Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Daily

Herald

THE BROWN

vol. cxlviii, no. 52

INSIDE

Page 2

Senior panel

Students exhibit capstones at Theories in Action

NO U. STUDENTS REPORTED INJURED IN EXPLOSION At least 20 students and alums attended the Boston Marathon Monday

By ALEXANDRA MACFARLANE AND SARAH PERELMAN UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

Page 4

Vacated space

City officials debate the fate of “Superman” building

Page 8

Gun control

Firearm legislation moves to R.I. General Assembly today

61 / 51

tomorrow

65 / 54

since 1891

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

AND SENIOR STAFF WRITER

No Brown students were reported injured after two bombs exploded by the Boston Marathon’s finish line around 2:50 p.m. yesterday, though at least 20 students and alums attended the event.

Three people were killed, and almost 150 people were injured in the incident, multiple news outlets reported Monday.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 told the Boston Globe no Rhode Island citizens had been reported injured as of Monday night.

The White House has not yet determined whether the attack was foreign or domestic, Reuters reported, but the FBI and Secretary of Homeland Security are taking appropriate measures, President Obama said in a speech in response to the events.

Five minutes after the explosions, the site was filled with debris, ambulances and people fleeing the scene, said Julien Ouellet ’12, who works in the Prudential Tower, located approximately 200 yards from the scene. Ouellet, a former Herald senior editor, witnessed the aftermath at the marathon’s finish line from a window in the tower.

Half an hour after the attack, the site was like a “ghost town,” Ouellet said, adding that the “whole scene was entirely deserted save for policemen.”

National Guard and SWAT teams entered about an hour later and began turning over trash cans — likely looking for other possible explosives — and sifting through debris, he said.

When Ouellet first heard the bombs, it sounded “as if someone dropped books on the floor above,” he said, adding that he didn’t know anything had happened until he heard ambulance sirens outside. The workers in his office were / / Boston page 5

DAN ZHANG / HERALD

Three individuals died and nearly 150 were injured after two explosions near the finish line at the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon.

TouchNet stalls Spring Weekend ticket sales UFB, The site caused problems with morning sales, but BCA released more of the tickets in the evening

By ABIGAIL SAVITCH-LEW CONTRIBUTING WRITER

After thousands of students were unable purchase Spring Weekend tickets Monday morning due to technical issues with TouchNet, a third-party service that handles credit card payments, Brown Student Agencies and Brown Concert Agency successfully resumed sales Monday evening.

Out of 6,400 tickets intended to be released to the student body 8 a.m. Monday — 3,200 tickets for each day of the concerts — only 1,000 were successfully sold, said Connor Shinn ’14, executive

director of BSA. This marks the fourth year in a row that the online sale of Spring Weekend tickets has faced technical issues. BCA and BSA rescheduled sales for Monday night and Tuesday morning to sell the rest of the tickets intended for release Monday morning.

Ticket sales Monday night went smoothly, said Emma Ramadan ’13, booking chair for BCA. “We’re really happy that TouchNet finally pulled through and did what they’re supposed to,” Ramadan said.

In response to past problems with the site, BCA and BSA made changes to the sales website this year, Shinn said.

Shinn said TouchNet hosted the sales website last year and didn’t have enough capacity to serve the influx of student customers, resulting in a site crash. This year, BSA created its own ticket-selling

server on Amazon that could handle 30,000 customers at once, Shinn said.

But the University has a contract with TouchNet that mandates that BSA’s website use TouchNet to process payments.

Though Shinn said TouchNet assured BCA and BSA the service would be prepared for a high number of payments, the site still experienced difficulties this morning.

TouchNet did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

Many students had charges pending on their credit card statements Monday morning but did not receive an email with their tickets attached.

“I woke up at 7:45 to get those tickets,” said Jason Addy ’16, who said he received an error message the first time he tried to purchase tickets and later found he had been charged without receiving a ticket.

BCA posted on its blog Monday

afternoon that students who had been charged but did not receive an email confirmations had not actually purchased tickets, and their pending charges would be canceled. It is TouchNet’s responsibility to contact credit card companies and cancel pending charges, Shinn said.

About 120 students requested a negative number of tickets Monday morning, further overloading TouchNet and interfering with the BCA website, Shinn said. Each of these students were charged $10 but didn’t receive tickets, he added.

Diane Chouinard, coordinator of Financial Services, refunded each student individually, Shinn said.

“Today sucked. It really did,” BCA members wrote in their blog post Monday afternoon. The post also said BCA and BSA were working with TouchNet and University administrators to reopen ticket sales on / / Tickets page 2

Housing renovation plans aimed to bolster community The University’s extensive renovation plan is meant to unify students based on class year

By MATHIAS HELLER UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR

As the University undertakes major changes to its housing system with a multimillion-dollar investment on the line, students expressed mixed views on how well residential life builds community.

First-year units and mutual friends are the most common ways students form connections that lead to housing groups, with 35.7 percent of current sophomores, juniors and seniors having met most of the people with whom they currently live through other friends

NEWS ANALYSIS

LYDIA YAMAGUCHI / HERALD

About 34 percent of juniors and seniors reported meeting their current housemates in their first-year dormitories such as Keeney Quadrangle.

and 35.2 percent having met most of their housing mates through their first-year units, according to results from a poll The Herald conducted last month.

Twenty-two percent of students in all class years met most of the people with whom they live or plan to live through teams or student groups, and 19 percent found most of their housing mates through academic settings.

Ten percent of students met most of the people with whom they live or plan to live through a fraternity, sorority or program house, 3 percent were randomly assigned housing and 8 percent indicated the poll question did not apply. An additional 9 percent of students, including some who studied abroad last semester or chose to live alone, indicated they are not in standard housing groups.

Poll respondents circled all options that applied to them.

The Corporation allocated $56 mil/ / Housing page 3 lion for hous-

Visions controversy resolved

Leaders of the magazine petitioned against the board’s funding cut and threat to control content

By KIKI BARNES SENIOR STAFF WRITER

After controversy flared online Sunday over a proposed budget cut to the literary arts publication Visions, a meeting Monday afternoon between Undergraduate Finance Board representatives and Visions leaders appeared to partially resolve what UFB members described as a misunderstanding.

But Visions continued to circulate an online petition as of Monday evening criticizing UFB for a general lack of transparency and what the publication’s leaders saw as an initial attempt to usurp its editorial independence.

Next year the publication is likely to receive all the funding it originally requested, said Zachary Fischer ’13, UFB chair.

Initial budgets for student groups next year were released the week before spring break, marking the first time Visions editors heard the publication was slotted to receive 85 percent of its proposed funding. When Visions, a Brown-Rhode Island School of Design Asian/Asian-American literature and art publication, went to a UFB appeals meeting April 9, its leaders were told the cuts were due to the high number of RISD student contributions in its most recent issue, said Larry Au ’14, Visions editor-in-chief.

In response, Visions posted a petition online Sunday lambasting UFB’s decision and demanding the board revise / / Visions page 5 its decision in a

2 university news C ALENDAR TODAY

APRIL 16

TOMORROW

7 P.M.

APRIL 17

5:30 P.M. Kink, Leather and BDSM

Who’s Afraid of Religious Passion?

Salomon 001

Pembroke Hall 202

7 P.M.

5:30 P.M.

Brown Lecture Board: Ron Paul

Obama’s “War on Terror”

Salomon 101

The Underground

MENU SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEY-WOOLLEY

LUNCH Tomato Quiche, Reuben Sandwich, Steak Sandwich with Onions and Mushrooms, Chocolate Chip Cookies

Steak Sandwich with Onions and Mushrooms, Vegetable Strudel, Chocolate Chip Cookies

DINNER Stri Fried Chicken with Noodles, Vegetable Egg Rolls, Fried Rice, Bread Pudding with Raisins

Chicken Breast with Brandied Glaze, Creamy Parmesan Primavera, Stir Fried Tofu, Panettone Bread Pudding

SUDOKU

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Los AngelesCROSSWORD Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Soccer officials 5 “You __ dead!”: “I’m telling mom!”

