Wednesday, February 4, 2009

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vol. cxliv, no. 11 | Wednesday, February 4, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

President, provost detail tighter budgets Brown lags fiscal year 2010, which begins July 1, recommends that both the general budget and the separate budget for the Division of Biology and Medicine break even next year. That goal represents a departure from recent years, in which the University’s expenditures have outpaced revenue to fuel a rapid phase of growth.

The proposed general budget would set expenses for the next academic year $21 million below previous projections. It would also increase payout from the endowment to the operating budget and raise

By Nicole Friedman Senior Staff Writer

Despite anticipating major endowment losses and tight budgets due to the slumping economy, the University remains committed to moving forward with some ambitious capital projects, top administrators said at a monthly faculty meeting Tuesday. They also provided details of planned budget tightening in the years ahead.

The budget drafted by the University Resources Committee for

undergraduate student charges by 2.9 percent — smaller than the fourto five-percent increases of recent years.

At the meeting, Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 also suggested that the University has not yet found ways to generate all of its needed savings, and President Ruth Simmons revealed that the University had scrapped plans to finance construction by taking on new debt.

In her report to the faculty, Simmons said the worldwide economic crisis provided the University with

the opportunity to “question longheld assumptions about our needs” and emphasized the importance of maintaining educational excellence despite the financial downturn.

Simmons said the University typically projects budgets five years into the future when planning, a practice it would maintain to “prevent radical, shortsighted solutions.” Since there is no consensus among economic experts on the economy’s prospects for recovery, she said, planners are assuming that the crisis will last lon-

the television and print reporters, Bogard said he felt the conference was successful on both accounts.

The act would allow candidates, if they chose to take part, to collect a certain number of $5 contributions to show that they have continued on page 2

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By Melissa Shube Senior Staf f Writer

It may have been snowing, but that did not deter members of the Brown chapter of Democracy Matters from trekking down to the state house Tuesday afternoon, posters in hand, for a press conference in support of the Rhode Island Public Financing of Elections Act.

METRO Melissa Shube / Herald

Members of the Brown chapter of Democracy Matters head to the steps of the Rhode Island State House.

the press conference to drum up support for the legislation, which would create a voluntary system of public financing for all statewide and legislative elections. The act was first introduced five years ago but has struggled to make it past several committees and onto the floor.

“Our goal was first to expose the issue to more legislators,” Jonathan Bogard ’09, a member of Democracy Matters, told The Herald. “The second goal was to expose the issue to Rhode Islanders.” Pointing to the ring of legislators watching the press conference from above the rotunda and citing

Student activities endowment on track to representatives from UCS and the Undergraduate Finance Board — a goal UFB Vice Chair Stefan Smith ’09 said was “not happening any time soon.”

But Davitt said the University would “love” to raise at least $100,000 — a minimum floor for endowments, she said — by the end of June.

The Council’s Student Activities Committee initiated the proposal to create an endowment for the Student Activities Fund at the beginning of the fall semester, presenting the University with a report on the benefits of such a move.

The chair of the Council’s Student Activities Committee, Ryan Lester ’11, told The Herald last month that he was

by Ben Schreckinger Senior Staff Writer

www.browndailyherald.com

Endowment changes since July 2008 0

Dartmouth

Duke

Northwestern

Harvard

Stanford

Yale

-20 -25%

Emory

-15

Columbia

-10

Georgetown

-5

U. of Chicago

News.....1-4 Higher Ed.5-6 Sports......7 Editorial..10 Opinion...11 Today........12

Percent change

inside

An Undergraduate Council of Students initiative to have the University raise an endowment for the Student Activities Fund will go forward, one of Brown’s top fundraisers said Tuesday, though increased stress on donors is likely to slow the project.

The plan, which would seek to ultimately eliminate the $164 fee all students currently pay into the fund, was approved in December, said Vice President for Development Kristin Davitt ’88.

The University would need to raise between $17 and $21 million to completelyeliminate the fee, according

By Lauren Pischel Staff Writer

Brown ranks second-to-last in the Ivy League in the percentage of black students enrolled in the Class of 2012, according to a recent study published by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.

Blacks made up 6.7-percent of the first-year class at Brown, compared with 12.1 percent at Columbia University, which led all 29 upper-echelon universities the study examined. Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, second and third in the Ivy League, had 10 percent and 9.4 percent respectively. Among Ivies, only Cornell enrolled a lower percentage of blacks than Brown — 4.5 percent of its incoming class.

Brown’s 6.7 percent enrollment tied it with Johns Hopkins, Washington and Vanderbilt Universities for 17th among the 29 universities, which were included in study because of their high scores in U.S. News and World Report’s annual college rankings.

“We admitted more African American students last year than in the history of the institution,” said Dean of Admissions James Miller ’73, but that did not lead to a rise in black students’ matriculation. The Class of 2012 matriculated 104 black students, one fewer than the Class of 2011.

“We did not have a good year last year,” Miller said.

The relatively low 6.7-percent enrollment is not due to a lack of blacks in the applicant pool, nor in the number admitted. The problem

Students rally for campaign finance reform

As students stepped over ice and through piles of snow, they called out, “Elections, not auctions,” and, “People in, money out” — though they accidentally chanted “People out, money in” while marching through Kennedy Plaza. On their march, they passed out faux $5 bills featuring advertising icon Mr. Clean advocating for campaign finance reform.

Democracy Matters organized

in black enrollment

ra c y o u trea c h

surprised by the plan’s rapid progress.

“My goal was that we would create this report last semester and ask for the money this semester,” he said.

Davitt said she hopes to compile a list of potential donors in the next two months, although she said it was not a top priority.

“It’s a little tricky in this economic environment to look for additional dollars,” Davitt said, adding that the annual fund and financial aid expansion are requiring increased attention.

Lester said the possibility that the activities fund endowment might be put on the back burner given the University’s other priorities was not a continued on page 2

Courtesy of Andrew Vottero ’09 New MSex posters “were interesting to people of all genders and sexualities.”

Higher Ed, 5

Sports, 7

Opinions, 11

Schools lose money Brown isn’t the only school with huge endowment losses

Gymnastics on top The gymnastics team is in first place in the Ivy League

More Ratty Issues Kate Doyle ’12 lists her dining hall grievances

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

herald@browndailyherald.com

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Students want fair elections continued from page 1 popular support, explained State Senator Rhoda Perry, D-Dist. 3, one of the primary sponsors of the act.

They would then receive a grant from the state, which would change the way they ran their campaigns, she said.

Perry said fair elections would increase the number of voters, help to create competitive races and encourage more minorities and women to run for office.

“If we could spend less time raising money and more time doing our job, I think it makes for better officials,” said Rhode Island Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis. “I think it makes for a better state.”

“I would love nothing more then to see us all begin a debate and start a dialogue,” Mollis added.

But “there is a price tag to it,” Mollis told The Herald, explaining that with current strains on the state’s budget, funding is the biggest hurdle for the legislation. A public financing system would initially cost $7 million a year, according to a press release from Rhode Islanders for Fair Elections.

To the side of the press conference’s podium stood a giant ear stuffed with money, which, according to Bogard, “symbolized the fact that right now legislators’ ears are being clogged with money, that voices of their constituents are being blocked out by the overwhelming presence of large corporate campaign donations.”

Speakers expressed disappointment in Rhode Island politics and some said they felt the act was an opportunity for the state to change its tune.

“As a proud Rhode Islander,” Rev. Donald Anderson said, “I continue to be dismayed by the disappointing lack of diversity in the House of Representatives, Senate and general offices.”

Phoebe Neel ’12, a member of Democracy Matters and the only student to speak at the conference, noted that in addition to coffee milk, Rhode Island is “definitely known for our brushes with corruption.”

She called the act “an amazing opportunity to show people that Rhode Island actually cares about fair and impartial elections.”

Sheila Dormody, the Rhode Island Director of Clean Water Action, said she supported the act because it would cut the influence of oil, gas and chemical lobbyists and force candidates to address issues she thought constituents were more concerned with. “Rhode Islanders really care about the environment,” she said.

Bogard said the policy implications were the most important reason for adopting the legislation.

Public financing would free candidates from an obligation to act in the interest of large corporate donors, he added.

A similar public financing system already exists in Arizona, Connecticut and Maine.

“I’m here to let you know that it works,” said Nancy Smith, a member of Maine’s House of Representatives.

Kurt Walters ’11, a member of Democracy Matters, said he was hopeful that the act would make it to the floor. “People are catching onto the idea,” he said. “If not this year, the momentum is growing enough that it will be soon.”

sudoku

Daily Herald the Brown

“Rhode Islanders really care about the environment.”

— Shelia Dormody, R.I. Director of Clean Water Action

Black enrollment unchanged from last year continued from page 1 instead lies in the number of students who accept Brown’s offer, Miller said. He said there are three steps to building a diverse student body: increasing diversity in the applicant pool, then among admitted students and finally among those who actually enroll.

