Wednesday, March 21, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEDNESDA

Volume CXLII, No. 39

H

21, 2007

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Pre-law advising to be run by deans Dunleavy and Simmons

BY IRENE CHEN STAFF WRITER

At the end of this semester, Executive Associate Dean of the College Perry Ashley will step down as the head of the University’s Pre-Law Office and be replaced by Linda Dunleavy and Andrew Simmons, both associate deans of the College. Together, Simmons and Dunleavy will be responsible for pre-med, pre-law and fellowship advising.

The Pre-Law Office “helps students decide whether to attend law school, when to attend and how best to complete the application process,” according to its Web site.

The change comes as part of restructuring the dean of the College’s office, which will group sim-

ilar responsibilities together under the same dean, Dunleavy said.

“One possible cluster is the post-baccalaureate cluster within the dean of the College office, including pre-law advising, pre-med advising and fellowship advising,” she said. “Dean Simmons and I will be the primary professional staff in that cluster.”

Simmons and Dunleavy both declined to comment on the reason for Ashley’s departure. On Feb. 14 The Herald reported that Ashley was forced out amid the office’s restructuring, but Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron told The Herald he was not fired.

Ashley could not be reached for comment for this article.

While neither dean has much Chris Bennett / Herald

continued on page 4

Slater Hall is home to a newly formed informal dining co-operative.

Cooking up a ‘co-op’ on the Green

Williams ’72 speaks on reporting BALCO steroids scandal

BY ANNA MILLMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

BY PETER CIPPARONE SPORTS EDITOR

Investigative journalist Lance Williams ’72 spoke about the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroids scandal, the impact of his book “Game of Shadows” and the lingering possibility that he could go to federal prison in List 120 last night.

The talk was hosted by The Herald, Alumni Relations and Campus Life and Student Services and featured a discussion between Williams and former Herald Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Ellis ’06.

Williams and co-author Mark Fainaru-Wada brought national attention to the steroid scandal in professional sports with their articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and subsequent book. He said one of his most important sources of information for the story was Kim Bell, the ex-girlfriend of San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

“She had kept all kinds of

“I figure if we put in the curry powder for now, then we can go from there,” said Elizabeth Irby ’08 as she reached for a huge metal pot. It’s a Friday evening in Slater Hall’s first-floor kitchen, the base of operations for an ad hoc cooking club, and Irby and several of her friends are trying to throw together enough curry, rice and salad to feed 15 famished students.

This semester, 15 sophomores and juniors — tired of the University’s dining options — have scaled down their meal plans and pooled the extra money in a bank account to cook nightly dinners as an unofficial co-operative. “A few people sort of became the organizers, and at the end of last semester figured out a plan and how much it was going to cost,” said Lily Spottiswoode ’09, a member of the group.

Zachary Stone ’09, another

Min Wu / Herald Former Herald Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Ellis ‘06 (left), and Lance Williams ‘72, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, discussed the BALCO story Tuesday.

things from her relationship with Bonds,” Williams said, explaining that Bell had documents to support her claims. “After the book came out, I did get a chance to talk to her. … She said, ‘Well I liked it.

People could see I was telling the truth.’ ” But Bell told Williams she saw one problem with the book — she

FEATURE

felt it lacked an ending.

“At first I was really troubled by this because actually I thought the book’s ending was like a piece of music by Mozart,” Williams joked.

What Bell meant by the comment, Williams said, was that the steroid scandal is ongoing. Bonds has not continued on page 6

member, said the group began last fall. “Last semester (there) were kids in Slater who cooked nightly, and that’s where we got the idea,” he said. They then began cooking regularly, inspiring a few people outside Slater to join, and the group has been cooking away ever since.

Many of the group members, including cooking novice Max Schoening ’09, said it has been an educational experience.

“I’m learning slowly how to cook,” he said.

Stone said they purchase most of their food bulk or go to local markets for fresh produce.

“What’s amazing is that we were able to do this pretty inexpensively,” he said.

Spottiswoode said the group mostly cooks vegetarian food, which keeps costs low. She estimated the group will spend less continued on page 6

Shepherd ’08 will launch interactive academic publication

Peterson criticizes black leadership in America

ic interests and have discussions with others.

“We think that people are interested in what scholars think about and what they’re researching, and what’s going on in society around them,” Shepherd said.

The Web site will make extensive use of video as a communication tool, and Shepherd said he envisions students posting videos of their professors giving lectures or interviews.

Shepherd’s idea developed last year, when he worked on the Brown Journal of World Affairs and interned over the summer at a public radio station in Cambridge,

Problems facing the black community in America are primarily due to the breakdown of the nuclear family, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson told a half-filled MacMillan 117 Tuesday. His speech was followed by a heated question-and-answer session.

Though he cited personal experiences with segregation during his childhood, Peterson said the major perpetrators of racism in America today are organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and black leaders like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Peterson said such leaders pro-

BY EMILIE ROSS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Imagine a YouTube or Facebook for academia. One Brown student is working to launch a Web site that will function as a networking site for students, academics and even journalists and policy makers interested in international affairs.

Henry Shepherd ’08 tentatively calls his project “University Commons,” and said he hopes to launch the Web site by the end of the summer.

The site, which will have personal pages — similar to a social networking site — and pages for specific interest areas, will allow people to describe their academ-

INSIDE:

3 CAMPUS WATCH

continued on page 8

YALE DROPS PAINTING Yale will take down a prominent campus painting of benefactor Elihu Yale with a servant on a chain after a decade-long debate

www.browndailyherald.com

5 CAMPUS NEWS

BY MATTHEW VARLEY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Chris Bennett / Herald The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson delivered a lecture on “white fear” and race relations Tuesday evening at an event sponsored by the College Republicans.

CRIME ON CAMPUS A brawl in Arnold Lounge, a shower painted purple and an e-mail banking scam were among the incidents reported to DPS last week

11 OPINIONS

SUPPORT MAT PROGRAM Four students in the Master’s of Arts in Teaching program write that the University should better support the program and its students

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

continued on page 8

12 SPORTS

PING-PONGING TO NAT’LS Brown’s table tennis squad is heading to Nationals but faces the departure of star playercoach Bruno Bianchi GS, who helped revitalize the team

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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WE A

T H E R

Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker

TODAY

TOMORROW

snow / wind 32 / 30

rain / wind 37 / 20

MEN

U

SHARPE REFECTORY

VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Spinach Strudel with Cheese Cream Sauce, Sticky Rice with Edamame Beans, Polynesian Ratatouille, Beef and Broccoli Szechuan, Raspberry Sticks

LUNCH — Vegetarian Squash Bisque, Turkey and Wild Rice Soup, Chicken Pot Pie, Pizza Rustica, Fresh Sliced Carrots, Blondies

DINNER — Macaroni and Cheese with Avocados and Tomatoes, Peppers Stir Fry, Cheese Ravioli, Pork Chops with Seasoned Crumbs, Apple Oatmeal Crisp

DINNER — Roasted Honey and Chili Chicken, Egg Foo Young, Vegetables in Honey Ginger Sauce, African Honey Bread, Apple Oatmeal Crisp

SU

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

WBF | Matt Vascellaro

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Hi, How Are You | Alison Naturale

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R Norris O S and S W O Nichols R D Lewis Edited by Rich Joyce ACROSS 1 Significant other, perhaps 5 Colorado resort on I-70 9 Alpine refrain 14 Describe in drawing 15 “__ la Douce” 16 Vital supply line 17 Superstore advantage 20 Breakfast fare 21 Bass add-on 22 Sweat shops?

23 Great pair 25 Net holder, on a court 27 Give a stern talking-to 35 Singer Grant 36 Menlo Park wizard, initially 37 Milne’s “old grey donkey” 38 Aired again 41 Tongue represser 43 Brazilian mountain chain 44 Long-billed birds 46 Ring site 48 Dawn deity 49 At work again 53 Actress Ullmann 54 1944 invasion city 55 Jai __ 59 L.A. setting 61 Liszt’s “Paganini __” 65 Browsable living room volume 68 To the point 69 Polluted Asian sea 70 Solitary 71 Reaction to an idol, possibly 72 Fad 73 Scots Gaelic DOWN 1 Voting group 2 Bonn article 3 OAS part: Abbr.

4 Use a letter opener on 5 R-rated, often 6 Dada cofounder

7 Words before 45 Be deviously 58 Assumption sorry or bored critical before “then” 8 Pakistan’s 47 Harris of 60 Skater Lipinski second-largest “Seinfeld” 62 It helps you get in city 50 Emmy winner, 63 Years and years 9 Talk foolishly often 64 __-Ball 10 Slipper’s word 51 Der __: 66 Night of yore 11 Faucet flaw Adenauer 67 Word that can 12 Sicilian hot spot 52 Stiff drink follow the last 13 Doesn’t keep 55 It follows John word of 17-, 27-, pace 56 MGM cofounder 49- and 6518 __ Bell 57 High style Across 19 Like champagne on ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: New Year’s Eve 24 Without women 26 Ginnie __: securities 27 Antilles native 28 Low life?

29 Songlike 30 Toffee bar maker 31 Deli option 32 Read intently, with “over” 33 Swashbuckler Flynn 34 Kid around with 39 Try to find out 40 Diamond in “The Jazz Singer” 42 Departs 3/21/07 xwordeditor@aol.com

Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

Cloudy Side Up | Mike Lauritano

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3/21/07

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CAMPUS WAT ATCH WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

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Yale removed portrait of its namesake with slave

Missing Purdue student found electrocuted An electrocuted body discovered Monday in a high-voltage maintenance room at Purdue University was identified Tuesday by local coroners as Purdue freshman Wade Steffey. Steffey had been missing for more than two months when he disappeared after a Jan. 13 fraternity party at the West Lafayette, Ind., university.

It appeared Steffey tripped and fell onto a high-voltage transformer in one of the university’s dorms, Purdue spokeswoman Jeanne Norberg said at a press conference Tuesday.

“He is believed to have died instantly,” she said.

A maintenance worker discovered the body Monday after investigating a “pinging sound” and an odd smell in the utility room.

In response to the accident, Purdue officials are scrambling to determine how Steffey gained access to the facility. Maintenance workers disassembled the room’s lock Tuesday to see if it was properly working, according to the Associated Press.

