Monday, October 7, 2002

M O N D A Y OCTOBER 7, 2002

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXVII, No. 86

An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891

www.browndailyherald.com

Simmons only Ivy Pres to sign antihate speech letter

BY JULIETTE WALLACK

Seth Kerschner / Herald

NICE WHEELS The Brown University FSAE Racecar Design Team test drove its car from two years ago on Saturday evening. The team is in the process of designing this year’s car, which will compete at a yearly design competition in Detroit, Mich. Working with the team is “probably the best way to get experience in a real world situation in design, fabrication and organization,”said member Simon Weiss ’03.

Learning community gives locals a taste of Brown

BY PHILISSA CRAMER

Long after most undergraduates have finished classes for the day, classrooms across Brown’s campus fill with passionate students who receive no credit for their work.

The Brown Learning Community has been offering enrichment courses for Providence area residents for over 20 years, currently reaching more than 3,000 students each year, said Dean of Special Studies Mark Curran.

“The role of (Special Studies) is to make Brown more an accessible educational resource for the local community,” he said.

The office also offers special courses for retirees, a monthly humanities seminar for local business and government leaders and a few programs where non-Brown students can receive credits for University courses.

The learning community is one of many programs the Office of Special Studies coordinates.

Current Brown students are also eligible to take the courses, which range from the humanities and foreign languages to ballroom dancing and professional development.

Curran said the outreach programs were created at the initiative of former President Howard Swearer, who wanted Brown to build strong ties to the surrounding community.

But Curran said Brown has had a tradi-

tion of opening its doors to members of the local community for more than 150 years.

“There’s always been a commitment on Brown’s part to reach out to the community,” he said.

Other Ivy League schools have similar extension programs, including Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, Curran said. But he said Yale and Princeton have decided not to open their doors to the community.

“Fundamentally, we’re an educational institution,” Curran said, adding he believes that is the message Brown wants to send.

Learning community instructors include Brown graduate students and faculty members as well as professionals from the greater community.

Miguel Bota, a visiting scholar in Hispanic studies, was slated to teach a business course in Spanish this semester before it was cancelled due to low enrollment. He said he expects to teach the class next semester.

Bota said he wants to teach a BLC class because he wants to interact with and learn from people from the greater community.

“I admire people who are working full time and have energy and courage to study at night,” he said.

Instructor Carlton Colyer, who teaches the course “Acting,” said he has been

involved with BLC for about 25 years, since he came to Brown as a visiting professor.

Now retired, he said he likes BLC classes because he can continue his passion for teaching.

“It’s my lifeblood,” he said.

Colyer, who published a book about acting and is a lifetime member of New York City’s and Hollywood’s Actors’ Studios, said he likes his BLC classes better than the ones he taught at four different universities over 40 years.

“I never liked the idea of teaching undergraduates a profession,” he said. “I think (college) should be a liberal education.”

Peggy Daly, a pharmaceutical sales representative with Scherling, said she decided to make the 30-minute drive from her home in Dartmouth, Mass., for the class after reading about Colyer’s credentials in the BLC course announcement.

“I thought it would be a good experience to learn from someone who knows about the industry,” she said.

Arisha Ashraf GS said she chose to take the class because its evening time fit with her schedule, and because she wanted an introductory class without being intimidated by students who planned to pursue theater.

“The people were from such diverse backgrounds,” she said. “That’s something you don’t really get during daytime classes.”

I N S I D E M O N D AY, O C T O B E R 7 , 2 0 0 2 Orchestra performs two benefits gigs, featuring works of Ravel and Franck page 3

Good writing comes out of a good life, ‘Fight Club’ author tells aspiring writers page 3

Salomon gets a new sound system, and wins rave reviews from students page 5

President Ruth Simmons was the only Ivy League president to sign a statement calling for “intimidation-free” campuses that is expected to be released today by the American Jewish Council.

The statement, signed by 300 college presidents, faces criticism from leaders in academia for being too specific in its support of Jewish students only.

The letter was sent to 1,900 university leaders and is fueling the continuing debate of how academia should react to the conflict in the Middle East.

The letter’s specificity drew criticism from many groups including the American Association of University Professors. It follows a speech by Harvard President Larry Summers in which he pledged support for Israel and a Web site that cites professors and universities for their stated views on Islam, Middle Eastern politics and Palestinian rights.

The letter, drafted this summer by Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz, calls for those on campuses to debate issues “without threats, taunts or intimidation.” Only Jewish students are mentioned specifically as targets of harassment.

The reason for the specificity, Reinharz told The Herald, was to not “dilute it by saying everybody’s being intimidated or being harassed.” see LETTER, page 4

Author says blacks, whites view slavery reparations differently

BY JULIA ZUCKERMAN

Black Americans tend to view the debate over reparations for slavery as an issue of justice, while white Americans see the issue as one of greed, political scientist and author Michael Dawson said Friday.

Dawson, professor of government and Afro-American studies at Harvard, presented the results of a recent public opinion poll on reparations in his lecture “Support for Reparations Among the General Public,” at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy.

The poll, conducted by Dawson and a colleague, found that 80 percent of African American respondents supported a formal apology for slavery by the U.S. government see REPARATIONS, page 4

TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T Yale Wang ’06 says the ratty must ‘biggie size’ its cup sizes, and do so immediately column,page 11

Football lets a lead slip away, falls 38-28 to University of Rhode Island Rams sports,page 12

showers high 68 low 45

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

THIS MORNING MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002 · PAGE 2 Pornucopia Eli Swiney

W E AT H E R TODAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

High 68 Low 45 showers

High 59 Low 42 sunny

High 53 Low 46 partly cloudy

High 68 Low 48 party cloudy

GRAPHICS BY TED WU

A Story Of Eddie Ahn

CALENDAR INFORMATION SESSIONS — about various fellowship programs. Room B2, Pembroke Hall, noon.

OPEN OFFICE HOURS — with President Ruth Simmons. Office of the President, 4 p.m.

WORKSHOP — “Bargaining and Competition Revisited Abstract,”Takashi Kunimoto. Room 301, Robinson Hall, 4 p.m.

SEMINAR — “Improving Confidence Intervals for Proportions, Differences of Proportions, and Odds Ratios,” Alan Agresti, University of Florida.

Hemisphere Building, 4 p.m.

Yu-Ting’s Monday and Tuesday Yu-Ting Liu

COLLOQUIUM — “Imaging Coherent Electron Flow,” Robert Westervelt, Harvard University. Room 168, Barus & Holley, 4:30 p.m.

SEMINAR — “Setting Goals for Success,”Teaching Seminar #2. Room 001, Salomon Center, 5 p.m.

CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Weight training counts 5 Oompah instruments 10 Struggle for air 14 “__ want for Christmas...”

15 Like Creole cooking 16 __ homo: Behold the man 17 Like a bug in a rug 18 Ohio rubber town 19 Whiskey measure 20 College, grad school, etc.

23 Ekberg or Bryant 24 Double curve 25 Triangular Greek letter 26 Crime boss 27 Maple tree yield 29 Tiny amount 31 Moon transport, briefly 32 Buddhist sect 33 Tease playfully 34 Richard of “Unfaithful” 35 Average income group 38 Urban uprising 40 Rogers who rode Trigger 41 “Gimme __!”: Alabama cheer start 42 Author Umberto 43 Cribbage marker 44 Toupee 45 Fiddler in a kids’ rhyme 48 Change for Churchill 50 Auditing firm hiree, for short 52 Purchase alternative 54 Mexicali’s peninsula 57 Lendl of tennis 58 Die down 59 Cry from Charlie Brown 60 Druid, for one 61 Commonly congested passage 62 Garfield’s pal 63 Torah holders 64 Ginger cookies

65 At the end of the line

34 Govt. property 46 The way things overseer stand now 35 Lunar stroll 47 Cups, saucers, DOWN 36 Lincoln’s creamer, etc.

1 Cosby costar birthplace 49 Partner of dollars Phylicia 37 Prefix with Saxon 51 First course of 2 Weather-affecting 38 Copy action current 39 Become frozen 53 Swashbuckling 3 Connect to an 43 Part of mph Flynn electrical outlet 44 “Don’t go without 55 Mama who sang 4 A __ for sore eyes me!” with the Papas 5 Autocrat until 45 Yukon Territory 56 Come clean, with 1917 country “up” 6 Maintenance cost ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: 7 Flying attackers in a Hitchcock film P I B B C A C A O A S I F 8 Not electric, as a O M A N I S I D E A G R A guitar 9 In __: harmonious P O I S O N P E N L E T T E R 10 “Beau __” N E W F O U N D A R C A N A 11 Hero with a K L E I N S E R R A T E vulnerable heel L E S T C A S T I R O N 12 Two-wheeler E M A I L D I A L M I R S 13 “Sweetie pie,” P A S T S N O A H L I N C e.g.

21 Reduced, as pain L E D P O L A R G O N Z O 22 Calculate column M E R S N I G H T C A P totals A R E S O V I O L E T S 28 Conductor Previn E N R A G I N G A N O M I E 30 Dwight’s N A T I O N A L A N T H E M S opponent, twice G R E E T O D A S O N A N 32 Clearasil target, slangily S E E R S T Y N E M E R E 33 Lock opener

Penguiener Haan Lee

Cookie’s Grandma is Jewish Saul Kerschner

10/7/02

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ARTS & CULTURE MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002 · PAGE 3

‘Fight Club’ author says spicy fiction requires living a dare-devil life

BY CARLA BLUMENKRANZ

You can’t write exciting fiction without living an exciting life, “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk told audience members at a Saturday afternoon lecture as blunt and funny as his novels.

Palahnuik’s new book, “Lullaby,” which now holds the seventh spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, follows the author’s string of dark novels that inspire cult followings.

“If you say the thing that people don’t expect, it creates this moment of honesty that I just love,” Palahniuk said. Finding that honesty in writing provides a “dark, incredibly funny relief” for both reader and writer, he added.

The reason many people find his books truthful is that he draws characters and themes from his personal experience, he said. As a result, “it sort of breaks my heart when people fall into the ‘I want to be a writer’ trap and want nothing else,” Palahniuk said. “Don’t write to the exclusion of having a really great life.”

As an example of the good life, Palahniuk cited a recent incident at Heathrow Airport. The recipient of a “Sam’s Club-size” prescription of painkillers, he offered a few to a noticeably surly ticket agent.

The agent asked if he was a doctor, and Palahniuk replied that no, he was a writer.

“OK,” the agent said, and swallowed them as he checked Palahniuk in.

This sort of experience is prime material for the novel he wants to write using his book tour, he said.

At this particular tour stop, Palahniuk rewarded questions with fake birds he threw into the audience, warning the recipients to watch their eyes.

Later, faced with an overwhelming number of hands, he demanded that those with questions make animal noises to thin the herd.

Audience questions touched upon both Palahniuk’s relationship with the film world and his books. His first published novel, “Fight Club,” inspired the 1998 film of the same name and is now see FIGHT CLUB, page 4

Orchestra plays two benefit concerts The lineup for the Friday and Saturday gigs included Franck’s ‘Symphony in D minor’ and Ravel’s ‘Pavane pour une infante défunte’

BY STEFAN TALMAN

The Brown University Orchestra masterfully performed benefit concerts Friday and Saturday nights to support its November tour and recording session with the McGill University Chorus.

The concert’s appeal lay in its polarity — each half complemented the other and represented a different compositional ideal.

The first selection, “Symphony in D minor, Op. 48” by César Franck, featured harmonic motifs. The selections after the intermission, Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte,” “Tziagane” and “Bolero” treated the audience to the composer’s more rhythmic, passionate style.

Franck, one of the most highly regarded French composers of the 19th century, was heavily influenced by Beethoven, Lizst and Wagner. These influences helped create a very chromatic style, most evident in his “Symphony in D minor.”

While this emphasis on tonal themes creates a lush

sound, the depth of which the Brown Orchestra mastered, it also poses a challenge: the maintenance of energy. The depth of tonality and the developing themes make it easy for an orchestra to slip into a harmonic stupor.

This happened at Friday night’s performance. Even as the orchestra executed the symphony with skill and sensitivity, an element of passion slipped away.

Following the intermission, though, this passion returned. The second half of the performance began with Maurice Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte,” conducted by Jaemi Loeb ’03.

Originally written for solo piano, the piece’s deceptively simple form requires a delicate symphonic energy, which was fully understood by the performing members of the orchestra.

Juliana Pereira’s ‘04 passionate violin performance of Ravel’s “Tziagane” brought this slow-building energy to a head. Pereira’s emotional investment in the solo violin cadenza was the spark that re-lit the orchestra’s fire.

“Bolero,” Ravel’s revolutionary piece, culminated the performance, embracing repetition, color and crescendo.

Beginning with inspired solos across the orchestra, the composition slowly builds upon itself. The already enthusiastic orchestra was one step ahead, concluding “Bolero” with enough sparkle and passion to raise the audience to its feet.

VA’s Phyllis Arnold: a women’s surfing pioneer

BY ALYKHAN KARIM

At a university known for its brilliant minds and academic scholarship, a heritage of novelty and revolutionary attitudes goes far beyond the classroom. Amid the Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners at Brown lies another sort of pioneer, one whose achievements have gone largely unnoticed, yet are remarkable nonetheless.

Phyllis Arnold, office manager in the visual arts department, is one of the first woman surfers in Rhode Island, as well as in the nation.

Arnold, who grew up in the Ocean State, began surfing in 1964 with fellow pioneer and childhood playmate Karen Adams, after the release of the surf-culture movie, “Gidget.”

Jumping head first into a sport that was completely maledominated at the time without thinking twice, Arnold and her friends received a lot of flak from all sides, she said.

“It was a totally male thing back then,” she said with a wry grin. “We were told to take up underwater basket weaving and all that, you know. They really resented us there, for a while at least.”

“She was different, that’s for sure,” says Administrative Assistant for Visual Arts David Rossi, her colleague of three

years. “For her to do what she did was pretty big. She plays it down, but to put up with the ridicule and the harassment like she did really takes a special person.”

Arnold’s family at that time really didn’t seem to understand either. The feminist struggle of the decade had yet to occur, and at the time the idea of girls going on long road trips to surf the East Coast was a ludicrous one, Arnold said.

Arnold and her compatriots had to go so far as to lie to their parents every time they wanted to catch some waves.

After spending her teenage years surfing the breaks of Newport and Galilee in Rhode Island, Arnold left for a 10year stint in California to pursue her studies and catch some of the finest waves that the West Coast had to offer.

It was in California that she really embraced the surf culture and lifestyle. Going to school in Santa Cruz, Calif., Arnold often embarked on surfing expeditions traveling the coast from San Francisco to Malibu and down into Mexico, still standing out as one of the only female long boarders in the scene.

Later transferring to Chico State in Northern California, see ARNOLD, page 4

PAGE 4 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002

Reparations continued from page 1 and 67 percent supported monetary reparations. Among white respondents, 30 percent supported an apology and just 4 percent supported monetary compensation.

Polling experts are “not used to seeing gaps this big” in African American and white responses, Dawson said.

Dawson measured the correlation between respondents’ feelings toward various political figures and support for reparations.

He found that “the warmer you feel toward any leaders of the mainstream political parties, the less likely you are to support reparations,” he said.

The party affiliation of the political leaders made little difference, although respondents identifying themselves as Democrats were more supportive of reparations than Republicans.

“It’s less the party affiliation and more the degree to which the political leaders are seen as racial insiders or racial outsiders,” he said.

Another factor that correlated strongly with support for reparations was a respondent’s exposure to what Dawson termed “black information networks,” including magazines, newspapers and music targeted toward black people.

Socioeconomic status and demographic factors other than race did not significantly

affect responses, Dawson said.

The poll did not measure attitudes toward reparations among nonwhites not of African descent.

According to the current pro-reparations argument, the burden of monetary compensation should fall on the U.S. government, not on individuals, Dawson said.

“We’re not talking about any single group responsible for the subjugation of African Americans,” he said.

Nor are reparations solely for slavery: they also represent compensation for the disfranchisement and loss of life and property that black Americans suffered after the Civil War, Dawson said.

He also described the antireparations argument.

Academics and others opposed to reparations argue that the Civil War and current welfare and affirmative action efforts have already compensated black Americans for the period of slavery.

Dawson, who did not say whether he supported reparations, said the reparations movement has a varied base of support.

Many black academics, members of Congress including U.S. Rep. John Conyers, DMich., and Members of Parliament in Britain support reparations measures, he said.

For black people, he said reparations are important even if the issue is not a priority.

“It may not be the first point on your agenda, it may not be the second point on your agen-

da, but it’s always on your agenda,” he said.

“Claims for reparations should be viewed as an international phenomenon,” affecting people of African decent all over the world Dawson said.

The lack of support among much of the general public means that monetary compensation for slavery is not likely to become a reality, Dawson said.

But he said the debate will and must continue.

“This issue is not going away,” he said.

Students who attended the lecture said they were interested in the tensions surrounding the reparations debate.

Vanessa Lipschitz ’04 said the issue of reparations is “very relevant at Brown,” especially in light of the heated debate that arose on campus in the spring of 2001 when The Herald printed a paid antireparations advertisement from anti-reparations activist and magazine publisher David Horowitz.

Lipschitz said she was glad to see “that there was obviously a lot of tension in the room and it was being discussed.”

The reparations debate is not over and should continue to engage students, she said, echoing Dawson’s remarks.

“The more Brown students who come and talk about it, the better,” she said.

Herald staff writer Julia Zuckerman ’05 can be reached at jzuckerman@browndailyherald.com.

Fight Club continued from page 3 at least as renowned.

Palahniuk also recently sold the rights to his novels “Choke” and “Invisible Monsters,” the latter of which starts filming next summer, he said.

Although Palahniuk said he thought the “Fight Club” film tells his story better than the book, he takes no credit for it. Beyond the actual writing, his work is entirely out of his control, he said.

“Do I look for people who will give me creative control?” he asked of production companies.

“No, I look for people who will pay me.”

Arnold continued from page 3 Arnold began to break into new areas as well, becoming a potter and a fine arts major. Doing cattle drives on horseback across the northern part of the state became a pastime of hers, but she always felt that the “pull of the ocean was too strong to deny.”

“Sometimes,” she laughs, “we used to find a strong creek to sit in because there was no beach to go to!”

After starting at Brown in 1989, working with the Center for Drug and Alcohol Addiction in the BioMed program, Phyllis took her position in the Visual Arts Department in 1998, where she remains today. And almost 40

Letter continued from page 1 Reinharz said the letter was partly in response to specific incidents of intimidation — both verbal and physical — that had occurred around the country in the wake of increased conflict in the Middle East.

