Tuesday, April 17, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXLII, No. 52

PRIL

VP for int’l affairs search narrowed to shortlist

BY MICHAEL SKOCPOL SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The field of candidates to be Brown’s first vice president for international affairs has been narrowed to a list of 8 to 10, members of the search committee told The Herald.

On-campus interviews of those candidates should be finished by April 19, said Assistant Provost Shelley Stephenson, who serves on the search committee. Following a second round of campus visits by a narrowed field of three to five candidates, the committee hopes to make a choice by early May, Stephenson said, though the selection would not necessarily be announced immediately.

The creation of a new vice-presi-

continued on page 6

SPORTS

When the weathermen were wrong about yesterday’s forecast of heavy rains and strong winds, no one could have been happier than Kathleen Loughlin ’07 and Kevin Sieff ’07, who were competing in the 111th Boston Marathon.

“The weather wasn’t as bad as predicted,” Sieff said. “In the beginning, there was a light drizzle, and the wind wasn’t bad. Towards the end, the temperature dropped, and the wind picked up, but it wasn’t as bad as we expected it to be.”

The day before, marathon officials had distributed handouts announcing a Weather Alert and Advisory for Participants in order to prepare runners for what were predicted to be the worst weather

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

SPRING NOR’EASTER

dential position is a central component of the University’s formal internationalization effort. The initiative kicked off in October 2006 with the appointment of an internationalization committee, chaired

by Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98, to propose ways Brown can improve its international profile.

The vice president for international affairs search committee is one of seven working groups that have been formed under the auspices of the internationalization committee. The others — focusing on such fields as global health and curriculum, language instruction and study abroad — will present possible areas of focus to the parent committee beginning in late

Loughlin ’07 and Sieff ’07 run 111th Boston Marathon

BY ERIN FRAUENHOFER ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

17, 2007

conditions in the marathon’s history. Athletes were warned that the expected mix of heavy rainfall, severe wind and low temperatures would increase their risk of developing hypothermia.

But the runners were in for a nice surprise. “The weather held off for us, which was incredibly lucky, considering what they were predicting,” Loughlin said.

Nevertheless, the cold temperature, light rain and wind did take their toll on Loughlin, who completed the marathon in 3:34:57.

“I wanted to run it in 3:30, so this was a little slower with the weather conditions, and the course continued on page 8

ADOCH kicks off with stricter alcohol policy

Chris Bennett / Herald

Heavy winds late Sunday night apparently felled the Harrison Kravis ‘94 memorial tree, which was situated inside the Van Wickle Gates on the Front Green.

Gender gap at Brown reflects national trend

BY JAMES SHAPIRO SENIOR STAFF WRITER

In line with a national trend, women outnumber men in terms of applicants to Brown, those accepted to the College and undergraduates enrolled.

The admitted class of 2011 was 53 percent female, while the current undergraduate population is 52 percent female. Women made up an even greater proportion of the applicant pool — 59 percent of applicants to the College this year were female, down slightly from 60 percent last year.

Women have a lower acceptance rate than men do primarily because of low female representation in certain disci-

33 dead after shooting rampage at Virginia Tech

plines, said Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73. “As we shift our emphasis slightly to science and engineering in the admission process, that tends to be more male-heavy in the applicant pool than some of the other disciplines,” Miller said, adding that Brown is “looking for female scientists and engineers.”

The higher percentage of women at Brown mirrors a broader national trend. In 1970, women made up 42 percent of the U.S. undergraduate population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Department of Education. That fig-

BY IAN SHAPIRA AND TOM JACKMAN WASHINGTON POST

continued on page 4

RUMBLE IN THE REFECTORY

BY MARIELLE SEGARRA S TAFF WRITER

A Day on College Hill, Brown’s annual two-day program for students admitted to the incoming first-year class and their parents, kicks off today with a stricter drug and alcohol policy to deter prospective first-years from abusing alcohol.

ADOCH, which is co-sponsored by the Admission Office and the Bruin Club, seeks to give prospective students a sense of the undergraduate experience at Brown — whether academic, athletic, extracurricular or otherwise.

At least 947 students and 756 continued on page 4

INSIDE:

3

ARTS & CULTURE

Chris Bennett / Herald

Presidential candidates for the Undergraduate Council of Students debated in the Sharpe Refectory Friday evening. Voting begins today.

UCS CAMPAIGN PROFILES AND MORE NEWS, SEE PAGE 7

IVY FILM FESTIVAL Doug Liman ’88 discussed how Brown helped prepare him for Hollywood in the keynote speech of the Ivy League Film Festival

www.browndailyherald.com

7 CAMPUS NEWS

UCS CANDIDATE PROFILES The Herald profiles the candidates ffor the Undergraduate Council of Students’ presidency and vice presidency

19 OPINIONS

FLAWED GROUP TACTICS? Ben Bernstein ‘09 argues two new advocacy groups on campus aren’t getting support because they’re using the wrong tactics

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

BLACKSBURG, Va. — An outburst of gunfire at a Virginia Tech dormitory, followed two hours later by a ruthless rampage at a classroom building, killed 32 students, faculty and staff and injured about 30 others Monday in the deadliest shooting attack in the nation’s history.

The shooter, whose name was not released Monday night, carried two 9mm semiautomatic handguns and wore blue jeans, a blue jacket and a vest that carried additional ammunition, law enforcement officials and witnesses said. Witnesses described the shooter as a young man of Asian descent — a silent killer who was calm and showed no expression as he pursued and shot his victims. He killed himself as police closed in.

He had left two dead at the dormitory and 30 more at a science and engineering building, where he executed people taking and teaching classes and even shot at a custodian who was helping a victim. Witnesses described scenes of chaos and grief, with students jumping from windows to escape gunfire and others blocking their classroom doors to keep the gunman away.

Even before anyone knew who the gunman was or why he did what he did, the campus community in Southwest Virginia began questioning whether most of the deaths could have been prevented. They wondered why the campus was not shut down after the first shooting, in which two people were killed.

The enormity of the event brought almost immediate exprescontinued on page 13

EDITOR’S NOTE

The print edition of Monday’s Herald was not published because inclement weather disrupted power at The Herald’s printing facility. Stories from Monday’s Herald appear in today’s print edition.

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 2

WE A

Chocolate Covered Cotton | Mark Brinker

T H E R

TODAY

TOMORROW

rain / wind 42 / 38

showers 43 / 37

MEN SHARPE REFECTORY

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

U VERNEY-WOOLLEY DINING HALL

LUNCH — Shaved Steak Sandwich, Tuna Noodle Casserole, Parslied Rice, Stewed Tomatoes, Fudge Bars, Raspberry Yogurt Pie

LUNCH — Beef Tacos, Vegan Burritos, Vegan Refried Beans, Corn and Sweet Pepper Saute, Chicken Vegetable Soup, Fudge Bars

DINNER — Curry Chicken and Coconut, Basmati Rice Pilaf, Indian Green Beans, Whole Kernel Corn, Onion and Dill Rolls, Chocolate Pudding, New York Style Cheesecake

DINNER — Roast Beef Au Jus, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Peppers Stir Fry, Glazed Carrots, Onion and Dill Rolls, Chicken Vegetable Soup, New York Style Cheesecake

SU

WBF | Matt Vascellaro

D O K U

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

How To Get Down | Nate Saunders

Deo | Daniel Perez �������������������

CR ACROSS 1 Victoria, for one 5 Lets off steam 10 Poled vessel 14 Unrefined finds 15 Regarding 16 Away from the breeze 17 Weight-loss program 18 Blackjack option 20 Skip over, as TV ads 21 Sierra __: African republic 22 Like 14-Across 23 Odd mannerism 25 Unsuccessful types 26 Not available 28 “Thus __ the Lord” 30 Keep control of 31 Assumed family name in punk rock 33 Nile reptile 36 Visionary, and a hint to what each word in 18- and 55-Across and 3- and 33-Down is 39 Dunderhead, in Dover 40 Lets up 41 Play or rest follower 42 Campfire treat 43 Take up a hem, say 44 Get a different actor for 47 Apple beverage 49 Forgo the reception 50 1953 Ladd classic 52 Brouhaha 55 Carefree existence 57 Stratford’s river 58 Kitchen addon?

59 Hearth tool 60 Eugene of “American Pie” 61 Garden intruder 62 Bikini blast 63 Show some muscle

O S S W O R D

DOWN 1 Polish birthplace of pianist Artur Rubinstein 2 Met melody 3 “Shh!” 4 Cornerstone abbr.

5 Skywalker’s dad 6 Online novel 7 It can be common in grammar class 8 Toothpaste container 9 Home of the NFL’s Rams 10 Salad veggie 11 In seclusion 12 Not as many 13 Takes care of 19 Chews the scenery 21 Commit perjury 24 Midshipmen’s sch.

25 Queues 26 Ayatollah’s land 27 Classic grape soda 28 Hit hard, Biblically 29 Excellent

31 Man of steel?

32 Way out there 33 Delta’s business 34 Hook cohort 35 Nectar flavor 37 Woman in distress?

38 It may be tall 42 Exhausted, as one’s strength 43 Fruity cooler 44 Darn again 45 Best of the best

46 Calais count 47 Outdoor eateries 48 Like neon and xenon 50 Mail drop, e.g.

51 Trail trek 53 Peace symbol 54 Banded chalcedony 56 Org. with an Acid Rain Program 57 E.T. of TV

Deep Fried Kittens | Cara FitzGibbon

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Cloudy Side Up | Mike Lauritano

xwordeditor@aol.com

4/17/07

T HE B ROWN D AILY H ERALD Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 Business Phone: 401.351.3260

University community since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the aca-

Eric Beck, President

once in July by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. POSTMASTER please send corrections to

Mary-Catherine Lader, Vice President Mandeep Gill, Treasurer Daniel DeNorch, Secretary

By David W. Cromer (c)2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

4/17/07

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown demic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement, once during Orientation and P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Offices are located at 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. E-mail herald@browndailyherald.com. World Wide Web: http://www.browndailyherald.com. Subscription prices: $319 one year daily, $139 one semester daily. Copyright 2007 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

ARTS & CULTURE TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

‘The Blind’ rejects realism, explores fluidity of language

BY MARIELA QUINTANA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

REVIEW

Innovation and originality abounded at the Sock and Buskin-produced performance of Maurice Maeterlinck’s “The Blind.” Director Rebecca Schneider, associate professor of theater, speech and dance, and her skilled group of actors certainly maintained Maeterlinck’s original artistic intentions that rejected realism and the boundaries of time and place — rather, both Maeterlinck and the production explore the subconscious and its mystical spirituality.

Rather than as individual characters, the assembly of actors worked seamlessly together as an embodiment of fears and questions. Subverting logical dialogue, the actors repeatedly posed questions that at first appeared rudimentary, such as “Where are we?” and “How much longer?” Through continuous reiteration, these questions shed light on the religious and other worldly undertones that nuance the play.

Despite its lack of substantial characterization and progression of plot, Saturday night’s performance of “The Blind” attained a strong sense of dramatic structure and direction from the numerous dichotomies that re-occurred throughout the play. Schneider’s directorial choices highlighted the universal clashes between silence and noise, light and dark, movement and inertia, knowledge and ignorance and comfort and anxiety, all of which are inherent in the dialogue of Maeterlinck’s original script.

The play opens on a stage strewn with scrap paper. The blind, a group of six figures — all in black, eyes shaded by oversized sunglasses — sprawl on a bench center-stage. Behind them, two projection screens hang, displaying a montage of flashing text.

Stage right, a giant plastic container holds the decaying remains of a priest’s corpse, like an airtight Tupperware container attempting to preserve his leftovers. On both sides above the stage, three figures in orange prison jump suits stand erect. The contrasting array of colors and textures is overwhelming to the senses, yet the introductory moments of silence drag on portentously and create a clear sense of waiting and expectation.

The silence gives way to paper shuffling and falling. Classical music crescendos are cut short by a cacophony of metal clanging

against metal. The dialogue begins suddenly and jars the audience with the unfamiliarity of the simple words, “Where are we?”

The language immediately takes on the unpredictability and ambiguity of free verse. In this way, the performance of “The Blind” evokes a mystical and imaginative quality that defies realism and theatrical convention with its lack of specific time, scenes, setting and characters.

The fluidity of language toys with words and morphs their meaning. Lines are not merely spoken but rather chanted and sermonized. Eventually they take on a rhythmic beat, recalling a prayer or the recitation of the liturgy. In this way, the vague questions repetitively asked by the actors begin to recall questions about the mysteries of faith. The repetitions of “Where is he?” evolve from a basic question to a profound plea that probes God’s presence. The initially confusing and ostensibly random question, “Why did we leave the big house?” beseeched over and over again in chanted unison begin to evoke uncertainty about original sin and the Garden of Eden.

Though the questions posed never seem to reach definite conclusions, the ceaseless cycle of guessing brings a coherent sense of struggle with the notions of mortality, fatalism and spirituality that have always challenged the motives of human action.

Despite the inaccessibility of some of these themes, Schneider and her well-rehearsed actors ably transcend Maeterlinck’s esoteric queries into lively and energetic entertainment. The actors engage the audience and hold them in rapt attention with coordinated dance routines and harmonized incantations. A group of six actors clad in nurses’ gowns, hairnets, pristine white sneakers and thick protective goggles intersperse themselves throughout the audience.

They interact with both the figures on stage and the audience itself.

Calling out in sudden excitation their impulsive propositions and recommendations, like at some sort of raucous Pentecostal Church retreat, the six figures humorously and provocatively displace the boundaries between the theatrical realm and the real realm, and perhaps even between the real realm and the divine realm.

Liman ’88 recalls Brown’s impact on his life Alum director gives Ivy Film Festival keynote

BY CAMERON LEE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“If I learned anything at school, it was how to show up to class without any studying whatsoever,” said Doug Liman ’88, director of movies such as “Swingers” and “The Bourne Identity.” With these words, Liman began the Variety Keynote Speech of the Ivy Film Festival Saturday night in Salomon 101.

His speech was marked by candor and dry humor as he recalled his exploits, setbacks and accomplishments from his years at Brown to the present. “I cherish this place and jump at any chance to return to Providence,” he said.

Liman started with an anecdote about his senior year at Brown, during which he said he enrolled in a class known as “Rocks for Jocks” along with seven friends.

While taking the course, he and his friends gave each other “handicaps” and competed to see who could score the highest grade. According to group-imposed rules, he wasn’t allowed to attend lectures or do the reading for the class, but he still managed to pass. He likened the experience to working in the film industry, as he said both require one to “be able to work under insane conditions.”

After graduating from Brown, Liman managed to direct his own short film at University of South-

Eunice Hong / Herald

Doug Liman ‘88, director of “Swingers,” “The Bourne Identity” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” gave the Variety Keynote Speech of the Ivy Film Festival Saturday evening in Salomon 101.

ern California even after dropping out of its film school, but the film was unfortunately not the “ticket to Hollywood” he had thought it would be.

He subsequently directed his first feature film, titled “Getting In,” which was not well-received.

After these two disappointments, Liman decided to climb the Alps with a friend from Brown. He credited the trip with giving him a sense of accomplishment that has inspired him throughout his career.

When working in film, “you’re

gonna get bad news every day,” Liman said. “I get rejected every day (by actors and writers). You need a way to still feel good about yourself.”

“There’s an adage in Hollywood — failure’s not falling down, it’s not getting back up,” Liman said. “To cut through and break in, you’ve gotta do something that’s great … it just has to have an original voice.”

Liman managed to break in with his next film, “Swingers,” continued on page 6

BOP’s ‘Goyescas’ hits a high note

BY CATHERINE GOLDBERG CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Brown Opera Productions’ “Goyescas,” a Spanish opera inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya, triumphed in its three performances this weekend. Written in three tableaux, the opera explores two parallel love stories — Goya and his lover Leocadia and Rosario and Fernando, two characters in one of the artist’s paintings.

Besides operatic voices, a production of “Goyescas” also calls for elegant dancers, convincing actors and powerful music, all of

which BOP strongly delivered.

Brown’s orchestra played the original score by Enrique Grandados, which offered a strong accompaniment to the emotional performance.

REVIEW The story begins in the painting studio of the artist (Kyle Dillon ’09), who is showing his lover Leocadia (Autumn Graham ’09) his most recent painting.

Expressed through ballet rather than song, the movements of the dancers revealed the playful and intimate relationship between the

two lovers. At the end of the overture, Goya and Leocadia, handin-hand, dash through a large frame together, symbolic of their entrance into the world of Goya’s paintings.

Tableau I begins outside in a square as the Majos, a group of young bohemians, enjoy the day.

On Friday night, singing was not the strong point of the initial few minutes of the first tableau. Audience members struggled to hear the Majos over the orchestra and had to depend on the English subtitles projected continued on page 6

continued on page 3

EDITORS’ PICKS TUESDAY, DAY, APRIL 17 DAY “SENORITA EXTRAVIADA”: A film screening. Senior Exhibit Opening: Rochelle Garza ’07 — McKinney Conference Room, Watson Institute, 7 p.m.

“ART IN ACTION: LUXURY ARTS AND INTERCONNECTIONS IN THE LATE BRONZE AND EARLY IRON AGES”: A lecture by Marian Feldman — Mencoff Hall (the Cabinet), 68 Waterman St., 5:30 p.m.

“VAS: AN OPERA IN FLATLAND”: A reading by Steve Tomasula, author of “The Book of Portraiture (FC2)” and “IN & OZ (Ministry of Whimsy Press)” — List 120, 8 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, ESDAY APRIL 18 ESDAY, HONORS / CAPSTONE SERIES: Readings by Marie Hopkins ’07 and Matthew Immerman ’07— Pembroke 210, 3 p.m.

read | share | recycle

Rahul Keerthi / Herald

Brown Opera Productions staged three performances of “Goyescas,” a Spanish opera inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya, this weekend.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 4

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

Gender gap at Brown reflects national trend continued from page 1 ure rose to 57 percent as of July 2006, according to a report by the American Council on Education, a higher education research organization.