Blacks represented 6.1 percent of the University’s 20,633 applicants last year. Brown accepted 22 percent of them, compared with just over 13 percent of all applicants.

In order to increase the matriculation rate among blacks, the admissions office has been bringing low-income students to the Third World Welcome, a program for admitted students run by the Third World Center in conjunction with A Day on College Hill. The University also hopes to expand contact between black alums and accepted students.

“We did very well with people from the lowest-income group” of blacks, but less well with those

Jonathan Spector, Treasurer Alexander Hughes, Secretary

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from the upper-middle class, Miller said.

“We are tr ying to get more (black) students to accept their acceptance into Brown,” said Brenda Allen, Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity.

“For the past 10 years, we’ve been doing about the same,” Allen said. “Is that about the same the best we can do? We don’t think so.”

The matriculation rate among blacks accepted to Brown was 37.4 percent, according to the study, compared with 64.1 percent at Harvard, 52.8 percent at Penn and 35.5 percent at Cornell. Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth and Princeton did not provide data on black student yield.

Though all 29 schools in the study provided enrollment data, some declined to provide information on acceptance rate or yield among blacks.

“Some universities believe they will be giving up a competitive edge to other schools if they reveal their admissions data,” wrote Robert

Bruce Slater, the Managing Editor of the journal, in an e-mail to The Herald.

“These universities may not want to let their conservative alumni see that they are giving preferences to black applicants,” Slater wrote.

To explain Columbia’s high black matriculation rate, Miller cited both Columbia’s geographic draw — Columbia, located in Upper Manhattan, is near Harlem and other black cultural centers — and a large applicant pool.

Slater, too, attributed Columbia’s high enrollment of blacks to its location.

But he also credited Columbia’s admission policies. “Columbia President Lee Bollinger has always been a firm supporter of affirmative action in admissions,” he said, adding that “since (Lee Bollinger) came to Columbia from the University of Michigan, the university’s numbers have been up,” Slater said.

Columbia admissions of ficials declined to comment on the study.

TA stint launched alum’s comedy career

By Matthew Klebanoff Staf f Writer

Long before he wrote and directed a Web series for Comedy Central, garnering hundreds of thousands of hits, Sandeep Parikh ’02 worked as a “humor TA” in Professor of Computer Science Andy van Dam’s introductory programming class.

“Every TA has a side job, and they pick two to be humor TAs,” Parikh said. “Your job is to basically deliver lessons with sketches or with little short films.”

Parikh, who writes and directs the live-action Web series “The Legend of Neil,” a spoof on the popular video game series “The Legend of Zelda,” first posted his videos on YouTube in July of 2007 and now runs his own Web site, effinfunny.com.

As a computer science concentrator with a passion for writing, Parikh described being a humor TA as a “perfect marriage” of his two interests.

One of the gags in the class entailed bringing van Dam water each class in an increasingly elaborate way.

On the first day, Parikh and the other TA brought van Dam a glass of water with a straw in it. On the second day, they offered the professor water in a boot.

“By the end of it we just did

Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 | Business Phone: 401.351.3260 Stephen DeLucia, President Michael Bechek, Vice President

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

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a whole ‘Les Mis’ parody, where instead of ‘one day more,’ it was ‘one drink more,’” Parikh said.

Parikh said he also filmed a Halloween skit in which the sweater van Dam always wears over his shoulders comes alive and attacks the TAs. “The sweater was iconic and having it cast as the villain was fun,” van Dam said. “It was unusual. No one had tried that before.”

During the summer following

FEATURE his junior year, instead of procuring a computer science internship as he had in previous years, Parikh and a few friends worked on an “insane 30-minute short film” entitled “The Courier Dodge.”

The movie became a finalist at the Ivy Film Festival, which encouraged Parikh: “If other people can do this, then why can’t I?” During his senior year, Parikh received a Capstone Award for a feature screenplay he had written.

After graduation, Parikh lived in New York and put up a few plays “off off off off off off Broadway.”

About a year later, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television.

He shot an independent pilot, “The Good Guys,” about a group of superheroes and what they do when they’re not saving the

world. The pilot helped Parikh land an agent at the William Morris Agency.

“Before I knew it, I was meeting with TV and all these other Web companies out here, and then Comedy Central kind of swooped in and trumped all the other deals and said they wanted to guarantee six episodes,” Parikh said.

He also promoted talented comedians on his Web site. “I know a lot of standup comics out here from doing a lot of improv, and that seemed like the easiest and sort of simplest thing to shoot and get a lot of content up for the site,” Parikh said. “The concept for the site was to put up a new standup clip virtually every day.”

Parikh has also created an original Web series called “The Guild,” which focuses on the lives of members of an online guild. He is currently releasing new episodes of “The Guild” and is working on the second season of “The Legend of Neil.” He is also pitching a few television concepts.

He credits his time at Brown with helping him figure out that he would like to do something creative with his life.

“Thanks to Brown I am able to apply my sciency/logical brain in creative endeavors,” Parikh wrote in a post on the Class of 2002’s blog. “I’m like a Terminator who can paint landscapes or sculpt.”

Plan for student activities endowment to move forward

rant

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surprise. “It’s not a setback in itself,” he said this week. The project will “hopefully get the fundraising to raise the initial 100k,” he said, “but we’re not going to get much more help because

of the economic situation.”

In December, the Development Office was “more optimistic that we could find more (money),” Lester said.

“In three months, if we (have not) gotten the initial hundred thousand, then, yeah, we’d be behind.”

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

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“I very much think of us as being at a building moment.”

— Ruth Simmons, president

W E D N E S D AY, B LO O D Y W E D N E S D AY

Tamir defends IDF actions in Gaza Strip

By Jenna Stark News Editor

Frederick Lu / Herald Sayles Hall is hosting the University’s first blood drive of 2009 now through Thursday..

Simmons and Kertzer address faculty continued from page 1 ger than two years.

The University is also “assuming all revenue sources will be down next year,” she said, and does not expect to be able to draw on its endowment much more heavily than it already does. Since payments on debt have to be accounted for in the operating budget, Simmons said, “no significant additional near-term debt will be incurred in order to fund our capital projects.”

The University is already drawing on its endowment at record levels this year to help fund increased financial aid commitments.

It was still expecting to take on additional debt to fund planned construction as recently as last fall, The Herald reported in September.

Though Simmons’ comments yesterday indicated a departure from that strategy, the president insisted that “our emphasis is on moving forward.”

The Corporation, she said, agrees that the University should continue to invest in new construction projects — hopefully at a reduced cost — despite making budget cuts in other areas. To fund new buildings, Brown has asked donors to redirect gifts toward more urgent projects and to deliver pledged payments early, if possible.

In his report to the faculty, Kertzer said the University is budgeting for just three-percent revenue growth over the next five years, less than the five-percent growth it anticipated last year for nearly the same period. Brown now expects general revenue — which does not include BioMed funds — to grow from $543 million this year to $635 million in the fiscal year ending in 2014, which is $60 million less than was projected last May. Projected BioMed revenues have been lowered $10 million over the same period.

But that money is not being cut from current budgets, Kertzer said.

Instead, the numbers represent the difference between newly projected

budgets and “where we previously thought we would be.”

The BioMed division, which is now projecting 3.25-percent yearly growth, revised down from 4.6 percent, is “discussing various options” for how to proceed with plans for a $65-million Medical Education Building, Kertzer said.

The URC’s budget recommendations for the next fiscal year include a 2.9-percent increase in tuition and fees for undergraduate students and a three-percent rise in charges for graduate and medical students. Even so, Kertzer said, “tuition is not going to be the place” for the University to make up lost money, since costs would not increase at all for the 41 percent of students currently receiving financial aid.

The URC’s budget recommendation includes a 9.8-percent increase in funds for undergraduate financial aid, he said.

The University is still looking for $30 million that it can cut out of projected general budgets by the fiscal year ending in 2014, Kertzer said, adding that the Organizational Review Committee is looking for ways to do so. Simmons announced in a campus-wide e-mail last week that top administrators are already seeking ways to cut their budgets, and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Beppie Huidekoper said several administrators volunteered last month to cut their own salaries.

Simmons told an audience at Family Weeekend in October that she planned to discuss a reduction in her own salary with the Corporation.

The URC will present its budget for the fiscal year 2010 to the Corporation for approval in February.

Simmons reviews the URC report and makes her own suggestions to the Corporation as well.

Simmons and Kertzer both emphasized the University’s commitment to continuing to review and approve some capital projects.

“I very much think of us as being at a building moment,” Simmons

said. “We went through a period of time where we invested relatively little in our infrastructure. We’re not in a position to wait five years before starting up again.”

