M O N D A Y APRIL 11, 2005
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXL, No. 46
www.browndailyherald.com
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
OUT OF AFRICA Film festival expands in its second year at the Cable Car to include tales of the diaspora A R T S & C U LT U R E 3
RIVER DEFILED Jack Sweeney-Taylor ’06: Maine Penobscot tribe’s water rights should be valued over paper profits O P I N I O N S 15
R.B.IVY Baseball sweeps two nail-biter doubleheaders, dispatching Penn and the Lions for 4-2 Ivy record S P O R T S 16
TODAY
TOMORROW
mostly sunny 50 / 30
p.m. showers 49 / 33
EMS simulates mass casualty incident
Cole promotes mix of politics, business BY CHRISTINA KIM CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Health Services building becomes temporary mockup ‘disaster zone’ Sunday BY TARYN MARTINEZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER
On April 10, a tanker carrying almost 800 million gallons of liquid natural gas exploded in Narragansett Bay. Everything within a one-mile radius of the explosion was immolated, while downtown Providence was mostly flattened by the blast and had several large fires to combat. Three of Providence’s main hospitals were destroyed. Up to 100,000 people were injured, and 38 seconds of exposure led to second-degree burns. How could such a thing have happened? This apocalyptic scenario was the subject of a mass casualty incident drill held by Brown Emergency Medical Services on Sunday afternoon. EMS Director Richard Lapierre defined a mass casualty incident as “one more patient than you can handle given the circumstances.” The first floor and basement of the Health Services building were transformed into a disaster zone, complete with injured and hysterical “victims” — mostly student actors and some mannequins — scattered debris and a power outage. The parking lot became a center of command and a treatment area for extricated victims, who were often strapped to spine boards or wearing neck braces. Victims themselves were removed from the building, treated and then placed onto tarps according to a color system: green victims were able to walk, yellow had non-critical injuries, red were critically injured and black were dead. About 104 people, all volunteers and mostly Brown students, participated in the drill. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into,” said volunteer Arminda Smith ’08. She played a hysterical woman whose baby died
Juliana Wu / Herald
Gerry Kagan ’06 moved a volunteer “victim” from the parking lot of Health Services into an ambulance as part of Sunday’s drill.
No ‘ideological litmus test’ for ‘Kaleidoscope’ fund, Simmons says BY ANNE WOOTTON STAFF WRITER
President Ruth Simmons was thinking about intellectual diversity “long before she came to Brown,” according to her assistant, Marisa Quinn, and in January she announced the creation of a fund dedicated specifically to that goal. The recently named Kaleidoscope Fund has been initially financed with $100,000 of Simmons’ discretionary budget to pay for speakers Simmons
see EMS, page 4
deems will increase intellectual diversity at Brown. Simmons initially announced the fund at her Spring Semester Opening Address in January. Conservative author Dinesh D’Souza was the first speaker brought to campus with money from the Kaleidoscope Fund. His March lecture, titled “In Defense of see FUND, page 4
Summer renovations planned for 22 U. buildings Some dorms fail new fire codes — Minden worst BY STEWART DEARING STAFF WRITER
By next fall, Brown will have some of the most fire-safe college buildings in the United States, according to David Greene, vice president for campus life and student services. The University plans to renovate 22 buildings this summer to comply with new state and city fire codes, he said. Rhode Island recently updated its fire codes in response to the February 2003 Station nightclub fire in West Warwick that killed 100, Greene said. The state has set a time limit for institutions such as Brown to update their facilities to meet the new fire safety requirements. Of the buildings to be renovated, Minden Hall poses the most serious fire safety issues. “The staircases in Minden aren’t rated for fire safety and need to be closed off,” Greene said. The current layout of the staircases in
Minden does not comply with state fire codes because it doesn’t account for the “smoke potential,” he said. The staircases are open to the hallway, which in the event of a fire would allow smoke to enter the stairs and prevent students from exiting safely. An enclosed staircase will provide students with a safer, smoke-free escape route, Greene said. To enclose the staircases, architects will have to change the floor plan of the dorm. Specific changes will vary from floor to floor, but no private bathrooms will be removed from any of the rooms, said Richard Bova, director of residential life. Some suites on the corners of the building, however, will lose their corridors to make room for the stairs. In these altered suites, students will have to walk through one room to get to the others, Bova said. Other suites located far from the stairs will remain unchanged.
Editorial: 401.351.3372 Business: 401.351.3269
see RENOVATIONS, page 4
Matt Lent / Herald
Minden Hall is one of several dorms that will undergo construction renovations this summer.
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
SMITHFIELD, R.I. — “Tomorrow I’ll donate clothes to the homeless, my sister won’t miss them,” reads an advertisement from fashion designer Kenneth Cole’s spring 2005 campaign. As the keynote speaker for the Brown University and Bryant University Entrepreneurial Extravaganza, Kenneth Cole spoke Friday night at Bryant about his experiences both as a fashion designer and as an advocate for social programs. The question and answer session covered the company’s tongue-in-cheek and socially aware advertising campaigns, Cole’s involvement with social programs and the actual business itself. “I love what I do. The business is a reflection of who I am,” Cole began. Cole started his career in 1984 selling shoes out of a 40-foot-long truck in New York City. Realizing that it was neither economical nor logical to be one of 1,100 shoe sellers, Cole decided to take a different approach. After changing the name of his company from Kenneth Cole Inc. to Kenneth Cole Productions Inc., he obtained a license from the New York mayor, under the pretense that he was shooting a full-length feature film titled “The Birth of a Shoe Company.” The license allowed him to park the truck in front of the New York Hilton Hotel, where department store buyers would be selecting shoes to sell in their stores. By catching buyers as they went from one building to another, Cole wound up selling over 40,000 pairs of shoes over the course of two and a half days. Twenty years later in 2004, Kenneth Cole Productions made over $515 million in revenue. Without “creative problem solving,” Cole said he would not have made that first sale. “The key is always to stay focused,” he said. Cole discussed the importance of connecting his work in social programs to his business. Because of a “pervasive consciousness” that seemed to be sweeping America in the 1980s, Cole said he wanted to work especially with AIDS in his early advocacy. “In 1985, you couldn’t speak about AIDS,” he said. Cole said he “started this public service campaign to talk about it.” One of the advertisements from the campaign advocates safe sex, featuring a portrait of a woman with the words “Shoes are not the only thing we encourage you to wear” written at the bottom. Cole serves as the chairman of the board of trustees for the American Foundation for AIDS Research and on the national board of HELP USA, an organization that provides housing and assistance for the homeless. During the month of February, Kenneth Cole stores offer a discount on shoes for shoppers who bring in a pair of their own shoes to donate to HELP USA. When one student asked Cole why he found it necessary to associate his political and social views with those of his company, he said he considers it his responsibility. “I’ve always done this because I’ve always thought that this is the right thing to do,” Cole said. see COLE, page 4 News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com