliated with the University. This program, implemented in 2002 in order to support the Plan for Academic Enrichment, places an undue burden on student groups. Campus life suffers when organizations have to pay higher rates or waste time jumping through bureaucratic hoops for lower prices from outside vendors.

There’s a common theme. Brown deprives undergraduates of access to the lowest-cost providers of education and services. But it doesn’t stop there.

The cap on off-campus housing creates an artificial demand for on-campus dorms. We understand the value of residential community, but we believe that Brown dorms should compete on their own merits for upperclassmen tenants.

Given that many students were crowded into converted lounges and kitchens last fall, the off-campus housing cap seems ill-advised.

It may appear imprudent for the University to adopt more generous policies in a time of financial distress. We would urge administrators to take a longer view. While these measures may prove costly in the short-term, a grateful class of alumni pays handsome returns.

t h e b r o w n d a i ly h e r a l d Editor-in-Chief Steve DeLucia

Managing Editors Michael Bechek Chaz Firestone

editorial Arts & Culture Ben Hyman Hannah Levintova Arts & Culture Features Sophia Li Features Emmy Liss Higher Ed Gaurie Tilak Higher Ed Matthew Varley Metro George Miller Metro Joanna Wohlmuth News Chaz Kelsh News Jenna Stark Sports Benjy Asher Sports Andrew Braca Asst. Sports Alex Mazerov Asst. Sports Katie Wood

Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor Editor

Graphics & Photos Graphics Editor Chris Jesu Lee Graphics Editor Stephen Lichenstein Eunice Hong Photo Editor Kim Perley Photo Editor Justin Coleman Sports Photo Editor production Kathryn Delaney Copy Desk Chief Seth Motel Copy Desk Chief Marlee Bruning Design Editor Jessica Calihan Design Editor Anna Migliaccio Asst. Design Editor Julien Ouellet Asst. Design Editor Neal Poole Web Editor

Associate Editors Nandini Jayakrishna Franklin Kanin Michael Skocpol

Senior Editors Rachel Arndt Catherine Cullen Scott Lowenstein

Business General Managers Office Manager Shawn Reilly Alexander Hughes Jonathan Spector Directors Ellen DaSilva Sales Director Claire Kiely, Sales Director Phil Maynard Sales Director Katie Koh Finance Director Managers Local Sales Kelly Weiss National Sales Kathy Bui University Sales Alex Carrere Recruiter Sales Christiana Stephenson Opinions Sarah Rosenthal

Opinions Editor

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Post- magazine Arthur Matuszewski Kelly McKowen

F ranny choi

l e t t e r s to t h e e d i to r s

Portrayal of women on tableslips offensive To the Editor: I recently saw several tableslips that were outrageously anti-feminist. The most appalling was the Class Board advertisement for a Super Bowl party featuring a lingerie fashion show. It stated, “Come see your friends rock football gear and lingerie,” implying that while guys relax in sportswear, intelligent and talented young women should walk around in their underwear for all to see. The idea that Class Board, which is supposed to represent the student body and receives University funding, would sponsor such a blatantly sexist event is an embarrassment to Brown, and I was dismayed that my student representatives approved the event.

One sorority rush tableslip claimed, “Not your average school. Not your average sorority girls,” and pictured five women engaged in a variety of projects.

I appreciated the sororities’ presentation of women

involved around campus until I noticed the way they were dressed: one in a sports bra, another in a belly dancing shirt and a third in a revealing tank top. For sororities that claim to be different from stereotypes, I was disgusted with the presentation that women need to expose their bodies to have worth.

Phi Kappa Psi had distributed a tableslip for “Gentleman’s Night,” and a second showing a Playboy Bunny icon. I’m horrified that a group of men who treat women with so little respect in advertisements and want to exploit their bodies at administration-approved parties would call themselves gentlemen. After seeing such offensive and demeaning tableslips, I’m not sure Brown is as progressive and friendly to women as it claims to be.

