Wednesday, October 21, 2009 by The Brown Daily Herald

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vol. cxliv, no. 89 | Wednesday, October 21, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

For city and U., a political standoff By Lauren Fedor Senior Staff Writer

Brown has long enjoyed an enviable position in Rhode Island politics, with numerous alums holding some of the state’s highest elected offices. But when one of Brown’s most prominent alums, Providence Mayor David Cicilline ’83, announced earlier this year that he wanted to levy not one, but two new taxes on the city’s private universities, the University found itself at odds with the city it calls home. Administrators spoke out against the proposed legislation, stressing the University’s long-standing economic and cultural contributions to both the city and state. As the seventh-largest employer in the state, the University employs over 4,200 local residents, University officials contended. Student spending alone generates over $54 million in statewide economic output. And last fiscal year, Brown paid $3.3 million to Providence in property taxes and voluntary payments, they said. But Cicilline insisted that Providence — a municipality whose annual operating budget is about $140 million smaller than Brown’s — needed the cash. Though the two tax bills have stalled in the Rhode Island General Assembly, the arguments over taxation continue, tainting Brown’s relationship with state and local

By Ashley Aydin Contributing Writer

Kim Perley / Herald

This structure in the Jewelry District will soon house a new Medical Education Building. Brown wants to acquire more property downtown to complement it, but disagreements with the city have complicated the effort.

lawmakers. Most recently, the tax debate has taken a central role in discussions as the University considers whether to expand into the Jewelry District downtown. In recent interviews, Brown administrators said Cicilline’s tax initiatives would make land acquisition for the University all but impossible in coming years. Looking to the Jewelry District Brown has long had its eye on three parcels of land that will be

Latest Soldiers Arch facelift completed BY Max Godnick Contributing Writer

inside

Two weeks of construction on Soldier’s Arch concluded late last week after an $80,000 restoration of the campus landmark. Soldiers Arch, which was dedicated in 1921 as a memorial to the 42 Brown alums and faculty who died in World War I, had seen excessive deterioration on its right side recently, said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president of Facilities Management. “Concrete tiles engraved with the names of the deceased individuals had been falling off of the arch due to weathering,” Maiorisi said. The project had been in the early planning stages since May, with construction starting earlier this month. “The bottom portion of (the arch) had deteriorated to the point

News.....1-2 Spor ts.....3 Editorial....6 Opinion.....7 Today.........8

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Prof., alum named finalists for Book Award

sold as part of the state’s ongoing “Iway” project to relocate the junction of I-95 and I-195 downtown. The Iway project will be complete — and more than 20 parcels of reclaimed land will be ready for use — by the end of 2012, according to the Rhode Island Department of Transportation’s Web site. The University has expressed interest in four acres in the city’s Jewelry District because it already continued on page 5

town/brown

The Herald examines Brown’s multifaceted relationship with the city it calls home.

First in a five-part series.

Professor of Literary Arts Keith Waldrop and Deborah Heiligman ’80 are among the finalists for the National Book Award, the National Book Foundation announced last Friday. Waldrop’s “Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy” was nominated in the poetry category, and Heiligman’s “Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith” was nominated in the young people’s literature category. The National Book Award is one of the most prestigious nationwide prizes for literature. The foundation judges books nominated in four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature. Waldrop has been teaching at Brown since 1968. He was a 1969 National Book Award finalist for the poetry category for his “A Windmill Near Calvary.” Waldrop’s nominated collection includes three poem sequences: “Shipwreck in Haven,” “Falling in Love through Description” and “The Plummet of Vitruvius.” The sequences are experimental collages that he created by pulling language from outside texts, he said. continued on page 2

Profs to FacMan: Can you hear us now? By Emily Kirkland Contributing Writer

where you couldn’t see the names,” said Michael Guglielmo, assistant director of project management who oversaw the Soldiers Arch restoration. Only the right side of the arch was repaired in the project, but Guglielmo expects that the left side will eventually require similar restoration if deterioration occurs again. “One side could deteriorate a lot faster, depending on the stone,” Guglielmo said. “You can’t control how nature responds to these stones or how they react to weather.” This was the second time within the last year that Soldiers Arch has required restoration. In November 2008, Facilities Management restored masonry and cleaned the arch. The project redirected masonry joints connecting the stones and repaired and reset stones as needed.