Purdue Police and administrators are also investigating whether the university complied with federal regulations regarding signage in hazardous areas, Joe Mikesell, Purdue senior director of engineering, construction and utilities, told the Purdue Exponent, the school’s newspaper. There were no warning signs posted on the door to the room — though depending on the date of the building’s construction, none may be required.

“We do implement signage requirement. I don’t know if we were in compliance or not. I hope we were, but I don’t know for a fact,” Mikesell said.

Norberg said during the press conference that Purdue will conduct an independent investigation into Steffey’s death. “We’re going to find out. The search for Wade Steffey is over, but the search for answers continues,” she said at the press conference.

Since Steffey went missing in January, students and campus officials had organized repeated searches for him — the most recent of those on Sunday. The dorm where he was eventually found was searched by both people and canines, but maintenance staff did not fully inspect the facility because of the danger from the high-voltage equipment.

— Ross Frazier

BY OLIVIA HOFFMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Courtesy of Yale Alumni Magazine A portrait showing Elihu Yale with a dark-skinned servant was removed by Yale administrators.

A portrait of one of Yale University’s earliest benefactors being waited on by a dark-skinned servant — the subject of campus debate for at least a decade — will be removed and replaced by a less controversial image, Yale administrators announced in early February.

The painting of Elihu Yale has hung for over a century above a mantle in the conference room that hosts meetings of the Yale Corporation, the university’s governing body.

“The issue has come up several times in my 13 years, but in every case, the individuals raising it recognized that the full understanding of the story did not comport with the superficial observation of the portrait,” said Linda Lorimer, Yale vice president and secretary.

“The facts are such that Elihu Yale did not support slavery and in fact did not have slaves. That was why, in the past, I felt it was better to leave the painting there.”

After speaking with a senior trustee who pointed out that many do not know the portrait’s background, Lorimer said she realized the work might be misinterpreted as racist and decided to replace it with an image of Elihu Yale that features no servants.

“It’s easy to focus on the portrait and be scandalized,” said James Campbell, Brown associate professor of history, chair of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice and a Yale alum. “But I think it’s important to remember that this is only a very graphic example of a fundamental truth of our nation’s history.”

John Errico, a Yale junior, said continued on page 4

URI Republicans face sanctions for white, male scholarship

BY PATRICK COREY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The University of Rhode Island College Republicans are fighting sanctions by the university’s student senate for an advertisement for a “white heterosexual American male scholarship” they published in the student newspaper. College Republican leaders say the ad was meant to be satirical.

The URI Student Senate, which funds the group, has already rejected an appeal by College Republicans, saying the scholarship violates bylaws that prohibit discrimination by any member group.

The November advertisement offered a $100 scholarship to the applicant who could best explain in 100 words or less what being a white heterosexual American male meant to him and what adversities he has had to face given his combination of race, sexual orientation and nationality. Forty or so students applied for the scholarship.

The URI Student Organization Advisory and Review Committee handed down a two-fold punishment to the College Republicans after ruling Feb. 19 that the scholarship is discriminatory. They ordered the College Republicans to issue a second ad clarifying the scholarship’s satirical nature in the Good 5-Cent Cigar, URI’s student newspaper. In addition, the group will be put on probation, forcing it to seek special approval for its event plans for the next year.

Because nowhere in its newspaper advertisement did the College

Republicans indicate the scholarship’s satirical nature, student senators also discussed whether the scholarship violates state false advertising or fraud laws. Instead of punishing the group for this ambiguity, the student senate decided to allow the College Republicans to clarify the satire in a letter to the editor.

After appealing the ruling, URI College Republicans Chairman Ryan Bilodeau was granted an opportunity to defend the scholarship in front of the student senate. On March 14, student senators rejected the appeal by a two-thirds majority.

Matt Yates, the senate’s student organization advisory and review committee chairman, expressed frustration with the issue. “All we’re asking him to do is clarify why (he’s) giving the scholarship,” Yates told The Herald. “I’m a registered Republican, half of my committee is a registered Republican,” he added, refuting claims by Bilodeau that he is up against a leftist judiciary.

The clarification requested by the student senate asks that the College Republicans clarify that the scholarship was satire and apologize to the 40 or so applicants. It does not ask the College Republicans to apologize for any discrimination.

Bilodeau said he was confused about the punishment. “(The student senate) has been very unclear and ambiguous and have changed their story several times,” he said.

“I don’t know what (the apology) is for, because they tell me different things at different times.”

Despite the failure of their appeal, the College Republicans continue to refuse to issue a clarification in the Cigar. “What they’re asking for is still ultimately forced speech, and that’s illegal,” Bilodeau said.

Citing their First Amendment rights, the College Republicans have sought the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group that defends freedom of speech on campuses across the country. FIRE is the same organization that defended Brown’s Reformed University Fellowship after it was suspended last semester.

In a March 13 letter to the student senate, FIRE argued the proposed apology “forces the College Republicans to engage in public expression with which they disagree.”

In the letter, FIRE threatens to use “all of (their) resources to (see) this matter to a just and moral conclusion.” The letter sets a March 28 deadline.

Yates said FIRE misunderstands the facts of the case, adding that College Republicans are not being asked to apologize but rather to publicly clarify the scholarship’s satirical nature.

A press release issued by the College Republicans said the purpose of the proposed scholarship was “to bring attention to the inherently racist policy of affirmative action.” The group currently claims it never intended to distribute the $100 and that the scholarship was solely a publicity stunt to raise awareness of their position on the issue.

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Yale removes ‘racist’ painting continued from page 3 that while he doesn’t think the university would shy away from the issue if confronted directly, connections to the slave trade are “sort of swept under the rug.”

“A majority of the residential colleges are named after slaveholders … but obviously that’s never mentioned,” Errico said.

“I can’t recall any specific things that the university is doing currently to distance itself from that history besides just not mentioning it at all.”

Helaine Klasky, Yale’s director of public affairs and special assistant to the president, called Yale a “leader in scholarship on slavery,” citing its Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition.

Campbell praised Yale for steps it has already taken, noting the center and a program supporting students who serve local schools in particular as initiatives similar to those advocated by the slavery and justice committee.

Lorimer said the painting will go back into the university’s col-

lection but said the switch is by no means an attempt to “hide from the history.”

Robert Forbes, lecturer in history at Yale and former associate director of the Lehrman Center, said the painting could be a tool for studying Yale’s history. If displayed with “really good documentation and curatorial attention,” a work like this would “make an ideal point of entry into a very important and complicated part of Yale’s history,” he said.

“The institutions in the 21st century do not need to turn away from difficult aspects of their history,” Forbes said. “I don’t think we need to be embarrassed by these artifacts. I think we need to understand them.”

Campbell echoed those sentiments. “The revelation about the portrait’s existence obviously generated a lot of controversy, but it’s also an opportunity.” He said the University’s slavery and justice committee confronted similar issues when it discovered that a clock hanging in University Hall once belonged to a slave ship commander.

“The simple fact is that any institution in our country of the vintage of Yale or Brown is going to have a history deeply entangled with the institution of slavery,” Campbell said. “Rather than try to evade that, it seems to me that the most sensible, edifying thing for a university to do is to face that history openly and forthrightly.”

Errico said most other students he has talked to do not find the painting particularly offensive, probably because its existence came as little surprise.

With a residential college at Yale named for John C. Calhoun, a former U.S. vice president and a fierce defender of slavery, he said students are generally quite aware of Yale’s past involvement with slavery.

Still, Errico said he understands the sensitivity of the subject.

“There certainly should be a forum for acknowledging or observing this,” he said. As for whether such a forum already exists, Errico said he didn’t know, adding that if there was one, “it couldn’t hurt to make it more obvious or transparent to the students.”

Deans Dunleavy and Simmons take on pre-law advising continued from page 1 experience advising pre-law students, both have been advisers for other post-baccalaureate programs — Simmons is the adviser for premed students, and Dunleavy is the adviser for fellowships. This experience will help them in advising prelaw students, Simmons said.

“There are a lot of similarities between all three processes: fellowships, pre-med and pre-law,” Simmons said. “I’ve already started to educate myself about that, and Dean Dunleavy has as well.”

Dunleavy said she will also draw on her previous experience.

“Through fellowship advising, I’ve certainly advised and gotten to know many students interested in law school, and I’ve had conversations with them about applying to law school,” Dunleavy said. “I also advised for the Truman Fellowship, which seems to be a fellowship that a lot (of) people who are interested in law school apply for. So we do have some experience.”

The two said they have also relied on Ashley’s past experience to guide them in the transition and are trying to connect these past experiences to pre-law advising. “In talking with Dean Ashley and other people who have more direct experience than us, it’s been clear that

a lot of the issues that students in law school face (they) share with others, which happens with medical schools and fellowships,” Dunleavy said.

“Our target is to really be ready to advise students by the end of June, and I think we’re well underway,” Simmons said. “We’ve been talking with (Ashley) … we’ve had several meetings together. He’s a very approachable, an easy guy to talk to.”

Simmons and Dunleavy said they hope to work with the on-campus Brown Pre-Law Society, founded in 2004. The group prepares students considering law schools after graduation — according to its Web site, “through lectures, panel discussions and various other activities, we investigate the full implications of attending law school, as well as the many possibilities thereafter.” The society co-hosted an “Advancing Social Justice through the Law” summit this past weekend, inviting Brown graduates to speak about their work in “social justice and public interest law.”

Christopher Keys ’08, president of the society, has worked with Ashley in the past.

“Dean Ashley has always been a great resource, but in day-to-day functioning, we operate independently,” Keys said. “It’s hard to see

Dean Ashley go, and we will miss him, but we look forward to working with these new deans. It’s going to take a bit of adjusting, and there may be issues with coordination, but we’re going to meet together to see which direction our group is going.”

Both Dunleavy and Simmons said they hope they will be able to learn about each of the three areas they will be advising. “We’re not going to assume that we’re going to be experts in all three areas, but the idea is that we can provide support for each other in different areas and that we will hopefully become good advisers for pre-law,” Dunleavy said.

Dunleavy hopes she and Simmons will also improve the existing advising programs in all three areas.

But both agreed the Brown curriculum is the best way for students to prepare for most post-graduation plans.

“This is not different from what I tell pre-meds — even though premeds have all these courses they have to take, it would be a mistake for a Brown student to simply come here and be simply pre-med and pre-law,” Simmons said.