Kate Fritzsche ’10 Jan. 30

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correction

Lauren Fedor, Frederic Lu, Luis Solis, Copy Editors Hannah Levintova, Brian Mastroianni, Ben Schreckinger, , Night Editors Senior Staff Writers Mitra Anoushiravani, Colin Chazen, Ellen Cushing, Sydney Ember, Lauren Fedor, Nicole Friedman, Britta Greene, Sarah Husk, Brian Mastroianni, Hannah Moser, Ben Schreckinger, Caroline Sedano, Melissa Shube, Anne Simons, Sara Sunshine, Staff Writers Zunaira Choudhary, Leslie Primack, Christian Martell, Alexandra Ulmer, Lauren Pischel, Samuel Byker, Anne Deggelman, Nicole Dungca, Cameron Lee, Seth Motel, Kyla Wilkes, Juliana Friend, Kelly Mallahan, Jyotsna Mullur, Chris Duffy Sports Staff Writers Peter Cipparone, Nicole Stock Business Staff Maximilian Barrows, Thanases Plestis, Allen McGonagill, Ben Xiong, Bonnie Kim, Cathy Li, Corey Schwartz, Evan Sumortin, Haydar Taygun, Jackie Goldman, Jilyn Chao, Kenneth So, Lyndse Yess, Margaret Watson, Matthew Burrows, Maura Lynch, Misha Desai, Stassia Chyzhykova, Webber Xu, William Schweitzer Design Staff Jessica Kirschner, Joanna Lee, Maxwell Rosero Photo Staff Alex DePaoli, Quinn Savit, Meara Sharma, Min Wu Copy Editors Rafael Chaiken, Ellen Cushing, Younhun Kim, Frederic Lu, Lauren Fedor, Madeleine Rosenberg, Kelly Mallahan, Jennifer Kim, Tarah Knaresboro, Jordan Mainzer, Janine Lopez, Luis Solis, Ayelet Brinn, Rachel Starr, Riva Shah, Jason Yum, Simon Liebling, Geoffrey Kyi, Anna Jouravleva Web Developers Jihan Chao, Greg Edmiston

Due to an editing error, an article in Friday’s Herald (“Alum may become Obama’s ‘car czar,’” Jan. 30) incorrectly reported that Professor George Borts taught Steven Rattner ’74 P’09 in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international finance. Borts said he only probably taught one of those courses. The Herald regrets the error.

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, February 2, 2009 | Page 11

Give us choice … in education BORIS RYVKIN Opinions Columnist A grassroots organization of Providence area teenagers, Young Voices, recently came out with a study on the state of the city’s public schools. The group surveyed 1,700 students, about a fifth of the city’s high school population, and 149 teachers. A consultant was hired to help interpret the results, which showed that only 30 percent of student respondents rated teachers as “motivating.” Some of what students heard from their instructors included “Why don’t you just drop out?” and “I don’t care if you graduate — I still get paid.”

Information Works!, a database created by the Rhode Island Department of Education and the University of Rhode Island, serves as the official state report card of Rhode Island’s public education system. A letter from Education Commissioner Peter McWalters opens the 2008 report, which touts improvements in math and reading proficiency as measured by state standardized tests.

Perhaps Mr. McWalters knows something I don’t, but little in the data he presented in the letter gives cause for celebration. The reading proficiency of third graders did improve by nine points — from 51 to 60 percent! Eighth grade math proficiency stayed at 48 percent.

Eleventh grade test results were equally discomforting. In fact, not one grade passed the 70 percent threshold in either math or reading.

Something is definitely wrong with Rhode Island’s public schools, but the problem nei-

ther begins nor ends here. America’s public education system is severely flawed and in need of comprehensive reform. Yet state bureaucrats and entrenched special interests, primarily teachers’ unions, continue to do everything in their power to prevent meaningful change.