A T-Mobile cell phone tower installed on the roof of Barus and Holley has angered some engineering and physics professors concerned about the tower’s impact on sensitive research equipment used in the building. According to Professor of Engineering William Patterson, faculty members are concerned that radiation from the tower, which was installed late last spring and has been in operation for several months, might interfere with powerful but sensitive measurement equipment. No problems have been reported, Patterson said, but problems may still arise in the future, he added. In the early 1990s, he said, a radio transmitter on top of the Sciences Library wrought havoc on two experiments, leaving the faculty worried about a repeat of the problem. Tim Wells, director of telecommunications and network technology for Computing and Information Services,

Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald

Professors are concerned about possible interactions between T-Mobile’s new cell tower and research equipment in Barus and Holley.

said CIS and Facilities Management had not considered the impact on research when they initially approved the cell phone tower. “We did miss that we were installing it in a research facility,” he said. Sherief Reda, an assistant professor of engineering who works in

Barus and Holley, said faculty members were unaware of the project until after construction began, so they were unable to voice concerns about the project until after it had already been approved. continued on page 2

News, 2

Sports, 3

Opinions, 7

all dried up A leaky pipe turned out to be the culprit in Salomon 101’s indoor rain

Men’s CreW places 5th Crew teams compete in international Championship Eights

Cultivating the mind Brian Judge ’11 defends the humanities

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS news in brief

Salomon 101 leak resolved Thanks to a leaky pipe, students attending class in Salomon 101 this month have spent class in an unexpected shower of drops of water falling from the ceiling. The problem, initially thought by Facilities Management to be from a leak in the roof, was repaired on Friday. Dami Olatunji ’11 was attending class in the auditorium last week when a friend on the other side of the room sent her a text message to say that water drops were falling on her head. But the problem was somewhat isolated — several students with classes in Salomon 101 told The Herald they had not heard of the issue. A custodial supervisor noted the leak on Oct. 5, and the mechanical division of Facilities Management repaired the pipe, said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for Facilities Management. “There were pipes leaking above the ceiling. It was a … low-pressure steam valve,” he said. “Now we’re scheduling work to fix the damage that was done to the ceiling.” Maiorisi said the leak does not indicate further mechanical issues for Salomon. “In all these buildings, all the time there’s plumbing or electrical or other issues that our people are taking care of,” he said. The pipe might have been leaking for some time before it was noted, Maiorisi said, because it was a “slow leak” that “saturate(d) an area of the ceiling.” — Kevin Pratt

sudoku

“That was the real ‘aha’ moment.” — William Patterson, Professor of engineering

Concerns over cell phone tower continued from page 1 “The first time we were informed was when we found the parking lot closed to accommodate the crane,” he said. In response, Reda — then the vice chair of the Computing Advisory Board, which offers faculty and student perspectives on information technology on campus — called a meeting with the CIS and Facilities. “We did a very comprehensive overview,” he said. After the meeting, T-Mobile, CIS and Facilities took another look at the possible impact of the tower, Wells said, and concluded that problems were unlikely. “T-Mobile told us that the radiation in the building from the tower was less than the radiation from a dozen cell phones,” Wells said. This reassurance from the company made Facilities and CIS comfortable to move forward, he added. But Patterson and Reda still have some reservations.

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“We just don’t know” about possible problems for researchers, Patterson said. The underlying issue of communication between Facilities, CIS and the faculty has been resolved, Wells and Patterson said. Wells said he is now in touch with several professors whom he would contact before approving the next project. And open channels of communication between Facilities staff and science professors have diffused much of the remaining tension, Patterson said. “There’s a lot less outrage expressed towards Facilities in committee meetings,” Patterson said. For Patterson and his colleagues at the Department of Engineering, at least some of that outrage stems from problems caused nearly 20 years ago by WBRU radio transmitters placed on the Sciences Library and J. Walter Wilson. Soon after transmissions began, professors noticed problems with scientific equipment, Patterson said. An

anemometer, which measures wind speed, registered storm conditions even when the wind tunnel it was supposed to be monitoring was turned off. A cryocooler, designed to bring experimental materials to within less than a degree of absolute zero, unexpectedly failed to work on occasion. On some days, the equipment functioned flawlessly, but on others, it barely functioned at all. The mystery was solved late one night by a nocturnal graduate student listening to the radio while trying to fix the anemometer, Patterson said. When WBRU stopped transmitting at 3 a.m., the anemometer suddenly began working. And when WBRU began transmitting again at 7 a.m., the anemometer stopped working. The grad student made the connection: When WBRU was transmitting from the top of the Sciences Library, as opposed to JWW, the radiation emitted by the transmitter caused problems with the equipment. “That was the real ‘aha’ moment,” Patterson said.