Dunleavy agrees. “I think that pre-law and pre-med fits in with the Brown curriculum, which is to encourage students to follow their passions … and explore broadly.”

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3 students win Gates Cambridge Scholarships Brown will be sending three Gates Cambridge Scholars to England this year — Kate Brandt ’07, Ariana Green ’04 and Eric Koskinen GS. The scholarships were announced March 13.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation established the Gates Cambridge Trust in 2000. Since then, six Brown students have won the scholarship — three this year and one each in 2002, 2003 and 2004.

The trust supports graduate study at the University of Cambridge for students from outside the United Kingdom.

Candidates are evaluated based on “intellectual ability, leadership capacity and desire to use their knowledge to contribute to society throughout the world by providing service to their communities and applying their talents and knowledge to improve the lives of others,” according to the scholarship Web site.

The Gates Cambridge Trust seeks to select 100 new scholars annually. Among the 48 U.S. students picked this year, 17 most recently attended Ivy League schools.

Applicants do not earn admission to Cambridge through the scholarship and must apply to the university separately. “Cambridge was my first choice for graduate school, and I had gotten in about a month earlier,” Brandt said.

“I mean, I was very thrilled and obviously really honored. I think it’s an incredible organization with a great mission,” she said of the Gates Foundation. A concentrator in international relations, Brandt said she will pursue an M.Phil in international relations at Selwyn College and likely stay to complete a Ph.D. Brandt is currently writing an honors thesis on the role of history and memory in Sino-Japanese security relations. She said she plans to research Chinese political, military and trade involvement with Latin America.

Green, currently a Fulbright scholar at London’s City University, will study community radio in relation to women’s empowerment for an M.Phil in modern society and global transformations, according to the scholarship Web site.

Koskinen, a graduate of the College of William & Mary, will begin his studies in the computer science doctoral program at Cambridge.

He will focus on developing techniques for verifying concurrent programs and building automatic software verification tools, according to the Web site.

— James Shapiro

Event canceled after speaker arrested in D.C. A lecture titled “The Coming War with Iran” was canceled Tuesday after the speaker, retired Army Col. Ann Wright, was arrested for disorderly conduct at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. Operation Iraqi Freedom, Brown’s anti-war group, organized Wright’s lecture, which was scheduled to be held last night. OIF member Bucky Rogers ’07 said the group hopes to reschedule the talk for a later date.

Wright was arrested at a hearing on the FBI’s use of national security letters, a method of obtaining private information without a warrant. She stood up during the hearing and expressed her belief that there must be an independent investigation into the use of the letters, said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the anti-war group CODEPINK, who was present at the hearing. Committee chair Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., asked U.S. Capitol Police officers to escort Wright out of the room but not to arrest her, Benjamin said.

Wright resigned from the State Department in 2003 to protest the war in Iraq. She previously served in the Army and the Army Reserves for 26 years.

Those who stand up and voice objections during hearings are asked to leave if the chair cannot continue business, said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. Wright did not stop yelling when she was told to be quiet, so her arrest was “absolutely lawful,” Schneider said.

“If the chair bangs his gavel to restore order, the Capitol Police will restore order,” Schneider said.

But Benjamin said Wright voiced her concerns in a “very calm voice” and said she was surprised when Wright was arrested.

“In some cases people are asked to leave, but we expected that she would sit down, and that would be the end of it,” Benjamin said.

“She was literally arrested for saying we don’t trust the FBI and we should have an independent investigation.”

— Debbie Lehmann

www.browndailyherald.com

Purple shower stall, DPS officer punched among incidents reported last week

BY DEBBIE LEHMANN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The following summary includes all major incidents reported to the Department of Public Safety between March 9 and March 15. It does not include general service and alarm calls. The Providence Police Department also responds to incidents occurring off campus. DPS does not divulge information on open cases that are currently under investigation by the department, the PPD or the Office of Student Life. DPS maintains a daily log of all shift activity and general service calls which can be viewed during business hours at its headquarters, located at 75 Charlesfield St. Saturday, March 10: 1:32 a.m. A DPS officer was informed, while on patrol, that there was a fight in progress at Arnold Lounge. The officer identified a large crowd and one subject being assaulted and attempted to remove the victim from the altercation. An unidentified individual struck the officer during the attempt. Additional DPS officers arrived at the scene, and the crowd dispersed quickly. The event coordinators were interviewed accordingly.

9:30 p.m. DPS officers responded to a report of a possible intruder in a student residence on Hope Street. The officers secured the perimeter and found no signs of forced entry. Officers conducted an interior check of the residence and cleared the scene without issue.

CRIME LOG Sunday, March 11: 12:51 a.m. A DPS officer responded to a report of a suspicious circumstance including loud music and someone walking with an object lit on fire at Poland House.

Upon arrival, the officer identified the subject and requested that the music be turned down. There were no objects ignited upon the officer’s arrival. However, the officer did remind the student about potential University fire safety violations. The officer cleared the scene without issue.

3:49 a.m. Complainant reported that a fellow student was leaving foul messages on the white board outside of his room in Mead House.

The matter is being handled by the Office of Student Life.

10:34 p.m. Complainant reported that her student ID card had been stolen by unknown persons on Vartan Gregorian Quadrangle.

The student was issued a temporary ID. Monday, March 12: 10:46 a.m. Person reported that a shower stall in a women’s restroom in Minden Hall was painted purple. There are no suspects or witnesses at this time. Facilities Management was notified to assess the damage.

Tuesday, March 13: 11:12 a.m. Persons reported that several personnel at George Street received suspicious voicemails from a known caller. The matter is under investigation.

Thursday, March 15: 4:21 p.m. Complainant in Perkins Hall reported that she received a fraudulent e-mail supposedly from Bank of America requesting that she update her personal information. Upon doing so, she found that an undisclosed amount of money was illegally withdrawn from her bank account. Complainant contacted Bank of America’s fraud department and an investigation into this matter is underway.

First-year Med School class set to grow

BY KRISTINA KELLEHER SENIOR STAFF WRITER

An increase in first-year class size is among the many changes in store for the Alpert Medical School, coinciding with the third year of the Med School opening its doors to students through a standard admission route.

A strategic planning working group for the Med School appointed in September by Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 recommended in its December report that a new medical education building planned for the Med School should be designed to accommodate up to 125 students per class in the future.

Eli Adashi, dean of medicine and biological sciences, who chaired the working group, told The Herald, “125 is a more distant goal.” The largest class size that the Med School is currently approved for by its accrediting body — and the largest size administrators are currently considering — is 108 students, Adashi said. Ninety-two students now comprise the first-year class.

The growth of the Med School is part of a larger trend — there has been a “national call to expand the ranks of medical school student bodies by up to 30 percent from the (American Association of Medical Colleges) to correct a projected shortage of physicians,” Adashi said.

“We don’t want the school to be too big — don’t want to be a factory — or too small — need critical mass to have an impact. And right now we’re closer to too small,” said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president.

The administration is aiming to have a 96-member first-year class this fall, said Philip Gruppuso, as-

sociate dean of medicine for medical education.

That size is only four students larger than the current first-year class but 12 greater than the intended size for this year. “The aim this year was to have 84 students in the current first-year class, but the Med School had a higher yield from standard-admissions-route students than expected,” Gruppuso said.

The first year the Med School began recruiting students through normal admission channels was 2005. Previously, medical students only came to Brown through the Program in Liberal Medical Education — an eightyear program that combines an undergraduate education at Brown with the M.D. program — or other special channels.

“We’re only on the third admissions cycle. First and second time around, thousands of people were applying for 10 open application spots,” said Neel Shah ’04 MD’08, president of the Medical Student Senate. “There were rumors of people not coming to the interview because they knew they had such low chances.”

Gruppuso said he believes a 96student first-year class is the largest the Med School can currently accommodate.

The major obstacle to further immediate growth is space in the Bio-Medical Center, Gruppuso said. Other concerns include the size of the anatomy lab and donations of enough cadavers, as well as having enough small-group leaders in the pre-clinical curriculum and enough clerkship spots — particularly in family medicine and internal medicine — in the clinical years.

Some students say increasing the class size makes sense.

“Brown has excess capacity —

way more clinical faculty members than students. Many, many times more the amount,” Shah said.

Even with next year’s classsize expansion, the number of slots available to students entering through the standard admission route for the incoming first-year class will fall slightly, to the high 20s from the current 33. That reduction, Gruppuso said, is due to an unusually large PLME class of 55 students. The current first-year Med School class has 48 PLME students enrolled.

The decision three years ago to open the Med School to students through the standard admission process and the current plan to increase the class size were “in some sense separate discussions,” Spies said. “We don’t want to reduce the number of PLME students.”

The projected number of PLME students for the Med School’s class of 2012 is 50, and the projected number of students to be admitted from the standard admission route is 35 to 40, Gruppuso said.

“We’re not doing away with the PLME program. We can do both,” said John Deeley, executive dean for administration for the Division of Biology and Medicine.

While admitting that the introduction of the standard admission program was designed to boost the visibility of the Med School, administrators and students alike have emphasized the increased diversity of backgrounds and ideas brought to the Med School class by students coming from the standard admission channel. “Diversity of perspective is almost always valuable,” Spies said.

“A lot of places didn’t even know Brown had a Med School.

Opening up admissions has certainly made Brown a lot more visible and was good for strategic reasons,” Shah said.

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A CONVERSATION WITH LANCE WILLIAMS ’72 Following owing are eexcerpts from Lance Williams’ ’72 talk Tuesday night. The investigative journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle spoke about his experiences reporting on the steroid scandal in professional sports. He described his role in cultivating sources from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative and the involvement of athletes such as Barry Bonds and Marion Jones. The event was sponsored by The Herald, Alumni Relations and Campus Life and Student Services.

On how the BALCO steroid d story started ...

Sometimes, especially in San Francisco, people asked us, why did you guys at the Chronicle decide to target the Home Run King — Barry Bonds, the greatest star in San Francisco in the era? How did you guys set out to expose him, what was the grand scheme here? It just wasn’t like that at all.

This was the most organic and least planned newspaper project I’ve been on in a long time. It started because Chuck Finney, who was my partner (at the Chronicle) decided he wanted to be an editor and in the summer of 2003 transferred to the city desk. Mark (FainaruWada) was a sports writer … and wanted to do (investigative) projects. There was a slot on the investigative team and he joined before there was anything going, before the (federal agents) raided this place.