“In the past few months, students who are Jewish or supporters of Israel’s right to exist — Zionists — have received death threats and threats of violence,” the letter stated.

President Ruth Simmons signed the letter but told The Herald she would have preferred it be more inclusive.

Though she said she objected somewhat to its focus, “I thought the sentiment was the right one,” she said.

“I always say we really need to make sure this is relevant for everybody and not just for one group,” she said. “It’s just that, from my perspective, it’s something we want for everyone.”

Reinharz said he is “delighted” that Simmons signed the letter.

“I commend her on her courage and thank her for her help,” he said. “I wish many more people would have.”

But he said the letter must be the beginning of an effort to end intimidation of all kinds on campuses across the country.

Harassment, he said, stifles debate and conversation.

“We can’t allow on campuses, which are supposed to be one of the few places that civilized dis-

After the last bird was thrown, Palahniuk signed books for several hours. He no longer signs body parts though, said Michael Cohen GS, who introduced him, because fans tended to have his signature tattooed.

On tour for his new book, “Lullaby,” Palahniuk stopped in Providence to speak to Brown and RISD students, community members and migratory Palahniuk groupies. His lecture nearly filled MacMillan 117, where the Brown Bookstore moved it to accommodate a large crowd.

Carla Blumenkranz ’05 edits the Arts and Culture section. She can be reached at cblumenkranz@browndailyherald.com.

years later, she continues to surf.

“The love of the sport keeps people bound to it,” she states.

“It’s not something that you have to give up just because you’re older.”

And although she downplays the contributions that she has made to surfing, Arnold is still widely recognized in the Rhode Island wave riding community as a local legend. She was even recently hailed as one of the “ground zero originators of the Newport surfing scene” by Longboard Magazine.

But she modestly denies that her influence in the sport was as big as it actually was. “It wasn’t really just about surfing,” she explains. “The music, the lifestyle, it was just part of the whole subculture that we lived in (during) the 60’s. We didn’t make waves, we rode waves.”

cussion can take place, for political demagogues and sensationalism and even violence to take place,” he said. “That is simply not permissible.

“The next step,” Reinharz said, “is to educate people. …

The only way you can have a debate on campus is to have informed debates.”

He said many students around the country are not fully educated about the situation in the Middle East. He said informed, civilized discussion will arise through education.

“A lot of people talk emotionally, or they have a gut feeling about what is going on,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that very few students unfortunately know what is going on.”

Reinharz said he doesn’t know why other Ivy League presidents did not follow Simmons’ lead.

Summers said he did not sign because he already made his views on the subject known during his speech.

But the drafting of the letter, which predated Summers’ speech, “was not about being politically correct,” Reinharz said. Rather, it was about facilitating civilized debate on the subject on campuses, he said.

Simmons said she understood the letter’s weaknesses, but “unfortunately, things don’t come packaged neatly, where you get the perfect wording for everything.

“Would it have been better if it had been more general? Of course it would have been,” she said. “On the other hand, I don’t think it was bad.”

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

CAMPUS NEWS MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002 · PAGE 5

ASA organizes drive to send books to African schools

BY BRIAN BASKIN

At Brown, textbooks are never more than a couple of blocks and 100 bucks away. But at African universities, such as the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, a semester’s worth of books can cost as much as half a year’s tuition, if they’re available at all.

The African Students Association hopes to help change this situation by collecting used textbooks from professors and students and sending them to an African university at the end of the semester.

The biggest push in the book drive will come at the end of the semester when ASA members will visit departments and ask professors to donate extra books and encourage their students to do the same, said Nzomu Ulenga ’03, communications officer for ASA. Last year, when the ASA collected books destined for the University of Asmara in Eritrea, it focused on engineering and the sciences because though books that came from Brown probably wouldn’t be the titles needed in Asmara, the information would be needed universally.

“Hopefully we might be able to feed into what people are learning in universities, not as textbooks but we might be able to help with reference books,” Ulenga said.

The ASA plans a similar focus this year, though it hasn’t decided where to send the books, Ulenga said.

Last year the ASA sent the books to an Ethiopian students association based in Washington, D.C. that then shipped them to Asmara. The books reached their destination, but the ASA never heard back from the university.

This year the ASA plans to send the books themselves, Ulenga said.

Students pay far less in tuition at African universities than students in the United States do. But books cost about the same because most textbooks are imported from England and sold at list price, said Ulenga, who is Tanzanian.

In Tanzania, where the per capita income is $710 per year, most students can’t afford to spend several hundred dollars on books each semester. Ulenga said his friends in Tanzania choose instead to photocopy their books or share one book between five people.

The ASA’s book drive won’t lower textbook prices, but it will provide students with more options, Ulenga said.

Herald staff writer Brian Baskin ’04 can be reached at bbaskin@browndailyherald.com.

Salomon gets an acoustic upgrade

BY ZACH BARTER

The recent acoustic renovations in Salomon 101, the University’s largest lecture hall, are receiving rave reviews from students and professors alike.

“It has very good resonance,” said Matthew Haar ’06, whose “Principles of Economics” class meets in the lecture hall. “It makes it a lot easier to pay attention to the lectures.”

The renovations aimed to correct the room’s “slapback echo” and give it a deader, flatter sound, said Media Services Technician Michael Haumesser, who coordinates special events in the 594-seat auditorium.

Salomon had not been renovated since the 1970s, he said.

“The sound in the hall suffered greatly because of acoustical problems within the building,” Haumesser said. “There was so much slap-back that it would obscure the sound of someone’s voice.”

In addition to upgrading all existing audio-visual equipment in the lecture room and in the booth, the project included the installation of new speakers, a new mixing board, wireless microphones, new automated on-stage lighting, new sound control panels in the booth and new sound absorbing and deflecting acoustic panels to eliminate the room’s dead spots.

The improvements reduced the room’s echo time from eight seconds to less than one.

The undertaking attempted to make Salomon more accommodating for both lectures and special performances, said John Noonan, associate vice president for Facilities Management, which handled the project’s planning, design and construction.

“It’s really going to help the student organizations out,” Haumesser said. “We’re going to be able to do a lot of things in here we weren’t able to do before.”

Haumesser said he received positive feedback from professors and a cappella groups alike.

Salomon 101 serves as the location for three classes this semester: EC11: “Principles of Economics,” BN1: “The Brain: Introduction to Neuroscience” and BI47: “Genetics.” In addition, Salomon hosts plays, concerts, forums and lectures.

The Salomon renovation was one of 65 projects Facilities Management undertook this summer. The projects totaled almost $30 million, Noonan said, though he said he didn’t have an exact figure on the Salomon improvements.

Seth Kerschner / Herald

A new sound system in Salomon is winning rave reviews from students who have class in the lecture hall.

Facilities Management contracted the work to Rosati Acoustics, a Boston-based business. The project was Rosati’s first at Brown.

The improvements are still a work in progress, Haumesser said. Several technical details and control mechanisms remain to be worked out, and the room must also be tuned and equalized, he said.

“Next month, after it’s completed, we’re going to have a completely functional and strong sound system in there,” Haumesser said.

Though most students offered praise for the renovations, others felt the funds could have been better allocated.

“The acoustical renovations aren’t useful when the stage is too small to support our orchestra,” said Nicholas Reul ’04, who plays the oboe in the orchestra.

Unveiling name of infamous Deep Throat now an academic pursuit PHILADELPHIA (U-WIRE) — Bob Woodward, the Washington Post journalist who broke the Watergate scandal, is still keeping the identity of famed source Deep Throat secret.

But students at the University of Illinois think they’ve solved the mystery.

More than 40 journalism students have worked on an intensive project to discover the identity of Deep Throat as part of a class that began in the fall of 1999 offered by Professor William Gaines at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The story was even featured on Dateline this summer and in newspapers across the country.

Deep Throat was an anonymous insider at the White House who disclosed important information to Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein. Their subsequent reports on the Watergate break-in and illegal activities within the White House led to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974.

Woodward and Bernstein continue to keep the identity of Deep Throat secret, prompting years of speculation even from Watergate participants and insiders. In a talk here at Penn earlier this week, Woodward would only comment that Deep Throat is “a man, he’s alive... the story will be told sometime... not tonight.”

“It’s obvious if you know the answer... which I do,” he added. Woodward said he will continue to keep Deep Throat’s identity secret until the source dies or otherwise releases Woodward from his original promise.

Woodward has also acknowledged that Deep Throat was a smoker and a Scotch whiskey drinker.

The Illinois class’ final list of possible Deep Throat identities includes Stephen Bull, a special administrative assistant; Fred Fielding, a White House lawyer; Gerald Warren, a presidential spokesman; Jonathan Rose, an attorney for White House relations; David Gergen, speechwriter; Raymond Price, head speechwriter for

Nixon; and Pat Buchanan, a special assistant to Nixon and later a presidential candidate himself.

When polled by Dateline, students agreed that Buchanan was their top choice, although research still continues and Gaines himself has not named his own top suspect.

“We contacted Bob Woodward but he would not comment,” Gaines said in an e-mail, adding, “we believe we have it right if Woodward and Bernstein have been truthful in the account of their dealings with Throat.”

The class offers students a unique opportunity to gain valuable investigative reporting skills with an awardwinning journalist.

Not just a college professor, Gaines teaches with better than average credentials, having won two Pulitzer Prizes for his investigative reporting at the Chicago Tribune in his more than 30 years at the paper.

Gaines and the students combined three years of progressive work by using a process of elimination and a large database created by Gaines to compile a list of 72 top suspects and narrow the field down to seven contenders.

Students worked together using sources such as old newspapers and phone books, published autobiographies of participants in the scandal and 16,000 pages of FBI investigative reports on Watergate and Nixon tapes and papers.

University of Illinois senior Jessica Heckinger was involved in the investigation for a semester and called Gaines “amazing” and the experience “mindblowing.”

Heckinger described long hours listening to Nixon tapes and the class’ appreciation of receiving one of the most helpful sources — an original manuscript of Woodward’s first book, All the President’s Men. The manuscript contained scattered notes by Woodward that hinted at the identity of Deep Throat,

leading the class to conclusions that helped narrow the field of suspects.

Heckinger frequently contacted Pat Buchanan because of his position at the White House and was surprised to receive a postcard from him this summer after he was named a top suspect.

“Basically, the only defense he had was he had no motive and he quit smoking in... February of ‘72,” she said, adding that she believes he is probably Deep Throat.

Fellow class member William Brumleve, a senior at the university, agreed with Heckinger and the rest of the class.

“Personally... I’m really not sure. The class came up with Pat Buchanan, I have no reason to think it’s not,” he said, also noting that Buchanan was the only suspect who “never publicly denied it.”

The list of the class’ top seven suspects was released this summer on the Finder’s Guide to Deep Throat, a site run by Gaines detailing the long process and the eventual results of the class.

Penn History Professor Bruce Kuklick argued that the results of the class’ work and the continuous speculation about Deep Throat’s true identity is unimportant, calling the issue “trivial” and “silly.”

“This search for one person... is not a fruitful way to look at what was happening,” he said, adding that he believed Woodward created one source “out of various pieces of evidence... 10 different guys who are telling different parts of the story.”

However, the students who have worked closely on the project disagree.

“Doesn’t everyone want to know?” Brumleve asked.

Anna Haigh is Pennsylvanian.

a

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PAGE 6 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002

Sholem continued from page 12 exception of a huge blowout, every college football play is run at 110 percent, with every player giving his all. Pro players are wise to the ways of their game, and they realize that not every play in the NFL matters. As long as disaster does not occur, there is no great harm placed upon a team from one lackluster play. As a result, you will often see NFL players, particularly stars, not giving full effort and “taking the play off.” Do not be so quick to blame the players for this approach to the game, for they are only part of the problem.

Blame pro football as well, for allowing rules that contribute to this type of behavior. If Charles Rogers of Michigan State, effectively the Randy Moss of the college game, ever tanked a play as badly as Moss does, he would find himself on the bench getting chewed out faster than you can say “the Vikings suck.”

Pro football also has way too much parity, if you ask me. While there may be many lopsided victories in college football, they are well worth the sheer excitement that comes from watching an amazing upset unfold. Last week, unranked Louisville stunned number-four-ranked Florida State 26-20 in overtime in a torrential downpour. When was the last time an upset of this magnitude occurred in a regular season NFL game? The answer, sadly, is never. The parity of the league, as well as the long schedule, makes huge upsets impossible. Even if the worst team in the NFL beats the best team, it is not a stunner compared to an upset like Louisville and Florida State.

There is nothing that NFL head honchos can do to correct this problem, and it is one of the many reasons why college football cannot be topped.

Simply put, college football and pro football offer two options. The pro game features superior talent, some close games, more parity and less enthusiasm. The college game has upsets, heartbreakers, mixups, dedicated athletes and a genuine sense of passion that exudes from every player. I cannot force you to watch college football, but if you spend your Saturdays doing something else while waiting for a Sunday full of NFL games, you are missing out big time. The true game of football is being played on Saturdays.

Jamie Sholem ’06 hails from the cornfields of Champaign, Ill.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD COME INSIDE

HEALTH • BEAUT Y • WELLNESS

FEEL IT. PEACE.

PAGE 2 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

For students, stress increases risk of anxiety attacks The difficulties of college life can instigate heart palpitations, shortness of breath and hyperventilation

BY MONIQUE MENESES

College can be quite overwhelming at times. Some students, who say they find it difficult to adapt to the atmosphere and the stress of balancing extracurricular activities with schoolwork, sometimes report symptoms of heart palpitations, shortness of breath and hyperventilation — all signs of anxiety attacks.

Anxiety attacks are genetic, although certain factors play a role in instigating the attacks, said Aleta Johnson, a counselor at Psychological Services. A student’s level of vulnerability depends on the pace of his life, she said. Many students are awake all night, cramming for tests, and this can wreak havoc on adrenaline levels.

Studies have shown that one’s sex can be a determining factor of vulnerability to anxiety attacks, Johnson said. Women are more prone to have anxiety attacks than men because they experience more hormonal changes in their bodies, she said.

“Lots of research suggests that people have a pre-disposition to anxiety attacks, but anxiety attacks can also happen to anybody, because it is a natural process that is hard-wired into everybody’s systems. So, with enough stress, everybody can experience a panic attack,” Johnson said.

According to an American College Health Association survey taken last year, more than 92 percent of students questioned say they occasionally feel

overwhelmed by the tasks they have to perform. One third of these students said that their stress was severe enough to negatively affect their grades.

At Brown, anxiety attacks do exist and the number of cases over the years is rising, Johnson said. On average, she said she treats a few dozen cases a year, ranging from mild to full-blown attacks.

“I have seen a rise,” she said. “I think that we live in such a fast-paced world, and we just take for granted that we’re all supposed to be going a mile a minute.”

Richard LaPierre, director of Emergency Medical Services, said he responded to 13 “behavioral calls” last year, including some anxiety attacks. He said he has not seen any change in the number of cases of anxiety attacks he has responded to over the years.

“I would say it’s pretty much the same,” LaPierre said.

Symptoms of anxiety attacks include lightheadedness, hot or cold flashes and shakiness. Johnson said this is the body’s attempt to help regulate the imbalance of carbon dioxide and adrenaline levels in the body.

“The body’s mechanism for dealing with danger goes a little haywire” during an anxiety attack, Johnson said.

“The body, when it responds to threat or danger, produces adrenaline, and this produces a fight-or-flight response.

When danger is an exam or when danger is problems at home there is no immediate physical demand for that adrenaline. … It constricts the blood vessels in your body — your vital organs are fooled into thinking that there hasn’t been a change in your O2 and CO2 levels.”

Johnson said attacks usually occur when people are inactive — in classrooms or just after waking up.

“The body’s mechanism for dealing with danger goes a little haywire” during an anxiety attack. … “The body, when it responds to threat or danger, produces adrenaline, and this produces a fight-or-flight response.

When danger is an exam or when danger is problems at home there is no immediate physical demand for that adrenaline. … It constricts the blood vessels in your body — your vital organs are fooled into thinking that there hasn’t been a change in your O2 and CO2 levels.”

Aleta Johnson Psychological Services Counselor “Typically, anxiety attacks occur when people are sedentary, if there is a surplus of these chemicals in the body and you’re not using them with physical activity,” she said.

Psychological Services’ treatment for anxiety attacks consists of two parts and is very specific, Johnson said. The first part emphasizes identifying those triggers that cause students’ fight or flight reactions while helping the student use corrective thinking strategies. The second part recommends techniques that students can use to offset physiological differences occurring in their bodies — for example, breathing techniques to elevate their CO2 level.

Students at Brown have been proactive in getting the help and attention they need. Of the 13 behavioral calls LaPierre got last year, most were made by the students experiencing the attack

rather than by their friends or strangers, LaPierre said.

“In my experience, it’s the person themselves who call in or get someone to call for them,” LaPierre said.

Anxiety attacks are by no means linked specifically to college students. A large percentage of people in the United States will at one time or another experience a form of an anxiety attack, Johnson said.

“In fact, 70 percent of the population in the United States will at one time experience a panic attack/anxiety attack, but they might not think of it as that bad, so it might seem normal at the time,” Johnson said.

“Balance is important,” Johnson said.

“One thing to keep in mind with anxiety is that once it begins, it gets worse. It’s like mold in a bathroom. You have to take care of it early on.”

FALL 2002 HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 3

IN BRIEF Meningitis a serious threat to college students, studies show Meningococcal meningitis, a dangerous inflammation of the area and fluid surrounding the spinal cord, kills nearly 300 Americans each year, according to www.mayoclinic.com.

And the Clinic says the disease is increasingly striking Americans between the ages of 15 and 24, many of them living on college campuses.

According to a 1999 study by the Centers for Disease Control, college freshmen living on campus are up to six times more likely to contract meningitis than members of the general population.

The CDC cited several possible reasons for the apparently heightened susceptibility, including living in residence halls, sharing drinks and kissing.

According to the Mayo Clinic, meningitis often presents flu-like symptoms at its onset, which shifts to a high fever, severe heading and swelling. One of the most characteristic symptoms is stiffness in the neck, although it does not always occur.

Meningococcal meningitis is fatal in about 10 percent of all cases, according to Brown’s Student Health Services website.

At Tulane University in New Orleans, LA, where two students died of bacterial meningitis in the last two years, schools officials have launched a campaign to get all new students vaccinated against the disease.

Shirley Jeandron, the Nurse Manager at Tulane’s Student Health Services, said all new students are required either to receive the vaccination or to sign a written waiver saying that they understand the risks of not being vaccinated.

