Wednesday, October 3, 2007

The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, O ctober 3, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 81

Deval Patrick on the Jena Six and gay marriage

By Chaz Firestone Senior Staf f Writer

Chris Bennett / Herald

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick spoke to a half-full Salomon 101 last night.

Former presidents to discuss Latin America

By Scott Lowenstein Senior Staff Writer

Two former presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Ricardo Lagos Escobar of Chile, will speak on campus this afternoon about economic development and inequality in Latin America. Both are professors-at-large at the Watson Institute for International Studies.

The lecture, titled “Inequality in Latin America: A Presidential Dialogue,” will take place at 4 p.m. in Salomon 101. It is the inaugural event of the Watson Institute’s Globalization and Inequality Initiative, a year-long effort that will include a lecture series, research and workshops focusing economic and social inequality in modern Latin America.

Cardoso was elected president of

Time to reassess strategic plan, Simmons tells faculty

by Michael Skocpol Senior Staff Writer

Americans often believe government is the enemy, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick told a halffull Salomon 101 last night, but the 51-year-old politician repeatedly insisted that Americans’ true enemy, as evidenced by current foreign policy, is fear.

“Fear is a device to manipulate, and even to govern,” Patrick said, referencing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, racial profiling after Sept.

11, 2001 and the Patriot Act of 2001.

“When people say ‘government is bad,’ we need to start saying ‘wait a minute, government is us — it’s you and me,’ ” he said.

Patrick’s lecture was part of the Governor Frank Licht ’38 lecture series, which has brought Sen. John Kerry P’02, D-Mass., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to campus in continued on page 6

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Brazil in 1995 and served for eight years, leaving office in 2003. As president, he developed an economic stabilization plan that successfully controlled inflation and is considered responsible for an increase in foreign investment in Brazil. He is also a well-known social scientist who helped develop dependency theory, a major line of thought in international relations. Since leaving politics, Cardoso has been critical of Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lagos served as president of Chile from 2000 to 2006 and was the first socialist to win the presidency since Salvador Allende’s government was overthrown by the military in 1973. Lagos is known for “aggressively pursuing free-trade agreements, improving healthcare and education legislation, and ad-

dressing the crimes of Augusto Pinochet’s military regime,” according to a Brown press release in May announcing Lagos’ appointment as a professor-at-large.

“Presidents Cardoso and Lagos, as former heads of state from countries with very different experiences and realities dealing with questions of inequality, will discuss their own views of the current situation in Latin America vis-a-vis the development agenda,” wrote Geoffrey Kirkman ’91, associate director of the Watson Institute, in an e-mail to The Herald.

“All members of the Brown community should benefit from hearing their unique insights, which should give us a good counterpart to the other coursework, research and policy outreach at the university.”

The lecture is free and open to public.

The time has come for the University to carefully reassess the Plan for Academic Enrichment’s strengths and weaknesses and adjust priorities accordingly, President Ruth Simmons told the faculty at its monthly meeting Tuesday.

Simmons said she promised the Corporation, Brown’s highest governing body, that the University would “go back” and “reflect” on the project “midstream” as a condition of its approval in 2002, and that reexamination was now called for. She intends to present the results of the reassessment to the Corporation in February.

“No budget can bear a limitless succession of good ideas,” Simmons told the faculty.

“It would be absolutely foolhardy to take a plan and stick with it because, ‘after all, we started it,’ ” she said.

The Plan for Academic Enrichment, a comprehensive blueprint for strengthening Brown’s academic profile, has defined Simmons’ presidency to date. The plan called for such ambitious initiatives as an increase in the size of the faculty, the introduction of need-blind admission and the construction of new buildings around campus. University planning has since expanded beyond its already ambitious mandate, highlighted by the sweeping effort to internationalize the University that was announced in the fall of 2006.

Simmons’ plan has shaped the Campaign for Academic Enrichment, the fundraising drive that went public in October 2005 and aims to raise $1.4 billion by 2010. The campaign reached the $1-billion mark in May. “Clearly now we’ll exceed that goal,” Simmons told the faculty yesterday. She declined to estimate a final total for the campaign.

Although some of the money

raised to date has already been committed to specific projects, Simmons said, there is still an opportunity to reallocate funds and revise fundraising goals to reflect changing priorities if needed.

Donors to the campaign have been encouraged to contribute to projects outlined in the University’s “table of needs,” which highlights specific priorities of the plan. The reassessment will likely result in changes to the table, Simmons told the faculty, and some projects may be dropped.

Simmons said the process of “finetuning” would involve “perhaps adding to what we’re doing and perhaps subtracting in some ways.”

Despite avoiding specific examples of how the plan might change, Simmons emphasized restraint.