Lit Arts prof nominated for award continued from page 1 In composing his collages, Waldrop said he used phrases from three books from different genres to make stanzas. He wrote the phrases and stanzas by hand and then typed them up and arranged them alphabetically. “Transcendental Studies” is “the only thoroughly collage-permeated book” among Waldrop’s works, he said. The book “is rigorously experimental and yet at the same time highly readable and meticulously constructed,” wrote Professor of

the Brown

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Literary Arts Brian Evenson, who chairs the department, in an e-mail to The Herald. “It’s a wonderful and surprising book, and highly original.” Like Waldrop, Heiligman is a prolific writer: She has published 25 books in the young people’s genre. Heiligman’s “Charles and Emma” is a biography of Charles Darwin that focuses on his relationship with his wife that focuses on the effect of her religious beliefs on his work and ideas. “I really wanted it to be essentially a biography of Darwin seen in the lens of his marriage. We tend to think of Darwin as just being a scientist

and not a real person,” Heiligman said. “He was an involved father and husband. His children ran in and out of his study.” Heiligman explained that the most interesting aspect of Charles and Emma’s relationship was their ability to see each other’s points of view, disagree and forge a successful and close marriage. The two were “sources of inspiration for each other,” despite their conflicting ideas of science and religion, Heiligman said. The winners of the 60th National Book Awards will be announced Nov. 18 at a ceremony in New York City.

SportsWednesday The Brown Daily Herald

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 | Page 3

s p o rt s i n b r i e f

Strong showing from Brown crews The men’s and women’s crew teams posted strong results against elite international competition over the weekend at the annual Head of the Charles regatta. The varsity eights closed out the competition on Sunday in the Championship Eights division, as the men took fifth and the women placed eighth. The men got off to a searing start, posting 3:21.8 to lead at the first checkpoint, before finishing fifth in a time of 14:49.4, just four seconds out of second place. Tideway Scullers, an elite British club, ran away with the title, followed by California, Washington and the USRowing Training Center. Elite German, French and British crews finished just behind the Bears in slots six through eight. Two more Bruno boats placed in the top 14. The second varsity eight placed 13th in a time of a 15:15.5, only five seconds behind Yale’s top boat, while a Brown alumni boat followed just behind at 15:18.9. On Saturday, the men’s freshmen eight placed fifth in the Club Eights division with a time of 15:42.9, sandwiched between two Harvard boats. Yale took the gold, followed by the BMA Boat Club and Boston University. The women’s varsity eight began the fall schedule on Sunday by placing eighth in a time of 17:00.9. ASR Nereus, an elite Dutch club, pulled away to an easy win, followed by USRowing Training Center, Yale and the Nautilus Rowing Club. Bruno finished less than 1.5 seconds behind fifth-place Washington, which was closely followed by Princeton and Virginia. The Bears beat out such college crews as Stanford, Michigan and Harvard. Earlier in the day, Brown posted a strong result in the Championship Fours division, finishing fourth in a time of 19:19.5. Old Glory Boat Club, a collection of U.S. national team rowers, blew away the rest of the field, trailed by Boston University and Cornell. The Bears edged Virginia and Yale. The men will conclude the fall season Nov. 21 at the Foot of the Charles, while the women will compete in the Princeton Chase on Sunday. — Sports staff reports

Browse, buy, sell.

Craig doesn’t have the only list in this town.

Well, we’ll leave the erotic escorts to him.

Don’t take me out to the ball game Take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd … ” Don’t you just hate that song? I mean, peanuts and Cracker Jack? If I go to a baseball game, I Ethan Hammerman at least want Nailed a soft pretzel or hot dog for my troubles, not any of these chintzy, salty, dusty snack foods. Now, I really hate some things about baseball. A lot. That’s not to say that I dislike everything about baseball. I love the concept of sabermetrics. And you won’t find someone who loves the atmosphere of going to games more than I do, but I just am not the type of person who can sit on a couch and watch a bunch of grown men swing a stick at a ball for four hours. The main reason I cannot stand the game of baseball in general? The lack of a salary cap. I know that may seem ironic since I am a fan of the big-spending Red Sox, but it just isn’t fair. Consider that the Yankees basically have half of the 2006 AL All-Star starters in their lineup right now. That’s just ridiculous. One of the reasons why professional football has caught on so much is because of the parity. It is harder for teams to buy talent — they have to scout and get bang for their

buck earlier instead. Sure, baseball is based on scouting, and it takes a good eye to pick up a solid player, but there are way too many opportunities to rectify one’s mistakes. It doesn’t serve to punish teams that are bad at scouting — instead, it just rewards the teams in large metro areas that have a lot of money. You may be wondering why I am ranting about this. If you want to see the answer, look no further than the playoff schedule in this week’s TV Guide (Aside: Is that even still in print?). New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and, once again, Los Angeles. Three of the top six metro areas in the country. You look at the year before that: Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston and, the outlier, Tampa Bay. In the past two years, seven of the eight second-round playoff teams have been from the top six metro areas in the country. The odd one out, Tampa Bay, accumulated talent through the draft and, even with its scouting acumen, still got extremely lucky to make it as far as it did. Look at this year — you’d think that with an extra year of experience, the team would have been just as strong a contender as last year. But unlike 2008, when the Rays won six more games than their Pythagorean numbers (runs scored