According to a 2006 NCES report, “women’s undergraduate enrollment has increased more than twice as fast as men’s” since 1970. “From 2006 to 2015, both men’s and women’s undergraduate enrollments are projected to increase. … Women’s undergraduate enrollment is projected to continue growing faster than men’s enrollment.”

The growing gender gap extends beyond the United States, said Tom Mortenson, senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.

“When I look at the international data, what’s going on in the U.S. is typical,” Mortenson said.

“It’s true in almost ever y countr y in the world, except in sub-Saharan Africa.”

At 52 percent, the percentage of Brown students who are female is slightly larger than it is at other Ivy League schools. Columbia University had a 48 percent undergraduate female enrollment rate in the fall of 2005, and Cornell University was then 50 percent female. This academic year, Princeton University’s female enrollment rate was 46.5 percent, Yale University was 49.3 percent female and the University of Pennsylvania was 51.9 percent female. Dartmouth College was 49 percent female, according to an undated figure on its Web site.

Mortenson said the gender gap is more evident at most colleges and universities than at elite schools. “Highly selective schools can pick anybody they want. Less selective schools are more driven by the underlying demographic forces,” he said.

“There is a much more even gender distribution at more elite schools,” said Sara Mead, senior policy analyst at Education Sector, an education policy think tank. “These are schools where they have many more qualified applicants than they can ser ve, so they’re able to choose who they enroll. They have plenty of qualified men and plenty of qualified women to fill their class.”

Mead and Mortenson both said the gender gap is especially pronounced among black college students — the gap shows up

more at “historically black universities where 60 percent or over 60 percent of African-American students are women,” Mead said.

Miller said the gender gap is a complex issue. “There are myriad theories about the gender imbalance, and it really is a national issue. It extends through all different populations and all different racial and ethnic groups.”

Mortenson said the gender gap is partly due to inferior male academic performance in elementar y and secondar y schools.

“It looks like the classroom environment is far more favorable to girls and almost hostile to boys,” he said, leading to lower college attendance.

“There are also some differences in economic incentives facing women,” Mead said. “The opportunity cost (of college attendance) would be higher for lower-income men than for women.

The types of jobs that men could get right out of high school pay more than the jobs that women could get.”

The gender gap could affect the U.S. economy in the long run, Mortenson said.

“Jobs that are being created require ever higher levels of postsecondar y education and training,” he said. “Men are not adapting to the new world, and women certainly are. The concern I have is that men’s lives are going to be ver y rough unless many more of them start going to college.”

Students inter viewed by The Herald said Brown’s open curriculum and progressive atmosphere may make it more attractive to female applicants.

“A lot of the guys I know were kind of nervous about how it’s so unstructured here, as far as the curriculum goes,” said Chantal Tape ’09. “Maybe girls are more flexible about that.”

“Because of other progressive aspects of the University, perhaps women applicants feel like they can be more accepted as women who are striving to succeed in academia or whatever else they are trying to succeed at,” said Will Emmons ’09.

But most students said they were not particularly concerned about the gender gap. “It just seems like more of a curious phenomenon than a problem,” said Jake Kline ’10. “I don’t think it’s a huge issue if there are more women than guys.”

“If the trend continues, I think Brown needs to think about wha what it’s doing that isn’t attracting men,” Tape said.

43%

58%

ADOCH kicks off with stricter alcohol policy

MALE

MALE

continued from page 1

57%

42%

FEMALE

1970

2006

FEMALE

GENDER BREAKDOWN, U . S . U N D E R G R A D U AT E P O P U L AT I O N

41% MALE

59%

FEMALE

GENDER BREAKDOWN, APPLICANTS TO THE UNIVERSIT Y T O TA L A P P L I C A N T S : 1 9 , 0 4 4 46.5% FEMALE

53.5% MALE

PRINCETON UNIVERSIT Y 52% MALE

48% FEMALE

C O LU M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y 51% MALE

49% FEMALE

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 49.3% FEMALE

50.7% MALE

YA L E U N I V E R S I T Y 50% FEMALE

50% MALE

CORNELL UNIVERSIT Y 51.9% FEMALE

48.1% MALE

U N I V E R S I T Y O F P E N N S Y LVA N I A 52% FEMALE

48% MALE

BROWN UNIVERSITY

GENDER BREAKDOWN, IVY LEAGUE ( E X C E P T H A R VA R D U N I V E R S I T Y )

www.browndailyherald.com

parents will be attending this year, said Amanda Calderon, assistant director of admission. That is many more parents than last year, she said, and more students because this year the University paid for the transportation of a number of students constrained by financial need.

Today’s “student and parent welcomes” in Salomon Center and Sayles Hall are two of the most highly attended events of the 25hour program, Calderon said. Students will hear welcoming remarks

by President Ruth Simmons, Visiting Fellow at the Watson Institute and former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee ’75 and Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73. Parents will hear Miller and Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron at a separate welcome scheduled for them.

Tonight’s talent show in Salomon, in which student groups perform for the prospective firstyears, is also often highly attended, Calderon said.

The talent show will be followed by a dessert social in Leung Gallery, a new event that will replace the “Food with the Fellows” event of previous years, said Adam Kroll ’09, student co-coordinator for ADOCH. The social will be a look into student life, including a “meet-and-greet” with representatives from the Office of Residential Life and Residential Council, Meiklejohn advisers and representatives from the Swearer Center for Public Service, Kroll said, adding that the ADOCH coordinators hope to “expose (prospective students) to the non-academic services that Brown provides.”

Another new event this year is a concert in Sayles Hall sponsored

by Greek Council and ResLife, Kroll said. The concert will take place during tonight’s “Late Night” activities and will hopefully draw students away from trying to find parties elsewhere, he said.

ADOCH coordinators are enforcing alcohol and drug policies strictly this year, requiring overnight student hosts to sign a form stating that they will not provide prospective students with alcohol or drugs, Calderon said. Prospective students and parents must also sign a form in order to attend the program, Kroll said.

Other events during Late Night will include arch sings, a glow-inthe-dark Frisbee game and unit “get-togethers” to deter prospective students from trying to find places to drink, she said.

On Wednesday, students can attend classes, go on campus tours from the Main Green and attend the activities fair and lunch, which will help them learn more about some of Brown’s extra-curricular activities, according to the ADOCH schedule. And for those interested in athletics at Brown, there is an information session at 2 p.m. in Petteruti Lounge in Faunce House.

There will also be a tent set up with refreshments today and tomorrow on the Main Green where students can go between attending classes and other events, Kroll said. This way, even if the weather does not cooperate, students will have somewhere to go where they can interact with their future classmates, he said.

METRO TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

PAGE 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Students protest Merrill Lynch coal investments with irony

BY AMANDA BAUER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Twelve students decked themselves out in top hats, pearls, gowns and tuxedoes Friday and handed out coal to passersby in Kennedy Plaza to publicly “applaud” Merrill Lynch’s continued investment in coal projects.

The students — members of the Brown chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and emPOWER, plus a local high school student — held a theatrical protest posing as “billionaires for coal” outside of the bank’s location in downtown Providence.

While heartily shouting “Coal is the future!” “Thank you Merrill Lynch!” and “Who needs so many species anyway?” the students handed out flyers and pieces of coal to people on the street. “We want to share the wealth — well, the coal — with everyone,” protestor Alex Ortiz ’09 told The Herald.

The demonstration was part of Step It Up 2007, an event that claims to be the largest national protest to stop global climate change in the nation’s history, according to the event’s Web site. Rainforest Action Network was a primary organizer of the weekend’s national protest, which included protests in every state.

Rainforest Action Network runs public awareness campaigns and engages in non-violent direct action and grassroots organizing with the goals of breaking America’s oil addiction, protecting endangered forests and indigenous rights and stopping destructive investments around the world, according to its Web site.

“We’re here to thank Merrill Lynch for their contributions to our stock portfolios. Merrill Lynch is one of the seven banks to invest in the 150 new coal power plants to be built in continued on page 6

Amanda Bauer / Herald Members of Students for a Democratic Society and emPOWER protested Merrill Lynch and its links to coal-fired power plants in a re-enactment of the “Billionaires for Coal” demonstration held in New York City earlier this year.

Nonprofits continue to develop a statewide wireless network with U. help

BY SIMMI AUJLA METRO EDITOR

As legislators in the General Assembly consider creating a center that may support a future statewide wireless network, Brown continues to provide bandwidth to a group that has already implemented pilot programs around the state.

Rep. Amy Rice, D-Dist. 72, has introduced legislation in the state legislature to create a technology center that may support statewide wireless. Meanwhile, the Business Innovation Factory and the Economic Development Corporation, both nonprofits, are already working to create a statewide wireless network — Rhode Island Wireless Innovation Networks.

The BIF is currently seeking funding from the state government — once it has received the funding it needs, it will take a year to a year and a half to set up permanent base stations throughout the state, according to the BIF’s Web site.

Brown is one of several part-

ners providing the project with the bandwidth necessary to support pilot programs. Two antennas on top of the Sciences Library have supported the pilot program since last May, said Tim Thorp, manager of communications and education at Computing and Information Services.

The pilot program that ran through December allowed Brown graduate students in the Master of Arts in Teaching program to use the network to teach in three local schools — the Hope High School complex, the Wheeler School and the Robert L. Bailey IV Elementary School, Thorp said.

Though the pilot is completed, the University still provides bandwidth for the Providence network, he said. Now, scientists and researchers will evaluate information gleaned from the pilot to see how they can improve the program when they begin to implement it statewide, Thorp said.

Elizabeth Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration, said the University allows external groups to use

its bandwidth if it thinks a certain program will make the best use of it. “It’s like we have property, and someone wants to lease the space,” she said. “What would they do with it if they had it, and would they do good things?”

Huidekoper said no money changed hands between the BIF or the EDC and the University.

“At the moment, that is the extent of Brown’s involvement with the project. We plan to see how RI-WINs develops in the months ahead before making any firm commitments on our future participation,” wrote Michael Chapman, vice president for public affairs and University relations, in an e-mail to The Herald.

Melissa Withers, communications director for the BIF, said the BIF will “continue to work with Brown to see how they want to be involved and what kind of usage they want students to have.” If Brown chooses to participate in the project, the network may be helpful for students trying to access the Internet in remote places in Rhode Island, she said.

3 months in, students and professors track Whitehouse’s senatorial progress

BY A. KAMYL BAZBAZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

After only three months in office, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has stuck to a Democratic agenda, meeting the initial expectations of Brown students and professors who followed his campaign closely last November.

Since he joined the Senate, Whitehouse has visited Iraq, given his first speech on the Senate floor criticizing President Bush’s policy in Iraq and advocated a timetable for troop redeployment. Whitehouse — a former U.S. Attorney and now a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — has also voted to issue subpoenas to high-ranking officials in the Bush administration to explain the recent controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors.

Brown students intimately involved in his election cited the possible Democratic takeover of the Senate as a major force behind their commitment. Adam Axler ’08 worked between 25 and 30 hours a week assisting the campaign treasurer and handling office responsibilities. Axler, vice president of the Brown Democrats, said he worked

for the campaign because “we needed to send a message to the Bush administration and get a Democratic Congress.”

For the Brown Dems, ensuring a Democratic majority in the Senate was of paramount importance.

“We should remember that Sen. Whitehouse put us over the top and ensured a Democratic majority in the Senate, all because of the dedicated Democrats — a large number of them from Brown — who worked so hard to elect him,” said Tor Tarantola ’07, president of the Brown Dems.

And now that Congress is in Democratic hands?

“It is hard for me to say whether or not I am satisfied, but I have a lot of faith, and that’s why I worked for the guy,” Axler said.

Associate Professor of Political Science Wendy Schiller said she believes Whitehouse’s focus on national issues — such as Iraq and the federal prosecutors scandal — is the most effective strategy to please his constituency and fulfill campaign promises.

Schiller said Rhode Island is a continued on page 6

Students march to State House to mark National Day of Climate Action

BY NANDINI JAYAKRISHNA STAFF WRITER

Courtesy of emPOWER Student group emPOWER and members of the Brown Band met at the State House Saturday as part of a nationwide campaign to encourage the U.S. Congress to mandate 80 percent reductions in carbon emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

About 35 Brown students — most belonging to emPOWER, a student group campaigning to make Brown climate-neutral — marched from the Main Green to the State House Saturday afternoon to urge Congress to make reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 a priority.

Holding signs reading “Step It Up” and “80% by 2050,” students followed the Brown Band to the State House, where they formed the number “80” on the steps. Students chanted, “It’s getting hot in here, there’s too much carbon in the atmosphere.”

“Even though our numbers are modest, we’re joined by 1,367 groups,” said emPOWER organizer Jon Magaziner ’07, speaking to the

group on the State House steps. “It’s up to us to continue to hold our institutions accountable. Carbon dioxide is something you can’t conveniently sweep under the carpet,” he added.

Step It Up is a movement started by environmentalist Bill McKibben to draw attention to issues of global warming and climate change. The Brown march was one of 1,367 registered rallies around the country on April 14, the national day designated for climate action and awareness, said Tess Hart ’09, one of the protestors.

The rally will “generate media coverage” and present “tangible evidence that people care” about the environment, Hart told the crowd before students formed the “80” shape.

“We want to make (carbon emissions) a priority for presidential campaigns and congressional campaigns,” she told The Herald.

Danny Musher ’10, one of the protesters, said he hopes similar events across the country will have an impact on the legislators.

“People’s voice in theory is supposed to move our representatives to action,” he said. “I don’t know if one day alone will have an impact, but it is one in a series of events.”

Karen Kovalevich ’10, another protester, said reducing carbon emissions should be “a high priority” for Congress.

“We only have one world, and we’re not doing a good job taking care of it,” she said.

“I think things like this do work so it’s worth our time,” she added.

Some students at the protest said they wished more Brown students had joined the march. Shane Easter ’10 said it was “sad” that they “couldn’t mobilize a lot of our own campus.”

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 6

VP for int’l affairs search likely complete by early May continued from page 1 April. The full committee’s recommendations could be released as soon as the end of May, according to Stephenson.

The University received over 300 applications for the position, and the current group was chosen from that pool for first-round interviews, Stephenson said. She said the search committee has tried to focus on candidates from a range of backgrounds, especially those with multiple areas of expertise.

“All of the candidates have a familiarity with academia, and most also have a familiarity with one or more of the other worlds from which they come,” Stephenson said, citing diplomacy and work for international non-governmental organizations as examples of candidates’ past experience.

“The strongest candidates … are people who have come with more than one type of background,” she added.

“I think we’ve defined the job in the way that is pretty challenging,” said search committee member Richard Spies, executive vice

president for planning and senior adviser to the president. “It’s going to require an overall set of skills or experiences that will allow somebody to do a lot of different things.”

Both Stephenson and Spies declined to say if any of the candidates who received first-round interviews come from within the University.

Philip Altbach, director of Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education, said internationalization is “the flavor of the month” in academia, and many other universities have already created similar positions.

“This is not a tremendous, innovative move on the part of Brown,” Altbach said.

But the position has generated strong interest, Stephenson said, because it is at the vice-presidential level and because the incoming vice president will be able to build on the internationalization committee’s work.

Altbach agreed that the position’s vice-presidential status at Brown is significant.

“Three cheers for Brown for doing it at that level,” he said.

Liman ’88 recalls Brown’s impact on his life continued from page 3 which was shot on a shoestring budget of $250,000. Because of the limited funds, Liman said he had to be crafty, using the same props in multiple scenes and filming without a permit while evading the police.

He also spoke about his forays into television, with shows like “The O.C.,” which he said “started out as a big success (and) ultimately turned into garbage.”

Liman ended by recalling the hoops he had to jump through while directing his more recent feature films, “The Bourne Identity” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

While preparing to enter production on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” there was a point when Nicole Kidman, who had been set to play Mrs. Smith, dropped out, followed by Brad Pitt and the producers, Liman said. Ultimately, Liman was able to complete the movie and is currently working on the television version of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

After the hour-long keynote speech, Liman responded to questions from the audience, which included topics such as Liman’s shift

‘Goyescas’ hits a high note continued from page 3

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TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

above the stage. The strength of the performance was in the acting. Paquiro, a flirtatious character played comically by Patrick Ramsey ’07, entered the scene wooing the ladies until his sweetheart, Pepa — strongly portrayed as confident and controlling by Christie Gibson ’06 — arrived at the square.

Several minutes into the tableau, Rosario (Sonia Nayak ’08) enters the scene. Rosario’s beauty may halt the festivities in the world of the painting, but it was Nayak’s voice that literally stunned the audience. Her voice was strong, emotional and feminine, and she sang the Spanish words as if she were speaking her native tongue.

Paquiro is quick to invite Rosario to a lantern-lit ball, but his courting is immediately interrupted by Rosario’s love, Fernando (Alexander Ebin ’07), jealous and fearful of Paquiro’s interaction with Rosario. Ebin exuded the masculinity, intensity and the sense of honor of men described in 18th-century Spanish literature. His voice revealed his character’s passion and pain caused by his love for Rosario.

Following the first tableau is another ballet scene in the studio with Goya and Leocadia.

She struggles for Goya’s affections as he becomes increasingly obsessed with his current painting. While Graham expressed feelings of hurt and frustration, Dillon ably portrayed his ambivalence through graceful movement.

The opera continues in this back-and-forth manner between Goya’s studio and the tableaux, providing insight into his personal struggle between the world of his reality and his art. Brown Opera Productions’ “Goyescas,” with the talent of its singers, dancers and musicians, left the audience impressed and touched in a performance that brought forth the complexity of what separates love from obsession.

from smaller movies to big-budget movies, the process of preparing for a movie and past and present filmmakers he admires. During the session, Liman insisted the audience call him “Doug” rather than “Mr. Liman.”

Liman told The Herald after his speech that he was glad the Film Festival had been organized. “The Ivy League schools as a whole are not supportive of film as a serious field of study,” he said. “I feel like at a place like Brown, it’s going to be the students who create the film (community).”