10 Location 14 Berry in healthy smoothies 15 “No way!”

16 Jazz classic “Take __ Train” 17 Lost color in one’s cheeks 19 Greasy spoon grub 20 Hit hard 21 Like blue hair 22 “Faust” dramatist 24 Fred’s dancing sister 26 Bartender’s twist 28 Beer to drink on Cinco de Mayo 30 Four quarters 31 Tax agcy.

32 Archaic “once” 33 Talk show pioneer Jack 36 Residential bldg. units 38 Stack of unsolicited manuscripts 41 Bush secretary of labor Elaine 43 Madeline of “Blazing Saddles” 44 Emails the wrong person, say 48 U.S./Canada’s __ Canals 49 Sunrise direction, in Köln 51 Buyer’s “beware” 53 Tribal carving 57 Go 58 City on the Rio Grande 59 Feed the kitty 61 “Cool” monetary amt.

62 Even-handed 63 It may be filled with a garden hose 66 Helsinki resident 67 Actress Burstyn 68 Hip-swiveling dance 69 Vexes 70 Extremely poor 71 Ruin Bond’s martini

DOWN 1 Daily grind 2 Besides Chile, the only South American country that doesn’t border Brazil 3 __ market 4 Break a Commandment 5 “Toy Story” boy 6 Fend off 7 Dance around 8 Somme salt 9 Where Nike headquarters is 10 Considerable, as discounts 11 Terse critical appraisal 12 Ties to a post, as a horse 13 Art gallery props 18 Delightful spot 23 “Paper Moon” Oscar winner Tatum 25 Many, informally 27 Change from vampire to bat, say 29 Kwik-E-Mart owner on “The Simpsons” 34 Extend an invitation for

35 “I knew it!”

37 Thorn in one’s side 39 Appears strikingly on the horizon 40 Co. letterhead abbr.

41 Welcome summer forecast 42 Noticeable lipstick color 45 Come down hard on 46 Filled pasta

47 Top-notch 48 Golden Slam winner Graf 50 Said 52 Away from the wind 54 Takes home 55 Punch bowl spoon 56 Over and done 60 Hard to see 64 French landmass 65 Acidity nos.

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Theories in Action gains popularity Seniors representing an array of disciplines joined the panel to showcase their capstone projects

By MOLLY SCHULSON SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Seniors will present on topics ranging from Algebra in Motion to the use of classical music in television advertisements during the fourth annual Theories in Action conference April 26-28.

Ninety-six seniors will participate, up from 21 participants last year and nearly twice as many as in 2010, when the conference was first created, said Peggy Chang, director of the Curricular Resource Center, which co-sponsors the conference with the Office of the Dean of the College.

Last year, about 600 audience members, including friends and advisers of the participants, as well as Providence community members, attended the conference, Chang said.

“This is an opportunity for students across departments, across disciplines, even students who are campus leaders in extracurricular service projects, to think about what has been meaningful for them during their time at Brown and to talk about the social and public significance of what they’ve done,” Chang said.

The 2007 Task Force on Undergraduate Education suggested the University should “encourage more students to think about doing capstones … and to improve advising about life after Brown,” Chang said. In light of the Task Force’s recommendations, the Theories in Action conference was created as a way to bring members of the senior class together and “(celebrate) the research, leadership activities, artistic productions and other capstone projects” that they’ve done, according to the conference website.

During the application process, participants choose to present their projects with posters or as a part of a panel with other groups. This year’s conference showcases 19 panels in Petteruti Lounge and the Salomon Center and 16 posters in the Leung Gallery.

While many seniors prepare to pres-

/ / Tickets page 1

xwordeditor@aol.com

04/16/13

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

Monday night and Tuesday morning to compensate for the tickets that should have been sold Monday morning.

TouchNet promised it would use more servers to prevent another jam, Shinn said.

BCA and BSA chose to sell the remaining 2,500 tickets per concert at two

ent their theses to members of their department, Theories in Action is about “broadening” the audience, Chang said.

“They’re really excited to talk to people outside of the handful of advisers they’ve been working with for a year and a half,” said Darcy Pinkerton ’14, co-coordinator of Theories in Action.

Madeline Sall ’13 focused on classical music in television advertising for her thesis and will be presenting on a panel entitled “Transformers: Aesthetic Narratives in Disguise.” She knew of people who participated in Theories in Action before and thought the conference “sounded really cool.”

“It’s easy to end up in one place and not really understand or know what is going on in other departments and what other people are working on,” she said.

“This conference puts all of these people together and forces a larger conversation.”

While her thesis was “meant for faculty of the music department,” she said she wants her presentation to be “less technically derived, more about semiotics and the cultural context.”

Each panel project consists of three or four presenters or groups.

“As much as possible, we try to pair people together who might not ordinarily go together in a conference that is discipline-based but who have common themes,” Pinkerton said. “They’re excited to figure out how their work relates to other people’s work.”

“I’m going to be in a panel, and we decided to call it ‘Enhancing the Brown Experience through Mindfulness and Self-Reflection,’” said Riyad Seervai ’13, who applied to the conference to present on his involvement with the Yoga and Mindfulness Club. Seniors from the Matched Advising Program for Sophomores and Social Classmates are also part of the panel.

“Our overarching theme would be mindfulness in general and some form of self-reflection, allowing people to think about what they want to get out of the Brown experience,” he said.

More students this year than ever before are presenting on extracurricular activities. Three seniors involved in the New Scientist Program, which focuses on promoting diversity in the sciences, are presenting a poster at the conference.

“(NSP) has kind of defined my experience at Brown,” said Tanayott Thaweethai ’13, a coordinator of NSP. “Theories in Action gives us an opportunity to show what we’ve been working on these past four years.”

Nobody presented on an extracurricular passion in the conference’s first year, though organizers advertised the opportunity to do so, Chang said. “We tried really hard to change that,” she said, adding that this year, “a nice set of folks are representing projects outside of the academic areas.”

Kathy Takayama, director of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, held two mandatory training sessions — one for panel presenters and one for poster presenters — to offer advice on what to include in the posters and “getting jargon out of their presentations,” Chang said.

“I’ve never made a poster before and I found it very helpful,” Thaweethai said.

The center had sample posters hanging on the wall, he said.

“The most traditional ... disciplines that tend to know what it means to do a poster are the STEM areas,” Chang said.

“It’s becoming more popular in the social sciences, but it’s not necessarily something that people know how to do to.”

Most participants are involved in disciplines with “more of a social focus,” Chang said. “We get a lot (of participants) from environmental studies, political science, international relations and also a lot from public health,” she said.

Seniors concentrating in applied math and physics are also presenting.

“Tailoring presentations to specific audiences, and in particular to ‘nonexperts,’ is a very important skill, and participating in this conference allows seniors to work on these skills, in addition to networking with others,” wrote Bjorn Sandstede, professor of applied mathematics, in an email to The Herald.

Sandstede encourages his students to take part in the conference, Chang said.

“It’s inspiring to see what people do here,” Chang said. “It’s a great representation of why you want to come to Brown and what is so special about Brown. It’s about finding something you’re passionate about and getting really deeply involved in it.”

separate times to prevent students with evening activities from missing out on the opportunity to buy tickets — 1,250 tickets per concert went on sale 8 p.m.

Monday, and 1,250 tickets per concert will go on sale at Tuesday at 7 a.m. to avoid interference with senior pre-registration at 8 a.m.

“People were being a lot more rude than they should have been to the Brown

Concert Agency representatives,” said Ananya Bhatia-Lin ’16, who praised BCA for posting updates to the Class of 2016 Facebook group, blog, event page and elsewhere.

“I would be much more pissed if I didn’t get tickets at 8 p.m.,” said Jason Shum ’14. “But since I did, it softens the blow.”

“I’m much happier, but I’m not happy I had to get up at 8 a.m.,” said Elizabeth Powers ’14. She said BCA did a good job communicating their solution to the student body and that she appreciated their sympathy on the blog.

While BCA and BSA members said they are frustrated with TouchNet’s poor performance, the University’s contract with TouchNet makes it difficult for BCA and BSA to change services, Shinn said.

“The difficulty is not only in the bureaucracy but also in the cost” of setting up an alternative system, he said.

Joie Steele, faculty adviser for BCA, said BCA and BSA are “two of the hardest working groups on campus” and that it is unfortunate the two groups always suffer the blame for issues with ticket sales.

