Friday, October 29, 2004

Page 1

F R I D A Y OCTOBER 29, 2004

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXIX, No. 99

An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891

www.browndailyherald.com

UCS aims to improve communication with region plan

Considered ‘guts’ by students, easy intro courses have a home in New Curriculum

BY AIDAN LEVY

BY SARA PERKINS

In an effort to jumpstart interaction between the Undergraduate Council of Students and the student body, UCS representatives will be assigned to specific campus regions starting sometime next semester. While the plan is still in its beginning stages, President Joel Payne ’05 believes it will expedite and broaden UCS communication with the Brown community at large. “This is a vehicle to interact with the student body, because we do a poor job of it now,” Payne said. “It’s hard to reach people when there are only 40 UCS members in charge of the entire student body.” Payne introduced the plan during his campaign for UCS president last year. Although it is unrelated to the Department of Public Safety’s new community policing initiative, which divides the campus into smaller regions assigned to specific officers, the spirit of the two initiatives is similar. Under the new UCS plan, Payne envisions approximately eight UCS representatives assigned to each of four precincts on campus. A suggestion box would be set up at a prominent post in each region for residents to voice their concerns. In addition, pertinent UCS information would be posted there, including the representatives’ office hours in the UCS office. Once or twice a semester, the representatives in charge of each precinct would hold a regional forum in a town meeting format for residents to discuss problems that need to be rectified. Twice a semester, UCS will compile a campus-wide regional report to facilitate accurate goal-setting, Payne said. “Your average run-of-the-mill student doesn’t really know us,” Payne said. “It’s all about accessibility, and this will make UCS

between UCS and students strengthens our ability to advocate for them,” he said. “I think it has the potential to have a great effect, since one of UCS’s perennial issues and shortcomings is communication with the student body. We’ve come a long way in a few years, but we have a long way to go.” Associate UCS member Melba Melton ’06 said she strongly supports the plan. “It would give representatives more of a responsibility,” Melton said. “In the past, some reps didn’t take the initiative to go

Many of the students who find their way into GE 5: “Mars, Moon and the Earth” are first-years looking to experiment with a new subject or seniors looking to balance rigorous courses with less intense offerings. Professor of Geological Sciences James Head said he knows that the class he’s taught, with a few interruptions, for more than 20 years, attracts those who will probably never take a geology course again. However, he said he is also “painfully aware that people can go through their career at Brown without ever taking a science course.” Common student wisdom assigns courses like Head’s and EN 9: “Management of Industrial and Nonprofit Organizations” the pejorative designation “gut course.” But Head and Professor Emeritus of Engineering Barrett Hazeltine, who teaches EN 9, say their courses and similar ones in other departments serve an important purpose that is slightly outside the larger missions of their respective departments. Large, well-taught, unintimidating courses can serve as an introductory gateway to a discipline, but more often they ensure that students do not leave Brown and its New Curriculum without some grounding in a subject outside of their concentration focus or subjectarea comfort zone, Head and Hazeltine both said. “Everybody sees it as an important service to the University as a whole,” Head said of GE 5. Though it’s not “a course dedicated to those who are going to major in the field,” GE 5 allows Head to pull in a few recruits and give a

see UCS, page 6

see GUTS, page 8

Julia Zuckerman / Herald

The Marcus Aurelius statue on Lincoln Field became the Headless Horseman for Thursday night’s Live on Lincoln. The Special Events Committee organized the annual event.

much more effective.” UCS representatives already have at their disposal several methods of communication — door-to-door solicitation, mailbox slips, campus-wide e-mail notices and a standing invitation for any student to attend the Wednesday 8 p.m. meetings in Petteruti Lounge — but Payne said he feels these methods are incomparable to regional representation. UCS Vice President Charley Cummings ’06 agreed that the more organized plan Payne proposes to foster student-representative relations would be beneficial. “Anything to increase the dialogue

CAMPAIGN 2004

THE ISSUES HIT HOME

Pro-choice groups work to mobilize students to vote

As Iraq conflict continues, young voters wonder if a draft is coming

BY SUCHI MATHUR

BY DANA GOLDSTEIN

The question of reproductive rights has mobilized student groups concerned with the possible long-term ramifications the presidential election will have on issues such as abortion. For most students, this will be the first presidential election in which they are eligible to vote. Groups including Students for Choice, the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance and the Brown Democrats have been working together since the semester began to organize voter registration drives and encourage students to vote, said Emilee Pressman ’05, co-chair of SFC. SFC, which has an active general body membership of over 50, helped students register and obtain absentee ballots, but its main focus remains informing the

student body about candidates’ stances on abortion. “Our goal is just to let students know who is the candidate who is pro-choice and who is not,” Pressman said. “Since we’ve already passed absentee ballot deadline, we’re focusing on state elections.” Along with activities emphasizing voter registration, some groups have invited speakers and planned special events aimed at demonstrating the importance of reproductive rights in this election. SFC had an abortion provider speak at a general body meeting about how difficult obtaining an abortion has become because of political and legal complications, Pressman said.

see PRO-CHOICE, page 6

When former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean visited Brown on Sept. 9, he told The Herald that college students should mobilize against the possibility of a military draft. “(Bush) has now dug himself into a really deep hole, and I think a draft is inevitable if he’s reelected,” Dean said. The comment might have seemed shocking at the time, but just three weeks later, James Carville, co-host of CNN’s Crossfire and famed Democratic consultant, swung through Rhode Island and echoed the sentiment. “The army is in a near state of mutiny — they’re calling people up who aren’t showing,” Carville told pro-choice advocates at a Planned Parenthood event in Warwick. “We’re one conflict away from a draft,” he

Modern Culture and Media offers movies that aren’t available at the local Blockbuster arts & culture, page 3

Herald columnists are making their voices heard, just in time for Tuesday’s election election insert, inside

see DRAFT, page 4

W E AT H E R F O R E C A S T

I N S I D E F R I D AY, O C T O B E R 2 9 , 2 0 0 4 At annual Roger Williams Zoo attraction, Halloween means thousands of glowing pumpkins arts & culture, page 3

warned, naming humanitarian crises and possible conflicts in North Korea, Iran and Pakistan as events that could require a large deployment of U.S. troops at a time when the military is already strained in Iraq and Afghanistan. One month after Dean’s visit to Brown, the New York Times’ Oct. 3 Week in Review section featured a story about the draft and the attempts by John Kerry’s campaign to assuage voters’ fears about conscription. Times columnist Paul Krugman took the issue up on Oct. 22, arguing that President George W. Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive warfare “leads to the justified suspicion that after the election, Mr. Bush will seek a large expansion in our military, quite possibly through a return of the

India is condoning autocracy with its position on Burma, writes Arjun Iyengar ’05 column, page 11

W. ice hockey turns to first-year recruits in hopes of rebuilding team after key players graduate sports, page 12

FRIDAY

partly cloudy high 57 low 46

SATURDAY

showers high 62 low 54


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Friday, October 29, 2004 by The Brown Daily Herald - Issuu