They portray themselves as selfless crusaders for student welfare, but simultaneously stand in the way of initiatives to simplify procedures for firing bad teachers, introduce merit-based pay to reward effective teachers and allow per-pupil education spending to be attached to students instead of schools through

spending $10,000 per pupil back in 2004.While officially considered per-pupil spending, the money is actually attached to schools, not students. That is the main reason why costs keep rising, independent of any improvement in student performance.

Vouchers correct this problem by making the money follow the students. Schools, public and private, would be forced to compete.

Schools with severe personnel problems, like those the Youth Voices respondents complained about, would go out of business.

Competition yields efficiency and lower costs. Children with legitimate special needs

Something is definitely wrong with Rhode Island’s public schools, but the problem neither begins nor ends here. voucher and scholarship programs. A 1996 study by Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby, “How Teacher’s Unions Affect Education Production,” concluded that unionization raised dropout rates by 2.3 percent.Whereas higher teacher pay and lower student-teacher ratios had a discernable effect in reducing dropout rates in nonunionized schools, the same was not true for their unionized counterparts.

School choice through vouchers is perhaps the most important of the reform initiatives.

Per pupil spending by state governments has skyrocketed. New York spends upwards of $20,000 per pupil, with the cost for Washington, D.C., reaching almost $25,000. Rhode Island, according to U.S. census data, was already

could attend schools that specialize in learning disabilities. Gifted children could attend high-quality prep schools. Vouchers level the playing field for minority and low-income students who are currently locked into broken inner city public schools by inflexible and convoluted school board regulations. Economist Carlisle Moody of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy estimated in a 2003 report that Virginia taxpayers spent $6,400 to educate one child in the public school system, even though tuition at the average state private school costed $4,500.

What about charter schools? They are public schools, but with greater independence in developing curricula and dealing with person-

nel than the current system. Why not let parents save financially and send their children to places where teachers are incentivized to experiment and take risks?

President Obama has no problem with choice when it comes to his two daughters. After moving to Washington, the first family sent both to an elite private school. Since D.C. public schools are among the worst-performing and costliest in the country, his decision is understandable. Yet in a speech last year to the American Federation of Teachers, one of the country’s two largest teachers’ unions, Obama said, “We need to focus on fixing and improving our public schools; not throwing our hands up and walking away from them.” Talk about a study in hypocrisy.

The situation in Rhode Island is rather bleak. It has the third-weakest charter school law in the country according to the Center for Education Reform. Its one significant voucherlike program is a corporate tax credit, capped at $1 million, which funds a maximum of 10,000 private school scholarships for children. State education guidelines emphasize centralized monitoring, arbitrary standards and flawed assumptions about student performance rates.

As Newt Gingrich would say, real change requires real change. Let’s sideline the special interests, really put students first and push for wide-ranging school choice for Rhode Island families.

Boris Ryvkin ‘09 is a political science and economics concentrator from New York City. He can be reached at boris_ryvkin@brown.edu.

Higher ground

BY WILLIAM MARTIN Opinions Columnist Last Thursday, a panel assembled to discuss the recent hostilities in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces, and drew a crowd that packed one of Brown’s largest lecture halls. The event was organized by the group Common Ground, which claims the lofty goal of bringing together Jewish and Arab opinions to find a workable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Buzzwords abounded: The forum was intended to mull “implications and reconceptualizations” of the conflict’s many facets, and it delivered an illuminating if diffuse set of perspectives.

But the event could have offered its attendees far more insight had it included a speaker to address the political, military and psychological considerations that led Israel to launch the Gaza campaign — not necessarily a fervent believer in the decisions of the IDF, but someone prepared to discuss the currents of opinion that shape those decisions.

Some of the organizers, panelists and attendees seemed to think that presenting these views was unnecessary — that during the three weeks of the IDF bombardment of Hamas, the American media had full-throatedly endorsed the Israeli strategy and minimized the Gazans’ suffering.

That is incorrect. American news outlets reliably focused on the bloody and traumatizing effects of the bombardment for ordinary Gazans and highlighted the IDF’s failure to

stop Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israel.

