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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD M ONDAY, J ULY 16, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 59

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Exonerated Duke suspect awaits fresh start at Brown BY STU WOO SPORTS EDITOR

NEW YORK — Reade Seligmann ’09 is sitting in a Starbucks a block away from Times Square, talking about some of the students he knows at Brown, when a woman with black hair, heavy, dark-blue eye shadow and an “I Love NY” shirt approaches the table. “Would you care for a psychic reading?” she asks. Seligmann looks up at her, unfazed, and quickly smiles. “No thanks,” he says. Then he adds: “I think I know where I’m going.” It seems like a bold statement for Seligmann, who admits he couldn’t say that a few months ago, when he was one of three Duke lacrosse players accused

of raping an exotic dancer at a team party in March 2006. But this evening, Seligmann looks relaxed, if a little tired after 11 hours of work at Bear Stearns, the New York investment bank where he is an intern. He is wearing a white Oxford shirt with an orange tie. His sleeves are rolled up. Tonight, all Seligmann wants to talk about is Brown, where he will enroll this fall as a transfer student and lacrosse recruit. He asks several questions about the open curriculum, the faculty and the history department, where he will be a concentrator. He says, half-jokingly, that he would quit his internship on the spot if he could start the semester the next day. continued on page 12

Tai Ho Shin / Herald

Summer@Brown students playing Frisbee on the Main Green enjoy the relaxed summer atmosphere.

Longtime prof makes waves with her exit BY ROSS FRAZIER NEWS EDITOR

Writing Fellows director Rhoda Flaxman PhD’82 resigned late last semester, protesting both a perceived lack of University support for the peer tutoring program she founded and ran for two decades and the transfer of the program’s longtime administrative assistant. The popular professor’s resignation prompted University ofﬁcials to defuse a vocal backlash

from writing fellows who sensed external meddling in their tightknit group, just as the dean of the College was preparing to begin a wholesale review of writing instruction at Brown. Writing fellows, who are selected through a competitive application process, help all the students in courses for which professors request their assistance. “I decided to leave Brown — I was going to retire in three years anyway — because I was very dis-

turbed when I found out I was losing my staff,” Flaxman told The Herald in a July 10 interview. “Wendy Sheridan, the woman who helped me for 14 years, who has done a terriﬁc job of managing our courses and our work, was no longer available to the program.” “At this point in my life, I did not really want to be in a ﬁght with administrators over supcontinued on page 4

Thayer St. bikers relegated to designated parking spaces BY CAMERON LEE STAFF WRITER

Bikers are a loud, proud, Thayer Street staple. But a new amendment to the city code may soon keep some of them away. Motorcyclists visiting Thayer Street will soon be required to park in designated spaces. An amendment calling for the designation of parking spots as “motorcycleonly” was signed into law July 11 by Providence Mayor David Cicilline ’83. Supporters of the amendment hope it will limit the number of bikers who choose to loiter on the commercial street.

METRO The new motorcycle-only spaces will likely be indicated by blue painted curbs. Several parking laws were adjusted in order to accommodate motorcyclists, according to Adrienne Southgate, deputy city solicitor. While ﬁnes are still applicable for cars that park with their left wheels toward the curb or at an improper angle to the curb, they will no longer apply to motorcycles, in order to ease the accommodation of more motorcycles into Tai Ho Shin / Herald

continued on page 5

INSIDE:

postINSIDE

Motorcycles have long lined Thayer Street.

POST- FOR THE SUMMER post-, The Herald’s weekly arts and entertainment magazine, gets an internship, wears the wrong clothes and gets knocked up

www.browndailyherald.com

READING, NOT COMPLAINING Incoming ﬁrst-years don’t seem to mind the new mandatory summer reading, one of several CAMPUS NEWS changes implemented as part of an Orientation overhaul

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

College without the stress Students ﬁnd new ways to enjoy Providence BY STEPHANIE BERNHARD FEATURES EDITOR

On a recent sunny afternoon in July, the Main Green was nearly as busy as when the trees first started blooming in April. Art students sat on the Quiet Green sketching the Manning Chapel, Frisbee players dashed around the University’s lawns and construction sounds from Wilson Hall belied the peacefulness of the tree branches swaying in the breeze. Many of the students lounging on the Green are high school students participating in Summer@Brown, while others are Brown students staying in Providence for the summer. Deborah Gorth ’09.5, who is living in a Governor Street apartment, is filling her days with both study and work. She is taking two classes, one in neuroscience and one in biology, and working at two labs doing biomedical engineering research. Gorth admitted that her schedule keeps her busy — she woke up to study neuroscience on a Saturday morning — but she also said she is enjoying her summer in Providence. “It’s awesome,” Gorth said. “It’s a good mix of being productive and having fun.” Gorth brought a car to campus, so she has been able to venture off College Hill for weekend entertainment. She went surfing in Newport, explored rural South County and made plans to attend a Red Sox game in Boston. Kaitlyn Laabs ’09, who also has a car available, has spent much of her free time scoping out the state. “I have a newfound love for

Providence and for Rhode Island,” said Laabs, a Herald sports staff writer. For her, one of the greatest benefits of spending summer near campus has been developing a new relationship with her surroundings. When she is not roaming Rhode Island, Laabs is studying for her American civilization class and working for WBRU. “You’ve got no stresses of the school year, but all the benefits,” Laabs said. She likes using her extra time to find new treasures in the area, from a great concert venue or a new restaurant to the perfect place for relaxing with a book. But Laabs said it’s the student culture that makes summer in Providence worthwhile. “I’ve met so many awesome people I never would’ve met during the year,” she said, explaining how easy it was to run into the same few people over and over again until friendships formed. Though Adam Backer ’08 does not have a car, he has also found ways to entertain himself and meet new people in Providence. Backer spent the past two summers here, and he said he can now navigate the city pretty well. “During the year, I’m always in the same few blocks, but now I can walk farther and see more,” Backer said. “There’s more time continued on page 4

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TODAY THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 2

WE A T H E R

MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

Aibohphobia | Roxanne Palmer

TODAY

TOMORROW

partly cloudy 85 / 70

thunderstorms 85 / 66

CALENDAR HANSON FRIDAY, JULY 20 (Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, 79 Washington St.) — Everyone’s favorite boy band is coming to town! “EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH: FROM THE STREETS OF NEW YORK TO JERUSALEM” JUNE 11 TO AUG 8 (Brown Hillel - 80 Brown Street) — Photography of Ned Harris is on display at Brown Hillel.

PROVIDENCE SOUND SESSION ‘07 JULY 15 TO JULY 21 (many Providence venues) — Genre-defying music festival sponsored by the Black Rep and the Cit of Providence.

One Hundred Years of Solipsism | Adrienne Langlois

FIRST-YEAR ORIENTATION BEGINS SUNDAY, SEPT. 2 — First-years move into the dorms and begin Orientation activities.

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

But Seriously | Stephen Barlow and Charlie Custer

RELEASE DATE– Monday, July 16, 2007by Pappocom �� Puzzles

Los AngelesCTimes Puzzle R O S Daily S W OCrossword R D Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

ACROSS 1 Sign of impending trouble, maybe 5 Effortless transition 10 Hormel meat product 14 iPod mini successor 15 “... the __ of defeat” 16 Dark soft drink 17 Designer Gucci 18 Untrue 19 Saharan 20 Arizona’s colorful badlands 23 Grammatically, grammatically 24 1988 Sum. Olympics host 25 ET’s craft 28 Whole wheat alternative 29 “Agreed” 31 1980s president 33 Lydia, in an old song 36 Mir launcher 39 www.amazon.com, e.g. 40 Emcee Trebek 41 Feature of many cathedral windows 46 Scammer 47 Noah’s safe haven 48 Fed. assistance payment 51 Wander (about) 52 “Mayberry __” 54 Minor’s minder 56 Vet with medals, e.g. 60 Heart of the matter 62 Varnish ingredient 63 Bedouin, ethnically 64 Improve, as skills 65 “It’s a Wonderful Life” director 66 Seized auto 67 Date of a historic senate assassination 68 Ford flop 69 Versifier DOWN 1 The same as, with “with”

2 Ailment 3 Salad green 4 Not a soul 5 Wager that isn’t risky 6 “Yikes!” 7 Au, on the periodic table 8 Racing family name 9 Ugly building in a pretty area, say 10 Harry Potter has a lightning-boltshaped one on his forehead 11 Its only neighbor is Spain 12 Pugilist Laila 13 Alfred E. Neuman’s magazine 21 “__ Little Tenderness” 22 Barely managed, with “out” 26 Lose brightness 27 Jet-black stone 30 Poker with four exposed cards 32 Word said with a sigh 33 In shape 34 Assn.

35 Spanish cooking pot 36 Mariner rescue gp. 37 Greek portico 38 Hill at the beach 42 Pusher pursuer 43 Require compliance with 44 Weapons supply 45 Fishtail 48 Audiophile’s setup 49 Mexican wrap

50 Asimov collection that includes the story “Robbie” 53 Foreboding 55 Choreographer Twyla 57 Fortensky and Warner, to Liz Taylor 58 Nile dangers 59 Grow weary 60 X, to Hippocrates 61 Reel partner

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

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get involved with the most-read xwordeditor@aol.com

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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: $179 one year daily, $99 one semester daily. Copyright 2007 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

CAMPUS NEWS MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Former Chilean president appointed prof-at-large BY OLIVIA HOFFMAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Tai Ho Shin / Herald

Construction has been a common scene on campus this summer. The area between Churchill House and the Urban Environmental Lab on Angell Street is no exception.

$30m in summertime construction projects underway BY SCOTT LOWENSTEIN S ENIOR S TAFF WRITER

Universities in the summer often look more like massive construction sites than centers for learning and research, and Brown is no exception. This summer, $30 million worth of construction projects have closed roads and turned heads around College Hill. Among the projects slated for this summer are an expansion of the Walk, renovations to Pembroke

Hall and the J. Walter Wilson Laboratory and upgrades to the University’s utilities. Construction of a temporary pool to replace the shuttered Smith Swim Center will begin soon, and a number of smaller projects, such as sprucing up residence halls and building new artiﬁcial turf athletic ﬁelds, are also in the works, said Michael McCormick, assistant vice president for planning, design and construction. Perhaps one of the most noticeable projects will be the relocation

of the Peter Green House from its current location on Angell Street to a lot on the corner of Angell and Brown streets. Though the house will be moved in the span of a week, most of the work for the relocation, such as building a foundation on the new site, must be completed before the physical relocation can occur. The space cleared by moving the building that houses the history department will become part of the continued on page 6

Ricardo Lagos Escobar, former president of the Republic of Chile, officially began a five-year term as a professor-at-large on July 1. Lagos, whose position is based at the Watson Institute for International Studies, will spend October on campus delivering lectures and working with students and faculty to design “policy-relevant” research projects, said Barbara Stallings, director of the institute. Lagos’ first event on campus will be a conference in early October that will also feature former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, another professor-at-large who is now in the final year of his five-year appointment at Brown. Stallings said it is likely that Lagos and Cardoso will spend time collaborating while at Brown, describing the two as “close friends and colleagues.” “One of the reasons that President Lagos agreed to accept our invitation was because he heard from President Cardoso that he had had a good experience here over the last four years,” she said. The Herald was unable to reach Lagos for an interview. Under Lagos’ leadership from 2000 to 2006, Chile signed free trade agreements, established unemployment insurance, expanded healthcare coverage and

Courtesy of Brown.edu

Former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos Escobar

extended compulsory schooling. After a military coup seized power in Chile in 1973, Lagos went into exile, but later he returned home and became a leader of the opposition to General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled the country until 1990. “Chile has been an important leader both in the re-democratization trend in Latin America and also in terms of economic and social development,” Stallings said. “(Lagos) will be able to bring ﬁrsthand experience to these questions for students to understand them better and for the public to understand more about what’s going on in that particular part of the world.” Brown’s Latin America program already stands out among its peers, Stallings said, having recently been awarded a Department of Education Title IV grant, which is a highly selective grant awarded for the study of internacontinued on page 6

Students win mtvU grant for music visualization software

Summer reading, so far, gets positive reviews

BY IRENE CHEN S ENIOR S TAFF WRITER

BY MICHAEL SKOCPOL SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The idea started with late-night discussions and a hacked iPod nano, but Osiris, a project created by three Brown undergrads, soon gained the attention of mtvU and Cisco Systems, which granted them $25,000 for their project. Zachary McCune ’10, Sebastian Gallese ’10 and Schuyler Maclay ’10 were one of five groups — and the only comprised solely of undergraduates — who won a grant in the second annual Digital Incubator contest to pursue digital media-related projects. Osiris provides visualizations of songs by using online visual databases like Flickr. Using the lyrics of the song, the program searches keywords in image databases to match up the music with pictures. The students initially created Osiris as a final project for a digital art seminar taught by Mark Tribe ’90, assistant professor of modern culture and media studies. According to Tribe, the course is designed for students to make art. “The way I run it, we do a lot of reading, we have discussions and we look at art, but instead of exams, we have these final projects in which students collaborate in groups of three to four.” It was in this class that McCune, Maclay and Gallese met. Gallese said it took several late night meetings for the idea to re-