“Every year ... I find myself wondering if we’re trying to do too much,” Simmons said, adding that it would be necessary to add “a modicum of discipline” to “the imperative to add on” to existing initiatives.

But Simmons sought to offset her somber tone by assuring faculty the reassessment was planned and its underlying motives transparent.

“For all those conspiracy theorists out there,” Simmons said, her remarks are “not intended to suggest anything except that we have reached that point in the plan when we need to have the discipline to come back and assess.”

Simmons said she is particularly interested in the growth of Brown’s administrative structures. She emphasized that the plan’s “core mission” is focused on improving Brown’s academics and that any expansion of the administration that has taken place under its auspices would have to clearly benefit that goal to be justified.

There is “no nationally recognized mechanism” for a university to regucontinued on page 4

Landlines nearing obsolescence on campus

PAinting live

By Carol Celestine Contributing Writer

Across the nation, more and more Americans are going exclusively cellular and opting to dispense with their landline phones — and Brown students are no exception.

FEATURE Landline usage on campus has declined so markedly that Computing and Information Services now only activates students’ landline voicemail boxes by request, not automatically.

“In previous years, we would pre-provision voicemail accounts for every student, but because usage decreased so drastically, (accounts) are now only activated by request,” said Timothy Thorp, manager of communications and education at CIS. In the 2005-2006 academic year,

Janine Kwoh / Herald

Native American activist and artist Bunky Echo-Hawk created a painting based on the words ‘Christianization’ and ‘over-indulgence,’ as chosen by the audience at a Native American Heritage Series event hosted by the Third World Center.

INSIDE:

3

CAMPUS WATCH

www.browndailyherald.com

Grade A policy Princeton’s strategy to lower grade inflation seems to be working, but not all students are happy.

5

CAMPUS NEWS

annual fundraising Coming off a record performance, the Annual Fund has set its sights on raising $35 million this year.

Rahul Keerthi / Herald

Cell phones have rapidly supplanted landlines as students’ preferred communication tool.

students made 31,617 calls from dorm phones, and 1,500 students activated voicemail accounts. Just a year later, only 900 students bothered to activate their voicemail ac-

11

OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

Black culture Renata Sago ’08 examines the problems that arise when America attempts to classify “black culture.”

counts, and only 12,075 calls were made from landlines, according to Denise Wynne, customer support continued on page 4

12 SPORTS

M. soccer stumbles The men’s soccer team lost its first game of the season to Boston University last night at Stevenson Field.

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

We a t h e r

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

Today

TOMORROW

partly cloudy 72 / 64

partly cloudy 82 / 64

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Falafel in Pita with Cuke Dressing and Tahini, Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Sandwich, Pancakes and French Toast, Barbecue Beef Ribs, Frosted Cookie Squares

Lunch — Beef and Broccoli Szechwan, Bruschetta Mozzarella, Italian Marinated Chicken, Frosted Cookie Squares

Dinner — Baked Stuffed Pollock, Savory Spinach, Hearth Bread, Chicken Cacciatore, Apple Crumb Pie

Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim

Dinner — Barbecue Chicken, Hot Dogs in Beer, Vegan Tofu Pups, Brussels Sprouts with Horseradish, Black and White Pudding Cake

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

Nightmarishly Elastic | Adam Robbins

Octopus on Hallucinogens | Toni Liu and Stephanie Le

© Puzzles by Pappocom

C r o s s wo r d

Classic How To Get Down | Nate Saunders

Classic Deo | Daniel Perez

T he B rown D aily H erald Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown

Business Phone: 401.351.3260

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

Eric Beck, President

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

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

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

C ampus W atch Wednesday, October 3, 2007

With anti-inflation policy, Princeton grades drop

BY Stefanie Angstadt Contributing Writer

Princeton students are receiving fewer A’s than ever before — and the university could not be prouder.

Three years after its implementation, Princeton’s policy to curb grade inflation ­has succeeded in streamlining grading standards and reducing the number of A’s students receive.

At a Sept. 17 faculty meeting, Princeton Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel issued a statement hailing the policy as a success. The statement declared, “The Princeton faculty has now demonstrated conclusively that with clear intent and concerted effort, a university faculty can bring down the inflated grades that — left uncontrolled — devalue the educational achievements of American college students.”

The policy, implemented in April 2004, established the standard that A’s constitute less than 35 percent of grades for undergraduate courses and less than 55 percent of grades for junior and senior independent work. Since the policy’s introduction, the share of A’s for undergraduate courses dropped by 6.4 percent to 40.6 percent, marking a halfway point to its achieving the 35 percent benchmark.