“We’ve made that one of our policies and requirements for being registered and living on campus,” she said.

Jeandron said students who fail to comply with the requirement have their spring course registration blocked.

But she said the number of students facing this penalty have dropped, from 1,500 at this time last year to fewer than 500 right now.

“Parents have helped us in making sure (students) are provided protection where (they) otherwise wouldn’t have it,” she said.

While Brown does not require the vaccine, Student Health Services website “strongly recommends” that students receive it.

The University will offer a meningitis vaccination clinic from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Oct. 29 in Petteruti Lounge and Nov. 12 in Arnold Lounge of Keeney Quad. The vaccine will be provided without charge to students under the age of 18 and for $65 to all other students.

— Philissa Cramer

Nutrition panel touts fewer rules, more exercise for better health (L.A. Times) — Acknowledging that Americans are getting

fatter, an independent panel of top physicians and nutritionists on Thursday recommended doubling the amount of exercise previously thought necessary to stay healthy while setting less rigid dietary guidelines.

The groundbreaking report,prepared for U.S.government health and nutrition agencies by the Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board,urges people to eat more “healthy”fats and allows for significantly more added sugars in the diet,a recommendation that some critics say could discourage consumers from getting all the daily vitamins and nutrients they need.

The recommendations, last updated by the board in 1989, could lead to significant changes in food labeling, analysts said, and ultimately affect the USDA’s closely followed list of recommended daily food requirements.

“I think it’s going to be difficult for USDA not to change the food pyramid (based on these recommendations),” said Dr. Walter Willett, nutrition and epidemiologist professor at Harvard University School of Public Health.“The top part of the pyramid is going to get bigger.”

The report emphasized physical activity over the restriction of calories — recommending an hour of moderate exercise every day such as brisk walking. That’s double the amount recommended by the U.S. Surgeon General and considerably more than what the majority of Americans accomplish.

Currently, more than 60 percent of Americans are not physically active on a regular basis, and 25 percent are inactive.

“We recognize that lifestyles of many in the United States might make this goal seem difficult to achieve,” panel chair Joanne Lupton, a professor of nutrition at Texas A&M University, told a briefing.

The report gives details of how many calories a person should eat based on weight and activity but avoided discussing what kinds of foods to eat. Instead the report set guidelines to accommodate a broad range of diets from lowfat Asian to Mediterranean fare which is higher in good fats.

Jennifer K. Covino / Stamford Advocate

Jaime Reed stuffs celery into a juicer to make a vegetable drink for a customer at the Oasis Bar at Wild Oats Community Market in Westport, Conn.

Squeezing pulp — for good health

BY JENNIFER K. COVINO

(The Stamford Advocate) — At the Oasis Bar at Wild Oats Community Market in Westport, Conn., everything seems so dizzyingly good for you, from the menu listing Beta Bunny and Mighty Green drinks to the colorful array of super-sized carrots, fresh parsley and deep red beets.

When store supervisor Natasha Wells tells me a 1ounce shot of wheatgrass juice has the nutritional value of 2.5 pounds of leafy green vegetables (can you even imagine eating that much spinach in one day?), I’m completely done in. I’m floating in health heaven, picturing the years, the pounds, the aches and the pains melting away.

Juicing is the practice of pushing a whole bunch of fresh produce: cucumbers, collard greens, cantaloupe, you name it, through a juicing machine. The machine separates out the hard-to-digest insoluble fiber (the pulp), and produces a steady stream of an often muddy-looking, multicolored liquid. This is the juice.

Juicing advocates claim that many of the enzymes, phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals are trapped in the indigestible fiber of whole fruits and vegetables and can’t be assimilated into the body. They say juicing “liberates” the nutrients from the cellulose in the pulp, so that the body can absorb them readily, within 15 minutes.

Fresh juice should be consumed right away because light, heat and air can quickly deteriorate the nutrients.

Mild gastrointestinal distress is common when you start juicing, which is why experts say you should start

with 4 ounces and gradually work up to 16 ounces daily. And since juice extractors remove the fiber-containing pulp, it’s still important to eat a fiber-rich diet of whole fruits and vegetables and whole grains.

Juicing gained popularity in the early-1990s, when proponents claimed it could reverse everything from the natural aging process to chronic diseases such as cancer. These claims haven’t been substantiated by scientific evidence, but juicing continues to attract an increasing number of followers, according to Cherie Calbom, the “Juicelady” behind Salton’s line of popular juicing machines.

Calbom, who has a master’s degree in nutrition, says juicing helped her overcome low-back pain, chronic fatigue syndrome and hypoglycemia. “Juice is considered a life food,” she says. “It is full of vitamins and enzymes. It strengthens the immune system with betacarotene, zinc, vitamin C and other nutrients. Plus, it helps you look younger, with better skin tone.”

Calbom cites studies that seem to demonstrate the healing power of juices: cabbage for ulcers, cherry for gout, citrus for kidney stones and cranberry for urinary tract infections. She also cites a 1996 U.S. Department of Agriculture study that found 90 percent of the antioxidants in 12 different fruits were in the juice, rather than in the fiber.

For those of us with on-the-go, fast food-style diets, juicing can be a good way to get the five servings of fruits and vegetables a day recommended by the see JUICING, page 13

PAGE 4 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

Remembering, forgetting can help emotional balance

BY JIM SHEA

( The Hartford Courant) — When we think about memory, usually we focus on the ability to recall.

It is, after all, crucial to our everyday existence that we remember such things as names, faces, facts, events, medications, emotions—and where we put the keys to the car.

But attached just as securely to our well-being is the other side of remembering—forgetting.

In terms of storage capacity alone, our ability to forget is important. We’d all be walking around with heads the size of beach balls if we retained everything.

To help us forget what we don’t need to remember, our brains tend to mark things in which we have more than a passing investment. We are not likely to ever forget shaking hands with Michael Jordan, but don’t ask what we had for lunch last week.

Other forgetting takes place because of the passage of time, or absent-mindedness—usually the result of inattention or being on autopilot. Or age. Ah, the always annoying senior moment.

Forgetting is also important to our emotional well-being.

Suppose our brains enabled us to recollect everything we have experienced with the same intensity and vividness as was present in its immediate aftermath.

Would we ever get back on that horse that threw us?

Would we ever take another chance on love?

Would we even be here? As someone once observed, the real miracle of childbirth is that anyone would ever do it again.

So time heals all wounds, right?

Not necessarily.

While distance does often dull the

painful memory of a death or a divorce or a professional disappointment, it is not always the case, especially if the event is particularly wrenching.

In such cases, our brains often force us to remember that which we most want to forget.

The phenomenon has been compared to that of a song that suddenly becomes stuck in your head. Only in the case of the painful memory, the repeated playback isn’t just a distraction; it can be debilitating, even deadly.

Psychiatrists call these types of popup recollections “persistent” memories.

Persistent memories, which are usually vivid and detailed, are a response to any type of traumatic experience, whether it be war, assault, rape or abuse.

To observe the still-fresh pain of adults who were sexually abused by priests as children is to witness the power of persistent memory.

Although many of these victims tried to cope with the trauma by avoiding the memory, experts say this is not the best approach.

“Children will often try to forget something as a defense mechanism,” says Dr. David Reed Johnson, co-director of the Post Traumatic Stress Center in New Haven, Conn. “But the memory is always in the background, pretty much always present. And once they remember the event, it is hard to put out of their minds.

“Forgetting can be used as a temporary defense to keep you going in the short run, but as a long-term strategy, it is a poor one. It doesn’t lead to good adaptation, good functioning.”

Harvard University psychologist Daniel Wegner did experiments in which people were instructed to try not to think about something. He found that

“Forgetting can be used as a temporary defense to keep you going in the short run, but as a long-term strategy, it is a poor one. It doesn’t lead to good adaptation, good functioning.”

David Reed Johnson Co-director, New Haven Post Traumatic Stress Center while suppression worked temporarily, in the long run, people thought about it more.

He concluded that “trying to forget might not only prolong the misery but make it worse.”

If, then, you are haunted by a traumatic memory, and trying to forget it may eventually exacerbate the problem, what do you do?

“It is very rare that a patient forgets,” Johnson says. “The therapist doesn’t try to help a patient forget; he tries to help them place the memory in perspective.

Once a person has been traumatized, the memory takes over the person’s life.

They can’t think of anything else. It interferes with daily functions. It saps energy from things they should be focusing on.

“When you look at the sexual-abuse victims, you can see how damaging it is.

Their suffering is ongoing,” Johnson said.

Children’s sexual abuse by someone

trusted yields particularly volatile memories, said Alan S. Brown, professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University.

“The brain structures which are responsible for encoding memory are intimately tied in with the limbic system, which handles primitive emotions.

When you mix the two, you get an exceptionally powerful and long-lasting memory. The violation of trust and unwanted physical intimacy are some of the most powerful emotional dimensions for humans,” Brown said.

Brown and Johnson agree that forgetting, in these instances, is a matter of first remembering.

“Most therapies are based on exposure treatment. You attempt to get the patient to try to remember the trauma and, in doing so, slowly diminish the memory of the event. By remembering, you diminish its intensity,” Johnson said.

This same philosophy applies to dealing with more common problems, such as the end of a relationship.

When a breakup occurs, prevailing wisdom is to get over the other person, to forget him or her, which, as any dumpee knows, is easier said than done.

“You can’t simply say you’re going to close that chapter and go on,” Johnson says. “It doesn’t work. It can seem to work, but it is not the best strategy.

“If you are trying to get over a relationship that is upsetting, you need to talk to friends, relatives, someone wise.

You need to talk it through and put it in perspective.”

While women more often than not tend to do this, men take the macho approach by clamming up and/or cozying up to a bottle of booze.

“Play it again, Sam.” And again. And again. And again.

FALL 2002 HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 5

For some, seat pads aren’t just for the car anymore

BY BETH COONEY

(The Stamford Advocate) — A little botox for frown lines? A nip and tuck around the eyes? Some silicon implants for the breasts?

How about some surgically inserted padding for that flat posterior?

The latest weapon in the plastic surgeon’s arsenal against our perceived imperfections is the butt implant.

That’s right. A little extra gluteus maximus for those who think their tuchus is a bit on the minimus side.

New York City plastic surgeon Dr. David Ostad says he’s doing a booming business in derriere enhancement. He reports he’s done 80 procedures this year, and scores more in the six years since he began offering them. Ostad trained for the procedure in Brazil, the cosmetic surgery capital of the world.

So much for the waif look. What Pamela Anderson did to mainstream breast augmentation, Jennifer Lopez has done, albeit naturally, to out the buttocks.

Ostad attributes growing consumer interest in the $6,000 to $8,000 procedure to two cultural phenomena: The popularity of low-rise jeans and the omnipresent J.Lo. He describes his typical client as a relatively fit Caucasian female frustrated with flat buttocks that are “virtually nonexistent.” Ostad also reports a growing business with male patients, 35 so far this year, all of whom have identified themselves as gay.

“A lot of people have just inherited a body type that makes them prone to having a flat butt,” he says. “For someone who is the least bit body-conscious and works hard at looking good, it can be frustrating.”

He also notes there can be cultural reasons why people opt for the surgery. “In some cultures that value a prominent backside, not having one can make you feel strange and self-conscious,” Ostad says.

The equally prominent backsides of

Latina songstress Shakira and pop sensation Britney Spears have also done their role in making a round, sculpted butt the fashionable body part of the moment.

While this desire for bigger, more prominent buttocks may baffle the scores of Americans who spend hours in the gym trying to reduce their hip-hugging fat stores, plastic surgeons and even some fitness experts speak of this new breed of implant patients with surprising empathy.

“I know it sounds kind of strange, especially if you have the opposite problem and are trying to lose your butt,” admits California-based fitness expert Tamilee Webb, famous for her “Buns of Steel” videos. “But I understand on some level why someone would want to do this. If you have one of those really flat butts there’s only so much exercise can do for you.”

Tanya, a New York City entertainer who went to Ostad for implants three months ago, says she spent years in the gym trying to build her buttocks. “Nothing worked,” says Tanya, who requested that her last name not be used. After her implants, she says, “I couldn’t be happier with the results.”

While Webb says you can improve the appearance of the buttocks through lots of squats, lunges and leg presses, there’s a limit to what you can do to alter the backside nature gave you.

“Genetics plays a big part in our basic shape, and some people are never going to have a butt that sticks out the way they want it to.”

Still, before he goes the implant route, Ostad and other plastic surgeons note there are less dramatic alternatives for looking good in your $100 Diesel jeans. They begin with exercises designed to improve the tone and appearance of the gluteus muscles.

Webb recommends exercises done at a 90degree angle, the angle of a speed skater.

Paul Demarais / Stamford Advocate

The silicon used in butt implant surgery serves as surgically inserted posterior padding.

“They have some of the most prominent backsides in sports. It’s that kind of movement that can really build up the buttocks muscles,” she says.

And Ostad says a good trainer is probably in order before you book a date with him.

“I’m conservative and I always recommend that first,” he says. “But frankly, some people don’t want to try the lunges and wait it out.”

One less drastic surgical alternative popular with patients of Greenwich, Conn., plastic surgeon Dr. Ian Rubins is liposuction or liposculpture. By removing fat stores from the waist, below the buttocks, or both, you can sometimes create the illusion of a more prominent and curvaceous backside.

“It’s less invasive and the recovery is easier,” says Rubins, who does not do buttocks see IMPLANTS, page 15

PAGE 6 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

Working up to better health — sixty minutes a day

BY JANE E. ALLEN

(L.A.Times) — Sixty minutes of moderate exercise every day? That latest health recommendation is enough to send the average office worker dashing to the Danish cart in despair.

It’s hard enough getting the 30 minutes of daily exercise that the U.S. surgeon general has advised as a hedge against heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. But the whole hour recently recommended by the Institute of Medicine may seem almost impossible.

Don’t give up, psychologists and exercise experts say. The recommendation from the influential federal agency is not as rigid as it may seem. It’s a guideline intended not only to keep your organs in good working order, but help you burn enough calories to reach and maintain a healthy, stable weight. (It was based on studies of how much energy people with healthy body weights took in and used up.)

The authors of the recent report stressed that not all of the hour has to be done at the same time. Some of the cumulative 60 minutes of activity can be reached through routine activities, such as taking stairs instead of elevators or doing some housework.

But it’s probably not practical to rely entirely on such pursuits.

Becoming more active can start with plain old walking. Other than sturdy shoes and maybe sunglasses, no special equipment is needed.

Yet unlike, say, New Yorkers, who walk almost everywhere, Los Angeles residents labor under the added pressure of living in a city in which cars are the primary mode of transportation. “We’re glued to our automobiles and to the highway system. We spend a lot of time

sitting at our jobs,” said Steve Hooker, an exercise physiologist in the California state health department. But, he adds, “everyone has the same amount of time,” and it comes down to priorities.

You needn’t start at full throttle.

Finding that first half-hour is a good foundation upon which you can build.

“People need to understand that they can still get good health benefits from trying to get out there at least 30 minutes most days of the week,” said Abby King, senior investigator at the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention in Palo Alto, Calif. “There’s nothing magic about an hour a day. If you’re not hitting an hour but you’re increasing activity levels, you’re going to benefit.”

You might try two 15-minute walks, at lunch and during a coffee break, then taking the family for a half-hour evening walk, or signing up for an evening exercise class. You might walk the dog, play with your kids (instead of just watching them).

Become mindful about moments when you could be more active. In one study, Stanford University researchers found that people have “dead times during the day that aren’t valued,” like when they watch a television program they don’t particularly enjoy, King said. Study subjects learned to get off the couch and take walks.

It’s important to note that the expert panel recommended 60 minutes of “moderately brisk” activity, which doesn’t mean window-shopping on your lunch hour. It means picking up the pace, from an amble to more of a gambol. The study authors recommend a “moderately brisk pace,” defined as 4 mph.

How can you tell if you’re pushing

“People need to understand that they can still get good health benefits from trying to get out there at least 30 minutes most days of the week. There’s nothing magic about an hour a day. If you’re not hitting an hour but you’re increasing activity levels, you’re going to benefit.”

Abby King Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention yourself hard enough? “You’re breathing harder, and your heart rate is higher and you sweat more,” King said.

Swimming long, slow laps of the breast stroke isn’t really going to get your heart pumping. But pick up the pace with a purposeful freestyle and you’re there. Of course, you can ratchet up the pace further — and even reduce the duration — by engaging in high-intensity bicycling, running, or jogging for 30 minutes four to seven days a week. A good game of basketball, singles tennis or other racquet sport also could get you to the goal activity level in under an hour.

Think too about what you’re doing over a week’s time. You’ve got more leeway than you might imagine. You might do half an hour of walking one day and nothing the next, then make up for it with a 90-minute dance class or golf game the following day, King said.

King conceded that while walking opens the door to exercise for many people, “if someone is serious about weight loss and weight maintenance, they may very well need to go spend an hour in the gym, not every day, but at least two to three times a week.”

However, if you’re an older adult or someone unused to exercise, start modestly, perhaps with just 10 minutes of exercise, and set your goal at “eventually reaching the recommendation,” Hooker said.

One way to help the reluctant exerciser is through social support to reinforce new habits. That can come from Weight Watchers-like groups that bring people together to share tips on overcoming exercise obstacles.

Among them is Active Living Every Day, which teaches sedentary people how to maintain physical activity for a lifetime.

Created by the Cooper Institute, a nonprofit preventive medicine, education and research center in Dallas, the course is available in book form, is offered at some community centers and has a support component available through the Internet.

Support can also come from mallwalking groups, neighborhood walking clubs, online personal training services, or automated computerized systems that respond to you with a human voice. To keep up the new exercise habits, King said, “people will need to be creative.”

THE THE BROWN DAILY HERALD DAILY HERALD YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO

FALL 2002 HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 7

Lesson: A beginner’s guide to introductory primping WELCOME TO INTRODUCTORY PRIMPING! I am your instructor, Sarah Green. I hope you are taking this course because you want to look and feel your best every day. As this is an introductory level class, I will assume that most of you have had little or no prior experience with proper primping methods.

Don’t worry! We’ll go slowly. And remember, primping is for winners!

Goals: For students to learn how to beautify themselves in twelve easy steps!

Course materials: SARAH Mascara, black.

GREEN Eyeshadow, a variety of GET IN GOOD colors. Eyeliner, black.

Base or foundation to match your skin tone. Eyelash curler (ask for help if you don’t know what this looks like — I assure you, contrary to popular belief, this item does exist). Lipstick. Blush. Hairdryer.