vs. runs allowed) would indicate, this year they broke even in that statistic and ended up in third place in their division and out of the playoffs. Even the homegrown talent of Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford could not trump the acquisitions of Mark Teixeira and Jason Bay. Let’s be frank for a moment. Baseball is dying a slow death as America’s pastime. The Super Bowl has already passed the World Series as the year’s premier sporting event. Regular season and playoff ratings were lower than ever this year. TBS is broadcasting playoff games, for heaven’s sake. TBS! Maybe a little more parity is just what the doctor ordered. This new diversity of talent could make fans from smaller markets get more invested in the game than ever before. Sure, some large market teams would be upset, but it would just serve to make them more accountable for the players that they draft (stinks for the Mets). And, overall, the sport would become more competitive. Or, at least, more unpredictable.

Ethan Hammerman ’13 is looking forward to a 2010 Nationals/Royals World Series.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

C ampus N EWS

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

“I thought it was unconstitutional and unfair.” — John Lombardi, city councilman, on “student impact fee” legislation

Current Brown property 1. 176 Richmond St. 2. 70 Ship St. 3. 222 Richmond St. 4. 233 Richmond St. 5. 339 & 349 Eddy St. 6. 1 & 3 Davol Square 7. 10 Davol Square 8. 110 Elm St.

Property sought by Brown University through legislation

Property sought by Johnson and Wales Univer sity through legislation

As Brown and city face off, commission seeks a middle path After months of debate in the General Assembly about the civic responsibilities of the city’s colleges and hospitals, Providence City Council members and oth-

er local leaders are joining the discussion. The City Council established a commission in July to study Providence’s tax-exempt institutions, and

the group began meeting earlier this month. Councilman John Lombardi, DWard 13, who sponsored the resolution, said the commission is similar

to one created in 2003. Shortly after the formation of that commission, Cicilline approved a memorandum of understanding with the city’s four private universities — Brown, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence College and Johnson and Wales University. The schools agreed to contribute nearly $50 million in voluntary payments to the city through 2023. Local hospitals were not included in the agreement. But Lombardi added that the memorandum of understanding did not come out of that commission. “That undermined and undercut the function of the commission,” Lombardi said of the memorandum. This time around, Lombardi said he hopes the commission will be given the necessary time to make appropriate recommendations to the city. Lombardi said the commission seeks to present “diverse, lengthy recommendations” by January or February. The commission includes representatives from the city’s tax-exempt institutions, members of the business community and local elected officials. Lombardi and Councilman Louis Aponte, D-Ward 10, represent the City Council. “My point was to obviously make it broad-based and diverse, so everyone’s opinion would matter,” he said, “because everyone’s taking a hit in this economy.” State Rep. John Carnevale, D-Providence, Johnston, will represent the General Assembly on the commission, and Michael Van Leesten, a prominent figure in the Providence business community, will lead the group.

town/brown

The Herald examines Brown’s multifaceted relationship with the city it calls home.

First in a five-part series. Lombardi said it was important to designate a member of the business sector to chair the commission, as he or she would likely be “more neutral” than a representative from local government or the tax-exempt institutions. “I want this to be fair across the board,” he said, “because everyone has something to say.” Earlier this year, Lombardi spoke out against Cicilline’s proposals for “Fair Share” legislation, particularly the “student impact” tax. “I thought it was unconstitutional and unfair,” Lombardi said of the legislation, which would have required private universities to pay millions of dollars for their out-ofstate students. As such, Lombardi said the commission to study tax-exempts will look at ways the nonprofits can contribute to city — and that doesn’t necessarily have to be more payments, he said. “It could be something else, like playgrounds or parks,” he said. “Maybe we need to think of transferring those properties to tax-exempts.” — Lauren Fedor

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C ampus N EWS

Page 5

“It’s a space where the University can expand.” — Richard Spies, exec. VP for planning, about the Jewlery District