Our boss put Mark on the story not to get a project, not to “get” anybody, not to expose anybody. Mark didn’t have an assignment and our boss wanted to know what the feds who raided this nutritional supplements company were doing.

They won’t tell what they’re doing, the city desk can’t figure out what’s going on — why don’t you see if there’s a story there?

That’s how (Mark) got in on it. ... When we went, we pulled documents at first and then we heard separately that Bonds was implicated. We got the impression that we could print that some day.

On Bonds’ ex-girlfriend, one of the key sources in the story ...

Many of the people we talked to we promised confidentiality to, and I have not ever been relieved of the responsibility of keeping that promise.

I spent a long amount of time with a person on the record, Bonds’ ex-girlfriend Kim Bell, who I came to respect and like in a way. She’s a young woman … who started dating this multimillionaire sports star. At first it was great, then it went south, then he got married and she stayed with him anyway. She wound up financially wiped out

and she got mad at him, didn’t know what to do. It was in that context I met her.

The thing I liked about Kim was she came with documents.

In her case, she had kept all kinds of memorabilia from her relationship with Bonds. Even better, she had thought about suing Bonds and with a lawyer she wrote a series of letters to Bonds’ lawyer, and Bonds’ lawyer would come back with responses. And they weren’t challenging any of the factual assertions you would expect would be an insurmountable problem in trying to sort out a swearing contest between an aggrieved ex-lover and a wealthy athlete.

When I met her, I thought this was great but we would never be able to release any of this because Bonds would never acknowledge that this was his girlfriend. But she not only had documented it, she had more than one letter from Bonds’ lawyer acknowledging the relationship that went on for many years. That is what made Kim so good as a source — she came with material to back up what she said.

On BALCO’s founder, Victor Conte ...

Mr. Conte was an accounting major at a junior college. He then played bass in a rock ‘n’ roll band in the ’70s. He reinvented himself as a nutritional guru.

His business plan was to sell a supplement called ZMA. The supplement industry is a multibillion-dollar, completely unregulated industry. To differentiate his product, he needed endorsements. The way he got endorsements from celebrity athletes was providing them with a regimen … of powerful and probably undetectable steroids that would make you bigger and stronger and help you recover from injuries. He could guarantee you that you would not get you busted. Some athletes paid (for the drugs). Some athletes didn’t pay a nickel.

What he did get was publicity in the muscle magazines. He had a cover story with Bonds in Muscle and Fitness. He got an exclusive interview with Marion Jones, the track star, when at the time Vanity Fair was begging for her to be on the cover.

For Muscle and Fitness, he got basically an advertorial from Marion (because) he was providing her with powerful, effective banned drugs.

The thing could have gone on forever, but Mr. Conte is a guy with ego-gratification issues. He insisted on telling each athlete what he was giving to the other athletes. Inevitably … coaches from rival athletes heard about what he was doing. He was busted when an

elite track coach, Trevor Graham, before the national meet at Stanford in 2003, scored a syringeful of one of his drugs … and gave it to the U.S. anti-doping agency.

I studied a course at Brown called “Nature and Tragedy,” and one characteristic of the tragic hero is hubris. I think that was Mr. Conte. He just couldn’t keep his yap shut. He had to take credit for the wonderful achievements of the athletes.

On the story’s impact ...

I think the effect of the story was the public reaction … partly because we care so much about our amusements in the United States. There are guys out there that just die to have something to talk about on the radio and if you blow a story up, they go nuts. There was a megaphone effect that would bring attention to the story and eventually bring officials in. We thought our stories, combined with Jose Canseco’s book (“Juiced”), got those congressional hearings going. … We think that we helped to bring about steroid policies in prep schools in 38 states. And I guess the biggest impact of all is we got sentenced to federal prison.

On the athletes ...

I have tremendous sympathy for the athletes. I think the emphasis in the doping clean-up of sports is to put too much of the blame on people who are basically young and ultra-competitive — people who are put in an almost Darwinian situation with their jobs. Sometimes a coach will even tell (a player) to juice. … Then they get busted and it’s all on them.

I never thought that was fair. I think the proprietors of sport always have a great deal to answer for. In baseball where guys are showing up in spring training who put on 15 pounds of muscle since you saw them last, you gotta know something is going on. (Baseball officials) would ignore it, not talk to the players about the health issues.

The guys who did it, benefited.

The guys who resisted often ended up out of the game.

On the prospect of going to jail ...

I assumed we would right from the get-go. I was saying, “I can see where this is headed,” because I’m a pragmatic person. But then you get used to it. I never like to dramatize this because I know so many people who have had really bad things happen to them in their life. …

People get through much worse stuff than being thrown in jail.

— Madeleine Marecki

thanks for reading

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

BALCO reporter speaks on sports, journalism continued from page 1 been convicted of using or buying illegal steroids and Major League Baseball remains in the midst of conducting its own extensive investigation into steroid use by players led by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.

Though Bell agreed to go on the record for the story, Williams and Fainaru-Wada obtained much information from confidential sources whose identities they promised not to reveal.

Last year, both writers were sentenced to 18 months in jail, pending appeal, for refusing to comply with a federal subpoena that mandated they disclose their source for the athletes’ sealed grand jury testimony. The 18 months would have been more jail time than the four months Victor Conte, BALCO’s founder, received for his role in distributing the illegal drugs.

As a result of his experience facing persecution from the federal government, Williams said he strongly believes the nation needs a federal shield law to protect reporters from having to divulge who their confidential sources are.

“We’ve got to do something about this in the United States,” he said. “What I’m concerned about here, and what I think we all should be concerned about, is cutting off the people from independent information about their government.”

Williams also reminisced about his time on College Hill. He was not involved with journalism at Brown and considered becoming a professor after graduation. Though he eventually went to journalism school on the advice of one of his professors, he told the audience

there was no need to worry about finding a job after graduation.

“I was nothing special as a student at Brown. … I know that everybody says this, but it’s true,” Williams said. “If you can muddle through somehow, you can probably get a job and keep it. And maybe even stay out of federal prison.”

Williams’ extensive career before he began covering the BALCO story ranged from reports on Oakland’s Black Panthers to investigations into financial abuses by officials in the University of California system.

“I liked almost every part of my career in newspapers. I hate to say that cause it sounds so positive, but I (began my career) at a little paper chasing little stories and I thought that was really fun,” Williams said.

When asked for his thoughts on professional baseball after investigating the BALCO story, Williams said he was a “second-deck baseball fan” prior to becoming involved in the story and that he had hopes for the future of the war on doping.

Though Williams said he thought his and Fainaru-Wada’s reporting had a positive impact on the sport, he added that doping remains prevalent and speculated about how the era would be remembered. Much depends on the outcome of Mitchell’s official investigation into the players’ steroid use.

“How it plays out will depend on what baseball does with the Mitchell Report,” Williams said.

“It depends on whether Bonds is indicted for perjury. A lot of stuff is in the highly anticipated future right now.”

Slater home to new cooking ‘co-op’ continued from page 1 than $3,000 this semester.

Groups like these are not uncommon at Brown, said Margaret Klawunn, associate vice president for campus life and dean of student life. But she added that because such groups are not regulated by the administration, University officials do not have any record of their existence. Klawunn said she had seen this kind of cooking group before.

“In my first job with the (Sarah Doyle Women’s Center), I knew a group of students who did exactly that,” she said.

Richard Bova, senior associate dean of residential life, pointed out that though this group displays some characteristics of co-ops — namely the pooling of money — the University uses the term specifically to refer to the independent, student-owned and studentrun housing, such as the Watermyn and Finlandia co-ops.

The Slater group has met some obstacles — including a fire alarm — but most dinners turn out successfully, Spottiswoode said.

“There was only one time that it was a total failure, and we just looked at it and burst out laughing and went to the Ivy Room to get falafel,” she said.

The group holds informal meetings every Sunday and writes down cooking and cleaning assignments on a large whiteboard in Ben Mandelkern’s ’09 room, where the group eats every night.

“Two people cook every night, and one person cleans. Cleaning has been sort of an issue. It’s not fun to clean 20 dishes,” Spottiswoode said.

Spottiswoode went on to explain that the group encourages its members to do the less desirable jobs by offering weekly recognition for the “most valuable person” and “least valuable person.”

“I once got MVP for going to the kitchen and cleaning everything at three in the morning,” she said.

Members agreed that the group created a great environment. “It’s been an important part of the semester because it’s like we created a family,” Stone said.

There is a definite sense of camaraderie among the members both in and out of the kitchen. The group provides something that is missing after freshman year, said Rachel Blatt ’09. “There’s a loss of security your sophomore year,” she said.

The group hasn’t decided if it will remain active next semester, said Drew Cosbie ’08, who manages the group’s bank account. “If we had the space next semester to do it, we would love to, but I don’t think we’re going to,” he said.

For the rest of the semester, though, the group provides something to look forward to every evening. “It’s a really fun group of kids,” Irby said. “It’s nice to have this at the end of a long day. You know there will be good food and good company.”

W ORLD & N ATION WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

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Iraqi insurgents use kids to mask car bomb WASHINGTON (Los Angeles Times) — Iraqi insurgents used children to get past a Baghdad checkpoint and then blew up their vehicle with the two youngsters still in the back seat, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

The weekend attack killed the children and three bystanders, Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, an official with the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, said at a briefing.

He said the vehicle was initially stopped at the checkpoint.

“Children in the back seat lower suspicion. We let it move through,” Barbero said. “They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonated it with the children in the back. So the brutality and ruthless nature of this enemy hasn’t changed. I mean, they are just interested in slaughtering Iraqi civilians to meet their ends.”

The attack occurred near a market in the Adamiya neighborhood, a defense official said.

Military officials were unable to offer more details, including whether the adults who triggered the bomb were captured.

Overall, Barbero said, suicide bombings have become less deadly as U.S. checkpoints have become more effective at preventing bombers from reaching their targets.

Report finds oversight of refineries lax WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has a poor record of oversight of the nation’s oil and chemical refineries, says a new report on the fatal 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas.

The report by the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board said that OSHA had not done a planned comprehensive inspection of process safety at any U.S. oil refinery between 1995 and March 2005, when the Texas City explosion took place.