Round brush. Flat brush. Hair gel, spray, mousse, foam, wax, pomade, goop (extra credit). (Note: students wishing to do extra coursework in nail care or hair removal should arrange to meet with one of the TAs.) Now let’s get started on our first lesson!

1. Stand in front of the mirror.

Don’t have one? Try looking at the TV when it’s off. Don’t have a TV either? Try the little screen of your TI-86!

2. Hold the hairdryer in one hand while wielding the round brush in the other.

Turn on the hairdryer. When the fuse short circuits, drop the hairdryer on your foot in shock and curse loudly. Grope your way into the hall, fix the fuse and try again — only this Sarah Green ’04 enjoys spending hours in front of the mirror,gluing her eyelashes back on.

time you might want to turn off the illegal halogen lights, unplug the mini-fridge and stop watching “Frasier.” Actually, you should just stop watching “Frasier” anyway.

2. Apply the base or foundation evenly over your face.

Realize that you now look like Krusty the Clown. Remove.

3. Pick up the eyelash curler.

This is tricky, so stay with me. The eyelash curler is the metal thing that looks like a medieval torture device. Clamp it down over your eyelashes and — now this is important — don’t blink!

4. Okay so you blinked.

Whatever eyelashes are left in your eyelid are now perfectly curled. All the ones you ripped out by the root should be discarded; reattachment of ripped-out eyelashes will not be covered until the graduate-level seminar.

The purpose of eyeshadow is to make your eyes look large, soft and doe-like. Even the ancient Egyptians had eyeshadow — one of their highest compliments was to say a woman had “cow eyes.” Raccoon eyes, however, are not desired. Quick review: does and cows are good, raccoons are bad. Now as for the color, blue will probably make you look like Anna Nicole Smith. Avoid. Pink will either make you look really stoned or like you have conjunctivitis.

6. Approach the right eye with the wand.

Two passes should do it — one, two, — there you go! A little clumpy, but with practice you should be great. Okay, now the left eye.

8. Before we jump into eyeshadow, I thought it would be helpful to give you some background theory on the subject.

The purpose of eyeshadow is to make your eyes look large, soft and doe-like. Even the ancient Egyptians had eyeshadow — one of their highest compliments was to say a woman had “cow eyes.” Raccoon eyes, however, are not desired. Quick review: does and cows are good, raccoons are bad. Now as for the color, blue will probably make you look like Anna Nicole Smith. Avoid. Pink will either make you look really stoned or like you have conjunctivitis. Also avoid. For now, I suggest you pick one color and stay with it (We will cover bi- and tri-colored applications in upper-level electives. For a preview of these techniques, tune in to any daytime television show).

7. You seem to have dropped the mascara wand behind your mini-fridge.

Not to worry! Just pick it up and pull away the attached dust bunnies, hair and mysterious green gunk. Now rub it across your left eye.

Remember, primpers never quail in the face of adversity.

9. Now we’re really making progress!

I know it seems quite long, but stay with me — we’re almost to the end, and you only had to wake up an hour earlier than usual. Take a break if you need to, get some water, do some neck rolls. When you’re ready, join me at step number 10!

5. Remove the mascara wand from the tube.

It should look kind of like a pipe cleaner, or that Christmas-tree-shaped thing the orthodontist gave you to clean between your braces that you never used. Try doing a few practice swipes in the air before trying it on your eye: we don’t want any more accidents! Pretend you are conducting a tiny orchestra of ants. Excellent!

10. Blush! Take the brush, dust the rosecolored powder lightly across your cheeks.

Okay, now you look like you have scarlet fever. You can’t wash your face or you’ll undo all of your hard work on steps one through nine. Try rubbing it off.

11. Well…it looks…pretty good.

Maybe layer a little more base over it to tone it down.

12. Okay, that admittedly wasn’t my best idea. Just put on some lipstick and a Wonderbra and no one will notice.

You are now officially primped! And it only took you an hour and a half — not bad for a beginner! As you improve, we’ll add more; today we didn’t even have time to get to perfume or plucking!

For next class, please bring an essay addressing one of the following topics: a) Lip liner or lip gloss? Discuss. b) To wax or shave? Discuss. c) Volumizer: God’s gift to the finehaired, or Paul Mitchell’s total rip off?

Discuss.

PAGE 8 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

When gender dictates acceptable consumption patterns COMPARE THESE TWO RADIO commercials by Citgo intended to illustrate the company’s caring, familiar relationship between Citgo convenience store employees and their customers. One commercial features “Jack Duffy,” who regularly goes into Citgo to pick up chips, soda and other party junk food. The voiceover employee conKATE cludes, “It GUBATA means he’s got A CLOSER LOOK a crew coming over to watch the game.” Another ad features a woman who walks into the Citgo store with red eyes and buys a box of Kleenex and a couple of boxes of chocolate ice cream, as the employee suggests, “She’s in the middle of a threepint break up.” These gratingly unfunny ads speak to two different, yet connected issues in U.S. society.

First, that in two entirely diverse settings in a person’s life, wherein food is not itself a natural feature — namely a sports game and a relationship crisis — food nevertheless becomes a major contributor. Second, in each situation, food plays a vastly different role depending on gender. For the guys, food is part of a celebration, adding to the overall animalistic atmosphere traditionally ascribed to some sports watching. For our female friend, chocolate ice cream plays a part in her emotional distress and self-pity. We are expected to believe that it is natural that, while the guys are engaging in a fun and carefree day of eating and cheering, the girl (whose ex is probably over at Jack Duffy’s) should be home gorging herself on forbidden chocolate and feeling sorry for herself. Nowhere in the commercials does one get the sense that Jack Duffy is just getting over a breakup and intends to wallow for a little while with chips and the Brown Bears. So why should she?

Though the gender discrepancies are blatant, one really must start with the source of the problem, which has its roots in modern U.S. society in general. We are a country obsessed with food. In a world where people are starving to death, we boast an epidemic of obesity. The Harris Poll (number 11, March 6, 2002), reported that 80 percent of the American public are now overweight. Furthermore 33 percent of Americans are 20 percent overweight, which the poll declares “a reasonable measure of obesity.” As if food weren’t tempting enough in and of itself, we are bombarded by images of appealing foods, most of them pretty unhealthy. Even more influential than sheer advertisements for various scrumptious ingestibles are the ubiquitous messages that food is, and should be, a staple of every aspect of one’s life, no matter how minor.

Far from ornamenting large family gatherings or holidays, the comsee FOOD, page 12

FALL 2002 HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 9

New logic says ‘skip the doctor on the way to the lab’

BY BENEDICT CAREY

(L.A. Times) — Getting a “simple” blood test can seem about as simple as getting a mortgage approved. There’s the 20-minute schlep (minimum) to the doctor’s office and back; the long purgatory of the waiting room; then the hour or so shuttling among doctors, nurses and medical technicians, only to learn — after half the day is blown-that the results won’t be ready for a week or more, sometimes requiring another appointment.

To which many Americans now say: Forget it. Commercial testing labs and Internet brokers have begun to bypass doctors, selling medical tests straight to consumers. So-called direct-access testing has a drive-through appeal: Roll up a sleeve, slap down a credit card or cash, and choose from a menu of 30 to 50 tests. The results are often available the next day, on the Web; no doctor’s order is required, and no insurer is involved.

“Time and convenience are quality-oflife issues for me,” said Jeannette Leach, 49, a research scientist in Boulder, Colo., who has ordered tests to help monitor her thyroid condition. “The lab I visit is located on one of the roads I use to drive to work. It opens at 8 a.m., and at 8:01 I’m there, and 10 minutes later I’m on my way to work.”

“The number of people doing this right now is very small, we think,” said Dr. Bruce Friedman, a professor of pathology at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, “but it should have enormous appeal to the sort of health-conscious consumers who are most enthusiastic about exercising control over their own health care.”

Limited health assessments, such as stroke screenings and blood-pressure checks, are increasingly being offered at pharmacies and grocery stores, and full-

body X-ray scans have proved so popular that they’re now available at some malls.

The world’s largest diagnostic lab, Quest Diagnostics Inc., opened direct-testing locations in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Maryland and Virginia and has partnered with Giant Food, an East Coast grocery chain, to sell a range of blood and other tests in stores.

So far, direct testing appears to be growing most on the Internet. Demand has not been strong at walk-in outlets, said Jondavid Klipp, managing editor of Laboratory Industry Report, who has surveyed some of the labs. Quest would not disclose the number of tests it has done.

Yet Web-based outfits have seen increased sales in the first half of this year. Online outfits contract with local labs to collect blood or other samples, then have the fluids shipped out of state for testing.

Although many states have laws prohibiting labs from performing most tests without a doctor’s authorization, directto-consumer Web sites aren’t subject to such laws if their labs are located outside those states.

“What’s happening is that many clinical lab functions are going onto the Web, and they are increasingly available to consumers, no matter where they live,” said Friedman.

In recent years, several state legislatures have moved to expand the number and type of tests available without a doctor’s order.

According to Friedman, who has studied the emergence of the e-laboratory, direct testing has two principal attractions: easy access and privacy. Healthconscious people who want tests more frequently than their doctors order are one category of users. So are people who want see BLOODTESTS, page 14

Mark Boster / L.A. Times

Medical assistant Blima Westre draws blood from a patient seeking a diagnostic assessment at the US HealthWorks clinic in Santa Ana, Calif.

PAGE 10 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

Infectious diseases on the upswing across the world

BY RITA R. COLWELL

(The Baltimore Sun) — Infectious diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide and are on the rise.

Take West Nile virus. As mosquitoes buzz around our back yards, parks and other public places, residents and health officials in Southern, Eastern and Midwest states are poised to retreat under protective netting. For fear of the lethal virus, citizens are being urged to drain flower pots, wash out birdbaths and eliminate standing water where the insects can breed.

And now the virus has marched onto football fields.

The Jackson, Miss., high school football team faces a potentially deadly foe: night-feeding mosquitoes that carry the virus. Players are being sprayed with insecticide before games and at halftime. More than 1,500 cases of the disease have been reported nationwide, and 71 people have died.

Other dreaded diseases of centuries past, such as

bubonic plague, are happening here and now.

Plague, for example, is on the rise in the Southwestern United States. Biologists conducting long-term ecological research have found that human plague cases in New Mexico are occurring after wetter-than-average winter-tospring periods. In fact, during much wetter than normal periods from October to May, there has been a nearly 60 percent rise in the number of cases. Yersinia pestis, the plague bacterium, has survived the Dark Ages and is with us yet.

And now researchers have discovered that a bumper year for acorns may result in a bad season for Lyme disease. This intriguing link is the result of a long-term study of the ecological relationships in oak forests of the Eastern United States. In those acorn-rich years when deer gather in oak forests to feed, large numbers of adult deer ticks drop from their hosts onto the forest floor and lay their eggs in the leaf litter.

An abundance of acorns also encourages growth of

white-footed mice, which in turn infect the ticks with the Lyme disease bacterium (ticks latch onto mice, which carry large populations of these microorganisms in their blood).

After a bumper-crop acorn year, then, numbers of ticks carrying Lyme disease skyrocket, and the incidence of Lyme disease follows suit.

What causes outbreaks of these diseases? Surprisingly, the answer may lie in the relationship of infectious diseases to our planet’s climate.

Recent average temperature increases and changes in precipitation amounts and patterns may be to blame. The combination of hot days and warm nights where once there were warm days and cool or cold nights has introduced changes in ecosystems.

Insects and microorganisms that are disease carriers previously couldn’t survive in certain localities but now thrive there.

FALL 2002 HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 11

Americans are living longer but health costs are soaring

BY ROSIE MESTEL

(L.A.Times) — Americans are living longer than ever before and infant mortality is at a record low, according to a new government report on the state of the nation’s health.

However, the cost of health care is rising yearly, and Americans are becoming fatter than ever . In addition, racial and ethnic health disparities — while continuing to narrow — are still significant.

These and many other statistics — many good, some bad — were released Thursday in a 430-page report prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The annual report examined a wealth of data on the habits, health care costs, diseases and deaths of the U.S. population in 2000.

“It shows what we’re doing right, and where we still need to make improvements,” said Edward J. Sondik, director of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, which prepared the report.

The report noted great strides in the nation’s health over the past century. “It’s pleasing,” said Dr. Linda Rosenstock, dean of UCLA’s School of Public Health. “We continue to be able to highlight how investments in public health activities have a big pay off.”

For instance, the average life expectancy at birth is now nearly 77 years, up from 47 a century ago. Today, the life expectancy is 74 years for men and nearly 80 for women, according to preliminary numbers.

The infant mortality rate also has fallen to 6.9 deaths per 1,000 births — a 75 percent drop since 1950 and a slight improvement from the 7.1 deaths reported in 1999.

Mortality rates at other stages of life have also dropped steeply for a variety of reasons.

There are fewer deaths among children and adults from accidents, infectious diseases, cancer and heart disease.

The report also noted that rates of syphilis are at an all-time low since reporting on the sexually transmitted disease began in 1941.

Homicide rates among black and Hispanic youth dropped nearly 50 percent in the 1990s; the percentage of adults who smoked dropped from over 40 percent in the 1960s to 23 percent in 2000. Deaths from AIDS, which peaked in the 1980s, dropped after 1995 following the introduction of potent new medications.

But not all the news is good. In 2000, 40,000 new cases of AIDS were reported.

Homicide remains the leading cause of death among black males ages 15 to 24 and the second leading cause of death among young Hispanic males.

A black baby born in 2000 is still, on average, likely to live 5.6 fewer years than a white baby. That is an improvement on the sevenyear gap that existed in 1990 — but still a significant difference, said Rosenstock.

And while the infant mortality and life expectancy numbers have improved, this country still lags behind other nations, she said. Of 30 industrialized countries, the United States ranks 23rd in infant mortality and 12th in male life expectancy.

The study also showed that health care costs are continuing to rise in the United States. In 2000, America spent $1.3 trillion on health care, or 13 percent of the gross domestic product — a 6.9 percent increase from the previous year. The cost of drugs has increased 15 percent each year from 19952000.

This presents a huge problem for an aging population — one that will worsen as the baby boomers age, said Scott Parkin, spokesman for the Washington-based National Council on the Aging, a nonprofit group concerned with aging issues. “The see COSTS, page 15

Lawrence K. Ho / L.A. Times

As more men turn to low-rise jeans, like the Levi’s at left, designers are coming up with more low-riding styles of briefs, such as this drawstring brief by Rips and camouflage low-rise silk brief by Intimo.

New style men’s underwear takes a dip

BY MICHAEL QUINTANILLA

(L.A. Times) — Alberto Mendez has had his fashion highs — and now he’s riding low in hip-hugging skivvies for the lowrise jeans that have infiltrated his closet.

He’s tried boxers and briefs under the low-slung trousers he wears on the weekend to show off the tattoo above his tailbone. But the styles “would rise and bunch up,” he says. “I didn’t know what to wear. I had to go commando a couple of times,” says the 27-year-old television news assignment editor, who dresses corporate-style for work. Then he purchased low-rise briefs. Since then, he’s been wearing them not just with his jeans but daily with his business slacks.

Mark Hewlett, an avid low-rise trouser aficionado, doesn’t do boxers. They’re not “sexy enough” for the blond 27-yearold importer. He prefers a briefer cut. “I like the short underwear that falls just below the hipbone. You know,” he says pausing pensively, “underwear can be a complicated piece of clothing, which is why I have all the brands.”

Men are finding more options than ever in their quest to drop their shorts — in a manner of speaking, of course — for their low-rise looks, a trend that once was the domain of women.

From pint-sized briefs to body-hugging boxers, many of the newer styles are so compact that they look as if they have shrunk in the dryer. Just this month, Jockey and Joe Boxer joined the low-rise posse that includes the likes of Calvin Klein, 2(x)ist and Playboy, which are churning out seamless, no-fly, bodycontoured designs made of high-tech fabrics that promise to be lighter, faster drying, as soft as cotton and 1 to 3 inches lower on the waist.

The current dip at the hip trend — a popular European guy style for several years — is not about flaunting elasticized labels and boxer prints above baggy trousers, a la hip-hop-wearing

nation. It’s about making sure you’re covered underneath those sexy low-riders, which can be tricky when you stand up and potentially encounter a cheeky situation.

“Let’s face it: In the world of men’s clothes, there are only so many silhouette options,” says Randy Heil, men’s fashion director for Macy’s West. “To tweak a pant and create a new musthave look is exciting. But nothing is more exciting in retail than one product creating a demand for another. And if you’ve got the new jean, you’re going to need the new briefer brief.”

There are plenty of fashionable ultralow jeans: Frankie B. Men, Diesel, Guess, Buffalo, Eisbar, Fever, Seven, Calvin Klein and even Levi. Other design firms are paying attention, including DKNY, slated to trot out a low-rise men’s jean line next spring. And come December, 2(x)ist, a company known for sexy underwear since its start in 1992, will introduce its first sportswear product: a low-rise men’s jean.

“For us, it’s about tying in our low-rise underwear with the low-rise jean trend,” says Jeff Danzer, the company’s executive vice president, about the denim collection. “These days, a guy wearing a low-rise garment isn’t about being gay or straight. It’s about being confident and secure and not thinking about what people think.”

At a July men’s runway show in Milan, Italy, the jeans on a model were so low that they slipped down as he turned to make his exit. “He caught them halfway down his cheeks,” laughs David Wolfe, creative director of the Doneger Group, a New York-based consulting firm that analyzes fashion trends. “As embarrassing as the incident was for the model, it illustrated the need for low, low briefs.

And you can bet that underwear companies will send out the product because style today is all about sex.”

Last week at a photo shoot in New York, male models were wearing lowslung jeans. “We had to keep jamming down the waistbands of their underwear so they wouldn’t show. That just wasn’t sexy,” says Wolfe. “The look today isn’t about showing underwear. Who wants to see more underwear? Skin is in.”

Less than two years ago, Levi Strauss & Co. quietly began making a low-rise jean for men called the Skinner, with a threebutton fly and a 9-inch “rise,” which refers to the length of the seam from the top of the waistband to the joint seam in the crotch. A standard jean has a 12-inch rise. The Skinner proved a success, so, nine months ago, Levi delivered an even lower low-rise called the Offender with a two-button 7-inch rise sold exclusively at Barneys New York stores.

“That jean is so low that you have to wax.” says Jimmy Hanrahan, director of product publicity, about the style that has been selling out. For Levi’s, the lowrise trend “is about addressing the need of the consumer,” he says.