In quest for downtown land, U. sought legal boost continued from page 1 owns — and plans to renovate — an existing building there for use by the Alpert Medical School, Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president, told The Herald in September. “It is a space where the University can expand, that’s valuable to the University over time,” he said of the neighborhood. A consultants’ report released this fall by the governor’s office, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and the city pointed to both Brown and Johnson and Wales University as prospective buyers of the land, suggesting that allowing the institutions to expand would support a “knowledge-based economy” in the area. Johnson and Wales wants to build two dormitories and a hospitality college and develop “green space” on two parcels on Friendship Street adjacent to its downtown campus, wrote Lisa Pelosi, director of communications and media relations at Johnson and Wales, in an e-mail to The Herald. In an unusual move, the universities together asked state legislators to help them secure the land, pushing for legislation earlier this year that would have assured each university the exclusive right to purchase the lots it wanted. The proposed legislation authorized the director of the Rhode Is-

land Department of Transportation to sidestep a conventional public bidding process and “sell, transfer and convey” certain parcels of land, at “fair market value,” to both Brown and Johnson and Wales. Providence pushing back But the bill made little headway, however, and, despite interest from both sides in a deal for the land, the future of the land remains in question. House Majority Whip Peter Kilmartin, D-Dist. 61, who submitted the House bill at the request of the universities, told The Herald the legislation did not leave committee this year because of concerns raised by city officials and local politicians — including Cicilline. Thomas Deller, the city’s director of planning and development, said the city wants certain questions answered before it approves the legislation. “If legislation still comes back,” he said, “the land has to be sold at market value and there needs to be a clear designation of how the land will be used.” Deller said the legislation currently contains “no time frame for the development.” “We need growth,” he said. “Development is something that needs to happen, and it would be unacceptable for the land to just sit there for 10 years.” Deputy Senate Majority Leader John Tassoni, D-Dist. 22, said some members of the Housing and Municipal Government Committee,

which he chairs, were concerned the land would “be taken off the tax rolls without the city recouping anything for their infrastructure.” “The mayor was pushing hard for the land to go to private industry,” he added. Instead of passing the universities’ bills, the General Assembly should first pass the city’s dual proposals that would increase taxation on universities, Cicilline has said, according to the Providence Journal. One bill would allow cities to assess a “student impact fee” of $150 per semester for out-of-state students who attend private colleges in Rhode Island. The universities would pay the municipal governments directly and could raise the funds as they see fit. The other proposed legislation would allow cities to collect a fee of up to 25 percent of property taxes from nonprofits with properties valued at over $20 million. Nonprofits, such as private universities and hospitals, are typically exempt from property taxes. The bills, which Cicilline has dubbed “Fair Share” legislation, together represent $27 million in potential annual revenue for the city, which has struggled to balance its budget since last year’s financial crisis. But the University has objected to the proposal, with President Ruth Simmons speaking out against the legislation as detrimental to cooperation between Brown and the city. The proposed student tax, which Simmons said “could be increased

at will,” would leave universities subject to the whims of local politicians, she told faculty members earlier this fall. “We believe it is not only bad, but highly risky public policy,” she said. The mayor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. An unclear future With the city and the University at cross purposes, the result has been a standoff, and both sets of legislation have stagnated in committee. It’s not clear whether either the Iway or nonprofit tax legislation will be on the agenda when both chambers of the General Assembly — which is in recess until January — reconvene for a special two-day session on Oct. 28 and 29. Greg Pare, press secretary for the Senate, said earlier this month that, though the legislation is “still alive,” it is “unlikely” anything that is currently in committee will be resolved during the brief session. If that were the case, all University-related legislation would need to be re-introduced next year in order to remain active, he said. Kilmartin said he would only reintroduce the Iway bill if the universities once again requested he do so. “If they want to hold off, that’s fine,” he said of Brown and Johnson and Wales. “It’ll be their call.” But Spies said this month that if the legislation is not passed at

the special session, the University has decided not to push for it to be reintroduced in January. Pelosi declined to say whether Johnson and Wales would pursue the legislation in 2010. “There seems to be no point,” Spies said of reintroducing legislation. “With the city’s opposition, it stands no chance to pass.” If Cicilline’s administration continues to lobby for increased taxes on nonprofits, Spies said, the University will be much less interested in further land acquisition in Providence. “Without the city’s support, we can’t acquire it,” he said. “It’s very disturbing that the city can block any significant progress.” It remains to be seen whether the state and city can agree on a plan for the sale and development of the new land. And some believe the discussion about the Iway lands should not take place in the legislature at all. “In the meetings that I chaired, I asked both sides to get together, to try to work out a deal, rather than the General Assembly try to make a decision,” Tassoni explained. “This is something that my committee is not willing to entertain unless I can get an agreement to come out of both sides.” He suggested University officials work directly with the mayor’s office. “Neither side wants to be a bully about these things,” he added. “But reasonable people need to sit down and discuss it, and make some solutions to the problem.”