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university news 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

/ / Housing page 1 ing renovations last year, setting the stage for large-scale changes to undergraduate residential life. Most renovations or improvements funded by this project will be completed by this fall, The Herald previously reported.

The housing overhaul aims both to cluster students in specific geographic areas and to create a stronger community within each dorm, said Cody Shulman ’13, housing lottery committee chair for the Residential Council.

Administrators are moving to cluster all first-years into either Keeney Quadrangle or renovated residence halls on the Pembroke campus, with Keeney separated into three buildings, The Herald previously reported.

The plan aims to create sophomore communities in smaller dorms clustered in the center of campus and on south campus. Caswell and Littlefield Halls and Hope College are already sophomoredesignated, and Barbour and Perkins Halls will become sophomore-only this fall. New Pembroke and Wriston Quadrangle will also have housing options for sophomores.

Juniors and seniors will be in suites and apartments, with Graduate Center, Vartan Gregorian Quad and Young Orchard now open only to upperclassmen, The Herald previously reported.

The University’s plans involved considerable student input, said Director of Residential Experience Natalie Basil.

Separating dorms based on class was a solution for first-years’ complaints about some units being “awkward and disjointed” because upperclassmen lived in their buildings, she added.

Senior Associate Dean of Residential and Dining Services Richard Bova said in his decade at the University, sophomores have often said they felt “neglected” by a lottery system they found skewed toward upperclassmen.

Administrators said they designed the plan for sophomore communities to prevent sophomores from feeling like an

afterthought.

The University has “a very open and independent system” that allows students to progress through their time at Brown from the “cohesiveness” of their firstyear units so they can make their own housing choices by the time they are upperclassmen, Bova said. “It is about the independence of progressively getting better housing.”

Out of bounds Students said they see value in the first-year unit system, but some criticized the current residential life structure.

“I would definitely say that my best friends have been kept and cultivated through where I’ve lived,” said Giulia Basile ’13, adding that she lived with most of her current roommates during her sophomore year and is still friends with people from her first-year unit.

Thirty-four percent of seniors and 34.6 percent of juniors met most of their current housemates through their firstyear units.

Basile, who now lives off campus, said she supports the focus on communities based on class year for underclassmen.

New common spaces being developed as part of the overhaul will facilitate this process, she said.

But living near students did not always foster friendship, Basile said, adding that sometimes she “had no idea who was living around” her.

Many students expressed support for making off-campus permission easier to attain. First-years and sophomores are required to live on campus, and those who wish to leave the dorms as juniors must petition the University.

“I still don’t understand the reasoning behind making it so difficult” to live off campus, Basile said, noting that it is often cheaper for students to live in houses or apartments.

By keeping students from moving to private houses and apartments within campus boundaries, the University “forces people to live in places that are actually farther and actually less a part of

the community,” said Ana Rosenstein ’15.

She added that a residential college system like Yale’s would not work at Brown because of a lack of space and suitable buildings.

“Sense of belonging” The lottery system and efforts to create communities based on year differentiate the University from its peer institutions.

Yale assigns incoming students to one of 12 residential colleges, and many students live in their assigned residential colleges for the rest of their time at Yale.

“You can live with the same people early and have that sense of belonging,” said Elizabeth Bradley, master of Yale’s Branford College. “Each college is randomly put together so they’re a microcosm of Yale,” she said.

“It provides an immediate and accessible group of friends,” said Sam Bendinelli, a senior in Yale’s Berkeley College. “College can be a big transition and knowing all these people from the get-go means more people to talk to in class.”

These spaces often foster “a lot of pride” in new Yale students, Bendinelli said.

The residential college model of mixing class years remains rooted at Yale, but a rising emphasis on the value of sophomore clusters appears to be gaining traction at the University and other schools.

As a small liberal arts college, Amherst College features 37 residence halls, which are inhabited by at most 125 students each, wrote Pamela Stawasz, Amherst’s assistant director of residential life, in an email to The Herald. Though Stawasz wrote that only first-years currently have specifically designated residence halls, she added this could change.

Recent research indicates that residential communities based on class year benefit undergraduates even after their first year, Stawasz wrote. She added that in light of this research, many institutions have begun shifting their approaches to residential life by creating new sopho-

2013-14 housing options by class year Andrews

Plantations

NP 3-4

Metcalf Machado

111 Brown

315 Thayer

Miller

NP 1-2 Morriss-Champlin

First-years

Emery-Woolley

Sophomores

West House Juniors/seniors

Minden Hope

Slater

Littlefield

Caswell Hegeman

Wayland

Wriston Quad King House

Keeney Vartan Gregorian Quad

Young Orchard

Barbour Grad Center

Perkins

Note: Greek and program houses located in sophomore communities will still be open to junior and senior members.

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

If you are a sophomore, junior or senior, where did you meet most of the people you currently live with? If you are a first-year, where did you meet most of the people you plan to live with next year? (Circle all that apply) First-year unit with me: 35% Team/student group with me: 22% Shared classes and academic settings: 19% Through other friends: 36% Fraternity/sorority/ program house: 10% Random assignment: 3% Other (live alone, went abroad, etc.): 9% Not applicable: 8% GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

more-based housing.

Common ground Forming a housing group with fellow members of teams or student groups is common among students, especially athletes. Sixty-two percent of varsity athletes who took The Herald’s poll indicated they met most of their current cohabitants through athletic or extracurricular activities, whereas 14.5 percent of students who are not on a varsity sports team did so.

Carter Aronson ’13, a member of the men’s crew team who has lived off campus for the past two years, said many of his housemates are also on the team.

Alex Scott ’16, a member of the women’s softball team, said she is planning to live on campus with teammates next year.

She added that she formed stronger ties with her teammates than she did with students in her first-year unit.

The opportunities to live in different campus areas over students’ four years is beneficial, Lauren Cheung ’15 said, adding that she does not support moving to a residential college system with static housing.

“You need to give people their space,” Cheung said. “I like the chance to switch it up and have different roommates and different people living around me in general.”

But Scott said she believes the residential college model does a better job than the University at building a sense of community. Scott said when she visited Yale, she liked how most first-years remained with their residential colleges for all four years.

“It’s more like a family,” Scott said, adding that she believes there is benefit to mixing class years in one living space.

For some of the 10 percent of poll respondents who indicated meeting most of their housemates in a fraternity, sorority or special program house, these communities offer a way to avoid the lottery and the perceived disorientation that accompanies housing at Brown.

“The whole lottery system is sort of chaotic and doesn’t make sense and ends up screwing a lot of people over,” said Emily Walsh ’13, a resident of Technology House who expressed relief at having avoided the lottery.

Over 14 percent of sophomores — the most of any class — met most of their current housing mates through Greek life or program houses, while only 5.5 percent of seniors — the least of any class — met their housemates through those groups, according to the poll results.

Ben Chesler ’15 said he joined the

Social Action House after his first year to form a group of friends tied to his residential experience, adding that the University’s system should more fully respond to students’ needs for community.

“I’d like to see their mission more fitting overall the mission of Brown as an educational institution (and) as a social place, than just putting students into rooms,” Chesler said.

Greek life provides students with “a subsection of the University they closer identify with,” said Greek Council Chair Tommy Fink ’13.

The push for greater residential intimacy goes beyond Wriston Quad, extending to current efforts to use class year as a basis for making students feel more connected.

Shulman said he believes a dormspecific focus can be more effective in fostering community than campus-wide events. He added that the University’s overhaul “standardized the community aspect” of housing by creating smaller communities for first-years and sophomores. But students remain divided over whether they will benefit from the current plan.

Residential Peer Leader Sophia Rabb ’14, who has served as an RPL for two years, said she believes first-year units are critical for building “a strong community for all four years.”

But as the University’s housing overhaul continues, students’ concerns over community remain at the forefront. Rabb, who will witness the University’s plans unfold as she continues next year as an RPL, said the pace of change can try students’ patience. “There is work to be done, but it has to be done slowly, and I think that’s frustrating to students.”

— With reporting by Sam Heft-Luthy and Brittany Nieves Methodology Written questionnaires were administered to 1,202 undergraduates March 13-14 in the lobby of J. Walter Wilson and the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center during the day and the Sciences Library at night. The poll has a 2.55 percent margin of error with 95 percent confidence.