“One of the problems with Princeton grade inflation was that students were being bunched up at the top of the grade level,” said Mark Rose, a professor of molecular biology and a member of the committee that helped bring about the change.

For the Princeton faculty committee on grading, the number of students receiving A’s raised concerns about the university’s ability to challenge students. “If it was the case that all students in a course met all of the things we ask of them at the beginning, we have to ask ourselves, are we really giving them an opportunity to excel?”

Rose said.

In addition to evaluating learning outcomes, Princeton’s policy also aims to encourage students to take courses or major in departments that traditionally award fewer A’s. “Different departments were awarding A’s very differently across the university, which in principal

page 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

could have been affecting the individual free choice of choosing majors,” said Rose.“When students would join the natural sciences, they’d be taking a calculated risk because they had lower grades than those in the humanities.”

According to Rose, one of the concerns of the program is that students might become more competitive than they have been in the past, now that there are fewer A’s to go around. However, Rose said this effect has not shown itself as a result of the policy.

Among Princeton students, one concern is that the policy might hinder their ability to find jobs and gain acceptance into graduate and professional schools due to lower grade point averages.

Princeton junior Ruth Schwab said some of her friends were excluded from applying to jobs with Google because the company requires that its applicants have a certain minimum GPA. “I have friends who are very smart who took challenging classes, who may have done good work, but here, it doesn’t count as an A,” she said. “You can’t suddenly change A-work to being B-work. I understand why Princeton implemented the policy, I just don’t think it’s doing what they want it to do right now.”

To address this issue, the university sent letters to graduate schools and prospective employers to inform them of the policy in 2004, according to a 2005 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“I think people know what Princeton is doing and have a sufficiently sophisticated view that the grades might be a little bit lower,” Rose said.

“The students are still the same.”

Grade inflation at the national level is a smaller concern for the Princeton committee, though Rose said the committee believes there is a social obligation among universities to evaluate the impact of grade inflation at their own institutions.

“We would hope that our colleagues join us on the national level,” Rose said. “We just happened to be somewhat ahead of the curve in doing something about it.”

University officials have raised the topic of grade inflation was raised as recently as late last spring. At one

meeting, administrators proposed forming a committee of department chairs to examine the topic of grade inflation by collecting data within departments on how to best measure learning outcomes.

According to the Office of Institutional Research, the number of A’s Brown has awarded in undergraduate courses has steadily risen in the past decade. In the 2006-07 academic year, A’s constituted 49.5 percent of grades, up by nearly nine percentage points since 1996.

Last year’s discussion on the introduction of pluses and minuses to the grading system at Brown highlighted the need for a better way of evaluating students.

“We have to ask ourselves, how do we measure success in learning outcomes?” said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.

In response to Princeton’s statement that inflated grades “devalue the educational achievements of American college students,” Bergeron said, “What inflation ‘devalues’ is what we think we know about learning outcomes.”

For Brown, where the open curriculum was designed to shift emphasis away from grading and toward learning, “grading may not be the best measurement,” Bergeron said.

According to Bergeron, the University recognizes there is a need to be concerned about large courses in which a high percentage of students receive A’s. “But first we have to think about what we value and how to express those values institutionally,” she said.

HPV vaccine costs down

By Oliver Bowers Campus Watch Editor

Beginning this academic year, Brown and Harvard universities will offer the human papillomavirus vaccine to students for $25 a shot — a 40 percent decrease in price at Brown from last year and an even steeper decrease at Harvard. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has also lowered the cost of the vaccine for students, according to David Rosenthal, director of Harvard University Health Services.

Students enrolled in Harvard’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan will be able to purchase each shot in the three-shot series for a co-pay of $25, instead of having to pay the full $154, according to a Sept. 25 article in the Harvard Crimson. Brown has lowered its co-pay from $40 to $25 per shot for students under 26 years old who are enrolled in the Universitysponsored health insurance plan.

Edward Wheeler, director of Brown Health Services, told The Herald in an e-mail that roughly 40 percent of the student body is covered by the University health insurance plan and will be able to take advantage of the price reduction.

The HPV vaccine, a three-shot series given over six months, prevents four types of HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that can lead to cervical cancer.

Rosenthal, one of the administrators responsible for the co-pay reduction at Harvard, said the university intentionally declined to lower the price immediately due to uncertainty

about demand for the vaccine.

“When we began to see that this vaccine is being used ... we felt (the best way) to get this in the hands of as many students as possible was to bring the price down,” Rosenthal said.

Rosenthal said Harvard’s health services division has held two clinics since prices were reduced and over 100 students attended each. Harvard began administering the vaccine to undergraduates under the age of 26 in October 2006.