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 6 | Wednesday, October 21, 2009

ale x yuly

e d i to r i a l

Mail call!

Going green

Send ’em in. letters@browndailyherald.com t h e b r o w n d a i ly h e r a l d Editor-in-Chief Steve DeLucia

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According to the College Sustainability Report Card released earlier this month, Brown is about as eco-friendly as universities get. Consider some of the initiatives that contributed to our A- grade this year. We’ve committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 42 percent below 2007 levels by 2020. We purchase food from over 20 local farmers, and we send food scraps to a local pig farmer. We’ve decided that all new construction projects will meet LEED Silver standards. We give employees monetary incentives to carpool. And we allow large donors to ask that their gifts be invested in sustainable companies. On the University level, Brown is looking pretty green. When it comes to our student body, however, things aren’t quite as bright. We know plenty of students who buy bottled water in bulk at Little Jo’s, who print hundreds of pages at a time in the Sciences Library and who leave the lights on when they walk out of their dorm rooms. Sustainability may be a buzzword for the University, but it’s far from the reality of most students’ daily lives. Brown can’t turn all its students into canvas-bagtoting environmentalists. But it can put policies in place that would encourage students to make environmentally sound choices. These policies can be simple and cheap. And they can benefit both students and the University. Here’s an idea, for starters: Brown could launch an energy reduction campaign and channel part of the savings from energy conservation to the Spring Weekend concert fund. The University would compare each dorm’s energy usage to the average usage over the previous five years. If students reduced their consumption — by being vigilant about turning

off lights, by unplugging appliances and by using compact fluorescent light bulbs, for example — the University would give 25 percent of the money from energy savings to the Brown Concert Agency. Similar programs have been successful in the past. Connecticut College started an initiative called Concert from Conservation in 2006, and last year the campaign led to a 12 percent reduction in dorm energy use. That saved the college almost $10,000 and gave students $2,400 to spend on a concert. It’s a win-win situation. Students get better bands on Spring Weekend. The University saves money on energy bills. And suddenly the whole campus is involved in decreasing Brown’s environmental footprint. Sustainability becomes a part of everyday life, not just a word in the University’s construction policies and emissions reduction pledges. And the University graduates a class of students who are a little more conscious about their energy use and the environmental effects of their actions. We applaud Brown for constructing efficient buildings and purchasing local food. Ultimately, those large-scale, institutional policies are the ones that make the biggest difference when it comes to the environment. But those policies create a sustainable campus, not a sustainable university. If we want to make the jump, we need to engage every member of the Brown community in making environmentally responsible choices. Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page boar d. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 | Page 7

20-year-old octogenarians BY SUSANNAH KROEBER Opinions Columnist I write this with all due respect to my former colleagues at the Brown Spectator and for my friends among the Brown Republicans. Despite my exceedingly liberal background, I find myself agreeing with their complaints about the dominant liberal discourse that pervades student discussion at Brown. I am entirely sympathetic to the Republican minority, which at Brown numbers in the single digits, and their experiences with a less than friendly environment in which to express their views. What I find increasingly difficult to justify is why I should remain sympathetic. It is hard to take seriously a group that decided to make Columbus Day (or rather, the replacement of Columbus Day with Fall Weekend) its rallying call. Moreover, it did so in a way that seemed aimed at alienating the student body rather than creating a platform on which students of various political and ethnic backgrounds can agree. Keith Dellagrotta ’10 led a Brown Republican-sponsored rally in protest of the name change last week. Perhaps I was wrongly in the “ambivalent” camp on this issue until after I read about his comments. I know I am not alone at Brown in objecting to his comment that “American Indians knew not Christianity, and thus lacked the bedrock to construct a great United States of America as we know it today” (“Rally against ‘Fall Weekend’ takes on U.’s name change,” Oct. 13). I will be the first to recognize that Della-

grotta’s comments were most likely an attempt to further debate on an issue that he considers important, in which case, I am taking the bait. I am in favor of rhetoric to electrify constituents, but I take umbrage at the insinuation that Christianity is the “bedrock” on which this country is based and is the reason for its greatness. I would first like to recognize that though history would have inevitably been different had the Europeans not colonized the American continents, I am not arrogant enough to offer

Church’s abhorrence to loans with interest, initially a horror shared by some of their Protestant brethren, would have rendered America in its current incarnation unattainable. The United States’ contemporary borders were defined only after the removal or extermination of the Native American populations in those territories, and the ability of settlers to buy land depended on credit from banks and the United States government. Without the medieval Jewish loan shark, we might not have seen a progression toward

The bedrock of Dellagrotta’s great American nation, a nation built on credit, is in fact the scourge of the Puritan American’s existence: the Jew.

