Monday, November 2, 2009

Daily Herald the Brown

vol. cxliv, no. 97 | Monday, November 2, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891

Student dies in rooftop fall while abroad

By Sydney Ember Senior Staf f Writer

Courtesy of Brown

An artist’s rendering of the reinvented Richmond Street around a renovated medical school education building.

Today, the Jewelry District site is mostly desolate around the University-owned property.

Downtown, big ideas are soon to be tested

By Brigitta Greene Senior Staff Writer

In fewer than two years, Brown’s new Medical Education Building will welcome its first class of students.

But looking at the building now, it is hard to tell.

The block-long former factory sits waiting, its 165 windows staring blankly out onto Richmond Street.

And though the Med Ed building sits just under a mile from Faunce Arch, few University students now find themselves strolling past its en-

Faculty missing ombudsperson to manage conflicts

By Nicole Friedman Senior Staff Writer

A staff position responsible for hearing and addressing the concerns of faculty and postdoctoral students will remain vacant this year after a failed search to fill the spot coincided with a hiring freeze instituted last year.

For the past three academic years, the University employed a part-time ombudsperson in a pilot program, who worked with faculty members to “mediate and try to resolve issues,” said Professor of Physics Chung-I Tan, chair of the Faculty Executive Committee.

Typical duties of the position included moderating disputes and acting as

inside

continued on page 2

News.....1-6 Sports.....7-8 Ar ts........9 Editorial..10 Opinion...11 Today........12

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trance — not to mention anywhere within the Jewelry District itself.

The Jewelry District, once a bustling manufacturing center but now a neighborhood in flux, lies between Brown’s College Hill campus and the Alpert Medical School’s partner hospitals downtown. Over the past decade, the University has looked to the area as an outlet for growth beyond College Hill. Administrators view the planned opening of the new Richmond Street facility in 2011 as continued on page 4

TOWN/BROWN

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

Last in a five-part series.

Arun Stewart ’11, a student whom professors and friends described as “brilliant,” “passionate” and “incredibly hip,” died Friday in Beijing, where he was studying abroad.

He was attending a rooftop gathering with friends near Tsinghua University when he lost his footing, according to an e-mail from President Ruth Simmons sent to the community Saturday night.

“At this point, few details have emerged,” said Marisa Quinn, vice president for public affairs and University relations, adding that the incident was being investigated by local authorities. She said the accident occurred approximately 10 miles from Tsinghua.

Stewart was pursuing a degree in East Asian Studies, following what people who knew him called an intense passion for Chinese language and culture. Driven by a desire to perform, Stewart wanted to perfect his Chinese so he could convey humor to his audience through Chinese dialogue called “cross-talk,” said Lingzhen Wang, associate professor of East Asian Studies and Stewart’s adviser.

“He was one of the very few brightest students I have ever taught,” Wang said. “I saw in this kid a very ambitious plan for the future.”

Wang, who taught Stewar t twice in classes on Chinese cinema and 20th-centur y Chinese literature, said Stewart wanted to perform as a popular entertainer in China, using language to unite people across cultures. He was also fascinated by Chinese poetry and late imperial literature, she said, which enhanced his cultural understanding because he had read the works he was studying in their original form.

Stewart’s enthusiasm spilled beyond the classroom. He was granted a fellowship through the Department of East Asian Studies before he traveled to Beijing.

Wang said Stewart and three other students went to Shanghai to do a project on Chinese food, restaurants and migrants and study local business owners. The group was working on a detailed report that Wang said was a project Stewart was completing for Brown while studying abroad.

“The interest he had in the humanities in general really made him a quite unique and outstanding student,” she said. “I just hope there are more students at Brown who will approach different cultures the way he has approached it.”

“He loved to tease and be teased,” said Professor of Comparative Literature Dore Levy, who taught Stewart and three other stucontinued on page 6

Edible car competition heats up with Food Network star airs in 30 countries and chronicles his adventures in the world of culinary competitions.

Gravity and inertia don’t figure “I have five days to learn a into most toddlers’ calculations particularly daunting skill that as they meddle with their mashed revolves around food before takpotatoes. But for participants in ing on professionals,” Blumer this year’s Edible Car said — professionals FEATURE who, in this case, were Competition, playing with food means fun Brown’s own engineerwith physics. ing students.

In Barus and Holley last week, Brown’s Society of Women Engi- Edible engineering neers and the Division of EngiLast Friday, the teams first neering pitted 20 teams against scrambled to divvy up a buffet each other to assemble a func- of potential car parts, including tional, stylish and entirely edible pumpkins, Life Savers, zucchini car in just one hour. and rice cakes. Unlike the first But this year’s contest, only the edible car contest, held in spring second ever, included Brown stu- 2008, the cars could only utilize dents and faculty — and Bob Blum- the ingredients that SWE proer, host of the Food Network show continued on page 3 “Glutton for Punishment,” which

By Jenna Steckel Contributing Writer

Quinn Savit / Herald

The Food Network filmed this year’s Edible Car Competition, which took place last week in Barus and Holley.

News, 3

Sports, 7

Opinions, 11

international faces More students from abroad are studying in the U.S. than ever before

B lu s t e ry D e f e at Football loses in overtime to Princeton after three missed field goals

healthy debate Sean Quigley ’10 tries to put the protest back in Protestant

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

herald@browndailyherald.com

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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Monday, November 2, 2009

“We are all faculty or administrators, so by definition, we’re not impartial.”

— Dean Rod Beresford, on the need for a staff ombudsperson to address concerns

Faculty fail to hire staff ombudsperson continued from page 1 a confidential and neutral soundingboard for personal and professional concerns, according to an annual report from the ombudsperson’s office.

That experiment “worked out well,” Tan said. The ombudsperson was contacted by 28 to 59 faculty members and postdocs each year, according to the office’s annual reports.

After surveying the faculty, the FEC decided that the position — which reported directly to the president — should be made permanent.

The University made an offer last year, but the candidate turned the job down because it was only part-time, according to the minutes of a Sept.

23, 2008 FEC meeting.

When the University imposed a hiring freeze on all staff positions soon after that date, Tan said, the FEC decided that “although this position is important, we would temporarily put this on hold.”

The Web site of the ombudsperson’s office directs users to take questions and concerns to Tan, Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity Valerie Wilson or Rod Beresford, professor of engineering and interim associate dean of the faculty.

“We are all faculty or administrators, so by definition, we’re not impartial,” Beresford said. Rather than try to replace an ombudsperson’s neutral view, the current structure provides the faculty with “helpful” resources, he added.

“This is an interim or short-term arrangement,” he said. “The longterm plan is not settled.”

Tan and Beresford said they have

not yet assisted any faculty member with a concern this year.

To see if the current structure is working, the FEC will review how many faculty members come forward this year, Tan said. Past ombudsperson reports indicate the approximate number of cases that arise each year.

“After a year we’ll probably want to review what’s transpired this year,” he said.

In the past three years, during which the University employed an ombudsperson, the number of cases taken to the FEC or the faculty’s Committee of Grievances declined, according to past FEC meeting notes.

“In the past, the grievance committee would basically have both jobs,” of addressing formal grievances and handling more general faculty concerns, Tan said.

An ombudsperson resolves problems before they become formal grievances and “can usually act much more quickly” than the grievance committee, “at the satisfaction of everybody else,” said Professor of Mathematics Richard Kenyon, the grievance committee chair.

The FEC still intends to hire an ombudsperson but has not yet decided when, Tan said.

In light of the University’s financial needs, Beresford said, “It would be difficult to justify this (position) at this time, although that could change.”