Liman said he remains close to his friends from Brown. “I really formed my life-long friendships at this place,” he said. “Many of the friends I met here helped me on my first films and my short films even though none of them went into film. That entrepreneurial attitude (here at Brown) made them good co-workers.”

Liman said he believes the future of film continues to lie in good storytelling, but the Internet and especially YouTube have provided new means to tell those stories.

“Someone is going to create the

first successful Internet-based program and … it would surprise me if it wasn’t a Brown student or a Brown alum,” he said.

Simon Kinberg ’95, writer of the film and television versions of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and a friend of Liman’s, had originally been scheduled to speak with Liman but had to pull out due to a commitment to the upcoming television series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” said Elizabeth Backup ’08, alumni relations coordinator for the festival.

Backup said Kinberg had been scheduled before Liman and that Kinberg helped bring Liman to Brown.

Backup said she didn’t know what to expect from Liman’s speech and was pleasantly surprised. “It was so funny,” she said. “I think it was kind of spontaneous.”

She added that she learned a few lessons from this year’s keynote and suggested the event may have drawn a bigger crowd if it were held on a Friday night or later in the evening. “I wish more people would have been there to see it, but (the scheduling) has to work with the filmmakers,” she said.

Whitehouse after 3 months in D.C. continued from page 5 small state in which Whitehouse has held a high profile for some time. “He has no pressing need for a local connection because he is already well-known,” Schiller said.

“The (federal prosecutors firing) has given him a platform that separates him from Sen. Jack Reed (DR.I.) and also gives him visibility,” she added. Reed, a United States Military Academy graduate elected in 1996, has served in the U.S. Army and is considered a leading Democratic voice on Iraq.

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee ’75, whom Whitehouse defeated last November, said Whitehouse is “firmly lodged in the Democratic agenda” and said he does “not see much surprising votes” from Whitehouse. He said his own entry into the Senate in 1999 was slightly easier because he took up his father’s already well-established and functioning office.

“I had a unique niche,” he said, as a Republican senator ideologically to the left of his party on many issues. Chafee said fulfilling the Democratic agenda was Whitehouse’s campaign promise, and he must pursue it.

Whitehouse must “show oth-

ers he is willing to work, compromise and learn,” Chafee said. “Most Rhode Islanders might not be aware of it, but it does take a while to adjust to committee assignments and build trust,” he added. Schiller agreed, saying Whitehouse has to “develop a credibility within the senators first and then look to gain media attention.”

Though three months is almost a semester for Brown students, it takes time for a new senator to set up a functioning office apparatus and get into the rhythm of life on Capitol Hill. Chafee called entering the Senate a “chaotic initiation” where the first months in office can be spent “operating out of a hallway.” Whitehouse was only able to move into his permanent office about a month ago, according to a March 25 Providence Journal article.

“You got to pay your dues, and that’s what (Whitehouse and his staff) are doing right now,” Axler said. “You are there for six years. He has been there for three months. It takes a long time to build up the infrastructure.”

Schiller echoed Axler’s sentiments. “It is too soon to tell which senator will emerge as the star in 2006,” she said.

Students protest Merrill Lynch continued from page 5 the next few years in the U.S., which will make us very, very rich,” Ortiz said while bracing his four-foot-tall top hat against the gusting wind.

Some banks profit from “dirty money” investments, Rainforest Action Network claims. Despite the availability of alternative energy sources, banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse, Citibank and Morgan Stanley have continued to invest in technologies that are harmful to the environment, such as coal power plants, according to the Rainforest Action Network Web site.

The Step It Up campaign calls for banks and other private organizations to stop investing in power that causes greenhouse gas emissions and to consider environmentally friendly options. These alter-

natives include “wind, solar energy and biomass,” Ortiz said. The campaign was also an attempt to bring national attention to global warming and energy efficiency and to put pressure on Congress, according to the Step It Up Web site.

“The whole campaign is geared towards galvanizing the whole nation about energy,” Ortiz said. “It’s an incredibly important issue, our futures are all at stake. … Science is behind it, and people are behind it.”

This is not the first time this semester SDS members have taken part in theatrical protesting downtown. Students held a “die-in” on March 19 in front of the downtown offices of Textron Inc. — a contractor for the U.S military — where they placed “bloody” handprints of raspberry jam on the building. One SDS member was arrested at that event.

UCS CANDIDATE P ROFILES TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Hours before C A N D I DAT E S F O R U C S P R E S I D E N T voting begins,

BY MICHAEL BECHEK S E N I O R S TA F F W R I T E R Mukherjee ’09 disqualified in UCS the “implementation process” fort to get those people into is not going smoothly.

UCS,” he says. presidential race “You can’t impose a lot of A New York City native who Voting for Undergraduate Council of Students and Undergraduate Finance Board elections open today at 5 p.m. on MyCourses and will be open until 5 p.m. on Thursday.

Though many races are uncontested, the contests for UCS president and vice president are among those that will be closely watched until the results are announced on the steps of Faunce House at midnight Thursday night.

One of the four candidates for UCS president, Eric Mukherjee ’09, was disqualified by the UCS elections board early Tuesday morning, hours before voting was slated to begin.

“Several rules, which were clearly articulated to all candidates through various elections communications, were violated” by Mukherjee, the elections board said in a statement. “These violations include the failure to attend mandatory elections information sessions, candidate’s meetings and to submit a campaign platform to the UCS Elections Board.”

The statement added that Mukherjee made no “good faith action” to warrant a lesser punishment.

The online ballot for the elections will include each candidate’s photo and a personal statement, as well as any endorsements they have received from student organizations going through the official UCS endorsement process.

The beginning of voting marks the start of what will presumably be a stepped-up publicity campaign from the candidates, though most — including some whose races are uncontested — have already been busy advertising this week.

Christina Kim ’07, the UCS elections board chair, said, before news of Mukherjee’s disqualification broke, that she had received some complaints from students who felt they were being “bombarded” with invitations to candidates’ groups and events on Facebook, but that “by and large, things are going really well this year.”

Kim added that because of candidates’ significant use of Facebook, there has been a decline in the use of other publicity tactics, such as table-slipping and putting up posters.

“We haven’t seen as much of people using the traditional methods,” she said.

— Michael Bechek and Herald staff reports

Chris Bennett / Herald

MICHAEL GLASSMAN ’09 With Banner creating an uproar across campus, Michael Glassman ’09 understands why

Though he transferred from Duke University last fall, Moses Riner ’08 thinks he’s gotten in touch with his new school.

A member of the rugby team and an at-large UCS representative since the beginning of the spring semester, Riner says going doorto-door in dorms and talking to students has helped him “understand what Brown students want.”

“You might think that a lot of people would just blow you off,” he says. “But actually, I got a lot of positive feedback.”

A history concentrator with a strong interest in entrepreneurship, Riner’s major issues include

rules on Brown students,” he says. “You have to let them make those choices for themselves.”

Glassman, currently the UCS communications chair, wants the council to develop an appropriate response to Banner. But he has also set goals of renovating dorms, expanding January@Brown and increasing the number of students on UCS by reaching out to those who show interest in participating but are discouraged when they lose an election.

“I want to personally approach them and make an ef-

creating more social space on campus and developing a response to Banner that protects the open curriculum.

“I live in New Dorm right now, and there’s absolutely no common rooms in there,” Riner said.

Riner, who is from Louisville, Ky., and is the youngest of six children, also wants to create a rewards system that would give students points for attending athletic events. These points would then be redeemable for Brown memorabilia.

In addition to the rugby team and UCS, Riner is also involved in the Brown Investment Group.

plans to double-concentrate in the sciences and the humanities — he hasn’t yet decided which ones — Glassman worked to create the Flex meal plans last year as a member of the campus life and admissions and student services committees.

Glassman is also involved with the Sustainable Food Initiative, the goal of which, he said, “is to get students who don’t know anything — who are basically like me and are from New York City and don’t know anything about agriculture — to come volunteer on the farm.”

Chris Bennett / Herald

MOSES RINER ‘08

STEFAN SMITH ‘10

Chris Bennett / Herald

Stefan Smith ’09, an at-large representative on UCS, wants to make sure Brown students don’t forget the world that exists around them.

Smith, a history concentrator, tutors at a juvenile training center in Cranston to help people earn their GEDs and is a crisis-line operator for suicide counseling and rape intervention at his home in Greenville, S.C. But he worries that Brown students are often “complacent” about the outside community, especially about education.

“We take so much for granted at Brown, in terms of intellectual freedom,” he says.

Smith favors mandatory community service for UCS members, and he advocates that the University freeze student tuition. He says tuition, which has been rising faster than inflation, should be kept “at the status quo so that the gap between who can come and who can’t doesn’t spread.”

Smith also wants to open the proceedings of the Undergraduate Financial Board to the public record, arguing that students have a right to know how their money is being spent.

“UFB Chicken Littles will tell you that the sky will fall down if we open meetings,” he says. “That’s not true.”

C A N D I DAT E S F O R U C S V I C E P R E S I D E N T

BY MICHAEL BECHEK S E N I O R S TA F F W R I T E R

Chris Bennett / Herald

JAKE HEIMARK ‘10 A freshman taking all of his classes S/NC because “grades can sometimes provide the wrong incentives for students,” Jake Heimark ’10 wants to have younger leadership at the top of UCS. “I think the problem with UCS is the current leadership focuses too much on their own agendas,” he says. “I think it’s time that, with

a younger person as vice president, they can help the younger members achieve their goals.”

Heimark, a Palo Alto, Calif., native, is the UCS Webmaster and is leading an initiative to consider outsourcing Brown’s e-mail service to Google’s Gmail.

Heimark also calls the current state of technology at Brown “embarrassing” and says students deserve a three-year plan from the administration that includes a plan for wireless Internet, universal card access and “an online registration system that’s actually usable.”

Because Brown is “a unique university,” he says, “we need to change Banner for Brown.”

Heimark is also involved with Free the Children, an organization that focuses on building schools and advocating against child labor, among other things. He has been to Kenya five times and has also been to Nicaragua and Mexico.

for complete UCS election coverage, read the herald and www.browndailyherald.com

Chris Bennett / Herald

LAUREN KOLODNY ‘08 Lauren Kolodny ’08, an international relations concentrator from San Diego, says there is too much bureaucracy in UCS and that individuals often get left behind in the paperwork.

“The reason I really want to run for vice president,” she says, “is I think there needs to be more oversight of each individual member of UCS.” New members sometimes get lost, she says, and are expected to know too much as soon as they arrive.

Kolodny — who transferred to Brown from the University of California, Los Angeles, the fall

of her sophomore year — says she wanted “a more open and progressive institution” and that the threat to shopping period represented by Banner “really undermines the open curriculum.”

Kolodny, who is UCS’ Corporation liaison, says she has many important connections in the administration, which she wants to use to try to lessen course caps and prerequisites and to print copies of the Course Announcement Bulletin.

She also pushed the Corporation to create a social choice fund, which it finally approved at its meeting this February after declining to act on it on more than one occasion. The new choice offers donors to the University the option of earmarking their money for a separately held fund that invests specifically in companies with good environmental practices.

Other than UCS, Kolodny is involved with the Darfur Action Network. She says she is focusing on trying to bring biogas stoves to a refugee camp so that women and children are not forced to leave the camp to collect firewood and are not exposed to rape and attack.

PAGE 8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

TROLLEYS ON THE GREEN

Chris Bennett / Herald

The Trolleys performed Saturday at the Spring Arts Festival on the Main Green.

Loughlin ’07 and Sieff ’07 run 111th Boston Marathon continued from page 1 was a little tougher,” she said.

Sieff finished with a time of 3:06:52. “I’m okay with it, considering the conditions of the race,” he said. “I ran the first half at a 6:40 pace, which was a little too fast. I had to slow down with eight miles left, at Heartbreak Hill.”

Heartbreak Hill is the final hill of the course, which begins in the rural town of Hopkinton, Mass., and ends at Copley Square in Boston. Both Loughlin and Sieff agreed that the supportive crowd encouraged them during the final sections of the race.

“When I was hurting, what helped was the great fan support and having two great friends pulling me along,” said Sieff, who was accompanied for the last 10 miles

by Pat Clark ’07 and Nick Neely

’07, members of the men’s cross country team.

Loughlin also said she appreciated her friends’ support, thanking all the Brown fans who came to Boston. Many of her friends were waiting at the start of Heartbreak Hill to cheer her on, and like Sieff, Loughlin was paced by friends Elizabeth Bird ’07, Alex Brown ’08 and Becky Crossin ’08 for the last half of the race.

“I was really excited to see them,” Loughlin said. “It was awesome because I’m used to running with people, and this would have been a long time to be by myself.”

Loughlin and Sieff also had to thank years of preparation for their strong performances yesterday.

For training, Loughlin’s approach was to “just run as much as you can.” Sieff echoed her sentiment.

“It’s important to run six or sev-

en days a week,” he said. “Runners can do 50 miles a week to 150 miles a week, depending on how serious they are. I run between 60 and 70 miles a week.”

According to Sieff, training intensifies during the weeks before a marathon. “The most important part is to do a few really long runs before,” he said, specifying distances between 17 and 21 miles.

This may seem like a lot to people unaccustomed to running such long distances, but for Sieff, the strenuous training and competition are worth it.

“I’ve always been an obsessive distance runner,” he said.

Loughlin had a more specific goal in mind going into the race.

“I wanted to run the Boston Marathon before I graduate,” she said.

“Obviously, this was the year to do it.”

CAMPUS N EWS TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

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Two alums win Pulitzer Prizes Mark Maremont ’80 and Usha Lee McFarling ’89 won Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism for Public Service and Explanatory Reporting, respectively. The awards, which are given by Columbia University, were announced Monday.

Maremont, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, was a history concentrator at Brown and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He then received a master’s degree from the Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. The Journal won the Pulitzer for its series on “options backdating,” which Maremont helped report.

Backdating is a procedure whereby businesses grant stock options at a set price dated prior to the transaction. Companies can grant stock options at prices that are months or years old. Recipients can make a windfall if they receive their options at an old price substantially lower than the current price. Through backdating, business executives made millions of dollars on options granted at substantially lowered prices. Though backdating itself is not illegal in all instances, many companies did not disclose their engagement in the practice.

The reporting spurred investigations and the ouster of executives at UnitedHealth, CNET Networks Inc., McAfee Inc. and other companies.

McFarling, a former Herald reporter who concentrated in biology while at Brown, is currently a science reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She won the Pulitzer for co-authoring a five-part series titled “Altered Oceans,” which examined ecological problems plaguing oceans across the globe.

The first article in the series discussed the proliferation of toxic primitive organisms that harm larger ocean species as well as fishermen. Subsequent articles addressed increasing incidences of toxic red tides and threats to wildlife caused by toxic algae and bacteria, plastic debris and acidic seawater.

— James Shapiro

Eunice Hong / Herald Relay for Life at Brown sponsored a walk from 6 p.m. on Friday to 6 a.m. on Saturday to raise money for the American Cancer Society’s cancer research and support efforts. A total of 632 walkers helped raise $79,000, according to a society press release.

SSDP regional conference draws Chafee, Loury

BY OLIVIA HOFFMAN STAFF WRITER

The war on drugs must be reevaluated “methodically and clinically,” from a global perspective, former Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee ’75 told a MacMillan 117 audience Friday. The speech kicked off the Students for Sensible Drug Policy Northeast Regional Conference, hosted at Brown this weekend.

“We need to ask ourselves, ‘Is this working?’ ” Chafee, a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, said of current drug policies. “We have to be honest with ourselves in looking at this worldwide problem.”

Chafee, who has admitted to experimenting with cocaine and marijuana while a student at Brown, commented on the “destabilizing effect of the illicit drug trade on so many countries.” He said that reforming policies “has to be done collectively” and suggested the possibility of United Nations involvement in this process. “The doors are open to a different way of looking at the war on drugs,” he said.

Tom Angell, government relations director for the national SSDP, told The Herald that hearing Chafee’s stance on drug policy “says a lot about how far the issue has come.”

“It was really heartening to hear Senator Chafee talking about how the war on drugs has failed and that we need to have a serious re-thinking of how to move forward from here,” said Angell, who founded the first SSDP chapter in Rhode Island in 2002 while he was a student at the University of Rhode Island.

Dan MacCombie ’08.5, cochair of the conference, said he was particularly pleased to hear Chafee speak about the Aid Elimination Provision of the Higher Education Act, which denies federal financial aid to students with prior drug convictions, a policy that Chafee called “backwards.”

Chafee is “a respected political figure, and it’s great that he came out against that,” MacCombie said. “That’s just one more voice to add to the chorus.”

This year’s conference, titled “Confronting the Drug War, Envisioning Alternatives,” was the first SSDP conference to be held at Brown, though the University’s chapter had the most representatives of any chapter at the national convention last November, MacCombie said.

According to Julia Van DeWalle ’08, president of Brown’s SSDP chapter, the goals of the conference were to “create cohesion” among the Northeast chapters and “reinvigorate their dedication to the cause.” This year’s conference drew about 80 people from 23 different schools, in addition to the core membership of around 40 students at Brown.

Beyond its general goals, cochair Matthew Palevsky ’07 said one theme of the conference was to understand “how the drug war provides a vehicle for systemic racism.”

“We criminalize half of America — approximately half of Americans use an illicit substance — and we choose which cohort of that half we are going to incarcerate,” Palevsky said. “Because of systemic racism, that ends up being predominantly people of color.”

Brown Professor of Economics Glenn Loury addressed the issue of institutional racism in a lecture Friday night in Leung Gallery called “Racial Stigma, Mass Incarceration and American Values.”

“We are a nation of jailers, and racist jailers at that,” Loury said.

“Today’s American race-making institution, the place where the stigmatized status of blacks is reproduced and reinforced in the American imagination is in the arena of criminal justice.”

Palevsky told The Herald he was impressed at the way Loury “really opened up.”