judgment on how great an America excluding European conquest would be. I am also not interested in a debate about the greatness of America. To quote one recent Republican president, our “flip-floppy” record on humanitarian issues and our all-too-recent preoccupation with unilateral force does not hold the United States up as John Winthrop’s vision of America as beacon to the world. Instead, I argue that the bedrock of Dellagrotta’s great American nation, a nation built on credit, is in fact the scourge of the Puritan American’s existence: the Jew. The Catholic

the general acceptance of loans and interest among the Christian population. It is upon these loans, both foreign and domestic, that America and Americans have paid for their exploits, for what has made America “great.” In fact, the definition of what makes America “great” is changing. Part of Republicans’ recent defeats must be attributed to the party’s inability to appeal to an increasingly globalized youth population, most of whom do not want to view themselves as the elite of the world but as a part of the greater global community. Voters under thirty want to envision a world

where the U.S. is a player among nations rather than the leader of nations. Advocating a narrow view of history that champions just one sector of our uniquely heterogeneous society does not appeal to voters coming of age in this decade. Christians — specifically, propertied male Christians before and up to the foundation of the American republic — did not constitute the entirety of the population, not even a majority. Slaves from Africa and the Caribbean largely contributed to American agriculture, and poor Asian, European, Latin American, Jewish and Muslim immigrants — not to mention women — worked in manufacturing to build American industry. America wouldn’t have been the same without Christians. Eliminating any group of their size would drastically alter the trajectory of the nation. That does not mean America wouldn’t have been a great nation, nor does it negate the crucial impact that non-Christians had on where America stands in the world today, for better or worse. Republicans today need to recognize the changing demographic when trying to appeal to a newly reformulated version of their base, not repeat slogans offered by their grandfathers. Ignoring past contributions of groups that make up more than half the population does not further the expansion of Republican ideas and values.

Susannah Kroeber ’11 is a Slavic Studies concentrator from Beijing, China, and proudly admits to learning about the joys of earning interest while in elementary school.

Oration on the dignity of the humanities By brian judge Opinions Columnist A caution to us future leaders of America: The recent financial meltdown and resulting misery was caused by very smart people who were very bad at thinking about what they were doing. It takes a mathematical genius to come up with the convoluted equations for pricing derivatives and mortgagebacked securities. It doesn’t take a genius to see how the thoughtless use of these equations created the current economic mess. This is because physics doesn’t tell you how to use physics, chemistry doesn’t tell you how to use chemistry and economics doesn’t tell you how to use economics. So how do we learn how to use this knowledge justly? In classrooms at Brown, the words “right” and “wrong” take on very different meanings depending on whether you are in a science class or a humanities class. For mathematics and the hard sciences, right and wrong refer to correctness. Something is right if it is true. Something is wrong if it is false. There is no moral content to the “rightness” of math or science. The sciences try to figure out what kind of world we have been given. The humanities try to figure out what kind of world we want to make. The humanities consist entirely of people reading, writing, talking and thinking. By holding one another to a high standard of rigor in the classroom, we will

be able to do the same outside of the classroom. I doubt that Ken Lewis, John Thain and Dick Fuld were precocious students of the humanities. The humanities suffer from an inability to assess the quality of an intellectual argument in the same way that mathematics or sciences do. There is no absolute standard by which to measure an argument against (like, say, a mathematical equation) or a standard method of argumentation which leads to necessary truths (like a geometric proof).

joyed by those who study math and science, our duty as students of the humanities is to develop our own intellectual conscience that sets our standard for belief. It would have taken just one person with an intellectual conscience to see the problems associated with pushing subprime mortgages on people who can’t afford them. The concomitance of the dignity of intellectual discourse with the dignity of the surrounding world is an observable historical fact (the recent national debates about health care reform ought to be enough to

Intellectual conscience is the faculty of mind that opposes injustice, and the humanities are about cultivating a student’s intellectual conscience. But how are we to know if things like hegemony, existentialism, jazz, capitalism or heteronormativity are right or wrong? What would it even mean for existentialism to be right or wrong? It would be right if it tells us both how the world we have created works and how we ought to live within it. The humanities have a moral imperative to pave the way for meaningful action. If they don’t, then studying it is just a more expensive version of stamp collecting, where there is nothing at stake except our own leisure. In the stead of the degree of certainty en-

demonstrate this). But as long as we are content to rest on our intellectual laurels within the humanities, we will never cultivate an intellectual conscience robust enough to oppose thoughtlessness. I was listening to a roomful of students debate the necessity of the public option to meaningful healthcare reform, and realized that no one once mentioned what would be morally right. There was lots of talk of “deadweight loss” and other Econ 101 buzzwords that masquerade as having the same status as apodictic concepts like “gravity” or “addition,” but no discussion of how healthcare re-