For many Brown students, the IDF operation in Gaza was dumbfounding, the logic behind it incomprehensible. But even those who considered the campaign utterly unacceptable will have to grapple with that logic, and if they want to have any chance of defusing and dismantling it they will have to understand it.

The operation had the support of more than 90 percent of the Jewish Israeli public, ordinary people who wanted their elected government to protect them from rocket attacks and demonstrate to those who wish them

have been more “balanced,” Alex Ortiz ’09, one of the event’s organizers, indignantly denounced the question as a “diatribe” and condemned the notion of equal time for all views as a way to covertly distort the discussion.

Ortiz is right that not every public forum on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be a diametric debate with equal representation for each major approach to the problem. But for many Brown students, the predominant Israeli view is the most radical “reconceptualization” of the debate to which they could be exposed.

Common Ground’s forum on Gaza could have offered its attendees far more insight had it included a speaker to address the political, military and psychological considerations that led Israel to launch the Gaza campaign. harm that they are willing to use the military force at their disposal. Dismissing their views as bloodthirsty machismo unworthy of consideration doesn’t do anyone any good.

Brown students could easily procure intelligent and detailed analyses of Israel’s motivations. But they could just as easily turn up scholarly or political treatises on arcane topics like those covered by the panelists. Common Ground set itself the task of exposing its audience to perspectives they would have otherwise ignored. But when it came to Israeli public opinion, they shirked that task.

When an older attendee praised the forum but asked whether the panel’s opinions should

For those less aware of Gaza’s plight, Common Ground provided analyses of humanitarian dilemmas, alleged Israeli war crimes and the political motivations that led to the election of Hamas. The panel posed no comparable challenge to students unsympathetic to Israeli suffering.

Presenting an analysis of mainstream Israeli public opinion would not only have helped students sympathetic to the Palestinian perspective navigate the issue, it would have sent a signal to Brunonians fiercely in favor of the IDF operation that the members of Common Ground acknowledge and respect their opinions, even if they disagree vehemently.

When supporters of the IDF assault see their opinions ignored and hear the vitriolic outbursts of students willing to acknowledge only the Palestinian perspective, they become bitter and frustrated — more likely to bicker, less likely to listen.

Former Senator Lincoln Chafee ’75, speaking about his experience observing Hamas’ rise to power from Washington, inadvertently provided one of the event’s low points. He recalled an American military expert emphasizing the crudeness of the Qassam rockets that are Hamas’ main long-range weapon against Israeli civilians: “They could go north … or they could go east.”

The remembered quip queued a ghoulish chorus of giggles from the audience, a sound to freeze the blood of any friend or relative of the 15 Israelis killed by Qassams since they were first launched in 2001.

I haven’t forgotten that 15 lives are a drop in the blood-stained bucket compared to the 1,300 Gazans killed during the recent operation, much less the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s overall death toll.

But if you scorn the fears and anxieties of the vast majority of Israeli Jews and their sympathizers and reject their strategies for self-defense as barbarism, you harden the ideological battle lines that help sustain the turmoil in the Holy Land. For all their good intentions, that’s what the members of Common Ground did last Thursday night.

William Martin ’10 is a history concentrator from Seattle, Washington.

Today

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W. hockey scores a two-win weekend

Monday, February 2, 2009

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feburary 3, 2009

5:00 PM — “Dissection and Doctoring: What the Dead Teach Us About Healing the Living,” Christine Montross MD ’06, Salomon 101

4:00 PM — “Israel in a Changing Middle East” with Nadav Tamir, Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute 5:30 Pm — “Providence 101: Making a Difference from the State Supreme Court,” Crystal Room, Alumnae Hall

Courtesy of SchultzLabs

9:00 PM — Audtiton for the Bear Necessities, Sayles 105

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Cheese Raviolis with Sauce, Pulled Pork Sandwich, Italian Vegetable Saute, Vegan Patties