“This is a personal issue for him, as it should be for all of us, and he talked about it with such passion and knowledge that I think it affected everyone in that room,” Palevsky said.

A workshop on Saturday also addressed the issue of institutional racism, focusing on the importance of anti-racism analysis in the drug policy reform movement.

Sunday’s events were directed more at drug culture, MacCombie said. “One of my biggest issues with the drug war is cultural stigmatization and marginalization. … Although that’s something that all of us care about, it’s often ignored.”

Daniel Pinchbeck, author of “Breaking Open the Head” and “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” lectured about that theme Sunday in a speech about role of traditional shamanistic practices in modern society. Pinchbeck told the audience how his own personally revelatory experiences led him to consider whether it is “possible for there to be a reconsideration of psychedelics in a positive, strategic way” and whether they “could actually be useful and healing substances for our modern world.”

Conference organizers said they hope conferences like this weekend’s can create forums that encourage members to challenge existing policies and debate about alternative solutions.

“I think we’ve all realized that the war on drugs is a failure, but there’s great disagreement and debate within the organization about what exactly a drug policy utopia would look like,” Angell said.

“One of the most important aims of an event like this is to bring people together and to help foster that realization that you as a student on a campus are part of an international movement of young people who are concerned about these policies and their disastrous impact on our generation,” Angell said.

Compressed primaries benefit fundraising-savvy candidates, McAuliffe tells Dems

BY NICK WERLE STAFF WRITER

The recent reordering of several large states’ primary contests will favor candidates who can raise the most money early on, allowing them to compete in the expensive media markets of California, New York and Texas, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe — now chair of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — told the Brown Democrats Monday.

Roaming the List 120 stage and speaking in a jocular tone, McAuliffe started his talk by describing the beginning of his political career. He told the audience how he started raising money for President Carter’s campaign while he was attending law school at Georgetown University and “living in a big blue house with 20 guys and kegs in the bathtub.”

After leaving law school, McAuliffe became the national finance director of Carter’s campaign when he was 23. The sparse crowd was amused by his story of wrestling “Jumper,” an alligator, for a $15,000 donation for Carter from a Seminole tribe in Florida’s Broward County.

After turning to policy and politics, McAuliffe’s remarks touched on a broad range of issues. He discussed the recent shifts in the primary schedule and advocated a national reconsideration of election procedure.

“After this year, we’ve got to take a real serious look at how we do our primaries,” he said. The change “benefits the candidates which can raise the most money. It used to be these four small states, but now who can play on Feb. 5? Not many,” McAuliffe said. “You might stumble in the first event or two, but now you have no time to recover.”

McAuliffe said he thought neither Carter nor President Clinton

would have been nominated had this year’s schedule been in place at the time. He also discussed his initiative that changed the Democratic primary schedule in 2004, the first modification in more than 25 years.

He also discussed Republican campaign tactics he characterized as “tough.” Describing various disinformation and intimidation tactics attributed to Republicans in recent elections, McAuliffe argued, “You don’t sink to their level, but you can’t let one attack go undefended in this business. With Fox News and 24-hour cable, if something is said enough times, it becomes true. … I’m a strong believer that when you get hit, you need to hit back harder. Folks, when they come after you on patriotism, the American public wants you to hit back.”

McAuliffe repeatedly called for Democrats to develop a “noise machine” to match conservative talk radio and Fox News Channel.

The Brown Dems and Students for Hillary initially co-sponsored the event, but the University required that the latter group pull its sponsorship because it was construed as a political endorsement. University policy prohibits political campaigning on campus due to Internal Revenue Service tax regulations concerning Brown’s nonprofit status.

“Originally, Students for Hillary was sponsoring the event,” said Craig Auster ’08, head of Students for Hillary at Brown and former vice president of the Brown Democrats. “(McAuliffe) was coming as a favor to help get publicity for the group, and the Brown Democrats were co-sponsoring it because it is a Category III group.”

The event’s organizers disputed the argument that the speech was a political event. They told The Herald the event was not an endorsement of Clinton’s presidential camcontinued on page 12

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 10

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

Retired military leaders warn of warming’s threat to national defense

BY KAREN KAPLAN AND THOMAS MAUGH II LOS ANGELES TIMES

Global warming poses a “serious threat to America’s national security” and the military should act now to minimize the destabilizing consequences of rising temperatures, a panel of retired generals and admirals warned Monday.

Shortages of food and water could cause weak governments to collapse, increasingly severe natural disasters could draw U.S. forces into humanitarian missions in volatile areas and melting Arctic ice could spark territorial disputes over shipping routes and natural resources.

Even the effectiveness of sonar used by U.S. submarines could be at risk if parts of the oceans become

less salty.

The 63-page report describes climate change as a “threat multiplier” that makes dangerous situations all the more menacing.

“We will pay for this one way or another,” said retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today … or we’ll pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives.”

Other experts who were not involved in the report said national security concerns, though real, are probably not the most significant threats posed by global warming.

“Everything’s a national security issue these days,” said Scott Barrett, director of the International Policy Program at Johns Hopkins School

of Advanced International Studies.

“It’s a bit of a marketing ploy.”

The report, produced by the Center for Naval Analysis, a federally funded nonprofit research and analysis organization based in Alexandria, Va., was overseen by an 11-member military advisory board chaired by former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon Sullivan.

It was funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Bipartisan Policy Center and other foundations that were interested in how climate change would affect national security.

The report’s release came on the eve of a United Nations Security Council debate on climate change beginning Tuesday.

“Global warming’s impacts on natural resources and climate systems may create the fiercest battle our world has ever seen,” said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chair of the newly formed House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Markey will introduce legislation to fund climate change planning by the Department of Defense.

Those battles might force the demise of weak governments in the developing world, creating power vacuums for terrorist groups to exploit, the report found.

Deteriorating conditions in Africa and the Middle East could prompt a wave of migration to Europe. As a result, the report said, some of America’s most dependable allies could find themselves too distracted to participate in international coalitions or other efforts aimed at preventing regional conflicts.

Other experts called those risks unlikely. Climate change will lead to more failed states, but it is not clear that the result would be an increase in terrorism, said Steve Weber, director of the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers “came from Saudi Arabia, not the floodplains of Bangladesh,” he said.

But Weber agreed with the report’s authors that the opening of shipping channels through the now-frozen Arctic could become a significant source of conflict.

The Russians, who have lots of

land above the Arctic Circle, and the Chinese, who do not, could have very different views about how to address access to new waterways there. “There could be some pretty big fights over that,” he said.

When the U.S. military does deploy, the logistics will be more complicated than in the past. Widespread droughts will require massive transportation of water to troops stationed in foreign countries, the report found.

In addition, increased storm activity will impair normal maintenance and repairs of military equipment, and coastal flooding could inundate some key U.S. bases, such as Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida and the Naval Support Facility at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

To lessen the impact, the panel said climate change should be woven into national security and defense strategies and called on the military to take a stronger role in reducing its own contribution to global warming.

The Department of Defense did not return calls seeking comment on the report.

6 Al-Sadr loyalists leave Iraqi cabinet

BY SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN WASHINGTON POST

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In the first major shake-up of Iraq’s fragile coalition government, six ministers loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr pulled out of the cabinet on Monday over Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s refusal to set a timetable for an American troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The action frees al-Maliki to pick qualified people to fill ministries that are widely seen as ineffective, corrupt and sectarian. Yet it could also deepen tensions with al-Sadr within the government and on the streets, which could thwart U.S. and Iraqi efforts to bring about political reconciliation and stability, Iraqi officials and analysts said.

The withdrawal occurred on a day when the U.S. military reported the deaths of seven American troops, including five who were killed Monday — three soldiers in Baghdad and two Marines in Anbar province — and two soldiers slain on Saturday in Fallujah.

At the Iraqi parliament, where a suicide bomber detonated explosives last Thursday killing one person and injuring 22, senior al-Sadr legislators on Monday framed the ministers’ decision to leave in nationalistic terms. They declared they wanted al-Maliki to replace alSadr loyalists in the cabinet with “independent technocrats” who would not place sect, tribe, or religion over the best interests of Iraqis. Then, they urged other political parties to follow their example.

“I ask God to give the people an independent, devoted government that will be like a candle in the middle of darkness,” al-Sadr said in a statement that Nassar al-Rubaie, a member of al-Sadr’s political bloc in parliament, read to reporters.

While the withdrawal is unlikely to collapse the government in the short term, it is a challenge to al-Maliki and his fractured government to fix Iraq’s problems. Al-Sadr’s legislators blamed the government for not providing basic services, although they themselves ran ministries such as health and transportation.

Even with the resignations, alSadr will remain a potent political

force. His loyalists hold 30 seats in Iraq’s parliament and for now plan to remain a part of the ruling Shiite political alliance, the al-Sadr lawmakers said.

Al-Sadr, who has long demanded a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, has threatened before to leave the U.Sbacked government. Last November, his legislators pulled out for nearly two months to protest al-Maliki’s meeting with President Bush in Amman. In conversations after Monday’s news conference, the legislators said the difference now is they had no intention of returning to the cabinet.

“There is no chance,” said Bahar al-Araji, an al-Sadr parliamentarian.

For several months, al-Maliki has said he intended to reshuffle his cabinet. Al-Sadr’s officials four months ago sent him a list of 18 candidates to lead the six ministries the Sadrists presently control, said al-Araji. Falah Shanshal, head of alSadr’s parliamentary bloc, acknowledged their decision to leave was partly because al-Maliki would not choose any of their candidates.

“We are free because we are not in the government,” said al-Araji. “If the prime minister doesn’t do what we want, we can do something to the prime minister. We can make him leave the government.”

Al-Maliki, in a statement Monday, welcomed al-Sadr’s decision to give him the opportunity to fill the six slots. But he resisted demands for a timetable, stating that any withdrawal of U.S. troops “is linked to the readiness of our armed forces to hold the security file all over Iraq.”

“I know the prime minister feels relieved by the pullout,” said Haider al-Abadi, a legislator from al-Maliki’s Dawa party. “Now he can move forward and choose his own ministers without any haggling from the bloc which puts one foot forward and two feet backward.”

Al-Maliki, he said, had told him that al-Sadr’s nominations were “worse than the existing alternative” and so “it was impossible to choose them.” He said al-Maliki would act quickly to fill the positions, although al-Abadi didn’t say when. He also said al-Maliki wasn’t obligated to pick an independent and that he would pick whomever was best qualified, regardless of

party affiliation.

“The danger is that they (al-Sadr’s legislators) could leave the political process or take to the streets and disrupt the security plan,” said al-Abadi, referring to the nine weekold security offensive to pacify Baghdad. “We need to move very quickly to fill the positions. The situation on the ground is not very good.”

The decision to withdraw comes a week after al-Sadr mobilized tens of thousands of followers in the southern holy city of Najaf on the fourth anniversary of the fall of President Saddam Hussein. The demonstrators demanded a timetable for U.S. troops to leave Iraq. But a few days later, al-Maliki said on a trip to Asia that he had no plans to set a timetable. Al-Rubaie said that triggered the cabinet pullout.

Motivated by the prospects of an eventual U.S. withdrawal, al-Sadr has uneasily cooperated with the current security plan, allowing U.S. troops to enter his Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City and ordering his Mahdi Army militiamen to stand down. But in the past two months, bombings have risen in Shiite areas while U.S. and Iraqi troops have killed or arrested hundreds of his fighters.

“The Sadrist base is becoming angry. This is mostly to preserve his base,” said Joost Hiltermann, a Jordan-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, a research group, referring to the pullout.

“They were under a lot of pressure because the security plan which they tacitly accepted is not working.

The Americans are failing. They can’t stop the bombings.”

By al-Sadr withdrawing his supporters from the cabinet, al-Maliki and the United States could end up having less leverage over him.

“Al-Maliki doesn’t have much time,” said Mithal al-Alusi, an independent Sunni legislator, referring to filling his cabinet. “Either you make the changes now and deal with the problem. Or else he’ll lose everything.”

In northern Iraq, armed men attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint at the village of Addaya southeast of Mosul early Monday, killing 13 soldiers and wounding four, said a police spokesman at the Mosul police operations center.

CAMPUS N EWS TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

PAGE 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

A fresh pot of Mocha

BY NICOLE DUNGCA STAFF WRITER

The students behind Mocha are introducing a new brew to accommodate the University’s switch to Banner. The founders of Mocha, the student-run alternative to the University’s online course catalog, have been pouring hours of work into their project to help students find courses as the first online preregistration period approaches.

They are also preparing to hand down the program to a new team of students.

Mocha was founded in 2006 by five computer science concentrators looking for an easier way to search for courses. Dave Pacheco ’07, Daniel Leventhal ’07, Adam Cath ’07, Dave Hirshberg ’08 and Bill Pijewski ’07 cultivated the idea of Mocha as a final project in a CS class. After they released Mocha, the popularity of the program skyrocketed. For many students, Mocha is now an indispensable resource during shopping period.

The Mocha team currently consists of four original members — Pacheco, Leventhal, Cath and Hirshberg — and three new students, Colin Gordon ’08, Tim O’Donnell ’09 and Andres Douglas ’09, who started working on Mocha this semester.

The newest additions are now becoming familiar with how Mocha operates. “We’re almost trying to go slowly so we can bring the new guys up to speed,” Leventhal said.

Development of the updated version of Mocha was also slowed this semester because of the launch of Banner, the new computer database that has replaced Brown Online Course Announcement. Since Mocha harvests course information from the University’s database, Mocha must be updated any time the Banner course catalog changes.

Updating Mocha can be incredibly time-consuming, Pacheco said, but the work often occurs in bursts. After Banner’s course database went live, Leventhal put in about seven or eight hours a day for four or five days.

“I took a deep breath before saying yes because I had some idea of how much time it would take,” Gordon said of his decision to join the Mocha team.

The three new members said they knew it would be a major responsibility, but they ultimately joined to be a part of what they thought was a valuable project.

“It helps people around you and has a direct impact on everyone you know. You can see it being used all around you,” Douglas said.

With the widespread criticism of Banner’s unfriendly user interface — including a public condemnation from the Undergraduate Council of Students — students are continuing to rely on Mocha to search for courses.

“Banner is so hard to navigate that I’ll probably be using Mocha even more,” said Bricia Trejo ’09.

The Mocha creators did not particularly wish for that outcome — their main goal, they said, is to have an effective way to search for courses, whether provided by their program or by the University.

“We hoped that when Banner came out, we wouldn’t have to exist anymore,” Leventhal said.

The group is aiming to keep up with changes to the Banner system and maintain the accuracy of the course catalog.

“We have to spend a lot of time at Mocha fixing problems with the way it reacts with Banner,” Pacheco said.

For example, when the XLIST feature for cross-listed classes was added to Banner this week, it “broke Mocha,” according to Pacheco. He wrote in an e-mail to The

Thefts of metal among incidents reported

BY DEBBIE LEHMANN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The following summary includes all major incidents reported to the Department of Public Safety between March 30 and April 5.

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.

CRIME LOG Chris Bennett / Herald The founders of Mocha are preparing to hand down the program to a new team of students. Clockwise from top left: Adam Cath ’07, David Pacheco ’07, Daniel Leventhal ’07, Andres Douglas ’09, Tim O’Donnell ’09, Colin Gordon ’08.

Herald that the Mocha team used a “quick fix” to update their program, but now they have to work to add the XLIST feature to Mocha.

Members of the Mocha team have met with Computing and Information Services administrators and, in the past, the Office of the Registrar to try to find a way to make course updates more accessible to Mocha. But administrators have been unwilling to release course data other than through the University Web site, the Mocha organizers said.

“I think the general consensus is that Mocha is useful to use in conjunction with Banner as an alternative to the scheduling office of Banner,” said Lisa Mather, associate registrar for registration ser-

Students pursue religious occupations Brunonians drawn to the rabbinate, ministry, missions

BY TAYLOR BARNES S TAFF WRITER

Up until the 1950s, Brown — which has historical ties to the Baptist church — produced “tons of Baptist clergy,” said University Chaplain Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson.

Now, up to four dozen Brown graduates in each class pursue religious occupations encompassing many faiths.

“The number of people leaving Brown who serve religiously is huge,” Cooper Nelson said, comparing the University to other schools where she has worked.

Hearing the call Shulamit Izen ‘07 has known since elementary school that she wanted to become a rabbi.

“My family would sit by the rabbi and the cantor, and I would want to be them,” she said of attending synagogue.

After graduating, Izen will attend the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Penn. Her program includes a five-year study

of Judaic history.

Izen has specific plans for her ministry. “I want to start an innovative Jewish day school that combines creative pedagogy with joyous Judaism,” she said.

Greta Pemberton ‘06, who spoke about her desire to become a Unitarian minister at last year’s Commencement as a senior orator, is still deciding whether to follow the path she planned last spring.

FEATURE “The ministry is still a distant dream for me,” Pemberton said.

She currently works at Open Source radio station in Boston and said before becoming a spiritual leader, she needs “to get more life experience under my belt.”

Danyel Currie ’08 said she has considered career possibilities ranging from chemist to author, as well as a Christian pastor. After taking RS 72: “Christianity in Late Antiquity” as a freshman, Currie decided to concentrate in religious studies and psychology.

“I’ve got to pursue my vocation,” she said. “I couldn’t see myself doing anything with chemistry.” But she admitted she would feel “so much more confident” graduating

with a science degree.

Mother Teresa is Currie’s role model. “I kind of see myself going to the extreme, like she did. Her work really resonates with me,” she said.

But for now, her plans are unclear. “I’m as much in the dark as anyone to how this will play out,” she said.

For some students, matters of faith — not practicalities — made for late realizations about their interest in religious careers. Jon Mitchell ’09 said he initially resisted the Jewish faith and thus had hardly considered the rabbinate.

“I was never interested in practicing Judaism,” Mitchell said. At his bar mitzvah in Israel, he spoke about not believing in God. But before coming to Brown, Mitchell said he “considered the possibility of reinterpreting Judaism” and has since delved so deeply into his faith that he is now set on becoming a rabbi.