There is a “possibility” that when the position is offered again, it will be as a two-thirds or three-quarters time job, rather than half-time, since the increased benefits might make the job “slightly more attractive,” Tan said. The ombudsperson’s role might also be expanded to address staff or student needs, he added.

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Kim Perley / Herald

A study of alcohol abuse in adolescents has produced evidence of a genetic link to alcohol-related problems.

New evidence supports youth alcoholism gene

By Sarah Mancone Contributing Writer

A Brown-led study has identified a genetic variant that indicates an increased risk of alcohol abuse in adolescents. The study, led by Robert Miranda P’04, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior for research, focused on a receptor gene previously tied only to adult alcohol abuse.

The mutation — located on a gene known as the m-opioid receptor gene, or OPRM1 ­— could lead to a higher risk of alcohol misuse in adolescents and heightened sensitivity to the reinforcing effects

of alcohol.

The study will help “shed some light” and “get a better handle on the etiology” of adolescent alcohol abuse from a genetic perspective, said Assistant Professor of Community Health Valerie Knopik, who co-authored the paper. Knopik said the study, which will appear in the January 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism, is significant because most literature on alcohol abuse has focused on adults.

The study involved 187 participants between the ages of 12 and 18 from “high-risk disadvantaged neighborhoods and the court system,” Knopik said. The volunteers were asked to provide a genetic sample and complete a series of assessments.

The researchers searched for the OPRM1 gene mutation — called a polymorphism — and surveyed each participant to determine “alcohol use disorder diagnoses and other psychopathology,” Miranda said. Those who exhibited the polymorphism were more likely to abuse alcohol.

“Our findings provide the first evidence to suggest that teenagers who carr y a certain variant of the OPRM1 gene experience more alcohol-related problems,” said Miranda, “and are more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for an alcohol-use disorder.”

This variant was shown to enhance how adolescents feel while drinking more than in adolescents without it, which partly explains why they are more likely to develop alcohol-related problems.

These findings, however, are not the sole causes of alcohol-use disorders, and both Knopik and Miranda emphasized the importance of environmental factors.

Still, “the relative importance of environmental and genetic factors appears to shift considerably over the course of adolescence,” Miranda said. The genetic mutation appears to play a larger role in determining alcohol abuse “once teenagers begin to drink,” he said.

This research will extend into future studies “to replicate these findings in a larger sample of youth and to identify protective environmental factors that reduce genetic risk for alcoholism,” Miranda said.

Drinking and alcohol abuse are “really complex behaviors,” Knopik said. “The candidate gene is just one piece of tens, of hundreds, of thousands of genes” influencing the actions of adolescents.

Monday, November 2, 2009

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“Brown can’t do it alone. And we don’t want to do it alone.”

— Richard Spies, exec. VP for planning, on developing the Jewelry District

Researchers awarded over $12 million to study obesity Studies to focus on ‘behavioral causes’ of weight gain

By Samer Muallem Contributing Writer

The Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at Miriam Hospital recently received six research grants worth a total of more than $12 million from the National Institutes of Health. The money will be used to research weight-gain prevention and the benefits of losing weight.

Though the research center often examines the ef fects of diet and exercise on obesity, the grant-funded studies will focus on the behavioral causes of weight gain and their inhibition, said Rena Wing, director of the center and professor of psychiatr y and human behavior at the Alpert Medical School.

The grant-funded studies are “much more focused on how to prevent … the behavioral causes of weight gain” and “the health benefits of weight loss,” Wing said.

Among the six research

grants is the competitive NIH Challenge Grant. Of the 20,000 applicants for the grant, Wing’s study was one of only 200 to be awarded funding. The grant is worth $930,320 and is dedicated to developing and evaluating an online program in which physicians can enroll their patients, helping those struggling with obesity to adhere to their prescribed weight loss program.

The largest grant Wing’s research was given came from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The grant, totalling nearly $6 million over five years, will be used to research the behavioral treatments of obesity in adults and to prevent weight gain in young adults.

“Between the ages of 18 and 35, people gain about two pounds a year,” Wing said. “It is an epidemic of obesity.”

The center’s other studies being funded by NIH grants include an identification of the specific genes related to obesity, the impact of weight loss on Type-2 diabetes, the effects of weight gain on erectile dysfunction and the relationship between short sleep duration and obesity.

Nick Sinnott-Armstrong / Herald

The number of students from foreign countries — particularly Asian countries — has increased at Brown and nationwide.

Rise in int’l students reflects national trend

By Ellen Cushing Senior Staff Writer

The number of international students — particularly those coming from Asia — has increased dramatically on U.S. campuses over the past several years, a trend that is changing the face of college admissions in many ways.

According to the Institute of International Education, more than 68,000 students came from abroad to study in the United States in the 2007-2008 school year — a seven percent increase from the year before. The top five nations of origin for these students were India, China, South Korea, Japan and Canada,

according to the Institute’s data.

At Brown, admissions statistics mirror these larger trends.

According to data provided by the Office of Admissions, 33 students who attended high school in China entered Brown with the class of 2013 — up from 13 in the class of 2009. Over the same four-year period, the number of Korean students increased from nine to 21, the number from Singapore went from 10 to 14, and the number from India went from four to 15.

At the same time, the number of students from the Middle East, Western Europe and the Caribbean has decreased over the last five years.

“Ever since I’ve been here, there has always been an upward trend” in students coming from Asia, said Panetha Ott, director of international admissions.

Ott attributed the increase to the general trends of globalization and Web communication.

After the creation of the European Union, Ott said, schooling became free for any EU resident attending school in any other EU member nation. The result, Ott said, is that “Europe, which used to be the center of recruitment, gradually started sending fewer stucontinued on page 6

Food Network films ‘extreme food’ challenge on campus continued from page 1 vided. While this meant there were no turkey-mobiles, as one team created in 2008, the contestants found innovative methods to turn vegetables into vehicles.

The day of the contest, Blumer and his teammates, Sam Rabb ’10.5 and competition creator Julie Sygiel ’09, gathered in Barus and Holley’s foyer with their competition. The teams spor ted names like the Gourd Accord, Bread Man Walking and Squash the Competition and included competitors as unusual as 7-year-old Peter Curtin, working with his father, Professor of Engineering William Curtin.

At the end of an hour spent drilling, car ving, chopping and nibbling, the teams carried their creations outside for judging and a test run. One member of each team held their car at the top of the specially built ramp, releasing it at event organizer Holly Lauridsen’s ’11 mark and watching it roll, tumble or crash.

The winning team — Pumpkin Express — was the first to launch its culinar y creation. Its entry rolled a full 174 feet to Brook Street, stopping just in time to avoid being crushed by two buses that pulled up as it approached the street.

But the team’s victor y was not without controversy — a section of an apple attached to the car fell off on the ramp and was discovered after the excitement of its success.

Lauridsen and the contest’s

judges said according to the rulebook, the car’s distance was determined by the distance the first piece — in this case, the apple — traveled. After the ruling was made, the team’s members looked up the rules.

“We printed out the of ficial rules and saw that the rules stated that the body and the wheels had to remain intact the entire time,” said Margaret Merritt ’11, one of the members of Pumpkin Express.

Because the apple was on the car’s axle, not the body or the wheels, the vehicle’s full distance qualified as part of its score.

The runners-up fell shor t by yards — the Cur tins came in second, and Blumer’s team, the Vegi-Mights, came in third with a car that consisted of a zucchini body, wheels made of oranges and squash and even a broccoli driver.

Cooking up a car competition The competition, one of two “extreme food” events put on by SWE, was the brainchild of Sygiel, who helped create the group’s first event in fall 2007: a gingerbread house competition that challenged participants to construct the house that could support the most weight.