Investigators for the board said that OSHA has fewer than a dozen inspectors for 2,816 high-priority facilities covered by process safety standards that, if enforced, might have avoided the March 2005 accident that killed 15 workers and injured many more at BP’s Texas City refinery.

Although OSHA had investigated injuries and isolated deaths at the Texas City plant — what safety experts call “slips and trips” — it had not inspected the safety of the plant’s industrial processes since 1998, the report said, even though process failures were capable of causing catastrophic accidents.

FBI may have broken law as many as 3,000 times in data collection WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — The Justice Department’s inspector general told a committee of angry House lawmakers Tuesday that the FBI may have violated the law or government policies as many as 3,000 times since 2003 as agents secretly collected the telephone, bank and credit card records of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals residing here.

Inspector General Glenn Fine said according to the FBI’s own calculus, as many as 600 of these violations could be “cases of serious misconduct” involving the improper use of “national security letters” to compel telephone companies, banks and credit institutions to produce records.

National security letters are comparable to subpoenas but are issued directly by the bureau without court review. They largely target records of transactions rather than personal documents or conversations. An FBI tally showed that the bureau made an average of 916 such requests each week from 2003 to 2005, but Fine told the House Judiciary Committee that FBI record-keeping has been chaotic and “significantly understates” the actual use of that tool.

Satellite radio merger doesn’t get warm WASHINGTON (Los Angeles) — The chairman of the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee Tuesday blasted the proposed merger of the country’s two satellite radio providers, charging it would create a “business colossus” that would raise the prices listeners pay.

“You have every right to ask ... but it’s another thing to grant you that permission to be virtually unrivaled, unchallenged in this whole area,” said Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. “What a business! I might quit this job to go into your business.”

Kohl’s criticism underscores the hurdles Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. face in getting their merger approved by federal regulators. Although Congress has no formal role, Sirius Chief Executive Mel Karmazin, who would head the joint company, has not received a warm reception for the plan at three congressional hearings.

Kohl has been the most outspoken critic so far. But Karmazin forcefully disagreed with Kohl’s contention that Sirius and XM would wield monopoly power over satellite radio, saying that traditional radio stations, iPods, cell phones and Internet radio provided enough choices for listeners.

“There is all this competition,” Karmazin said. “We’re not talking about being a monopoly.”

Bush offers support for Attorney General

BY MICHAEL ABRAMOWITZ AND PAUL KANE WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — President Bush sought Tuesday to defuse the controversy over the firings of U.S. attorneys, offering strong support for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales while proposing to make Karl Rove and other top aides available for private interviews with congressional investigators.

The White House, however, placed limits on the kinds of questions the aides would answer and said the interviews may not be conducted under oath or with the preparation of a transcript. The conditions enraged congressional Democrats, who vowed to go ahead with plans to issue subpoenas as early as Wednesday that would compel the aides to testify.

The actions raised the likelihood of another clash between the White House and the congressional Democratic leadership, which has already been pressuring the administration to bring U.S. troops from Iraq and improve the care of wounded service members. The president also seemed eager to portray the scandal as another partisan sideshow.

Bush signaled a willingness to go to the courts if necessary to prevent his aides from giving

public testimony. He described his plan for private interviews as a reasonable balance that would give Congress the information it needs while preserving the president’s ability to receive confidential advice from the White House staff. The Justice Department also released thousands of pages of internal agency documents — though not internal White House records.

The president said some Democrats appear more interested in “scoring political points” than in fact-finding. “It will be regrettable if they choose to head down the partisan road of issuing subpoenas and demanding show trials when I have agreed to make key White House officials and documents available,” Bush told reporters at a brief news conference in the Diplomatic Reception Room.

Reaction from Hill Democrats was swift and negative. “I don’t accept his offer,” said Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “It is not constructive and it is not helpful to be telling the Senate how to do our investigation or to prejudge its outcome.”

Asked at his news conference about the declining support for Gonzales on Capitol Hill, Bush interjected, “He’s got support from me.” Bush called the attorney general earlier in the day and reaffirmed his strong backing,

aides said.

Still, Gonzales’ standing among Republicans remained shaky. Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., the No. 3 Republican in leadership, said the attorney general’s ability to lead the Justice Department had been “greatly compromised.”

“He himself should evaluate” his future, Putnam said. He added that Republicans are hesitant to come to his defense because of the surprise dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon the day after the midterm elections, despite repeated public assurances

by Bush that the secretary of defense would remain in his job.

But other Republicans said Gonzales may be firming up his position. “I assume he’s going to survive,” said Sen. Trent Lott, RMiss., the minority whip, who cautioned that the investigations needed to unearth more facts about the dismissals before final decisions are made.

The controversy centers of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — seven on Dec. 7 — a highly unusual act in the middle of a presidential term. The Justice Department and White House have offered shifting explanations for the moves, at first saying most of the prosecutors were fired for performance reasons, but later continued on page 9

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’08er works to link students, profs around the globe continued from page 1 Mass. Shepherd said his experience at the journal encouraged him to think about the production cycle of a paper publication — and its limitations.

He said he was frustrated by waiting for scholars to submit research articles, the intensity of the editing period right before publication and the costliness of printing and distribution. “That production cycle doesn’t keep as many people involved as would want to be in a different kind of cycle,” Shepherd said.

Shepherd said he realized as an intern at WGBH in Cambridge, Mass., that the Internet could be used to accelerate the production cycle for distributing ideas. While the radio station was covering the Israeli-Lebanon war, a student blogger in Lebanon contacted him online, and the student was able to talk via Skype to the radio station about his experience in the country.

“I learned you can get close to news events,” Shepherd said.

“The evolving lesson of journalism is that the more technology you have, the closer you can get to an event or place — quickly.”

“I thought, ‘I have conversed with someone who is in a completely different situation than me, and not only that, it’s completely newsworthy,’ ” Shepherd said.

“That was really inspiring to me.”

Shepherd’s Web site would make it “possible for students around the world to collaborate on the production of a publication, and each of them would have access to scholars around the world as if they were scholars at their own university,” he said.

Last month, Shepherd met with about 15 people interested in getting involved in the project. Shepherd said the meeting generated a lot of excitement, and he has since recruited other students who have technical, design, coding and video production experience as well as an interest in international relations.

Shepherd also approached James Der Derian, research professor of international studies at the Watson Institute for International Studies, for advice and support. Der Derian heads the institute’s Global Media Project, which explores “the significance of the new media landscape for major international issues,” according to its Web site.

“Henry came to me with a great idea,” Der Derian said. “I’m providing informal advice on how to find the best medium for what he’s attempting and how to package it.”

Shepherd said his idea is not entirely new, but it’s indicative of the changes that have happened on the Web in the last couple of years — namely the emergence

of online social networks and userdriven content.

The advantages of a Web site over a printed publication, he said, are that it is generally less expensive to publish and easier to encourage academics to share their knowledge. For example, a scholar who doesn’t have the time to write an article might have time to sit down and do an interview, Shepherd said.

Der Derian agreed that Shepherd’s idea is consistent with broader changes on the Internet.

“On the Web, we’re moving to something more robust and democratic in how people have access to information, produce their own video and produce their own Web sites,” he said. “Because of the increasing ubiquity of broadband Internet … and because of the literacy and fluency of users, increasingly they are becoming producers as well as consumers of media. The Web is becoming a more sophisticated tool for academic and political use.”

Shepherd and other students are still in the early stages of creating the Web site and have yet to work out some of the logistics. For example, he said students would not videotape class lectures without express permission.

“I haven’t investigated the legal side of this at all. I am going to be working with a lawyer,” Shepherd said.

Peterson critiques black leadership, white fear continued from page 1 claim racism where it does not exist in order to promote themselves — and in the process, he said, they anger black Americans and contradict the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a society in which individuals would be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“Once (King) was assassinated, Jackson and others took his dream and perverted it — they took good and turned it into evil,” Peterson said. “The battle we are fighting

has nothing to do with color and everything to do with character.”

Peterson — a conservative, nondenominational minister — was born and raised on what he described as a plantation in Alabama. He is the founder of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny — a group dedicated to, its motto proclaims, “rebuilding the family by rebuilding the man” — and author of “Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America.”

“We’re trying to wake black folks up so they can overcome their anger and move forward,” Peterson said of BOND, a nonprofit he said receives no government funding. Peterson was sharply critical of the federal government, which he called “godless” and pointed out that “prior to the civil rights movement, families were together” and helped one another without depending on the government.

Peterson, who advocates a boycott of the NAACP and hosts an annual National Day of Repudiation of Jesse Jackson in Los Angeles, attributed the rise in single motherhood, incarceration and educational discrepancy among blacks to the absence of stable, two-parent households and the tendency to blame white people for problems.

“That state of anger is destroying the black family, the black community itself,” Peterson said.

In an infrequent invocation of religion in his speech, Peterson said “there’s so much anger between the black man and the black woman that I think it’s going to take Jesus Christ to come and restore” peace in relationships.

Peterson went on to criticize the use of the term “African American,” which he called “ridiculous in itself — because if you’re born in America, you’re an American.”

Peterson also spoke of the presence of “white fear” in American

society — white people, he said, have become intimidated by the notion of being labeled racist or threatened with lawsuits for speaking out about issues related to black America.

“White Americans have allowed themselves to be intimidated” into not speaking their minds about race, Peterson said. “White folks who are living today are not responsible for the past. … They need to get rid of the false guilt that they have,” he added.

The theme of dwelling on the past became a major issue in the heated question-and-answer session that followed Peterson’s lecture. In response to a question about his tendency to speak about black America in the third person, Peterson said, “I don’t identify as a black man. I identify as an American, a Christian, a conservative and a Republican. My color doesn’t matter to me — it gets me nowhere. It’s my character that counts.”

“What good is it doing you to identify with your color?” he added, followed by several seconds of silence from the crowd.

A question responding to Peterson’s criticism of black welfare families noted the Wagner Act, past policies of the Federal Housing Authority and other forms of government handouts that the questioner said favor white Americans.

“Intelligence is overrated,” Peterson responded. “What we need more of is wisdom, because if you were a wise man, you would let the past be gone and live today.”

When the same student noted that accumulated privilege would still be inherited by future white generations, Peterson dismissed the student, saying, “I’ve already wasted too much time on you.”