Both Miller Hui ’07 and Jennifer Quiroa’s ’09 see Christian missionary work in their futures, among other careers.

Hui said his father told him that pursuing missionary work alone would be ineffective. “ ‘You need continued on page 16

vices.

“They seem to be acknowledging and liking Mocha now, but we’re hoping to have a tighter relationship in the future,” Cath said.

As the Mocha team looks to the future, its three graduating members still intend to contribute to Mocha. Pacheco, Leventhal and Cath will have full-time jobs next year, but the three plan to spend time on the project, even if they’re not at Brown. Their commitment to the project will decrease, but they believe the program will continue be a beneficial tool to new students because of their choices in their successors.

“We trust the new guys. We know Mocha’s in good hands,” Pacheco said.

Tuesday, April 3: 10:09 a.m. Person reported that sometime between 3 p.m. on Feb. 1 and 7 a.m. on March 25, unknown persons entered a room in Barus & Holley and took four pieces of metal needed for equipment in the area.

There are no suspects or witnesses at this time.

Thursday, April 5: 10:02 a.m. Person reported that a recycling sign was missing from the Post Office in Faunce House. There are no suspects or witnesses at this time.

1:28 p.m. Complainant reported that unknown persons removed the whiteboard from her door in Mead House. There are no suspects or witnesses at this time.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 12

Former DNC chair McAuliffe talks politics with Brown Dems continued from page 9 paign by the Brown Democrats.

“Having this lecture is good for politics at Brown because it’s important to be able to have these kinds of political discussions, and I hope in the future we’ll be sponsoring events with other candidates as well,” said Brown Dems Vice President Adam Axler ’08, who also serves as the Rhode Island state director of Students for Barack Obama and interim chair of the Brown chapter. “I think that just bringing someone involved with a campaign to campus isn’t the Dems endorsing somebody, but it’s endorsing this sort of political discussion.”

Auster said the groups informed the Student Activities Office of the lecture last Monday but didn’t get a response until Thursday. Although

he said that they considered moving the event to the Avon Theater on Thayer Street — which would have satisfied University policy and allowed Students for Hillary to remain a co-sponsor — it was too late to arrange the move and easier for the Brown Democrats to sponsor the event alone.

Throughout the lecture, McAuliffe commented on the difficulty of speaking without seeming to endorse his candidate. “I’ve gotta be very careful about what I say because you have a lot of rules here,” he said. In his talk and his answers to audience questions afterwards, McAuliffe referred to Clinton as “a certain woman.”

Attorney General Patrick Lynch’s ’87 introduction of McAuliffe at the beginning of the lecture did not mention his role in the Clinton campaign.

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

Q&A WITH TERRY MC AULIFFE After addressing the Brown Democrats Monday night, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe spoke with The Herald about the new Democratic Congress, current DNC Chairman Howard Dean and fundraising in the 2008 presidential race.

Herald: What can Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., do in Congress to best help Democrats’ chances in 2008?

McAuliffe: Show that they can govern. Provide real health care, education, pass an immigration bill for the president to sign. What they want to see from us isn’t partisan bickering but results. They want to see results on the things that affect people every day. Their incomes are down, they don’t have health care, they don’t feel there is quality education, and a disastrous foreign policy.

Do you think it will help public perception of the Democrats to pass bills in Congress they know the president will veto?

If they think it’s right, they ought to pass it and let the chips

fall where they may. If the veto happens, so be it.

What do you think of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy?

I’m all for it. I did it with him a week before he came in, and I said, “Howard, the national party is fixed, now you’ve got to focus on the state parties.”

How have Democratic politics changed since fundraising increased so drastically under your leadership?

I think the biggest change is that there are now so many more people involved with the democratic process, because so many more young people, so many more people are giving money on the Internet. I think it’s expanding greatly the universe of people involved with the Democratic Party. I think you’ve got a lot more people now who have voice and they want to hear their candidates talking about issues that are important to them.

What do you cent attempts to soft money?

I’ve said this you’re going to

think about recrack down on

money, you have to get rid of all of it. Right now you’ve got gigantic loopholes, you have the 527s.

You’ve got to remember, in ’04, probably the most significant ad that was done was the Swift Boat ad — that wasn’t done by the campaign, that was done by a 527. There are gigantic loopholes that people can use to give large amounts of money. If you’re going to get rid of soft money, get rid of all of it.

Have you been surprised by Barack Obama’s ability to raise money for his campaign?

Well I’ve been hearing for a while that he was going to raise a lot of money. He put together a great operation, and he’s been working very hard. As I’ve said, there isn’t a donor I’ve called who Barack hasn’t called four or five times. I think it’s great, I still think this is great for the process.

I think that getting more people involved in it, bringing more people in will ultimately be great for our party. We collectively raised $80 (million) and they raised $40 (million) and that’s all good for us. So I wasn’t surprised.

many times, if get rid of soft

subscribe to the herald e-mail edition visit www.browndailyherald.com

— Nick Werle

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 13

Shooting rampage at Virginia Tech kills 32 students, faculty and staff continued from page 1 sions of condolences from President Bush, both houses of Congress and across the world.

“I’m really at a loss for words to explain or to understand the carnage that has visited our campus,” said Charles Steger, Virginia Tech’s president.

The rampage began as much of the campus was just waking up. A man walked into a freshman coed dorm at 7:15 a.m. and fatally shot a young woman and a resident adviser.

Based on witness interviews, police believed it was an isolated domestic case and chose not to take any drastic security measures, university officials said. But about 9:45 a.m., a man entered a classroom building, chained some of the doors shut behind him, then started walking into classrooms and shooting faculty and students with the two handguns, causing some to leap out of second-story windows and others to lie on the floor and bar their doors to keep the shooter from entering. Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said investigators were still not certain that the same man committed both shootings. But several law enforcement sources said it was the same person.

As police entered Norris Hall, an engineering and science building, shortly before 10 a.m., the man shot and killed himself before officers could confront him. He had killed 30 people in that building. One witness said the gunman was “around 19” and was “very serious but (with) a very calm look on his face.”

“He knew exactly what he was doing,” the witness, Trey Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., said. He said he watched the man enter his classroom and shoot Perkins’ professor in the head. “I have no idea why he did what he decided to do.

I just can’t say how lucky I am to have made it.”

The university canceled classes Monday and Tuesday and set up counseling for the grief-stricken campus. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who had just arrived in Japan on a trade mission, immediately flew back to Virginia. He was expected to attend a vigil Tuesday.

“We’ve been devastated as the death toll has been rising,” said Payton Baran, 20, of Bethesda, Md., who is a junior majoring in finance. “I’ve been calling everyone I know, and everyone I talk to is pretty much in tears. It’s really, really depressing.”

None of the victims’ names was released Monday, pending notification of their families.

Initial reports from the campus

raised the specter of “another Columbine,” in which two teenagers in Littleton, Colo., killed 13 people inside a high school in 1999 before killing themselves. But soon the Virginia Tech rampage dwarfed Columbine, to become the biggest mass shooting in U.S. history.

Students and parents launched a frenzied round of phone calls and text messages Monday morning, monitoring news reports and waiting for information. And the shootings prompted intense questioning of Steger and Flinchum from a community still reeling from the fatal shootings of a security guard and a sheriff’s deputy near campus in August and the arrest of the suspect on the edge of campus on the first day of classes.

Although the gunman in the dormitory was at large, no warning was issued to the tens of thousands of students and staff at Virginia Tech until 9:26 a.m., more than two hours later.

“We concluded it was domestic in nature,” Flinchum said. “We had reason to believe the shooter had left campus and may have left the state.” He declined to elaborate. But several law enforcement sources said investigators thought the shooter might have intended to kill a girl and her boyfriend Monday in what one of them described as a “lover’s dispute.” It was unclear whether the girl killed at the dorm was the intended target, they said.

Students who lived in the dorm said they received knocks on the door telling them to stay in their rooms but nothing else. Shortly before 9:30 a.m., the university sent out this e-mail: “A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston (dorm) earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating.”

“The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech Police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case.”

Steger said that, even though the gunman was at large, “we had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur.” He said 9,000 students live on campus and 14,000 live off-campus, and “it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to get the word out spontaneously.”

Students on campus and parents were angry. When Blake Harrison, 21, of Leesburg, Va., learned of the shootings, he called an administrative help line and was told “to proceed with caution to classes.” He said, “I’m beyond upset.

I’m enraged.”

Monday, as officials began to sort out the shootings, tales of the

read share recycle

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

VIGIL FOR VIRGINIA TECH VICTIMS

Chris Bennett / Herald

Students and other members of the community gathered in Manning Chapel Monday night for a candlelit vigil, led by University Chaplain Janet Cooper Nelson, for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings.

horror began to emerge.

Alec Calhoun, a junior, was in Room 204 in Norris. When the shootings began, people suddenly pulled off screens and pushed out windows. “Then people started jumping,” Calhoun said. “I didn’t just leap. I hung from the ledge and dropped. Anybody who made it out was fine. I fell and I hit a bush to cushion my fall. It knocked the wind out of me. I don’t remember running.”

About 9:50 a.m., Jamal Albarghouti was walking toward Norris Hall for a meeting with his adviser in civil engineering “to review my thesis. As I was walking, about 300 feet away, I started hearing people shouting, telling me to run or clear.”

He started to move away, but he also pulled out his cellphone, which has videorecording capability, and he began filming. His video, which he later shipped to CNN, captures officers running toward the brown three-story building, a couple of flashes from the second floor and 27 gunshots.

The video soon became the defining image of the rampage. “I just didn’t think I was in great danger,” Albarghouti said later.

In a German class in Room 207, Perkins was seated in the back with about 15 fellow students. The gunman barged in with two guns,

shot the professor in the head, then started shooting students, Perkins said.

“Everyone hit the floor at that moment,” Perkins said. “And the shots seemed like it lasted forever.”

The gunman left Room 207 and tried to return several minutes later, but Perkins and two other students had blocked the door with their feet. He shot through the door.

The last time anyone spoke with Kristina Heeger, she was headed for a 9 a.m. French class in Norris. Within an hour, the sophomore from Vienna had been shot in the back. But she survived.

It was a story that played out across campus, and far beyond, with so many injured, so many dead. “She’s doing better,” said a friend, Eric Anderson, Monday night after seeing her. “She’s recovering. We’re praying for her right now. She couldn’t talk to them yet, or anyone, and they didn’t know any details about what happened.”

Tucker Armstrong, a freshman from Stephens City, Va., passed in front of Norris as he headed to a 10 a.m. class. He said in an e-mail that he “noticed several kids hanging and jumping from the second floor windows trying to land in bushes.”

Armstrong said he heard repeated bangs. He went to help

the people who had leapt from the building, but they yelled at him: “Get out of here, run! At that point I realized they were shots and they just kept going and going.”

Police and ambulances poured into the area. Dustin Lynch, 19, a sophomore from Churchville, Md., watched from the nearby Drillfield, as unresponsive students were carried out of Norris Hall.

“I saw police officers literally carrying kids out,” Lynch said. “It basically looked like they were carrying bodies.”

Parents arrived at the Inn at Virginia Tech to meet with other grieving families and were distraught at the university’s management of the incident. “I think they should have closed the whole thing. It’s not worth it. You’ve got a crazy man on campus. Do something about it,” said Hoda Bizri of Princeton, W.Va., who was visiting her daughter Siwar, a graduate student.

Bret Hudner, 23, communications major from Vienna, Va., was heading toward one of the dining halls and suddenly a scrum of police cars came racing by. “The scary thing is I know I’m going to go into classes, and there’s going to be empty spaces,” Hudner said.

The Bizris, meanwhile, were waiting for news about a friend whom they could not locate. They think she was inside Norris Hall.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 14

Baseball keeps pace with Harvard, Sunday’s doubleheader postponed continued from page 17 leftfielder Ryan Murphy ’08 both had three hits and three runs scored.

“You had a lot of guys (Saturday) in the first game who aren’t the guys you’re usually counting on to produce your runs,” Drabinski said.

“Those four guys — Papenhause, Murphy, Tanabe, Kelaher — which is great because you can’t always rely on the same guys: (Devin) Thomas (’07), (Jeff) Dietz (’08), Tews, (Matt) Nuzzo (’09). It’s nice to get see those other guys get into the fold and contribute.”

The team’s offensive explosion overshadowed another stellar start

by Dietz, who gave up just two runs while pitching a seven-inning complete game. After allowing a double and a home run to start the game, the right-hander settled down, allowing just three baserunners and striking out 11 batters the rest of the way.

He improved his Ivy record to 3-0, with a 2.57 ERA. “After the first two batters, I felt pretty good,” Dietz said. “I threw my curveball for strikes — when I start getting my curveball working, I feel fine.”

In the second game, both starters — Brown’s James Cramphin ’07 and Dartmouth’s Jeff Wilkerson — pitched well in the early innings.

But in the top of the fourth, with the Bears leading 1-0, three of Brown’s first four batters hit solo home runs to break the game open. Dietz, Tews and right-fielder Dan Shapiro ’09 connected on the homers, and designated hitter J.J. Eno ’08 contributed an RBI-double later that inning.

Tews, who went 3-for-3 in the second game, hit another solo homer in the

sixth, and the Bears scored again in the seventh and the ninth.

Cramphin — who was two outs away from a complete game shutout against Columbia last week — again pitched well, striking out 10 in six innings while allowing just one run in improving his Ivy record to 2-0, with a 2.66 ERA and 27 strikeouts in 20 and 1/3 innings. His recent successes have impressed Drabinski.

“The big thing with James is that we’ve worked on some mechanical issues in the offseason,” the coach said. “Since the Charleston Southern (University) game he pitched, he’s shortened up his arm action and he’s keeping his shoulders level. …

As you can see from the number of strikeouts, he’s been very effective.”

With Brown and Harvard’s Sunday doubleheaders against Dartmouth and Yale, respectively, postponed because of rain, the Bears and Crimson will head into next weekend’s four-game series at Aldrich Field with identical 7-3 Ivy League records, tied for the Red Rolfe Division lead. Before the season, Collegiate Baseball predicted that Harvard would finish first in the division, with Brown second. Dietz said the team has been looking forward to the match-up all year.

“There’s nothing I would like to do more than to take (the series) against Harvard,” Dietz said. “If we played like we did this weekend, we’ll have good results.”

Before the weekend’s doubleheaders against the Crimson, the Bears have three midweek games at home. They will face Marist College in a doubleheader on Tuesday and the University of Connecticut on Wednesday.

M. track gets six first-place finishes continued from page 17 Craigwell ran to a second-place finish in the 100-meter dash with a time of 11.49 seconds. Sean O’Brien ’09 also put up a silver-medal finish in the 400-meter run with a time of 49.97 seconds, less than a second behind the winner. He also pulled double duty, running to a sixth-place finish in the 200-meter dash.

The Bears posted a number of successes in the field events to cap the successful day. Urlacher won the javelin with a throw of 170-feet 9inches. David Howard ’09 launched the discus a distance of 154-feet 6inches, good for second place. Howard also took home a bronze in the shot put with a 48-foot 10.25-inch throw.

“The goal was to compete hard,” Lake said. “It was to compete to win or as close to winning as possible.”

To continue the winning ways of the day, Mike Woods ’09 bested the competition in the pole vault by clearing 14-feet 7.25-inches, and Deshaun Mars ’08 took home gold in the long jump with a 22-foot 2.5-inch jump.

Brown swept the top three spots in the triple jump. Reggie Cole ’10 hopped, skipped and leaped to first

with a 47-foot 0.75-inch attempt and was followed by Craigwell and Andrew Chapin ’10, landed in second and third places, respectively, in the event.

The Bears will face the Huskies again next weekend at the UConn Husky Spring Invitational in Storrs, Conn.

“I don’t think we are too concerned about beating the Huskies,” Schmidt said. “They are not in our league, and when we face them, we are often missing important parts of our team. …Next week, myself and a few of our top distance runners will not be competing or competing in events that we don’t specialize in. We are preparing for (the Heptagonal Championships).”

The Heptagonal Championships, the culmination of the season for the Bears, looms on the horizon only three weeks away.

“Heps is the only meet that we truly care about team placing, so until then we are using each competition as a tune-up for Heps on an individual level,” Lake said. “Each competition is an opportunity to learn and improve as an athlete both mentally and physically. Each athlete’s individual performances are critical to our team’s success at Heps.”

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

W. lax blindsided by Big Red, 19-10 continued from page 17 more goals. They managed to outscore the Big Red 5-4 the rest of the way.

“In the second half, we started to enforce our style of play on them, and it led to some positive results,” Markowski said.

After another goal by Vitkus

and two more Cornell goals made the score 17-6, Bruno outscored the Big Red 4-2 for the final 16:03.

Vitkus, DeTolla, Markowski and Krystina DeLuca ’09 each scored for the Bears. Despite the solid defensive play in the latter stages of the second half, Brown could not overcome the early first-half deficit, and Cornell came out with the

victory.

The Bears return to action at home on Wednesday against Yale at 4 p.m.

“We’re extremely excited for our next Ivy competition,” Holland said. “We want to come out strong from the first whistle and play strong all the way through till the end.”

W. track makes strong showing at Brown Invitational W continued from page 17 ish of 10:54.91.

“I was most proud of Madeleine Marecki’s first collegiate win in the 3,000 meters,” Ferjan said. “It was great to see her breakthrough performance on the home track.”

Breakthroughs continued in the steeplechase as Lindsay Kahn ’08 and Brooke Giuffre ’10 provided big boosts for the Bears by coming

in second and third, respectively, with times of 10:46.98 and 11:01.5.

Kahn’s performance was an NCAARegional qualifying time, and Giuffre’s race was her first time running the event.

Tiffany Chang ’08 placed second in the pole vault by clearing 11-feet 5.75-inches. There was a dramatic tie for third as teammates Cassandra Wong ’10 and Keely Marsh ’08 each bested 10-11.75 feet in the event.

