PAGE 6 THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2005
Independent continued from page 1 including philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, biology, community health and anthropology. The most unique part of Daniels’ proposal is a class she plans to take at the University of Hawaii that studies health and healing in religion. Another independent concentrator exploring a new perspective in medical studies is Bathsheba Demuth ’06, who is working on trauma studies. According to Demuth, her concentration is “an interdisciplinary look at how different economic and political factors create ‘structural violence,’ which is so detrimental to populations that it inflicts physical harm.” Demuth hopes to analyze how public health and economic interventions can be designed to take into consideration psychological and cultural aspects that “go beyond the physical.” Demuth’s concentration is based on the two years she spent living in a remote Native American village in the arctic, which she said
made her notice how poverty and cultural influences often create different lifestyles that can be viewed from medical and sociological points of view. By taking a mix of comparative literature, public health, anthropology, history and sociology classes, Demuth is building on her experience in the arctic, which taught her to “read against the grain in various disciplines.” She will complete her thesis work on her experience in the village. Daniels’ and Demuth’s independent concentrations are characteristic of many new proposals that are heavily influenced by students’ experiences outside of Brown, Dunleavy said. Among other trends in the independent concentration program, Dunleavy has also noticed a rise in proposals in performance studies and digital media. One of a few students who is doing work in these emerging disciplines, Sage Morgan-Hubbard ’05, has titled her independent concentration “Perfor-mance Studies: the socially conscious art of the everyday.” MorganHubbard will draw from different fields at Brown including dance, ethnic studies and visual arts to
explore how “everyday life is performative,” she said. Morgan-Hubbard said she is trying to analyze how certain academic subjects can have a performance element at their core as they deal with race, gender and sexuality. Her thesis project focuses on the photographer Lorna Simpson, who combines photography and text to address such, Morgan-Hubbard said. Despite recent trends, however, independent concentrations are by no means limited to performance and biomedical studies. Adam Green ’05 has titled his independent concentration “Rationality and decision making.” Green is combining philosophy, psychology, statistics and economics courses to analyze game theory, decision theory and “expressive utility theory” in his concentration, which looks at how people should make decisions and how they actually make decisions, he said. Green, who was two courses away from finishing his A.B. in physics, said he decided on an independent concentration because he felt his interests could not be fit into one or two subjects. According to Dunleavy, most of the recent independent concentrations come in subjects that are on the “vanguard” of academia and have not had enough of a track record for Brown to create an official concentration. But today’s independent concentrations could become mainstream concentrations in the future. “Successful independent concentrations like ethnic studies end up being added as majors,” Dunleavy said.
M. track continued from page 12 In his season debut, Neil Hamel ’07 recorded a personal best 9:40.50 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, finishing only seven seconds behind first place. In only his second time racing the 400-meter hurdles, Will Bernitsky ’08 finished in 55.69 for a nearly two-second personal best. Jumpers Ray Bobrownicki ’06 and Brian Zubradt ’08 earned eight points each for their second-place efforts on jumping mats. Bobrownicki successfully cleared 6-9 in the high jump,
Union continued from page 1 ent groups and planned campus-wide events. When the Undergraduate Finance Board was established in the early 1980s, however, the new group assumed responsibility for allocating funds, making the Student Union virtually obsolete, Gresh said. It was at this time that the Student Union stopped meeting. The Student Union was reestablished last semester under Gresh, though it no longer serves the role of allocating funds to Brown’s various student groups. Bojedla and Husk were appointed to the positions of interim chair and secretary. The new Student Union hosted the Faunce Turns 100 birthday party using funds provided by its member groups. It was not until months later that the Student Union found the $70,000 in its account. The money “certainly helped increase the legitimacy of the Student Union,” Bojedla said. She said that in planning future events, it will be better to not have to ask member groups to “sacrifice part of their budget for a mission that is not their own,” given the tight budgets with which many
and Zubradt had a personal best jump of 14-11 1/2 in the pole vault. The 4x100-meter and 4x400meter relays did not stray from the trend of second-place finishes, as the squads started and finished a day of runner-up honors for the Bears. After using the UConn Invite as a tuneup, the Bears’ focus will turn to this Saturday’s home competition at the Brown Invitational. “The men’s team as a whole has so much potential,” Eisenreich said. “They just have to be enthusiastic and bring it to the practices like they do to the meets.”
groups are currently working. The Student Union’s membership currently includes the Special Events Committee, Brown Lecture Board, Brown Concert Agency, Brown Television, Brown Student Radio, Brown Film Society, the Underground and Brown Key Society. Husk and Bojedla are still not sure about how they would like to use the newly-found money and both expressed reticence about spending it prematurely. “We don’t want to rush into anything, because we’re still a new group,” Bojedla said. She added that it would be beneficial to allow the money to collect even more interest before it is spent. Bojedla said the purpose of the Student Union is to foster tradition at Brown, and therefore its leaders are thinking of using the money to create a new annual event. Husk said that next semester there would be a Fall Weekend in addition to Spring Weekend. The Student Union was instrumental both in establishing Fall Weekend and in planning this year’s program for Spring Weekend, she said. Elections will be held in the fall to establish a more formal leadership structure for the Student Union. After the elections, the Union will begin to consider potential uses of its money more seriously.