The margin of error is 3.9 percent for the subset of males, 3.4 percent for females, 5.1 percent for first-years, 4.7 percent for sophomores, 5.4 percent for juniors, 5.2 percent for seniors, 3.8 percent for students receiving financial aid, 3.4 percent for students not receiving financial aid, 6.5 percent for varsity athletes and 2.8 percent for non-athletes.

4 city & state

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

Poll: Vast majority supports R.I. legalizing same-sex marriage Female students support the measure by 14 percentage points more than do male students

By EMILY BONEY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

More than 91 percent of the undergraduate student population supports legalizing same-sex marriage in Rhode Island, according to a Herald poll conducted last month. Nearly 86 percent of female students responded that they strongly agree that Rhode Island should legalize same-sex marriage, while only 78 percent of male students strongly agreed with legalization.

A 2012 Gallup poll reflected similar discrepancies in support across gender lines, with 56 percent of women agreeing that same-sex marriage should be legalized in the United States, but only 42 percent of men expressing similar support for such legislation.

Some students said they believe the variance in support can be attributed to the difference in how men and women perceive the idea of marriage.

“Maybe women think about it more … like a romanticized thing,” said Natasha Rosario ’16. “Maybe there are a greater number of women who are comfortable with LGBTQ,” she said, adding that the average woman may tend to sentimentalize same-sex marriage more than the average man.

“The answer I’m thinking of sounds sort of heteronormative,” said Susan Chakmakian ’14. “The way society works, women are depicted as thinking more about marriage than men are.”

Often women are more “accepting” of behaving outside the status quo when compared to men, she added.

Tyler White ’13 said the difference in opinion likely stems from a biological rather than cultural difference.

“Naturally women are more compassionate,” White said. “Women’s brains work differently than men’s do, right?”

Kavya Ramanan ’15 said women might support same-sex marriage more because LGBTQ rights are often associated with the feminist cause.

“Because women traditionally are a marginalized group, and homosexuals are also another marginalized group, that there might be sort of … understanding

that society isn’t totally set up for them,” said Rachel Bloom ’13. “Maybe it’s that mutual understanding that things could be better all around, so why not stand in solidarity with that group?” Marginalized groups can be more empathetic to adversity faced by other minorities, she added.

About 87 percent of students who identified as “white” strongly agree with legalization compared to just threequarters of students who identified as “non-white.”

The Herald poll revealed a nuanced correlation between religious affiliation and approval for legalizing same-sex marriage. Seventy-five percent of those who identified as Protestant strongly agreed that same-sex marriage should be legalized. But Protestants also comprised the largest percentage of those who expressed strong disagreement with legalizing same-sex marriage at slightly more than 11 percent.

About 92 percent of those who identified as Jewish strongly agreed with legalization, with atheists, agnostics and those reporting “other” religious affiliation expressing similar support.

Bloom said she believes religious affiliation / / Same-sex page 5

Rhode Island should legalize same-sex marriage.

Somewhat disagree Somewhat agree

Strongly agree

No opinion

Strongly disagree

Total

Male Female

White Black Asian 0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

Support for legalizing same-sex marriage transcends demographic differences. Cross-tabulations are not statistically significant for races not shown.

R.I. gun legislation targets unlawful ownership, assault weapons The bills include proposals for a task force to ensure the state meets national background check standards

By JILLIAN LANNEY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The Rhode Island General Assembly is considering a nine-bill package of gun control legislation ­— including a statewide assault weapons ban — that Gov. Lincoln Chafee ’75 P’14 announced with other legislative and community leaders at a press conference last Tuesday afternoon.

“This is a conversation that’s taking place right now in every state and at the national level,” said Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport. The bills are the product of months of col-

laboration between legislators and law enforcement officials, she said. The call to action was in part inspired by the Dec. 14 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., she added.

Some of the bills have already been introduced into the General Assembly, and the rest will be introduced shortly, according to a General Assembly press release. Attorney General Peter Kilmartin called the bills “common-sense measures,” adding that they target criminals, not lawful gun owners. These bills are aimed to prevent unlawful gun ownership and equip law enforcement with the

means to effectively tackle the gun and gang violence in Rhode Island, Kilmartin said.

During the question and answer section after the announcement, one audience member spoke against the gun control measures, saying he believes the legislation could prevent citizens from protecting themselves against government tyranny.

Policymakers are obligated to address issues of gun violence while respecting the rights of citizens, Chafee said. “Somehow we have to reconcile what the Second Amendment says and what’s happening in our streets and in our schools.”

Some of the proposed provisions

include banning the manufacture, sale, purchase or possession of semi-automatic assault weapons, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and weapons with their physical identification numbers somehow altered, according to a press release. A few of the bills exempt antique or inoperable weapons from the regulations.

Other parts of the package would increase the maximum penalties for crimes like stealing a firearm, possessing a stolen firearm and possessing a stolen firearm during a violent crime. One bill would ban “straw purchases,” where an individual buys a firearm for another person.

Another bill would close loopholes that currently allow individuals under the

age of 18 to carry firearms if they have a permit or have parental permission.

Minors would still be permitted to use firearms if “they are involved in a competition, hunting or … accompanied by a parent or qualified adult over 21 who is licensed to possess and use (a) firearm,” according to a press release. A second bill would increase penalties for people who give minors firearms that are then used in a violent crime.

The “Kilmartin” bill — named for the attorney general, who has pushed for the legislation — mandates that all individuals seeking licenses or permits for firearms must undergo national criminal background checks. It also places control of licensing entirely within the Office of the Attorney General.

The package also proposes two task forces that would report back to Chafee before the beginning of 2014. One task force would examine existing state gun laws, while the other would work to ensure Rhode Island successfully meets national standards for background checks and examine how mental health and substance abuse relate to gun safety.

Rhode Island currently does not contribute information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a national database of individuals determined to be mentally unfit for gun ownership.

A final proposal would create an appeals board for those denied a firearm “based on a mental health adjudication or commitment or on substance abuse backgrounds,” according to the press release.

Speaker of the House Gordon Fox, D-Providence, stressed the importance of balancing mental health issues and gun safety. He said the legislature must be careful going forward not to cause people, who do not want to lose their right to purchase firearms, to fear seeking support for mental health.

Both Fox and Paiva Weed said the package will serve as the launching pad for discussion of gun control and that there will be evolving debate and compromise moving forward. “If we get one gun off the street, that makes a difference,” Fox said.

city & state 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

Future of vacated building unclear Costs pose a challenge to the city’s plans to remodel Providence’s tallest building

By MARIYA BASHKATOVA AND MEG SULLIVAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER AND SPORTS STAFF WRITER

The fate of Rhode Island’s tallest building remains uncertain after its only tenant, Bank of America, moved out last Friday.

The tower, nicknamed the “Superman” building due to its resemblance to the Planet News building in the Superman comic books, was the tallest structure in New England when it was built in 1928.

The tower will stand vacant unless a new tenant is found.

The owner of the Superman building, High Rock Development, hired Cornish Associates in January to research the feasibility of different options for the building, including converting it into residential units. Originally named the Industrial Trust Building, after the regional bank that commissioned its construction, the building has always housed a bank through its 85-year tenure on the Providence skyline.

The Superman Building is one of the earliest skyscrapers of the Art-Deco movement, which was prevalent in architecture and fashion in the late 1920s and 1930s. Though the Art Deco style fizzled by the ’40s, the Superman Building

/ / Boston page 1 instructed to stay inside from around 3:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. for safety, but many employees rushed outside to help out, he said.

Police used dogs to conduct searches of trains departing immediately after the attack, said Victoria O’Neil ’16, who was on a train from Boston to Providence around 3:30 p.m. She ran 10 miles of the race and was traveling to South Station at the time of the explosions.

The train station was crowded, and “everyone was on their phones, on Facebook, on Twitter, trying to call people and get updates,” O’Neil said. It seemed as if everyone found out about the events at the same time, she said.

“Just the idea of a targeted terrorist attack hits home in a different way when it’s in the city you grew up in,” said Josh Linden ’14, who grew up in the Boston suburb, Acton, Mass.