The lecture was organized by the College Republicans and cosponsored by the Young America Foundation and the Department of Africana Studies.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

Bush offers support for Attorney General continued from page 7 acknowledging that some were dismissed in part because they failed to support the administration’s agenda.

Democrats are also suspicious that partisan politics may have had a hand in the dismissals, since a number of the prosecutors were involved in probing corruption by GOP officials. One of the e-mails released last week showed that Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, had asked in early 2005 about a plan to fire U.S. attorneys. While the e-mail does not suggest Rove’s point of view, Democrats want to put him under oath to find out.

The White House position is that the administration did a poor job communicating the reasons for the dismissals but that the president was well within his rights to fire presidentially appointed prosecutors. Bush said Tuesday that “there is no indication that anybody did anything improper.”

In a letter to lawmakers, White House counsel Fred Fielding indicated he would make four White House aides available for private interviews — Rove, former counsel Harriet Miers, deputy counsel William Kelley and political aide J. Scott Jennings. He said the interviews would be limited to communications between the White House and people outside the White House about the request for resignations of the U.S. attorneys, including communications with congressional offices.

But Bush indicated a fierce commitment to making sure Rove and his aides do not testify in public, laying down a clear line beyond which he said Congress should not go. Although past administrations have allowed White House aides to testify before Congress — and Bush himself per-

mitted his then-homeland security adviser Tom Ridge to testify — Bush said he was worried about setting “precedents that would make it difficult for somebody to walk into the Oval Office and say, ‘Mr. President, here’s what’s on my mind.’ ” Democrats were upset that under the Bush plan, the interviews would not be conducted under oath or with a transcript. Without being under oath, aides would not face the same level of criminal charges if they were found to have intentionally lied to Congress, they said.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the head of Judiciary subcommittee leading the Senate probe, contended that some recording of the interviews would be needed to prove the lesser charge. “Without a transcript it would be almost meaningless,” he said.

The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee was more circumspect about the White House offer. “I would prefer to have the interviews in public,” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said in a statement. “But it is more important to get the information promptly than to have months or years of litigation. If we are dissatisfied with the information provided in the manner offered by the president, we can always issue subpoenas.”

Legal experts say previous clashes between Congress and the White House on such matters have typically been settled before they reach the courthouse.

While Republicans on the Judiciary Committees are expected to object to issuing subpoenas, they are powerless to stop them.

The chairmen of the full committees, Rep. John Conyers, DMich., and Leahy, have indicated they will not formally issue subpoenas while talks continue with Fielding.

M. tennis goes 0-3 on trip continued from page 12 cisively, the losses were hard to swallow. “We went in with some expectations,” Ratnam said. “It was a tough transition. We played easier schools the past couple weeks, but then we ran into stiff competition.”

During spring break, the Bears will travel to Boca Raton, Fla., for a match against Florida Atlantic University on March 26, compete

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against North Carolina State University on March 30 in Massachusetts and then return to Providence to host Wake Forest University on April 1. These matches will be Brown’s last before the Ivy League season begins.

“It’s important for us to have this kind of experience before the Ivies,” Scott said. “That’s when it really all has to come together, when it’s most important for us to play well.”

Trudeau: Picks for the Final Four continued from page 12 er in the 12-and-under leagues that just dominated the boards without really having to try.

The Hoyas should put up a fight against the Tar Heals in the Elite Eight, but as good as Hibbert and Jeff Green are, they are lacking a true go-to scorer and someone who will absolutely refuse to let the team lose.

I have No. 1 OSU falling to both No. 2 Memphis and No. 3 Texas A&M in the Elite Eight of two brackets that I filled out, but how often do No. 1 seeds slip up

twice? The Buckeyes should have lost to No. 9 Xavier but had one of those insane final three minutes that featured several huge shots, lots of luck and some bonehead plays by the Musketeers. The entire Buckeye team has already experienced that feeling where it knew it was going to lose, then escaped with a stunning overtime win. Ohio State won’t want to experience it again.

Besides, you can’t bet against a team whose best player, Greg Oden, is still the consensus number-one pick in the NBA draft — despite Kevin Durant’s historic

freshman year — looks 45 years old and could eat a baby without surprising anyone.

Okay, so I picked all No. 1 seeds, which might seem lame at first glance, but it has still never happened before. Do my predictions make me the most courageous sports columnist ever?

Probably, but most columnists don’t have superpowers. Go-gogadget end column!

Tom Trudeau ’09 also boldly predicts the Suns, Spurs and Mavs will make the playoffs.

Table tennis team heads to Nationals T continued from page 12 tion from national powerhouses such as Princeton and Texas Wesleyan University. Whereas Texas Wesleyan has four coaches and recruits top-ranked players, Brown practices on a carpeted surface (official matches take place on a hardwood surface), has only a few tables to train on and will be getting its first official uniforms in Ohio, courtesy of table tennis company Killerspin. Though the team recently received Category III status funding from the Undergraduate Council of Students, many of the club’s costs are out-of-pocket expenses.

“We are pretty realistic about our expectations. I think we all just want to have fun but at the same time see if we can win a couple matches,” Chan said.

Nevertheless, it has been a season of unparalleled success for the table tennis team, which started three years ago as a mostly informal venture. Chan founded the club during his freshman year with a friend. As the team has grown and become more successful, its organization has become more formalized.

This year, under Bianchi’s guid-

ance, the club instituted a formal training regimen — consisting partly of running around the tables — and began to incorporate a number of drills into its practices. Frequent practice matches with Bianchi also helped elevate several players’ games, Chan said.

Team members said the table tennis club has provided them with a meaningful and enjoyable bonding experience.

“It is a serious league, but it is still a really enjoyable thing to do, and we have a great time,” Chan said.

Team members said their experiences with the club have helped them connect to the Brown community. Seth Izen ’08, who transferred to Brown this year from Williams College, said he missed the sport at Williams, where there is no club team. He started a team at his high school and was eager to begin competing formally again after arriving on College Hill.

Ahuja is from Thailand and is the team’s highest-ranked player after Bianchi. He said participating on the club tennis team helped him transition to college life in America.

Four of the team’s six members

are international students. Shou Yi Poon ’09 is from Singapore, and Bibek Karki ’08 is from Nepal. Poon and Ahuja both played pingpong in high school and said high school matches in their home countries were extremely competitive and taken very seriously.

Ahuja said pingpong is one of the most popular sports in Thailand.

“In Thailand, table tennis is much more serious and formal than it is here. You can find a table tennis match on TV all of the time,” he said.

Bianchi agreed. “The thing that pingpong can do is take a lot of different people from different countries, and they can all understand each other through the sport,” he said.

Bianchi said he is disappointed he won’t be able to be with the team for the national competition, but his time with the team has provided him with some of his best memories of his stay in the United States.

“I am really happy for the whole team,” he said. “It was great to play with them this year, and I think it will be a great experience for them at the Nationals.”

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 10

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

Pre-registration gets serious Pre-registration has long been treated as something of a joke at Brown.

When students find white cardstock registration cards stuffed in their mailboxes in the middle of a semester, few put extensive thought and careful planning into their course selections for the following semester.

(Instead, many quickly jot down the codes for several limited enrollment courses they might be interested in — not a bad strategy when getting into seminars resembles a battle in which those with the foresight to pre-register have the high ground — without actually mapping out what they may want their next course load to look like.) But with the advent of Banner, students may need to adopt a new battle plan.

Though we think some students’ view that Banner is the death knell for the New Curriculum is irrational or paranoid, it’s true that Banner — whether through the impermeable online course catalog or the enforcement of registration restrictions — will alter how students pick courses and, thus, possibly how we navigate the curriculum.

Last week, Banner’s impact became evident when the College Curriculum Council approved firm registration caps for a slew of classes that previously had either unenforced caps or no limit at all. Banner now gives these enrollment ceilings teeth. Before, anyone could pre-register and it was up to a professor to sort out who’s in and who’s out at the beginning of the semester. Now, only those students who pre-register before Banner hits its limit get in. Everyone else, whether they wanted to pre-register or simply wandered in during shopping period, is at a clear disadvantage.

More significantly, these limits aren’t just being used for seminars, expository writing courses and other traditionally capped classes. Lecture courses — especially in political science and history, disciplines that draw students from a range of concentrations — are getting capped, too.

How the introduction of Banner’s hard course caps will play out remains to be seen, but it’s not hard to imagine that it would shift the primary course selection time from shopping period to pre-registration. Though there may be benefits to academic planning that minimizes shopping period chaos, we’re not sure students, or administrators, realize just what’s in store.

Spring reflection With only three days until spring break, many of us are either preparing for the stereotypical trip to Cancun or an obscure Bahaman island, or we’re heading south to New Orleans to serve some of America’s hardest hit communities.

Though spring break may most often be considered the perfect time to perfect that tan, it also marks the fast approach of the end of another valued year on College Hill. This sobering reality that post-college life draws closer may cause us to reflect on how we’ve spent the past semester or year and what we’ve left undone.

Hopefully, everybody enjoys spring break, whether it’s spent MTVstyle, doing good or simply recharging. But those of us who might have been bogged down — by a reading load, problem sets, summer plans or a job hunt — will use spring break to remember all that Brown has to offer us in and out of the classroom.

Use spring break to relax and have a good time, but most importantly use it to gain some perspective and return to Brown ready to actually go to class and enjoy it in those last few weeks before finals. Whether filled with thoughtful self-reflection or behavior that would land you in rehab if continued after graduation, spring break is a good reminder that our time here is slipping away. After working hard enough to land on College Hill as freshmen, we owe it to ourselves to make the most of it.

T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Editors-in-Chief Eric Beck Mary-Catherine Lader

Executive Editors Allison Kwong Ben Leubsdorf

Arts & Culture Editor Arts & Culture Editor Features Editor Features Editor Metro Editor Metro Editor News Editor Opinions Editor Opinions Editor Sports Editor Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor Asst. Sports Editor

PHOTO Eunice Hong Christopher Bennett Jacob Melrose

Photo Editor Photo Editor Sports Photo Editor

LETTERS Townsend ’09 wrong on College task force To the Editor: I agree with Zachary Townsend ’09 (“College task force should have 6 students, 6 profs,” Mar. 13) that the Task Force on Undergraduate Education has been assigned an ambitious curriculum review with inadequate time to complete it. However, I would stop short of concluding that its recommendations are predetermined and biased toward the addition of requirements because of the absence of Harvardian subcommittees and a greater number of participants. Such speculation is not useful — it devalues student involvement and can limit its influence when we have little reason to be so discouraged.