SU

Softball plowed by Big Green

D O K U

The next slated competition for the Bears will be at the UConn Husky Spring Invitational next week in Storrs, Conn., where the Bears will continue to improve on their times, heights and throws as they move closer and closer to the Heptagonal Championships three weeks away.

“Weather in outdoor track in the Northeast is a huge factor for performances, and it looks hopeful to be a decent day this Saturday in Storrs,” Lake said.

EX

T R A

Fill in the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains the digits 1 through 9.

continued from page 20 both singled to bring in Asay for Brown’s first run. However, Dartmouth got hot again while Brown’s bats went silent until the sixth, when the score was 10-1. Facing another early end from the mercy rule if Bruno didn’t close the gap to less than eight, pinch hitter Linnea Anderson ’08 started a two-out rally in the bottom of the sixth. With Lewis on second, Anderson hit one to deep right, and the ball grazed off the Dartmouth fielder’s glove to drop and score Lewis. Browne stepped up to the plate and hit her final RBI of the weekend to score Anderson.

“Kelsey (Wilson ’09) had just told us last week to go out there and have fun, since we’d been losing and thinking too much, and that helped me a lot today,” Browne said of her slugfest.

Browne had cut the deficit to 10-3, giving the Bears one more chance in the seventh, but all of the at-bats produced pop-ups to right field.

“We’re working on getting the little victories, like not getting mercied in this game,” Enabenter-Omidiji said.

Pitchers Michelle Moses ’09 and Kristen Schindler ’09 split the game on the mound, allowing five hits each. Moses walked four and struck out two while Schindler’s entered the game in relief and walked one and struck out three.

Brown is going up to Boston twice this week. On Thursday, it will travel to Boston College and then it will make a return trip to play Harvard next weekend.

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CR ACROSS 1 Botch the opportunity 7 Taxi 10 Doorframe segment 14 Subsist by eating 15 Fold female 16 __ Mountains: Europe/Asia border range 17 Sartre’s “No Exit,” e.g.

19 Span. miss 20 Lower-left PC key 21 Family 22 Marquee toppers 23 Businesswoman’s attire 27 Cleans with soap 30 In the manner of 31 Pres. before FDR 32 Unlikely “Jeopardy!” result of 3/16/2007 39 Melville captain 41 50-and-over org.

42 Void’s partner 43 Capitale NW of Napoli 44 Shrink’s “Mmhmm” 46 Numbered musical work 47 Olympic bobsledding unit 51 Prefix with fauna 52 Beer keg insert 53 Bail out 55 Soviet economic project 61 Pizza cookers 62 Glop 63 Irish Rose’s lover 67 Encircle with a belt 68 Goal of one doing crunches 71 Trait transmitter 72 New Haven collegian 73 “__ Waldo?”

74 Strategic Belgian river of WWI 75 Tiny, as a bairn 76 Suspicious of DOWN 1 Political coalition 2 Dryer fluff 3 “__ and out”: CB sign-off 4 Money to burn

O S S W O R D

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58 Nimble 5 World games 38 Borden’s 59 Renée’s org. spokescow “Chicago” 6 Dynamite 40 Drink mixer role relative 45 Jurist Warren 60 Weasel sound?

7 Big strings in the 48 The “Say Hey 64 Like Hubbard’s orchestra Kid” cupboard 8 Not sleeping 49 Mimic 65 “Not bloody 9 Ottoman 50 “Sing __ song” likely” governor 54 Rattler and cobra 66 Exxon, once 10 “War on Drugs” 55 Like London 68 Stitch up slogan weather, often 11 Chilean pianist 56 Harvard and Yale 69 “Isn’t that adorable!”

Claudio 57 French sci-fi 70 Ho __ Minh 12 Mother: Pref. pioneer Jules 13 Explosion ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: 18 Spot on a playing card 22 Actress Ward 24 Drenched 25 Labor Dept. watchdog 26 Crow cry 27 Pier 28 Sound of a sneeze 29 SeaWorld orca 33 Ball game postponer 34 Once, once 35 Sword with a guarded tip 36 Rapper __ Shakur 37 Candy heart 4/16/07 xwordeditor@aol.com shorthand

By Mike Burlisen (c)2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

4/16/07

O PINIONS E XTRA TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

PAGE 15

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

With Slingbox, watch your parents’ cable from your dorm room

BY BART STEIN

TECHNOLOGY COLUMNIST “Wow, that’s incredible.” “Wait, how is that possible?” “But I don’t get it, you’re controlling your TV over the Internet?”

These are the excited exclamations you’ll hear from friends once you show them the innovative Slingbox AV ($179) from Sling Media. You shouldn’t be surprised by these reactions — the Slingbox is probably the coolest gadget you’ve seen in a long time.

The Slingbox is a small, sleek box that attaches to your digital cable box or DVR (Digital Video Recorder). It also connects to the Internet through a broadband connection.

The concept works like this: the Slingbox allows you to view and control your cable box or DVR from any broadband-connected Mac or PC equipped with SlingPlayer software, which comes with the device.

This is a simple idea, but the application of it has mind-blowing results. Say, for instance, you’re a Brown student from California. You can hook up a Slingbox at your home in California and watch California TV on your computer at Brown. A virtual remote appears on your computer screen and you can change channels and interact with your TV just as if you were sitting in front of it. It’s pretty amazing.

You connect the Slingbox to your cable box or DVR using those ubiquitous yellow, red and white composite video cables. Once you’ve done that, you connect your Slingbox to the Internet through your home router, with an Ethernet cable.

What if your router is in a room that can’t be reached by an Ethernet cable from the location of your Slingbox? To solve this, Sling Media offers a solution called SlingLink. SlingLink consists of two devices that turn the electrical wiring of your house into a distribu-

tion system for your Internet. One Slinglink connects to the router and the other connects to the Slingbox. The devices are connected together just by being plugged into the wall.

It’s that simple to set up, and it works flawlessly.

Once you’ve connected your Slingbox to the Internet, you place tiny infrared “blasters” on your cable box or DVR and connect them to your Slingbox. This will allow your computer to act as a remote control when watching over the Internet (although you’ll experience a slight lag when changing channels).

The only other thing you have to do is install the SlingPlayer software on your Mac or PC (the Mac version is still a trial version and

one of the best support sites I’ve seen, and it was able to help me fix the problem.

When you begin actually watching your Slingbox over the Internet, you might have similar confused feelings. That’s because in order to achieve acceptable picture quality, you’ll need to understand confusing information about upstream and downstream bandwidths. SlingPlayer automatically optimizes the picture, but some connections — even if they’re broadband — just aren’t fast enough to adequately stream your TV signal. Once again, credit to Sling Media for providing a simple tool online that allows you to test your connection.

If you can find a nerdy friend to figure all these complications out, you’ll be happily

The Slingbox allows you to view and control your cable box or DVR from any broadband-connected Mac or PC equipped with SlingPlayer software. has to be downloaded).

You begin by configuring your Slingbox to share TV over just your home network, and this is easy. Unfortunately, being able to watch your home TV on your home computer isn’t particularly useful. The real advantage of the Slingbox is when you can watch it from anywhere in the world.

To enable this feature, you’ll have one of two experiences: You can get lucky and have immediate success, or you can run into significant techno mumbo-jumbo. I experienced the latter (UPnP was disabled on my home router, and even I don’t know what that means). Fortunately, Sling Media has

rewarded with one of the coolest technology experiences out there. A slick interface makes you feel as though you’re sitting on the couch in front of your TV. If you have a DVR, you can pause, record and rewind TV from thousands of miles away. You can also watch recorded shows. It’s incredible.

The quality of video and audio depends, as mentioned, on your Internet connections.

If you meet the minimum requirements, it is generally pretty good.

The applications of the Slingbox are very exciting. You can watch your local sports teams wherever you have access to the Internet. You can also piggyback on your parents’

cable and have access to premium channels you don’t get at Brown, like HBO. Students living off campus should consider foregoing expensive cable service for a one-time fee of $179 (the cost of the Slingbox AV) to watch their home cable on their computer.

That proposition becomes even more attractive when you consider that Sling Media plans to release a new device in the second half of the year called the SlingCatcher. The SlingCatcher will allow you to “sling” your home TV to not only PCs and Macs but also to any other TV in the world.

When this gizmo is released, you could potentially take the off-campus scenario further: You could split a Slingbox and SlingCatcher with your roommate and have a TV in your house with full access to cable without actually paying any monthly cable fee.

If you’re wondering whether that’s legal, so am I. It’s important to note that the Slingbox AV is just one of three Slingboxes the company offers. There is also a Slingbox TUNER, offered at the same price, which allows you to sling your basic cable TV without the need for a digital cable box, and there’s the Slingbox PRO ($249), which accepts and streams high definition broadcasts. It’s also worth mentioning that both the Slingbox AV and Slingbox PRO work with satellite services, and that all three Slingboxes can stream content to cutting edge mobile devices like Palm Treos and Windows-based smartphones.

Sling Media really has an impressive technology on its hands, and I suspect you’ll be hearing more about the company as time goes on.

For now though, I’m going to close this Word document and get back to watching a Knicks game … in the Rock.

Very cool.

Bart Stein ’09: the Steinster!

Our problems with AEA

BY JENNIFER CHUDY AND BELINDA NAVI GUEST COLUMNISTS

In light of the articles that have been published in The Herald this semester regarding Asian Equality in Admissions, we feel the need to respond as a community about our strong reservations regarding the group formed by Neil Vangala ’09 and Jason Carr ’09. Though we cannot speak for the entire Asian, Asian-American, Third World and greater Brown communities, we feel compelled to voice our concerns both as individuals and based on the responses we have received from members of our organizations.

We do not oppose the stated purpose of AEA. On its Web site, AEA claims that it aims to promote “institutional transparency” and to “(educate) and (inform) the Brown student body of discrimination.” We do not object to fostering institutional transparency at our school, nor do we object to the possibility of eventually advocating for the release of admission statistics.

However, in our opinion, the goals touted by AEA have not been honored in an appropriate and sensitive way. This column will therefore not dispute the claim that Asian or Asian-American applicants encounter bias in the admission process. That is an important but separate discussion. We hope instead to convey why we cannot embrace AEA. We have three main concerns regarding Vangala and Carr’s group.

The first is related to how the organization was formed. At a recent debate between AEA and the Brown Debating Union (a debate to which Asian and Asian-American leaders were not invited), Carr and Vangala explained that they formed their group in response to a recent lawsuit brought by

Yale freshman Jian Li against Princeton, as well as a 1983 report conducted at Brown.

Carr and Vangala assumed that many of Li’s charges against Princeton were applicable to Brown, and they used the 1983 report — which claimed Asian and Asian-American applicants encountered discrimination at Brown — to garner support. Somehow, these conclusions were reached even before AEA met with Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73 to discuss current admission policies.

Though many meaningful clubs are initially started by a small group of individuals rather than entire communities, the leaders of AEA were unresponsive to calls for more widespread dialogue. During conversations some of us had with its founders, our concerns were dismissed in a cursory manner, leaving many of us feeling alienated.

Since AEA did not form organically as a response to community concerns, it may come as no surprise that it has not received support from any Asian or Asian-American student groups at Brown. Carr and Vangala only approached two of the 18 Asian and Asian-American groups on campus to solicit their official endorsement — which AEA never received.

However, AEA never entered into an exchange with these groups, nor did it include them in the process of determining the best way to pursue “institutional transparency.”

Rather, AEA sought these affiliations for the sake of promoting its own credibility. Indeed, a liaison to AEA felt he was being used as a liaison “in name only,” and many of his attempts to work with the organization went unacknowledged by Vangala and Carr. Furthermore, when Carr was asked if he would move forward with AEA even without support from Asian and Asian-American organizations on campus at the aforementioned debate, he responded, “Hell, yes,” demonstrating, we feel, a disturbing lack of respect for

the opinions of the community.

This disregard for the voices of Asian and Asian-American students — students whose causes it claims to champion — reflects a general attitude within AEA. For an organization that insists on promoting institutional transparency, there is an alarming lack of dialogue informing its own platform.

We are concerned with the strongly charged language continuously used by AEA. In a Spectator article (“Asian Americans in Admissions: When Success Breeds a Backlash,” Vol. 5, Issue 5), Carr wrote, “Only two groups of people believe discrimination is a nuanced issue: racists and college admissions officers.”

We believe comments like these reveal that AEA’s campaign relies on the presumption of discrimination in Brown admission. If our “racist” admission officers are already written off as guilty of discrimination, how can we expect AEA to produce a report (one of its stated goals) that makes unmotivated and objective conclusions?

Furthermore, we feel that the group’s frequent use of words such as “equality” and “institutional transparency” to beckon campus support oversimplifies a complicated issue. AEA’s leaders would allege — according to the logic in their columns — that our critical analysis of their group and its goals makes us enemies of equality, out to “destroy a group that is both noble and progressive” (a direct quotation about two of us from a recent e-mail, dated April 14, that Vangala sent to Asian community leaders). By using such terminology, AEA suggests that anyone who questions it must also be in favor of bias and institutional secrecy. Apparently, we’re either with them or against them.

We want to commend Vangala and Carr for bringing attention to an important topic.

However, we will not lend support to an organization that, in our opinion, has actively

excluded the voices of members of our community.

Unfortunately, we feel that attempts at communication with AEA have been exhausted, and we are wary of collaborating with a group that has ignored our input since its initiation.

For members of any campus group, we hope this letter will fuel the discussion that needs to accompany initiatives such as AEA. Finally, we encourage all those who are interested to contact admission officers so as to better understand the complexity of admissions here at Brown.

This column was written by Jennifer Chudy ’07, Hapa Club president and TWC staffer, and Belinda Navi ’09, Filipino Alliance E-Board member and TWC staffer.

It has been endorsed by: Henry Chien ’09, Chinese Student Association co-chair Darnell Fine ’08, Minority Peer Counselor coordinator Natasha Go ’10, Brown Organization of Multi-Racial and Bi-Racial Students co-chair Karynn Ikeda ’09, VISIONS layout editor and MPC Friend Heilyn Paulino ’09, Latin American Students Organization chair Jane Tanimura ’07, co-chair of the Asian American Student Organization Kristin Jordan ’09, MPC Jessica Kawamura ’07, former AASA co-chair Jamie Farris ’07, BOMBS member, FA member, MPC Friend, TWC staffer Christable Lee ’09 Rukesh Samarasekera ’08 Cyprian Kibuka ’08, African Students Association member Wendy Chen ’09, CSA co-chair, AASA member Agnes Barrios ’09, Movimiento Estudantil Chicano de Aztlan member, LASO member, Residential Peer Leader Robert Smith III ’09, Queer Political Action Committee member, MPC Friend Patrick Pangan ’09, MPC, FA member Rick Ahl ’09, Operation Iraqi Freedom member Nisha Mirani ’10 Lily Shield ’09 Alexander Ortiz ’09 Laura Gerace ’07, BOMBS member, MPC Friend Anna Hidalgo ’09 Victoria Chao ’08, Strait Talk Symposium coordinator Amy Tan ’09,, BOMBS member, TWC staff staff.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

M. lax drops another close game to Penn continued from page 20 breaks. There were a couple of shots deflected off helmets and defenders and went in, but we can’t take anything away from Penn.”

Brown went into the half down 6-4, as Muldoon scored before the half on a rebound off of midfielder Jeff Hall’s ’08 shot. Muldoon finished the game with four goals and two assists, continuing his incredible rookie season.

Bruno hung with the Quakers for most of the third quarter and found itself trailing 8-7 with 8:31 remaining in the third, but then Penn went on another run that put them up 11-7 to finish the quarter.

However, the gritty Bears would not quit, as has been the case all

season. They pulled to within one with 7:30 left in the game and had a chance to tie when attackman Kyle Hollingsworth’s ’09 shot produced a rebound right in front of the net, but the second effort was put just over the crossbar. Though Hollingsworth did not convert, he did finish with two goals on the day.

That was the last great opportunity for the Bears, and Penn picked up an insurance goal late to take the game, 12-10.

“It’s always tough to come back when we’re in a three-four goal hole,” Tiffany said. “The Penn face-off men did a great job. They won all the face-offs in the first half, and that’s how they got their run going.” Face-offs have plagued Brown throughout the season, and

though midfielder Harrison Avart ’10 performed well in the second half — winning about 50 percent of his draws — it was too late because Penn had already built up its lead.

Shields was impressed with Penn’s toughness. “This was the first game this year that our opponent played a game congruent with ours,” he said. “They are a scrappy team that plays like we do.

They just shot a little better than us.”

The team will try to right the ship against the University of Hartford at home Friday at 7 p.m. The Bears need a big win to get some momentum for two match-ups down the stretch against top-10 ranked Cornell and Princeton.

Unexpected pair packs dangerous 1-2 punch on mound continued from page 20 still has plenty of time to mature.

Maybe someday his tiny head will even fit into his hat.

In two starts this season, Greinke matched up well with two teams that boast powerful lineups: Toronto and Boston. Greinke pitched well in both contests, allowing one earned run in each game. Though he gave up only one earned run in seven innings against the Red Sox, he was outdueled by some guy from Boston named Daisuke Matsuzaka, whom you may have heard of.

What is also encouraging is his K/BB ratio — 12/1 — which suggests that he has regained the command that made him a firstround draft pick in 2002. Assuming that Zack won’t pull a Ricky Williams and lose his desire to play ball, he should develop into the ace that the Royals have been looking for.

An AL East team might have the best ace no one’s heard of. Tampa Bay’s Scott Kazmir?

Because we’re Mets fans, we couldn’t write a column about Kid K and still keep our security deposit. So … no. Daisuke?

We’ll see. Roy Halladay? An ace for sure, but too well known. Instead, we’ll focus on Camden Yards. Yes, the Baltimore Orioles. As much as Peter Angelos has devastated the organization, the O’s still have two absolute studs at the top of their rotation: Erik Bedard and Daniel Cabrera.