“For years, guys have been wearing standard jeans on the hip, low and baggy. That pretty much has been the mainstream norm,” he adds, which is why earlier this month the company launched a more modest low-rise for men with a 10-inch rise. “We just decided to put jeans where men want to wear them and at the same time show off their assets. This was not about chasing a trend. The Levi’s brand is too old to get trendy.”

With Levi and other brand names competing for the men’s low-rise market, naturally the $1.7-billion men’s underwear industry would follow, says Marshal Cohen, co-president of NPDFashionworld, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based company that tracks apparel industry trends. see UNDERWEAR, page 15

PAGE 12 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

Food continued from page 8 mercial message is that food is itself a driving force behind even common events. A three- hour weekly football game becomes an all-day orgy with all kinds of less- than-nutritious snacks, from nachos to wings to ribs, as well as that ever-present sports companion, beer. Watching a movie in the theater has grown to full-feast capacity; popcorn, soda, candy and — now in many places — even pizza, ice cream and hamburgers are sold inside the theater. All this embodies a cultural message that affects both genders: whatever event a person is involved in is made better, even complete, with food. Food has so overwhelmed so many types of events that, for many people, watching a baseball game without a hot dog or two is like being a baseball fan in Tampa Bay. It’s just no fun.

In the above section I speak as both a sports fan and a moviegoer, and these examples serve for all who find it hard to break the “food equals fun” equation ingrained in our

society. The American attitude towards food does have major implications for both genders, reinforcing sex stereotypes and generally making this issue of food and culture stickier than white rice at the Ratty.

Let’s return to Jack Duffy and the “crew” and the melancholy Citgo female. Both commercials present stereotypical situations that promote excess and unhealthy behavior. But the dissimilarities come to the surface quickly. While one could argue that as a special treat and an occasional social gathering the guys’ behavior cannot be censured, the image of the lonely, dejected woman, trying to self-medicate by indulging in an ordinarily “forbidden” food speaks to a deeper and far more troubling concern. While Jack and the boys are promised a very enjoyable afternoon and may just suffer a little indigestion, we know that all the chocolate ice cream in the world will not make our nameless female feel better.

In fact, on top of the rejection she already feels, an additional scoop of guilt, which invariably follows this secret indulgence, can only make matters worse. This element of the guilty conscience reflects how deeply the double standard infiltrates our conceptions of food and gender. Women are expected to restrain themselves from the temptations of

junk food, particularly those stereotypically “feminine” treats such as ice cream. This woman’s “giving in” to her craving for chocolate is a sign of weakness and loss of control both physically and emotionally. It is a direct manifestation of her vulnerable state after breaking up with her boyfriend, which itself is a mark of uneven gender constructs. Jack Duffy might decide to hit the gym Monday morning to try to work off those extra chips. But when this newly single woman adds another 15 minutes to her elliptical machine workout the next day at the Bear’s Lair (average female to male ratio: 86:1), she is trying to burn off the insecurity, guilt and embarrassment of weakness and rejection that society has imposed on a woman who eats what she shouldn’t.

Often today we view the heading “Health and Wellness” as encompassing two separate features of our lives, generally divided along the lines of body and mind. I suggest that any distinction between the two terms is an illusion; physical health and our emotional and attitudinal approaches to our health are intensely intertwined. The United States’ epidemic is a spawn of this country’s preoccupation with food and all of the often contradicting and misleading baggage society has attached to it.

FALL 2002 HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 13

Juicing continued from page 3 American Cancer Society, says certified dietitian Pam Barbaro, the society’s Wilton, Conn.-based regional executive for cancer control prevention and detection.

According to Barbaro, juicing also may be helpful for patients undergoing treatment who are lacking appetite or energy. But, she says, “If you can eat the whole fruits and vegetables, that’s better, because you get the fiber as well.” And Barbaro cautions against extreme diets, saying that while studies continue all the time, megadoses of fruits and vegetables haven’t been proven to prevent cancer.

Dr. Joel Evans uses juicing selectively with his patients and says it has an advantage in the sheer volume of fruits and vegetables it enables a patient to consume. Evans is an obstetrician/gynecologist and holistic practitioner who offers complementary cancer care at the Center for Women’s Health in Darien, Conn.

Evans says to achieve optimal health, cancer patients and others with compromised immune systems should consume 1 pound of raw vegetables for every 50 pounds of body weight. And a 150-pound patient can get 3 pounds’ worth of vegetables in a 32 ounce-glass of juice.

“Juicing is consistent with my overall principal that it’s best to obtain vitamins through natural food sources rather than through supplements,” Evans says. “It also helps people to maintain optimal weight. It helps with calorie intake and regular insulin levels, which play a role in the prevention of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. “ Evans says it’s still important to chew when you juice, since chewing is the mechanism that signals the digestive system that food is on the way. He recommends that patients drink half their juice, then mix the remaining juice with the pulp and some ground flax seed, and eat it for breakfast like a cereal.

Diabetics and others who need to avoid sugar should limit the amount of fruit, carrots and beets in their juices.

Evans suggests ginger, garlic, unsweetened coconut, lemon juice or a small amount of fresh cranberries for fla-

vor.

Evans says his patients who juice “absolutely have better energy levels and find symptom improvement from chronic diseases such as diabetes, fatigue and cancer.”

If juicing is so great, why aren’t more of us chasing down this health-promoting, youth-preserving elixir?

Quite frankly, it’s because juicing at home can be a real pain. First, you have to shop frequently for large volumes of fresh produce (organic is recommended), find space for it in your refrigerator, then scrub it, wash it and peel it if necessary. If you have a good machine, the actual juicing part doesn’t take long — you can shove fairly large chunks into the opening.

The ease of cleanup varies from machine to machine; my low-end model takes forever to disassemble all the parts, hose them down and scrub out the pulp catcher.

And don’t make the mistake of deciding you’ll clean up later; the pulp crusts up and gets tougher to remove, plus it’s an open invitation for a fruit fly party in your kitchen.

In fact, according to Wells, many of the customers at Wild Oats’ Oasis Bar have juicers at home, but don’t want to be bothered with the cost and the cleanup.

PAGE 14 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

Bloodtests continued from page 9 to check their blood and urine before submitting to a drug test.

The list also includes people who want to test themselves for HIV or hepatitis C anonymously, or who want to peek at certain values — such as cholesterol levels — in private, before shopping for health insurance or changing plans.

The most popular tests are standard blood panels, which include anywhere from 12 to 20 different measures, from cholesterol and glucose levels to markers of liver and kidney function.

These panels are often ordered as part of routine physical exams, but the demand for them suggests another category of user: affluent and busy people who want to have a peek at their test scores without going to visit a physician.

As a rule, direct-access testing labs strongly advise their customers to consult with a doctor.

“We have been very clear that this testing is no substitute for seeing a doctor,” said Hughes Bakewell, vice president of consumer health at Quest. “We see our service as a complement to regular doctor visits.”

Yet there’s no guarantee that most direct-access customers will consult a professional, and that’s the problem, doctors say.

“The first rule of medicine is: Do no harm,” said Dr. Linda Rosenstock, dean of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health, “and here we have a situation where people may be getting false assurances about their health and not making follow-up appointments when they should be, or becoming very anxious about a test result when there’s no need to be.”

For that matter, not everyone understands what a “normal” result is. According to Dr. Carolyn Clancy, acting director of the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which researches health care quality and patient safety, a normal test score is one that falls within the range where 95 percent of healthy people score. The other 5 percent are perfectly healthy people whose levels are naturally higher or lower than this range.

“For that type of person, the result they get is not abnormal at all for them, but they have no way to know that,” Clancy said. “I would be concerned about anyone who had one of these results and was waiting for a doctor to return a call. They could be waiting as much as a week, and the whole time they’re trying to figure out if they need to make a will, or what.”

Some of the most popular tests available by direct access are widely accepted as authoritative evidence of underlying disease: cholesterol for heart disease risk; glucose levels for diabetes risk; and markers for liver and kidney function. Other tests often present people with a difficult puzzle, however.

For example, labs often check levels of homocysteine, an amino acid associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Unfortunately, said Clancy, no one knows exactly what to do about those levels, or how much difference it makes to reduce them. “If we found out that redheaded people were more likely get heart disease, well, what could we do about it?” she said.

FALL 2002 HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 15

Implants continued from page 5 implants, primarily because his patients haven’t demanded them.

Liposculpture, he notes, is also less expensive, with a surgeon’s fee in the area of $1,500 to $2,000.

(Operating room and anesthesia expenses are extra).

Ostad often recommends his clients consider fat transfer, also known as fat implantation surgery, which involves transferring fat from one part of the body (on women, usually the plush thighs) to another. The fat is harvested and injected into the desired area through two tiny incisions. “Fat injections are almost always done on an outpatient basis and the pain is minimal,” Ostad says.

Another advantage: “The recovery time is much shorter.”

While Rubins describes buttocks implants as “perfectly safe” since the silicon implants used are rock-solid, he says there are some drawbacks. “You can’t sit down for at least a week. You have to lay and sleep on your side. And it can be painful.”

Ostad says his patients are able to return to normal activities within a week or two. Tanya says she had discomfort for about two days, then was able to resume normal activities.

“And one of the things they like about it is they can see the results immediately,” Ostad says.

Especially if they feel up to slipping into a pair of low-rise jeans.

Costs continued from page 11 cost of drugs are out of sight and seniors are clamoring for help,” he said.

Compounding the problem of increasing costs, more than 40 million people in the United States are uninsured. “We spend almost twice as much as anyone else, but we are the only one of the industrialized countries in the world that does not have universal access to health care,” Rosenstock said.

The nation is also heftier than it was prior to the late 1970s. About 60 percent of adult Americans are overweight, as are 13 percent of children ages 6 to 11, according to early data. An estimated 40 percent of adults say they don’t exercise in their leisure time.

“This worries me a lot,” said Dr. Ravinder Singh, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Heart Association. “If we don’t change things it’s going to start swinging back the other way and incidence of heart disease and stroke are going to increase again.”

Underwear continued from page 11 “The low-rise brief has the potential to be the new rising star and could possibly stay for a long while,” he says, adding, “There’s not a lot of reason to wear low-rise skivvies if you are wearing basic pants, but if the wearer likes them — even though he may not like the low-rise trouser — he’ll wear them because it’s the consumer who ultimately will determine the longevity of this new style.”

PAGE 16 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS SPECIAL FALL 2002

Female empowerment — not just a product of porn MOTORCYCLE GANGS. DARK alleys. Recent robberies. While walking the streets of Thayer or any other pathway home or otherwise, a girl begins to imagine the various actions and ju-jitsu moves she can do if confrontHEATHER ed with the JOHNSTON silverA CLOSER LOOK toothed, masked highwayman of Providence.

Then she begins to realize that if she was actually put into that type of situation, she would probably be able to do nothing except the wrong thing.

Face it; on average, males are physically stronger and more powerful than the average female.

Therefore, in a conflict pitting female victim against male attacker, the female is, to put it bluntly, screwed.

For this reason and a couple others that need not be discussed here, my roommate and I decided to attend the L.E.A.P. (short for Lifetime Empowerment and Awareness Program) workshop on “Self-defense and self-empowerment” as they called it.

The closest L.E.A.P. was in Boston and there is currently not one in Providence. Mostly involving high schools and junior high schools, L.E.A.P. was looking to extend its awareness to colleges.

Not surprisingly, the participants were 100 percent female, probably coming for the same reasons as us: the fear of being attacked and not knowing what to do. Lasting a little more than an hour, the two ladies leading the workshop covered three basic moves to be used for self-defense and sadly enough, had to gloss over actions to do in other situations.

There was the wrist break, the shoulder pull away, and the barroom push away. However, this workshop did not cover only the physical actions that one would do to avoid conflict, but the mental confidence as well.

No, it wasn’t the usual mental fuddy-duddy that I was afraid might happen, such as the “we all have to believe in ourselves” etc., but actual tips like “Don’t look the follower straight in the eyes for too long, but be assertive” that may actually be useful and at the

A one-hour session is not enough to make one Lois Lane a Superman. L.E.A.P. has its closest base in Boston, but no permanent program here at Brown. It is not only adolescent girls that do not know how to defend themselves; self-defense is a skill that everyone should develop. It is vital that universities such as Brown promote programs like L.E.A.P. in an effort to increase female self-empowerment. same time improve self-confidence.

People can’t get away from an attacker simply by saying “I too, am valuable as a person.”

Ready to kick some Mortal Kombat ass on the way back from the Grad Center, my roommate and I showed some of our male compatriots the various moves we had been taught.

Yet, by simply changing the scenario to grabbing someone at the bottom side of the wrist instead of the top, my dorm buddies were able to effectively neutralize those moves so that the

only options we were left with were instinctual. A one-hour session is not enough to make one Lois Lane a Superman.

L.E.A.P. has its closest base in Boston, but no permanent program here at Brown. It is not only adolescent girls that do not know how to defend themselves; selfdefense is a skill that everyone should develop.

It is vital that universities such as Brown promote programs like L.E.A.P. in an effort to increase female self-empowerment.

Additionally, during the end of a session, where we gathered

as a group to discuss any other questions we might have as well as contact info, the question came up about a rape support group besides Health and Psychological Services.

We realized that there had been no notification about such a thing though we had heard about a rape hotline. L.E.A.P. not only encourages safety, but helps acknowledge such problems as these that our university may have overlooked. It promotes the well-being and safety, as well as the independence of the contemporary woman.

Some snack makers beginning to eliminate trans fats

BY JANE E. ALLEN

(L.A. Times) — First we learned that butter was bad for our hearts. Then we switched to margarine and found that was unhealthful too. Now nutrition experts are declaring war on the fats used in almost all commercially prepared foods.

Commonly listed on food labels as “partially hydrogenated” vegetable oils, these semisolid shortenings are prized for their shelf life and less greasy taste.

But they contain trans fats, which studies have associated with higher blood levels of LDL, or bad cholesterol. Elevated cholesterol is considered a

major risk for heart disease.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected early next year to require the listing of trans fats on nutrition labels.

And in two reports this summer, an expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine said trans fats aren’t essential to the diet and provide no known health benefit, adding that there is no safe level of trans fats.

Knowing where the federal government was headed, leaders in the snack and fast-food arenas have taken action.

Last week, Frito-Lay announced that Doritos,

Tostitos and Cheetos are going “trans-fat free” in early 2003. ( The company’s Lays and Ruffles potato chips and Fritos corn chips never contained trans fats.)

Abelardo E. Bru, president and chief executive of Frito-Lay North America, said the company would simply replace partly hydrogenated soybean oil with corn oil, one of the polyunsaturated oils thought to lower bad cholesterol.

In September, McDonald’s announced that beginning in October, it would halve the trans fats in its signature French fries and eventually its chicken nuggets, fried fish and fried chicken sandwiches and hash browns.

McDonald’s will change its frying oil to a new blend of corn and soybean oils. Eventually, it plans to zero out trans fats from all its foods.

But the health rationale behind all this activity isn’t as clear as we might think, given all the public and commercial concern.

When researchers have given people various amounts and types of fat, those eating trans fats had higher bad cholesterol, lower HDL (the good cholesterol), higher triglycerides (another unhealthy blood fat) and higher lipoprotein A than test subjects given the same amount of saturated fat each day.

Each of those measures is associated with heart disease, said Dr. Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Saturated fat’s seeming superiority was particularly telling, experts say, because it’s that type of fat — found in meat, dairy products such as butter, coconut, palm and palm kernel oils — that has long been dietary enemy No. 1 in heart disease.

Further, Willett said data from 90,000 women in Harvard’s

landmark Nurses Health Study showed “that trans fat was the worst type of fat in terms of future heart disease risk.”

There also is some evidence that those who eat trans fats instead of more healthful polyunsaturated fats have a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, he said.

So although no one has proven that trans fats directly cause heart disease, nutrition and heart experts are making their judgments based on the evidence at hand, hammered home through the persistent lobbying of organizations such as the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The trans-fat message isn’t an easy one to convey to the eating public. We’ve been conditioned to think about eating less cholesterol-laden food, although even the link between dietary cholesterol and high blood cholesterol remains controversial and far from proven.

There are three main kinds of fatty acids — saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated — all made up of carbon and hydrogen.

They get their names based on how those hydrogen atoms attach to the carbon atoms.

When the maximum number of hydrogen atoms are attached to carbon atoms, a fat is said to be “saturated.”

When some hydrogen is missing and two carbons attach by a double bond, the fat is said to be “monounsaturated.” Examples include olive, canola and peanut oils, and nutritionists encourage more consumption of these oils because they’re thought to lower our bad cholesterol.

When there are several missing hydrogen atoms and multiple double bonds, the fat is said to be “polyunsaturated.”

These also are considered healthful fats that can lower bad cholesterol. Sources include seafood and vegetable oils such as safflower, sunflower, corn, flaxseed and canola.

Some of the polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid, are needed by the body.

But sometimes hydrogen atoms are added back to a fatty acid to make it solidify, retain its flavor and last longer, all characteristics prized by food makers.

When this happens, the fat is said to be “hydrogenated,” and the extra hydrogen makes it less healthful.

“Partly hydrogenated” vegetable oils, in which some of the double bonds remain, also are solid at room temperature.

They’re called “trans fats” after the Latin word “trans,” which means “across,” because the hydrogen atoms end up on either side of a double bond, across from each other.

The softer the fat, the fewer the trans fats, so liquid margarines and tub margarines have lower trans fats than those in solid stick form.

To make a huge dent in the amount of trans fat the average American consumes, snack makers will need to move beyond fries and chips to cookies, crackers and cakes. That’s not happening as quickly.

Commercial bakers use partly hydrogenated fats not only because they have longer shelf life, but because they improve texture, said Mary Mead, a lecturer in the nutritional sciences department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Because the batter or dough is better at holding the air beaten into it, cakes are lighter, pies are flakier and crackers are crunchier.

Though trans fat’s critics are pleased with recent actions by McDonald’s and Frito-Lay, the changes won’t transform Americans’ overall diet — a diet that gets more of its calories from fatty, salty, fried and processed foods than from oldfashioned, nutrient-rich vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean protein.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

WORLD & NATION MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002 · PAGE 7

IN BRIEF Bush threatens veto over new disabled military pension benefit WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — Alarmed by the cost of expanding military entitlement programs, President Bush has threatened to veto the entire $355 billion defense authorization bill for the new fiscal year if House and Senate conferees do not eliminate new pension benefits for disabled military retirees that could cost $18.5 billion to $58 billion over the next decade.

“We simply cannot continue to add ever-expansive obligations to the defense budget,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a letter to conferees, who could decide the issue this week.“ This would divert critical resources away from the war on terrorism, the transformation of our military capabilities, and important personnel programs such as pay raises and facilities improvements.”