Second, Townsend’s argument for the inclusion of more students should not have leaned on a notion of equal representation that decries anything less as “token representation.” While students have much to offer, and may in fact be in a better position to answer

many task force questions, faculty do determine the curriculum at universities. It was true here even in 1969. For this reason, the argument for more students should simply be that our perspectives would provide for better, more informed recommendations about undergraduate education at Brown. The entire faculty will ultimately vote on such recommendations without students — now is the time to be heard. Six students would have been reasonable and preferable, sure, but let’s get behind the three capable representatives appointed last week. They are going to need to speak up on our behalf.

David Beckoff ’08 Student Representative, College Curriculum Council March 19

Pay attention to Augustus To the Editor:

Senior Editors Stephen Colelli Sonia Saraiya BUSINESS

EDITORIAL Lydia Gidwitz Lindsey Meyers Stephanie Bernhard Stu Woo Simmi Aujla Sara Molinaro Ross Frazier Jacob Schuman Michal Zapendowski Peter Cipparone Justin Goldman Sarah Demers Erin Frauenhofer Madeleine Marecki

A L E X A N D E R G A R D - M U R R AY

General Manager Mandeep Gill General Manager Ally Ouh Executive Manager Darren Ball Executive Manager Dan DeNorch Laurie-Ann Paliotti Sr. Advertising Manager Office Manager Susan Dansereau

I was more than a little disappointed when I looked at the front page of Tuesday’s Herald. The caption under the lead picture referred to the statue of Augustus, first emperor of Roman Empire, simply as “the statue on Wriston Quadrangle.”

The failure to identify this statue, so centrally located in the heart of campus, left me wondering how many students take the time to learn who created all of the sculptures around campus, such as the excellent Calder piece behind Hope College. I mean, I know this

is a generation of apathy, but almost everyone on campus passes this statue every day.

Next time you walk to the Sharpe Refectory, take a moment to examine the statue of Augustus, and familiarize yourself with one of the most well-known images from antiquity. Even without knowledge of the period, the power that this statue exudes is hard to ignore.

Adam Kriesberg ’08 March 20

PRODUCTION Design Editor Steve DeLucia Copy Desk Chief Chris Gang Graphics Editor Mark Brinker Graphics Editor Roxanne Palmer Web Editor Luke Harris POST- MAGAZINE Hillary Dixler Melanie Duch Taryn Martinez Rajiv Jayadevan Mindy Smith

Managing Editor Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor

Steve DeLucia, Sophie Elsner, Designers Ayelet Brinn, Ted Lamm, Cici Matheny, Copy Editors Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Oliver Bowers, Zachary Chapman, Chaz Firestone, Kristina Kelleher, Debbie Lehmann, Scott Lowenstein, James Shapiro, Michael Skocpol Staff Writers Susana Aho, Taylor Barnes, Brianna Barzola, Evan Boggs, Irene Chen, Nicole Dungca, Catherine Goldberg, Isabel Gottlieb, Thi Ho, Rebecca Jacobson, Tsvetina Kamenova, Franklin Kanin, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Zachary McCune, Nathalie Pierrepont, Alexander Roehrkasse, Jessica Rotondi, Marielle Segarra, Robin Steele, Allissa Wickham Sports Staff Writers Amy Ehrhart, Kaitlyn Laabs, Eliza Lane, Kathleen Loughlin, Megan McCahill, Marco Santini, Tom Trudeau, Steele West Business Staff Dana Feuchtbaum, Kent Holland, Alexander Hughes, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Viseth San, Kaustubh Shah, Jon Spector, Robert Stefani, Lily Tran, Lindsay Walls Design Staff Brianna Barzola, Jihan Chao, Aurora Durfee, Sophie Elsner, Christian Martell, Matthew McCabe, Ezra Miller Photo Staff Stuart Duncan-Smith, Austin Freeman, Tai Ho Shin Copy Editors Ayelet Brinn, Catherine Cullen, Erin Cummings, Karen Evans, Jacob Frank, Ted Lamm, Lauren Levitz, Cici Matheny, Alex Mazerov, Ezra Miller, Joy Neumeyer, Madeleine Rosenberg, Lucy Stark, Meha Verghese

CORRECTIONS POLICY The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

COMMENTAR Y POLICY The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR POLICY Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed.

ADVER TISING POLICY The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

O PINIONS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 11

To serve the Providence community, Brown must better fund MAT

BY ALEXANDRA PALMER, JESSICA COOK, KRISTINE LAPIERRE, CLARA WEBB GUEST COLUMNISTS When the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice released its final report in October, it specifically addressed Brown’s relationship to the surrounding community and public schools. In the recommendation to dedicate University resources to improving the quality of education for the children of Rhode Island, the committee proposed “increased funding to Brown’s Master’s of Arts in Teaching program, including full-tuition waivers for students who commit themselves to working for at least three years in local public schools.” In the much anticipated response to the report, the University announced the creation of Urban Education Fellowships that will “offer free tuition each year to up to 10 admitted students who, after receipt of a Master’s Degree in Urban Education Policy or a Master of Arts in Teaching, serve urban public schools in Providence and surrounding areas for a minimum of three years.” The program will begin in the 20082009 academic year.

As four of the 28 graduate students currently enrolled in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, we wish to express our appreciation for Brown’s commitment to supporting teacher education by allocating more resources to future teachers in this program. At the same time, we feel compelled to point out that if the University is truly committed to upholding the recommendations of the committee, it is vital to

realize that this is only the first step toward fully living up to the report’s recommendations. Though 10 fellowships make a significant difference, their addition is not enough to allow the program to grow. If Brown wishes to make a genuine commitment to creating and funding excellent and well-qualified teachers who will go on to be leaders in the Providence public schools and beyond, the program needs more support. The pro-

We have significant ties to the Providence community. Two of us were born and raised in the Providence area and graduated from Classical High School in Providence and East Providence High School. Two of us earned our undergraduate degrees at Brown. All four of us are doing our student teaching at local public schools, including Hope High School, Central High School and Blackstone Academy Charter School

When an elite institution like Brown makes an investment in a socially responsible profession like teaching, it sets the standard for other institutions of higher learning and can affect public education nationally. gram’s potential is not being fully realized because of declining resources.

We chose to attend Brown’s MAT program because of our desire to receive a high-quality education in order to one day make a difference in struggling urban schools.

in Pawtucket. We have seen first-hand the impact the MAT program can make on the surrounding public schools. Walk into any of these schools and you will meet MAT graduates at every level of teaching and administration who are highly respected by the education community.

Given the wish of many MATs to serve the local community, it’s unfortunate that in recent years the University’s financial commitment to teacher education has diminished, resulting in shrinking financial aid funding and markedly smaller enrollment.

To cover the cost of attending the MAT program, each of us has taken out more loans for this one-year program than for all four years of our undergraduate education. In last year’s admission cycle, many qualified applicants declined admission and instead chose other programs comparable to Brown’s — for example, Harvard, Yale, Duke and Tufts universities’ — which offered more competitive financial aid packages.

We sincerely hope that President Simmons’ recommendations signify a change in the direction and priorities of the University administration. Under the leadership of Ted Sizer, from 1984-1996, Brown’s education department became a nationally recognized leader in education reform, a reputation it is increasingly unable to live up to as funding has decreased. An exemplary teacher education program may never bring the prestige, donations and financial return that other graduate programs promise. Yet, when an elite institution like Brown makes an investment in a socially responsible profession like teaching, it sets the standard for other institutions of higher learning and can affect public education nationally. Brown has the funds, knowledge and resources to live up to its image as a socially conscious and engaged community.

Alexandra Palmer ‘06 GS, Jessica Cook ’06 GS, Kristine Lapierre GS and Clara Webb GS are in the Master of Arts in Teaching program.

Coulter culture

BY CALEB KARPAY GUEST COLUMNIST

Liberals and conservatives alike awe at the deterioration of public discourse in this country and claim it signals the downfall of our republic. Liberals blame Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, while conservatives blame “The Daily Show” and Michael Moore. Neither side adds much to the debate other than fuel to the fire.

Is there actually any merit to this criticism from right and left? There is a notion that America used to be made up of respectable statesmen appealing to a respectable public. But, as Donald Rumsfeld put it, “democracy is messy” — a comment that applies equally to Iraq and the United States — and so is freedom of expression. From the beginning of U.S. history, politicians such as Thomas Jefferson have been accused, often by reporters such as James Callender, of moral crimes such as sleeping with their slaves.

More recently, Bill Clinton was accused of committing a number of acts with various women, which I had to ask my parents at the time to explain. In the cases of Jefferson and Clinton, allegations initially considered outlandish slander proved to be at least partially true with hindsight.

Yet Ann Coulter’s recent and not very subtle implication that John Edwards is gay — “faggot” was her word of choice — stands out, even against the backdrop of this time-honored tradition of political assault. Even in the pugnacious world of conservative journalism, this charge stood out.

This accusation threw Edwards’ campaign into panic mode. That in itself should be the story — that being called gay is still a serious insult, not just on the playground but in “grown-up” politics.

It’s one thing for the chairman of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, to say homosexuality is “immoral.” We may not like to hear these things, much less from important figures, but General Pace was merely expressing his own belief, not hurling unfounded statements about a married man. Ann Coulter’s comment raises true questions about abusing, or at least misusing, the right to free speech.

It might be possible that Coulter knows something we don’t, as James Callender did about Jefferson. But more likely, she’s doing what she has always done, and what has made her famous: attacking liberals, pro-

the efficacy of figures such as Coulter is, when they strike one cheek to “offer also the other,” as a wise leader said a few thousand years ago.

Her remarks, and her style, are not out of line with American history — and that suggests our republic can withstand this kind of slander. However, Edwards’ campaign couldn’t resist overreacting. Its Web site says: “Ann Coulter’s use of an anti-gay slur yesterday was un-American and indefensible.” Calling someone a “faggot,” no matter how anti-gay you are, isn’t in the same league as calling someone un-Ameri-

Coulter is a normal citizen, just with an oversized soapbox. Denounce her all you want — in the end, it just gives her more attention and ammunition. voking a backlash and then lashing back against the backlash. I’m sure this whole affair will lead to a very good book (she’s already written one called “Slander”).