Linden said he remembers getting a day off school for Patriot’s Day, the Massachusetts state holiday celebrated Monday, when he was younger and watching reenactments of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

“It’s just shocking that in that kind

is one of several well known American products of the movement, including New York City’s Empire State building, Chrysler building and GE building, the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center.

High Rock is asking the state for $40 million in historic tax credits to remodel the building. Because the state’s historic tax credit program is currently not in effect, the General Assembly would need to pass legislation to allocate tax credits to the company. In the past the state has provided the historic tax credit to make it easier for developers of historically important buildings to incur costs associated with maintenance of aged and important properties. In an interview with WPRI, economist Dean Baker said giving High Rock historic tax credits is “crazy” because the credit will allow the owners to keep the building vacant and the rent artificially high. Instead, High Rock should sell or rent the building, he said.

Providence Mayor Angel Taveras asked the General Assembly for tax credits to help fund the building’s remodeling as part of his “legislative wish list” to the House of Representatives, WPRI reported last month. The Senate Finance Committee heard legislation to reinstate the tax credit program last week, but the committee did not discuss the Superman building directly, and a vote has not been scheduled, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

Taveras also told the press he is not ruling out the possibility that the building

might need to be torn down.

Tearing down the Superman building would “be a travesty” because of the building’s significance and because demolition would require a large expense of effort, said Mack Woodward, an architectural historian at the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission.

“It very much defines the space of downtown Providence. It is crucially important from a history standpoint,” Woodward said.

Adding more residential space would help revitalize downtown by bringing more retail and foot traffic to the area, he said. Apartments in the building would “have tremendous appeal,” Woodward said, especially for young people who do not want to live in the suburbs or retirees who are ready to downsize.

The possible redevelopment coincides with Taveras’ recent resolution to revamp Kennedy Plaza by making it more accessible to pedestrians and drawing more people downtown.

The Providence Preservation Society is not able to comment on the best use for the building until detailed and concrete proposals are released, said Paul Wackrow, advocacy and education coordinator at the society. The society will evaluate proposals based on how they would affect the building’s interior and exterior architecture, he added.

“We hope any proposals would maintain the architectural features that give the building significance,” he said.

of celebration, you get a tragedy like this,” he said.

Sammie Gross ’15, who is also from the Boston area, said that she first heard of the explosions when she was on Facebook and saw status updates stating a bomb had exploded at Copely, the square nearest to the marathon finish line. This was before any news outlets had reported on the events, she said.

Gross said nothing like this event has happened in Boston in her lifetime, adding that the marathon is an especially “joyous and pure” event.

Yesterday’s events will “probably hurt the psyche of the city,” she said.

Gross said she knew most of her family and friends would be watching the marathon from towns outside of the city, and she said she texted and called family members to ask if they had heard what happened.

Social media allowed Gross to hear about her friends in the city, many of whom posted updates to say they were safe, she said.

Jessica Mitter ’13 had recently dropped her boyfriend off the train station when she heard about the explosions. “I had a big rush of fear and panic wave over me,” she said. “He was going to be getting in right at that time.”

“It reminded me a lot of exactly how I felt whenever I heard about (Sept.

11),” she said, “a lot of the same fear coming back up.”

Though Boston is a large city, it “feels like a small community that is supportive of each other,” Mitter said.

“People are scared — but holding together really strongly.”

The University is offering support through Psychological Services and the Department of Public Safety, wrote Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, executive vice president for planning and policy, in a community-wide email Monday night.

“While members of the community may see a heightened security presence in some areas, there are no local security threats or concerns in Providence nor any changes to University operations,” he wrote.

Patriot’s Day “draws the world to Boston’s streets in a spirit of friendly competition,” Obama said in his address. “Boston is a tough and resilient town. So are its people. I’m supremely confident that Bostonians will pull together, take care of each other and move forward as one proud city.”

- Additional reporting by Jennifer Kaplan

/ / Visions page 1 second round of appeals. The petition specifically criticized Alex Sherry ’15, a UFB at-large representative, for allegedly telling Visions at the meeting that UFB could influence its editorial content because it funds the magazine.

Sherry is running for UFB chair in the elections that begin today, and commenters on The Herald website have called for his defeat, citing the ontroversy.

Daniel Pipkin ’14, UFB vice chair and UCS presidential candidate in today’s elections, previously met with RISD officials about funding collaborative groups, Au wrote in a follow-up email to The Herald. But other UFB members appeared to have little knowledge of the interaction, he added.

Pipkin told The Herald he was unavailable to comment.

Fischer and Sherry said the budget cut was a preliminary suggestion, not based on the number of RISD student contributions.

This year’s budgeting process is the first in which UFB is actively trying to get RISD to partially fund collaborative student groups between the two institutions, Sherry said.

Visions leaders said they were not informed of this policy before they applied for funding. The publication only became an official Brown-RISD collaborative effort at the beginning of this semester.

Both before and after the April 9 meeting, Visions leaders contacted RISD’s Center for Student Involvement — the equivalent of UFB — but Au said they have not heard back yet.

UFB initially declined to fund the full proposed budget in order to open a discussion between the University and RISD, Fischer said, adding that the 15 percent initial decrease was due to the fact that some Visions magazines are distributed on the RISD campus.

Au estimated that less than 10 percent of Visions issues are distributed to RISD, describing the number as “negligible.”

“Distribution is always considered,” Fischer said. “The most important thing is that Brown students have access (to the publications) first.”

“By no means do we believe that RISD students shouldn’t be involved,” Fischer said, citing a lack of communication from both parties as the cause of the conflict.

UFB is “trying to establish a partnership between Brown and RISD,” Sherry said. The board’s intention with the preliminary budget decrease was to

/ / Same-sex page 4 plays into the discrepancy apparent between support among racial groups.

“You’d think it might be the other way around,” Chakmakian said. As marginalized groups, minorities and LGBTQ individuals might stand in solidarity, she said, but “a lot of people in media who support same-sex marriage are also

COMIC Class Notes | Philip Trammell

DAN ZHANG / HERALD

First responders were on the scene in Copely Square throughout the afternoon. University officials reported no immediate danger in Providence.

give Visions time to ask RISD how much the school could contribute and then return to UFB to work out the difference, he said.

“UFB’s (initial) budget is in no way set in stone,” Fischer said.

“I see (Visions) getting the full amount (of their budget) — I just don’t know where it will be from,” he said.

Budgets for student groups will not be finalized until the beginning of next year, Sherry said.

Visions’ petition received over 100 signatures in its first hour, and within 15 hours it had over 300 signatures, Au said.

At the meeting Monday afternoon, Sherry, Au and Fischer had a “productive conversation” about UFB’s communication practices, Au wrote.

“UFB can’t tell us what we can and cannot publish,” Au said before the meeting.

“No one on the board believes that” UFB should dictate student publications’ editorial policies, Fischer said.

Sherry told The Herald, “I fundamentally oppose the notion that UFB has the right to dictate editorial content.”

But Visions leaders criticized the board’s approach to the situation. “The entire (budgeting) process was not transparent at all,” said Mabel Fung ’15, a Visions managing editor.

Visions’ online petition criticizes UFB for not publishing its meeting minutes online.

In fact, UFB meeting minutes recently appeared online, under the “Supplemental Budgeting” section of UFB’s website, Fischer said.

The most recent meeting minutes are now available from the board’s April 2 meeting.

Kate Holguin ’13, managing editor of Clerestory Journal of the Arts, a Brown-RISD collaborative literary arts publication, said RISD funds 10 percent of Clerestory’s budget annually.

“RISD is much smaller than Brown, and there isn’t as much involvement with student organizations,” Holguin said.

UFB has decreased Clerestory’s budget in the past due to a general lack of funds, Holguin said, adding that she feels UFB doesn’t respect arts and humanities groups as much as other student organizations.

Holguin said she supports Visions’ petition, referring to its message as “taking a stand against something that has been going on for a while.”

Additional content written by Sherry and representing UFB’s perspective has since been added to the online petition. white.”

“My guess would be that people that object to same-sex marriage are probably objecting along politically conservative lines or religious lines,” said Ralph Rodriguez, associate professor of American studies. “Are they against same-sex marriage because they’re of a certain racial group, or because they’re of a certain faith?” he said.