In response to a question, Huidekoper said the University expected to save some money on healthcare costs in the coming year, but then see costs rise by about eight percent per year after that. The University became self-insured this past year and is now saving about a million dollars a year in healthcare overhead.

Asked whether the University would allocate funds to departments based on their potential to bring in revenue, Simmons said she “would not be prepared” to take money from departments that do not produce as much revenue, such as humanities departments, in order to focus money elsewhere.

“That is a business decision that’s excellent, but that’s a lousy decision for a university,” she said. “I’m probably being a little too emotional as somebody from French, but there it is.” The faculty met this comment with a round of applause.

After questions ended, Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Faculty Executive Committee Jamie Dreier presented the first annual Faculty Service Awards for “distinguished service in faculty government.” Simmons, who had told the faculty in her address that she assumed the University’s existing governance processes could “serve us well during this period,” joked that the three award recipients would not be asked to decline their $2,000 research awards.

In other business at the meeting, the faculty voted unanimously to approve a motion to officially change the name of the William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics to the William R. Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance. The meeting also included a memorial minute for Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Katsumi Nomizu, who died at age 84 on Nov. 5.

Amid tensions brought on by the recent war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the upcoming elections in Israel this week, Nadav Tamir, consul general at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem, spoke yesterday about the possibility of a two-state solution from an Israeli perspective.

Tamir, who served as a policy assistant for three different Israeli foreign ministers, began his lecture by describing the Israeli perspective on the situation in Gaza. “For us, the way we see things is that we left Gaza in order not to go back to Gaza,” he said. “It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but we thought that it would be a great way to embark on an attempt to eventually reach the two-state solution.”

However, Tamir said, even before the Israelis left Gaza, rockets were already being launched into Israel’s southern cities, with the frequency of Qassam rocket-fire only increasing once Hamas took over Gaza. The rockets continued even as a cease-fire was reached between Hamas and Israel, Tamir said.

“Eventually, Hamas left us no choice, because the first responsibility of every government is to protect their citizens from external threat,” Tamir said.

Tamir emphasized that the Is-

raeli government did not target civilians during the military operation. “We did everything possible to make sure that the Palestinian people knew when we were going to attack an area that Hamas was in,” he said.

But Tamir said Israel will not stop defending and protecting its people. “Israel will not succumb to terrorism,” he said. “We will not have to apologize to protect our people.”

Tamir said that 80 percent of the Israeli public now believes in a twostate solution. “If we keep controlling the Palestinians’ life, we cannot remain a democracy,” he said.

After the Six Day War in 1967, during which the Israeli government took over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the government made a “tragic mistake” in allowing settlements in the West Bank, Tamir said, adding that Israelis are “now paying the price for this.”

When multiple attempts at peace failed, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally moved to create a two-state solution, Tamir said, by giving the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to the Palestinians.

But “instead of making Gaza a great model, it became a hub of terrorism,” he said.

Still, Tamir said he remains hopeful that an agreement with the Palcontinued on page 4

news in brief

Meara Sharma / Herald File Photo

A writing fellow at work. The program recently switched funding sources.

A program by any other name The Writing Fellows Program has dropped the Rose family name from its official title and now receives funding from the Office of the Dean of the College after the gift supporting it ran out last spring. The program, previously known as the Rose Writing Fellows Program, began in 1982 and was funded by a gift from the Rose family.

Britt Harwood ’09, assistant director of the program, told The Herald in an e-mail that the Office of the Dean of the College agreed to fund the program after the gift expired a year ago. Program Director Douglas Brown said the end of the gift came as no surprise.

“We saw it looming,” he said.

Each fellow is paid $800 per semester, and most of the program’s funding goes towards these payments, Brown said.

Though Harwood wrote that the program’s operating budget has decreased from $200,000 to $110,000 annually, Brown wrote in an e-mail that the program is doing well under the new funding arrangement. “The news for the fellows is good, not bad,” he wrote.

— Anne Speyer

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Sultry slips stimulate MSex interest

by Sarah Husk Senior Staf f Writer

A close-up of three mouths kissing. A nearly-nude Giselle Bundchen washing a car. These and other sexually provocative images, while perhaps not standard fare for tableslips, have made appearances all over campus.

The images, part of a series of advertisements for the Male Sexuality Workshop, are part of the group’s plan to encourage a more diverse group of participants, said MSex coordinator Andrew Vottero ’09.

The campaign focuses on images of eroticized women, portrayals of threesomes and heterosexual couples as part of an effort to reach out to female and straight male students, Vottero said. The impetus for including these images, he said, is partially to dispel the idea that MSex is primarily for gay men.

“We wanted (the tableslips) to feature images that were interesting to people of all genders and sexualities,” Vottero said.

But some students questioned whether the advertisements were not too overt an appeal to certain groups.

“It seems to me like they are tr ying to recruit straight people who are afraid of joining something that is not overtly masculine,” said Adison Lax ’11. “I think more men will look at these because of this.”

“It’s all really catchy,” she added. “It makes it seem really sexy.”

The advertisements, Vottero said, “grabbed people’s attention immediately.”

The images — all chosen by Vottero — aim to do more than provide simple shock value. Vottero said that all of the images were taken by respected art photographers, like Terry Richardson and David LaChapelle.

“The aesthetic of the ads is where I started,” he said.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

“The aesthetic of the ads is where I started.”

— Andrew Votteroa ’09, MSex coordinator

State court chief speaks about women, justice in law

by Luisa Robledo Staf f Writer

Courtesy of Andrew Vottero / Herald

Program coordinators took a new approach to MSex table slips this year.

Vottero also said that each image represented a topic addressed in the MSex curriculum or that might be broached during a session. The scenes depicted in the advertisements, he said, depict a variety of relationship models, genders and sexualities.

He said his intention was to find “interesting, beautiful images that were relevant to the subject matter.”

But many students said they were confused by the images in the advertisements.

“Is this supposed to be a safe place for discussing gay and transgender things?” Miriam Joelson ’11 asked.

“I just kind of thought it was ironic,” she said.

Each advertisement also contains a brief testimonial from a past MSex participant about what

he (or she) got out of the workshop. These quotations, Vottero said, were included to give students a better idea of the kind of content the group covers and of what prospective participants might learn.

While the MSex curriculum will remain similar to the one followed in years past, Vottero said that curricula are fluid between groups. He added that while one notable addition to this year’s curriculum is a class devoted to a discussion of the anus, the ultimate goal is to find and address material that “everyone can respond to.”

Despite the suggestive nature of the advertisements, which Vottero admitted could be “bothersome to some people,” he said he has received no complaints about them. In fact, he said, the tableslips have been doing their job in attracting interested students.

Vottero reported that approximately 30 students attended the information sessions. “I think the turnout was really good,” he said.

But some students did think the images were causes for concern.

“I can understand why people might take issue,” said Sam Yambrovich ’11, a post- Magazine columnist. “These are all heterosexual images, and I think MSex has to do with anything and everything with male sexuality.”

Despite positive feedback, the provocative images may also deter potential members. After viewing the advertisements, Alex Hare ’12 said he was “probably less” likely to join MSex. A few of the images “have been pretty intense,” he said.

— With additional reporting

by Sydney Ember

Maureen McKenna Goldberg, the acting Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, turned the Swearer Center’s “Providence 101” initiative into “Law and Order 101” yesterday.

Discussing topics that included the history of women on the state’s top court and advice for prospective law students, Goldberg gave the audience a glimpse of her professional life. Tuesday’s lecture, held in Alumnae Hall, was part of a series of sessions intended to give students the opportunity to learn more about Providence and its histor y.

Goldberg, a graduate of Providence College, began the event by talking about the “arduous path” of women to success in the legal world. A few decades ago, men argued that “the delicacy of the female sex” made them unfit to pursue a career in law, she said.

“Women trial lawyers, of which I was one, were a rare sight to see,” said Goldberg, who is the third woman to be appointed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

But she noted a rise in the number of female judges over the last three decades — there are now 28 female judges in Rhode Island’s several courts, compared with just three in 1980.

“Now that looks like we’ve made great improvement,” Goldberg said.

Goldberg also gave advice to the handful of prospective law students in the audience of about 15 people.

She spoke about the financial crisis, President Barack Obama and the “changed world” into which graduates are stepping.

“Get the job done,” she said.

“Whatever responsibilities may come your way, fulfill them and do so with a smile on your face.”

During the question-andanswer period that followed the lecture, audience members asked Goldberg to speak more about her own professional experience as a judge. She talked about the need to remain neutral when making a decision because, according to Goldberg, ever yone has the right to have a “fair and impartial trial.”

“You have to be able to look at a trial record with dispassion,” she said. “No matter who asks the question, the answer is always the same.”

Goldberg said that as a state Supreme Court justice who reviews case decisions, she misses being directly involved in the legal process like she was as a judge in state Superior Court, where she said she would often sentence drug addicts to rehabilitation instead of jail.