form can actually help create a better world. It was taken for granted that more efficient markets mean a better world for everyone. Intellectual conscience is the faculty of mind that opposes injustice, and the humanities are about cultivating a student’s intellectual conscience. To the extent that the humanities foster unrigorous pseudo-intellectual charlatanism, our world gets that much more unjust because no one has the good intellectual conscience to challenge thoughtlessness. The proper practice of the humanities cultivates a student’s intellectual conscience by forcing him or her to think rigorously about his or her beliefs. Since the humanities don’t have a set standard of discourse, we can either do this well or we can do this poorly. When this is done well, the student’s habits of thought that they develop in their study of the humanities carries over into all aspects of his or her life. When we can think well about things that don’t matter, we most certainly will be able to think well about the things that do. If we give up on thinking well about the world, then ever ything is permitted: we can only come to recognize injustice if we have carefully cultivated our intellectual conscience. This is the reason why Socrates called for philosopher-kings and not economist-kings.

Brian Judge ’11 is a humanities concentrator from North Carolina. He can be reached at brian_judge@brown.edu

Today The Brown Daily Herald

Case of the leaking ceiling solved

to day

to m o r r o w

64 / 46

72 / 42

Rowed to victory

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Page 8

t h e n e w s i n i m ag e s

1 c a l e n da r

comics

Today, october 21

tomorrow, october 22

6:45 pm — Guatemalan Film Series: “Recycled Life,” Joukowsky Forum

4 PM — Romano Prodi and Flavia Franzoni: A European Perspective on Healthcare and a Comparison with U.S. Reforms, Joukowsky Forum

7 pm — Multiracial Identity Week Interracial Dating Forum, Salomon 101

Hippomaniac | Mat Becker

7 pm — 3rd Annual Strong Sexy Words, List 120

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Beef Tacos, Vegetarian Tacos, Spanish Rice, Refried Beans

Lunch — Honey Mustard Chicken Sandwich, Tomato Quiche, Glazed Carrots

Dinner — Cod with Potato, Cheddar and Chives, Spinach Stuffed Squash, Quinoto

STW | Jingtao Huang

Dinner — Rotisserie Style Chicken, Sweet and Sour Tofu, Sticky Rice with Edamame Beans

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Los Angeles Times Puzzle c r o sDaily s w oCrossword rd Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Droops 5 Benchwarmer 10 Dull 14 Spiritual guide 15 Pageant trophy 16 Tot’s first word, often 17 Electrical worker’s action 20 Stuff to capacity 21 Like the healthiest corned beef 22 White House advisory gp. 23 “Don’t tase me, __!” 24 Discount retailer’s action 32 Virginia, for one 33 Sits on the sill, as a pie 34 Absorb, with “up” 35 Exaggerated publicity 36 Type of servant or engineer 37 Ready for picking 38 “You __ here”: mall map words 39 Arrested 40 Parson’s home 41 Feuder’s action 44 In the past 45 Actress MacGraw 46 Traffic jam causes 50 Toronto skyline landmark 54 Accused speeder’s action 56 On a single occasion 57 Two-time U.S. Open winner Fraser 58 Opposite of aweather 59 “The __ the limit!” 60 Freezing cold 61 Bakery offerings

5 Pain in the side 6 Movie 7 Tabloid 8 Russia’s __ Mountains 9 America’s pastime 10 Key of Beethoven’s Ninth 11 Distance divided by time 12 Gremlin and Pacer 13 Capital of Thailand? 18 Out of fashion 19 Time irregularities, in sci-fi 24 Prefix with foam 25 Boutonniere site 26 Cupcake topper 27 Spanish sweetheart 28 Continuing to operate 29 “Of Thee __” 30 Thicket 31 Olympics sword 32 Peacock Throne occupant 36 Challenging the rapids, maybe

37 Police cruiser 39 On the money 40 Poly- equivalent 42 Sprints 43 Went on a tirade 46 Corp. money bigwigs 47 Place where the starts of this puzzle’s four longest answers result in a penalty

48 Part of CIA: Abbr. 49 Dagger of yore 50 Colombian cartel city 51 How many employees are pd. 52 Hard-to-find shoe width 53 Numbered hwys. 55 Word before Friday or pal

Birdfish | Matthew Weiss

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Cabernet Voltaire | Abe Pressman

xwordeditor@aol.com

10/21/09

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

DOWN 1 Bilko and York: Abbr. 2 Subtle emanation 3 “True __”: John Wayne film 4 Rotate face-up, By Donna S. Levin as one’s palm

10/21/09