6 editorial EDITORIAL

EDITORIAL CARTOON b y v i t to r i a n o d i va i o

A minor problem

In The Herald’s most recent undergraduate poll, about 61 percent of students expressed the opinion that the University should offer minors. Though important arguments for the introduction of new programs exist, we strongly believe minors should not be implemented. Introducing minors at Brown would not only undermine the purpose of the Open Curriculum, but it would also add to the problematic culture of pursuing credentials for the sake of resume padding, instead of engaging with the academic choices available at the University.

Introducing minors would further entrench a structure of pre-professionalism within Brown’s curriculum. Some may argue this is not a bad thing, but there is little denying that the perspective as a whole is diametrically opposed to the Open Curriculum. Students come to Brown for a variety of reasons and make use of the Curriculum in myriad ways, but the idea of a general liberal arts education, and Brown’s curriculum in particular, is for a student to study an array of disciplines to gain multiple critical points of access to problems and ideas, and then, over the course of working toward an undergraduate degree, come to focus on a specific area.

The reason behind the large number of courses required for a concentration is to train a student in his or her chosen discipline. This requires not only the articulation, practice and mastery of the skills that accompany that discipline — such as analytical writing for the humanities or logical proof deduction for mathematics — but also a significant area of expertise within the field that the student explores in depth. This scope of experience cannot realistically be contained in the reduced course load a minor demands. Either the initial grounding in the field would suffer, with worrying consequences for both post-college employment and later work conducted within that discipline, or the chosen focus would be dramatically reduced, in which case the student would not be given the chance to apply his or her skills and acquired knowledge in a meaningful way.

But perhaps most important is the fact that official minors are unnecessary because the agency the Brown curriculum allows its students give minors an unofficial — but transparent — existence at Brown. Students regularly take several courses in one department they are not concentrating in because they enjoy or feel they get a lot out of them. Taking enough of these courses is essentially creating your own minor — but one that you’ve constructed, instead of fulfilling yet another set of requirements, complete with unappealing classes and those taken just to fit within a certain program.

Because the Open Curriculum allows Brown students so much control over the direction of our educations, the need to slap a label on portions of our courses of study seems to rise out of desire to pursue credentials rather than learning for learning’s sake. This may seem necessary in the job market, but we doubt the mere ability to call a small set of courses by a particular program name will convince a prospective employer one way or the other — the fact that students have taken these courses is something they can emphasize without a label.

But we acknowledge some alternatives to minors could improve the relationships between students and their educations. A potential change to the curriculum could be a certification for certain select skills, like attaining fluency in a foreign language, mastering a specific programming code or reaching a professional skill-level with an instrument. Like being trained in depth in an academic discipline, these examples reflect significant achievements of determination, focus, practice and passion — something we remain unconvinced would be conveyed by introducing a limitation on the Open Curriculum in the form of minors.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editor, Dan Jeon, and its members, Mintaka Angell, Samuel Choi, Nicholas Morley and Rachel Occhiogrosso. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

t h e b row n da i ly h e r a l d Editors-in-Chief Lucy Feldman Shefali Luthra

Managing Editors Elizabeth Carr Jordan Hendricks

EDITORIAL Greg Jordan-Detamore Strategic Director Sections Hannah Abelow Arts & Culture Editor Maddie Berg Arts & Culture Editor Sona Mkrttchian City & State Editor Adam Toobin City & State Editor Elizabeth Koh Features Editor Alison Silver Features Editor Sahil Luthra Science & Research Editor Kate Nussenbaum Science & Research Editor James Blum Sports Editor Connor Grealy Sports Editor Mathias Heller University News Editor Alexandra Macfarlane University News Editor Eli Okun University News Editor Dan Jeon Editorial Page Editor Matt Brundage Opinions Editor Lucas Husted Opinions Editor Maggie Tennis Opinions Editor Multimedia Emily Gilbert Head Photo Editor Sam Kase Photo Editor Sydney Mondry Photo Editor Tom Sullivan Photo Editor Danny Garfield Video Editor Angelia Wang Illustrations Editor Production Copy Desk Chief Sara Palasits Design Editor Brisa Bodell Design Editor Einat Brenner Design Editor Kyle McNamara Assistant Design Editor Sandra Yan Web Producer Joseph Stein Assistant Web Producer Neal Poole

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

Senior Editors Aparna Bansal Alexa Pugh

BUSINESS General Managers Office Manager Julia Kuwahara Shawn Reilly Samuel Plotner Directors Sales Eliza Coogan Finance Luka Ursic Emily Chu Alumni Relations Business Strategy Angel Lee Justin Lee Business Development Managers Jacqueline Chang Regional Sales Leslie Chen Regional Sales Anisa Holmes Regional Sales Wenli Shao Regional Sales Carolyn Stichnoth Regional Sales Chae Suh Regional Sales William Barkeley Collections Nicole Shimer Collections Josh Ezickson Operations Alison Pruzan Alumni Engagement Melody Cao Human Resources Owen Millard Research & Development POST- MAGAZINE Editor-in-Chief Zoë Hoffman Editor-in-Chief Claire Luchette BLOG DAILY HERALD Meredith Bilski Editor-in-Chief William Janover Managing Editor Connor McGuigan Deputy Managing Editor Cara Newlon Deputy Managing Editor Georgia Tollin Deputy Managing Editor Jason Hu Creative Director

CORREC TION An article in Friday’s Herald (“Nearly 400 students seek summer funding through UTRAs,” April 12) incorrectly quoted Rachel Kaplan ’15 saying she applied for an UTRA because older pre-medical students advised her to. In fact, she said she heard about the program through older students but applied so she could continue the research she began this semester.

The Herald regrets the error.

CL ARIFIC ATION An article in Friday’s Herald, (“RUE program sees low enrollment,” April 12) stated that half of the students in the Resumed Undergraduate Education program were veterans last year. Half the RUE students who matriculated to Brown last year were veterans, but a minority of all RUE students are veterans.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I woke up at 7:45 to get those tickets. ”

— Jason Addy ’16 See tickets on page 1.

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CORRECTIONS POLICY The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

C O M M E N TA R Y P O L I C Y The editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and clarity and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed.

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opinions 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

Facing the UFB’s dysfunction

BY RAILLAN BROOKS, LARRY AU, EMMA RAMADAN, KATE HOLGUIN, GAVYN OOI, CAROLINE SEYLER Guest Columnists The marketization of higher education has eroded the liberal arts curriculum at universities across the nation, and Brown is no exception. Student publications and arts groups stand as bulwarks against the creeping pre-professionalization of the University.

They vigilantly steward this campus’ public artistic and intellectual discourses. Their importance cannot be overstated.

So it should mortify the Brown community that the body tasked with delivering the resources needed to keep these groups going, the Undergraduate Finance Board, has systematically discriminated against them and partaken in ethically questionable practices in its annual budget allotment process.

In particular, they have consistently targeted student groups who consider cultivating a relationship with Rhode Island School of Design and broader Providence as central to their missions.

Early in this school year, UFB Vice Chair and UCS presidential hopeful Daniel Pipkin ’14 met with the director of RISD’s Center for Student Involvement, Don Morton, to select a set of Category III student groups that publish material from both colleges. They were to have their funding cut by Brown with the expectation that the gap would be filled in by RISD — despite the fact that it was unlikely

RISD would ever be able to cover the difference. These publications, which include VISIONS, Clerestory and the College Hill Independent, were never informed of this experiment they had been selected to participate in. And since, until recently, UFB had not published meeting minutes on its website for nearly two years, we would have never found out had Pipkin not told us — after the spring budgeting process had already concluded.

In fact, the cuts made to our budgets were chocked up to other technicalities without

the bonds between the two schools in the service of broadening the exchange of ideas on College Hill.

We must also face the problem of controlling how our content is consumed. Part of UFB’s argument is that these publications not be allowed to distribute beyond Brown’s campus or face funding cuts. RISD students and Providence residents ought not be allowed to pick up the Independent, tune into Brown Student Radio or read Visions. This is a pernicious, unenforceable and elitist po-

We believe UFB operates within the following fantasy: that the money it budgets every spring is its money to mete out. It is, in fact, the student body’s money, and UFB’s task is to simply apportion it. explicit mention of this agreement. The explanation for UFB’s decision is simple: The organization sneers at RISD students as ‘freeloaders,’ totally blind to the reality that campus life at both schools is enriched by RISD students’ presence in our student groups.