She said she once met one such man whom she had sent to rehabilitation, and he showed her how he had turned his life around and bought a new car. “‘This is my car, and I have a car because I have a job,’” Goldberg recounted the man saying. “‘And, I have job because you didn’t send me to jail.’”

She finished the session by telling students to start figuring out what they like to do before settling on a career. “It is not cheap to go to college — you might as well end up doing something you like,” Goldberg said. “I like what I do, so that turned out well.”

According to a Jan. 31 Providence Journal article, Goldberg is among at least seven candidates interested in the vacant job of chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, which she is filling in a temporar y capacity.

Israeli official visits Brown continued from page 3 estinians and a long-term solution will be possible in the future. “With a new government in Jerusalem, we will be able to go back to negotiations,” he said. “I believe that ‘yes we can.’”

Tamir’s lecture was protested by an ad-hoc group of students outside MacMillan Hall holding signs and pamphlets saying, “Shouldn’t Israel be accountable to human rights standards?”

Other students, some dressed in keffiyehs — traditional Palestinian scarves — and signs reading “IDF Was Here,” referring to the acronym for the Israeli military, protested inside the lecture.

Brown Students for Israel, which helped publicize the event, passed out flyers at the event describing “Hamas’s illegal actions during recent escalation.”

Students expressed a range of feelings about the lecture, which was sponsored by the Watson Institute for International Studies.

“The speaker did a good job respecting and fully responding to opinions of all perspectives,” said Jimmy Rotenberg ’09. “As always with an event on this issue it’s very emotional.”

Harr y Reis ’11, president of Brown Students for Israel, said that Tamir “really articulately represented the mainstream view of the Israeli public,” a voice that is “extremely important” to hear on campus and that was “missing until now.”

“The case for Israel in recent histor y is a ver y strong one and that is why he had such a strong presentation,” Reis said.

“I thought it was a pack of lies,” said Jesse Soodalter ’94 MD’09, one of the anti-Israel protestors. “It was a very seamlessly orchestrated justification for Israeli policy.”

“I thought the expressions of sympathy for the Palestinians killed was an unspeakable atrocity, presuming to call that a tragedy and wishing that we could have avoided it — naked hypocrisy,” she said.

Higher Ed The Brown Daily Herald

“Brown is not alone.”

— Ken Redd, NACUBO director of research and policy analysis Wednesday, February 4, 2009 | Page 5

Brandeis community laments museum loss

By Alicia Dang Contributing Writer

Courtesy of Aly Young

Brandeis students display outrage over a decision to close the Rose Art Museum.

news in brief

Genocide allegations lead to visiting prof’s suspension at Goucher College Goucher College has suspended, without pay, a visiting professor accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Leopold Munyakazi, 59, was hired to teach in the Modern Languages and Literatures department at the Baltimore liberal arts college for two semesters beginning September of last year. College officials suspended him in December after a Rwandan prosecutor approached them with an indictment calling for Munyakazi’s arrest.

In a Jan. 31 letter to the Goucher community, President Sanford Ungar wrote, “Evidence that would either convict or exonerate Dr. Munyakazi beyond a reasonable doubt simply does not exist at this time.” He added that the former French professor, who is a member of the Hutu tribe, “vehemently denies any involvement in committing genocide, and in fact has presented evidence that he assisted numerous Tutsis in fleeing Hutu killers.”

Munyakazi’s appointment at Goucher was arranged by the Scholar Rescue Fund, a division of the Institute of International Education, which aids academics who face persecution in their home countries. According to the Balitmore Sun, he was imprisoned in Rwanda during the 1990s but was released in 1999 without any pending accusations.

But the Web site of the international police organization Interpol lists Munyakazi as wanted for genocide. In his letter, Ungar claimed he was “not personally aware” of the Interpol advisory until recently.

Munyakazi stirred controversy in a 2006 speech at the University of Delaware, which he delivered while he was an assistant professor of French at Montclair State University in New Jersey. In the speech, Munyakazi said the genocide in Rwanda — which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives — was a civil war between social classes rather than an ethnic cleansing.

Ungar wrote that he decided to disclose details of the case before an upcoming NBC News documentary about international war criminals that includes Munyakazi airs this spring. In the meantime, Goucher “will continue to provide modest off-campus housing for Dr. Munyakazi and his family through the end of this semester, but he will not a have a presence on campus,” Ungar wrote.

— Matt Varley

Herald Mail > Morning Mail?

Try it for yourself.

Brandeis University’s recent decision to close its Rose Art Museum and auction off all of its artwork has sparked disappointment and anger in the school community.

The Waltham, Mass. university’s Board of Trustees unanimously voted Jan. 26 to shut down the museum and sell its art collection of over 6,000 works in order to deal with the anticipated effects of the current financial crisis.

According to a press release from Brandeis, the Rose, founded in 1961, will be closed this summer and then become a “fine arts teaching center with studio space and an exhibition gallery.”

Over the past seven months, Brandeis’ endowment has lost 25

percent of its value, according to The Justice, the university’s student newspaper. Combined with other administrative measures, the proceeds from auctioning off the art works are intended to help the university make ends meet in coming years.

But this decision has been met with vehement opposition and criticism from students, the museum staff and art lovers across the country.

In an effort to save the Rose, Brandeis students organized a sit-in last week to protest the decision.

They also wrote letters to administrators, put up posters in front of the museum and held an art exhibition, “Comeseeart,” at the student center to raise awareness about the continued on page 6

Reports show historic endowment losses

By Ellen Cushing Senior Staf f Writer

Last Tuesday, as President Ruth Simmons announced devastating losses to the University’s endowment, two reports released by the National Association of College and University Business Officers painted a bleak picture for the state of college and university endowments in general.

Though NACUBO conducts research on college endowments annually, this year it released a second report covering the five-month period from July to November 2008 “in order to document the effects that the market downturns” had on college endowments, according to an online press release.

According to the first study, which surveyed 796 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, college endowments on average grew 0.5 percent from June 2007 to June 2008. However, the second study showed that between July and November 2008, the market value of endowments plunged by an average 22.9 percent, for a loss of about $94.5 billion among the 435 responding schools.

This marks the first time the national average of college and university endowments has dropped since the downturn of the early 2000s and is the biggest drop since the mid1970s, according to The New York Times. The current recession has meant that colleges and universities have seen decreased returns on investment — an average 2.7-percent loss in the last fiscal year — as well as decreased giving, both of which have caused the dramatic drops in endowment values.

On average, the 39 schools with endowments greater than $1 billion that participated in the second survey reported slightly less severe average losses, experiencing 20-percent decreases in the market value of their endowments.

Schools have reported losses

ranging from Georgetown University’s 9.5 percent to Cornell’s 27 percent over the past several months.

Johns Hopkins University, whose $2.1-billion endowment is close to that of Brown, lost about 11 percent of its endowment. Simmon’s recent e-mail projected a loss of about $800 million, or just under 30 percent, from the endowment by the end of the fiscal year in June. Brown’s figures are more recent than those included in NACUBO’s study, and unlike other schools’ data, are projections rather than hard numbers.

According to Ken Redd, director of research and policy analysis of NACUBO, “Brown is not alone.

Many universities are in the same position, having lost 20 to 30 percent of market value in a relatively short span of time.”

Private schools tend to use a greater share of endowment returns to support their operations than public schools, Redd said, and so they will probably see a greater adverse impact from the decline in endowments.

“Typically an institution such as Brown derives anywhere between 10 and 15 percent of its annual operating funds from it endowments,” he said. “From the declines we’ve seen, that type of a loss would mean there’s much less money to spend.”

As a result of these losses, many schools said they would decrease spending out of their endowments.

NACUBO’s follow-up survey asked respondents whether they intended to change their endowment spending rates, calculated as the amount spent from the endowment divided by the endowment’s initial market value. Seventeen percent of institutions overall said that they planned to reduce spending, while only 3.7 percent said they intended to increase payouts.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has been critical of colleges and universities for what he believes to be unnecessarily low payout rates, issued a statement in response to

NACUBO’s report in which he called on colleges to continue to strive to spend more out of their endowments. “The right kind of modest pay-out requirement for endowments above a certain dollar amount might do a lot of good for universities and students regardless of economic conditions,” the statement said.

Many schools have taken various measures, including freezing hiring and construction, cutting costs, deferring maintenance and selling assets. This is consistent with past behavior, according to Redd. But, he added, because “this recession is turning out to be much more severe” than previous downturns, institutions may be forced to take more drastic steps. “The impact is going to be pretty large and potentially pretty devastating for a number of institutions. It’s going to be hard to make up that kind of loss anytime soon,” he said.

Despite the turmoil, it is unlikely that schools will decrease student aid in order to cut losses. “One area that most colleges tend not to reduce is financial aid,” Redd said.