The vaccine has been popular at Brown as well. Health Services began offering the vaccine in November 2006 and has since administered over 800 shots, Wheeler wrote.

Rosenthal said Harvard students lobbied for reduced prices last year.

The Harvard College Women’s Center and 13 other organizations led a campaign to publicize the benefits of the HPV vaccine in an attempt to pressure HUHS into subsidizing the cost of the vaccine, according to the Crimson article.

Co-pays at Harvard have been reduced for a two-year span ending July 2009, Rosenthal said. In that time, most freshmen arriving at Harvard will likely already have received the vaccine in high school or through other means, he said.

Rosenthal said administrators gave the program the go-ahead when they realized the university had the resources to lower the price for the two-year span.

The cost of the insurance plan will not rise as a result of the price reduction, he said.

Page 4

U. to review strategy continued from page 1 larly review the growth and function of its own administrative structures, Simmons told The Herald after the meeting, adding that by establishing such a process Brown could potentially establish itself as unique in higher education.

The overall reassessment will proceed through established committees such as the Academic Priorities Committee and University Resources Committee, Simmons told The Herald, and it will involve opportunities for all campus constituencies, including students, to have a say.

In other business at Tuesday’s meeting, Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 updated the faculty on major construction projects currently underway or planned for the near future, and representatives from the Research Advisory Board and the Campus Planning Advisory Board gave brief presentations.

The faculty also unanimously passed two motions to revise its code. The first amended the charge of the Committee on Academic Standing, removing the dean of the College from its membership and adding the deputy dean of the College, who will now serve as chair.

Those posts are currently filled by Katherine Bergeron — who presented the motion — and Stephen Lassonde, respectively.

Under the revised charge, appeals of the committee’s decisions will now be heard by the dean of the College.

The second motion revised the faculty rules to change the phrase “a mail ballot” to “an electronic ballot” in order to reflect the recent implementation of online balloting through MyCourses for faculty committee memberships.

The afternoon’s business began with a wide-ranging report from Associate Professor of Psychology Ruth Colwill, who chairs the Faculty Executive Committee, on the work of her committee. She emphasized recent challenges in recruiting faculty to serve on standing governance committees, particularly the Committee on Nominations, which

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

is responsible for recruitment to faculty committees.

Colwill also presented statistics indicating that minority groups are underrepresented on faculty committees. Almost 90 percent of faculty members who served on governance committees during the 2006-2007 academic year were white.

To encourage more faculty to serve, Colwill and Constantine Gatsonis, a professor of medical science who chairs the nominations committee, announced the creation of the President’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Government. That award — and an accompanying $2,000 research stipend — would be granted annually to up to five faculty members who have demonstrated above-average commitment to committee service.

Colwill also suggested creating a pool of professors with committee experience who could agree to step in on a short-term basis for committee members on leave as a way to bolster participation.

As an inducement to serve on the nominations committee, members of that committee will be given the power of allotting the governance awards.

Professor of Mathematics Thomas Banchoff, who said he has served on recruiting committees in the past, called that idea “bizarre.”

“I don’t think that would have made our job easier. In fact, I think it would have made it harder,” he said.

Another professor suggested tying faculty pay to committee service, while John Hermance, professor of geological sciences, said he thought the best inducement to serve on committees would be to assure faculty that their input would matter.

“If you want to reward the faculty, have them make a difference,” Hermance said.

“We’ve been sitting here looking at statistics,” he added at the conclusion of the executive commitee’s report to underscore the point. “We haven’t gotten into any substantive issues.”

Cell phones replace landlines on campus continued from page 1 manager for telecommunications at CIS. So far this year, Wynne said that only 230 students have activated landline voicemail accounts.

Another sign of the wireless times is Brown’s recent request that all students provide the University with their cell phone numbers so that they can be contacted in the event of an emergency, part of the University’s new emergency alert system.

Nationally, the wireless trend is less dramatic. The number of households with a landline telephone dropped to 94.1 percent in 2003 — down 2.1 percent from 1998, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In the same period, the percentage of households with cellular phone service doubled — rising from 36.3 percent in 1998 to 62.8 percent in 2003.

As improvements in cell phone technology have lead to better reception and smaller devices, and expanded service has brought lower costs and overall greater connectivity, cell phones are not just more convenient than landlines but more affordable as well. Free mobile-to-mobile and nighttime calling, rollover minutes and text messaging make having a

cell phone more cost-effective, students said.

“My landline is connected, but I never use landlines to make offcampus or long distance calls because I would have to use phone cards, and that just doesn’t make any sense,” said Carl Dickerson ’08, who described his cell phone plan as “excellent.” Dickerson does not have an activated campus landline voicemail.

