W E D N E S D A Y FEBRUARY 19, 2003
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXVIII, No. 19
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
www.browndailyherald.com
Number of minorities in Brown athletic department remains low BY PHILISSA CRAMER
and Justice a permit for the planned demonstration. Bloomberg denied the permit in hopes of limiting the number of people in the city while the nation was under a code orange warning level, the Washington Post reported. The lack of a permit did not stop Elizabeth Sperber ’06, one of the organizers of the Students Against the War in Iraq, from making the trip. “I think (New York City officials) were concerned about public safety, and conveniently there is the super alert which probably had a lot to do with it,” she said. SAWI organized the two buses that departed from Faunce Arch at 6:30 a.m. the day of the protest. Students who did not make it onto the original buses were picked up by ANSWER, a national, non-profit antiwar group that had buses leaving from downtown Providence. Elizabeth Luna ’06 said while she didn’t get to New York with the buses from Brown, “there was no problem figuring out where to go. Everyone in the city seemed to come
Minorities remain underrepresented in Brown’s athletic department despite a commitment made in 1998 to increase the diversity of the University’s coaching staff. In a self-study conducted by the University in 1997 in accordance with a National Collegiate Athletic Association regulation, the University noted a need for an “increased commitment to recruit and hire more minority coaches and assistants,” The Herald reported at the time. In 1997 Brown employed two minority head coaches and two minority assistant coaches. By October 2001 the total number of minority coaches at Brown had declined to 3 out of a coaching staff of 63. Athletic Director David Roach said his department remains committed to the University’s affirmative action policy and goal of equity. “We promote diversity, we want to be diverse and we do what we can to advertise all our positions,” he said. Roach said the athletic department advertises open coaching positions in a variety of coaching newsletters, including that of the Black Coaches’ Association. Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Janina Montero said Roach also seeks help from colleagues at other universities to encourage minority applicants to apply for Brown’s open positions. “Roach works hard with each new vacancy to have a strong pool and also a diverse pool,” Montero said. Henry Johnson, director of the Equal Employment and Affirmative Action Office, said guidelines about equitable hiring procedures are enforced for the athletic department just as they are for the rest of the University. According to the Brown University Hiring Plan, departments with open positions identified as underutilized by minorities work with a representative from Human Resources to advertise in trade journals targeted to minority groups. A position is considered underutilized when fewer members of a minority group fill the position than would be expected based on the percentage of qualified members of that group in Rhode Island, Johnson said. “One thing that is critical to the equal opportunity employment program is to have equal access to com-
see PROTEST, page 4
see MINORITIES, page <NONE>
Danielle Cerny / Herald
Hundreds of thousands of people — including a number of Brown and RISD students — braved the cold weather on Saturday to gather in New York City for an antiwar protest.The New York protest was one of many the world over.
Brown students join hundreds of thousands in NYC antiwar protest BY DANIELLE CERNY NEW YORK — Hundreds of Brown and RISD students
braved the cold and shuffled through miles of police barricades to join the antiwar protests Saturday in New York City. New York City’s “The World Says No To War” protest, hosted by United for Peace and Justice, was one of 600 protests that took place across the world that day. Nearly one million people marched in London and one to two million in Rome, Madrid and Barcelona. More than 10 million people protested around the world, causing United for Peace and Justice to claim that Saturday was “the largest day of coordinated protest ever known.” Though United for Peace and Justice estimated 500,000 people at the New York demonstration, the New York Police Department reported only around 100,000 people were actually present. These masses gathered despite New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to deny United for Peace
Brown joins six other universities in brief supporting U. Michigan BY JULIA ZUCKERMAN
Brown joined Harvard and six other universities Tuesday in filing an amicus brief supporting the University of Michigan in two Supreme Court cases that could determine the future of affirmative action in the United States. In the brief, the universities recommended that the court uphold the constitutionality of affirmative action and Michigan’s points-based admission policies. In an official University statement on the brief released Tuesday afternoon, President Ruth Simmons emphasized the importance of racial and ethnic diversity in higher education. “By almost all accounts, our institutions of higher learning have benefited enormously from greater diversity in their student bodies, faculty and staff,” Simmons said. “The greater variety of backgrounds, life experi-
ences, political positions, social perspectives and personal aspirations on their campuses has allowed the nation’s colleges and universities to better prepare students for lives in an international, multicultural world.” The brief states that “the main impetus for developing a broadly representative student body is not to remedy past injustice but to assure that educational programs are forward-looking and inclusive,” according to the University press release. The universities specifically criticized “race-neutral” policies such as those guaranteeing admission to a top percentage of high school graduates. President Bush promoted guaranteed-admission policies as an alternative to affirmative action in the White House’s brief opposing Michigan. But those policies are “unworkable for small, academically selective universities,” the universities wrote
in the brief, noting that last year, 2,900 valedictorians applied for 2,066 spaces in Harvard’s freshman class. The universities also cited recent studies showing that guaranteed-admission policies at public universities in Texas, Florida and California have not increased minority enrollment, The Harvard Crimson reported. Harvard served as the main author of the brief, and the University of Chicago, Dartmouth, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale also signed it. The Supreme Court will hear arguments April 1 for both cases, which involve white students who claim they were unfairly denied admission to Michigan’s undergraduate and law schools because black and Latino applicants with similar or weaker academic
I N S I D E W E D N E S D AY, F E B RUA RY 1 9 , 2 0 0 3 Memmott GS uses prose, art and HTML to create interactive multimedia projects. academic watch,page 3
Record setting blizzard cripples much of the Northeast, including Providence. page 5
Bush pushes rightwing agenda while America watches Iraq, says Von Oeyen ’05. column, page 15
see AMICUS, page 4
TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T Alexandra Toumanoff ’06 ponders America’s guilty pleasure: “Joe Millionaire.” column, page 15
Men’s basketball ends 52-year drought at Princeton but loses to Penn. sports, page 16
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