The latter, a 26-year-old righty, had what baseball sage Peter Gammons called the best spring training pitching performance in 2006. However, Cabrera has not turned this potential into results during the regular season with any consistency. His career .500 record can be improved upon if he trusts his stuff and simply throws more strikes. In 2006, his 1.58 WHIP was higher than many journeymen starters, and he had a walks-per-nine-innings figure that is even larger than his monstrous hands — above six. He won the MLB title for most wild pitches last season with 17, while allowing only 11 homeruns. Similar to Zack Greinke, Cabrera clearly suffers from a mental block.

As promising as Cabrera is, Erik Bedard is that much better.

The Canadian southpaw has an

absolutely electric mid-90s fastball that mows down the best hitters in baseball’s best division on a regular basis. Combine that heater with an improving changeup, his tremendous slide pitch — which some consider to be a slurve a la Dontrelle Willis — and a deceptive delivery, and Bedard’s stuff becomes devastating. The late bloomer (he’s 28) has racked up 17 strikeouts in his three starts this season, including a gritty April 8 start in the Bronx where he retired 11 straight in an eventual 6-4 win. O’s skipper Sam Perlozzo acknowledged the talent this spring and named Bedard his opening day starter.

Our honorable mentions for other dynamic duos of “pocket aces” would go to the Mets’ Mike Pelfrey and Oliver Perez, San Diego’s Jake Peavy and Chris Young, the Giants’ Matt Cain and Noah Lowry, and the Marlins’ Scott Olsen and Anibal “more no-hitters in my rookie season than 45 years of Mets baseball” Sanchez.

Shane Reil ’09 and Chris Petersen ’07 belly-flop off of diving boards that are higher than Ricky Williams, and it hurts.

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

Brown students pursue vocations as missionaries, rabbis and ministers continued from page 11 some kind of craft, like Paul in the Bible — he was a tent-maker,’ ” Hui recalled his father telling him. Hui said he applied to Brown’s Program in Liberal Medical Education because, on a mission trip to Mexico, many people “would ask me to pray for some sort of physical ailment.”

“I felt like (my acceptance to PLME) was part of God’s plan. He put me here specifically,” he said.

Hui and several of his Christian friends at Brown and Rhode Island School of Design hope to someday create a Christian hospital and orphanage.

“Some people say that you can’t mix religion and medicine, but, in my perspective, the best place is where someone cares for you, not just your vitals,” Hui said.

Quiroa decided she wanted to be an anaplastologist — or prosthetics specialist — before she seriously considered doing missions work.

Volunteering in New Orleans, La., during freshman year “gave me a heart” for service.

“I can’t imagine other lives without the amazing blessing that I have, and I want to share it,” she said.

She said war-torn countries have a high demand for new limbs due to frequent amputations.

“I have always wanted to make prosthetics. Maybe God could use me,” Quiroa said.

Questioning their conviction Like their classmates, students pursuing religious occupations are often indecisive when making the career choice.

“Very few people at 22 want to make a commitment to anything,” said Father Henry Bodah, the University’s Catholic chaplain. “They don’t go into Goldman Sachs thinking they’ll be working there until they’re 40.”

Izen questioned whether she could devote herself to the rabbinate. “When you’re a rabbi, that’s a big responsibility,” she said. “People are handing you their bundles of

sorrow and saying, ‘Help me.’ ” Pemberton said she thinks she is too young to enter religious service.

“It would have been arrogant for me to preach at age 21 or 22,” she said.

Currie has practical concerns as she approaches the ministry — she is unsure how following in Mother Teresa’s footsteps “will work in terms of me paying the rent,” she said.

But she said her faith keeps her going. “Jesus, he just walked around and talked to people. He was cool with that, and I’m cool with that.”

Quiroa sometimes questions why she is at Brown. “You go to this Ivy League school, you pay thousands of dollars for this school, and then you go and be a missionary?

You beg people for money to be a missionary?” she said.

Faith at a secular school As a religious person at Brown, Currie said she finds herself in the minority.

“Unfortunately, many of our peers don’t value religion,” she said.

“Many people see religious people as stupid or irrational.”

Mitchell agreed. “It’s not a religious environment here,” he said.

“It’s a secular, liberal university, and most people are not interested in religious life.”

Hui said he has not encountered hostility toward his faith at Brown.

“The people who point to Brown as being anti-Christian are people who have not talked to anyone at Brown about their faith,” he said.

Cooper Nelson said she disagrees with the notion that Brown is nonreligious. Nearly three quarters of students claim a religious background, and nearly half are involved in religious activities on campus, she said.

Though Quiroa said she has met few students on a religious career track, she affirmed the value of preparing for religious service with a Brown degree. “Having a wellrounded education can just help so much when you’re sharing your faith,” she said.

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PAGE 16

S PORTS E XTRA TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

PAGE 17

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Baseball keeps pace with Harvard, Sunday’s doubleheader postponed

BY STU WOO FEATURES EDITOR

Baseball Head Coach Marek Drabinski has been concerned about his team’s offense for much of the season. But after Saturday’s showing, he might not have to worry anymore.

Behind solid starting pitching and offense from unexpected sources, the Bears blew out Dartmouth 202 and 10-3 in a doubleheader sweep at Aldrich Field. For the day, Brown batters hammered out 31 hits, and the defense, once a sore spot, committed no errors. The Bears improved their record to 7-3 in the Ivy League, 12-14 overall, while the Big Green dropped to 2-8 in league play, 5-19 overall.

“I think those are the best two games we played this season,” said infielder Bryan Tews ’07. “We had no errors, the pitching was great, the of-

fense was great. If we keep playing well in those three (areas), we can beat anyone.”

In the top of the first inning of the first game, the Bears jumped out to a 3-0 lead and never looked back. Brown was the visiting team on its home field because snowy conditions in New Hampshire forced the games to be moved south. The Bears scored a run in every inning of the first game, and all 10 batters recorded hits and had either an RBI or run scored.

Chris Tanabe ’10 got his first start of the Ivy League season in right field and responded by going 2-for-3 with five RBIs and hitting his first collegiate homer, a three-run shot to left field. Second baseman Brian Kelaher ’08 added four RBIs, while third baseman Robert Papenhause ’09 and Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

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Pitcher Jeff Dietz ’08 backed up baseball’s offensive explosion by striking out 11 in a complete game.

Home cooking helps m. track to six first-place finishes at Brown Invitational

BY SARAH DEMERS ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

The men’s track and field team finally got its chance to put on a show in front of the home crowd when it hosted the Brown Invitational on Saturday. Brown won six events and had multiple athletes finish in the top three of their events.

“It’s always good to have homefield advantage,” said sprinter Miles Craigwell ’09. “Knowing that you have friends and family there watching gives you a lot of support and makes you want to do well.”

The invitational attracted several of the top track and field teams in the area to College Hill this week-

end. Ivy League rivals such as Harvard and Yale brought athletes on Saturday as well as regional foes such as the University of Connecticut and the University of Rhode Island.

“Regardless of whatever team won the meet, the toughest competition is always against the other Ivies,” said middle-distance runner Ozzie Myers ’08. “You always want to go out and send a message.”

Despite missing a large portion of their throws and sprints squads, who were participating in a meet held by the University of Tennessee, the Bears managed to send a strong message under the sunny skies at Brown Stadium.

“Our coach reminded us of the importance of the meet,” said javelin thrower Sam Urlacher ’09. “Our championship meet is only a few weeks away now, and you never know what the weather is going to be like for our remaining meets.”

Myers took advantage of the opportunity to race on his home track by running the 3,000-meter steeplechase seemingly without competition — the runner-up finished almost 22 seconds behind him. His personal best time of 9:12.16 won the race and landed him in seventh overall on Brown’s top 10 all-time list in the event. “(Director of Track and Field Craig Lake) didn’t really tell me

much before the meet, just go out and run my race,” Myers said. “ ‘Don’t hit any steeples.’ ” Taking a page out of Myers’ book, a fleet of Bears dominated the 3,000-meter run. Brian Schmidt ’09, Stephen Chaloner ’09, Duriel Hardy ’10 and Ryan Graddy ’08 placed first, third, fourth and fi fth, respectively.

“Although this was technically a scoring meet, it really wasn’t about team competition,” Schmidt said.

“We were missing many of our best sprinters and throwers. (The) meet was mainly about making individual improvements.”

Jacob Melrose / Herald File Photo

Lauren Vitkus ’09 scored three goals and added an assist in a loss to Cornell.

SP

O R T S

SCO

FRIDAY, AY APRIL 13 AY, W. CREW: Varsity Eight - No. 1 Brown 6:17.27, Boston University 6:33.60 W. LACROSSE: Cornell 19, Brown 10 M. TENNIS: Cornell 5, Brown 2 W. TENNIS: Brown 4, Cornell 3 SOFTBALL: Dartmouth 5, Brown 2; Dartmouth 13, Brown 0

SATURDAY, AY APRIL 14 AY, BASEBALL: Brown 20, Dartmouth 2; Brown 10, Dartmouth 3 M. CREW: Varsity Eight - No. 6 Harvard 6:31.4, No. 3 Brown 6:36.6

R E B O A R D

M. LACROSSE: Penn 12, Brown 10 SOFTBALL: Dartmouth 3, Brown 2; Dartmouth 10, Brown 3 M. TENNIS: Columbia 5, Brown 2 W. TENNIS: Brown 6, Columbia 1 W. WATER POLO: No. 18 Brown 20, Utica 0; No. 18 Brown 13, Queens 3

SUNDAY, AY APRIL 15 AY, M. GOLF: 9th of 12 teams, New England Championships W. GOLF: 3rd of 3 teams, Dartmouth/Harvard Triangular

The women’s lacrosse team got into a shootout with Cornell game Friday afternoon but ran out of bullets in the end. It took the Bears a while to recover from the long bus ride to Ithaca, N.Y., and they spotted the Big Red an eight-goal lead midway through the first half. The Bears couldn’t overcome the hole they dug early on and in the end fell to the Big Red, 19-10.

“The trip is very long, and none of us looked forward to it,” said co-captain Ali Holland ’08.

“We prepared ourselves all week throughout practice so we were ready to play, but unfortunately we didn’t come out playing Brown lacrosse.”

With the loss, Brown fell to 1-2 in the Ivy League and 4-7 overall.

Cornell bumped its record to 2-3 in the league.

The Big Red opened the game with a 3-0 run to grab the momentum, and despite the first of three goals by Lauren Vitkus ’09 at 26:35, Cornell continued to roll. It tacked on two more goals to take a 5-1 lead just 6:14 into the contest, forcing Brown to call a timeout.

“I think it was tough for us, being our first game that we traveled a long distance in a bus,” said Meghan Markowski ’10, who had two goals and an assist in the game. “It seemed like it took us

BY SARAH DEMERS ASSISTANT SPORTS EDITOR

10 minutes to wake up in the first half.”

While the Bears were waking up from the bus ride, Cornell continued to increase its lead. The Bears scored quickly after the timeout when Lindsey Glennon ’07 netted her first goal of the season, but the Big Red continued its offensive barrage and scored five straight goals to take a 10-2 lead midway through the first half.

But after the midway point, Brown started to come together, and co-captain Mimi DeTolla ’08 and Markowski each scored a goal to cut the deficit to 10-4 with 3:50 remaining in the half.

“After the first 10 minutes of play, we got ourselves together and started playing better,” Holland said.

Cornell outscored Brown 4-1 to close out the first half, including three goals in the final 1:02.

The Big Red took a 14-5 lead into the locker room.

“We didn’t make any specific adjustments at halftime, but everyone re-focused and got hungry to play well,” Holland said. “I think that attitude really helped.”

Despite the concentrated effort after halftime, Cornell scored again just 34 seconds into the second half to make it 15-5 to generate even more momentum. After that, the Bears tightened up defensively and only allowed four

A short-handed women’s track and field team hosted its first home meet of the spring season Saturday at Brown Stadium. The Bears managed to put up some impressive numbers despite missing most of their sprinters and throwers, who were competing at the Sea Ray Relays hosted by the University of Tennessee.

“Sea Ray Relays is one of the greatest track events in the country, especially for the sprinters,” said middle-distance runner Naja Ferjan ’07. “Some of the best sprinters in the country come every year.

Unfortunately, it was on the same weekend as the home meet. It was definitely hard to compete against UConn without our sprints crew, especially since UConn brought its entire sprints squad to Brown.”

Despite the depleted roster, the team managed to do just fine in front of the home crowd.

“I like competing at home because all of the alumni come to see us race,” Ferjan said. “I was surprised to see a number of my professors with their families came too.”

Ferjan made sure she put on quite a show for the fans, winning the 800-meter run by two seconds with a time of 2:10.82. Jenna Ridgway ’10 followed her teammate with a 2:14.82 finish, which was good for fourth place. Ridgway also competed in the mile, in which she finished second with a time of 4:53.25, a personal best by six seconds. Teammate Smita Gupta ’08 finished fourth in 5:03.73 in the event to round out the shorter distances.

It was a good day to be a senior.

Both Ferjan and Herald Assistant Sports Editor Madeleine Marecki ’07 won their respective events.

Marecki’s finish came in the 3,000meter run, where she blazed to a personal best time of 10:32.94, almost four seconds ahead of teammate Lena Groeger ’08, who finished second in 10:36.19. Colleen Brogan ’10 rounded out the scoring in the event with a fourth place fin-

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W. lax blindsided by Big Red

BY MEGAN MCCAHILL SPORTS STAFF WRITER

Seniors propel w. track to strong showing at Brown Invitational

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 18

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

Riner ’08 for UCS president This year’s pool for UCS president is larger than in the past two years, but not one of the four candidates vying for the council’s top post offers a reassuring combination of leadership qualities, knowledge of UCS and the University and a realistic agenda, whether big or small.

So students are left to decide which characteristics are most important for the UCS presidency. Do we want a UCS president who is going to fight for attractive yet ultimately unrealistic initiatives like a tuition freeze? Or should the UCS president be someone who has extensive experience on the council and is knowledge of all the projects on its slate? Or ought the leader of UCS be an affable, energetic person who shows potential to lead a bickering council to action and collaboration with University officials?

Moses Riner ’08, currently an at-large representative, seems like the student-government type we love to hate, and his potentially offensive ads and the self-laudatory Web site that extols him as the “Exodus to Awesomeness” give us pause. Yet his platform is well-researched, even if some of his initiatives — such as his plan to boost school spirit by creating an incentive scheme for attending athletic events — seem imported from Duke, from which he transferred last fall, and may not be right for Brown.

But, more importantly, Riner is outgoing and — unlike UCS representatives immersed in their own world of parliamentary procedure — can engage with students and pursue what matters to them in meetings with top administrators. He understands the importance of improving campus life in ways that would have a real impact on students, such as his plan to add printers and card value centers in dorms.

There’s no great candidate for UCS president this year, but we think Riner may inject energy into the council and focus its attention on achievable goals. That makes him the best choice for the UCS presidency.

Kolodny ’08 for UCS vice president Fortunately, the choice for UCS vice president is much clearer. Lauren Kolodny ’08 will make sure the council operates purposefully, with a nononsense emphasis on efficiency.

The vice president of UCS is primarily responsible for running a tight ship — keeping the internal committees on task, following projects through to completion and making sure the weekly meetings don’t drag on longer than necessary. Kolodny’s understanding of both UCS and University operations makes her perfect for the post.

As UCS Corporation liaison this year, Kolodny has demonstrated her ability to work with the University’s top decision-makers, bringing influential Corporation members — including the vice chancellor, the head of the Brown Alumni Association and a past chancellor — to Petteruti Lounge this week to hear student concerns. Her efforts to include students and student groups beyond UCS in discussion would serve to improve the perception of UCS as a cabal removed from student life.

Three of this year’s UCS presidential candidates lack knowledge of the recent history of the council and the University, and all would benefit from Kolodny’s institutional memory and efficient leadership. No matter who wins the UCS presidency, we hope Lauren Kolodny will be at his side.

Executive Editors Allison Kwong Ben Leubsdorf

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

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

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 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

LETTERS Elliott ’07 is divorced from reality To the Editor: As a subscriber to Commentary magazine for over 40 years, I was simply delighted to find that the magazine, in the eyes of Justin Elliott ’07 (“Ruth Simmons’ new boss: patron of the Right,” April 12), had created the intellectual underpinning for the Iraq war. I was horrified that our actions would go unnoticed.

I was shocked — absolutely shocked — to find Elliott indicating that the State of Israel is actually being helped by the United States in its effort to survive the continuous onslaught of its neighbors. That Thomas Tisch ’76 P’04 P’07 is part of this cabal relieves my

easily swayed mind that the next generation of Herald executive editors will have this guideline to work with, all neatly laid out by former Herald Executive Editor Justin Elliott.

I think we should all do whatever we can to help Justin land the right kind of job in New York. Maybe with Loews, the Tisch family’s corporation.

Sy Dill Providence April 13

Calling Israel apartheid is ignorant To the Editor:

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

PETE FALLON

Managing Editor Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor

Steve DeLucia, Matthew McCabe, Ezra Miller, Designers Catherine Cullen, Erin Cummings, Karen Evans, Madeleine Rosenberg, Meha Verghese, 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, Joy Chua, Nicole Dungca, Catherine Goldberg, Isabel Gottlieb, Thi Ho, Olivia Hoffman, Nandini Jayakrishna, Tsvetina Kamenova, Franklin Kanin, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Nathalie Pierrepont, Alexander Roehrkasse, Jessica Rotondi, Marielle Segarra, Robin Steele, Allissa Wickham, Meha Verghese 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

Recently, I was alarmed to see signs on campus publicizing a forthcoming lecture, “One Country: Moving Beyond Apartheid in Israel/Palestine,” sponsored by Common Ground. I hope that Brown students will see through the hate-filled rhetoric in the lecture’s title.