FEATURE ally come together. “We were thinking that we could do cool graphic displays on iPods but then thought ‘Oh, that doesn’t really work,’” Gallese said. “Then we started messing around with visualizers, and we realized that people had never really done anything with that before.” The project, named for the Egyptian god of the underworld, is different from those currently available, which only use abstract images based on the music that is playing. “The visualizer is extremely static, and one of the most unsophisticated pieces of technology that people still have on their computers,” said McCune, a former Herald staff writer. “It’s probably the same that it’s been since color computers were introduced.” “We’ve gone from a predominately audio, to audio-visual, to an interactive age. This combines everything and takes everything to another level,” Maclay said. “As an artist, I was interested in that transition. If you look at music, it went from purely music to the development of MTV and music videos, live shows being performances, not just sound. I was interested in what the next steps continued on page 8

Administrators expect smooth transition to new Orientation

With the class of 2011’s arrival on campus just a month-and-a-half away, organizers have yet to hit any major snags in preparing the University’s new Orientation program, administrators say. A revamped, shorter Orientation was ﬁrst recommended in January by an Orientation review committee. Orientation programming, which is now slated to begin on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, will feature a streamlined series of class meetings and a more condensed schedule leading up to the beginning of classes, with activities continuing into the ﬁrst three days of shopping period and the subsequent week-

thanks for reading

end, which University officials have dubbed “First Weekend.” A summer reading requirement has also been implemented for all incoming first-years. The summer reading requirement — which calls for incoming students to read a book, write a letter to their adviser in mid-August discussing it and participate in a faculty-led discussion of the book during Orientation — represents one of the most significant departures from past practices, and the Orientation review committee’s report urged caution in implementing it. “We need to carefully think about how to sell this idea to the incoming class,” the report said. “This initiative will be ineffective if a significant portion of the class (does) not read

the book.” But nine members of the class of 2011 interviewed by The Herald all said they intended to read the book — “How Proust Can Change Your Life” by Alain de Botton — and that they supported the requirement. Kathleen Braine ’11, a prospective political science concentrator from Columbus, Ohio, said she planned to read the book and that the requirement did not bother her. “We had to read like seven books for my school, so one is not that big a deal. It actually looks kind of interesting.” Stephanie Van ’11, a pre-med student from Rockville, Md., agreed. “It’s only one book,” she said. “I trust Brown to choose a book that everyone will enjoy.” continued on page 8

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

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MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

Longtime prof.’s departure prompts concern over U. writing programs continued from page 1 port,” Flaxman added. Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron said the stafﬁng change was originally proposed by her predecessor as dean, Professor of English Paul Armstrong. In a July 12 e-mail to The Herald, she wrote the change was part of a comprehensive plan to rethink the University’s writing requirement.

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Fellows question U.’s reasoning After learning last semester that Sheridan would be reassigned to work with deans in University Hall, Flaxman mailed letters to more than 800 current and alumni writing fellows, describing what she saw as the University’s lack of support for the program and, according to a recipient of the letter, a conspiracy to change its structure and culture. Bergeron, like other University officials, was initially unaware of the letter. She first learned of it when two concerned writing fellows met with her in late April and other students sent letters of complaint to The Herald and the dean, alleging insufficient backing for the student writing fellows, sources said. “The way Rhoda expressed it to us was that she was going to be expected to do administrative work on top of her normal duties,” said Nick Swisher ’08, one of the writing fellows who met with Bergeron. “We were really concerned about these changes being made without any sort of student input and that these changes would affect the way the Writing Fellows program was run, in that the fellows themselves would now be running the program.” Bergeron asked Flaxman for a copy of the letter she sent to alums, sources told The Herald, and soon after offered a 25 hourper-week administrative assistant to Flaxman’s replacement, Doug Brown, who will direct both the Writing Center and Writing Fellows this fall. Until then, Brown was slated to direct both programs without any staff support, Flaxman and several writing fellows said. Because the Writing Fellows program works with nearly half the undergraduate population each year, Flaxman said staff support is imperative. Bergeron told The Herald that Flaxman announced her retirement before discussions of staff support for the Writing Fellows were ever completed. “After further discussion with staff and students during the spring and summer, we concluded that the best use of our resources would be to

hire a new staff member to assist with the program,” she wrote. Writing fellow Fiona Heckscher ’09 said Bergeron, Brown and Associate Dean of the College Kathleen McSharry met with fellows on May 14 and told them an assistant for the program would be hired. Heckscher described the meeting as “a great brainstorming session” that provided a link between fellows and the administration. But Swisher, a former Herald opinions editor, said though he appreciated Bergeron’s gesture, her talk of a broad curricular evaluation didn’t answer writing fellows’ specific concerns about why Flaxman’s staff was cut in the first place. “If Brown’s going to be re-evaluating writing in the curriculum, it seems they were shutting out the people who might have something very valuable to say about it,” Swisher said. “What caused most of the turmoil was the worry there wasn’t going to be administrative support for the program. Now that there is, I wonder why all these changes needed to happen under the circumstances they did.” “It’s all so surreptitious,” Swisher added. New leadership and direction Though writing fellows said Flaxman’s resignation is a significant loss to the program, they said they have confidence in Doug Brown, who currently directs the Writing Center and will also lead the Writing Fellows next year. Brown said Thursday he is sensitive to fellows’ concerns that the program’s unique culture will fade with Flaxman’s departure. “There’s the culture of this program and the practice of this program. The culture is vitally important, so we’ll be working together to preserve it,” Brown said. “As far as methods and practice, that’s what will be evaluated.” Fellows were particularly concerned that the program faces consolidation with the Writing Center. “My sense from meeting with Dean Bergeron is that perhaps her office didn’t have the best perspective on each program’s goals,” Swisher said. Though two programs have always been distinct entities, next year they will both move into J. Walter Wilson Laboratory, which is being transformed into a student support center, and the programs will be run by one person. The Writing Center is staffed by graduate students who provide individual writing support to students and lead writing workshops,

whereas the writing fellows are undergraduates assigned to provide assistance in specific courses. Both Bergeron and Brown said they have no intention of combining the two programs. Brown said collaboration between the programs would be limited to social events or retreats. Brown and Bergeron said students can expect increased focus on the University’s writing requirement. In a Herald poll conducted in the spring, fewer than half of Brown students said they believe all undergraduates fulfill the University’s writing requirement, which mandates “competence in reading and writing” to graduate. McSharry will work on that issue next year, Bergeron wrote, with an eye toward linking various writing support programs. This fall the Writing Center will have weekly seminars on writing within different disciplines, and a student-faculty committee should be formed by the fall, Brown said, to advise on the University’s writing programs. While writing fellows like Swisher remain skeptical of Bergeron’s call for “strengthening the connections between many parallel programs,” others see an opportunity for dialogue. “A lot of different parts of the University tend to finger-point when it comes to determining who is responsible for providing writing education — programs point to the administration, administration points to professors, professors point to departments,” said Katherine Saviskas ’06, who wrote her senior thesis on the history of the Writing Fellows program. Now, she said, “We have a chance for a campus-wide conversation about how to give people the writing education they need.” Even as the Writing Fellows program moves forward without Flaxman, several fellows were quick to point out that the program has suffered a significant loss. “Her departure may be an opportunity to update the program, but I really dislike the way that opportunity arose,” Swisher said. Flaxman said she is excited about spending time on her consulting business. “The next step of my career is to spread a methodology of writing,” Flaxman said, adding that she has already been working with four institutions. “I think it will be more effective to work with faculties than with my wonderful writing fellows, who work solely in the Brown context.”

Enjoying a College Hill summer continued from page 1 to waste.” This summer, Backer’s favorite haunt is the Steel Yard in Olneyville, a community space for teaching and creating art. At night, Backer said, the Yard often hosts parties attended by Brown and RISD students, as well as local artists and community members. Though he ventures to Olneyville occasionally, Backer, like most Brown students, lives and

works on the East Side. He is renting a room at Watermyn co-op, eating his meals at Finlandia coop and doing electrical engineering research through a Royce Fellowship. Backer said he is having more fun this summer than last, when he was spending all of his time researching, funded by an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award, and taking an intensive emergency medical technician class. The key to a good summer in

Providence, Backer said, was setting aside enough free time to enjoy the social scene. Gorth agreed. “Even cooking dinner is really a social event,” she said. The only negative aspect of Providence in the summer, Gorth said, is the oppressive heat and lack of air conditioning. Laabs admitted that apartment living has its challenges but said she does not regret staying in Providence. “It’s probably the best decision I made,” she said.

M ETRO MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

METRO

I N

BRIEF

Incarcerated ex-mayor returns to Providence a free man Buddy’s back. Providence’s longestserving mayor, convicted on federal racketeering conspiracy charges ﬁve years ago, was released from a halfway house in Boston June 20. Cianci moved into his nephew’s East Greenwich home and is now working for the upscale downtown Providence condo complex 903 Courtesy of BuddyCianci.com Residences, the Boston Globe re- Vincent “Buddy” Cianci ported June 9. Cianci spent four years in a New Jersey federal prison before his May 30 release. He began working for 903 Residences June 8, the Globe reported. Cianci initially planned to work for the XV Beacon hotel in Boston, which was closer to the halfway house where he was required to stay. However, he decided to work in Providence to get away from the Boston media and to be closer to family and friends, the Globe reported. — Simmi Aujla

Motorcyclists curtailed on Thayer continued from page 1 the available spaces. Ward 2 Councilman Cliff Wood said Thayer Street shop owners and patrons who were dissatisﬁed with the presence of bikers prompted him to introduce the amendment at the Providence City Council. “The whole point is so that as many people (as possible) can enjoy Thayer Street, whoever they are and however they get there,” Wood said. The amendment was intended to make it “easier to share the space” — not to exclude bikers, Wood said. But biker Joseph Roman said he disagrees about the motives behind the change to the city code. “Look at all these bikes. Where are we supposed to go?” he said Thursday when he heard of the law, gesturing to about 50 bikes on Thayer Street that night.

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

“It will make the city more money,” said another biker, Kevin Black. “That’s what they want — for us to park illegally in car parking spots and then ticket us (to pay) for their doughnuts,” he said. Roman and Black were two of 10 bikers interviewed who had not previously heard of the law. Most bikers said they would not stop coming to Thayer but feared that the law would change the street’s dynamic for the worse. The amendment was modeled after a similar ordinance in Maine that “seemed to work well,” Wood said. First signed into law in April, the amendment had to be changed and re-signed before it became ofﬁcial in July because of a technicality that prevented the amendment from applying to Thayer Street, Wood said. — with additional reporting by Scott Lowenstein

City Council approves yearlong development moratorium in Fox Point BY SARA MOLINARO METRO EDITOR

Building and development projects in Fox Point will be heavily restricted over the next 12 months due to a moratorium passed July 5 by the Providence City Council. The ordinance was designed to delay development along Providence’s waterfront as well as on the property made vacant by the relocation of Interstate 195. The ordinance establishing the 12-month moratorium was passed in hopes that extensive neighborhood planning will take place over the next year, both locally and as a part of the city’s Comprehensive Plan for Development, said City Councilman Seth Yurdin, who represents Ward 1, including all of Fox Point. Yurdin said the neighborhood, which is near Brown’s campus, would beneﬁt from more thoughtfully planned development projects. “The history of Fox Point has been really affected by the way the big construction projects have been implemented,” he said. “The original I-195 cut Fox Point in half and displaced a lot of people.” The ordinance does not ban all building projects in Fox Point, Yurdin said — just those that would require special permission from the zoning board of appeals, most commonly any buildings taller than six stories. Yurdin said he has received a lot of support for the ordinance, not only from residents and businesses in Fox Point but also from Providence residents in general. “People want to see the city’s plan implemented, rather than piecemeal development,” he said. “It’s not just a neighborhood issue.” While the largest parcel of land

Tai Ho Shin / Herald

Development in Fox Point has been restricted by the Providence City Council.

affected by the ordinance is the area made vacant by I-195’s relocation, there has also been controversy over a section of waterfront property in Fox Point. For the purposes of the interstate’s relocation, the state Department of Transportation acquired control of a sixacre piece of property — formerly occupied by the nightclub Shooters — at the head of Narragansett Bay, just west of India Point Park. However, this land is no longer needed by the DOT and is currently vacant. Many residents of Fox Point would like to see that vacant land

used for a public park, according to Daisy Schnepel, president of the Fox Point Neighborhood Association. The FPNA, along with Sen. Rhoda Perry, D-Dist. 3, Friends of India Point Park and Rep. David Segal, D-Dist. 2, have lobbied the DOT for public access to the land. Perry and Segal, a former Ward 1 councilman, wrote in a letter to DOT Director Jerome Williams that there is a “substantial and growing interest” to use the property for public activities and that several non-proﬁt groups have continued on page 8

Proposed Thayer Chipotle gets zoning approval BY NICK WERLE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Chipotle is one step closer to Thayer. A proposal to build a location of the popular burrito restaurant chain on Thayer Street has received conditional approval from the Providence Zoning Board of Review. The proposed building, steps from campus at the corner of Euclid Avenue and Thayer Street next to Kabob and Curry, required exemptions from city code that requires businesses to provide off-street parking spaces. The zoning board waived those requirements in early June, but its approval has not been officially recorded because of an administrative backlog. Once the official decision is issued, opponents of the exemption have 20 days to appeal. Then the project must pass other reviews, such as a review of the building’s fire safety, and obtain building permits from the city. Andrew Teitz, an attorney representing Chipotle, called the zoning board’s decision a “key approval.” Other procedures are “more ministerial,” he said. Though there is no date set yet for groundbreaking, David Shwaery, owner of the property, said he expects “Chipotle will be-

gin construction immediately once they get all of their approvals.” The board’s decision has not quieted some College Hill residents’ opposition to the project. There is “a critical shortage of off-street parking in the Thayer Street area, and the action by the Zoning Board, if upheld, will only exacerbate that further,” said Will Touret, a member of the College Hill Neighborhood Association board of directors.