Thorp echoed Dickerson’s sentiment. “That’s the nature of cell phones, you can call anywhere at the same rate,” he said.

But convenience and portability aside, cell phones cannot compete with landlines when it comes to overall connection quality — especially on College Hill.

“I have Sprint, therefore I need to use my landline,” said Adrienne Allen ’08, referring to Sprint’s less-than-stellar quality service on Brown’s campus. “But I don’t know (phone) numbers by heart, and I wouldn’t use the phone to call room to room,” she said.

Fellow Sprint user Stephanie Tan-Torres ’08 also has a landline.

“Sometimes I don’t get great service in my apartment, and it’s free to call campus phones and local numbers,” she said by way of explanation.

But for the most part, students

do not see the need to connect their landlines if they have cell phones.

Rebecca Williams ’09, a cell phone user, said her hectic schedule makes a landline impractical. “I’m not in my room enough to make it worthwhile,” she said.

“My roommate has a landline, but I don’t use it because I have a cell phone,” said Sam Koplewicz ’11.

Some students said Internetbased options such as Skype and voice-over-networks like Vonage are becoming increasingly popular because they provide quality service for little or no cost. Shyam Sundaram ’08, who lives off-campus and does not have a connected landline, said he uses Skype, which allows users to use their computer to connect to other computers, landlines and cell phones.

“Having a landline is not convenient, since I’m hardly in the apartment,” he said. “I use Skype to make calls, and Skype along with cheap cell phone service make landlines unnecessary.”

Thorp agreed, calling this shift a “big trend.”

As Brown students overwhelmingly choose cell phones and Skype over landlines, the dorm phone might just be destined for obsolescence — that is, in any residence hall where the reception is good.

States rush to meet renewable energy goals

By Janet Wilson Los Angeles T imes

The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday designated all of Southern California, parts of Arizona and much of the N ortheast as “national interest” energy transmission corridors, an action that allows federal regulators to approve new highvoltage towers and lets private utilities condemn homes and land even if a state agency won’t.

As California utilities face fierce local opposition to proposed transmission lines that would stretch for hundreds of miles through numerous communities and counties, they are up against a state deadline to change 20 percent of their power to renewable sources by 2010, which in most cases means shipping in wind, solar or geothermal power from elsewhere.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, following direction from President Bush and Congress, designated six California jurisdictions in their entirety as “national interest electric transmission corridors,” including Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern, and San Diego counties.

“We’re not talking about a huge new transmission tower on Wilshire Boulevard,” said Mary O’Driscoll ,

a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission spokeswoman . Less clear is how fast-growing inland communities would be affected. Small towns in rural areas and private land preser ves around national parks could be early targets.

Kevin Kolevar, Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability in the Energy Department, said “critical areas of congestion” had been identified in the Southwest and Northeast. He said that under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the federal government would act to designate transmission corridors only if a state had not acted on an application by a utility within a year or had turned it down.

A spokeswoman with the California Public Utilities Commission said the agency had no immediate comment. But utilities and other business groups, including the California Chamber of Commerce and Edison Electric Institute, a national electric industry lobbying group, praised the announcement, while residents in rural areas expressed concern.

Although Edison International, the parent company for Southern California Edison, is prepared to spend as much as $4 billion on new transmission lines in the next five

years, Chief Executive John Bryson said the utility recently had suffered “a real setback in Arizona” because of that state’s unwillingness to provide more power to California. Edison was recently denied approval by that state’s regulators to build a new transmission line between Southern California and an area of Arizona covered by Tuesday’s decision.

“So what do we do?” Br yson said . “We’re evaluating the Arizona situation, and I think in the view of Congress this was enough of an issue, the parochialism and state balkanization, that a law was adopted ... so that all parties can apply to FERC. ... No one has done that yet. It’s something you don’t do lightly, because in our case we would like to work very well with Arizona and California.”

Residents in the Morongo Valley in San Bernardino County have been fighting a proposal by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to place new towers through Pioneertown, the setting for countless television westerns and movies, and through private land preserves pieced together between Joshua Tree National Park and the San Bernardino National Forest. Koleva r said Tuesday that federal regulators would steer clear of public parks and forests unless sister agencies allowed transmission lines, putting more pressure on private lands as possible route sites.

“We’ve been expecting the federal pre-emption card to be played ... and we’re going to fight it,” said Danny Sall, a lifelong resident of Pioneertown whose home has been identified as possibly being in the route of a proposed transmission line.