We shouldn’t rush to condemn her remarks, as Edwards’ campaign did. Were Ann Coulter an elected representative, or campaigning to become one, her slanderous libel of Edwards would be an issue of public concern.

But Coulter is a normal citizen, just with an oversized soapbox. Denounce her all you want — in the end, it just gives her more attention and ammunition. She thrives off of liberal overreaction. The only way to lessen

can. Coulter simply called someone gay — something countless people do every day, even here at Brown. But Edwards’ team decided to channel Joe McCarthy by suggesting Coulter’s words have no place in America or in its inner debate.

It is this kind of mutual attacking that makes money for politicians. For Coulter, it sells books, even though her Web sites lost ads from Verizon. Edwards, meanwhile, used Coulter’s remark as an excuse to raise $100,000 of “Coulter Cash” for his campaign. Coulter would have been wise not to say what she said, and Edwards’ people would’ve been wiser to be more tactful

and not denounce her statement the way they did. Some would say that at least one of these verbal assailants is violating the rules of decency that must be followed to hold our liberal society together. While there’s nothing unconstitutional about this (nor should there be), perhaps this country would at least function better if we were all a bit more courteous.

As I’ve explained with two prominent examples — Jefferson with his slaves and Clinton with his interns — presidents can still function while their dirty laundry is aired publicly. But what about presidential candidates? If you don’t believe what the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” claimed, you would say that a small group slandered John Kerry and ended up with inordinate influence over the campaign. Or you could simply say that this is the kind of attack all presidents have to deal with. Kerry could possibly have addressed the accusations, defused the situation and ultimately used it to his advantage.

Surely, this is not an easy thing to do, but shouldn’t the future leader of the free world be able to brush off some nasty verbal attacks, especially if they are false?

Some would say slander, of the Coulter variety, only divides the country along lines that have nothing to do with good governance. That is why it is the role of politicians to skillfully move beyond the mudslinging and show that they care more about their country than their reputation.

As long as the United States remains free and open, people are going to say and believe a whole variety of strange things.

The President’s job is to suggest, but not demand, a greater vision for the nation.

And if they can’t do this on the campaign trail, how can we expect they will in office?

Caleb Karpay ’08 asks not what he can do for his country, but what his country can do for him.

S PORTS W EDNESDAY WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

PAGE 12

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Tru picks for the Final Four Rumor has it that after UCLA’s 54-49 win over Indiana Saturday night, Arron Afflalo called his father and said, “Hire the party planner, book Jay-Z and buy me a sports car, Pops. I’m goin’ to the Sweet Sixteen!” Afterwards, Arron’s friends were quotTom Trudeau ed as sayTru Story ing (while fighting for position in front of a camera), “Oh my God, that was, like, the illest game ever. Arron looked so good tonight. I’m mad jealous.”

Yes sir, Arron, not only did your parents spell your name wrong, but you’re also two games away from getting back to the Final Four.

Looking at this year’s bracket to date, it makes me wonder if everyone really overthunked each game. Hindsight is 20/20, which is why if I could have one superpower it would be hindsight, but there really haven’t been many surprises. All of the top seeds are alive, and Wisconsin is the lone two-seed to fall, while No. 3 Washington State, clearly the weakest of the higher seeds in the tournament, was the only three-seed to lose. Could this be the year that all four of the top seeds reach the Final Four?

In the Midwest bracket you have to like top-seeded Florida.

Last year’s champion retained all its top players, had by far the easiest road to the Final Four even before Kammron Taylor, a.k.a.

Chris Rock, and the No. 2 Badgers fell to No. 7 UNLV, and will likely have its biggest challenge from the less-than-mighty No. 3 Oregon Ducks. Although, Oregon might have a chance if Aaron “Way-to-spell-your-name-cor-

rectly” Brooks remembers that ducks fly together. Flying V. Moving slightly more west to the West bracket, No. 2 UCLA has something of a home court advantage because the games will be played in California. But it also has to win two tough games, starting with No. 3 Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, No. 1 Kansas is matched up against No. 4 Southern Illinois, whose roster has been absolutely devastated since the loss of super star Renaldo Balkman to the NBA draft.

(Take that, Isiah Thomas!)

A head-to-head match-up in the Elite Eight between Kansas and UCLA is a toss-up, but I’ll take the Jayhawks to move on to the Final Four because of their significantly superior regularseason point differential and because they are less likely to lose in the Sweet Sixteen.

In the East bracket, plenty of people forgot to use their hindsight superpowers to anticipate that in order for the much anticipated No. 1 UNC vs. No. 4 Texas match-up to take place, the Longhorns would have to beat Reggie Bush and No. 5 Southern California … wait, what? USC has a basketball program now? Screw that. UNC, probably the most talented team in the field, should have no problem overpowering Matt Leinart n’ Co. No. 6 Vanderbilt has had a nice run and showed that it can beat elite teams in its regularseason win over Florida, but it won’t be able to get past No. 2 Georgetown, which might have the most impressive combination of size and athleticism in the NCAA. Watching 7-foot 2inch Roy Hibbert grab offensive rebounds over opposing centers without ever leaving the ground is reminiscent of the one six-footcontinued on page 9

Table tennis pads successful season with trip to Nationals

Courtesy of Seth Izen

The table tennis team is headed to the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association championship competition after a 14-0 season.

BY ZACHARY CHAPMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

An outside observer who stumbled into Andrews Dining Hall on Sunday afternoon and saw the carpet covered in orange and white pingpong balls may have surmised that a group of students was preparing early for Spring Weekend festivities.

But with an overhand smash that sent his opponent lunging, Sunny Ahuja ’09 soon made it clear that the facility was being used for a more constructive purpose.

While most students were fixated on March Madness or a weekend’s worth of homework, the Brown club table tennis team turned the dimly lit confines of Andrews Dining Hall into a makeshift pingpong arena as it put in some final preparation before its inaugural visit to the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association championship competition at Ohio State University on March 29.

Brown will take its perfect 140 record to Columbus to compete against top teams from around the country in the round-robin, multi-

Courtesy of Seth Izen

day tournament consisting of 24 teams.

Despite its considerable success this year, the club will likely be playing the role of spoiler in Ohio. The New England division of the NCTTA is not known as one of the stronger national divisions, and Brown will be without its star player-coach, Bruno Bianchi GS, a visiting student who has finished his studies at Brown and returned home to Italy Tuesday. The team blossomed under Bianchi’s leadership — last year’s record was 3-9 — and players agreed the team will not be the same in his absence. Bianchi was 15-0 in singles

play on the season, losing only four of 49 games in which he played.

Bianchi also managed to work pingpong into his academic work.

He studied in the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, and a key part of his work was an experiment he conducted testing the relationship between pingpong and visual perception.

“Obviously we won’t be the same without Bruno,” said Captain Steven Chan ’07. “He can pretty much crush everyone on our team.”

Brown will face tough competicontinued on page 9

Southern trip not-so-hospitable for m. tennis

BY ERIN FRAUENHOFER ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

Jacob Melrose / Herald File Photo

Saurabh Kohli ’08 secured the lone point for the men’s tennis team at this weekend’s Blue Gray National Tennis Classic.

Following four straight wins over unranked opponents, the men’s tennis team traveled to Montgomery, Ala., last week to compete against ranked teams in the Blue Gray National Tennis Classic. No. 59 Brown dropped a 4-0 decision to No. 22 University of Tulsa, fell 41 to No. 31 Texas Tech University and lost a 4-0 match to the No. 67 California State University, Fresno.

“This weekend was important for us to learn how to compete with some of the better teams in the country,” said Joe Scott ’08.

“We got a lot of good examples of really strong teams and how they perform on big stages.”

The Bears gave up their first doubles point of the season in the match against Tulsa. At second doubles, the 30th-ranked duo of cocaptain Eric Thomas ’07 and Basu Ratnam ’09 fell 8-3 to No. 41 Diego Camacho and Ross Cunningham.

Zack Pasanen ’07 and Saurabh Kohli ’08 had a closer match against Andy Connelly and Lucques Maasdorp at third doubles, but they lost 8-5 to give the Golden Hurricane the doubles point.

The Tulsa squad then won

three singles matches to claim the victory. At third singles, Thomas dropped a 6-3, 6-2 match to Ricardo Soriano. Meanwhile, at fi fth singles, Pasanen narrowly lost the first set to Cunningham by a score of 7-6, then fell 6-3 in the second set. Noah Gardner ’09 suffered a 6-0, 6-2 loss to Camacho at sixth singles.

The remaining three singles matches — which the Bears were in good positions to win — were not completed, as the four points clinched victory for the Golden Hurricane. At second singles, Ratnam was leading Federico Soriano 7-6, 2-1, while at fourth singles, Kohli had taken his first set 7-6.

“I played pretty well, but we just ran out of time,” Ratnam said. “The match against Tulsa was closer than the score indicated.”

The next day, against Texas Tech, the Bears dropped four singles matches and won one. The first three losses came at second, third and sixth singles as Ratnam, Thomas and Gardner fell in straight sets. At fourth singles, Kohli gave the Bears their only win of the weekend, defeating Michael Breler 6-4, 7-5.

With the score at 3-1, the outcome of the first singles match decided whether the Bears would re-

main in play. Co-captain Dan Hanegby ’07 lost the first set to Dimitrio Martinez 6-2, then bounced back to win the second set 6-2. The third set was close, but Hanegby ultimately dropped the set 6-4 to give the Red Raiders the victory.

“We didn’t play our best,” Scott said. “We could have played a lot better.”

In their final match of the competition, the Bears again came up short in doubles play. At first doubles, Hanegby and Chris Lee ’09 fell 8-4, and at second doubles, Thomas and Ratnam dropped a close 8-6 match, giving Fresno State the doubles point.

The Bears took straight-set losses in singles to finish off the loss.

Ratnam fell to Mirko Zapletal 6-2, 6-0 at second singles, and Pasanen lost 7-5, 6-1 at fi fth singles. Scott dropped the sixth singles match to Tejesvi Mollinedo by a score of 62, 6-4 to complete the Bulldogs’ 4-0 victory.

“It was my first big match,” Scott said. “I think I played well, but I didn’t compete well. I didn’t figure out a way to win. That’s what we all have to learn how to do for the Ivy League season.”

For a team that usually wins decontinued on page 9