This corruption is a danger to more than just publications. By our count, 18 student groups claim Brown/RISD status, officially or unofficially. We would venture that far more than 18 groups have RISD members — Brown student groups are unrestricted to RISD students and vice versa. By UFB’s logic, any group that welcomes members from our neighbor faces defunding. Judging by the experiences of Visions and the Independent, that cut is in direct proportion to the strength of their commitment to deepening

sition. We frankly must be freely permitted to interact with life beyond the Main Green if any of the endowments of a Brown education are going to be put to use.

Instead, when asked at a public appeals meeting by VISIONS Editor-in-Chief Larry Au ’14 whether he thought UFB had the power to dictate the editorial policies of individual publications, UFB At-Large Representative and UFB Chair candidate Alexander Sherry ’15 retorted, “Why not, we give you guys money” and stated he believed UFB has the power to tell campus publications what they can and cannot publish. Sherry has since stated he does not remember saying this in the context of editorial policy. Of course, there are no meeting minutes to accompany his account.

Sherry’s statement deserves all the outrage the Brown student body can muster.

What’s most terrifying is that his is a position held by a person poised to helm the organization next year. This should signal to us that UFB is not only not doing the job it was created to do — encourage student co-curricular activity through judicious and considered budgeting decisions — but also that the body represents a clear and present threat to public, intellectual discourse on campus.

The combination of the lack of institutional mechanisms to encourage scrupulous practices and student representatives drunk with power has totally undermined the legitimacy of the sole funding source for the majority of student groups, if it can be said to have had any legitimacy to begin with.

We believe UFB operates within the following fantasy: that the money it budgets every spring is its money to mete out. It is, in fact, the student body’s money, and UFB’s task is to simply apportion it. Aside from warning students to stay away from Pipkin and Sherry during the coming elections, we hope this letter will ignite a conversation about UFB’s role in directing and shaping campus life and our relationship to the broader community — without direct oversight from anyone, least of all from students.

To leave things as they are, the Brown community courts disaster.

Raillan Brooks ’13, Larry Au ’14, Emma Ramadan ’13, Kate Holguin ’13, Gavyn Ooi ’14 and Caroline Seyler ’15 hold leadership roles within various Brown/RISD organizations.

A turn of phrase NICOLAS ENRIQUEZ Opinions Columnist They say curiosity killed the cat. Let’s be more concrete. Before democracy became the bee’s knees and freedom of speech became a protected right, curiosity killed the heretic. It’s a little less appealing to say it that way, and it definitely would be harder to explain to a child, but this is really what the phrase means.

Let’s pretend that our modern cliche phrase was actually the heretic edition. You would have to explain to the child that, according to Merriam-Webster, a heretic is someone who “dissents from an accepted belief or doctrine.” Governments and societies destroyed those who were curious enough to seek answers outside of the stock phrases that they would give about why life is the way it is and why their systems are supposedly the best. Some famous heretics were Galileo, Joan of Arc and Darwin.

Without people like them — people who were curious enough to say, “What would happen if I did or thought something different?” — we would still believe in male dominance, geocentrism and intelligent design, among other things.

Creativity is the product of curiosity.

This means all the answers to making better medicine, solving world hunger, making sustainable energy or solving (insert world crisis here) will only be solved by someone who is curious. It is the main ingredient in

human progress and, as such, we should try to cultivate it in our citizens so that we may better compete.

The best way to cultivate curiosity is through our school system. Sadly, our schools kill curiosity.

From kindergarten through high school graduation, our school system systematically squashes creativity. Every school is an assembly line. Fifty-minute class. Bell. Fifty-minute class with a new teacher. Lunch.

Repeat. Homework. Not only does this structure make school as boring as possible, but it also makes sure a student is taught in modules that can fit into 50 min-

lists of facts and test-taking techniques to memorize instead of a better balance that includes more creative expression?

Even worse for student creativity is the current assessment system, which emphasizes a very narrow, test-oriented approach.

Kids are told they cannot think differently or daydream because their school will fail them, their teacher will be fired and their parents will be disappointed. Our test-centric curriculum obscures the reason we are teaching kids. The curriculum leaves them asking over and over again, “Why am I learning this again?”

Instead of focusing on tests, classes

The curriculum leaves kids asking over and over again, “Why am I learning this again?” utes. The system is made to be as impersonal as possible. Every person has his or her little bubble. The briefness of each encounter with your history, math or English teacher makes only the most superficial of relationships possible. David Brooks put it best when he wrote, “Since people learn from people they love, education is fundamentally about the relationship between a teacher and student.”

Kids won’t take the risk of thinking creatively with a teacher or class they don’t know. Instead, they will try to conform to what they think the teacher might want. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child, and surely there is much to be learned from the ideas and strengths of your peers. So why are our school days filled entirely with

should emphasize more of an engineering project style of teaching. Projects in which kids try to physically make something using the scientific theories and methods they are taught will go a long way toward relieving boredom. As any mother knows, “Because I said so!” isn’t a sufficient explanation in the eyes of a child. These projects will give kids an inherent reason for why they are learning seemingly random physical laws or even historical facts on innovation.

A great part of President Obama’s education reform initiative, Race to the Top, is that it emphasizes a system of teacher accountability. But a huge part of how officials gauge teacher performance is through these tests. Why not spend a little more money preparing a test that not only rewards good

reading comprehension, but also creative problem solving and a willingness to think more boldly? These assessments could use a light mix of the old reasoning and comprehension tests and combine them with outlandish prompts like “Explain the color orange.” These questions may be hard to answer and may be biased toward kids who were raised in a certain type of family, but this inherent bias is exactly why the scores should be ignored in favor of any sign of improvement. If a teacher demonstrates his or her students improved in their creative thinking and reasoning from the previous year, and they receive good assessments from students and families, then they should be rewarded.

For a country that spends nearly 5 percent of its GDP on education, we sure do not get a good return on our investment. Every day, there is an article in the paper about the growing wealth disparity in the United States. Liberals cry for increased taxes on the rich, lower taxes on the rest and more direct government aid for the poor. All of these solutions are artificial fixes that have not changed the widening gap. Our government can do the easy thing and play the paternalist by throwing money and keeping its citizens dependent on the system — or it can choose to foster curiosity and interest in education so these future job seekers can be empowered. Curiosity is what will make us “Win the Future.”

Nicolas Enriquez ’16 is a member of the empirical generation. He can be reached at nenriquez3@gmail.com.

daily herald sports tuesday THE BROWN

TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2013

SABERMETRICS

Fielding percentage and error don’t tell whole story LEWIS POLLIS Sports Columnist It is often said that 50 percent of success is showing up. But when it comes to conventional fielding statistics in baseball, getting in good position to make the play can actually put you at a disadvantage.

Popular perceptions of defensive skill primarily revolve around one concept: the error. In a sport full of convoluted numbers and arbitrary distinctions — see the previous installments in this series — the error is one of the most intuitive statistics there is. Simply put, a fielder is charged with an “E” every time he fails to make a play he should have made. If an obvious defensive mistake — a dropped pop fly, a flubbed ground ball, a wild throw — leads to a hitter reaching base safely or a baserunner advancing, it is ruled an error. Though the designation of “E” may seem natural, keep in mind that it is an inherently subjective thing to keep track of. “It is,” the great Bill James once wrote, “without exception, the only major statistic in sports, which is a record of what an observer thinks should have been accomplished.”

When you tune into a game, the other fielding stat you’ll hear about is fielding percentage, the proportion of defensive

plays a team or player successfully converts. Fielding percentage is calculated by adding up a player’s (or team’s) total outs made — putouts (balls caught, baserunners tagged and forceouts induced) plus assists (runners thrown out) — and dividing by the sum of his (or its) putouts, assists and errors committed. A perfect score (no errors committed) would be 1.000, and the top finishers usually place in the high .900s. When your local broadcaster announces that your team is “fifth in the league defensively,” that’s what he’s talking about.