Lunch — Shaved Steak Sandwich with Mushrooms, Artichoke and Red Pepper Frittata

Dinner — Pacific Chicken and VegDinner — Chopped Sirloin with Onetable Stir Fry, Lemon Rice, Brown Rice ion Sauce, Tofu Raviolis, Mashed RELEASE DATE– Monday, Garden Casserole, BelgianFebruary Carrots 2, 2009 Butternut Squash, Cuban Stir Fry

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle r Norris oss or d Lewis Edited byc Rich andw Joyce Nichols ACROSS 1 Celebrity skewering 6 Jeff’s partner 10 One-horse carriage 14 Mammy’s boy 15 Swelled heads 16 “Brothers & Sisters” actor Rob 17 Frank Burns’s heartthrob on “M*A*S*H” 20 Bird feeder filler 21 Gal Fri. 22 Left, at sea 23 Malt-drying oven 25 Ponderer’s phrase 27 Be a B-team player 31 A prospector might get a lode of it 32 Lioness’s lack 33 House haunters 37 Rx’s 39 Dr. Mom’s forte 41 Piece marked “piano, four hands,” obviously 42 Good-for-nothing 45 Sci. with a lab 48 Hens do it 49 1967 Paul Newman title role 52 Virgin Mary 55 Peter, Paul and Mary, e.g.

56 “There __ atheists in foxholes” 57 Town name ending 59 Stop sleeping, with “up” 63 Pre-1991 U.S.-U.S.S.R. strategies 66 Spanish sunrise direction 67 Green Hornet’s sidekick 68 Art class models 69 In need of charging, as a cell phone 70 Elemental unit 71 Court reporter

DOWN 1 Arena cheers 2 Orchestral reed 3 Start the pot 4 Once in a long while 5 Hex- halved 6 “M*A*S*H” chow area 7 Exclamations of disgust 8 Play the flute 9 Nashville sch.

10 Careless, as workmanship 11 Sounds from Santa 12 In the loop 13 Broadway matchmaker 18 Turkish big shot 19 Gate fastener 24 PIN requester 26 Subj. including grammar 27 Prebirth berth 28 Kind of code or rug 29 Funny Foxx 30 Shakespeare’s Sir Toby 34 “Star Trek” crewman

35 Shipbuilding wood 36 Eyelid affliction 38 Backed the motion 40 Place for online gab 43 “You’d better __”: “Please leave” 44 Poly- ending 46 Sign up 47 16th-century start 50 Scurrier in a maze

51 Backless 52 Sprayed with tear gas 53 Stood up 54 Triangular Greek letter 58 Vision: Pref.

60 Right-hand man 61 Sharp-edged 62 Old U.S. gas 64 Wanted-poster letters 65 Officeholders

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

For those of you who may have forgotten, today is Groundhog Day. This fateful day will determine whether winter will continue, unrelenting, or if spring is closer than we thought.

The largest Groundhog Day celebration is held every year in Punxsutawney, Pa., where thousands gather at Gobbler’s Knob to see if Punxsutawney Phil, the town’s legendary groundhog, will see his shadow upon emerging from his burrow.

If he does, he retreats into his hole, indicating that six more weeks of winter are in store. If the day is cloudy and Phil does not see his shadow, he will stay above the ground and, as tradition holds, spring will arrive shortly.

According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Web site, Phil’s official prediction will have come earlier this morning, at

approximately 7:25 a.m.

While there are many varying theories regarding the historical origins of Groundhog Day, most seem to link it to German beliefs that once surrounded Candlemas Day, a Christian holiday celebrated throughout Europe. Historically, on this day clergy would bless candles and then distribute them to people.

The weather on Candlemas Day was considered an indication of seasons to come.

If the sun appeared, then traditionally a hedgehog would emerge, seeing its shadow and ushering in six more weeks of winter.

Since Phil’s first official Groundhog Day appearance in Punxustawney in 1886, he has seen his shadow 96 times, not seen it 14 times, and nine times left crowds with no seasonal forecast.

comics Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

xwordeditor@aol.com

02/02/09

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

By Betty Keller (c)2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

02/02/09