The CHNA is considering an appeal to the zoning board’s decision, Touret said. Barbara Harris, also a CHNA board member who opposes the decision, said she has “nothing against Chipotle” but said Shwaery and Chipotle have not met legal criteria for an approval. “Every time you ignore the zoning laws, you risk diluting the protections for the neighborhood,” Harris said.

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Former Chilean president appointed prof-at-large continued from page 3 tional cultures and institutions. It has a larger number of people involved than any of Brown’s other regional programs and is “far and away our most important one,” Stallings said. Stallings said Lagos’ appointment is also an indication of the University’s commitment to internationalization. “What the internationalization initiative is about … is both to bring the rest of the world to Brown to a greater extent and to send Brown out to the rest of the world,” she said. Lagos’ appointment contributes to both goals, Stallings said, giving Brown a higher profile and opening up opportunities for collaboration for students and faculty through the use of Lagos’ contacts in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America. With the addition of Lagos, the University now has five professorsat-large. Of the five, three — Lagos,

Cardoso and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke ’62 — are based at the Watson Institute. Marta DaSilva ’09, an international relations and history concentrator who plans to study abroad in Latin America in the spring, said bringing in these types of figures is “a huge deal for a lot of IR students.” Because the concentration is interdisciplinary and offers four tracks, it is often difficult to separate all of the things that go on within the IR program and find a focus, DaSilva said. She said going to lectures by figures such as those serving as professors-at-large at Brown is important because it’s “more interactive” and helps to engage students in the subject matter. “When you actually meet the people that do this for a living, it kind of puts everything in perspective and helps the people that are concentrating in the department decide what they’re actually doing with their concentration,” she said.

MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

Relocation of Peter Green House among construction projects continued from page 3 Walk, a green space that will link Lincoln Field and the Pembroke campus. The Peter Green House will be ready for occupancy in its new location by spring of 2008, McCormick said. This summer the University will also renovate Pembroke Hall to house the Cogut Humanities Center and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. The center is expected to be completed by the fall of 2008. McCormick explained that in the new Pembroke Hall, “most of the (renovated) spaces will have a completely different feeling from before.” He stressed that the Pembroke Hall construction will take the history of the building into account during its renovation. “There are a lot of features that we want to make sure we hold on to,” including the top-floor library and a second-floor classroom that will be restored instead of being completely redone, he said. Still, some modern elements, such as new, energy-efficient windows that mimic “old glass,” will be used, McCormick said. Renovations to J. Walter Wilson will also start late this summer, and the building will be ready for occupancy in the fall of 2008. The former laboratory is being transformed into a yet-to-be-named center that will house student services offices. “It is a very centrally located spot, and all the things that students need to get their jobs done will be in this primary location,”

McCormick said. Construction of a temporary pool to replace the Smith Swim Center will begin this summer and should be completed by January 2008, according to Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, interim vice president for campus life and student services. The pool will serve the swimming, diving and water polo teams while a new swim center is built in conjunction with the planned Nelson Fitness Center, both of which are expected to be completed in 2010. Also in the athletic complex, two artificial-turf football fields will be ready for play in the fall, providing “all-weather practice fields” for athletic teams and intramurals, Carey said. McCormick added that Pembroke Field will be graded to better serve as a playing field and will receive a new fence and sand volleyball courts to “get more use out of it and make it a campus entity.” Carey also described smaller projects aimed at improving campus life, such as renovating dorms to improve kitchens and bathrooms and improving handicapped accessibility in residence halls across campus. Outdoor areas around campus are also getting face-lifts, including new landscaping and sidewalks and improved lighting, McCormick said. He said the new lights will be more diffuse, illuminating campus landmarks like University Hall, the Van Wickle Gates and Soldier’s Arch, and that low-level, ambient lighting will be placed along the sidewalks to avoid glare. Aesthetic improvements to the exterior of Wilson Hall on the Main Green will also contribute to a better atmosphere, he said. This summer also marks Brown’s recent engagement with the surrounding community, including funding improvements on Thayer Street and public streets. “We used to be very hands-off with public streets,” McCormick said. “But we have realized that public streets are how everybody circulates through campus, and so we have a whole series of pedestrian improvements throughout campus.” Improvements on Thayer Street include replacing sidewalks, planting trees and hanging flower baskets. The improvements, which are partially funded by Brown but not managed by University officials, are part of a greater goal to improve cooperation with merchants on Thayer. “The big difference we are hoping will be most noticeable is the creation of Thayer Street District Management Authority so all of the merchants have a board of directors that speaks with one voice,” McCormick said. Finally, routine utility projects to improve hot water and electricity distribution have been responsible for the road closings and bustling construction during most summers. Still, University officials

say this year’s projects represent something special. “Every summer for us in Facilities Management is an incredibly busy time, but this summer is a little bit different, because it is the first wave we are seeing of the planning process that (started) almost five years ago” when the Plan for Academic Enrichment was first laid out by President Ruth Simmons, McCormick said. “We have a whole series of management plans that came from (the Plan for Academic Enrichment) that are now becoming individual projects you are seeing out there.” Not all members of the College Hill community are as enthusiastic about the projects, however. The construction projects are “kind of an eyesore,” said Baird Langenbrunner ’09, who is doing research on campus this summer. “It is a shame that they have to do them during the summer when students are touring. They make the campus a lot less attractive for them.” Street closures have also proved inconvenient. Confused motorists trying to use closed streets are often forced to turn around, and pedestrians making the walk from the main campus to Pembroke campus are faced with a maze of detours and closed walkways. Still, the ultimate goal of this year’s summer construction — street renovations and the Walk — is to streamline and consolidate campus connections, ultimately making it easier to get around, McCormick said. “Improvements to the circulation structure on campus … will make the core of campus more connected,” which is worth the summer inconvenience, McCormick said. Community groups have also criticized Brown’s construction goals as ignoring the residential and historical aspects of the College Hill neighborhood and have recently challenged projects, successfully derailing a planned parking garage in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Complex. “We don’t want Brown taking over all of College Hill with their tax-exempt status ... and architecturally insignificant buildings,” said Ronald Dwight ’66, a member of the College Hill Neighborhood Association. Though McCormick cited Brown’s increased communication with the community as a reason behind the University’s new strategy of building on the current campus instead of spreading further into residential areas, Dwight said the administration is still not doing enough to cater to the community. Brown’s cooperation with the community “is all lip service,” Dwight said, adding that “Brown is an arrogant institution to work with.” Despite the criticism, Langenbrunner said he thinks the “benefits from construction outweigh the short-term costs.”

CAMPUS NEWS MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

U. drives int’l effort forward, with Air Force plans to improve military aircraft major progress expected by Sept. through study of bat ﬂight NEWS

I N

BRIEF

The U.S. Air Force is investing $6 million over the next five years to study the flight of bats in a project led by Associate Professor of Biology Sharon Swartz. The study will focus on the flight of pregnant female bats, and researchers hope that understanding the physics of carrying so much weight in flight could help aircraft designers improve current aircraft models. The research team has already reported that bats can execute airborne maneuvers that birds and planes cannot while carrying up to 50 percent of their weight. They hypothesize that hundreds of tiny sensors covering bats’ wings might be the key to their airborne maneuvers. Researchers have also found that bats can fly with badly damaged wings and show no discernible changes in flight control. This project is funded by a pool of federal money recently allocated for the support of basic academic research into new technologies that have potential military applications.

Professor helps create removable tattoo Professor of Medical Science Edith Mathiowitz has created tiny microcapsules as small as the point of a pin, which can carry medicines, genes, paints or any other molecule that requires protection or controlled release. The devices will be used to make ink for the ﬁrst durable but removable tattoo. The technique of suspending particles in biodegradable coatings has been used in the past for drug delivery. The University recently signed a licensing agreement with Freedom-2 Holdings Inc., giving the company rights to make and sell the ink. Funding from the company has allowed Mathiowitz and her team to create dye-ﬁlled, microencapsulated beads for Freedom-2 tattoo inks. A single laser treatment breaks the polymer beads, allowing the body to naturally expel the dye trapped inside the microcapsules. Traditionally, it takes six or seven laser treatments to remove a tattoo.

One in 10 hospice patients referred “too late,” U. researchers ﬁnd A new study found that one in 10 hospice patients are referred “too late” to receive the full beneﬁts of the intervention, resulting in unmet needs in the areas of pain relief and emotional support. Many patients are not referred to hospice care until the last 24 to 48 hours of life, said Joan Teno, professor of community health and medicine and associate medical director at Home and Hospice Care of Rhode Island. Teno surveyed bereaved family members to gauge the quality of hospice programs, collecting information from over 100,000 surveys. The research team included Janet Shu ’02 MD’07 and Ramona Rhodes MPH’06, assistant professor of medicine and an attending physician at Rhode Island Hospital. — Kristina Kelleher

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BY MICHAEL SKOCPOL SENIOR STAFF WRITER

The University should complete the first major steps of its official internationalization effort by early September, when officials hope to name a vice president for international affairs and release the report of its internationalization committee. The committee — established in October 2006 to recommend how the University could raise its profile outside of the United States and enhance the international character of its curriculum, campus life and research — is finalizing revisions to the report and expects to make its findings public at the beginning of the fall semester, said committee member and Assistant Provost Shelley Stephenson. The University has also identified a candidate for the new vice presidential position and is currently in negotiations to finalize the appointment, added Stephenson, who serves on the vice presidential search committee. Those negotiations are unlikely to be completed before mid-August, Stephenson said, meaning

a vice presidential appointment could be announced around the time the report is released. Stephenson declined to identify the candidate or provide any information about the person’s background, citing the candidate’s request that nothing about the appointment be made public yet. The new vice president will be responsible for overseeing the next phase of the University’s internationalization effort. University officials and committee members have said they expect the vice president will use the committee’s recommendation to guide his or her efforts, at least initially. The committee’s report, expected to be about 20 pages long, will highlight specific suggestions from initial reports of its six discipline-specific working groups, which will be appended to the report. The Herald reported in April that proposals in the working groups’ reports include encouraging more science and technology students to go abroad and creating centers to coordinate the University’s global health activities and study African development. The fi-

nal report will emphasize specific recommendations for University officials and will try to place the working group reports into a larger context, Stephenson said. The appointment of the vice president for international affairs and the release of the committee’s report will be two of the most significant signs of progress in the University’s internationalization effort since it was announced last fall. The appointment in February of former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke ’62 as a professor-at-large at the Watson Institute for International Studies and an informal adviser to President Ruth Simmons was also touted by University officials as a boon for the effort. Holbrooke is a former editor-in-chief of The Herald. One project currently underway is the creation of regional advisory councils in areas such as Asia, Africa and Latin America. The University has also sent delegations to China and India in the past year to discuss collaboration with businesses and universities in those countries.

Alum scores top U.S. ﬁnish in mahjong history BY MICHAEL BECHEK SENIOR STAF F WRITER

Ben Boas ’06.5 posted the best ever finish by an American at an international mahjong competition in June, placing third out of 133 competitors at the Open European Mahjong Championship in Copenhagen, Denmark. Boas, who was playing mahjong in Finland last week when reached by The Herald, wrote in an e-mail that this year’s championship was the first ever to have a full American team, and the first to have an American top finisher. Mahjong, which originated in China, is a strategy-based fourplayer game with intricate rules in which competitors use tiles to try to build complete suits, usually of threes, from either 13 or 16 tiles. According to the World Mahjong Organization, the game has been a worldwide pastime for over a century, “owing to its comprehensive cultural content as well as its merits of being interesting, competitive and helpful to wisdom and friendship.” Boas was joined at the tournament by Alexander Young ’07, whom Boas wrote wasn’t planning on playing but “ended up substituting for a Russian player.” Young finished in 59th place and was the next best American finisher. “For someone who only learned the rule-set three weeks before the tournament, I’d say that’s pretty good,” Boas wrote. The tournament’s champion was Denmark’s Martin Wedel Jacobsen, while Japan’s Kohichi Oda finished second. In his e-mail, Boas wrote that

Courtesy of Ben Boas

Ben Boas ’06.5 put his mahjong skills to the test in Copenhagen, Denmark, placing third in the European championship.

he has been playing mahjong since he learned it in Tibet in 2004 during a year off from Brown. When he returned the following fall he started a mahjong club, and later decided to write an honors thesis in East Asian studies on mahjong culture in Japan. Boas has since won a Fulbright fellowship to pursue the same topic next year while studying at Japan’s Kyoto University and plans to compete at the World Mahjong Championship in November in Chengdu, China, he wrote. Boas also wrote that he plans to “work with the European mahjong community” in the next year as a consultant to develop rules for their Japanese-rules mahjong tournament. Though Boas was not avail-

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able by telephone, he has detailed many of his experiences on his blog. “With 13 points out of a possible 16, I had had a great start to the tournament!” Boas blogged on June 24. “But my luck soon took a change. Round 5 was a bit of a nightmare. My opponents included Sune, a very strong Danish player, and Emmanuel, the former French champion who handles his tiles so well, often he doesn’t even need to look at them because he can feel the patterns on the tiles with his thumb.” “And yes, I’m not a Brown student anymore,” Boas wrote on June 25, though it isn’t clear to whom or what he was responding. “But hey, what can I say? I love my alma mater. Go Brown!”