Some schools are even increasing financial aid as families may now have a harder time paying for college. Princeton expects to lose 25 percent of its endowment by the end of June, according to spokeswoman Cass Cliatt, and has increased its financial aid budget from $92 million to $104 million for the fiscal year 2010.

“This accommodates the needs of an increase of students on financial aid — from 56 percent to 58 percent — in addition to the increase in scholarship amounts that we’ve been awarding already this year to meet the increased need of individual families,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

Though she did not go into specifics in her letter to the community last week, President Simmons similarly pledged to protect the University’s financial aid program.

Page 6

H igher E d

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

“The entire student community is outraged.”

— Eliana Dotan, Brandeis senior

Brandeis art auction triggers protests continued from page 5

www.browndailyherald.com

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

decision.

The exhibition was intended to send a message to Brandeis’ president and trustees that students disapprove of their “treating their art collection as a commodity,” said Brandeis senior Eliana Dotan, who helped organize the exhibition.

“Nobody — the students, the

museum, the faculty — knew (about the decision) except for the Board of Trustees and the president,” Dotan said. “The entire student community is outraged.”

Dotan said the museum is used frequently by the university’s art and art history departments.

“It’s like a lab for us,” she said, adding that the backlash against the decision is not just about selling off a university asset, but also about “what this means and how this administration values art within a university setting.”

“Both the staff and the board of the museum were completely shocked,” said a museum official who asked to remain anonymous.

“We only learned of the decision a couple of hours before it went to the press.”

The museum attracts between 13,000 and 15,000 visitors annually.

The Rose also loans art work to museums across the country.

“The people who are buying art are not necessarily institutions,” the official said. “The art is being kept very carefully for the students and for the public here in this museum.

However, it might be sold to individuals and that will mean a great loss to future generations.”

The value of its art collection,

according to an insurance estimate done three years ago, was $350 million, the official said. But art prices have gone down, he said, so the current expected value may be less.

The museum has been receiving angry calls and e-mails from its financial donors, the official said.

“Some of them were furious. They even yelled at us,” he said.

Brandeis’ decision is unprecedented, said David Robertson, president of the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries. Colleges and universities historically have sold individual works when faced with economic difficulties, he said, but not entire collections.

The ACUMG sent letters protesting the decision to the Board of Trustees, the president of Brandeis and the Attorney General of Massachusetts, who has to sign off on the sale.

“Most responses from member colleges and universities around the country are dismayed and angr y,” Robertson said. “Dismayed because Brandeis is closing off its museum and selling all its artworks and angry at the lack of process by which the decision was made, with no consultation from the University or the Board of Trustees.”

SportsWednesday The Brown Daily Herald

Wednesday, February 4, 2009 | Page 7

First-place gymnastics earns season-best scores on road

By Elisabeth Avallone Sports Staff Writer

After back-to-back meets on the road this weekend, the gymnastics team came home with a season-high score and a number of outstanding performances.

Despite a loss on Saturday in a meet against Towson University (192.850) and Penn (189.725), the Bears earned a season-best 187.300 and maintained a first-place standing in the Ivy League.

On Sunday, the Bears outscored West Chester University of Pennsylvania185.250 to 178.300 but finished second to Southern Connecticut State University (185.300) by a mere .05 points.

“We are definitely proud that we came home with a season high,” said head coach Sara Carver-Milne.

“The girls really started to put

things together.”

“We know that we still have some improvements to make and will work hard in the coming weeks,” she added.

Lilly Siems ’12 was named ECAC Rookie of the Week after her outstanding performance in both meets.

Carli Wiesenfeld ’12 placed first on both the beam and in the all-around, and Katie Goddard ’12 took the title in the floor event on Sunday.

“Ever yone did a great job of keeping up the energy, and I think we really proved to the other teams that we’re a threat this year,” Goddard said. “The best thing is that, as a team, we keep building from one meet to the next.”

“It’s really exciting,” she said.

Wiesenfeld led the Bears on Saturday, placing fifth on the vault with a score of 9.525. She was followed

by Chelsey Binkley ’11 (9.500) in

Weekend Sports Recap

By Andrew Braca Sports Editor

Whether home or away, the Brown sports teams had an active weekend but came away with mixed results.

Women’s tennis The Bears were not gracious hosts, trouncing Army, 7-0, on Saturday and Buffalo, 6-1, the following day to run their record to 3-0.

Sara Mansur ’09 led the way, combining for doubles victories at No. 1 with Bianca Aboubakare ’11 against Army and at No. 2 with Cassandra Herzberg ’12 against Buffalo. She shined even brighter at No. 3 singles, demolishing her Army opponent, 6-0, 6-0, before toppling her Buffalo opponent, 6-1, 6-1.

The No. 3 doubles team of Emily Ellis ’10 and Kathrin Sorokko ’10 won twice, Herzberg won twice in straight sets at No. 2 singles and Julie Flanzer ’12 won a pair of three-set matches at No. 4 singles.

The Bears will look to continue their winning ways tomorrow when they hit the road to take on Boston College.

Men’s swimming and diving Despite a strong effort from Daniel Ricketts ’09, who took home three of the Bears’ six victories, the men’s swimming and diving team suffered a 186-112 loss to Columbia on Saturday in New York, dropping the team’s record to 1-5 overall and 1-4 in the Ivy League.

Ricketts began his day by winning the 200 Free in a time of 1:41.64. He added victories in the 100 Free (45.33) and 100 Fly (50.68).

Sam Speroni ’11 won the 1000 Free in a time of 10:20.32. CJ Kambe ’10 secured Bruno’s only diving victory of the meet by posting a score of 282.75 on the one-meter boards.

Ryan Kikuchi ’11 added a win in the 500 Free (4:40.48).

The Bears will have their only home-away-from-home meet of the season Saturday at noon, when they host Cornell at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass.

Women’s swimming and diving The women did better than the men against Columbia, but they still fell short in a close meet, 157-143.

Brown now stands at 2-3 in the Ivy League.

Allyson Schumacher ’12 continued her successful season by securing two individual wins and a relay crown to lead the Bears to seven wins. She won the 200 Free in a time of 1:51.64 and finished first in the 500 Free at 4:58.17.

Ainsley McFadgen ’09 won the 1000 Free (10:20.32), Natascha Mangan ’11 topped the field in the 200 Fly (2:06.61) and Candice Sisouvanvieng-Kim ’11 took first in the 50 Free (24.13). Katie Olko ’10 secured Bruno’s lone diving victory in the onemeter dive with a score of 236.31.

Sisouvanvieng-Kim, Kristen Caldarella ’12, Stephanie Pollard ’11 and Schumacher teamed up to win the 400 Free Relay in a time of 3:30.70.

The women will hit the pool along with the men’s team Saturday against Cornell in Massachusetts.

Men’s squash The No. 14 men’s squash team lost to No. 8 Dartmouth on Saturday in Hanover, N.H., by a score of 9-0.

Patrick Davis ’10 at No. 5 and Alex Heitzmann ’10 at No. 8 both pushed their opponents to five sets before falling short.

The Bears will look to recover today when they travel to Williamstown, Mass. to face Williams.

Women’s squash The No. 10 women’s squash team had a busy Saturday in Hanover, beating No. 9 Dartmouth, 5-4, but losing to No. 14 Stanford, 9-0.

Against the Big Green, Nikoo Fadaifard ’12 at No. 5, Kali Schellenberg ’10 at No. 6 and Sarah Roberts ’10 at No. 9 won in straight sets. Sophie Scherl ’11 at No. 4 and Carolyn Tilney ’11 at No. 7 both went the extra mile, recovering to post 3-1 victories after each dropped the first set.

The women will join the men in Williamstown today to take on Williams.

sixth place and Siems (9.450) in eighth. The Bears totaled 46.600 for the event.

On the bars, Wiesenfeld continued to shine, with a score of 9.450.

Siems (9.300), Isabelle KirkhamLewitt ’10 (9.200) and Vida Rivera ’11 (9.175) led the Bears to a total tally of 46.125 for the event.

Brown continued to improve on the beam, earning a total score of 47.100. Lauren Tucker ’12 (9.575) and Siems (9.525) earned top scores for the Bears, placing eighth and tenth, respectively.

The floor, the Bears’ best event of the day (47.475 total score), was headlined by Binkley’s seventh-place finish (9.625). Goddard (9.600), Whitney Diederich ’09 (9.550), Siems (9.500) and Helen Segal ’10 (9.200) followed close behind.

“Saturday against UPenn was a great gauge as to where we are as a

team going into Ivies later on in February,” Captain Jennifer Sobuta ’09 said. “It definitely helped everyone to see what needs to be focused on and polished for the rest of the season.”

