F R I D A Y JANUARY 30, 2004
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXIX, No. 3
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
Coed housing options will double for this year’s lottery
www.browndailyherald.com
New Brook Street substation focuses police attention on East Side BY DANA GOLDSTEIN
After $100,000 in renovations financed by Brown, the Providence Police Department substation on Brook Street opened in December, following a rash of street crime and Brown’s decision to arm its police. Now, Providence Police have occupied the Brook Street space, paying only a symbolic $1 for rent each month. As students returned to campus last week, the substation began operating full time. About 21 officers assigned to the substation are responsible for patrolling an area stretching from South Main Street to the Seekonk River, known as District 9. The substation was the eighth built in Providence as part of a new commitment to “neighborhood policing,” a widely used model in which officers are assigned to specific neighborhoods, allowing them to build relationships with local residents, institutions and businesses. Because of the Brook Street substation’s proximity to Brown, the University and its police force are working closely with Providence Police officers on a variety of investigations and crime preven-
BY KIRA LESLEY
The Office of Residential Life plans to double the amount of available coed housing for next year, according to Dean for Campus Life Margaret Jablonski. Jablonski wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that ResLife plans to add 145 optionally coed beds to Minden Hall, 129 to Barbour Hall Apartments and 168 beds to Young Orchard buildings for 2004-2005. This will increase the percentage of housing that is optionally coed from 9 percent to 18 percent. This year, a total of 403 beds were available as optionally coed in Vartan Gregorian Quad A and B, Morriss suites and Wriston suites. The expansion of coed housing falls short of the plan Residential Council outlined in November, when it approved a resolution that would expand optional coed housing to “all suites in Minden, Barbour, Young Orchard and the Graduate Center.” ResCouncil Chair Jesse Goodman told The Herald the resolution is currently “in the very final stages of negotiation.” The changes Jablonski outlined do not include plans to make any coed housing available in Grad Center. Director of Housing Richard Bova said the status of Grad Center bathrooms is one major reason the University is unlikely to add coed housing to the towers. Residence halls that are likely to have coed housing next year contain lockable, single-use bathrooms, and Grad Center does not, Bova said. According to Goodman, coed bathrooms have been a sticking point for the University in creating more optional coed housing. The University feels that students may be uncomfortable sharing bathrooms with members of the opposite sex, Lottery Committee Chair Pamela Dubyak wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. She noted that other schools, including Williams College and Princeton University, offer optional coed housing with coed bathrooms.
Nick Neely / Herald
see POLICE, page 8
Officer Charles Boranian climbs into his car as he leaves the Providence Police Substation on Brook Street.
Brown legacy in Mars research will continue in future exploration
Lab,” is slated to open next week. “It’s a lab for doing experiments that simulate applications running on the entire Internet,” Doeppner said. For example, if researchers wanted to create their own version of the search engine Google, they could simulate “tons and tons of people using it simultaneously,” he said. The lab will also be used by students in CS courses, he said. The new “Motion Capture Lab,” located in the former CIS telecommunications office on the first floor, will be used to
Sciences Jim Head ’69, “hooked,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “I was most fortunate to have been a graduate of this tradition, and it helped me achieve the position I currently hold for NASA,” Garvin wrote. “This very department has led to the large number of Brown graduates who have major roles in the NASA programs of planetary exploration.” The University’s legacy in Mars research may have begun with Mutch, who designed the Viking camera, but student involvement has always been key to the school’s production of prominent planetary scientists, said Head, who said he considers Mutch an inspiration. And the legacy is not likely to end. Of the 15 or so graduate students in the planetary group, Professor of Geological Sciences Jack Mustard Ph.D. ’90 said about half are involved in Mars research. Mustard, who became a professor in 1990 after finishing his doctorate, said the excellence of the department, with its emphasis on undergraduate education and its collegial and visionary faculty, kept him at Brown. He said he believes in the mantra, “Don’t just do science, make discover-
see CIS, page 7
see MARS, page 4
BY KAVITA MISHRA
In a way, Brown saw Mars first, with Professor Tim Mutch leading the first mission to Mars in 1976. Since the Viking mission, Brown students have been BROWN & MARS: linked to a netsecond in a two-part series work of University faculty and graduates who still lead the efforts to explore the Red Planet. In planetary research, Brown ranks
see HOUSING, page 7
among the top programs in the country, along with institutions such as Arizona State University, California Technical Institute and Washington University in St. Louis, said Professor of Geological Sciences Malcolm Rutherford. But it was Mutch who brought Mars research to Brown, according to Jim Garvin ’78, Sc.M. ’81, Ph.D. ’84, chief scientist of NASA’s Mars Exploration Programs. Mutch got many of his students, including Professor of Geological
CIS downtown move makes more space on campus for new technology, classes BY JONATHAN ELLIS
CS is pushing CIS out of the CIT. As it acquires more faculty, graduate students and staff, the Department of Computer Science is expanding operations in the Thomas J. Watson Sr. Center for Information Technology. To accommodate the growth, Computing and Information Services is moving some of its offices to a Davol Square business park. CIS ceded half of the CIT’s third floor to the CS department in early January, according to the CIS Web site. When the second phase of the move is completed this summer, the CS depart-
ment will occupy all of the third, fourth and fifth floors of the building, said Thomas Doeppner, associate professor and vice chairman of the CS department and coordinator of the expansion. Plans for the expansion have been in the works for five to six years, Doeppner said. “The big issue is that both CIS and CS had to expand,” he said. “Although it’s not ideal for CIS to go off campus, it makes more sense than for us to.” The CS department will acquire new labs as part of the expansion, Doeppner said. One of them, dubbed the “Internet
I N S I D E F R I D AY, J A N UA RY 3 0 , 2 0 0 4 Casts, producers of five plays prepare for another semester of theater arts & culture, page 3
Students release inaugural issue of multimedia magazine on DVD arts & culture, page 3
Cross-disciplinary class brings together theater, physics and history campus news, page 5
TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T Christopher McAuliffe ’05 responds to Lani Guinier’s Tuesday speech column, page 11
Wrestling loses match to Rutgers, looks ahead to weekend competition sports, page 12
mostly sunny high 26 low 12