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Students win MTVu grant for music visualization software continued from page 3 might be.” Encouraged by Tribe, the three students applied for the mtvU “Digital Incubator” development team grant. The company’s press release promised that winning teams would be granted access to “everything necessary to launch a successful online business: the creative firepower and reach of MtvU, the tech expertise of Cisco, and the financial backing to see their idea realized — all while still in college.” “We submitted this in January. … We were crossing our fingers every day,” Gallese said. When MTV first called in May to tell them they had a crew in Providence and wanted to film a formal interview, the group got suspicious. “We’ve grown up in an age of reality TV,” McCune said. “We were expecting to be Punk’d or something. We suspected something but we had to feign absolute shock and awe.” But the trio needn’t have worried — MTV just wanted to tell them they had won $25,000. “We were very appreciative of someone actually investing financial resources in an ‘art’ project,” Gallese said. “It’s an honor to have people trust us and give us enough responsibility to do this.” The three students have now undertaken different roles for the project. McCune has taken over as press manager, while Maclay serves as the contact and art managers. Gallese is the technical manager. The group has also added Nick Greenfield ’09 as business manager. “It’s a different feeling being in charge, being responsible for people working for you,” Gallese said. McCune said that because

none of the group’s members had extensive computer science knowledge, most of the funds would go toward outsourcing the tech development. “We’re mainly using the money to hire outside people to collaborate with us, as well as taking care of server space that needs to be paid for, domain name, online certificates, but much of our money goes to hiring outside human resources,” Gallese said. “It’s challenging because it originated as an art project, we still like to think of it as having aesthetic aspects,” McCune said. “It’s kind of like we designed a sculpture, but are not going to do any of the actual sculpting.” The group is looking at two different markets for the visualizer. “Osiris LITE is going to be a free, web-based program that we hope to have finished in late August,” Greenfield said. “This will be available to the general public via a Web site.” “Osiris PREMIUM is a substantially more sophisticated product that we intend to individually customize and sell to nightclubs and lounges,” Greenfield said. “PREMIUM would access a curated image library and a variety of other media sources, rather than simply interfacing with Flickr, as at least early versions of LITE will likely do.” The Osiris Project will compete for more funds in the fall, including a supplemental grant of $100,000. The group submitted a business plan in June for consideration. “We have a bunch of different ideas of where it’s going to go, if we get more money,” Gallese said. “If not, it’s an art project at heart, it’s going to stay out (there) and the community can use it.”

MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

Required reading among new Orientation changes continued from page 3 Arune Gulati ’11, a possible neuroscience concentrator, said he planned to read the book and thought most of his classmates would do the same. “Most freshmen would be so intimidated by the fact that Brown is telling them to read a book that they will read it,” he said. “It’s a good way to break the ice, to get into discussion on the first day.” “I am definitely planning on reading it,” said Rita Bullwinkel ’11, a San Francisco native. “I want to be prepared. You don’t want to come in looking like an idiot.” But, she added, “The only way I know who Proust is is from the movie ‘Little Miss Sunshine.’ ” In “How Proust Can Change Your Life,” the author “has chosen to weave Proust’s life, work, friends and era into a gently irreverent, tongue-in-cheek self-help book,” said a 1998 Publisher’s Weekly review. Marcel Proust was a French author in the early 20th century best known for his expansive seven-volume novel “In Search of Lost Time.” Copies of the book were mailed free of charge to incoming students last week and were paid for by the Office of Alumni Relations and the administrative offices that run Orientation, said Interim Assistant Dean of the College Carol Cohen ’83. The book was selected by Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, who originally proposed the summer reading and Orientation seminar idea to the Orientation review committee. In addition to selecting the book, Bergeron has also taken a personal role in bringing the academic seminars to fruition and appealing to the faculty to lead discussions. The review committee’s report stressed the importance of faculty participation in leading the semi-

nars and expressed concern about a plan that would require graduate students to take a teaching role during Orientation, but administrators in the Office of the Dean of the College said such concerns proved to be unfounded. A group of 66 volunteers — 54 faculty members and 12 administrators, including President Ruth Simmons — has agreed to lead discussions, said Kathleen McSharry, an associate dean of the College. With just under 1,500 students expected to matriculate in September, each discussion group is expected to accommodate about 22 students. In an e-mail to The Herald, Bergeron said she was pleased with the response. “I was thrilled with (the) response (of the faculty),” she wrote. “And I was very pleased that almost half come from math/science fields. So it should be an eclectic mix.” McSharry said faculty members would be given significant leeway in guiding their discussions as they see fit, but Bergeron said she chose the book because it “is more about life than it is about Proust and that she hoped it would provide first year students with an opportunity to reflect on the importance of new experiences. Professor of Geological Sciences Reid Cooper is one of the faculty members who agreed to lead a discussion group. In an e-mail to The Herald, he wrote that he was motivated to volunteer because he likes “interacting intellectually with undergraduate students, and particularly outside the constrains of having to sit in judgment.” He expressed mixed feelings about the book itself, however. “The book chosen, while weird, is provocative,” he wrote. “And provocative is good, particularly if one pursues group discussion.” He also expressed concern that having students write about the

book in a letter to their advisers will not be effective if first-year advisers do not read the book. So far, other changes have also been implemented smoothly, administrators said. Perhaps the most significant challenge is posed by the later start to Orientation, said Senior Associate Dean for Student Life Allen Ward, who co-chaired the working group of administrators who helped to implement the recommendations of the Orientation review committee this spring. Moving the start of Orientation to the weekend was intended to make it easier for parents to bring their children to campus without missing work, Ward said, but administrators have run into one complication — most University offices that students and parents may need information from are closed on the weekend. Some offices will make arrangements to remain open that weekend, and those that are closed could send representatives to an information fair on the first day of Orientation activities, Sunday, Sept. 2, Ward said. Many of the changes fell under the auspices of the Office of Student Life, McSharry said. The office was primarily responsible for adjusting the class meeting schedule, another of the main changes recommended by the Orientation review committee. While some class meetings from past years will remain the same — such as Professor of Africana Studies James Campbell’s presentation on the work of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, which he chaired — others were changed completely. The first class meeting will feature an outside speaker who will discuss issues of drug and alcohol abuse, which is a departure from past formats, McSharry said.

Fox Point development heavily restricted for one year continued from page 5 come together to consider uses for the property, which would reduce the government’s expense by “several hundred thousand dollars.” Schnepel told The Herald that the property at the head of the bay is a “signature piece of land” in a

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ﬂoodplain, with deep water docking capabilities. Ideally, she said she would like to see the property used for public marinas and as a tourist attraction to bring people to Providence. “If it gets developed by an independent developer and becomes high-end condos, no one will have any access to it at all. It will all be

private,” Schnepel said. But the DOT wants to sell the six-acre waterfront property to a private owner or developer and has repeatedly objected to the 12month development moratorium. In a letter to Mayor David Cicilline ’83, Williams wrote that “the site’s optimum location, proximate to the water, and the state’s need for capital compel our wish to dispose of the site.” Williams went on to write that the moratorium would “deprive us of the chance to garner revenue” and “diminish the property’s value.” Representatives of the DOT voiced similar objections to the ordinance at a public hearing held by the Providence City Council, according to Ward 2 Councilman Cliff Wood. Wood supports the moratorium, calling it an “opportunity to step back and look at what we’re doing in that part of the city.” According to Wood, the City Council’s Committee on Ordinances, of which he is a member, unanimously voted in favor of the ordinance. Wood said he felt especially optimistic about the ordinance since it will only be effective for 12 months. “A year isn’t that long, in terms of moving properties through the government,” he said. Ofﬁcials from Cicilline’s ofﬁce, which has yet to make clear whether the mayor will sign or veto the ordinance, could not be reached for comment.

CAMPUS NEWS MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 9

Capital campaign passes $1b mark

U. launches commission to consider slavery memorial

BY FRANKLIN KANIN SENIOR STAF F WRITER

The Campaign for Academic Enrichment, which aims to raise $1.4 billion to fund President Ruth Simmons’ Plan for Academic Enrichment, reached its $1 billion mark on May 24. As of July 11, the fundraising drive had raised an additional $28 million. With about 73 percent of its goal complete, the campaign will focus more time and effort on raising money in the greater New York City area, including Fairfield, Conn., and northern New Jersey. It will also expand operations in California, University officials said. But that doesn’t mean the campaign will ignore the rest of the country, said Ronald Vanden Dorpel MA’71, senior vice president for University advancement. “Brown is a national institution.” And the campaign will also continue spending time fundraising overseas. The capital campaign officially kicked off in 2005 after a two-year ‘quiet phase’ that raised $575 million. It funds endowments for professors, educational programs for students, new facilities and reno-

vations to existing residence halls. One of the most prominent boosts to the campaign thus far was a $100 million donation in January from the late Warren Alpert to improve the Medical School, now named for Alpert. “The Medical School has been one of the highest priorities from the beginning,” said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior adviser to the president. Future plans include constructing a new fitness center, replacing the Smith Swim Center and finishing the Walk, which will connect Lincoln Field to Pembroke campus. The campaign is “incredibly important — the most important thing Brown will do during the Simmons presidency,” Vanden Dorpel said. “It gives us the wherewithal to institute the president’s plan.” Spies said “the plan came first — developed a vision and then tried to figure out what resources were required — and organized the campaign around that.” But despite planning, the campaign has had to deal with some unanticipated expenses, such as the need to replace the Smith Swim Center, which was closed

last semester over concerns about the structural integrity of its roof. The campaign adjusts to the unanticipated because it was built with flexibility, said Neil Steinberg ’75, vice president for development and campaign director. “We just kind of go with it,” he said. “It’s not that rigid.” And as the campaign proceeds, so do its priorities, Spies said. “Things always evolve. The plan is evolving. New priorities and new needs emerge that you hadn’t anticipated and still have to deal with,” he said. “In some ways the campaign will have to change in order to reflect those changes … The core elements aren’t going to change, just some of the details might.” “Some other projects might have to wait a little longer and we might have to reconfigure some of the things we’ve been thinking about,” he added. Spies said the response to the campaign has been encouraging. “The most exciting thing about the campaign is that people from the largest donors to the smallest have responded to that appeal to support the plan and all that can mean for Brown,” he said.

Student garden sprouts on Hope Street BY MATTHEW VARLEY STAF F WRITER

Fresh, locally grown produce may soon be available on campus, thanks to a new student vegetable garden that is taking root at the corner of Hope Street and Young Orchard Avenue. Just a few months ago, the site was a rocky, barren patch of silt — now, lush green rows of basil, eggplant and tomato plants are sprouting from rich black soil, protected by freshly-hewn wooden walls. Soon, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, kale, beets and radishes will grow there as well. The Brown Sustainable Food Initiative, a student group devoted to promoting local agriculture, is largely responsible for developing the garden. During the academic year, David Schwartz ’09, Ben Mandelkern ’09, Zach Stone ’09 and Michael Glassman ’09 planned the project on paper. Mandelkern, Stone and Glassman received an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award to put their plans into action this summer. The work was not easy — the founders labored for over a month before planting their first seedlings in early July. Schwartz said the entire site was contaminated with lead when they first examined it, requiring them to spread a foot of topsoil over the earth. The students spent weeks removing debris, constructing a retaining wall and re-grading the 2,700 square foot garden with the help of Facilities Management. “We’ve been helped really invaluably by Facilities,” which contributed “a lot of time, tools and resources” to the garden, Stone said. He said the garden would have an “educational aspect” and also serve as a “community-building tool.” He said he hopes Brown students will benefit from work-

ing at the site, cooking and enjoying local food and “appreciating the difference between the food that comes from here and the food that you would get out of Stop and Shop.” Stone said other Brown students have considered starting a vegetable garden in the past but have failed due to the difficulty of finding sufficient space close to campus. But Stone and Mandelkern persisted, going all the way to the top for assistance. Stone recalled speaking with President Ruth Simmons at the sophomore barbeque last fall.

