THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2006
Volume CXLI, No. 41
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An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891 RACIALLY NEUTRAL IS THE NEW BROWN The Slavery and Justice Committee report will recommend changing University’s racially charged name CAMPUS NEWS 7
STARVING ARTIST Lack of food and substance at UCS meeting leads to a trying experience for Herald reporter CAMPUS NEWS 5
MAN VS. BEAST The Penn Quaker’s aggressive side fails to bring down Bruno the Brown Bear at Wrestlemania 22 SPORTS 12
TODAY
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Simmons to join cast of ‘Survivor: Cambridge’
Brown offers Kim Jong-Il honorary degree in bid to one-up Yale
BY ALVIN THEODORE SIMON REALITY TV COMMENTATOR
BY GLEN SCHEUTTLER PYONGYANG CORRESPONDENT
In their quest to fill the void soon to be left by departing President Lawrence Summers, administrators at Harvard University are employing an unconventional tactic that may land Brown back in the reality TV spotlight. Beginning in June, President Ruth Simmons will take six weeks off from promoting the Campaign for Academic Enrichment to film “Survivor: Cambridge,” the 12th installment in the Emmy Award-winning series. Simmons will compete against other higher education powerhouses — including Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman and former Wellesley College and Duke University President Nan Keohane — as she vies to take over the most coveted administrative position in the country. Though the physical competition will certainly be a change of pace for Simmons, Marisa Quinn, assistant to the presisee SIMMONS, page 4
Office of the President
“Ruth the Truth” is the new credo of Marisa Quinn, assistant to the president turned personal trainer, who is helping the president train for a stint on “Survivor: Cambridge.”
Following on the heels of Yale University’s decision to admit former Taliban spokesman Rahmatullah Hashemi, Brown has awarded an honorary doctorate to reclusive North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. Administrators said that though the move is sure to provoke controversy, the partnership demonstrates Brown’s commitment to inclusion and its desire to become an internationally recognized institution. “Yale might try to bring different perspectives to campus by enrolling a mid-level Taliban official, but when Brown undertakes a project, we think big,” said Vice President for International Advancement Ronald Margolin. “All hail the Dear Leader!” Kim accepted the degree from President Ruth Simmons in a ceremony Satsee KIM, page 4
CCC finds whimsy a plus in new grading system BY LESTER MCLEGACY MR. YUK ENTHUSIAST
During a series of emergency meetings held over spring break, members of the College Curriculum Council drafted a new proposal to revise the University’s grading system, outlining a more detailed array of possible notations that could appear on students’ transcripts. Students will now be evaluated on a scale ranging from gold stars to neon green Mr. Yuk stickers. Following the vote against the addition of pluses and minuses to Brown’s grading system, members of the CCC opted to change their spring break plans late last month. All 13 members convened in Kingston, Jamaica, for what Luther Spoehr, lecturer in education and vice chair of the CCC, termed a “five-day power brainstorming session.” “There was a sense that we really needed to mix things up,” said Spoehr, who wore a t-shirt proclaiming “Jamaica me want to prevent students from gaming the system and cheapening their educations” for the duration of the retreat. Spoehr expressed satisfaction with the CCC’s final proposal, praising in particular the scale’s arbitrary nature. According to partial drafts leaked to The Herald via e-mail, the middle ranges of the scale will vary not only by department, but also by individual professor and, potentially, from student to student. Professor of Biology Jonathan Waage, a member of the CCC, expressed a grudging satisfaction with the proposed system. “I mean, ideally, students’ transcripts would reflect the entirety of their emotional knowledge and spiritual karma,
but I guess this system works better than the standing one,” he said. Waage’s contribution to the proposal was a series of smiley faces with varying angles of smile curve that “no one really understands but him,” according to CCC member Freya Zaheer ’06, whose bid to include 1980s-style “scratch and sniff” stickers in the proposal was ultimately unsuccessful. “The point, really, is to keep students on their toes,” Spoehr said. “You can’t game something that’s not rooted in reality.” Members of the CCC offered varying accounts of how the system was originally conceived. Evidently, after two days of unsuccessful negotiations, Dean of the College and CCC Chair Paul Armstrong abandoned the group to “go in search of
some adventure,” according to Zaheer. He returned 36 hours later with the fundamentals of the revised system scrawled on his forearm. Council members ironed out the details during the trip’s final days. Armstrong told The Herald he is reluctant to divulge the details of his mini-excursion. “I can’t do justice to what I saw out there,” he said. “Suffice to say, I returned a changed man. I really put myself back in touch with the spirit of the New Curriculum.” Upon returning to Providence, the CCC will recommend that the Faculty Executive Committee vote on the proposal. If approved, it will go before the full faculty later this month. A series of University-wide forums discussing the pros and cons of the new system — origisee GRADES, page 4
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Il received an honorary degree from the University Saturday.
Facebook ‘poke’ leads to awkward one-nighter BY JACK ZABIAN SOCIAL COMMENTATOR
A March 31 “poke” on Facebook.com led to an encounter over the weekend between two seniors that “can only be termed an extraordinarily awkward one-night stand,” according to participant Ethan Gold ’06. The chain of events that led to the uncomfortable, no-strings-attached sex in Eva Larson ’06’s Young Orchard dorm room began last Friday. Sitting at her Rockefeller Library carrel, Larson, a modern culture and media concentrator who stayed in Providence over spring break to finish her senior thesis on “Deconstructing the Meta-Narratives of Postmodern Celebrity Weeklies,” was procrastinating on Facebook.com. Larson came upon Gold’s profile and “felt an instant attraction” to his picture, in which the San Francisco native
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is wearing an “artfully frayed” Amoeba Music t-shirt. Larson told The Herald she was “somewhat perplexed” by Gold’s interest in “spiritual ecology,” though she ultimately overcame this initial reservation. After seeing that Gold’s spring break plans included “forties in the stacks,” LarIwasa Mistake / Herald son decided to click Following a ‘poke’ on Facebook.com, Ethan Gold ’06 and Eva the “Poke Him!” link Larson ’06 had awkward intercourse on Larson’s bed. “just as sort of a joke,” she said. Gold’s reciprocal poke led to a Gold, a religious studies concentraseries of events that culminated in Gold tor working on his thesis, “Representadiscreetly tip-toeing out of Larson’s dorm tions of the Ear th Mother in Kabbalah room Sunday morning following blunsee FACEBOOK, page 4 dering sexual intercourse.
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