After the event’s success, Sygiel began thinking of other novel ways to incorporate fun into engineering events, she said.

Though Sygiel enter tained a variety of possibilities, including a paper airplane folding contest, she ultimately found inspiration

in her childhood memories.

“The University of Kentucky hosted open houses and invited kids to participate in all these fun engineering events,” she said. One of her favorites, she recalled, involved making miniature cars from food — last year, a revved-up version rolled onto College Hill for the first time.

For this second installment, SWE’s leaders — headed by Lauridsen — placed a new emphasis on environmental consciousness and social awareness.

SWE bought most of the food through the online marketplace Goodshop, which in turn donated a percentage of its profits from the purchase to Amos House, a local social ser vices agency.

All the scraps are being used as compost at the Urban Environmental Lab, Lauridsen said, and as food for Assistant Professor of Engineering Kelly Pennell’s chickens.

“We chose specifically to use food as our medium because engineers in this day and age have to think about sustainability,” Sygiel said. “If you build cars out of wood and metal and plastic, what do you do with the material?”

And unlike plastic, the entirely edible cars are biodegradable. “It was part of the thinking behind the event that there should be some other destination besides a dumpster,” Pennell said.

Hitting the books The “Glutton for Punishment” team stumbled across the edible

car contest in a Google search for “food competitions,” Lauridsen said. Producers contacted the University in April, she said, and preparations for the episode’s filming have been under way ever since.

Blumer and the crew, which for this episode included modern culture and media concentrator Zack Caldwell ’10, were on campus the week leading up to the event, filming segments that Lauridsen said “highlight Brown’s sustainable food use,”, including a segment filmed in the kitchen of West House, a Brown program house and food co-op dedicated to environmentalism.

The Food Network star began his quest at the beginning of the week by building a car to ser ve as a “benchmark” of his initial skill, Pennell said.

“With no information from me, he had one hour to build a car (out) of produce,” she said.

“It was an utter failure.”

“It lost a wheel on the way to the ramp and was in pieces all along it,” Lauridsen said.

Blumer then immediately “hit the books,” spending 13-hour days filming and learning the complex engineering behind a winning car from Pennell and Interim Dean of Engineering Rodney Clifton, Lauridsen said. Blumer also learned pumpkin-car ving techniques from celebrated car ver Richard Alford and spent a day testing car models with the members of Brown’s Formula Society of Automotive Engineers race car team.

A recipe for success The main challenge to crafting a successful vehicle is to make the wheels spin and support the car at the same time, Lauridsen said.

Sygiel advises having as much weight in the car’s body as possible without breaking an axle.

From her own experiments, Sygiel said, she has found that carrots make good axles, but “you have to chew them down to have the same diameter all the way around.”

Bundling fettuccine is another tactic Sygiel suggests, but as Blumer discovered while experimenting with different models, vegetable wheels effectively “cook” the pasta they surround, producing soggy, weakened axles.

Professor Emeritus of Engineering Barrett Hazeltine, Professor of Engineering Allan Bower and Adjunct Lecturer in Visual Art Ian Gonsher judged the cars on appearance, speed and distance traveled.

“It’s easy to make it look cool,” Lauridsen said. “Making it function is more of a challenge, at least in engineering,” “All the theor y and practice doesn’t do anything,” Blumer said, when it comes time to actually build.

But Blumer’s coach thinks his experience as a chef ser ved him well in dishing up a functioning vehicle. “People overlook how creative engineers are,” she said, “but it’s one of our most important skill sets.”

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With Jewelry District expansion, U. aims to liven city continued from page 1 a step toward a vibrant intellectual center.

The dream is infectious. Imagine sitting at a small sidewalk cafe on Richmond Street, sipping a cappuccino, discussing the applications of stem cell growth. A renewed Jewelry District, administrators say, will bring new life to downtown Providence.

It will be like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kendall Square, like a less-urban New York University.

But dreams will soon require blueprints, and glossy images must give way to nuts and bolts. As that process unfolds, the University will have to reconcile its goals with those of the city as a whole, and the future of Brown in downtown Providence will hang in balance.

A CT scan with that coffee?

The opening of the Med School’s new home in August 2011 will represent a key moment in Brown’s history. By then, there will be more than 1,000 members of the University community present in the Jewelry District — what administrators consider to be a “critical mass” — according to architectural consultant Frances Halsband.

Halsband, who drafted the University’s 2003 Strategic Framework for Physical Planning, was one of the first proponents of the University’s growth beyond College Hill. Growing research interests demanded largescale facilities that simply wouldn’t fit within current bounds.

The Jewelry District emerged as an area with the capacity and flexibility to allow for University expansion, but also as a place that could support community development in a broader sense, said Richard Spies, vice president for planning and senior advisor to President Ruth Simmons.

Research activity by universities and hospitals in the district has “mushroomed” since the 1990s, said Edward Wing, dean of medicine and

biological sciences. The district is on a trajectory to become an intellectual hub.

In 2003, the University purchased property at 70 Ship St., and bought seven more properties in the Jewelry District in 2006. Administrators have looked to land freed up by the relocation of I-195 as another potential opportunity to acquire space.

Halsband presented a new “capacity study” for the Jewelry District to the Corporation at its meeting in October. The study, which included recommendations for mixed-used development surrounding Brownowned properties, described “lively promenades,” sidewalk cafes, treelined streets and restored access to the historic waterfront, she said.

The Jewelry District Association, an advocacy group for neighborhood residents and businesses, has been working with Brown to develop plans for the area.

“Obviously they want the students to have some life outside the building that they’re in,” said Jim Brown, president of the association. Brown has been working closely with the community throughout the planning process, he said, and he anticipates that the influx of students will foster new interaction.

This focus on community outreach represents a new tack for University planners. The 70 Ship St. lab, completed half a decade ago, has been used as an example of what not to do. The facility was designed primarily to maximize lab space, Spies said, not to encourage openness.

“If you walk by the building, the shades are drawn,” he said. “We need to think about making those spaces friendly to the street.”

In contrast, the Medical Education Building will encourage accessibility and interaction. The building will feature large windows, displays of student and faculty work and maybe street-level cafes, Wing said.

“With all these people down there, other kinds of businesses that they need will spring up,” said

Courtesy of Brown

Brown’s plans for expansion into the Jewelry District include the evolution of a retail corridor similar to Thayer Street.

Clyde Briant, vice president for research. He pointed to Thayer Street as an example of a retail corridor that depends on Brown as its economic driver.

Brown officials hope the name “Richmond Street” may soon conjure a similar image.

Providence weighs in Many of the proposed improvements, including grooming and restoring streetscapes, require cooperation with neighboring landowners and community groups in the area.

“There aren’t too many things that we can snap our fingers and do,” Spies said. “Brown can’t do it alone.

And we don’t want to do it alone.”

The University’s vision parallels the ideas of city planners, legislators and community members for future development, although the city’s official vision is not yet fully articulated.

The city’s official Jewelry District Neighborhood Plan will be complete

in about two months, said Thomas Deller, Providence’s director of planning and development.

Once that happens, the task in the coming months will be to integrate the University’s planning with the broader goals of the city.

But some of the city’s long-term goals are already becoming clear.

The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority — in addition to reexamining existing transportation routes — is planning a new streetcar line, which in the next decade could connect “meds to eds,” running a loop from Brown through the Jewelry District to hospitals downtown.

There have been 15 or so studies in the past ten years examining planning for the district, said Brown, the neighborhood association president.

“In the broad sense, they’re all in agreement,” he said. The Jewelry District can and should become a hub of the city’s intellectual economy.