FEATURE “I asked, ‘Do you garden?’ She said she did and asked me if I gardened,” Stone said. “I said I was trying to start a garden at Brown, and she said ‘That’s a great idea!’ ” Simmons put Stone in touch with Interim Vice President of Student Life Russell Carey ’91 MA’06 and Grounds Superintendent Pat Vetere, who helped with site selection and logistics. Mandelkern said the group borrowed tools from the Urban Environmental Laboratory and received funding from the Center for Environmental Studies. Though they accepted assistance from the administration, the founders intend the Hope Street garden to be a space “run by students for students,” Mandelkern said. “Come fall, this will be a place where all students can gather, learn and take on leadership roles.” “SuFI is the organization that is currently coordinating it, but the idea is that this will become a Brown student garden for everyone,” Mandelkern said. Though the founders are still looking for markets for the vegetables, Schwartz said Brown Dining Services has already commit-

ted to purchasing some of the student produce to serve somewhere on campus. The garden “connects with a lot of things (the University) is interested in,” Carey said. He said Dining Services has been making greater efforts recently to serve sustainable, local and farm-fresh produce in the dining halls. Vegetables from the student garden would ﬁt the bill. “I would be thrilled if some of it turned up on the menu in September,” Carey said. Schwartz praised the University staff, whom he described as “great teachers.” “You think of professors as the best teachers at a university, but I feel I have learned so much from these guys from grounds, from someone who works at the greenhouse … who have so much knowledge and expertise and who have taught us so much,” Schwartz said. He envisions Brown students gaining “teaching experience, growing experience and entrepreneurial experience as well” as they sell the produce to the Brown community and beyond. Schwartz plans to organize a collaborative program with Brown/Fox Point Day Care, in which children could help in the garden on a regular basis. He hopes that part of the garden’s bounty will be donated to hunger relief organizations. Schwartz said the students expect the garden to grow over the next several years. “This is the ﬁrst, inaugural, pilot year. I think you’ll see this space and all the programs associated with it really growing over a two-to-three-year time span,” Schwartz said. “It’s just one part of a large and growing interest among students in issues of sustainable agriculture and local food.”

BY DEBBIE LEHMANN SENIOR STAF F WRITER

The University has established a commission to consider how best to publicly acknowledge Brown’s ties to the transatlantic slave trade and the history of slavery in Rhode Island. The 10-person commission was created earlier this month in response to one of the recommendations made in the October 2006 report of the University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. The recommendation speciﬁed that Brown should set up a “living site of memory” as a way to address the University’s historic ties to the Rhode Island slave trade and move forward. The committee’s report detailed the University’s early benefactors’ ties to the slave trade and offered a comparative study of how other countries have addressed legacies of historical injustice. In addition to a slave trade memorial, the report called for a $10-million endowment to improve Providence public schools and the creation of a center for slavery and justice research. The commission, which includes representatives from Brown and individuals nominated by Gov. Donald Carcieri ‘65 and Providence Mayor David Cicilline ’83, will meet for the ﬁrst time in August to recommend possible monuments, sites and ceremonies for a memorial. Committee members said it is too early to say what kinds of proposals will be evaluated or what the timeline for consideration will be. But committee member Kerry Smith, an associate professor of history and chair of the Department of East Asian Studies, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that the process of discussing proposals and debating outcomes is just as important as the memorial itself. “That ability to engage in dialogue with the community is very important in the memorialization process,” wrote Smith, who also served on the steering committee. Smith will draw from his own research, which focuses on the construction of historical memory in Japan, in discussing memorials.

“That, I suspect, gives me a sense of how tenacious and complicated questions of memory, of historical commemoration (and its absence) can be in communities outside of the United States,” he wrote. The commission is also comprised of members of the Providence community, including Joaquina Bela Teixeira, the executive director of the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. Teixeira said the BHS has ideas about what might make a meaningful memorial, but she said she would try to approach discussions without preconceived notions. “This is not simply a memorial to one war,” Teixeira said. “It’s over centuries of time, and we need to honor the length and depth of that experience. We need to create in the hearts and minds of people who experience the site something that will transcend the nature of time and connect both black and white.” Teixeira also underscored the scope of slavery’s history, saying it is “not just about Brown’s role in the trafﬁcking of slaves, but about Rhode Island as a whole.” Other members of the commission include Associate Professor of Visual Art Kerry Coppin, Professor of American Civilization and Director of the Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization Steven Lubar and Dietrich Neumann, a professor of history of art and architecture. The commission also includes Deborah Smith, the director of municipal and external affairs in the Ofﬁce of the Governor, O. Rogeriee Thompson, an associate justice at the Rhode Island Superior Court, and Spencer Crew, the president and CEO of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Leslie Gutterman of Temple Beth-El and Michael S. Van Leesten, president of the Van Leesten Group and deputy executive director of public affairs at the Massachusetts Pequot Tribal Nation, will also serve on the commission. In addition, Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity and JoAnn Conklin, the director of the David Winton Bell Gallery, will work with and advise the commission.

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U.S. journalists in Mexico targeted as violence intensiﬁes BY MANUEL ROIG-FRANZIA WASHINGTON POST

MEXICO CITY — The San Antonio Express-News, a 230,000-circulation daily, last week withdrew its U.S.-Mexico border reporter after learning of what appears to be an unprecedented plan to assassinate American journalists who frequently write about drug cartels in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Sources have told several Texas newspapers that hit men from Los Zetas, a group of former Mexican military ofﬁcers who operate as the Gulf cartel’s assassins, may have been hired to cross into the United States and execute American reporters. Word of the threat shattered the widely held perception here that foreign journalists are somehow shielded from violent retribution in a nation that is now second only to Iraq in deaths of journalists. “We are not immune,” wrote Eloy Aguilar and Dolly Mascarenas in a statement sent Friday to fellow members of the Foreign Correspon-

dents Association in Mexico. “We have a very confused and violent situation in Mexico, with the government ﬁghting drug cartels on one side and suspected guerrilla groups on the other. … An incident involving a U.S. or other foreign journalist could be used by all groups to create more confusion.” More than 30 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the past six years, but only one — freelancer and activist Brad Will, who was shot to death during teacher protests last year in Oaxaca — was American. Most of the killings are believed to be related to coverage of an ongoing war between drug cartels. Last year, drug gangs were suspected of ﬁring automatic weapons and throwing a grenade into the newsroom of Nuevo Laredo’s El Manana newspaper, seriously injuring one reporter. Express-News Editor Robert Rivard, a former Central America bureau chief for Newsweek magazine, said in an interview Friday that steps have been taken to conceal the location of his former border

correspondent, Mariano Castillo. Castillo wrote nearly 100 stories about cartels, crisscrossing the border from the newspaper’s bureau in Laredo, Texas, for the past 4 1/2 years as drug violence escalated. His ﬁrst piece about cartels, in late 2003, was headlined “Mexico town erupts into a battle zone; Grenades, machine guns roar south of the border.” In his last front-page article, which ran in May, Castillo exposed the existence of a “shadowy and violent group that calls itself the ‘Gente Nueva,’ or New People — and authorities don’t want to talk about it.” For now the paper’s border bureau, which is a 2 1/2-hour drive from San Antonio, sits vacant. Rivard is grappling with a challenge faced every day by his counterparts south of border — how to cover a region where his reporters are targets. “It’s a dilemma,” Rivard said. “On the one side, no story is worth a reporter’s life; on the other side, you don’t want to back down from telling readers about an important story.”

Robber asks for money, then a hug BY ALLISON KLEIN WASHINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — A grand feast of marinated steaks and jumbo shrimp was winding down, and a group of friends was sitting on the back patio of a Capitol Hill home, sipping red wine. Suddenly, a hooded man slid in through an open gate and put the barrel of a handgun to the head of a 14-yearold guest. “Give me your money, or I’ll start shooting,” he demanded, according to Washington D.C. police and witness accounts. The five other guests, including the girls’ parents, froze — and then one spoke. “We were just finishing dinner,” Cristina “Cha Cha” Rowan blurted out. “Why don’t you have a glass of wine with us?” The intruder took a sip of their Chateau Malescot St-Exupery and said, “Damn, that’s good wine.” The girl’s father, Michael Rabdau who described the harrowing evening in an interview, told the intruder to take the whole glass. Rowan offered him the bottle. The would-be robber, his hood now down, took another sip and had a bite of Camembert cheese that was on the table. Then he tucked the gun into the pocket of his nylon sweatpants. “I think I may have come to the wrong house,” he said, looking around the patio. “I’m sorry,” he told the group. “Can I get a hug?” Rowan, who lives in Falls Church, Va., and works part time at her children’s school, stood up and wrapped her arms around him. Then it was Rabdau’s turn. Then his wife’s. The other two guests complied. “That’s really good wine,” the man said, taking another sip. He had a final request: “Can we have a group hug?” The five adults surrounded

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him, arms out. With that, the man walked out with a crystal wine glass in hand, filled with Chateau Malescot. No one was hurt, and nothing was stolen. The homeowner, Xavier Cervera had gone out to walk his dog at the end of the party and missed the incident, which happened about midnight June 16. Police classified the case as strange but true and said they had not located a suspect. “We believe it is a true robbery,” said Cmdr. Diane Groomes, who is in charge of patrols in the Capitol Hill area. But it’s one-of-akind, she said, adding, “I’ve never heard of a robber joining a party and then walking out to the sunset.” The hug, she said, was especially unusual. “They should have squeezed him and held onto him for us,” she said. Rabdau said he hasn’t been able to figure out what happened. “I was definitely expecting there would be some kind of casualty,” Rabdau said this week. “He was very aggressive at first; then it turned into a love fest. I don’t know what it was.” Rabdau, a federal government worker who lives in Anne Arundel County, Md., with his family, said that the episode lasted about 10 minutes but seemed like an hour. Rabdau, who lived on Capitol Hill with his wife in the 1980s, said he thinks the guests were spared because they kept a positive attitude during the exchange. “There was this degree of disbelief and terror at the same time,” Rabdau said. “Then it miraculously just changed. His whole emotional tone turned — like, we’re one big happy family now. I thought: Was it the wine? Was it the cheese?” After the intruder left, the guests walked inside the house, locked the door and stared at each other. They didn’t say a word. Rabdau dialed 911. Police arrived

quickly and took a report. They also dusted for ﬁngerprints, so far to no avail. In the alley behind the home, investigators found the intruder’s empty crystal wine glass on the ground, unbroken.

Feds seek $3m ﬁne against UC for Los Alamos breach BY RICHARD C. PADDOCK LOS ANGELES T IMES

The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday proposed a record $3 million fine against the University of California for a security breach last year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in which a worker took home classified documents on a thumb drive. An investigation by the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration concluded that security procedures implemented by UC were so lax that the contract employee was able to leave the nuclear weapons lab with classified documents on her thumb drive and other documents she had reproduced at work on a copy machine. The security breach was discovered in October when police responded to a domestic disturbance call at the trailer home of the employee, Jessica Quintana, and found the thumb drive and documents along with methamphetamine paraphernalia. Investigators said they found 431 classified documents and devices with more than 1,200 classified pages at Quintana’s home. Among the documents were some dealing with nuclear weapons design and nuclear weapons testing. Quintana pleaded guilty in May to one count of removing classified material. She faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000

fine. UC, which was the sole manager of the nuclear weapons lab for more than 60 years but now runs it with a consortium of private companies, said it will contest the size of the fine, noting that the security breach occurred more than a month after the new management group took over on June 1, 2006. “We are going to respond to the department on this matter,” said Chris Harrington, a spokesman for UC in Washington. “Our response will point out that the university was no longer the sole manager of the laboratory when this incident occurred.” The new management group, known as Los Alamos National Security and formed by UC, Bechtel National and other firms, faces a proposed fine of $300,000. William C. Ostendorff, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, called the stiff penalty against UC warranted because the security breach was serious. Ostendorff wrote that the incident was “particularly troubling” because the breakdown in security procedures at the lab was similar to earlier deficiencies cited during UC’s management. Violations included not eliminating ports from the lab’s desktop computers despite an earlier pledge to do so; not following recontinued on page 17

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Prepared for classes and skepticism, Seligmann ’09 awaits a fresh start at Brown continued from page 1 After a nightmarish year spent in the national spotlight, hounded by the media and the thought of spending the beginning of his adult life in prison, the 21-year-old Seligmann now has a destination, and he’s ready to be a college student again. He knows he’ll get stares when he introduces himself on the first day of class. He knows that, as a top varsity athlete, he’ll have to fight the dumb jock stereotype he says he tried to overcome at Duke. He knows he’ll meet skeptics who still think something happened at that party. That is why he is in Starbucks tonight, spending two-and-a-half hours talking about the worst year of his life. He could be catching up on sleep so he can wake up at 5 a.m. to work out and get back into playing shape, but he wants everyone at Brown to know who he really is. “I hope that anyone who’s not supportive takes the time to meet me, because I want to meet them,” Seligmann says. The line may be rehearsed, a by-product of spending a year under scrutiny and giving interviews to 60 Minutes, The Today Show and Newsweek. But Seligmann looks like he means it. *** On the afternoon of April 17, 2006, Seligmann and two lacrosse teammates were in their lawyer’s Durham, N.C., office, just down the road from Duke. A month earlier, a 27-year-old exotic dancer alleged that three Duke lacrosse players raped her after she performed at a team party. The story of a black, single mother accusing wealthy, white college students of rape soon became a perfect media storm. On this afternoon, a grand jury was to indict two of the players whom she had identified. All the players had hired lawyers after the accusation came out and were now with their respective representation awaiting the news. Around 2 p.m., Julian Mack, Seligmann’s lawyer, told his three clients the indictments were sealed, meaning the names wouldn’t be released immediately. Seligmann’s two teammates left, thinking there was no point in sticking around. Seligmann and his father, Philip, stayed behind to talk about a billing issue when Mack’s secretary came in. “Mr. Nifong’s on the cell phone,” she said, referring to Mike Nifong, the Durham County district attorney handling the case. Mack took the phone and started talking. After a few seconds, he glanced up at Seligmann, who before that point was thinking his other two teammates were in trouble. “For some reason, you never think it’s going to be you,” Seligmann says now. After a moment, Mack stopped the conversation to ask Seligmann and his father to go into a conference room, where Seligmann began pacing the room, thinking, is it one of my friends? Or is it me?