The Pentagon currently spends in excess of $35 billion a year—roughly the entire military budget of France—on military pension and health care entitlements that are among the most generous in the country for public or private-sector employees.

With the new pension program, the defense budget would become one of the federal government’s fastestgrowing entitlements.

The pension provision at issue would for the first time allow military retirees to collect retirement benefits from the Pentagon and disability benefits from the Veterans Administration at the same time.

Proponents call this “concurrent receipt.” Some critics use another term—”double-dipping.”

Under current law, a military retiree’s pension benefits must be reduced, dollar for dollar, by the amount of disability benefits received from the Veterans Administration.

The House-passed version applies only to military retirees who are considered 60 percent disabled or more by the VA and would cost $18.5 billion over the next 10 years.

Paris’ mayor stable after being stabbed during civic celebration PARIS (L.A. Times) — An assailant stabbed Mayor Bertrand

Delanoe early Sunday during an all-night party for the public at City Hall, leaving the mayor hospitalized but in good condition with a wound in the abdomen.

The suspect, a devout Muslim, told interrogators that his dislike of gays and politicians caused him to attack the mayor, who is openly gay, authorities said.

“He explained his strong religious views made him reject homosexuality as unnatural,” said Jean-Claude Dauvel of the Paris prosecutor’s office, according to media reports.

Authorities quickly subdued the suspect. He was identified as Azzedine Berkane, 39, a Frenchman of Algerian descent with a criminal record and psychiatric problems.

The incident occurred about 2:30 a.m. as Delanoe was greeting partygoers in a ballroom in the elegant City Hall during the festival dubbed Nuit Blanche, or “Sleepless Night.” City Hall had been opened to the public and decorated as a 1930s nightclub as part of the all-night extravaganza, which drew tens of thousands of Parisians to art exhibits, concerts, swimming pools and landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre.

The incident was the third serious attack on a French politician this year. In March, a mentally disturbed sometime environmentalist gunned down eight City Council members at City Hall in suburban Nanterre. In July, a neoNazi would-be assassin fired a shot at President Jacques Chirac during a Bastille Day parade.

“Already on a number of occasions, we have seen how many elected officials have been exposed to numerous aggressions,” Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said Sunday. He said France must “reinforce (its) overall security measures so that French society can be a peaceful society.”

Authorities said they had not detected any connections between Islamic extremist groups and the mayor’s assailant. Berkane is reportedly a computer technician who lives with his parents in a housing project in suburban Bobigny north of Paris. He has an arrest record and has been treated at least once for psychiatric troubles, authorities said. The fact that he is a self-described devout Muslim added another troubling element to the latest act of headline-making violence in France.

In Costa Rica, a new approach to paternity SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (L. A. Times) — Maria Jimenez doesn’t seem like she would have the energy to be part of a legal revolution.

She’s a single mom, living in a poor town about two hours outside this sleepy capital. She has four kids, no job and no husband.

But Jimenez has seized on a controversial new law here that gives her the upper hand in winning child support from the man she believes is the father of her children.

“My children have the right to know who their father is,” said Jimenez, 32.

The new law—believed to be the first of its kind in the world—allows a mother to name the father of the child in a simple administrative process that begins in the hospital’s birthing room. The man is asked to submit to a DNA test; if he does not agree, he is automatically assumed to be the father, with the duty to pay child support.

The test is legally binding, though the man can appeal the results in court. The entire process is free.

This procedure contrasts dramatically with the nation’s former paternity system, which was similar to the one in effect in most of the United States and nearly every other Western country. In those systems, paternity is determined through court hearings that can take years and cost thousands of dollars in lawyers fees.

Since its inception last year, more than 8,000 Costa Rican women have taken advantage of the new law. A preliminary study shows that the number of newborns with no father declared in the country’s civil registry has dropped from 30 percent to about 10 percent.

“We think it’s revolutionary,” said Maria San Roman, director of the clinical laboratory at the country’s largest public hospital, which performs the DNA tests.

The law had plenty of detractors. Many legislators feared it would prove too costly because the state pays for the tests.

This year, the lab will spend about $700,000—a significant amount in a country with an annual budget of just under $2 billion.

Others feared it would allow poor women to take advantage of rich men by naming them as fathers. There were worries that notorious lotharios would be hit with dozens of requests for DNA tests.

And some lawmakers had philosophical objections.

Only women can force DNA tests under the law. A man has no right to force a woman to submit to a DNA test if he suspects she has borne another man’s child.

If a man denies he is the father, he automatically sacrifices paternal rights, such as visitation with the child. But in absence of DNA exoneration, he still has a duty to pay child support, and if he wants his full paternal rights

restored, he must petition the court.

“The law is not proportional. The father is left out,” said Federico Malavassi, the vice president of the legislature who opposed the law. “It’s vindictive.”

But the legislation’s supporters—a coalition of women’s groups—say the law has many safeguards built in to discourage abuse. For instance, women who falsely accuse men of fathering children can face civil prosecution.

The government lab has begun taking blood samples from couples, and initial results show that women named the wrong men in only 10 percent of cases.

Women’s groups said the new law was needed because the old paternity system was open to abuse. First, few women used it, because it took an average of three years to process a case, resulting in lawyer’s fees that few could afford.

Second, men, knowing they had nothing to lose, often fiercely fought the paternity suits.

“The thought of child support is like a boogeyman for men here,” said Montserrat Sagot, a sociologist who specializes in gender studies at the University of Costa Rica.

“They have no vision of being committed to a woman or to the children they father.”

The push for the law came after Costa Rica’s former first lady, Lorena Clare de Rodriguez, became alarmed at the rising number of illegitimate children born in Costa Rica. Between 1990 and 1999, the number of children born without declared fathers rose from 21 percent to 30 percent.

The issue is more important than simply avoiding the stigma of being labeled a bastard. Children who have a father listed in the nation’s registry automatically receive rights to inheritance, social security benefits and child support, whether or not the mother is married to him.

“Everything is easier if they have their father’s last name,” said Jimenez, who is still waiting for an appointment to take the DNA test with the presumed father of her 3-month-old, Monica.

But Costa Rican officials believe the law might do more than simply help ensure economic support for fatherless children. They also hope men will be more aggressive in using birth control, once they realize how quickly they can be named as fathers. Even more, they hope the whole process might convince men to be better fathers.

“The idea is not only that the child gets economic support,” said San Roman, the clinic director. “It’s also that maybe the child can receive paternal love and care.”

The initial results have given them some encouragement. In 56 percent of the 8,368 cases filed by July, the man named by the mother admitted he was the father without taking a DNA test.

Va. shooting linked to Md., D.C. murders (Washington Post) — The bullet that seriously wounded a

Spotsylvania County, Va., mother of two while she was loading packages into her minivan outside a mall Friday was fired from the same gun used to kill at least four of the six victims in the series of sniper shootings in Montgomery County, Md., and the District of Columbia, authorities said Saturday night.

“The forensic evidence has shown us that their shooting is linked to the Montgomery County shootings, linked to the D.C. shooting,” Montgomery Police Chief Charles Moose said of the Virginia case.

The conclusion means that five of seven shootings since Wednesday, in which four people were killed, have been attributed to a single high-powered, .223-caliber rifle.

The finding also widens the geographical scope of the shootings, from roughly a five-mile area in Montgomery County and the District to include a largely rural community about 50 miles south of Washington.

Police believe that in each shooting, a single shot was fired from a long distance at an unsuspecting victim by an assailant who quickly disappeared.

The victim’s van, which contained the bullet that ripped through the woman, was taken to a laboratory set up in a Montgomery County police facility by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The bullet, or its fragments, was analyzed at the ATF’s lab in Rockville. The 43-year-old victim was in stable condition Saturday night at Inova Fairfax Hospital, authorities said.

Also Saturday, police said they were questioning a Rockville, Md., man who had been reported missing along with a rifle that fires the same kind of bullets used in the attacks. But after initial high hopes that they had found a strong suspect in the attacks, authorities Saturday night

all but ruled out that the man had carried out the shootings.

“I’m not convinced that there’s anything we can say that completely clears anyone until we bring the suspect or suspects into custody, get an indictment and get a conviction,” Moose said.

But he said the man had returned the rifle to the store where he purchased it, and the firearm has since been resold.

The rifle “has nothing to do with our situation,” Moose said. What had looked to be a break in the case early in the day turned out to be a disappointment. “He certainly did generate a lot of attention, a lot of energy,” Moose said.

“And that has now come to closure.”

As dusk fell in the woman’s neighborhood in Spotsylvania County, which lies about halfway between Washington and Richmond, neighbors arrived with covered dishes at her home, and detectives and the sheriff’s department made a brief visit.

Authorities declined to identify the woman because they consider her a witness.

About 7 p.m., the woman’s husband arrived home from the hospital and told a waiting reporter that the family would have no comment.

Asked how his wife was doing, he replied, “She’s serious, is how she’s doing.”

The bullet that struck her went through the lower-right side of her back, exited under her left breast, then lodged in the back of her minivan.

Neighbors in the subdivision of 50 luxury homes described the woman, her husband and their two sons as an all-American family.

The Virginia attack occurred at 2:30 p.m. Friday at Spotsylvania Mall in front of a Michaels craft store, authorities said.

PAGE 8 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002

Administration prepares to prosecute Saddam Hussein WASHINGTON (L. A. Times) — The

United States has not yet decided to go to war against Iraq, but the Bush administration is laying the groundwork for prosecuting Saddam Hussein and what it calls a “dirty dozen” of other officials for genocide, “ethnic cleansing,” mass executions, rape and other crimes against humanity.

The list of Iraqis wanted for war crimes is a telling reflection of how the Iraqi leader rules: Half of the dozen are members of Saddam’s family, including two sons, three half-brothers and a cousin.

After Saddam, the next name on the list is Ali Hassan Majid, nicknamed “Chemical Ali” for his role in a 1988 operation-codenamed Al Anfal, or “the spoils”— that used chemical weapons to kill tens of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq. Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi president, also was responsible for putting down 1991 uprisings by northern Kurds and southern Shiites after the first Bush administration called for Iraqis to oust Saddam.

At least 130,000 civilians have been killed as a result of deliberate regime policies during Saddam’s 23-year rule, although that might prove to be only a fraction of the final tally, according to U.S. officials and human rights groups.

Tens of thousands, including women, children and the elderly, were victims of chemical weapons attacks.

In a massive ethnic cleansing campaign, more than 120,000 Iraqis—primarily Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians, none of whom is an Arab—have been expelled forcibly from the area around the northern city of

Kirkuk to “Arabize” the oil-rich region, government and private groups say.

Ethnic cleansing in the northern region known as Kurdistan, which began in 1991, has accelerated in recent months, according to Human Rights Watch.

Every week, anywhere from three to 20 families are expelled forcibly from their homes and towns, said Hania Mufti, an Iraq specialist with Human Rights Watch who just returned from a fact-finding mission to the region.

The push to prepare dossiers for war crimes prosecutions, which involves the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and the intelligence community, reflects the growing momentum in Washington, D.C., toward ousting Saddam and the increasing preparation for the days afterward.

“We need to do our part to document the abuses, to collect the evidence that points to who is responsible,” said PierreRichard Prosper, the State Department’s ambassador at large for war crimes and a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor for the Rwanda tribunal.

“We feel there has to be accountability for what has occurred. You can’t brush aside the deaths of more than 100,000 people.”

The issue of justice is also key to Iraqis, both for healing deep wounds and for rebuilding the nation.

“For Iraqis and the international community, the issue of addressing Saddam’s crimes against humanity is as important as addressing his possession and use of weapons of mass destruction,” said Sermid Sarraf, an Iraqi

American lawyer based in Los Angeles who works with the State Department on government transition issues.

The United States, with varying degrees of support from Iraqi opposition groups and human rights organizations, is looking at a three-tiered system of tribunals to deal with the thousands of army commanders, ruling Baath Party officials, government employees and security and intelligence agents implicated in war crimes.

In a break with the recent pattern of international war crimes prosecutions for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the administration favors a tribunal to try top officials inside a “free Iraq,” with Iraqi and foreign judges, probably including Americans, according to administration officials.

The tribunal would prosecute the leadership—which could well expand beyond the dirty dozen after further investigations—for violations of both Iraqi law and international conventions.

“If and when there is a regime change, the appropriate forum should be at home, in a free and democratic Iraq,” said Prosper, a former deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who dealt with hard-core gangs.

The concept has been endorsed by the Iraqi Jurists Association, an exiled group based in London, and by more than 40 Iraqi emigre judges, law professors and legal experts who met last month in Italy to discuss a transitional justice system in the event of Saddam’s ouster.

The hybrid is also a model necessitated by the Bush administration’s opposition to the International Criminal

Court, human rights groups say.

Washington, D.C., would look hypocritical if it asked for a U.N.-mandated war crimes tribunal.

A similar hybrid of local and foreign judges and lawyers is being used to deal with war crime trials stemming from the nine-year civil conflict in the West African nation of Sierra Leone, although human rights experts are concerned about the precedent this model would set if used in Iraq.

“It’s a practical approach, but the international community would like to see these people dealt with in a way that conforms with the developing law on crimes against humanity, especially given that these crimes are so much more severe than anything dealt with anywhere recently,” said Charles Forest, chief executive of Indict, an international group based in London that is amassing information on Iraqi war crimes.

After the trials of the top leaders, the next level—potentially dealing with hundreds or even thousands of offenses, as the war crimes go back a full generation—would be left to local courts, U.S. officials say.

The third and largest group of cases might never go to trial but would be worked out through a truth and justice commission, like the one in South Africa, that would grant a form of amnesty in exchange for a full accounting of crimes committed.

“One thing we have learned with war crimes around the world is that it’s impossible to prosecute each and every perpetrator, as the number is so large,” Prosper said. “You have to deal with the leaders to send a strong

signal that justice will prevail.

But the treatment of the balance of cases is more flexible, depending on the needs of society.”

To avoid violent retribution after regime change in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, the exiled group of jurists has issued a communique calling on their countrymen not to take the law into their own hands.

“There are millions of Baath Party members who joined the party mainly to advance their jobs or survive but aren’t guilty of crimes,” said Sarraf, who attended the meeting last month in Italy.

“Then there’s the guy in the army who killed someone on orders and to stay alive. Those individuals who can raise defenses such as `involuntarily killed on threat of losing their own lives’ ought to be allowed to use that as a defense.”

The decision to prepare for war crimes prosecutions follows 11 years of inaction on Iraqi war crimes despite a wealth of data, eyewitness accounts and more than 18 tons of captured Iraqi documents, according to the Iraqi opposition and human rights groups.

“Over the years, the U.S. has failed to take a leadership role in bringing this regime to justice, which could have been done without toppling it. The U.S. could have pushed for an apparatus that would demonstrate the regime’s criminality and further isolate it by obligating other countries to arrest and extradite any Iraqi official who left Iraq,” Michael Amitay, director of a research group, the Washington Kurdish Institute, said.

“We might not be where we are today if there had been action.”

Anti-war protesters turn out across US Report on LAX shooting cites LOS

ANGELES

(L.A.

Times)

—

Thousands of protesters opposed to a war in Iraq converged Sunday as part of a coordinated national effort that stretched from New York City’s Central Park to San Francisco’s Union Square and spots in at least a dozen other cities.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lt. Pat Jordan estimated the crowd at the Federal Building in Los Angeles at about 3,000 but a California Highway Patrol officer overseeing the peaceful rally and march put the number at “well above” the group’s permit for 3,500. Organizers pegged the turnout at 10,000.

The rallies, pulled together by an umbrella group called the Not in Our Name Project, were timed to coincide with the eve of the one-year anniversary of the start of bombing in Afghanistan.

While polls have generally shown support for the Bush administration’s actions since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and for a war on Iraq with allied and United Nations support, the weekend’s well-coordinated events indicate the presence of a national dissent movement.

Central Park’s event, where actor Martin Sheen spoke, drew more than 10,000 people, San Francisco’s drew thousands and a Chicago demonstration attracted more than 1,000. On Saturday, a companion rally in Portland, Ore., drew an estimated 5,000.

In Los Angeles, protesters toted

signs from the straightforward, “Don’t Invade Iraq,” to the snide, “No, It’s Not Iraq. It’s the Economy.

We’re not Stupid.” Protesters said they hope to send a strong message to Congress and fellow Americans that opposition to a war is alive, and expressing it is a form of patriotism.

The crowd was packed with the regulars of progressive rallies: tattooed students pounding drums, Green Party activists promoting their candidates and the more radical Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party distributing newspapers.

But the rally also drew first-time demonstrators who said they are deeply concerned about the implications of a war and feel their voice has not been heard. Bush is expected to make his case for a war on Iraq, which he says has developed weapons of mass destruction, in a televised speech Monday.

Not in Our Name was born out of a meeting last March in New York. Since then, nearly 20,000 artists, intellectuals and musicians have signed a “Statement of Conscience” against the Bush administration’s resolve to wage war on Iraq, “a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11.” The statement also decries the Patriot Act, which gave the government greater latitude to curtail civil liberties in the name of the war on terrorism.

The lengthy list of signatories on the statement, which was pub-

lished in full-page advertisements in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, include Edward Asner, Barbara Kingsolver, Eve Ensler, Tony Kushner, Alice Walker, Steve Earle, Laurie Anderson, and Noam Chomsky.

At the events across the country Sunday, demonstrators recited a “Pledge of Resistance” against war, roundups of immigrants and infringements of civil liberties.

A recent Washington Post-ABC poll showed that three in five Americans favored using force to get rid of Saddam Hussein. But 47 percent opposed such a move without the support of our allies (46 percent approved it) and 52 percent of those polled said they feared Bush would move too quickly to challenge Saddam.

Other polls have reflected greater dissent.

And many Democratic members of Congress have said that calls, letters and e-mails from constituents have overwhelmingly opposed a war.

Organizers drew on a network of labor, religious, student and other activist organizations.

Among the speakers was Ron Kovic, the Vietnam War veteran who wrote “Born on the Fourth of July” and has become an outspoken peace activist.

Steve Boise, 43, wore a hard hat emblazoned with the U.S. flag and the name of his union local to let people know hat “blue collar America is talking about this at work.”

cross-agency discord LOS

ANGELES

(L.A. Times)

—

Numerous law-enforcement agencies grappled with deployment mix-ups and communication problems in the aftermath of an Independence Day shooting at Los Angeles International Airport, according to a report to be presented to the Los Angeles City Council’s Public Safety Committee Monday.