“People live out here because they don’t want the congestion and the traffic,” Sall said. “.. I think we should be able to do that without some conglomerate 100 miles away coming in saying, `This is for the greater good because we have more heads to count, so we’re taking your land.’”

c ampus n ews Wednesday, October 3, 2007

page 5

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

News in Brief Alcock uses geography to study ancient lands When most people think of archaeology, they may picture Indiana Jones exploring exotic sites and excavating lost cities. But rather than digging on her hands and knees or crawling through craggy cliffs, Susan Alcock, professor of classics and director of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, uses advanced technology to study the geography of ancient landscapes for clues into the behavior and movements of ancient peoples.

Courtesy brown.edu People’s lives, Alcock said, are imprinted in the landscape. To Susan Alcock, professor of classics and understand the lives of ancient director of the Joukowsky Institute for people, it is necessary to look at Archaeology and the Ancient World all the places they touched, she said, and landscape archaeology offers a much broader picture of ancient life than excavation of a single area, such as a temple or a burial ground.

That’s where technology comes in — Alcock said she uses satellite imaging, aerial photography and geographic information system technology to study landscapes. Alcock’s work focuses on the Greek and Roman rural countryside, which she said had been largely ignored in favor of urban areas when she began her work. She said she employs the relatively new methodology of systematic pedestrian survey, or regional survey, which involves walking an area of land and examining the surface for agricultural features, remains of settlements and pottery.

Alcock said she is particularly interested in the collective memory of ancient peoples. Often, she explained, texts from the period aren’t representative of the greater part of society — the poor, commoners and farmers — but of an elite fragment.

“Archaeology reveals alternative memories,” Alcock said. The lesson: “Don’t believe everything you read.”

Alcock is currently one of four co-directors of an archaeological project in southern Armenia called the Vorotan Project. A diachronic study, it focuses on all periods from the Stone Age to the Soviet era and attempts to build an understanding of how and why the landscape has evolved through time, Alcock said.

For Alcock, the site is of particular interest because of its location between the ancient Roman and Parthian empires — the inhabitants of the region would have been caught between two formidable empires, she said.

But Alcock said she isn’t expecting to find anything specific there.

She said archaeologists learn not to hold too many hopes going into a dig.

There is so much “serendipity in archaeology” that you have “no idea what you’re going to find,” she said, and so little is known about the region that “everything changes the picture.”

— Dana Teppert

OIP examining why fewer men study abroad The Office of International Programs is conducting a survey to learn why fewer males study abroad. The study — conducted in collaboration with Bowdoin College and Brandeis University — surveyed 100 randomly chosen students from each class at each school to find out what factors influence a student’s decision to study abroad.

“We’re trying to get an understanding of why there is a gender gap in study abroad,” said Samantha Brandauer, assistant director of the OIP. “The goal is to see whether we can get more men to study abroad.”

According to the Institute of International Education, 34.5 percent of students who studied abroad in 2005 were male. That percentage has declined from 37.8 percent in 1995. The OIP survey is part of the data-collecting stage in the first comprehensive research about gender and study abroad.

“Our hypothesis is less men study abroad because of language study. More women than men are language concentrators,” Brandauer said.

Jeremiah Kittredge ’08, who studied in Paris in 2006, said, “There were a lot more girls in my language classes. Study abroad programs that have a language requirement might have more women.”

Brandaeur and her colleagues at Brandeis and Bowdoin will present their findings at a conference of the Council on International Educational Exchange in Toronto this November.

— Tanmay Misra

Annual fund aims to raise $35m in FY’08

By Hari Tyagi Contributing Writer

Following a record-breaking campaign last year to raise funds to support ongoing projects, Joan Wernig Sorensen ’72 P’06 P’06 and Ralph Rosenberg ’86 took the helm of the Brown Annual Fund as co-chairs in July.

Sorensen and Rosenberg have previously held various positions in the University’s fundraising apparatus, and both are members of the Corporation, the University’s top governing body.

“Each year raising money seems to get easier and easier,” Sorenson said. “We have a wonderful president in Ruth Simmons and her plans for academic enrichment. I am proud of the University I graduated from, and many other people feel the same, since participation increases every year.”

Rosenberg could not be reached for comment.

The Annual Fund is the main avenue for alums, parents and past faculty to donate to Brown. The fund contacts thousands of people connected to the University each year, not only to encourage donations but also to give updates on University news, said Annual Fund Director Tammie Ruda.

“Last year 340 Brown alumni and parents made up the Annual Fund,” Sorensen said. “We hope to increase our numbers with more volunteers, who make our jobs easier.”

In fiscal year 2007 — which ran

from July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2007 — the fund raised over $34.6 million from 34,316 donors. That set a new record — the 13th straight recordbreaking year, Ruda said.

In fiscal 2006, $30.7 million was raised from 32,295 donors, and in fiscal 2005, $25 million was raised from 30,230 donors.