After what seemed like forever, Mack entered the room and looked at Seligmann. “She chose you,” he said. His father collapsed, and Seligmann retreated to the corner and sunk to the floor. He remembers thinking, “My life is over. ” He doesn’t remember how long it took him to get over the shock, but when he finally did, he thought: “Wait, I have everything to prove.” Seligmann said the worst part was calling his mother, who was attending a lacrosse game of his two younger twin brothers at Delbarton, the all-male Catholic school in New Jersey that he also attended. Kathy, his mother, answered her cell phone as she was walking across the field after the game. It was her birthday. “Mom, I need you to be stronger than you have ever been in your entire life,” Seligmann said. “Who was it?” Kathy asked. Seligmann paused. Then, he told her slowly: “Mom, she chose me.” Kathy says “the world started spinning.” She remembers sprinting toward her car. When she finally reached it, she collapsed, only to be helped up by Father Luke, the headmaster at Delbarton. Seligmann had called him right before he called his mother, asking him to find her as she heard the news. As Seligmann, who calls himself “an emotional guy,” tells the story, he begins to tear up. He looks down. Even a year later, it’s hard to tell the story, he says, adding a nervous laugh. He recomposes himself to explain the rest. *** Seligmann remembers going back to his dorm room. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about his indictment, so he pretended to his roommate that everything was fine. He picked up some things and then saw his girlfriend, now a Duke senior, whom he had to tell. Seligmann says now he wouldn’t have gotten through the ordeal without her support, and the two are still dating today. Seligmann and his father then got a hotel room, where Seligmann spent a few sleepless hours before leaving at 4 a.m. to turn himself into the Durham County sheriff. He and fellow sophomore Collin Finnerty, who was also indicted the day before, drove to the back of the Durham County jail, where they had arranged to meet officers. (Team captain David Evans, who held the party where the rape was said to have occurred, would be indicted a month later.) They were handcuffed and then driven 15 yards to the front of the jail, where camera crews were waiting, Seligmann says. He believes Nifong orchestrated the whole thing to maximize media attention. As he got out of the car, Seligmann was blinded by camera lights. But strangely, he felt calm. “Maybe it was because I was so detached from the situation,” he says. The two went inside, where they signed papers and were

Stu Woo / Herald

Reade Seligmann ’09 searched. When Seligmann was asked to place his finger on a futuristic-looking machine to be fingerprinted, he remembers saying to the officer, “Hey, this is kind of cool.” Then he remembered it was he who was being printed, for a crime he knew he hadn’t committed that could put him in jail for 30 years. Seligmann was taken to a small, one-person cell while his father posted bail. He spent about 90 minutes there. He remembers trying to keep his mind busy, so he started reading the Spanish that former inmates had written on the walls in pen. It was nearly finals period, and Seligmann should have been starting to study for his final in Spanish, which he says is not his strongest subject. He remembers one phrase on the cell’s wall. “Ayudame,” it read — help me. *** Lars Tiffany ’90 was hired away from Stony Brook University to be Brown’s new lacrosse coach last August. Almost immediately, he began recruiting Seligmann. The coach had done his homework, speaking with many in the lacrosse community who knew Seligmann. He heard the same from everyone he spoke to: If you know this kid, then you know he couldn’t have done it. Tiffany says there was “no way” he would have considered recruiting Seligmann if he even had the slightest doubt about him. “We cannot sacrifice the team and University for one person,”

Tiffany says. When he approached people in the athletics department, he says there were a few skeptics. But nearly everyone, including Mike Goldberger, the director of athletics, supported him, he adds. Tiffany is glad they did, because he sees a potential star in Seligmann, who at 6’1” and 220 pounds looks more like the star power running back he was on his high-school football team than a lacrosse player. (Seligmann says he got several Division I football scholarship offers out of high school and considered playing both sports this year at Brown, but decided against it). “He’s got a strong, accurate shot,” Tiffany says, “and because of his frame, he can power dodge you, just run over you.” But what impresses Tiffany most about Seligmann is his maturity and personality. In February, Tiffany realized that the case might soon be dropped and that Seligmann could very well come to Brown. He called Seligmann and remembers the conversation as such: “Reade, I need to know about every little thing, what you’ve been accused of or anything you’ve ever done wrong. Let me know any detail so I can present it to whomever, before it gets thrown at our face in the last second.” The line was silent for a minute. “Coach,” Seligmann ﬁnally said. “My freshman year, there was a party in my hallway, and all of us got written up for it.” Tiffany remembers saying, “Is

that it? Is that everything that you got?” The coach doesn’t think Seligmann will have trouble adjusting to Brown, and lacrosse team tricaptain Jeff Hall ’08 says the team is excited to welcome him. Seligmann, who says he always wanted to attend an Ivy League school, chose Brown over the other two or three schools that were interested in him because of how the University treated him. They allowed him to visit the campus when he wasn’t even allowed back at Duke. Tiffany, too, played a big role in the decision. “He said, ‘I’m going to stand by and wait for you,’ ” Seligmann says. “And no other coach told me that. I promised him I would go to Brown if I got in, once this was over.” *** Kris Udekwu ’08 creates an interesting juxtaposition to Seligmann. Both were sought-after lacrosse recruits coming out of Catholic high schools. Both played for top college lacrosse teams before leaving their respective teams sophomore year. (Udekwu quit after some of the coaching staff at Brown left.) Udekwu, who is black and grew up in Raleigh, N.C., just a half-hour from Durham, probably understands the Duke case better than anyone at Brown. He has been closely following it and wrote about it for the College Hill Independent, of which he is now a continued on page 13

MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

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After a nightmarish year, Seligmann ’09 prepares to start anew at Brown continued from page 12 managing editor. He believes that when Seligmann gets to campus, the skeptics will pounce. “Historically, what Brown has been known for is making a meal out of things like this, as far as student activism goes,” he says. Sign-waving and protests, he says, are not out of the question. One of Seligmann’s new teammates, Jack Walsh ’09, doesn’t think there will be anything of that sort, but says he’s “fearful that people will be ignorant about the facts.” *** For the record, Seligmann is innocent. He is quick to correct those who say the charges against him and his teammates were simply dropped. On April 11, North Carolina’s attorney general declared them innocent. Nothing happened at the party that night, Seligmann asserts, and if something had, he would not have been there anyway. Cell phone records and a video of him at an ATM prove he was not at the party when the alleged rape was said to have occurred. But it wasn’t until the case started unraveling, when the accuser started changing her stories, when DNA evidence didn’t match those of the Duke suspects, that people began to believe him. A moment of relief came on Dec. 22, 2006. Seligmann was spending the holidays with his family in London when he received a Facebook message. “They dropped the rape charges. It’s over,” the message read. It was from the girlfriend of Seligmann’s brother. Seligmann didn’t quite understand what that meant, so he called his lawyer. He then found out that Nifong had dropped the rape charges against the three but that the prosecutor was still pursuing kidnapping and sexual offense charges. “It kind of hit me in the stomach, because it wasn’t over at all,” Seligmann says. Instead, he became even more frustrated at Nifong’s persistence in the absence of evidence. When Seligmann returned from London, he rejected an offer to return to Duke. He wasn’t interested, he says, and couldn’t have attended classes with the case looming over him. Instead, he continued what he had been doing: helping coach football and lacrosse at Delbarton and volunteering at a soup kitchen near his hometown of Essex Fells, N.J. At the kitchen, he says, people would often come up to him and say, “Do I know you from somewhere?” Seligmann says many recognized him, and most offered words of support. Though it’s hard to believe, he says no one confronted him during the ordeal, though he received a few e-mails from strangers who suggested what would happen to him if he went to prison. Seligmann’s new notoriety was strange at first, but he got used to it. He says he would often be on the treadmill at the gym, when CNN would suddenly flash his face across the screen. He tried to ignore the faces that turned toward him when that happened. The strangest incident occurred right after he attended his first recruiting trip at Brown. He

was at an interview for a business internship in Jersey City, N.J. Someone was showing him how to use a Bloomberg computer terminal when a Bloomberg News alert scrolled across the ticker on the top of everyone’s screen. “Duke suspect Seligmann recruited by Brown,” it read. Again, everyone turned to look at Seligmann. *** Seligmann is gregarious, eloquent and unfailingly polite. But he is unforgiving about two subjects: Nifong and the accuser. Nifong apologized to the Duke players and their families last month, when he spoke before the North Carolina State Bar’s disciplinary hearing panel. But Seligmann has no sympathy for the former district attorney, who has

since been disbarred and suspended from his position. “I’ll never accept an apology from him,” Seligmann says. “It’s been too hard of a year.” When asked what he thinks of Nifong, Seligmann breaks eye contact and appears upset. He says he has nothing more to say about him, adding that the state attorney general, who called Nifong a “rogue prosecutor,” put it best. Seligmann is similarly mum about his accuser, who picked Seligmann out of a lineup. He says he wouldn’t accept an apology from her, either, but declines to say more. Seligmann also does not want to talk about Duke, about how it suspended the team’s season shortly after the accusations broke, and about how it how suspended Finnerty and him from school when the case started.

(Evans was allowed to graduate.) “It’s all about Brown now,” he says. *** Seligmann was an honors student at Duke, a history major who made the Atlantic Coast Conference honor roll in his two years at the university, even though he had to complete his ﬁnal semester at Duke from home, over the Internet. He plans to study history at Brown and is considering adding economics as a second concentration. His internship at Bear Stearns has gotten him more interested in business, he says, but his heart, especially after the past year, is in law. Seligmann knows some resent the three accused players for having the resources to battle the legal system. He is unapologetic about it, but after the Duke case, he realiz-

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es more than ever how economics plays a role in law. Seligmann says he and the two accused teammates plan to one day work with the Innocence Project, a nonproﬁt organization dedicated to exonerating prisoners through DNA testing, or something similar. His goal, he says, is to work toward making sure that something like the Duke case never happens again, that innocent people never have to go through what he went through, regardless of their ﬁnancial situation. At Brown, he promises to start a club related to the Innocence Project, and to devote much of his time to its cause. When asked if he’s comfortable making a promise, with the Brown community and much of the nation watching, Seligmann doesn’t hesitate to respond. “They’ll be watching me anyway,” he says.

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MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

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Shisha cafes ﬁght British smoking ban BY MARJORIE MILLER LOS ANGELES TIMES

LONDON — Gone are the sweetsmelling trails of smoke that used to bubble out of the water pipes at Al Arez cafe on Edgeware Road. Gone are ﬁve employees who Mohammed Khalil sacked a day after Britain’s national smoking ban went into effect last week. And gone are many of the Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian customers who used to pack into Al Arez to socialize and smoke the pipes, also known as hookah or shisha. “This is a disaster for us,” Khalil said over a cup of sweet Arabic coffee in an empty restaurant. “We don’t drink. I don’t smoke cigarettes. But we smoke shisha, it’s part of our culture. And this is against our culture.” Khalil has joined the Edgeware Road Association and its Save Shisha Campaign, which is challenging the new law that bans smoking in all enclosed public places from work sites to pubs, company cars to shisha cafes. The association is seeking an exemption from the law, arguing that it is discriminatory and has a disproportionate effect on the largely Muslim communities who smoke the tobacco and fruit paste. The group sent a letter to the government on May 15 stating that the law would have a negative impact on “the culture and social practices and meeting places of the relevant ethnic minority communities.” They did not receive a response to that letter or to a subsequent letter sent on June 29, according to Ibrahim el-Nour, who is heading the campaign. He said the next step is to go to court to seek judicial review.

