The Brown Daily Herald T hursday, S eptember 20, 2007
Volume CXLII, No. 72
Former Time editor speaks out on Plame and principles of journalism
First online registration period draws to a close
By Irene Chen Senior Staff Writer
By Chaz Firestone Senior Staff Writer
After two weeks, over 50,000 classes added or dropped and countless 5-minute time-outs, the campus has survived its first shopping period using online course registration. “I’m definitely relieved,” said Associate Provost Nancy Dunbar, the Banner project owner. “But there is still a lot of work to do.” Banner, the $23-million system implemented to integrate information from 11 different University offices into a single database, brought many new procedures and its own language. Although overrides and course reference numbers, or CRNs, may have been hard to get used to for some, many students and faculty told The Herald they have come to appreciate the modernization of Brown’s registration system. “It’s definitely been much more convenient,” said Michael Li ’10, a prospective biology concentrator. “I registered for my classes, and that was it. I had zero problems.” “Banner has gone really smoothly,” said Julia Green ’08, who plans to graduate with a degree in cognitive neuroscience. But while Li and Green have had positive experiences with the new system, some students have been disgruntled by Banner’s inability to cater to certain individual needs. Li said his classes — large lectures such as CHEM 0360: “Organic Chemistry” — “aren’t the type people would have problems with.” Michael Morgenstern ’08, who continued on page 11
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Kim Perley / Herald
Former Time editor Norman Pearlstine spoke yesterday on the Valerie Plame scandal.
Norman Pearlstine, the former editor in chief of Time Inc. who was at the helm of the weekly news magazine during the controversy surrounding the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, spoke Tuesday at the Watson Institute for International Studies about source confidentiality in the media, including his decision to turn over his reporter’s notes in the Plame case. Pearlstine, now a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group and a member of the Watson Institute’s board of overseers, appeared on campus as part of the Directors Lectures Series on Contemporary International Affairs. Pearlstine’s new book, “Off the Record,” focuses on issues of confidentiality in the media and recounts his experience as Time’s editor in chief, when his magazine found itself in the middle of the Plame controversy. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald subpoenaed Time in 2004 for reporter Matthew Cooper’s notes, which Pearlstine eventually agreed to turn over. Pearlstine said
he agreed to comply with the subpoena because Cooper’s source, then-White House senior adviser Karl Rove, had been interviewed by Cooper as an anonymous source, but not a confidential one. In the lecture, Pearlstine stressed the need to focus on distinctions in the vocabulary of source confidentiality. “What this book is about is to a large degree what changed my mind. One of the things I learned along the way is that most of us in the business do not have a clear idea what the rules are — or ought to be — regarding dealing with anonymous and confidential sources,” Pearlstine said. “Part of that is by design. We’re not a business that is licensed. You don’t go to school to become a journalist.” “We are not as straight and honest with our sources about what the rules are or ought to be,” he said, pointing out the need for journalists to communicate better with sources during interviews. Pearlstine detailed the types of confidentiality agreements that journalists can enter into with their continued on page 4
First-years hail from hometowns in Swaziland, Nebraska By Amanda Bauer Staff Writer
Brown prides itself on its geographically diverse student body, and this year’s class is no exception: The class of 2011 boasts students from 44 states and 126 international students from 51 countries, wrote Dean of Admission James Miller ’73 in an e-mail to The Herald. Though students were admit-
ted to the current freshman class from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, no students matriculated from Arkansas, Mississippi, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota or Wyoming, Miller wrote. The most students come from California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Among the countries sending students to College Hill are Swaziland, Australia, Turkey, Sweden, India and South Africa.
Carlo Coppetti ’11 is from Nafels, Switzerland, a rural town in a valley near the Swiss Alps, and is one of only three Swiss students at Brown. “Everyone’s like, wow, that’s so cool,” Coppetti said. Zachary Smith ’11, from Fremont, Neb., said he has encountered surprise and occasional confusion about his home, including comments such as, “Whoa, that’s kind of weird,” and “Isn’t there lots of corn there?”
Nick Jessee ’11 is amazed at the attention he gets for being from Anchorage, Alaska, especially, he said, at a place boasting students from so many other unusual places. “You get the same reaction everywhere in the world when you say you’re from Alaska. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Seattle three-and-a-half hours away, in Chile, or Brazil or in Europe. … I say ‘Alaska,’ and continued on page 4
Mars comes to Providence — in three dimensions U. expands availability of gender-neutral bathrooms By Simon van Zuylen-Wood Contributing Writer
By Marielle Segarra Staf f Writer
Twelve dormitor y bathrooms — three multi-use and nine single-use — have recently been converted to gender-neutral spaces, and University officials are continuing to consider policy changes that would make all upper-class housing gender-neutral and that would allow “greater choice for first years,” said Russell Carey ’91 MA’06, interim vice president for campus life and student ser vices. The conver ted bathrooms, located in Perkins Hall, Keeney Quadrangle, North Wayland, Goddard, Sears and Diman houses were selected because of their proximity to other male-only or female-only restrooms. With these conversions, over half of the single-use, lockable bathrooms in dormitories are now gender-neutral, Carey said.
INSIDE: www.browndailyherald.com
An online sur vey conducted by the Division of Campus Life and Student Ser vices last spring — with responses from 1,167 students — spurred administrators to designate the bathrooms genderneutral. According to the poll’s results, 26.9 percent of students strongly agreed and 29.8 percent of students favored designating some bathrooms as gender-neutral where gender-specific bathrooms were also available. 20.6 percent had no opinion, and the remaining 24.3 percent opposed such a change. The University is currently in the process of mapping out on-campus bathrooms and deciding which can be designated gender-neutral, said Kelly Garrett, coordinator of the LGBTQ Resource Center. Currently 20 percent of Brown’s housing inventor y is gender-neucontinued on page 4
inside postpost- desperately clings to summer — the movies, the music, the celebrity gossip
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METRO
In Providence’s own Roger Williams Park, 15 minutes from campus, lies the Museum of Natural History. The museum is three stories tall with a sharply sloping shingled roof, and Corinthian columns flank the doorway and exterior. On the inside, the dark wood interior lobby and the winding staircase lead to “A New Perspective on Mars.”
FEATURE It’s an unusual place to find an exhibit about Mars. On the left of the Mars exhibit is a display room filled with Polynesian artifacts. On the right is the room of “Natural Selections,” featuring models of birds and small minerals. But just over a week after the exhibit opened on Sept. 12, museum director Renee Gamba estimates that roughly 1,000 visitors have seen the exhibit. As “A New Perspective on Mars,” t he exhibit not only dis-
bikers aren’t back Long populated with roaring motorcyles, most Thayer Street parking spots are now off-limits for bikers.
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OPINIONS
195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island
Simon van Zuylen-Wood / Herald
Visitors to the museum use special 3D glasses to view the exhibits on Martian surfaces.
plays revolutionary photography technology but also highlights the geological elements of space study. Sponsored by the NASA/ Brown Northeast Planetary Data Center and the NASA Rhode Is-
father of 1,000 Matt Prewitt ’08 considers the implications of reproductive technology and the many kids he could have.
land Space Grant Consortium, the show features photos of Mars taken from 2004 until late 2006 by a high resolution stereo camera during the continued on page 6
16 SPORTS
Polo player Mike Gartner ’09 has garnered a few awards and now gears up for another water polo season.
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