The next day, the Bears started off strong on vault with a score of 46.800. Siems and Binkley earned fifth with scores of 9.400. Wiesenfeld and Victoria Zanelli ’11 followed in eighth (9.350), and Melissa Bowe ’11 placed 11th (9.300).

On the bars, Bowe (9.475), Zanelli (9.400) and Siems (9.275) earned third through fifth, respectively. Wiesenfeld (9.174) and Rivera (9.100) brought Brown’s total score for the event to 46.425.

The Bears won the beam event with a score of 46.025. Wiesenfeld placed first with a score of 9.600, with Zanelli finishing close behind in second (9.575) and Tucker in fifth (9.050).

Goddard led the Bears on the floor event, capturing first place with a score of 9.575. Binkley finished in third with a 9.375, followed by Diederich in fifth (9.300).

Wiesenfeld (36.550) and Siems (36.375) took home first- and second-place finishes in the all-around, respectively.

“Our meet against West Chester and Southern Connecticut on Sunday was both a close and frustrating meet, but I’m really proud that all the girls were able to stay focused throughout the weekend and make some great changes from Saturday to Sunday,” Sobuta said. “There’s a lot of potential to do some great things this year, and the fight that carried across this weekend was really a great thing to see.”

The Bears will compete next against Bridgeport on Feb. 8 at the Pizzitola Sports Center.

World & Nation The Brown Daily Herald

Wednesday, February 4, 2009 | Page 8

Finger-pointing in Calif. over prison health care

By Michael Rothfeld Los Angeles T imes

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The battle over California prison inmates’ constitutional rights has come to this: finger-pointing over who thought of giving convicted criminals taxpayer-funded bingo and yoga rooms.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Attorney General Jerry Brown have lambasted efforts by J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed overseer of prison health care, to spend $8 billion on a “goldplated utopian hospital plan” for 10,000 inmates. It features a “holistic” environment with natural light and space for yoga, music, horticulture and art therapy.

On Tuesday, Kelso fired back, saying the facilities are meant for mentally ill inmates, and he had followed the state’s example for treating them. The evidence?

Sexual predators forced to live at Coalinga State Hospital, which opened on Schwarzenegger’s watch, have access to an electronic bingo board, a state-of-theart gymnasium with a rubberized floor, a weight room and eight landscaped atriums.

Kelso showed reporters enlarged images of the hospital from the state Depar tment of Mental Health’s Web site. “They are criticizing their own treatment program,” he said.

On Tuesday, Brown said the facilities at Coalinga were not comparable to Kelso’s proposal because the sexual predators had finished their prison terms and

were confined under the state’s civil commitment law.

“The bar is much higher in that case, because they’re being deprived of their liberty outside the criminal law,” Brown said.

“It’s a totally separate legal situation.”

He said he could not comment on whether sex offenders need a bingo board and called Kelso’s appeal to the media “unseemly.”

Nancy Kincaid, a spokeswoman for the Depar tment of Mental Health, said Coalinga was designed based on a federal court settlement on constitutional standards for treatment of the mentally ill in institutions, and that social skill development, vocational training and physical activities dramatically reduce aggressive behavior.

Matt Cate, Schwarzenegger’s corrections secretar y, said the administration believes inmates need treatment but not on the scale envisioned by Kelso.

Tuesday, Kelso said he was scaling back his plans, reducing the size of the proposed facilities.

But he said he did not think the features at Coalinga — or the ones he had proposed — were bad ideas.

“I’d rather have inmates sitting in a small, relatively empty room practicing yoga than engaging in race riots or gang violence,” Kelso said. “I’m not exaggerating when I say that’s what can happen when you have overcrowded conditions and don’t provide medical care.”

Nominees’ failures a blow to Obama

By Peter Wallsten Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — In only his second week in office, Barack Obama is punching the restart button on his presidency.

On Tuesday, Day 14 of a tenure that began with high hopes and soaring promises of bringing a new competence to Washington, Obama essentially admitted that he had lost ground in confronting his biggest challenge, fixing the United States’ crippled economy, due to the “selfinflicted injury” of hiring appointees who had failed to pay their taxes.

He shed two of those appointees and then took to the airwaves — conducting not one but five Oval Office network television interviews in which he sought to seize control over an economic stimulus debate in which Republicans have found traction by painting themselves as defenders of taxpayers and homeowners, while portraying Democrats as frivolous big-spenders.

“I’m frustrated with myself, with our team,” Obama told NBC’s Brian Williams in a comment that was typical for his afternoon of televised mea culpas, “but ultimately my job is to get this thing back on track, because what we need to focus on is a deteriorating economy and getting people back to work.”

He told ABC’s Charlie Gibson that he “can’t afford glitches because, right now, what I should be spending time talking to you about is how we’re going to put 3 to 4 million people back to work.”

“This is a self-induced injury that I’m angry about,” he added, “and we’re going to make sure we get it fixed.”

To the network anchors he repeated a surprising mantra: “I screwed up.”

Obama’s language was striking in part because the man he replaced in the White House, George W. Bush, famously refused to admit error, at least until his final days in office.

For the new president, winning passage of a stimulus has become only more difficult in recent weeks.

A surprisingly unified GOP has taken control of the debate — and embarrassed Democrats — by highlighting controversial expenditures in the $819 billion bill passed last week by the Democratic-led House, such as funding for contraceptives and for new sod for the National Mall.

Those items were stripped from the bill, but their presence in the debate put the White House on the defensive in pushing legislation that, not long ago, many Democrats had thought could be delivered, sealed and signed by the new president within days, if not hours, of his taking office on Jan. 20.

At the same time, U.S. banks have deteriorated further, raising the prospects that Obama will have to press not only for the stimulus but also for a second, unpopular bank bailout.

Amid it all came the disclosures that three of Obama’s highest profile appointees had failed to pay taxes, and that at least two senior officials were being granted exemptions from the administration’s new, strict ethics policy banning lobbyists from getting jobs.

Two of the tax-plagued appointees, including would-be Health and Human Services secretary Tom Daschle, a key Obama adviser, withdrew their names on Tuesday, hoping to end what the president called a “distraction.”

The third, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, remains in office.

Whether Geithner’s problems will fade over time or remain a focus of public attention is not yet clear.

The tax problems were damaging Obama’s arguments in the stimulus debate — and were potentially damaging to his ability later on to push for other politically difficult legislation, including the healthcare reforms that Daschle was to shepherd through Congress. The White House was left open to attacks such as the one from a top GOP leader, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, who said over the weekend that it was no wonder Democrats push for higher taxes, “because, you know what — they don’t pay them.”

The events are not a defeat for Obama and his legislative priorities, but they do mark a significant reversal of fortune. Obama started building support for the stimulus weeks before he took office, and he came to the White House with a claim that he deserved wide lattitude to turn the page in how politics is conducted — a claim that he may no longer clearly hold.

Even White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, in an offhand remark during his regular briefing on Tuesday, conceded that “people have lost sight of what the legislation does.”

A Gallup survey released Tuesday

showed the challenge facing Obama, and suggested that GOP attacks have had an impact. While three-quarters of Americans support passage of some version of the Obama-backed stimulus plan, only 38 percent said they thought Congress should pass it “basically as Barack Obama has proposed it.” A similar number, 37 percent, said it should be passed, but only with “major changes.”

The same poll showed that Obama continues to enjoy approval ratings in the high 60s, and Tuesday’s events showed that Obama does not intend to watch that political capital be squandered.

It was evident Tuesday that the White House had concluded it was time to regain the upper hand. The stimulus debate was beginning in the Senate, where Democrats will need to win support from at least a handful of Republicans to avoid a GOP filibuster.

“The Republicans have done a good job in recent days of fly-specking this bill,” conceded a Senate Democratic leadership aide. “The easy part was getting it through the House,” where Democrats hold a majority that allowed them to approve the bill without Republican support. “But the Senate is much harder.”

Obama’s five interviews Tuesday gave him the chance to reach millions of Americans and to make a case that the stimulus will benefit them. White House officials say Obama will be more aggressive in the coming days, speaking to lawmakers at House and Senate Democratic retreats.

He will also begin laying out plans for helping banks — arguably a much more politically risky task than drafting a stimulus bill for which advocates can point to tax cuts for workers and specific expenditures in specific communities. Aides say Obama will start laying the groundwork for a new bank rescue plan today, with tough talk on how to limit the compensation of bank executives whose institutions are accepting taxpayer assistance.

As the Senate takes up the economic stimulus package in earnest, “he’s got to set the terms of the debate,” said Al From, founder of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. “The Republicans have had some success in framing the debate.

Whether that is just a passing success or not will depend on what happens in the Senate.”

Obama tried to reshape the stimulus fight with his flurry of TV appearances, telling each network anchor that the plan would save millions of jobs. He said the projects cited as unnecessary by Republicans amount to a tiny fraction of the overall bill.