The cafe owners say the law is killing their businesses, with sales down 50 to 80 percent in the first week. They argue that second-hand shisha smoke is only about 20 percent tobacco and, therefore, is not as harmful as cigarette and cigar smoke, but the government disagrees. Liam Donaldson, the nation’s chief medical officer, said World Health Organization recommendations and other studies show water pipes have as much nicotine as cigarette smoke. He denies any discrimination, saying an across-the-board ban creates “a level playing field.” He said the law aims to lower the approximately 25 percent adult smoking rate in Britain and to protect nonsmokers from second-hand smoke. “We are looking at the experience of California. We want to keep the subject of tobacco in the public eye so that pressure is kept up on public awareness,” he said. Actually, while cigarette smoking is prohibited in California restaurants, hookah bars are exempt and have become increasingly popular in recent years. The British legislation also goes further than laws in some other European countries. In Belgium, for example, smoking is allowed at shisha bars, but food may not be served in the same place. Around the corner from Khalil’s cafe at the Duke of York pub, manager Nick Leith is enthusiastic about the ban and says most of his customers are, too. “Most of the staff here are nonsmokers and we can’t stand going home stinking like an ashtray. On Monday, we had a team in and they scrubbed the place from top to bot-

tom. We’re getting more families and American tourists and we think we’ll sell more food,” Leith said. As Leith spoke and the Wimbledon tennis tournament aired on a ﬂat-screen television behind him, one man eating a salad and two beersipping customers nodded in agreement. “It’s a little early to tell, but sales this week are about the same as other weeks.” Back on Edgeware road commercial district, Lebanese music bounced off the mother-of-pearl inlaid tables at Fatma Hassan’s empty Miramar restaurant, and the scent of shawarma wafted out the door. Many cafes like hers still offer their customers pipes at sidewalk tables, where it is permitted by law, but the worst summer weather in decades has compounded their troubles. “Our luck, the weather is really cold and rainy and people can’t sit outside,” said Fatma Hassan, manager of the Miramar restaurant. “If it’s like this now, what about in winter? I don’t know where we’re going to ﬁnd money to pay the rent.” Summer is usually high season on Edgeware Road, when well-to-do tourists head north from the Gulf States and other countries to seek refuge from the heat in London’s high-end department stores and outdoor cafes. Restaurants on the road cater to them with halal meat and honey-soaked desserts, and refrain from selling alcoholic beverages to avoid offending the heavily Muslim clientele. Women in black hijab or brightly colored frocks and head scarves meander up and down the road, children and shopping bags in tow. Men and women stop in the exchange houses and Islamic Bank of Britain before meeting up in the cafes,

where they customarily lay packs of cigarettes on the table next to their cell phones and thick coffees. Middle Easterners are heavy cigarette smokers and they also enjoy the apple or mango-scented tobacco in a shisha for $12 to $20, the restaurateurs said. “People want lunch or dinner and then they want coffee and they don’t feel the taste of the coffee without a smoke,” said Samar Eid of the family-owned Al Dar restaurant. “Now they would prefer to have food at home, where they can smoke.” El-Nour, chief executive the Edgeware Road Association, says the ban is hitting Britain’s own Arab and Muslim communities as well, particularly its young people who don’t go to bars and clubs that serve alcohol. El-Nour says cafes keep them off the streets, out of trouble and in contact with different generations. “It is nice to have places to engage young people in debate, to break down barriers and to promote community engagement,” El-Nour said. Cafe owners saw injustice in the fact that people are allowed to drink in pubs until drunk and aggressive, while a “calming” shisha smoke is banned from restaurants. “Usually all the young people come smoke and they’re chattering and having a very nice time here,” said Hassan of Miramar. “Now it’s boring for them.” Mohammed Nayeem of the AQ cafe agreed on a disappointing Friday afternoon. “I used to keep a security guard at the door to keep too many people from coming in at once. By this time it would have been full. Seventy or 80 people can sit in here, but now look at it,” Nayeem said. “Empty.”

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Tigers take baseball’s Thomas ’07 in seventh round

Feds seek $3m ﬁne against UC for Los Alamos breach

continued from page 20 he arrived at Oneonta, he discovered that the team was about half rookies and half players who participated in extended spring training in order to fine-tune parts of their game, so there was a wide range of experience levels. Thomas’ new club plays in the short-season New York-Penn League and travels by bus to places such as Brooklyn, N.Y. and State College, Pa., for games. The entire team stays in dormitories at Hartwick College in central New York. The undivided focus on baseball makes the minor league experience and competition “similar to summer ball,” according to Thomas, who played two seasons in the prestigious Cape Cod League. The intense schedule is the biggest difference, Thomas said. “You play 70-plus games (in the short-season minor leagues) instead of around 30 in the Cape Cod League,” Thomas said. “There’s just so little down time. In college when you got home from an away series you’d have a couple days off, but here you have a game that next night.” One of the fresh experiences for Thomas has been the number of spectators at the team’s games. Oneonta has the smallest attendance in the league with an average of 1,147 fans per night, but this still dwarfs the Brown baseball experience. “There’s definitely more support than at Brown,” he said. “We got a lot of people for the Ivy Championship, but here there are a lot of people every night. Some of the other teams get four, five, six thousand people.” And Thomas has certainly put on a show. Just two months removed from leading the Bears in hits, RBIs and home runs, Thomas has made an immediate impact on the Tigers. He played in 20 of the team’s 24 games through July 13, and has consistently hit in the middle of the lineup, logging at bats at anywhere from the second through sixth spots in the order. Thomas currently leads the team in walks and RBIs with 11 and 16 respectively. Thomas has also focused on his defense and management of games behind the plate. One of the main keys to improving in this area is building a rapport with the pitchers on the staff. Thomas quickly discovered that he would need to work on his Spanish lan-

Turf awaits football team, students on return to campus continued from page 20 team practices daily during the season, is likely the biggest beneﬁciary of the new turf surfaces. “They were absolutely delighted when they found out,” Goldberger said of the football team and staff. The new ﬁelds, which will measure 370 feet by 380 feet, were designed by Gale Associates and are being installed by R.A.D. Sports, which installed the turf at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., home of the New England Patriots.

guage skills to develop these relationships as about half the pitchers are from Latin American countries and speak little English. “It’s a great excuse to learn Spanish,” Thomas said. “I took Spanish in high school, but speaking and using it here would be great for me. It’s almost like study abroad.” As Thomas continues to try to improve every aspect of his game, he has kept his mind on the ultimate goal of moving up to a higher level of minor league play after the season ends. “The ultimate goal is just to move up, but it can’t drive you crazy,” he said. “It’s easy to look at your stats all the time, but you can’t let them make you go nuts. The ﬁrst day at Oneonta, someone from the team said ‘Don’t wait for us, let your performance move you,’ and I’ve really taken that to heart. You can’t control anything except your performance on the ﬁeld, so that’s where I have to show them.”

continued from page 11 quired procedures for escorting contract employees on the premises; and not conducting physical searches and inspections of employees, the inquiry found. “As revealed by this incident and the Department’s investigation, the University of California had systemic failures in establishing adequate work controls, consistently implementing these controls, assessing the effectiveness of its protection measures and improving the quality of these

PAGE 17

measures over time,” Ostendorff wrote in a letter to UC that accompanied its ﬁndings. For UC, the proposed ﬁne amounts to more than half of the $5.8 million it received in 2006 for managing the lab. If the university is ultimately compelled to pay, Harrington said, the money will come from a laboratory reserve fund, not from funds used to educate students. Los Alamos has a record of security and safety problems going back to 1999 when the FBI accused scientist Wen Ho Lee of

leaking nuclear secrets to China. He later pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling nuclear data. In 2004, the laboratory was shut down for nearly six months after two classiﬁed computer disks were reported lost and an undergraduate intern was injured in a laser accident. Investigators later concluded that the supposedly missing disks had never existed. The closure of the lab cost the federal government an estimated $370 million.

www.browndailyherald.com

E DITORIAL & L ETTERS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

PAGE 18

MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

STAF F EDITORIAL

With six weeks to go, a few words of advice for anxious ’11ers: Do look at a map of Providence. Don’t show up and ask where the mall is. Don’t friend everybody on Facebook. And you can’t join The Underground Network of People Who Understand That the Ratty is Far Superior to the V-Dub Facebook group. Yet. Do the summer reading but be wary of taking life tips from a sickly French intellectual whose most well-known protagonist had a crush on his mother. You did read the book, right? Don’t spend too much time reinventing yourself. You got in here because of who you are — not because you wear Converse. Do enjoy your last few weeks with high school friends. Everyone’s right when they say nothing will ever be the same. Do treasure your time at home with your parents. The Ratty’s comfort food section isn’t exactly home-cooked cuisine. ROXANNE PALMER

Don’t take registering for courses too seriously. Everything at Brown is subject to change. Everything other than the quality of the Ratty’s comfort foods. Do try to contact your roommate ahead of time when Brown notiﬁes you in August. You’ll probably want to decide who’ll bring the martini and shot glasses. Do get a Brown hoodie from the Brown Bookstore. Don’t get seven. Do splurge at Bed, Bath & Beyond but stay away from the silk sheets — they’ll be covered in puke in a week’s time anyway. Don’t overestimate how chill Brown is. You can’t smoke pot on the streets, you have to wear shoes and you will have homework. Except during Spring Weekend. Don’t freak out and ask everyone you know what you should do to prepare for college. No one can give you any relevant information about the transition to college. That is, besides The Herald. Do get excited about Brown. You won’t regret it.

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O PINIONS MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

A comedy of terrors DON TRELLA OPINIONS COLUMNIST

In his 1961 inaugural address, John F. Kennedy famously made a bold proclamation to the world: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” That line became my favorite in all of presidential history from the very first moment I read it –– I even chose it as the quote I wanted in my high school yearbook. I liked it because its oratorical power arose from its dual function — it was both a declarative statement as well as a call to action, urging young people to participate in their democracy and leave their mark on the world by changing it significantly for the better. Kennedy’s words on that cold morning in January 1961 inspired an unprecedented level of hopeful idealism among young Americans. The contrast between the potential for positive change that participation offered in 1961 and the disappointment it eventually brought by decade’s end, when a government that refused to listen failed to make the reciprocal commitment Kennedy had years before promised it would, only added fuel to the fire of frustration and tumult that would come to define the 1960s. But in 1961, of course, all the painful events and great struggles of the decade still remained unseen, and America’s young president both embodied and encouraged the unbridled optimism of its people. Here and now in 2007, our own generation can scarcely contemplate what such optimism might have felt like. Our leaders, both Republican and Democrat, no longer make solemn appeals to our better nature. Instead, empty rhetoric drives poll numbers, and the resulting change in poll numbers encourages more empty rhetoric. This vicious cycle can explain even the weightiest decisions made by our elected officials in the war in Iraq: empty rhetoric about Iraqi WMDs and false implications by the Bush administration of a connection between Saddam, al Qaida and Sept. 11, 2001 influenced public opinion, and Congress ultimately yielded to that

public opinion by writing President Bush a blank check to go to war. No, our generation truly cannot fathom what it must have felt like to hear the president’s words and not only believe them, but actually feel inspired by them. In the face of such overt pandering to fear –– the absolute lowest common denominator –– how could we? In Al Gore’s new book, “The Assault on Reason,” he argues that the level of American political dialogue has deteriorated, largely due to the fact that the 30-second TV spot and the sound byte have become the principal way in which political messages are com-

tions allow individual citizens voices’ to have real impact on the national (and global) political dialogue which informs our opinions and shapes our political attitudes. But Gore’s faith in this communication technology revolution to save us from “the assault on reason” rests on one key assumption: us. As media is gradually democratized and control over the dissemination of information becomes increasingly decentralized, the journalist’s obligation to “seek truth and report it” ultimately becomes every citizen’s obligation. If you don’t fulﬁll it, other people will –– but the “truth” they seek and report may not necessarily be, in your estimation, a

I originally thought Time Magazine’s choice to name ‘You’ as 2006’s Person of the Year was stupid, but in retrospect I was wrong. municated in society. He further argues that the Bush administration has exacerbated this problem by manipulating ﬂaws inherent in those forms of communication, in turn promoting imagery over substance and reactionary tendencies over critical thinking to an even greater extent. However, Gore remains hopeful about the prospects of breaking the stranglehold that the current media culture places on healthy political debate, pointing to the rise of instantly updateable, user-generated media such as blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube and the like. This rapidly growing new species of Internet communication tools enhances the very aspect of the Internet which makes it revolutionary as a medium –– the ability it gives anyone, anywhere to make information available to the entire world. By amplifying the Internet’s power (and ultimately, our power) in this way, these new innova-

fair presentation of the relevant facts. If you don’t counter their contribution with your own, however, you have no right to be disappointed if society ultimately embraces its version of the truth over yours. To engage others in discussion and exchange ideas with them whether their worldview is similar to ours or not, to argue, debate and to reason, to question “facts,” to start blogs, Web pages, e-journals or whatever is required to ensure the world hears us, to give an honest listen to others who see things differently: This will be the great challenge to which our generation must rise. As our generation assumes the mantle of leadership in the coming years, we will occupy a place and time in history that will allow us to essentially reinvent the institution of American political dialogue for the 21st century. In so doing, the impact we will have will not be a ﬂeeting political shift to

the left or right. Rather, our impact will be the enduring course upon which we place ourselves and the generations to come that will be judged by history only in terms of up or down. The experiences that shaped our parents’ worldviews and indirectly inﬂuence ours provide both a lesson and a challenge. The lesson is that collective action is truly possible if we believe in ourselves. The challenge, however, is that the aforementioned frustration of the 1960s and early 1970s left our parents’ generation with a largely jaded attitude toward politics that they have passed on to us. If we are going to work together to change anything or everything, however, we must all rise above our pessimism and each commit to doing our part. I originally thought Time Magazine’s choice to name ‘You’ as 2006’s Person of the Year was stupid, but in retrospect I was wrong — it’s a powerful statement of truth. You are becoming the media. As such, You are the check on government, and it is your duty to speak the truth to power and to your fellow citizens. Jaded cynicism only makes sense in a world that will not change as a result of your actions. Today, however, You are more powerful than ever before, and there’s no reason to believe You are incapable of stimulating positive change in the world. We owe it to ourselves and to our posterity to start believing again both in the power of our own voices and in the ideal of democratic debate by making the most of our First Amendment right to free speech. Choosing to renew these beliefs is not naive, as some might urge us to believe. Just because a proposal arouses idealistic passion within us does not mean that detached rationalism (upon which the forces of the status quo and its defenders always purport to have the monopoly) necessarily opposes it. It is perfectly rational to believe in our capacity to foment change because unlike generations before us, we have an unprecedented level of power to shape political dialogue and communicate our message … if we choose to. The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans once again. What we do with it will be determined by the answer to this question: What will you do with it? Don Trella ’08 is a member of the “you” generation.