“We look to continue the same methods in the past that has made us very successful. We went from $15 million in 2001 to $34 million in 2007 and about a 77 percent increase in the donors,” Sorensen said. “We plan to fine-tune some things but not much change.”

In fiscal 2008, which began in July, the fund is raising its target slightly — to $35 million from 35,000 donors.

“Our goal of $35 million from 35,000 donors was determined by a number of factors including the University’s budget needs, our previous fundraising results and the opportunities for further growth,” Ruda said.

The fund targets dif ferent groups. About one-third of donations come from groups of alums returning to campus for reunions in May. “When alumni celebrate the anniversar y of their graduation, they often make extraordinar y gifts, giving more generously than they would in the years between reunions,” Ruda said.

Other important donor groups include alums of the Graduate School and parents. Graduate alums

gave $523,746 last year, 9 percent more than the previous year. Nonalum parents contributed $4.8 million last year, a 15 percent increase from the previous year.

Challenge gifts — pledges by major donors to match contributions up to a certain amount — have been an important part of past years’ fundraising efforts, but “at this point, no challengers have stepped forward” this year, Ruda said.

Last year’s Graduates of Last Decade Participation Challenge raised $500,000 from alums of the classes of 1997 through 2006. Other challenge gifts from last year included Rally for the Record challenge and the Chancellor’s Leadership Challenge, which raised $1.5 million and $1 million respectively.

Current students are also involved in the Annual Fund, including through the senior gift and the approximately 60 students who work for the University asking alums, parents and others to make contributions to the fund.

Annual Fund donations are unrestricted, meaning the University can use them for any immediate programmatic needs.

“Annual Fund gifts provide faculty suppor t, undergraduate financial aid, graduate student fellowships, library and technology resources, and other enhancements to the student experience such as the first-year seminar program and (Undergraduate Teaching and Research Awards),” Ruda said.

Page 6

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Mass. governor Patrick fields questions on same-sex marriage, Jena Six continued from page 1 recent years. Patrick received some early laughs from the crowd with references to the past and present presidential candidates, saying “it might be wise for me to confirm unequivocally at the outset that I have no intentions of running for president.”

With Rhode Island Governor Donald Carcieri ’65 and Providence Mayor David Cicilline ’83 among the audience, Patrick compared his upbringing in the “ghetto” of Chicago to that of his daughter Katherine, who by high school had traveled three continents, shaken hands with the President and “knew how to pronounce and use a concierge.”

“One generation it took for my family to completely transform our circumstances,” Patrick said. “What will define the character of this generation?”

Patrick rattled off the biggest issues he sees facing America today, including alternative energy, impoverished public services, an increasing income gap between the rich and poor and healthcare reform.

“Many if not all of these issues are or will soon be at the point where action is unavoidable, and how we

respond will define the worth and character of this generation,” Patrick said. “The question is, ‘Can we summon that character today?’ ” Emphasizing the role of fear as a root cause of problems in the U.S., Patrick pointed to instances in American history where fear was used as a “powerful political weapon.”

“In 1956, when I was born, the nation was gripped by fear,” Patrick said in reference to the Cold War. “Thousands of missiles were pointed at us, ready to launch at a moment’s notice.”

“Senator (Joseph) McCarthy used fear to challenge so-called ‘un-American activities,’ ” he said.

“Some even went so far as erecting billboards of Dr. King attending a non-violent training meeting, labeling those billboards with the caption ‘Martin Luther King at Communist training school.’ ” Drawing on the wisdom of other well-known political figures, Patrick quoted former Vice President Al Gore and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who famously said, “men feared witches — and burnt women.”

Patrick also spoke about religious fear about sexual education and the problems it may have for current middle and high school students.

“The federal rules say if you take federal money you can only teach abstinence and all you can say about condoms is what you have to say about their failure rates,” Patrick said. “I said, ‘If that’s the case, we’ll teach sex ed. without federal money,’ and for that I have been denounced by church groups and called ‘a free love enthusiast.’ ” “Through one decision, we’ve

gone from promoting abstinence to promoting promiscuity,” he added. “Fear is a tactic to influence policy.”

Patrick concluded with a cautionary yet inspiring message for the current generation.

“The challenge in my view is not about the right versus the left, it’s not about just race or gender or ethnicity or religion,” he said. “It’s a challenge of citizenship, and the need fearlessly to reclaim American ideals.”

“Mankind holds in his mortal hands, as President Kennedy said, the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life,” Patrick said. “That is still the choice between us and before us.

Choose wisely.”

Though the question-and-answer period following the lecture was limited to only a few questions, students and members of the Rhode Island community turned heads with colorful and pointed remarks and questions for Patrick.