“Now, the recovery package that we’ve put together has not only immediate relief to families,” Obama told Williams of NBC, “if they’ve lost their job, they’re going to get extended unemployment insurance, they’re going to get to keep their health insurance.

We’re going to make sure that states don’t have to lay off teachers. … We’re also investing in critical infrastructure, green jobs, making sure that we’re weatherizing two million homes.”

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 10 | Wednesday, February 4, 2009

e d i to r i a l

Table slip up Last September, the University spent $15,000 to send Vice President for International Affairs David Kennedy ’76 to the Clinton Global Initiative’s national meeting. The Initiative, started in 2005, works to confront pressing global issues and has taken a particularly strong stance on cleaning up the environment — according to their Web site, they’ve helped reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 40 million metric tons.

Vice President for Public Affairs and University Relations Marisa Quinn called the $15,000 fee a “fair amount of money” for the opportunity to “engage in thoughtful dialogue on issues of interest to higher education and the broader society.” While we won’t say outright that this expense was a waste of money, we will say that it means nothing if it is not followed by action here on campus.

Each day, students clamber into University dining halls to find the counters littered with table slips. These slips, advertising ever ything from parties to global initiative panels, remain only a few hours before their disposal and subsequent replacement — a waste that contributes to the global problems of deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions that Brown purportedly stands against.

Though staffers at the Student Activities Office and the Metcalf Copy Center (where the majority of slips are printed) were unable to estimate the number of slips in circulation each day, a few simple calculations reveal the magnitude of the situation: According to mygroups.brown. edu, there are 454 student organizations at Brown. Between the two dining halls there are 250 tables. If each group makes just one slip per table over one semester, then over the course of that semester you have 113,500 slips. Assuming a sheet of paper can produce four slips, that’s 28,375 sheets per semester or 56,750 sheets a year. Appraising a sheet at 7 cents (the price on a University printer), that’s nearly $4,000 dollars per year wasted on paper.

If the University took the money expended on table slips and instead spent it on TV screens for scrolling advertisements it, could phase out table slips over the course of a few years without affecting the visibility of student-run events or activities.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

carly huddelson

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

2011 Class Board works to include, not offend To the Editor:

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

Editorial Page Board James Shapiro Nick Bakshi Zack Beauchamp Sara Molinaro Meha Verghese

Editorial Page Editor Board member Board member Board member Board member

Post- magazine Arthur Matuszewski Kelly McKowen

Editor-in-Chief Editor-in-Chief

Marlee Bruning, Julien Ouellet, Designers Kathryn Delaney, Jordan Mainzer, Copy Editors Ellen Cushing, Sydney Ember, Sarah Husk, 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

Regarding Tuesday’s editorial (“To the 2011 Class Board,” Feb. 3): The 2011 Class Board would like to apologize if anyone misinterpreted the intentions behind our Super Bowl Watch Party and Lingerie Fashion Show, slated to occur this past weekend. The Class Board decided to host a Super Bowl Watch Party as there was not a campus-wide event open to the general student body.

Our Fashion Show was an inclusive event and students of all genders and body-types were invited and scheduled to attend and participate. Over 1,600 people were invited to the Facebook events for both the show and casting call for models. Not a single person who wanted to model was turned away.

Our Facebook event stated that the Fashion Show casting is “open to anyone, not just sophomores, guys and girls, short or tall.”

As for the actual show, we had six male models slated to participate.

Those models who dropped out did not do so because of their discomfort with our event but rather due to scheduling and other conflicts.

This event was advertised on

Facebook and in print advertising throughout the campus for a week leading up to the event, and yet no one brought any complaints or concerns to us directly. In fact, we received much positive feedback from students and administrators lauding us for making our event inclusive.

With respect to our advertising, our tableslips only featured a woman in lingerie because we were unable, after an extensive search, to find appropriate images of men wearing football-themed lingerie. Additionally, our tableslips referenced our Facebook event, which clearly stated that the show would feature models of all genders.

Yesterday’s editorial implied that the general body of the audience would be male and that our goal in including a fashion show was to draw in men using sex symbols. The audience that showed up was vastly different than what you might find at a Greek house party — in fact, about 50 percent of the audience was female.

Many of our models, both male and female, were offended by the editorial board’s choice to compare them to exotic dancers.

Given the prestigious history of The Herald, it saddens the us that The Herald has not upheld responsible journalism and checked all the necessary facts or contacted any of the people involved prior to printing — all our names can be found on the Student Activity Office’s website.

Speaking of reading textbooks, it appears that the editorial page board hasn’t read any books on responsible journalism either. Herald editorial page board, “you really should have a little more taste.”

We will be hosting a town hall meeting this Saturday at noon in the Lower Blue Room to address the concerns of all those interested in discussing our previous and future events. And for the record, our party, Crush, will be held this Friday night at VIVA and will be open to students of all genders. Come see for yourself.

Jenna Kaye-Kauderer ’11 Salsabil Ahmed ’11 Neil Parikh ’11 Vikram Kedar ’11 Evelyn Limon ’11 Hari Tyagi ’11 Karthikeyan Harith ’11 Feb. 3

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 editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page 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 clarity 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.

Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Wednesday, February 4, 2009 | Page 11

What’s an activist to do?

TYLER ROSENBAUM Opinions Columnist Brown is one of the few schools where the activists truly won. Like most of the other student bodies in the Vietnam-era, students “spoke truth to power.” They protested, organized and cajoled. In our case, the establishment relented, acceded to students’ demands, and, as is the case with most successful revolutions, we continue to worship the result.

Modern-day activists have so much to live up to. Our predecessors liberated us from the chains of Brown’s barbarous old curriculum, in which students could only take four classes per semester and were required to pass 32 classes to graduate. We used to have oppressive distribution requirements and now have none. The list goes on.

In light of these successes, it’s hard to fault would-be activists like Students for a Democratic Society for wanting to do something. And with the example of the successful academic reforms of the ’60s, it’s also understandable that SDS would have targeted the Corporation for its protests.

In an unusually open, responsive university, the fact that the final authority is a secretive cabal of wealthy, old alumni who mostly jet in from out of state is suspicious. Sure, they seem nice, but why do they cling so tenaciously to their veil of secrecy? I mean, 50 years? Most classified CIA documents

probably see the light sooner.

That being said, the Corporation is no evil empire. I know from my work on UCS that its members aren’t involved in the day-today running of the University, and that they mostly rubber-stamp the decisions already made by administrators who often actively seek student input. So while the buck stops with the mysterious suits in the smoky room, there won’t be a whole lot of people dumping tea into the harbor over it.

And that’s precisely the point. Contrary to the situation at many colleges, practically all of the things students could really care about

Quite simply, the ethos of the 1960s is gone. It’s dead. It’s been replaced by a completely new, far less confrontational spirit.

Our generation has grown up without the need to rebel. We are used to getting practically whatever we want, and to the idea that (at least theoretically) the largest barriers to our achievement and contentment are selfimposed.

When faced with this pervasive sense of “why bother,” organizations such as SDS want to revive the old activism or get their point across. They sometimes turn to confrontational violence and brash showmanship to

Quite simply, the ethos of the 1960s is gone. It’s dead. It’s been replaced by a completely new, far less confrontational spirit. Our generation has grown up without the need to rebel. already go their way. We can see Brunonians organizing en masse on the Main Green for a loosening of general education requirements, or perhaps for more flexibility when it comes to how many courses you can take. But over obscure aspects of faculty governance that have no direct bearing on our lives? Hardly.

So the student body is not interested in protesting. And there have been enough columns in The Herald lamenting the decline in student activism. Strangely, no matter how many such columns get written, the demons of apathy remain.

compensate for their lack of numbers, or the lack of a broad-based appeal for their brand of activism.

Sadly, such tactics are counterproductive.

Where previously there may have been a significant reservoir of popular support for the premises of the activists, most of this evaporates as the student body rejects unnecessarily combative actions and strategies.

The days of the heroic student activist are gone. And if we are completely honest with ourselves, there really never were any such days. The Port Huron Statement, for all

its eloquence and all the hopes that underpinned it, led to nothing — its chief writer, Tom Hayden, acknowledged that within a few years the original SDS had “disintegrated.”

All of the activism against the Vietnam-era draft produced a backlash and more anti-war Democrats were defeated for reelection to Congress, while Richard Nixon assumed the presidency. Even the New Curriculum was implemented because Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06 P’07 P’10 wrote hundreds of pages persuasively justifying the New Curriculum, not because he occupied University Hall.

None of this means that we students should bend over and acquiesce to ever y administrator’s whim. Rather, in keeping with the spirit of the times, we should make our voices heard. We should take the opportunities given to us to express our opinions on proposed policies before they have been formulated and presented to the Corporation.