Not quite a tea party

But the I-195 properties, continued University planning in the area and local budget crises have brought to the surface underlying conflicts over taxation between the institution and the city.

Perhaps it is not her style to don feathers and start dumping Brown property into the Narragansett Bay in the dark of the night, but Simmons has made it clear that she will not stand for increased city taxes on the University.

The city — which collects no income tax and relies on property taxes to fund its schools — sees University expansion as a threat to its tax base, Deller said. About half of Providence’s land generates no property taxes, in large part because nonprofit institutions like Brown are tax-exempt. Faced with troubled schools and a shrinking budget, the city needs to protect all the revenue streams it can, Deller said.

“The whole property tax thing continued on next page

Kim Perley / Herald (left), Courtesy of Brown (right)

The University plans to renovate the building at 222 Richmond St. into a new medical school education center, the centerpiece of bigger plans for the Jewelry District area.

Monday, November 2, 2009

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“Brown can’t do it alone. And we don’t want to do it alone.”

— Richard Spies, exec. VP for planning, on developing the Jewelry District

Private growth, intellectual vitality figure into big plans continued from previous page is just a nightmare for the state,” Brown said.

When the city planning department was first considering its longterm approach to the Jewelr y District and surrounding areas in the early 1990s, officials expected that future development would come from taxable, for-profit ventures, Deller said.

But over the past 20 years, the economy in Rhode Island has changed. Taxable industr y was once considered to be the prime engine of economic growth, but now, life sciences and biotechnology — often in the form of sponsored University research — are key drivers.

The tax question has come front and center with the sale of land opened up by Providence’s so-called “Iway” project, which will relocate the junction of I-95 and I-195 and free up 20 parcels of new property where the highways once stood.

Brown expressed interest in the property, but with Mayor David Cicilline ’83 now pushing legislation to levy a new tax on non-profit institutions and out-of-state students at private colleges and universities, it has scaled back its ambitions.

“We obviously — regardless of who ends up owning it — have an interest in how (the Iway land) is developed and want to see it developed in a way that is supportive of this knowledge economy,” Spies said.

But the University is no longer making aggressive moves towards Iway land acquisition.

Administrators say it is the city, not the school, that has more to lose.

The problem is there are no developers at this point who are looking to buy up the land and start paying taxes, Wing said. “There’s not a tremendous alternative for the city at the moment.”

But city of ficials argue that, with no income tax, job growth offers little taxable revenue to the city, especially in comparison to what private development would offer.

“We need to figure out how we can grow and prosper as a city without losing our economic space,” Deller said.

Entrepreneurship and potential The BrownMed/Downcity Express shuttle runs a loop connecting College Hill to the Jewelry District research facilities and hospitals downtown. Riding the shuttle is like playing a game of connect the dots; each satellite destination stands alone, isolated both from College Hill and from the neighborhood that surrounds it.

If city and University plans come to fruition, however, these facilities will slowly be engulfed by a growing and vibrant intellectual community.

“We must acknowledge that Brown has an effect on the success of the community and that the success of the community has an effect on Brown,” Spies said.

The school’s ability to attract and retain the best students and faculty is contingent on the perceived “competitiveness” of Providence, he added.

Moreover, the University hopes to encourage private companies to invest in the area, offering graduates a greater opportunity to live and work in Providence after graduation.

“We’d like to see a lot of industry go in there that will feed off of the research activity going on,” Briant said.

“In the ideal world, we would have our researchers spinning out their businesses that would then locate right around where they are.”

In April, Brown, in collaboration with local business and government leaders, opened the Rhode Island Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at One Davol Square. The center offers support for Rhode Islanders — including Brown faculty and students — looking to start their own businesses.

“It’s exciting and it’s promising,” said Brendan McNally, director of the center. “There’s truly the potential for this to be a real hub for entrepreneurship.”

The goal is to offer alternatives to researchers who now must look to nearby intellectual centers such as Boston or New York City. The University is following in the footsteps of cities such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New Haven, Conn. that have allowed non-profit institutions to serve as the key drivers of economic growth.

“Brown is not simply sitting on College Hill and doing what it has done for the past 240 years,” Wing said. “It’s really taking advantage of its strengths.”

Kim Perley / Herald

The University also owns this biomedical research building in the Jewelry District, at 70 Ship St., above, which University officials cite as an example of a closed-off architectural approach to avoid in future projects.

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Number of students enrolled

200

“If you were friends with Arun, you were friends for life.”

— Franny Choi ’11, on Arun Stewart ’11, who died Friday

International students at Brown East Asia

150

Monday, November 2, 2009

Stewart ’11 remembered as ‘exceptional’ student continued from page 1

100

Canada Southeast Asia

50

Eastern Europe

0

2000

Source: Office of Insitutional Research

2002

2004

2006

2008 Jessie Calihan / Herald

The number of international students at Brown has risen over the past several years — particularly the number from Southeast and East Asia.

Number of Asian students has increased at U. continued from page 3 dents to the U.S.” Moreover, Ott said, families in Asia have become more open to and interested in sending their children to the United States for school.

Kening Tan ’12, who went to high school in China, said there has been a “tremendous” rise in the number of students from her high school looking at colleges in the United States.

But Ott said serving this growing interest comes with trade-offs.

Recruitment is difficult when admissions officers must travel across an ocean to conduct information sessions, and it is a challenge to ensure

that all students have the tools they need to apply.

“You’re not going to be able to hit everybody,” Ott said.

As more students become interested in studying in the United States, a cottage industry of application preparation services has emerged, particularly in China.

Last month, Inside Higher Ed, an online magazine that explores topics in higher education, ran a story discussing the ethical questions admissions officers face in reviewing applications that may have come from students who have received inappropriate assistance — including forged transcripts and test scores.

Ott said Brown works to ensure that all applicants — from the United States and abroad — present correct information to the University in their applications.

But “it’s hard,” she said, noting that “it’s also a phenomenon in the United States.”

Ultimately, Ott said that despite the complications of recruiting and admitting students from abroad, international students contribute greatly to Brown’s mission.

“If you are going to have good relationships with people, its important that they understand one another,” she said. “And one means of doing that is studying abroad.”

dents in an independent study on Chinese poetry. “He had a shine on him.”

When she taught Stewart, Levy said he would come to her office before class to talk, and sometimes even to take a bite of her sandwich.

“He was exceptional,” she said.

“He embodied every possibility of diversity.”

Representatives of the University, including administrators and officials in the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, have spoken to Stewart’s family members, who are preparing to travel to Beijing from their home in Dallas.

The Chaplain’s Office hosted an informal memorial gathering Sunday night, which swelled with nearly 40 friends and professors, who spoke of Stewart’s humor and style. Stewart’s commitment to justice and his ability to make ever yone feel important were common themes echoed by all in attendance.

“I knew how much Arun was an important person here,” Alex Arruda ’11, who was Stewart’s roommate during their first year at Brown, said after the memorial.

Courtesy of Franny Choi

Arun Stewart ’11.

“Everything he meant cannot be summed up,” he added.

“I think he would have laughed hysterically” at the descriptions of his character at the memorial, said Sean Feiner ’11, a thought echoed

by Flannery Berg ’11, who said Stewart had “swagger,” but was always humble.

“If you were friends with Arun, you were friends for life,” Franny Choi ’11, one of Stewart’s closest friends and a Herald editorial cartoonist, wrote in an e-mail.

“Arun was a kind, beautiful, unapologetically genuine person.

I am so blessed to have had his wit, his love and his friendship in my life.”

SportsMonday The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, November 2, 2009 | Page 7

M. hockey drops opener at Princeton

By Dan Alexander Senior Staf f Writer

Jesse Morgan / Herald

Quarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero ’11 failed to find the end zone for the first time this season, as the Bears’ offense was shut down by Penn.