Comparing Israel’s situation today with that of South Africa’s apartheid years is ignorant. Palestinians generally dispute Israel’s very right to exist, whereas the South Africans did not seek to destroy their state. In spite of the constant threat of terrorism, Palestinians are allowed to work in Israel and to study at Israeli uni-

versities. They are also given the freedom to run most of their own affairs, unlike the situation of South African blacks during apartheid. Common Ground, don’t you know that sponsoring lectures promoting a fictitious, vilified image of all Israelis is no way to promote a fruitful dialogue about events in the Middle East?

Balanced dialogue shouldn’t frighten you.

Mirele Davis ’07 April 15

Quigley ’10 mis misjudges liberals on McCain To the Editor: While I appreciate Sean Quigley’s ’10 attempt to present Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as an acceptable candidate for liberals (“Give the maverick at least 4 years,” April 13), his effort is futile. Despite his career as a maverick, McCain has committed a cardinal sin for which the left will not forgive him: He has relentlessly defended the liberation of Iraq. Until the

left wakes up and realizes the war on radical Islam is more important than their war on the Bush administration, McCain does not stand a chance with defeatist American leftists.

Pratik Chougule ’08 April 14

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.

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O PINIONS TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 19

Goodnight, children’s literature KATY CRANE OPINIONS COLUMNIST

As of next May, yet another celebrity will be taking up space in the children’s section of your local bookstore. Geri Halliwell — also known as Ginger Spice — announced Thursday that she will be publishing a series of six books about a nine-year-old named Ugenia Lavender. According to Halliwell, the books will feature a princess based on Victoria Beckham and will “taste like chocolate and feel like fun.”

This is bad news. Not because of the books themselves, which deserve to be judged on their own merits. It is just conceivable that Ginger Spice has developed a talent for writing, although the combination of girl power, princesses and Victoria Beckham does not sound promising. The problem is that as far as the publishing industry and the chain bookstores are concerned, the books themselves are completely irrelevant.

When Madonna published ““The English Roses,” a picture book that she had written but not illustrated, critics immediately pointed out that it was trite, boring, syrupy and didactic. Yet despite its lack of entertainment value and its obvious attempt to force-feed children life lessons about the wrongness of bullying, ““The English Roses” proceeded to sell faster than any children’s book before or since.

A famous name will always sell books, but celebrities with literary ambitions used to be

satisfied with either writing an autobiography or having one written for them. The recent fad of writing children’s books is part of a general trend of lowered expectations for children’s literature. For people who want to be published but can’t produce a plot, characters or even a halfway readable sentence, the modern solution is to write for children.

After all, they won’t know the difference.

It is a mistake to think that the only test of a children’s book is whether or not children like it. Children cannot learn to judge

are there for them to read. The problem is that in today’s world of chain bookstores and limited shelf space, the bad books are literally crowding out the good ones.

Over the past few years, literature for children and young adults has become increasingly categorized. There are the books by celebrities, there are any number of fantasy series and there is chick-lit. The fantasy tends to be the stylized kind involving witches, wizards, dragons and alternate worlds, and the level of the writing is usually sub-

For people who want to be published but can’t produce a plot, characters or even a halfway readable sentence, the modern solution is to write for children.

After all, they won’t know the difference. a book’s quality until they have read enough to have a standard of comparison, and those who really like reading will swallow almost anything.

I grew up reading classic writers like E. Nesbit and Arthur Ransome, but I also brought home foot-high stacks of Sweet Valley Twins and Saddle Club from the library.

It does children no harm to read bad books along with good — as long as the good books

Harry Potter.

The chick-lit ranges from ditzy (“Angus,” ““Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging,” Meg Cabot’s “Princess Diaries” series) to viciously class-obsessed (the “Gossip Girl,” “A-List,” “It Girl” and “Clique” series). Most of it has a lighter-than-air quality: People share personal revelations via text message, and instead of characterization, we get a list of brand names. Not long ago, the trend

in young adult fiction was for brutal realism, and the shelves were filled with heartwrenching tales of survival in the urban jungle. Most modern writers have gone too far in the other direction and have eliminated reality completely.

None of this would be a problem if there were other options. But the proliferation of chain bookstores means that their selections are increasingly homogenized. The regular fiction section in most bookstores is large enough to allow for some variety, but the children’s section often is not. As a result, much of the available space goes to displaying every volume of every series, with Meg Cabot and J.K. Rowling each getting her own shelf.

A large amount of space goes to books by celebrities, and a lesser amount goes to classics like ““The Secret Garden.” The other authors on the shelf tend to be ones who were already established 10 or 20 years ago and are still publishing. That leaves virtually no space for emerging authors, especially those who are not writing either chick-lit or fantasy.

Every time that publishers manufacture a new “Gossip Girl” knockoff or sign a new celebrity, the chances of anything better getting published go down another notch. Geri Halliwell says she hopes to get children reading, and maybe she will do so. But getting children to read only works if they have something decent to move on to. Otherwise, they may as well be watching TV.

Goodnight, Katy Crane ’07

How (not) to start a group at Brown BEN BERNSTEIN CAMPUS ISSUES COLUMNIST First impressions really are everything, especially when it comes to politics.

Political groups at Brown cannot achieve legitimacy merely through their intentions, and they cannot take for granted the support of student sub-communities they claim to represent. Absolutely fundamental to the success of a new group is the way in which it is formed and the first messages that it sends.

Two recently formed student groups have demonstrated the truth of these maxims. The first is Asian Equality in Admissions, started by two sophomores earlier this year. The other is the more mysterious Order for Jewish Action.

AEA has failed to gain widespread support on campus. Its original goal, according to group co-founder Neil Vangala ’09, was to “battle assumed discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans” in the Brown admission process.

After finding less support than anticipated for his group, Vangala said he and co-founder Jason Carr ’09 decided to make their group’s mission less aggressive. Currently, their goal is to “understand ways that race and ethnicity affect Brown admissions” by getting the admission committee to publicize its data.

You would think that with goals like “admissions equality for Asians” and “institutional transparency,” AEA would have

strong support in Brown’s Asian community. Not so.

None of the Asian groups on campus have endorsed AEA. The reason? From its formation to its subsequent outreach, the group’s efforts have been perceived as uncooperative and arrogant. It is precisely this behavior that has landed the group in hot water with the Brown Asian community — the very people it would have to rely on for support.

AEA was announced to the Brown community in The Herald in February (“Two students challenge Asian American admission discrimination,” Feb. 9). Interestingly, this was also how most of the leaders of Asian student groups learned about the group.

After certain leaders in the Brown AsianAmerican community spoke with Vangala and Carr, they left feeling patronized. Belinda Navi ’09, a member of the Filipino Alliance’s executive board, said AEA “approached several of us (student leaders) in a very patronizing manner. They have no history of involvement in the Asian or Asian-American community at Brown, yet they spoke to us as if they knew more about our communities just because they read the relevant case reports.” Navi said when she challenged their assumptions regarding equality in admission, suggesting that releasing data was not the only way to promote institutional transparency, Vangala and Carr responded with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, which turned her off from embracing the group.

It is also worth taking a look at the group’s aims. AEA has said it wants admission data to become public, so that it can determine

whether discrimination against Asians exists in Brown admission. Of course, discrimination in admission can also be called by another name: affirmative action. Many groups on campus see AEA as a threat to Brown’s affirmative action policies, and two sophomores started a Facebook group called “Real Equality in Admissions” to articulate this fear. The group’s description calls AEA “nothing but a veiled attempt to attack affirmative action.”

One creator, Agnes Barrios ’09, said, “They (AEA) haven’t considered the long-term consequences of publishing data, and they refuse to openly discuss this with minority groups on campus.”

Though Vangala said AEA has no plans to campaign for the elimination of affirmative action, by calling for an end to discrimination the group seems to inherently threaten systems of racial preference in admissions.

Of course Vangala and Carr have the right to agitate for whatever they want, but they won’t get far when administrators realize that they will not garner the support of the students they purport to be fighting for. Vangala said, “we’re not even trying to get their (Asian student groups) support.” If AEA’s leadership hopes to be taken seriously though, they should approach all of the Asian groups on campus — not just a few — and do so with an open mind to new ideas and differences of opinion. It’s not too late to mend these fences.

AEA is not the only group that could learn some support-building tactics. Not since I received a naughty love note from a secret admirer in seventh grade has an unsigned letter gotten me really worked up — but though the former turned out to be a prank by my “friends,” the students behind

a radical new Jewish group remain veiled in mystery.

Many members of Brown’s Jewish community received an e-mail from a new group, calling itself the Order for Jewish Action and promising “to strengthen Jewish pride and Jewish nationalism” and “change the meaning of Jewish activism at Brown.” Its hardline pro-Israel position struck a nerve, and soon Jewish students were responding with short essays — mostly in opposition — to the group.

The group did little to elaborate on its message and continued to hide behind the OJA name, refusing to identify who was behind the group. OJA’s organizers wrote that they “do not feel comfortable” making themselves known and that “this is common practice … across history.” I wonder what historic clandestine organizations they are referring to.

What practical measures does OJA want to enact? If it is secure in its ideology, why does it feel “uncomfortable” taking credit for it? These questions and many others could have valid answers. However, because the OJA has opted for a secretive route and what many students feel is an unjustifiable position, it has poisoned its potential for future success — again, within the very group it would claim to represent.

These two groups have botched their first impressions. Unless they take different approaches to gathering support, they will not be able to achieve the legitimacy they need to affect change at Brown.

Ben Bernstein ’09 cooperated with the Brown community in forming this column.

S PORTS T UESDAY TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 2007

PAGE 20

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Unexpected pair packs dangerous 1-2 punch on mound

M. lax drops another close game to Penn

The Kansas City Royals certainly made a big splash this offseason when they signed free agent pitcher Gil Meche Chris Petersen to a five-year, $55 Shane Reil million contract.

Pocket Aces Clearly this wasn’t one of those can’t-miss, cannonball-type splashes, like when the Red Sox traded Carl Pavano for Pedro Martinez. But it wasn’t exactly a belly flop either, like when the Yankees signed Carl Pavano.

Meche can definitely eat some innings, throw a few gems here and there and help solidify a horrid Kansas City rotation that featured 17 different pitchers in 2006. If consistent, he will prove to be an effective No. 2 starter.

Even better for KC, he’ll have help this season with the return of Zack Greinke, the former stud prospect whose pinpoint accuracy has drawn comparisons to Greg Maddux. Unfortunately, during his brief career Greinke has battled psychological issues that have kept him from reaching his potential. However, in his first full season in the majors, Greinke underachieved with a 5.80 ERA and 17 losses. Strangely enough the main reason for his 17 losses wasn’t mechanics or talent but rather his lack of passion for the game.

After a 2006 season in which he did not start a single game for KC, Greinke has asserted himself as a front-runner for Comeback Player of the Year. He has assured his fans he is committed to winning and seems poised to take over as the ace of the Royals’ staff. At 24, he

The men’s lacrosse team suffered another excruciatingly close loss Saturday at home against the University of Pennsylvania, losing 1210. The loss puts the 6-5 Bears in a precarious position with a 1-3 record in the Ivy League.

Brown started off strong, taking a 3-1 lead after the first quarter on goals by attackmen Dave Madeira ’07 and Thomas Muldoon ’10 and midfielder Mike Bernard ’07. This was a good omen for the Bears, who have struggled all season with slow starts. Brown got down early against Harvard on Tuesday and had to mount a tremendous comeback, only to fall short at the end. Fed up with starting in the hole, Brown set out to remedy the problem.

“All week we put it on ourselves to come out strong,” said tri-captain defenseman Bobby Shields ’07.

Head Coach Lars Tiffany ’90 said he was pleased with the team’s effort early on. “I was impressed with the energy level of the men. After the loss on Tuesday, I told them ‘you have to make sure you find the emotion,’ and they did.”

Though Brown corrected the pattern of sluggish openings, it could not carry the positive momentum into the second quarter.

Penn came out on fire, scoring five goals in the first half of the period. Two of the goals came from Ivy League scoring leader attackman Craig Andrzejewski, who finished with a monstrous seven points (three goals and four assists) on the day.

“Craig Andrzejewski was

continued on page 16

BY JASON HARRIS SPORTS STAFF WRITER

BY AMY EHRHART SPORTS STAFF WRITER

Jacob Melrose / Herald File Photo

Kyle Hollingsworth ’09 scored two goals against the University of Pennsylvania, but they were not enough to overcome two big scoring runs by the Quakers.

great,” Tiffany said. “We didn’t have an answer for him. We tried some different things, but it seemed like whenever he had the ball he made something good happen for them.”

Shields gave credit to Andrzejewski as well. “He is the kind of guy that will take whatever the defense gives him and then make

one or two plays that are just unbelievable. He also got a lot of teammates involved.”

Shields felt that the energy remained high in the second quarter, but the results just weren’t as favorable.

“We had a couple of bad continued on page 16

Courtesy of Mike Braca ’73 P’10

The women’s crew team continued to lead the pack this season, sweeping all its races against Boston University.

W. crew continues to dominate, strokes past Terriers

BY ANDREW BRACA SPORTS STAFF WRITER

The No. 1 women’s crew team won all five races against Boston University Friday on the Seekonk River to continue its string of impressive performances. The Bears have lost only one race in their first four competitions this year.

“I’m very pleased (with the results) because BU has a strong program and a long tradition of rowing,” said Head Coach John Murphy. “Anytime we’re fortunate enough to beat them, I’m happy.”

The Bears’ varsity eight won by a comfortable margin, finishing at 6:17.27, while the Terriers came in at 6:33.60. The second varsity race was much closer, and Brown crossed the line at 6:34.66, while the Terriers trailed closely at 6:40.81. Brown’s freshman crew turned its race into a laugh. Bruno came in at 6:46, while Boston Uni-

versity’s lagged behind at 7:21.73.

The Bears controlled the varsity four race, as all three of Brown’s crews beat the Terriers’ crew.

Brown Novice “A” came in first at 7:09.55, followed by Brown Novice “B” at 7:15.59, Brown “A” at 7:26.32 and then Boston University at 7:39.66.

The varsity four “B” race was the most dramatic of the day. The result came down to a matter of inches, but Brown prevailed by less than a second. The Bears crossed the line at 7:34.1, nipping the Terriers, who finished at 7:34.72.

“That was exciting,” Murphy said of the varsity four “B” race, which he watched from a boat that followed the officials’ boat. “I bumped into the buoy out there because I was watching so closely. That was close all the way, from start to finish.”

The forecast called for strong

Softball smashed by Big Green

winds, which could have been a problem. But while those winds did develop, they did not affect the competition.

“The winds were pretty high,” Murphy said. “It was a sustained 20 mile-per-hour wind, gusting to 30. But, for some reason, the water stayed pretty flat. I’ve been out here a long time and sometimes the wind won’t be that strong but the water will be really rough. But we were fortunate that we were able to get it in.”

Christine Flynn ’08 echoed her coach’s sentiments and said the wind didn’t have a big effect on the team.

“We’re kind of used to it,” she said. “It gets pretty choppy and windy out there during the week, so we deal with that on a daily basis. We just approached the wind and the water the way we do every day.”

The crowd that gathered on

the deck of the Narragansett Boat Club to support the Bears was a welcome prospect for the team.

“We heard all the fans and I could see the Brown Bear out of the corner of my eye,” Flynn said.

“One of my friends was inside the Bear costume. It’s always nice to see all the fans down there.”

Murphy said he has been impressed with the way the team has performed, but there is still a long way to go.

“The class of 2006 was a large and very talented one,” he said.

“Losing them when they graduated was a big step. This group right from the start has stepped up to take their places. They’ve worked very hard and they’re continuing to improve each week.”

The Bears will take on Columbia and Cornell on the Seekonk River Saturday, April 21, at noon in their final home event of the season.

The hitting woes of the softball team continued this weekend with 5-2, 13-0, 3-2 and 10-3 losses to Dartmouth. Friday and Saturday’s doubleheaders dropped the Bears to 1-11 in the Ancient Eight while boosting the Big Green to 6-6 and second place in the North Division behind Harvard.

Brown is still just two games behind Yale, which went 1-3 against the Crimson this weekend. The Bears will play Harvard next weekend before ending Ivy League play against Yale the weekend after. Last year, the Bears split two games with Harvard.

“We can beat anyone, and we just want to win and have fun for the rest of the season,” said second baseman Andrea Browne ’10, who had eight hits and scored four of Brown’s seven runs this weekend.

In the first game, pitcher Jessica Iwasaki ’10 struck out nine and walked one, giving Brown’s offense a reasonable chance for its second consecutive win. But the Bears left 11 on base despite smacking eight hits.

“The pitchers are just really focusing on each pitch, hitting our corner spots, and staying in the moment so we don’t think about (losing),” Iwasaki said. “As long as we can put hitting and defense together, we’d be fine.”

The second game on Friday was over after five innings, as Dartmouth pitcher Angela Megaw held Bruno to three hits and six left on base.

“We told them we couldn’t play any worse and to keep plugging away,” said Head Coach DeeDee Enabenter-Omidiji.

Brown almost bounced back for a win in its first game the next day. Dartmouth struck first in the second inning with two runs. The Big Green snuck another one in after a slide by Ashley Gleason beat a tag from catcher Amy Baxter ’08 in the sixth. But shortstop Katie Rothamel ’10, Browne and Amanda Asay ’10 turned a pretty double play to end the inning.

In the seventh, Asay walked, Lewis hit a single to left and a chopper from Brittany Lavine ’10 was mishandled by Dartmouth’s shortstop to load the bases. Browne came up and punched a single over the second baseman’s head into shallow center to score two.

The score was 3-2 with runners on the corners for Herald Sports Staff Writer Kaitlyn Laabs ’09. After a couple cuts landed foul, Laabs grounded to third and almost beat the throw to first, but the game ended with the first base umpire’s fist in the air.

Iwasaki pitched another complete game with only four hits again, on walk and four K’s.

“They’re not better than us. We just need something to light a fire under us and we need to remember why we play softball,” Iwasaki said.

In the second game of the day, Dartmouth jumped to a 4-0 lead in the second before Rothamel and third baseman Whitney Lewis ’10 continued on page 14