This is why I’ll rot: Why rapper MIMS is condemned to hell ADAM CAMBIER OPINIONS COLUMNIST

This spring, the rap world unleashed a bestselling monster upon us unsuspecting listeners. That beast took the form of MIMS’ selfpromoting anthem “This Is Why I’m Hot.” The single was released in late January, and after a scant few months the song had become so ubiquitous that it managed to take the holy grail of achievements for singles — it topped the Billboard Hot 100 Singles list for two weeks. Since then, the music world has vomited up countless numbers of remixes and rehashes, and the stodgy old white guys over at Microsoft have attempted to capitalize on the song’s popularity by including it in a commercial for the Zune. I could go on here talking trash about what is undoubtedly one of the most widely known songs of the year. It would be easy — lyrics this inane haven’t topped the Hot 100 since the Macarena. As a religious studies concentrator, however, I ﬁnd something more deeply troubling about the song than its glaring stupidity alone.

The artist, born as Shawn Mims, turned his real-life surname into an acronymic version of itself, standing for “Music Is My Savior.” Considering how his hit single demonstrates the high esteem in which he holds himself, it would not be a stretch of the imagination to assume that MIMS fancies his song as the acme of musical perfection. Thus, by the transitive property, “This Is Why I’m Hot” is MIMS’ savior. In one respect this is true; after all, it has certainly saved his bank account from ever being overdrawn. Does the song, however, compare to the one true savior, Jesus Christ? Let’s review the song’s lyrics to reach a conclusive answer to this question. In the chorus, MIMS asserts that he is “hot ‘cause he’s ﬂy,” and that all the rest of us “ain’t ‘cause we not (ﬂy).” Outside of our Christological debate, I can’t help but to point out the ironic fact that MIMS declares his superiority over everyone else in a song in which he samples three other popular hip-hop artists, but that’s irrelevant. MIMS demonstrates his massive superiority complex by repeating the phrase “this is why I’m hot” — by my count, a full 39 times through the course of the song — while denouncing the rest of us as decidedly un-hot on at least half a dozen instances.

For comparison, why don’t we examine Jesus’ No. 1 hit single, the Sermon on the Mount? The opening of the Sermon, known as the Beatitudes, features the famous assertion that the meek will inherit the earth. Additionally, Jesus makes references to the so-called “salt of the Earth.” Although the connotations of Puritanesque modesty and hard work that this phrase carries in English were not present in Christ’s Aramaic, at the time salt represented wisdom, purity and the convenant with God. All in all, regardless of language differences between ancient and modern times, Christ heaped praise upon those who were humble. The ego trip that is “This Is Why I’m Hot” shows that MIMS is about as humble as Hillary Clinton is warm and inviting. Need I say more? MIMS’ decisive lack of meekness in his song is not the only departure from Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. In the third verse, MIMS states that when “n*****s start to hate” he will “rearrange their faces.” I’d like to turn your attention to a little part of the Sermon called the Lord’s Prayer, in which Jesus tells humanity to “forgive them that trespass against us.” Maybe it’s just me, but a threat to disﬁgure anyone who crosses him doesn’t make MIMS look particularly amenable to forgiveness. Else-

where in the Sermon, Jesus asks his listeners to, when struck on one side of their face, turn the other cheek, and he speciﬁcally denounces the Hammurabic notion of an eye for an eye. Where famous peacemakers like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. drew from the Sermon in developing their respective philosophies of satyagraha and civil disobedience, MIMS’ threat of retaliation against those who slander him clashes directly with Christ’s teachings. I could go on about how un-Christlike MIMS demonstrates himself to be for longer than the space of this column would allow — for instance, while the Lord’s Prayer asks God not to lead us into temptation, MIMS describes how his prowess in the recording studio helps him to pick up “shorties” — but I think I’ve demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that the only reason MIMS might be hot in the hereafter is because he’ll be surrounded by ﬁre and brimstone as he burns for eternity in hell. Be sure to join me next week, when I examine whether Fergie really is as delicious as she purports herself to be.

Adam Cambier ’09 can sell a mill saying nothing on the track.

S PORTS S UMMER MONDAY, JULY 16, 2007

PAGE 20

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

W. rowers cap season with ﬁfth National Championship BY ANDREW BRACA SPORTS STAFF WRITER

For graduating seniors, few things are important enough to merit missing their own Commencement. But on May 27, the women’s crew and its seniors skipped Brown’s ceremonies to win the NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The championship triumph was Brown’s fifth in the past nine years. The Bears utilized depth superior to other top-ranking universities such as runner-up the University of Virginia and Ohio State University. The Bears capped their season with a victory in the Henley Women’s Regatta in England on June 24. Even after overseeing five national championship seasons since 1999, Head Coach John Murphy isn’t taking the crew’s success for granted. “I definitely don’t think we’re a dynasty,” Murphy said after the Bears lost in the semifinals of the Henley Royal Regatta. “I don’t think there are dynasties in any sports. I think you have to work really hard and hope for the best, and nothing’s guaranteed.” Murphy’s philosophy is to take things one year at a time, and 2007 was one of the best in the history of the program. The season looked promising from the start as the Bears lost only one race in their first five meets. But on April 28, Brown’s varsity eight lost to Yale by two seconds

Courtesy of Susan Fison P’07

Women’s crew scored 58 points to edge out the University of Virginia for the NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships title.

in the final tune-up of the season. Yale finished fourth at the national championship. “I knew as the real spring finally appeared that everyone was going to get a little faster, including Yale, who had their share of bad weather,” Murphy said. “(But) I knew that we had some time to prepare to take our shot, and we did.” The Bears fell to the Bulldogs again in the Eastern Sprints on May 13, settling for second despite victories by the novice eight and second varsity eight crews. Still, Murphy viewed it as an encouraging performance. Murphy’s optimism was borne out at Melton Hill Lake in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The varsity four, composed of freshmen Aubrey Fitz-

patrick ’10, Nicole McDonald ’10, Molly Junck ’10 and Rebecca Fein ’10, placed second. The second varsity eight took third and the varsity eight came in fourth, giving Brown 58 points for a four-point victory over Virginia. The consistent performance across the board garnered the Bears another championship to add to their previous NCAA titles from 1999, 2000, 2002 and 2004. “I was just very happy and thankful for winning,” Murphy said. “Each year it seems to get a little bit tougher, the competition gets better. …Virginia had all three boats in the ﬁnal and they have a very strong team (with an) outstanding senior class. It was extremely difﬁcult competition.”

The Bears followed up their stateside triumph by heading to England to compete in the Henley Women’s Regatta and the Henley Royal Regatta on the River Thames. First, Brown won the Women’s Regatta by defeating Ivy League opponent Radcliffe in the ﬁnal on June 24. But Brown fell short in the Royal Regatta, ending the season with a loss in the semiﬁnals to Dortmund on July 7. The Bears gave a valiant effort, but ultimately were not fast enough to catch Germany’s national crew, who Murphy described as “the fastest crew in Europe.” “It’s a unique opportunity to race against the best in the world,” he added. “In a lot of sports you can’t do that.” Though a lot of work went into

preparing for the trip, Murphy said it was a great way to end the season. “We started to plan for this trip in December,” he said. “We really didn’t have a lot of time to sit back and enjoy the NCAA because we had to immediately start preparing for this trip. But it was a lot of fun. I think it’s a great race over here.” Now that the season has come to a close, Murphy is ﬁnally able to reﬂect on a wonderful year. “I think you come away appreciating the opportunity to work with these exceptional kids that we had this year,” he said. “I think it ended on a very good note. I think that’s the best you can hope for. We’ll get a little rest here, and then in September we’ll start up again.”

U. replacing grass ﬁelds behind OMAC with turf BY ERIN FRAUENHOFER SPORTS EDITOR

Jake Melrose / Herald File Photo

Devin Thomas ‘07 was drafted by the Detroit Tigers last month.

Thomas ’07 a Tiger after MLB draft BY PETER CIPPARONE S PORTS EDITOR

For the baseball team’s seniors, June 2 was the end of an era. As the Ivy League Champions lined up to shake hands after being eliminated from the NCAA Tournament by Wake Forest University, most of the recent graduates knew that they had played their ﬁnal game of competitive ball. But for Devin Thomas ’07, the dream of playing beyond the collegiate level has become reality. A week after that loss, Thomas was selected in the seventh round of the MLB Draft by the Detroit Tigers. Just six weeks removed from his ﬁnal collegiate game, Thomas is a regular starter behind the plate for the Oneonta Tigers, a Class-A

afﬁliate of the Detroit Tigers. After playing college ball at a high level all four years of his Brown career, Thomas says he is appreciative of his chance to play in the pros. “Playing professional ball is something I’ve been hoping to do and looking forward to for a long time,” Thomas said. “It feels great to make it here. It’s really a validation for all the hard work that you put in.” The Brown star was selected by the Tigers as the 241st overall pick. Thomas said he was in the car on the way back to Providence when he received a call telling him that he’d been drafted. “(Draft day) was kind of a tense day,” Thomas said. “I had talked to some teams so I kind of had

an idea who was interested in me, who wanted me. But it’s tough to get a speciﬁc idea.” Thomas is Brown’s 17th draftee since the MLB draft began in 1965. Thomas was the University’s highest drafted player since shortstop Bill Almon ’74 was the ﬁrst overall pick in the 1974 draft. After being drafted, Thomas reported to Lakeland, Fla., where all Tigers’ draft picks gather for an orientation camp and prepare for a June-to-September season with a club in either Lakeland or Oneonta. Thomas was assigned to Oneonta because “the Gulf Coast League (and Lakeland Tigers) is more for younger guys and higher-round draft picks,” Thomas said. When continued on page 17

As Brown welcomes new students this fall, the football team will also greet two new turf practice fields. The new fields, which will replace the grass practice fields behind the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center, are expected to be completed Aug. 15 for use during the coming season. According to Director of Athletics Michael Goldberger, the operation began one year ago. “We brought in outside consultants, Cannon Design, to look at all of our athletic facilities,” he said. “They spent three months evaluating our facilities, then came out with their recommendations.” Cannon Design’s top concern with Brown’s athletic facilities was the poor condition of the grass practice fields, which suffered from drainage from Stevenson Field during inclement weather conditions. “We have an incredible shortage of playable fields,” Goldberger said. “The fields behind the OMAC are so wet. When it rains, they become unplayable.” The new turf surfaces will stand up to the wet weather conditions in Rhode Island because they are permeable, permitting water to drain through them, and have a rubber granule infill that maintains elasticity when covered in frost and allows for snow to be cleared more easily. Turf can also withstand more frequent usage, up to three times

the number of hours per year recommended for grass fields, which must lie fallow to recover from overuse. The new fields will also have new lights, giving teams greater flexibility in planning practice sessions. After Cannon Design’s assessment of the grass fields, the athletic department made swift progress towards installing the Field Turf fields. “The Sports Foundation raised the money and it happened very quickly,” Goldberger said. “Construction began in May and will be completed in August.” John Berylson ’75 provided the lead gift toward covering the $3 million cost, which also includes the price of installing 724 spectator seats on the one existing turf field. Lead gifts from the Meister family — including Rich ’75, Steve ’76, John ’79 and Charlie ’81 — and Bill Kavan ’72 contributed to improving the existing field and now the spectator stands. The added seats will increase the field’s usability as a venue for men’s and women’s lacrosse games early in the season or during inclement weather. Likewise, the new turf fields will not benefit only the football team. Goldberger said the lacrosse, baseball and soccer teams, as well as intramural teams and club sports teams, may all gain from the new fields. Still, the football team, which has been most troubled by the inadequate grass fields where the continued on page 17