Quakers’ defense keeps Bears away for a 14-7 win

By Dan Alexander Senior Staff Writer

Before this Saturday, no one on Penn’s football roster had ever won an overtime game in college. They dropped 14 Penn three straight 7 Brown in 2006 and had lost three since. An overtime field goal hit the upright against Yale in 2006.

The next week that year, a field goal missed versus Brown. An extra point missed against Princeton.

“We had had enough,” Penn linebacker and captain Jake Lewko said. “To hell with the old history of bad breaks — bad snaps, missed kicks, interceptions, all those. It’s over with.”

Penn ended its hard-luck streak against Brown on Saturday, defeating the Bears 14-7 in overtime at Brown Stadium.

The Quakers’ defense stopped Brown on the Bears’ only four downs in overtime, keeping Brown’s offense off the scoreboard for the day.

If not for an interception that cornerback A.J. Cruz ’13 returned for a touchdown in the third quarter, Brown would have been shut out for the first time since 1996.

The Quakers’ defense — the stingiest defense in the Ivy League by points allowed — blanked the Bears’ offense, which had been the top offense in the Ivy League before Saturday.

Penn’s defensive line and linebackers recorded three sacks and put pressure on Brown quarterback Kyle Newhall-Caballero ’11 all day.

The Quakers’ pass rush “definitely got him thinking,” Lewko said.

“We were in there a lot, making him scramble, getting a couple shots on him — especially in pressure

situations.”

Newhall-Caballero was 24-of-42 passing for 241 yards but didn’t have a touchdown for the first time all season.

The Bears’ attack was balanced in the first quarter, as they threw seven times and ran six. But running back Zach Tronti ’11 didn’t touch the ball in the second quarter and got only six handoffs in the final two quarters.

Tronti had 63 yards on 11 carries, making him only the second running back to gain over 60 yards against Penn this season.

The Quakers’ offense struck early. On Penn’s second drive of the game, quarterback Kyle Olson led his team 65 yards to the end zone for the only offensive touchdown scored in regulation. After throwing a 28yard strike on the first play of the drive, Olsen threw short passes out of the I-formation for the remainder of the drive.

Olsen finished the first quarter 8-of-10 passing for 119 yards. But the rest of his day wasn’t as easy.

“It seems like later in the game, they were in more of a cover two,” Olsen said of Brown’s defense.

“Those corners were staying down there in the flat areas, and we had to react to that and start throwing more passes in the middle of the field.”

Olsen threw four interceptions in the second half, three of which were passes over the middle. He finished 27-of-47 passing for 313 yards.

Penn Head Coach Al Bagnoli said his team — which usually focuses its attack around the run — turned to the pass because he didn’t want to run at Brown’s defensive line, which includes two All-Ivy players, co-captain Jimmy Develin ’10 and David Howard ’10. continued on page 8

Men’s hockey Head Coach Brendan Whittet ’94 said before this weekend that he didn’t know who would win the star ting goalie job this season. His decision didn’t get any easier this weekend. Dan Rosen ’10 and Mike Clemente ’12, who each started a game this weekend, allowed just one goal between them.

Clemente got the start in the Bears’ season opener at Princeton on Friday afternoon. After 60 minutes of play, he hadn’t allowed a puck behind him. It took an overtime goal for Princeton to win, 1-0.

Rosen started against the University of Ontario Institute of Technology on Saturday, and had 10 saves without allowing a single goal in his 30 minutes in net. UOIT didn’t score until continued on page 8

Jonathan Bateman / Herald

The Bears also faced UOIT in an exhibition tune-up Friday.

Late Penn goal spells loss for w. soccer

By Tony Bakshi Contributing Writer

Despite a strong performance on an unseasonably warm Senior Day, the women’s soccer team fell 1-0 to the Penn Quakers Saturday.

A surprising breakaway goal in the 80th minute by Penn forward Marin McDermott gave the Quakers the only tally of the match, and silenced a Stevenson Field crowd expecting late-game heroics from the Brown squad (5-8-1, 2-4-0 Ivy League).

McDermott’s goal came after she found herself unmarked on the right side of the field. Goalie Steffi Yellin ’10 was forced to come off her line, and McDermott maneuvered around her and then tapped the ball into the empty net.

Penn (9-4-2, 3-3-0) scored the goal while suffering an offensive onslaught by the Bears, who outshot the visitors 11-4 in the second half and 16-8 overall. The Bears spent the majority of the second half in possession of the ball near the Penn goal, but could not deliver the needed blow.

Bruno’s best second-half scoring opportunity came in the 65th minute, as midfielder Gina Walker ’11 got free between two defenders in the Penn box. She dribbled through the opposition, and sent a strike towards the goal. But her shot went just wide, and she was relegated to covering her head in disbelief after the near miss.

Bruno played a solid first half as well. Following a pre-game ceremony honoring the team’s octet of seniors — Yellin, Brenna Hogue ’10, Bridget Ballard ’10, Melissa Kim ’10, Kellie Slater ’10, Paige Reidy ’10, Meghan Robinson ’10 and Kiki Manners ’10 — the Brown squad got off to a good start in front of the many family members and friends

on hand for the game.

Manners, a forward, made her first appearance and start of the season after having been out with an injury all season. She made an instant contribution on the field, forcing a Brown corner kick in the initial minutes before being substituted for.

The Bears got ver y close to notching a goal in the 25th minute, with two consecutive opportunities by key senior players. Ballard’s initial header off a corner kick

was blocked off the line by a Penn defender. Seconds later, another header by Robinson sailed just over the crossbar of the Penn goal, and was met by groans from Bruno supporters hoping for a score.

The disappointing loss dropped Brown to seventh in the Ivy League standings. The Bears close out their season next Saturday in New Haven, Conn., where they will face the Yale Bulldogs, who are currently second on the Ivy League table.

Page 8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S ports Monday

Monday, November 2, 2009

“Not any one guy loses a game, and it takes a team to win.”

— Football Head Coach Phil Estes

M. hockey drops Ivy opener despite tuneup continued from page 7 Anthony Borelli ’13 was in net and the Bears were ahead, 4-0.

“Michael Clemente played unbelievable against Princeton,” Whittet said. “And I thought Danny Rosen played very, very well.

“It’s up in the air as we move for ward, he said. “I could see a rotation until somebody wins the job.”

Jesse Morgan / Herald

Field hockey fell to Penn Saturday after the Quakers scored four goals in the game’s final 21 minutes.

Field hockey loses season’s penultimate game

By Andrew Braca Spor ts Editor

The field hockey team fell to Penn, 4-0, on Saturday in its penultimate game of the season.

The final game atop blustery War ner 4 Penn Roof was a 0 Brown bittersweet experience for seniors Whitney Knowlton ’10, Madison Miketa ’10 and tricaptains Jackie Connard ’10, Nora Malgieri ’10 and Michaela Seigo ’10.

“We’re all really sad that it’s ending,” Malgieri said. “Having our last home game was really emotional, but we have one more game left.”

The Bears (5-11, 0-6 Ivy) held the Quakers (5-10, 2-3) scoreless for 49 minutes before the floodgates opened.

“We all worked really hard and

just couldn’t make it happen,” Malgieri said.

Brown goalie Caroline Washburn ’12 was the star of the first half, stopping all seven shots she faced to keep the Quakers off the scoreboard. Malgieri said the defense as a whole had a strong start to the game.

“We were communicating, and ever yone was recovering,” she said. Washburn “had a lot of really great saves, and Laura Iacovetti (’12) was playing really well, but I don’t know — I think we stopped talking and got pretty tired by the end. That’s when it kind of fell apart.”