The document, requested by council member Jack Weiss after the deadly attack at the El Al Airlines ticket counter in the Tom Bradley International Terminal, illustrates the jurisdictional complexities that surround crime investigation at the world’s fifth-busiest airport.

Although city officials and security experts praised the response by numerous lawenforcement agencies to the shooting, the report lists several areas that need improvement, both in crime investigation techniques and in the way the airport handles evacuations.

Some of these areas, such as the need for better coordination among agencies and more efficient sharing of resources, are not unique to the shooting, but would arise in many major incidents at LAX, officials said.

For instance, the sheer number of personnel who arrived after Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadayet gunned down two people

before he was killed by an El Al security guard caused confusion, according to the report, compiled by airport Police Chief Bernard J. Wilson.

Ten agencies responded with 425 people — from the Los Angeles Police Department, airport police, the city agency that operates LAX and the FBI. Officials from the Customs Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the California Highway Patrol and the Beverly Hills Police Department also were involved.

The response was so large partly because the event took place on Independence Day, when the United States was on high alert for terrorist attacks, the report said.

Members of the council’s Public Safety Committee said they are interested in discussing how well the agencies worked together and whether it was clear who was in charge.

“It is one thing to say that the system worked well during an attack that lasted less than two minutes. But after all, this attack was brought to a close by El Al,” said Weiss, who declined to discuss specifics of the report. “My question is, what’s the best structure so that if an attack occurs in the future, local authorities can bring it to an equally swift conclusion?”

MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD PAGE 9

Congress to debate resolution on Iraq (Washington Post) — Congress plans this week to debate a joint resolution that would give President Bush broad powers to disarm Iraq — including the authority to invade the country and depose President Saddam Hussein.

The resolution is expected to pass easily, in part because leading Democrats want to get the issue of war behind them, and in part because there is widespread agreement on Capitol Hill that Saddam must be dealt with. “We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the Middle East,” said Sen. Carl Levin, DMich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

There is also general agreement that, if it comes to war, the United States would win.

But beyond this first level of agreement lie major disputes over important questions — about alternatives to war, timing and, most of all, outcomes. The debate in Congress is likely to distill these disputes.

Although these questions might not be answerable without a crystal ball — experts have debated them without reaching consensus in congressional hearings, op-ed and journal articles, speeches and interviews — they frame the risks and the assumptions of the U.S. approach.

Here are eight of the most important questions:

1) Can Saddam be “contained” and “deterred”?

For more than 50 years of the Cold War, the United States faced an enemy armed with thousands of high-yield bombs mounted on sophisticated missiles and avoided a direct military confrontation. How? By “containing” the enemy — that is, trying to prevent communist expansion — and “deterring” attacks with threats of apocalyptic retaliation.

Some experts believe this strategy, applied aggressively, can work with Iraq.

Containment and deterrence is the U.S. policy for dealing with Iran, which is widely believed to be more advanced in nuclear capability and deeply involved in supporting terrorists. Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to then-President George H.W. Bush, recently argued that “Saddam is a familiar ... traditional” case, “unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists” or by using them for blackmail. “While Saddam is thoroughly evil, he is above all a powerhungry survivor.”

Saddam’s behavior has not always squared with this view. In 1993, he tried to use secret agents to assassinate George H.W. Bush, and Iraqi guns routinely fire at allied aircraft over Iraqi “no-fly” zones. But proponents of continued containment think there is a line the Iraqi leader will not cross for fear of the consequences.

This assumption drives the thinking of figures such as Morton Halperin of the Council on Foreign Relations, who advocates a policy of tougher weapons inspections and a more effective embargo on trade with Iraq — ”containment-plus,” as he calls it. This strategy, “if pursued vigorously ... will, in fact, succeed in preventing Saddam from using weapons of mass destruction or supplying them to terrorist groups,” Halperin recently assured Congress.

But many people — among them, President Bush — believe deterrence is no longer enough after Sept. 11, 2001, not when weapons might be delivered secretly to fanatics willing to vaporize themselves in an attack. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, put it this way: “The concept of deterrence that served us well in the 20th century has changed.... Those who would commit suicide in their assaults on the free world are not rational and are not deterred by rational concepts of deterrence.”

2) Is Saddam in league with al-Qaida?

Somewhere, there is a cold, hard answer to

this, but so far, no one has publicly proved it one way or the other. Though administration officials have charged that al-Qaida operatives are living in Iraq, the same is believed to be true of more than 50 other countries. Daniel Benjamin, former director of counterterrorism for the National Security Council, recently argued that secular Iraq and fundamentalist al-Qaida are natural rivals, not co-conspirators.

But if the answer is yes, it strengthens the case for moving quickly.

“We must remove threats such as those (posed by) Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney told a Senate hearing. The same gaps in intelligence gathering that make it hard to know whether Saddam deals with al-Qaida make it dangerous to assume he doesn’t, McInerney argued. “We face an enemy that makes its principal strategy the targeting of civilians. … We should not wait to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction.”

3) Is disarmament possible without “regime change”?

No one in the mainstream believes Saddam will disarm voluntarily, but some experts — including Secretary of State Colin Powell — entertain the possibility he will if it is his last hope of survival.

That said, skepticism is very high that the Iraqi weapons problem can be solved while Saddam runs the country. Charles Duelfer, a veteran of previous weapons inspections in Iraq, recently said, “in my opinion, weapons inspections are not the answer to the real problem, which is the regime.” Finding and destroying offending weapons now would not prevent the regime from developing new ones after the inspectors leave.

Even many proponents of renewed U.N. weapons inspections see them mainly as a tool for building international support for war. As Gen. Wesley Clark, a former supreme commander of NATO, put it: “The closer we get to the use of force, the greater the likelihood that we’re going to see movement on the part of Iraq — even though it’s a very small likelihood. And the more we build up the inspections idea, the greater the legitimacy of the United States effort in the eyes of the world.”

4) In the event of war, what would Saddam’s military do?

Two scenarios, one ghastly, one hopeful.

In the first, his commanders fire chemical and biological weapons into Israel, trying to ignite a pan-Arabic war, and lob gas bombs at U.S. troops. In the other, Iraqi officers refuse to commit such futile war crimes in the face of certain defeat and turn on the dying regime.

“Most of the army does not want to fight for Saddam,” McInerney maintained. “We are already seeing increasing desertions from the regular army as well as the Republican Guards.” He cited reports that Saddam has arrested or executed scores of disaffected officers, and won’t allow even some elite Republican Guard units into Iraq’s cities, for fear of a coup. “That’s why I think there will not be urban fighting.”

Gen. Joseph Hoar, retired commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, sees it differently. “The nightmare scenario is that six Iraqi Republican Guard divisions and six heavy divisions, reinforced with several thousand anti-aircraft artillery pieces, defend the city of Baghdad. The result would be high casualties on both sides, as well as in the civilian community ... (and) the rest of the world watches while we bomb and have artillery rounds exploded in densely populated Iraqi neighborhoods,” Hoar testified before Congress. “It looks like the last 15 minutes of ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ “ 5) What would the Iraqi people do?

Again, two scenarios (always with the possibility the truth is somewhere in between).

One emphasizes the relative sophistication and education of the Iraqi population,

and its hatred for Saddam . These qualities, according to the optimists, would make the Iraqis unwilling to defend him, grateful for the arrival of American liberators and ready to build a new, pro-Western country.

“We shall be greeted, I think, in Baghdad and Basra with kites and boom boxes,” Arabist Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University has predicted.

The aftermath of the war would not necessarily be chaos, Duelfer has theorized.

“There are national institutions in Iraq that hold the country together. The regular army. There’s departments of agriculture, irrigation. There’s a civil service.”

The pessimistic view emphasizes the deep divisions in Iraq. There are Kurds in the oil-rich north, yearning for an independent state. There are Shiite Muslims concentrated in the South and seething at the discrepancy between their large numbers and small influence in Iraq. For all their education and institutions, Iraqis do not have experience with self-government.

Iraq might trade one despot for another.

In this scenario, the only thing that can prevent a messy breakup of the former Iraq would be a long American occupation — a prospect the Bush administration has been reluctant to discuss.

6) How will the Middle East react to war, and to subsequent peace?

This may be the most potent of the unanswered questions. There seems to be agreement that rank-and-file Muslims won’t like an American war in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, referred to the “alJazeera effect” — millions of Muslims watching televised scenes of destruction and death, and blaming the United States.

Halperin is one of many who have theorized al-Qaida recruiters would be inundated.

“Certainly if we move before there is a Palestinian settlement ... what we will stimulate is a large number of people in the Arab world who will be willing to take up a terrorist attack on the United States and on Americans around the world.”

According to Geoffrey Kemp, director of Regional Strategic Studies at the Nixon Center in Yorba Linda, Calif., “Iranians ... worry about a failed or messy U.S. operation that would leave the region in chaos.

They would then be on the receiving end for possibly millions of new Iraqi Shi’a refugees.” Against this, there is a school of thought that says a moderate government in Iraq could lead to modernization and liberalization throughout the region. “A year after (Saddam falls), Iran will get rid of the mullahs,” McInerney recently predicted. “The jubilation that you see in Baghdad ... will change the whole tenor of the world, and the sum of all your fears will disappear, I assure you.”

7) Would a military campaign in Iraq help or hurt the war on terror?

Sources as diverse as the conservative Weekly Standard magazine and former President Clinton scoff at the idea that it’s too much to pursue al-Qaida and deal with Iraq simultaneously. However, former NATO commander Clark worries about “a diversion of effort” on the part of U.S. military and intelligence forces, and Halperin counsels there is a limit on the number of things government bureaucracies can handle at one time.

8) In the end, will the U.S. be more secure?

One’s answer to this depends on answers to the previous seven. If Saddam is indeed impossible to deter and willing to engage in terror, if a new regime is the only way to eliminate the threat he poses, and if that can be done with a minimum of chaos and relatively few bad consequences — then the case for war might seem strong.

Different answers change the equation dramatically.

In the coming debate, Americans can watch elected leaders wrestle with some or all of these disputes, but if the resolution passes, as expected, they will ultimately come to a final calculus on a single desk.

French oil tanker rocked by blast, cause disputed KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait (Washington Post) — A French oil tanker carrying nearly 1.6 million gallons of crude oil was rocked by an explosion and engulfed in flames off the coast of Yemen Sunday morning in an incident Yemeni authorities blamed on an oil leak but the ship’s owner contended was a terrorist attack.

Yemen’s state-run SABA news agency quoted an unidentified government official as saying an oil leak caused a fire on the supertanker, named the Limburg, as it was nearing the port of Mina al-Dabah, on the southern coast of Yemen about 350 miles east of Aden. The official said the Limburg’s captain, Hubert Ardillon, told Yemeni authorities the fire set off an explosion at 9:15 a.m. as the crew attempted to get the blaze under control, SABA reported.

But the director of the company that owns the vessel insisted the explosion was the result of a “deliberate attack that appears to be terrorism.”

Jacques Moizan, the director of Euronav, said in a telephone interview from the company’s headquarters in Nantes, France, that a small speedboat pulled up to the tanker’s starboard side immediately before the explosion. He said Euronav officials believe the speedboat was carrying explosives because of the size of the blast.

The Limburg, he said, has a double hull and likely would not have been severely damaged in an ordinary collision with a small boat. “We cannot imagine an accident causing such a large explosion,” he said.

Moizan also said the fire began after the explosion, not before. He said his statements were based on a conversation that Ardillon, the captain, had with company officials after he reached shore Sunday afternoon.

Yemeni officials acknowledged to SABA that a boat pulled alongside the tanker, but they said it was carrying a pilot to help guide the ship into port.

Faris Sanabani, editor of the Englishlanguage Yemen Observer newspaper, said his reporters talked to witnesses who offered contradictory versions, with some saying the large explosion was preceded by a fire and two smaller explosions. Others said the explosion occurred as the speedboat neared the ship, Sanabani said.

“It’s too early to know what happened,” he said.

In Paris, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Francois Rivasseau, said his government did not “have enough elements to allow us to formulate a ... hypothesis which would point to a terrorist attack.” In Washington, a U.S. intelligence official said: “We don’t have any evidence to tell us it was terrorism, but we remain open to the possibility.”

Almost two years ago, in October 2000, suicide attackers on a small explosive-laden skiff struck an American warship, the USS Cole, during a refueling stop at the port of Aden. The blast, which killed 17 sailors, was blamed on Yemeni supporters of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network.

Last month, U.S. authorities warned that al-Qaida might try to attack oil tankers in the Middle East. A U.S. official warned in early September that “the threat should be regarded seriously.”

Although Yemen has long been regarded as a redoubt for al-Qaida operatives, Yemeni authorities recently have intensified efforts to crack down on terror activities in the poor, largely undeveloped desert nation. Over the past several months, 100 U.S. military advisers have trained a 2,000-member counterterrorism unit within the Yemeni army that is reported to have captured several alQaida members.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

EDITORIAL/LETTERS MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002 · PAGE 10 S T A F F

E D I T O R I A L

Signing on The American Jewish Committee drafted a letter calling for “intimidation-free” discussions and debates of worldwide political events and circulated the document to 1,900 university leaders, asking for signatures in support of the letter’s message. Three hundred presidents of institutions of higher education, including President Ruth Simmons, signed the letter. Many university presidents and other leaders in academia criticized the letter for its specific support of Jewish students only, and its failure to include other students who may be the victims of hate crimes. While we certainly support the committee’s letter and goals, we understand why many leaders refused to sign the letter in opposition to its unproductive and suspect exclusivity.

The letter attempts to unite the leaders of U.S. higher education in opposition to threatening speech and hate-filled dialogue.

The document expresses support for constructive and thoughtful debate that includes all groups. These are important causes to rally around. And with tensions over the war between Israel and Palestine mounting along with growing concerns about the maintenance of peace in other areas of the world, the council’s letter was appropriately timed. We laud Simmons for signing the letter.

However, it is understandable that other leaders in academia — including most Ivy League presidents — did not sign the letter.

It is suspect that a letter attempting to garner broad support against hate-speech and threatening dialogue includes a paragraph alluding to threats made against a specific minority group, but ignores a discussion of threats of violence against non Zionists and non Jews. This tactic is counterproductive. It adds an element of exclusivity to a letter that is geared toward a broad, diverse audience. The letter would have been as strong and less objectionable if the sentences that discuss “death threats” against Zionists and the defacement of “property connected to Jewish organizations” were omitted. The objections to the letter largely stemmed from the inclusion of these sentences.

Unfortunately, the letter is receiving media attention not because of its attempt to end hate speech and threatening dialogue on campus but for its oddly exclusive content. If the letter acknowledged acts of hate against people other than Jews, it probably would have garnered the support of the 1,900 university leaders who received it, rather than the 300 university presidents who signed the document.

RYAN LEVESQUE

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Working as TAs also causes grads to lose research time To the Editor: The Herald article “For graduate TAs, making ends meet is job one.” (10/1) presented a fairly balanced picture of the situation of teaching assistants at Brown. There are certainly many benefits that teaching provides us, including the chance to interact with the incredibly talented Brown undergraduates, as well as preparation for a career potentially based on teaching.

However, after a point, the personal benefits of an extra hour spent teaching are outweighed by the cost of lost research. As the article headline implies, for many graduate students teaching is really a way of making ends meet. It is out of professionalism and dedication to the educational

mission of our institution that graduate students, when faced with excessive teaching loads, persevere nonetheless. While Brown benefits from this in some regard, the quality of undergraduate education may be diminished.

Graduate students have expressed concern over this for some time now. Especially problematic is the substantial inequality across the University in teaching loads and conditions. This is what motivated a group of graduate students to form to address TA policy. While the first paragraph of the article touched on our initiative, it could have merited expanded discussion. Given the tremendous efforts that went in, it is important to recognize all those who helped to draft the policy proposal.

Nancy Burns GS, Renee Allen GS and Chris Frazer GS contributed as much as we did and should be commended for their efforts.

Heinrich Hock and Aaron Katz Graduate Student Council Co-Presidents Oct. 6

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD EDITORIAL Beth Farnstrom, Editor-in-Chief Seth Kerschner, Editor-in-Chief David Rivello, Editor-in-Chief Will Hurwitz, Executive Editor Sheryl Shapiro, Executive Editor Elena Lesley, News Editor Brian Baskin, Campus Watch Editor Carla Blumenkranz, Arts & Culture Editor Stephanie Harris, Academic Watch Editor Juliette Wallack, Metro Editor Victoria Harris, Opinions Editor

BUSINESS Stacey Doynow, General Manager Jamie Wolosky, Executive Manager Joe Laganas, Senior Accounts Manager Moon-Suk Oh, Marketing Manager David Zehngut, National Accounts Manager Lawrence Hester, University Accounts Manager Bill Louis, University Accounts Manager Hyebin Joo, Local Accounts Manager Jungdo Yu, Local Accounts Manager Tugba Erem, Local Accounts Manager Jack Carrere, Noncomm Accounts Manager Laurie-Ann Paliotti, Sr. Advertising Rep. Genia Gould, Advertising Rep. Kate Sparaco, Office Manager

Sanders Kleinfeld, Opinions Editor PRODUCTION Marion Billings, Design Editor Bronwyn Bryant, Asst. Design Editor Julia Zuckerman, Copy Desk Chief

P O S T- M A G A Z I N E Kerry Miller, Editor-in-Chief Zach Frechette, Executive Editor Morgan Clendaniel, Film Editor Dan Poulson, Calendar Editor Alex Carnevale, Features Editor Theo Schell-Lambert, Music Editor

Jonathan Skolnick, Copy Desk Chief Andrew Sheets, Graphics Editor Ellen Bak, Photography Editor Allie Silverman, Asst.Photography Editor Brett Cohen, Systems Manager

SPORTS Joshua Troy, Sports Editor Nick Gourevitch, Asst. Sports Editor Jermaine Matheson, Asst. Sports Editor Alicia Mullin, Asst. Sports Editor

THE BROWN THE DAILY THE BROWN DAILYHERALD DAILY HERALD YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO.