If our goal is to prevent or eliminate policies that detract from the academic, social, or residential existence here at Brown, or to encourage reforms that would have the opposite effect, we should not storm the castle like a bunch of barbarian invaders, either figuratively or literally. Rather, we should work with each other and with the administration to implement a mutually acceptable solution.

Tyler Rosenbaum is an international studies concentrator.

He can be reached at tyler.rosenbaum@gmail.com.

If I ran the dining halls

BY KATE DOYLE Opinions Columnist Where matters of eating are concerned, I would be lying if I said we had a bad deal here at Brown. With plenty of options to choose from among campus eateries, a meal plan system that’s fairly useful once you’ve wrapped your head around its complexities and a full menu of food that is, generally speaking, edible, we do all right.

Still, I can’t pretend there aren’t little things that irk me from time to time when mealtime rolls around. So it’s always nice to learn that a step has been taken to smooth out a particular quirk in the dining system, as UCS has done with its recent petition to make meal plan balances readily available to us on Banner.

Doing mental point subtraction at the register, puzzling over how many meal credits I’ve used and agonizing about whether that $1.30 cup of yogurt is going to come back to haunt me at the end of the semester has rarely been pleasant, so I’d like to take this opportunity to offer my thanks to UCS from the bottom of my heart. And in light of its great success in reforming the system, I thought I might also take the opportunity to throw a few of my own ideas out there for making the eating experience at Brown a better one.

Let’s start with the V-Dub. As a Pembroke freshman, I love the place ardently. With dependably decent meals and, on most days, nary a line, the V-Dub offers eating that Brown students from all corners of campus can ap-

preciate. Yes, lines may grow on chicken finger Fridays, but truthfully, most of us don’t mind a bit.

Still, it does occur to me that the V-Dub could probably scale back a bit on the chicken during the rest of the week. If we really have to eat it every single day, we’d rather not eat it twice every single day.

And I can’t say it doesn’t bother me that at 9:30 a.m., as V-Dub breakfast doors are closing, many students are only just waking up. If we could rouse ourselves earlier, we would — we’ve tried! But it just never happens.

only chance.

And trivial though this may seem, V-Dub, it must be said: There’s just got to be a better way to deal with the butter. It’s a rare moment when I suggest you take a leaf from the Ratty’s book, but their tiny foil packets are 1,000 times easier to deal with than your sizable tubs of crumbly butter that refuses to stay on a knife.

Now where the Ratty is concerned, I’ll admit up front that my experiences are more limited. But it’s fairly common knowledge that the food simply isn’t as good as the V-Dub’s,

Want to nab that “Happiest Student Body” prize back from Clemson? Seriously, meal credits at the Blue Room just might do the trick.

Even a mere extra 15 minutes of breakfast would make all the difference in the world, and we’d all be a little happier starting the day on full stomachs.

Add to that the eternal question of why, oh, why, there is no V-Dub food to be had on weekends — two sorry days when the combined prospect of a long walk in the cold and a Ratty brunch means that Pembroke kids eat way less than we ought to, and when regular Ratty diners without the time to make the V-Dub trek during the week lose their

though some will argue that the far greater variety of food, including more extensive vegetarian and vegan options, makes the longer lines worth the wait.

Of course, the little things bother me.

There’s rarely a seat to be had at lunchtime, the line for the grill is impossibly sluggish, there’s no Minute Maid lemonade at the soda fountain and if you’re the type that avoids using a tray, give up now — you simply won’t survive the meal.

Nevertheless, despite its imperfections, the

bustling Ratty is an experience to be had and a Brown classic through and through. With my own future away from Pembroke looming on the horizon, it might be time for me to resign myself to drinking that Hi-C. Still, couldn’t we at least get a little light in the caves? All it would take is the flip of a switch.

The rest do pretty well, all things considered — Jo’s, the Ivy Room, and the Gate remain excellent stops for a quick meal or minor grocery shopping. Yes, I’d like it if there were fewer instances when basic staples like chocolate pudding and cartons of milk didn’t go mysteriously MIA from shelves for days at a time, but it’s a minor issue, really, and chances are if I were in dire need of something, one of these three would do.

But I do have a note to offer the Blue Room, that truly delightful eatery with its irrefutably delectable food and pumpkin muffins that render us all happy on even the worst of days. We love it so much we’d eat there all the time — save for the fact that few of us can afford the points-only system.

Mightn’t it be time to start letting us pay with meal credits? If not, I’m afraid that’s fewer pumpkin muffins, and sadder Brunonians.

Want to nab that “Happiest Student Body” prize back from Clemson? Seriously, meal credits at the Blue Room just might do the trick.

Kate Doyle ’12 is from Westport, Connecticut. She can be reached at Katherine_Doyle@brown.edu.

Today

5

Goucher prof. linked to genocide

The Brown Daily Herald

7

to day

to m o r r o w

29 / 11

23 / 17

Gymnastics’ stellar start to season

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Page 12

the news in images

5

3

7 c a l e n da r

h i g h e r e d s n a p s h ot

Dinner — Pot Roast Jardiniere, Stuffed Spinach Squash, Red Potatoes with Fresh Dill, Asparagus

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, February 4, 2009

c r o sDaily s w oCrossword rd Los Angeles Times Puzzle

-20 -25%

DOWN 1 Solemn 2 Center of the Minoan civilization 3 Calves : cows :: leverets : __

4 TV production co. whose mascot was Mimsie the Cat 5 Bodies of work 6 Brit’s nappy, here 7 Immature salamanders 8 Cape Verde’s cont.

9 “This might interest you,” in memos 10 __ split 11 Pop of rock 12 Site of a memorable “When Harry Met Sally” scene 13 Observed 18 Prima donna 19 Mil. truants 24 Huge in scope 25 Whopper maker?

26 Created, on signs 28 A whole lot 29 High time?

30 Cacophonies 31 Gin flavoring 32 Things to connect 33 Each 34 Actress Olin

38 Price 39 Sounds from Santa 40 Top 42 “Exodus” actor 43 Leafy green 45 Bit of corn 46 Leaves holder 47 Cheese in a ball 50 Each of this puzzle’s four longest answers begins with one

51 Diarist Bridget’s portrayer 52 Down-at-heel 53 Rug rat 54 Bum 55 Afflictions 56 Gloria Estefan’s birthplace 59 Surfing venue 60 Camera type, for short 61 Kanga’s son

comics The One About Zombies | Kevin Grebb

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

xwordeditor@aol.com

02/04/09

Enigma Twist | Dustin Foley

By Donna S. Levin (c)2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

02/04/09

The University announced last week that it may lose $800 million of its $2.8 billion endowment by July 2009, but it’s not alone in posting big losses.

The University did not disclose how much it has lost since it last released endowment figures in July, but a number of other big-name schools have.

See Higher Ed, page 5, for details on how other schools are coping with losses from the economic crisis.

Source: campus newspapers

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Jerk 6 Unwilling to listen 10 Pinochle calls 14 Emulate Cicero 15 Questionable 16 “A Death in the Family” novelist 17 Site of strange disappearances 20 Somme summer 21 BMOCs, e.g.

22 Entrance 23 High-quality wine 25 Singer Redbone 27 Gulf of Panama archipelago 32 Displays at a St. Petersburg, Florida, museum 35 They may be rolled 36 Texas tea 37 Vienna-based cartel 38 Wine choice, briefly 40 U2 co-founder and Nobel Peace Prize nominee 41 Whole lot 42 Frame of mind 43 Perceive 44 Roman landmark rising from the Piazza di Spagna 48 Digging 49 Changing careers?

53 Levi or Zebulun 56 “The Godfather” actor 57 Once known as 58 Song vessel beneath a “sea of green” 62 Leafy green 63 Site of Napoleon’s exile 64 Murmured lovingly 65 Formerly, formerly 66 Show off 67 Sweetie pie

Georgetown

Lunch — Pulled Pork Sandwich, Pizza Rustica, Italian Marinated Chicken, Fresh Sliced Carrots

Columbia

Lunch — Beef and Broccolli Szechwan, Sticky Rice with Edamame, Cauliflower Cheese Pie, Polynesian Ratatouille Dinner — Pork Chops with Seasoned Crumbs, Baked Sweet Potatoes with Honey and Chives

-15 Dartmouth

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Northwestern

Sharpe Refectory

-10

Duke

menu

-5

Emory

4 P.M. — “Institutional Transformation and Women and the Sciences,” Smith-Buonanno 106

0

Harvard

5:30 P.M. — “The Stakes of a World Literature,” Cogut Center for the Humanities

Endowment changes since July 2008

Stanford

8 P.M. — “U.S. and China: Cooperation or Confrontation,” Salomon 001

U. of Chicago

4:30 p.m. — “Geographies of Latinidad,” John Nicholas Brown Center

Yale

FEBRUARY 5, 2009

Percent change

FEBRUARY 4, 2009