Penn scored four goals in the final 21 minutes to pull away.

“That’s kind of been our problem all year — we allow those goals to happen,” Malgieri said. “It was great that we played so well in the first half, but we need to be able to keep that for 70 minutes.”

Penn outshot Brown by a margin of 28-6. Washburn totaled 14 saves, and Abigail Taft ’12 came off the bench to lead the Bears with two shots.

Brown will travel to New Haven, Conn. on Saturday to close out the season against Yale (11-5, 5-1). The Bears will need to work hard this week to beat the Bulldogs for the third year in a row.

“We’ve been talking a lot about being personally accountable for what we’re doing on the field,” Seigo said. “This week of practice is going to be really hard, physically and mentally.”

Malgieri said the team will focus on fundamentals such as communication and “stick-to-stick passing.”

“I think we’ll be fine for Saturday,” she said. “We’re all really frustrated with the loss, so we’re ready to go into our last game (and play) for a win.”

Football falls to 2-2 in Ivy standings with loss continued from page 7 Develin was all over the field on Saturday, racking up 8.5 tackles, including one sack. And Howard — who had a scout from the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs watching him — made two tackles and forced two hurries.

“I thought our defense played outstanding,” said Head Coach Phil Estes. The tough unit “created those pressures for them to throw those interceptions, and it gave us an opportunity,” he added.

The Bears scored their only points of the game when Cruz took an interception back for a

touchdown on Penn’s first drive after halftime. Olsen tried to hit Penn wide receiver Joe Holder in double coverage, but Cruz wrestled the ball out of Holder’s hands and took it the other way.

Just after the start of the fourth quarter, with Penn just eight yards away from the goal line, Olson threw an interception to Blaine Grinna ’11 in the end zone, keeping the game tied, 7-7.

The Bears offense drove 65 yards downfield on the ensuing drive, setting up a 32-yard field-goal attempt for Patrick Rooney ’11. But Rooney, who was 0-of-3 on the day, sent it wide left.

Rooney, who is listed on the roster as a wide receiver and made a dramatic, unlikely go-ahead field goal in the final seconds against Holy Cross three weeks ago, had a chance to be the hero again when he lined up for a 44-yarder with the score tied and just seven seconds left in regulation. Against a strong wind, Rooney didn’t have enough leg to reach the goalpost, sending the game into overtime.

“It wasn’t the last (field-goal attempt), but it was the one before that — got to have it,” Estes said.

“Now he’s not the hero … Not any one guy loses a game, and it takes a team to win.”

Princeton 1, Brown 0 (OT) Princeton couldn’t score in 60 minutes of regulation play Friday, but it took just 1:16 in overtime for Tyler Beachell to beat Clemente and win the game.

The goal came just five seconds after the Tigers got a power-play opportunity because of an interference penalty against Jesse Fratkin ’11.

Princeton had only one more shot than Brown during the game, and it was the 32nd one that Clemente couldn’t turn away. Princeton goalie Zane Kalemba, who led the ECAC in save percentage last season, posted a shutout with 31 saves.

Princeton got out to a 10-2 shot advantage in the first period, but the Tigers didn’t dominate play, as the Bears spent much of the opening frame with the puck in the Tigers’ zone.

Although the Tigers couldn’t beat Clemente in the opening period, they had a number of chances in the center of Brown’s zone. The puck crossed the slot in front of Brown’s goal three times in the first period, but no Tigers were there to finish it.

The closest they came was when Mark Magnowski one-timed the puck in the slot, but Clemente turned it away with under five minutes left in the period.

Clemente got another scare at the start of the middle frame, when Tiger Sam Sabky wound up with a slap-shot from the left point. The puck went past Clemente, off the inside of the post and out of the goal.

Princeton kept Clemente busy at the beginning of the third period, but the Bears withstood the siege and came back to regain a 12-10 shot advantage in the frame.

Neither team could get the goahead goal in the final minutes of regulation, sending the game into overtime. It didn’t take Princeton long to score in the extra period, giving the Tigers a win on their season opener.

The season-opening game, played outside of the normal ECAC schedule, does not count in the conference standings but will count as an official game in both teams’ overall records.

Brown 6, UOIT 1 Brown scored 25 seconds into the exhibition game on Saturday, and the game was never close again. By the end of the game, six

Jonathan Bateman / Herald

The Bears opened on home ice against UOIT with a 6-1 win.

different players had notched a goal for the Bears.

Brown’s first goal came when tri-captain Devin Timberlake ’10 passed across the crease to Chris Zaires ’13, who one-timed it into the net for his first collegiate goal on the Bears’ opening shift of the night.

“That was a great first shift, but we didn’t play how we wanted to play in that first period,” said tri-captain Aaron Volpatti ’10. “I think we improved as the game went on.”

Brown pulled away to a 2-0 lead by the end of the first period despite getting only three shots on goal.

UOIT outshot the Bears, 7-3, in the opening frame, but Brown controlled the puck for most of the period.

Whittet said he thought his team came out slow, but played better in the last two periods.

“Our guys just thought it was going to be easy, they thought it was an exhibition game,” he said. “I don’t think they had the feeling that there needed to be that intensity.

And I want it. I want that intensity, and I want that passion, and that drive — every, every shift.”

UOIT got only six shots off in the final two periods, one of which was a one-timer that beat Roselli.

With a 3-0 lead entering the third period, the Bears didn’t let up, and ended the game ahead 6-1.

“It was great because it went 60 minutes,” UOIT Head Coach Marlin Muylaert said.

But the final period was plagued by whistles, as the teams took a combined total of 16 penalties.

“I just felt that the officials were going to be really relentless in making sure that we were going to be the team always shor thanded,” Muylaert said.

UOIT took 15 penalties in the game for 38 minutes, compared to Brown’s 12 penalties for 40 minutes. Whittet said he thought the officiating was “great.”

The Bears will return to the ice next weekend, when they will face Union and RPI in on a two-game road trip.

Arts & Culture The Brown Daily Herald

Craftland show finds a downtown home

By Ana Alvarez Staff Writer

Every December since 2002, Providence shoppers in search of artisanal holiday gifts have relied on the annual Craftland show, a craft fair as homey and handmade as the work sold there.

This year, the annual event has established a year-round presence at Craftland’s permanent store at 235 Westminster St. The brainchild of local artists Margaret Carleton and Johanna Fisher, Craftland was conceived in October 2002 after its creators “just decided there was no good place to get good handmade products,” said Craftland artist and store employee Kristin Crane.

Deb Dormody, one of the original artists featured in Craftland who now organizes the store, said both Carleton and Fisher “were ruminating about all their talented friends and how traditional venues weren’t the best fit to showcase their work and they decided to do something about it.”

Within the month, Carleton and Fisher had contacted 50 artists and obtained a donated retail space in downtown Providence. Craftland opened that November and remained open for the rest of the holiday season. The craft fair was well received, and with each consecutive holiday season, the number of artists from Providence and around the world grew to 140.

Noting the growth and popularity of Craftland, Crane said, “There’s been this handmade revolution. I think people just want to get back to products that are more thoughtful and crafted well.”

As the Craftland spirit flourished and became ingrained into the holiday shopping routine of many Providence residents, demand for Craftland to open year-round began to spread.

When the financial crisis hit in October of 2008, the future prospects of holiday shopping — and with them, Craftland — seemed bleak. Despite such predictions, Crane said, “Craftland did better than ever.”

Dormody wasn’t surprised by Craftland’s success despite the eco-

nomic setbacks, and noted that the harsh economic times made Providence residents feel more compelled to support local businesses and artists.