The problem with fielding percentage — so obvious that even some hard-nosed baseball traditionalists will concede it — is that it assumes all fielders have the same opportunities to make plays.

As Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello said in “The Departed,” “A man makes his own way.” And anyone who has ever seen Jim Edmonds or Andruw Jones dive for a ball or watched Kenny Lofton or Torii Hunter bring back a home run knows that fielders can create their own opportunities to make plays.

This brings us back to the error. One cannot say that a fielder unambiguously should have made a play on a ball unless that fielder is first able to get to the ball.

“You have to do something right to get an error,” James once wrote. A player with a high fielding percentage and a low error count need not have great defensive

skills but simply “a talent for avoiding obvious failure.” As Michael Lewis put it in “Moneyball,” “The easiest way not to make an error is to be too slow to reach the ball in the first place.”

Imagine two third basemen are charged with fielding identical sets of 100 ground balls. One gets in front of all 100 of them, but 10 bounce off his glove or roll through his legs, and he loses 10 more would-be outs by making bad throws to first. The other gets to only 60 of the grounders, but he makes a clean play of each ball he gets a glove on. The numbers would make it clear that the second player is a better defender, with no errors and a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage to his peer’s 20 errors and .800 fielding percentage. But the first third baseman was far more effective — though he did not look as polished doing it, he retired 20 more batters than his counterpart thanks to his superior ability just to get to the ball.

Understanding this concept has not yet achieved the status of universal truth, but it is starting to take hold throughout baseball. For example, New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter (known for his vacuum-like ability to make clean plays on balls hit near him but notorious for his Derek Zoolander-like inability to get to balls hit to his left) won five Gold Gloves in seven years from 2004-10 in managers and coaches’ vote for the league’s best

W. WATER POLO

Bears take second at division championship The Bears crushed the Lakers and Crimson but fell to the No. 12 Tigers at home this weekend

By NIKHIL PARASHER SPORTS STAFF WRITER

The women’s water polo squad finished second in the Collegiate Water Polo Association’s Southern Division Championships, which Brown hosted over the weekend.

The team (15-19, 5-3 CWPA Southern) defeated Mercyhurst University 12-7 and Harvard 16-12 Saturday before losing 12-4 in the championship game against No. 12 Princeton Sunday.

The team will next compete as the fifth seed at the CWPA Eastern Championships at the University of Michigan later this month. If the squad finishes in first place, it will be granted a spot at the NCAA tournament, said Kate Woods ’14.

Madison Pepper ’15 and Woods led the way Saturday, combining for seven goals against Mercyhurst (13-13, 0-5) and eight against Harvard (16-14, 3-3).

Brown narrowly defeated both Mercyhurst and Harvard earlier this season, winning each game by two

goals. Woods said defeating Harvard Saturday showed the squad the earlier victory against Harvard was not just a fluke.

“We went into Saturday night thinking, ‘Was that game more luck, or was that because we’re the better team and we deserve to win?’” Woods said. “That’s at least what I was thinking. So … winning that game was just really awesome.”

Head Coach Felix Mercado said the team was anticipating the Harvard matchup.

“We knew, ultimately, it was going to be us and Harvard for the semi-final game,” Mercado said. “And the game did not disappoint.”

Sunday the squad faced Princeton (23-5, 5-0), which had already beaten Brown 15-4 earlier in the season.

Though Mercado said the squad would “play and give it everything we have” in the championship game, the Bears ended up falling to the Tigers.

Woods said she did not think the score fully reflected the progress the squad has made this season and that the loss would serve as motivation for the future.

“We’ve come very far as a team,” Woods said. “I don’t think that the score necessarily shows that. Even though we did lose by less (than in

the teams’ previous match-up), I think that it doesn’t represent the fact that we’ve been through a lot this season together … It was good that that game happened because it’s pushing us to work hard this next few weeks before (Eastern Championships).”

Mercado said the team is not necessarily expecting to win at the Eastern Championships, adding that the team wants to “finish where (it’s) seeded or higher.”

“We’ve weathered the storm, and we’re in a really good position and we’ll see what happens,” Mercado said.

Woods also said the team can still accomplish goals without winning the tournament.

“We really just want to play well as a team,” Woods said. “It would be so awesome if we won, but I think that we’ll all be able to be pleased with ourselves and happy with the season if, in our final games, we’re just playing well together and having fun, playing the sport that we love.”

Regardless of how the team fares at the Eastern Championships, Woods said she will look back positively on the season.

“I feel like this season has been really great,” Woods said. “We’ve improved so much from where we’ve started. … I’m thankful for that.”

fielders at each position, but was unseated in 2011 by a fielder with a bigger range who had committed more errors.

The problem with overhauling defensive statistics is the lack of an obvious replacement for errors and fielding percentage. James’ first attempt at solving the puzzle was “range factor,” the number of successful plays a fielder makes per game or per nine innings. It was far from a perfect substitute — though it accounts for the opportunities they make for themselves, it also mistakenly assumes that all fielders have roughly the same chances to make plays — but it was a step in the right direction. As Lewis put it, James’ support for range factor over fielding percentage and errors left “an honest mess for others to clean up rather than a tidy lie for them to admire.”

The newest paradigm of defensive metrics, including Ultimate Zone Rating and Defensive Runs Saved, is the use of multidimensional batted ball data to model the benefits and damage a fielder provides and causes with the plays he does and does not make. Imagine a line drive hit at x velocity and y angle off the bat to z location in center field gets caught by the center fielder 60 percent of the time and results in a relative run expectancy increase of one run for the offense if it lands in the grass (don’t ask).

If the center fielder makes the catch, he is credited with saving 0.4 runs (40 percent

of one run, the expected value of the batted ball for the offense). If he cannot, he is said to have cost his team 0.6 runs compared to an average center fielder.

But this new family of statistics has its own issues. First and foremost, these numbers lack intuitive appeal. The concepts of expected runs and counterfactual play-making turn the game into an abstract intellectual exercise that is as off-putting for fans as it is confusing.

One cannot watch a game and count UZR on a scoresheet like strikeouts or RBI. Complexity need not be a vice in the search for understanding, but such statistical modeling is unlikely to appeal to most casual audiences. Also, these metrics are notoriously inconsistent, disagreeing both with each other’s ratings over the course of a season and with their own rankings from year to year. There is still more work to be done before we get numbers on which we can confidently rely.

Compared to hitting and even pitching, quantifying fielding is still largely a mystery in the statistical world — and that’s before considering more subtle nuances like catchers’ pitch framing techniques and how defensive shifts move fielders out of their normal positions. I don’t know what the magic bullet is for fixing it, but you can’t do much worse than the ones you’ll find on the backs of baseball cards.

State to adopt new standardized test The state plans to replace the NECAP to meet updated standards created with other states

By SANDRA YAN STAFF WRITER

Beginning in the 2014-15 school year, Rhode Island will no longer use the New England Common Assessment Program as a measure of high school students’ academic skills.

“Rhode Island is one of 46 states transitioning to the Common Core State Standards,” said Elliot Krieger, executive assistant for communications for the Rhode Island Department of Education.

As a result Rhode Island will collaborate with other members of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a consortium of 22 of the 46 states on the Common Core standards, to design a new assessment.

The states designed the new uniform standards to serve as a “benchmark against those held by countries leading the world in education,” Krieger said.

Chad Colby, director of strategic communications and outreach at

CITY & STATE

Achieve, the organization contracted by the PARCC consortium to assist in developing the assessments, said his organization has begun conducting studies in six states to help develop the test. These studies will be expanded over the summer, and the assessments will be field-tested in the 2013-14 school year.

The state is “not at a point yet to know what the requirements are” or whether the state will apply graduation requirements based on high school students’ scores, as it currently does with the NECAP exams, Krieger said.

He added that he does not believe the new test will be a major transition for students in Rhode Island.

The NECAP test was administered on paper to students, while the PARCC assessments will be administered to students will be offered on laptops and tablets to be more “in line with how (students are) doing things these days,” Krieger said.

One of the goals of the PARCC assessments is to be able to determine whether high school students are ready to be placed into entry-level college courses “because right now, we know too many students leave high school needing remediation when they go into a two-year or a four-year college,” Colby said.