Marion Billings, Night Editor Mike Rivello, Copy Editor Staff Writers Kathy Babcock, Brian Baskin, Jonathan Bloom, Carla Blumenkranz, Chris Byrnes, Jinhee Chung, Maria Di Mento, Nicholas Foley, Neema Singh Guliani, Ari Gerstman, Andy Golodny, Daniel Gorfine, Nick Gourevitch, Stephanie Harris, Victoria Harris Maggie Haskins, Shara Hegde, Brian Herman, Brent Lang, Elena Lesley, Jamay Liu, Jermaine Matheson, Kerry Miller, Martin Mulkeen, Alicia Mullin, Crystal Z.Y. Ng, Ginny Nuckols, Juan Nunez, Sean Peden, Katie Roush, Caroline Rummel, Emir Senturk, Jen Sopchockchai, Anna Stubblefield, Jonathon Thompson, Joshua Troy, Juliette Wallack, Jesse Warren, Julia Zuckerman Pagination Staff Bronwyn Bryant, Jessica Chan, Sam Cochran, Joshua Gootzeit, Michael Kingsley, Hana Kwan, Erika Litvin, Jessica Morrison, Stacy Wong Staff Photographers Josh Apte, Makini Chisolm-Straker, Allison Lauterbach, Maria Schriber, Allie Silverman Copy Editors Anastasia Ali, Lanie Davis, Marc Debush, Yafang Deng, Hanne Eisenfeld, Emily Flier, George Haws, Daniel Jacobson, Eliza Katz, Blair Nelsen, Eric Perlmutter, Amy Ruddle, Janis Sethness

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

OPINIONS MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2002 · PAGE 11

Size does matter: Ratty needs bigger cups The lack of decently sized cups in the Sharpe Refectory is not only irritating but un-American “SIZE DOESN’T MATTER.” THIS SIMPLE himself is associated to be good looking, maxim was continuously drilled into my and thus not a loser), he eyes something head by ex-girlfriends, high school quite peculiar. Everybody in the cafeteteachers, parents and even my minister. ria is carrying, or has on their tray, at “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” least four cups. Each one is about as big they’d say. “We love you no matter as the cowboy’s shot glass. And so he wonders. what,” they’d say. “Size doesWhy is it that at an instin’t matter.” tution of higher education, What a lie. In only a where students are required month at this institution of to pay upwards of $38,000 a higher learning, I find all my year, there exists an absence pre-frosh values to be unreof regular size beverage conalistic fairy tales. The first tainers? truth learned here is that The answer to that quessize does matter — a lot. tion may lie in this answer Imagine if you will, a to this one. Is Brown under promising young man full of YALE WANG funded, or devoid of comjoy and hope, stumbling TREAT PEOPLE AS mon sense? With President wearily into town like a cowENDS, NOT MEANS Ruth Simmon’s new boy from an unknown land. fundraising campaign, I’d The first thing the cowboy needs is a saloon. He enters one, orders have to go with the latter.

What the Ratty needs is bigger cups. a shot glass full of whiskey and drinks Some better food would be nice too, but himself to happiness.

However, let us now look at this let’s just stick with the cups for a young man who arrives at Brown with minute.

What exactly would it take to inteanticipation and anxiety. What he needs to calm his nerves is a shot of grate the Ratty with regular size beverwhiskey and a good meal. But since age containers? Not much. Other places underage drinking is so strictly on campus like the V-Dub, Jo’s and The enforced at Brown, he decides that he Gate already have them. Yes, there will should just get a soda. He meets sever- be some cost involved, but it would be al upperclassmen who direct him to the rather nominal, especially compared to Ratty, a source of mass-produced nour- all the benefits bigger cups bring.

Bigger cups would cut down on the ishment.

As the first-year worries about a seat amount of work the kitchen staff has to among good looking people (so that he do (bigger cups equal less cups to wash).

It would also save students the effort of having to balance four glasses in their Yale Wang ’06 is from Cranston, R.I. His hands. For you see, not all of us are turn-ons include the metric system and members of the Out of Hands Juggling Judge Joe Brown.

club. And since there won’t be as many refill trips, there would be less traffic in the Ratty, resulting in less accidents involving: “Oops I’m sorry I just spilled all my coke on your tight, white T-shirt Ms. Sobieski. By the way, I really enjoyed your last movie. Oh and what’s your phone number? Maybe we can get together sometime and make babies.”

(Actually, if you’re a fan of spillage, bigger glasses can carry more liquid, meaning a bigger wet spot.)

Plus, we could always do something charitable, perhaps donate the small glasses to a Jenny Craig program, thereby decreasing the consumption of soda in overweight people and curing the United States’ problem of obesity. This would in turn result in a billion dollar grant to Brown that, would not only cover the cost of new cups, but also provide the resources to buy other cool stuff.

Because other Brown dining facilities already have regular cups, extending them to the Ratty will not be so hard. It is not some multi-million dollar renovation program that I don’t give a crap about because I won’t be here when it’s finally implemented. It’s just bigger cups — just a small luxury that would make everybody in the United States happier.

And let us not forget that this is the United States where we are entitled to pursue our happiness. This is the land of milk and honey, where we can pay eight bucks and eat as much as Chinese food as our puny stomachs can hold.

This is the only place on earth where there is no such size as “small” at fast

food joints, where everything is either extra large or super sized. Thus, I will even go so far as to assert that the lack of large beverage containers in the Ratty is not only a ridiculous nuisance, it is un-American.

Seriously though, I just want bigger cups because that’s what a lot of people are complaining about when they don’t have anything to talk about. Sure, this space could be used to write another column about the racist minority clansmen who run TWTP and keep trying to oppress the downtrodden white people.

If you’re feeling alienated, TWTP isn’t the reason. Being a young and insecure person in an unfamiliar environment without a close support net is. Do you kids all really want to come to school four days early? Or are you just bitching about this because you’re sexually frustrated?

I could also write about the unending violence in the Middle East but who cares about that? And even if we did, staging mass protests in Providence won’t change President Bush’s unofficial “Kill innocent people: Attack Iraq to save a nickel on gas” policy. Bigger cups in the Ratty: now that’s something that can be accomplished by voicing our opinions!

But if you’re into protests, that’s cool too. How about a mass student dehydration protest? No drinking of any liquids until we get bigger cups? That’ll show ’em!

Remember, college is a fountain of knowledge, and we’re all here to get drunk. But how can we without decent sized cups?

Elitist attitudes not acceptable at Brown University Assuming an air of superiority is an affront to the humble backgrounds of many students Oskooi calls these poor, uneducated I’M NOT SURE WHETHER OR NOT Shirin Lua Oskooi ’05 is aware of this, people ignorant, but I think she is more but “trailer park” kids do go to Brown as ignorant than they are. She obviously well (“A call to arms: Brown students has no idea what kind of lives these peomust defend themselves,” 10/4). ple live and how very hard it is to escape However, after going on a rant about the binds of poverty. Oskooi seems to imply that just because they how even poor kids are didn’t get into Brown or admitted to this University, another college, they are you’d think she’d realize this.

DORAELIA RUIZ worse than she is.

Surely, Oskooi wouldn’t GUEST COLUMN To even apply to Brown, down one of her elite classone must take three SATs, at mates, would she? Contrary a cost of $20 per SAT test. I to many Brown students’ beliefs that poverty is something that is know that put a strain on my pocketbook seen outside Brown walls, let me bring when I applied. Not only that, to apply for financial aid, not including the you to reality.

I myself grew up in a trailer park. FAFSA, costs another $20 dollars per Additionally, the uneducated barbarians school, and the application to Brown Oskooi speaks of are my family mem- alone costs $75. Do you honestly believe bers. When Oskooi degrades an entire that people will sacrifice paying the elecsociety of people on the sole basis of tricity bill that month to apply to a coltheir education, she degrades all the lege full of people who are ignorant of people that have shaped me. All these the ways of the harsh world of poverty? people have brought me to the very To go here with people who wave their same prestigious University Oskooi degree in the faces of the poor, saying, “Look, this paper proves I’m better than ended up at.

Superiority is not a matter of educa- you!”?

These people are not “threatened, tion. We all come from poor and rich backgrounds, but it is foolish to believe weak pansies”; they are stronger than that even those who came from poor Oskooi will ever be. She bases her supebackgrounds had educated families. riority on the intelligence she was lucky Oskooi was foolish to believe that she enough to acquire through privilege. could dishonor these people, and then While it is true that education is needed come to the diverse Brown student body to become a member of the elite in U.S. and expect us to all agree and abide by society, it is also true that whom the elite is varies from country to country. such elitist and ignorant doctrines.

We have been taught to value education, but it by no means makes us better than Doraelia Ruiz ’06 is not an elitist. She hails the people who clean the floors of the from Midland, Texas.

Do you honestly believe that people will sacrifice paying the electricity bill that month to apply to a college with people who are ignorant of the ways of the harsh world of poverty? To go here with people who wave their degree in the faces of the poor?

Ratty.

For example, I was eating lunch in the Ratty one day. A lady was mopping near by and had put a “Wet Floor” sign down.

A few girls wanted to walk through that area to get a banana, and one said to the other two, “Oh my god, like if I fall, can’t I like sue them?”

This is why people yell crude things to Brown students on the streets. These girls didn’t bother to think about the lady mopping. They didn’t stop to even consider the fact that this lady would probably rather be doing something else.

I worked at a place called Sonic for two years during high school and encountered people like Oskooi, people

who drove up in their nice new cars and assumed because I worked there that I was beneath them. They too assumed people like me were undeserving citizens.

These rich kids were my fellow high school peers and nothing felt better than being the only one in a graduating class of 600 to go an Ivy League school. They were shocked because they assumed the color of my skin and the nametag on my shirt meant that I would forever be their lowly servant.

So, just as these East Side locals make assumptions about Brown students, Oskooi makes assumptions about them.

Look around, the East Side is the rich side of Providence; these people can’t be too uneducated.

Before people go spouting ideas of superiority, look around the Brown campus and remember that the daughter of a janitor could be walking right beside you. If this is still unbelievable to readers, my father works in a hockey stadium selling beer, mows lawns over the summer and also works in a fast food restaurant. On my 14th birthday, to assure that we would be able to go out for dinner, my father went to sell his blood for $25.

He grew up in a trailer park and started work picking cotton at age six. If it were not for my father, I would not be at Brown. I owe everything to this man, who told me to never settle for secondclass citizenry and to never ever let people like Oskooi win. Next time, practice sensitivity. I surely am not the only one at Brown from this sort of background.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

SPORTS MONDAY OCTOBER 7, 2002 · PAGE 12

NCAA vs. NFL: Not even close AS SOON AS THE TOPIC ARISES, AN immediate argument ensues. Husbands and wives split, fathers and sons refuse to speak to each other, and brothers turn against brothers, all battling over one question. Mention it at a sports bar, and punches are sure to be thrown.

JAMIE Okay, so I am getSHOLEM ting a little carried FIRST YEAR PHENOM away, but “college football versus pro football” is an ancient debate that seems to pop up again and again all across our great nation. Well, folks, here I am to settle this heated topic once and for all. If you think pro football is better than college football, you are dead wrong.

College football is superior to pro football in a number of ways. First of all, let me disprove the main argument in favor of pro football. Yes, you are right, pro football fans — the level of play is higher. Who cares? It is not about watching the best players, it is about watching an interesting game with players who genuinely put their hearts and souls into each play. I often get annoyed watching the pro game, because I feel that the players are so skilled they have perfected each play and it has become somewhat of a routine. College football has a plethora of broken plays, silly penalties and general chaos caused by inexperience. I love it.

A major problem with the pro game is the 16-game schedule. It seems way too long and decreases the importance of each game. College football does need a playoff system, but an even more pressing concern should be to make pro games more meaningful during the regular season. I do not like the fact that Florida’s early loss to Miami nearly eliminated its chances of a national title game bid. However, far more despicable is the fact that St. Louis started 0-4, but it may not matter. The national media has made a huge deal out of the Rams’ early-season collapse because it needs a story. The Rams’ record is certainly newsworthy, but it will not destroy them. The truth is that the Rams will most likely recover, finish somewhere in the 9-7 range, and quite possibly make the playoffs. The 16-game schedule makes a loss, or even four, disappointing but not insurmountable. In college football, if you lose four games early on, as my beloved Fighting Illini have done, you are in for a world of pain. In pro football, it simply means that you must focus and work harder to continue driving towards the playoffs. Do not take this as a Rams playoff guarantee. The fact that they even have a shot at the playoffs after four losses, however, does not seem right to me.

The unimportance of a regular-season NFL game has other negative effects as well. The “I play when I want to play” attitude was caused by the 16-game schedule and the lack of a sense of urgency that every college football play has. With the see SHOLEM, page 6

SCOREBOARD Men’s Soccer BROWN 2, Santa Clara 2 (2 ot); BROWN vs. San Francisco

Volleyball BROWN 3, Iona 1; BROWN 3, Towson 2; BROWN 3, Yale 2

Field Hockey Boston College 2, BROWN 0; Northeastern 3, BROWN 0

Football Rhode Island 38, BROWN 28

Men’s Water Polo BROWN 20, Connecticut College 2

Farenheit 451: Football torched by run

BY JERMAINE MATHESON

The Brown football team (0-3, 0-1 Ivy League) could not hold onto a halftime lead on Saturday, losing 38-28 to the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. The Rams (1-3) retain the Governor’s Cup for another year with the win.

In the loss, Chas Gessner ’03 caught 24 passes to tie the NCAA I-AA record set by Jerry Rice and quarterback Kyle Slager ’04 set a new Ivy League record with 44 pass completions. Yet the most decisive number of the day was 451- URI’s total rushing yards.

After three games, a pattern is starting to emerge. Brown continues its offensive prowess -particularly in the passing game, though the results are not favorable.

Opponents consistently opt to run against a Brown defense that is not lacking in heart, but in size on the defensive line. The defense has not been able to hold a team to less than 200 rushing yards and is repeatedly giving up more yards on the ground than the week before.

“It’s frustrating. We haven’t executed during crunch time,” said Jamaal Grier ’03.

“The schemes are there. Everyone needs to execute. We felt like we need to score on every possession and defensively we just needed a few key stops.”

Though Brown has come close, they have not scored on every possession this year. The defense, under tremendous pressure to make key stops, has not always delivered.

Brown scored the game’s first touchdown on Saturday, a 12-yard reception by Gessner from Slager. Then, Aaron Neff ’05 had a one-yard scoring run followed by another touchdown reception by Gessner in the second quarter.

URI freshman quarterback Jayson Davis had two touchdown runs to keep the game close at halftime, 21-17 in favor of Brown.

In the third quarter, after a field goal brought the Rams within one, Davis ran in

dspics

Chas Gessner ‘03 caught 24 passes to tie an NCAA record also held by Jerry Rice. another score. A two-point conversion gave URI a 28-21 lead.

Slager then completed a 41-yard pass to Grier ’03 for a touchdown. The extra point tied the score at 28. Unlike last week, Brown had no problems getting more points after touchdowns.

In the fourth quarter, URI kept Brown out of the endzone. They scored on a 70yard run to take the lead and a late field goal put the game out of reach.

The Brown offense relied exclusively on the pass as Gessner and Slager had record setting days. Gessner finished the day with 207 yards on 24 catches. Slager completed 20 consecutive passes in the first half. His 44

M. tennis wins Harvard tourney

BY BEN WISEMAN

In its last matches before the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships, the Brown men’s tennis team dominated the Harvard Invitational, defeating Rutgers University, UNLV, University of Alabama, University of Notre Dame and fellow Ivy League challenger Princeton University.

The team’s most impressive victories were over Notre Dame and Alabama, who were nationally ranked 14th and 18th, respectively, at the conclusion of last season.

Although the team played poorly in doubles, it made up for it with stellar singles performances from all ten players. The squad gave up only three singles matches over the course of the weekend. All ten members of the roster played and each had an important role in the team’s victories.

“We made a huge statement this weekend,” said Benjamin Brier ’04. “All of our guys stepped it up in singles and played well. We are getting a better feeling for this team.”

The team is especially pleased with the great play they have received from all four freshman so far this season.

“All of our freshman have been exceeding expectations thus far, but they are still in a student’s role,” head coach Jay Harris.said “They are all very talented and are gaining valuable experience but still have a lot to learn.”

The team mixed up doubles pairings this weekend to test the chemistry of certain pairs and of the overall team. Although its performance was not as impressive in doubles, Harris is confident that his team is

improving.

“We worked out some key issues this weekend,” Harris said. “It is a process to get to the comfort point we want to be at. Our doubles are going to be important all season and it comes down to the fact that no matter who plays together, we need to play better.”

Harris noted that the weekend was successful in terms of wins and loses but that there were still areas of concern. Going into Sunday’s matches, Harris challenged the team’s toughness, telling his players that they needed to finish off the weekend—something which they had failed to do previously.

“I told the guys they were turning into the Phil Mickelson of tennis by not playing well on Sunday,” Harris said. “They responded and have given us a huge boost.”

The response that Harris saw was four tiebreak wins in the third set, leading to two huge team victories and momentum that will hopefully carry over into this comong weekend.

The squad leaves this Thursday for the ECAC Championships held at Flushing Meadow, New York, the annual site of the US Open. Brown enters the tournament seeded third and hopes to repeat last year’s victory.

“We have to play really hard and take it one match at a time this weekend,” said Nick Goldberg ‘05. “To win it is going to take a team effort.”

Bruno showed it has the toughness that it needs to win this past weekend, but the team will need strong showings from its veteran crew to take to championship and advance to nationals.

completions surpassed the Ivy League record of 42 set by Brown’s James Perry ’00 in 1999. Slager ended the day just short of 500 yards in the air with 497.

Unlike last week, the Bears never established a running game and finished the day with minus ten rushing yards.

URI, on the other hand, ran the ball 58 times. It was evident that the URI quarterback was given the green light to run after a Harvard backup ran all over Brown last week. The Rams’ Davis rushed 28 times for 194 yards.

Next week, Brown travels to Fordham University and should expect more of the same from another Ram team.

Field hockey shut out twice The 15th-ranked Boston College Eagles (10-2) scored twice in the first half to defeat Brown field hockey team (2-6), 2-0, in non-conference action on Friday evening. On Sunday afternoon, Northeastern scored two goals in the first half en route to a 3-0 victory over the Bears.

In the first game, the Eagles scored what proved to be the game-winner just 13:30 into the contest and added an insurance goal just 11:00 later en route to the 2-0 win.

Offensively, Lizzie Buza ‘04 led the team with three shots, while Cory Pelletier ’03 added one defensive save for the Bears. Katie Noe ‘05 made five saves in net for the Bears.

On Sunday, the Huskies got on the board early just 5:12 into the contest and added an insurance goal with two seconds remaining in the first half to take a 2-0 lead into the break.

Northeastern scored their third goal of the game on a penalty corner with 28:47 left in the game, for the 3-0 final.

On offense, Laurel Pierpont ’04 and Ashley Wallace ’03 each had two shots for the Bears. Noe made six saves in net for Brown.

The Bears continue in action on Wednesday when they host Sacred Heart in a 4:00 p.m. contest.

— Brown Sports Information