“They’re sustaining artists in their community, they’re investing in their local economy, they’re buying work that only appreciates in value. Who can’t get behind that?” Dormody said.

It wasn’t until 2008 that the Craftland team, having weathered the economic storm with impressive gains, began to seriously consider expanding the store.

“We started to look at how we had grown exponentially each year, even in this economy, and it seemed right to give it a try,” Dormody said.

As Craftland has transitioned into its new role, the team behind the store has broadened the original concept.

“We still have our big holiday show, but for the year-round shop we have about 70 artists and have divided up the space so that we are also a gallery and classroom where we host the Craftland School of Craft,” Dormody said.

The gallery, which is set in the rear of the store, hosts small monthlong exhibitions curated by, and featuring the work of, Providence artists.

Along with the gallery, the store is also offering a “School of Craft” with about 10 classes each month on different craft techniques. Class topics include tote bag-making, Adobe Photoshop production and spray painting stenciled skateboards.

With all of this activity, Craftland has become “a great income generator for a lot of artists,” Crane said.

“We’re all pretty proud of how many artists we’ve supported in the last eight years,” Dormody said, adding that this support of artists in the Providence community distinguishes Craftland from other stores.

Craftland has donated five percent of proceeds to a different charity every year. This year, the show will benefit Girls Rock! Rhode Island, an organization that offers music camps to empower young women and girls.

Monday, November 2, 2009 | Page 9

‘Oak Tree’ innovative, hypnotic

By Fei Cai Contributing Writer

The drone of the audience quiets as the house lights dim. The stage lights brighten, and the audience sits back to enjoy a seemingly typical two-man show.

The only catch? One of the actors has never seen the script.

Thus begins Tim Crouch’s innovative play, “An Oak Tree,” which appears one night only at Leeds Theatre Tuesday at 8 p.m. The per formance will be the first in Crouch’s monthlong U.S. tour.

The show dramatizes the meeting of two men — a father and a hypnotist responsible for the death of the former’s child — after a terrible accident.

Crouch, a British actor turned playwright, will play the hypnotist, and a local actor will play the father. As always, the second actor’s identity will not be revealed until the performance itself.

Crouch has per formed the show more than 250 times around the world. Each time, he plays the hypnotist, and a different actor

— male or female — plays the father.

“I use hypnosis as a metaphor for art,” Crouch said. “In effect, I play the artist.”

By collaborating with a different actor each night, Crouch said, he aims to challenge established theatrical traditions.

“In the last hundred years in performing we got horribly stuck in a certain way of acting — a certain style of preparation of acting,” he said. “I think we are, sadly, completely ignoring the presence of our audience in that preparation, and my work brings the role of the audience into the forefront of the theater experience.”

In “An Oak Tree,” the actor playing opposite Crouch becomes representative of the audience, the playwright said, in that both the actor and the viewers are experiencing the performance for the first time.

“The actor is playing a character who is lost in their grief, who has lost the compass in their life.

And that character is being performed by an actor who has also lost his compass,” he said.

Though the play does have a script, Crouch said, having different actors ever y time creates a cer tain freedom within the text, “a kind of improvisation in the spirit.”

“We go and see the play not just for the words. We go for all the other stuff,” he said. “And it’s all the other stuff that is being made up in the moment.”

Lisa D’Amour, a visiting lecturer in playwriting and the person responsible for inviting Crouch to Brown, said she was excited about the playwright’s coming. “He is an amazing writer and an amazing performer,” she said.

In addition to the performance of “An Oak Tree,” Crouch’s visit to Brown this week will include lectures and workshops for playwrights and actors.

Crouch said he hopes students in the workshops will learn to leave behind the cultural stigmas that society has placed on theater.

“Theater is a cultural form that is available to anyone. And the transformation of theater is available to anyone, not just to specialist actors,” he said.

Editorial & Letters The Brown Daily Herald

Page 10 | Monday, November 2, 2009

chris jesu lee

e d i to r i a l

Letters!

Send them our way, please? 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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Opinions Editor Opinions Editor

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We’re all right, Dave David Dooley, the new president of the University of Rhode Island, has grand plans for increasing collaboration with Brown. He’d like the two universities to share research sites and equipment, work together on projects and grant proposals and allow students to cross-register for classes. We’re all for pooling resources, especially in tough economic times. But some of Dooley’s ideas are unsettling, and we urge the University to think carefully about whether these measures would benefit Brown.

Chief among our concerns is Dooley’s proposal for cross-registration between Brown and URI. The University currently allows cross-registration with the Rhode Island School of Design, and Dooley has hopes for a similar program between Brown and his school. But opening our classroom doors to URI students may do Brown more harm than good.

First, consider the impact of an influx of students on Brown’s course infrastructure. Overcrowding in classes is already a significant problem at Brown. A number of courses are so full that students must sit on the floor or on windowsills. One section of ENGN 0900: “Management of Industrial and Nonprofit Organizations” has 261 students in a room with capacity for 140. What’s more, a shortage of teaching assistants is leading more professors to impose enrollment caps on their courses, making it harder to enroll in popular classes.

Sure, URI students might jump at the chance to take such Brunonian classes as GNSS1960G: “The Globalization of Family-Making” and MCM0800E: “Race and Imagined Futures.” But Brown classes and professors are already feeling a strain. Adding more students to the mix will only make matters worse. And we’re not talking about a trivial number

of students. With nearly 13,000 undergraduates, URI’s undergraduate population is almost double the size of Brown’s.

Dooley told The Herald this week that collaboration, including cross-registration, could benefit both institutions. Brown offers programs that are unavailable to URI students, and URI offers classes that are unavailable on College Hill. In theory, cross-registration would give Brown students access to classes on nursing, pharmacology and marine research. But transportation difficulties will likely rule out these opportunities for most Brown students. Though URI has one campus in Providence, the campuses that offer more eclectic classes — the ones unavailable here at Brown — are far away from College Hill.

We don’t like to be overly pessimistic, but here’s the worst-case scenario: URI students enroll in Brown classes by the dozens, straining the University’s resources. On the other side, relatively few Brown students take the bus to Narragansett to study oceanography. Clearly, Brown does not come out ahead.

If the University decides to consider cross-registration with URI, administrators must ensure that Brown can reap the benefits. That may mean placing a cap on the number of students who can crossregister in a given semester or severely limiting the types of classes students can enroll in. It may also mean setting up a shuttle between campuses so that Brown students can take advantage of URI’s rich class offerings.

Collaboration is good. We just need to make sure we get our money’s worth.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board.

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Opinions The Brown Daily Herald

Monday, November 2, 2009 | Page 11

Why did you come here?

BY SEAN QUIGLEY Opinions Columnist As I began my first year at Brown more than three years ago, I remember receiving this exact question, having made no effort to hide the fact that, at the French Legislative Assembly, I would have sat on the right. Even to this day, when fellow conservatives and I make recommendations concerning where we see room for reform at our school, we are typically met with scorn — as well as the obligatory remark that we should have matriculated elsewhere.

The gripes range based on a given situation, but the most common tend to revolve around four central claims: we do not accept Brown’s progressive consensus; we reject what is distinctively Brown; we seek only discord and bitter disagreement; and we are so prejudiced and misinformed that we have not advanced to the moral consciousness expected of a Brown student.

Essentially, we are stubborn neanderthals disguised as stupid curmudgeons. Fit for College Hill we are not.

One need only consult the reaction to the recent Columbus Day rally, jointly sponsored by the Brown College Republicans and the Brown Spectator, in order to see how reviling are our presence and our criticisms. In a letter to the editor, Geoffrey Mino ’12 infers that the purpose of the rally must have been “to belittle rather than engage the community” (“Criticism of Fall Weekend stokes racial an-

tagonism,” Oct. 13). Mino then points to the President of the Brown Republicans, Keith DellaGrotta ’10, as the chief Brown antagonist there.

DellaGrotta’s tireless work to better the campus, from his creation of the annual Dash for Diabetes to his long-standing involvement with Brown Christian Fellowship, should demonstrate that his loyalties are always with Brown. Moreover, he does not take his threegeneration Brown pedigree lightly, a pedigree that greatly motivated the emotional content

practice of waving the bloody hide of native oppression, he must have been deriding Brown.

Such is the logic of a person like Mino.

Taking a cue from those who conflate criticism with disloyalty, the editorial page board characterized the crowd, among whom was yours truly, as betraying “rabidly anti-Brown sentiment” (“A day off, not a day on,” Oct. 19).

I wonder whether the board would make the same claim about those members of the Brown Corporation who, in 1926, voted to

In the end, it appears that far too many Brown students resort to the charge that a critic must be a traitor.

of his speech.

Had Mino possessed a belief in the possibility of a loyal opposition, he might have realized that DellaGrotta cringed at the thought of losing the Brown once attended by his Italian grandfather from Federal Hill, Guerino DellaGrotta ’36. For while destruction comes rather easily — as the recent Herald articles about Brown’s relationship with the Providence community should reveal — preservation is painstakingly difficult. So, not prone to inaction, DellaGrotta took a stand.

But, since he was critical of Brown’s decision, and sought a way to transcend the

increase the number of trustees by six members, and then removed all denominational considerations for those six members, as well as for the President. What of the members who, in 1942, removed all denominational requirements for all Corporation members?

If anything could be called un-Brown, it should be the premeditated and deliberate upending of the very charter that birthed the University. Not to mention how much of a slap in the face of Brown’s founders such a departure from more than 160 years of precedent must have been. They abandoned our school’s very identity as a Baptist, Christian

college.

Or let us take a more recent example, while still applying the logic that a critique, even a call for fairly substantial change, necessarily amounts to hatred. Must we conclude that the man largely behind the New Curriculum, Ira Magaziner ’69 P’06 P’07 P’10, was a despiser of Brown? He, after all, sought and succeeded in shepherding a major revision to the University’s academic policies. How dare he.

In the end, it appears that far too many Brown students resort to the charge that a critic must be a traitor, especially when that critic is on the right. What could end a discussion sooner than the idea that one’s opponent secretly hates Brown and thus only disagrees out of a desire to encourage its failure?

One should expect more critical thinking from the Ivy League. Then again, in the minds of most progressives, discord does not and cannot arise either from conflicting principles or from genuinely differing interpretations, but rather from a lack of knowledge. “You’re just misinformed,” as so many opponents of the rally stated time and time again.

Clearly. It is not as though people actually could disagree in good faith, and then make their disagreements known through recommendations. That would be impossible, and uncouth to boot. Who could want to reform Brown? I mean, it is not as though it has ever been reformed before.

Wait…

Sean Quigley ’10 puts the protest in Protestant. He can be reached at sean.b.quigley@gmail.com.

To those interested in creating peace in the Middle East

BY AVI SHAEFER Guest Columnist An open letter to the group Common Ground, from a former Israeli Soldier: My name is Avi Schaefer. I am a freshman at Brown. I’m the one who doesn’t quite look like a freshman, who doesn’t quite act like a freshman and who generally shies away from the question, “So what did you do during the three years you weren’t in school?”

You know me as the quiet person who sat in the back of Common Ground meetings. I tried to speak up, but my opinions were not welcomed.

No one echoed my call for dialogue — this is why I can no longer come. This is why I felt that I had to write a letter.

As a good friend put it, “Avi, it’s time to tell people the truth! Why are you afraid to tell everyone what you have done?”

I was afraid, because I don’t know how to convince you that I dream of peace, desire it more than anything and have devoted my life thus far to it. How do I convince you of this, after I tell you that I volunteered to fight in the Israeli Defense Forces? If I said that I decided to go not because of hatred, but rather to work for peace, would you believe me? I went to the army so that my children will not have to — a dream I fear

may not come true. I am telling you this, Common Ground: Justice and Equality in Palestine/ Israel, so you know my story, to implore you to consider what I have to say.

I came to Brown looking for an environment that embodies the qualities of expression, openmindedness and understanding. I arrived opti-

side. As my father always says, “An enemy is someone whose story we have not yet heard.”

Only through recognition of the other side will there be peace.

When both sides truly understand that Israelis and Palestinians have a right to live, a need for legitimate safety and a desire to envision a

I went to a meeting of your group called “Common Ground,” looking for a forum of honest dialogue, to establish two states for two peoples, to find only the Palestinian side being represented, understood and shared. mistically searching to meet others devoted to a common goal: forging lasting peace.

Imagine my utter disappointment as I went to a meeting of your group, Common Ground, looking for a forum of honest dialogue, to establish two states for two peoples, to find only the Palestinian side being represented, understood and shared. There was no attempt to recognize hardships on Israelis or assign mutual blame for conflicts.

I know that the group’s intentions are good, but this situation is too nuanced, too complicated and too important to only share the Palestinian

more peaceful future for their children, then there will be peace. Can we move past the nuances to work together? Can we understand each other in order to help both Israelis and Palestinians realize the other side’s story? If we at Brown cannot create a forum to understand each other, how can we ever assume that this will be created in the Middle East?

I am writing to you, Common Ground, to urge you to embody your name. Otherwise you should be honest and change your name, clearly stating that you are a pro-Palestinian group. If you truly want to be a place for common ground, then you

should look to further honest dialogue.

While you bring both Palestinians and Israelis to speak of the situation, you carefully bring only those who support your one side, and tell your one story. Your most recent events brought in Israeli voices who do not represent the general view of Israeli society.

If you are truly concerned about sharing the unheard voice, about achieving lasting peace, about finding the common ground that Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis, Palestinians and other citizens of the world all care about, you will be true to your name, and work towards peace. You will not demonize and vilify the Israeli side alone.

Let’s figure out how we can work together to do something productive to honor your name and find our common ground. I am here, ready and anxiously waiting for you to work with me, not against me. Do not give me another reason to lose hope, because my patience is sadly running out. I wait for the day that the words of the Prophet Isaiah will ring true: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Avi Schaefer ‘13 is an international relations and Middle Eastern studies concentrator from Santa Barbara, Calif. He can be reached at avi_schaefer@brown.edu

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Monday, November 2, 2009

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

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2 c a l e n da r Today, november 2

tuesday, november 3

12 pm — Brown-Tougaloo Partnership Open House, J. Walter Wilson 411

12 PM — Paper Crane Folding, Sharpe Refectory

7 pm — Asian/Asian-American History Month Opening Convocation, Salomon 101

7 pm — “Ethics and Animals: Where We’ve Come From, and Where We Need To Go,” MacMillan 117

comics Birdfish | Matthew Weiss

menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Gnocchi Alla Sorrentina, Italian Vegetable Saute, Popcorn Chicken, Chocolate Frosted Brownies

Lunch — Fried Clam Roll, Manicotti with Tomato Basil Cream Sauce, Fresh Broccoli, Rice Krispie Treats

Dinner — Brown Rice Garden Casserole, Pirate Ship Pork Loin, Belgian Carrots, Ambrosia Cake

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

Dot Comic | Eshan Mitra and Brendan Hainline

crossword Hippomaniac | Mat Becker

Classic Deep-Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

Classic How To Get Down | Nate Saunders