“As governor of the only state in the United States that currently supports same-sex marriage — and pretty much the governor of the only state whose legislature isn’t afraid of the idea of same-sex marriage — will you do anything to convince the governors of the other states to follow Massachusetts’ lead?” asked Tyler Rosenbaum ’11. He said he hoped to rouse the attention of Rhode Island Republican governor Carcieri, but the governor had left Salomon moments before.

Patrick said he had not taken action to convince other governors to adopt same-sex marriage legislation, pointing to his “full-time job” in Massachusetts.

“We have a very ambitious agenda in Massachusetts,” he said. “And even once same-sex marriage is lawfully sanctioned in any jurisdiction, there are a whole host of other questions that have to be sorted out, in terms of inheritance issues and benefits issues. Some of them are very simple — some of them are not.”

Gabe Kussin ’09, president of the Brown Democrats, asked Patrick — a former U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights — for his thoughts on the Jena Six controversy currently playing out in Louisiana.

“I know about Jena Six from what I read in the newspaper, and I’m never sure I’m getting the whole story,” Patrick said. “But I’m very troubled by what I read.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that race is still with us in character and in the criminal justice system,” Patrick added.

A man who identified himself as an employee of the Providence Journal lightened the mood with a sarcastic remark for Patrick.

“I’ve been watching you two-anda-half years, and I’ve decided this job is too easy for you, so I want you to know I’m going to be nominating you to be headmaster of Milton Academy,” the man said, referring to the prestigious preparatory school Patrick attended outside Boston.

Despite a series of recent political missteps, including a questionable business call and using state funds to upgrade a state car from a Crown Victoria to a Cadillac (parked outside Salomon last night), no member of the audience referred to Patrick’s shaky start in their questions.

Emily Ebert ’08, who attended

Milton Academy for 13 years, said she was impressed with Patrick’s speech and that people may have stayed away from Patrick’s political blunders out of respect.

“It might have been a bit insulting to bring up those issues considering the event,” Ebert said. “But Deval was great — he’s always fun to watch.”

Rosenbaum said he was impressed with the governor’s knowledge of same-sex marriage issues and said he understands Patrick’s passive stance, even though he would like to see more support from him.

“I would have liked for him to have said he would work with the national association of governors or at least Donald Carcieri,” Rosenbaum said. “But I understand his position because the issue is settled in his state.”

Kussin spoke highly of Patrick’s speech and of his answer about the Jena Six. “I didn’t expect him to have any groundbreaking statements, but it’s very refreshing that he recognizes that race still plays a crucial role in American politics,” Kussin said. “I thought it was terrific. He definitely has the pulse of the national political scene.”

Cicilline, who sat in the center seat of the front row during the speech, also told The Herald he was impressed with Patrick.

“Deval Patrick was brilliant, inspirational, and spoke about the issues that people care about,” Cicilline said. “But most importantly his message was a message of great hope, and that’s what people need from political leaders, to really inspire us to find our best values.”

c ampus n ews Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Admission offices go paperless

By George Miller Contributing Writer

College admission offices across the country are increasingly receiving applications online, and some are even moving to completely paperless systems. But what does “paperless” mean?

“It’s such a sexy term, everybody wants to use it,” said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

With paperless applications, students are required to use a webbased submission form, though even entirely paperless offices still allow paper applications in special circumstances, Nassirian said. Some “paperless” applications may still include paper forms, such as teacher recommendations and transcripts.

The biggest factor in many schools’ decisions to switch to paperless applications is money, Nassirian said. Going paperless saves the cost of printing applications as well as entering data from paper applications into a computer system. It also minimizes errors by removing the data entry step, Nassirian explained. For applicants, an added benefit is that the quick turnaround time and nature of the electronic process means they don’t have to wonder if their submitted forms got lost in the mail and can get decisions more quickly, Nassirian said.

There is one “residual concern” about applicants’ access to the Internet, he said, calling it the one downside of paperless admissions.

Using a public library computer to access the Internet might not offer the same leisurely pace as a home computer for filling out forms, Nassirian said.

The Brown Admission Office is not going completely paperless any time soon, Dean of Admission Jim Miller ’73 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Other technology projects, such as Banner, are taking precedence, he said. According to Miller, about 90 percent of applicants to Brown currently apply online.

thanks for reading

page 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

That figure is higher than most schools, but the trend nationwide is definitely toward more online applications, Nassirian said, though he added that there are not many completely paperless admission offices in the country. The University of California system, the University of Michigan and Northeastern University are among those that have made the switch.

Lance Jabr, a senior at Mountain View High School in California, is one of the 90 percent of applicants to the University who plan to submit their college applications online. Jabr said he will apply to Brown early decision this fall.

“I think (paperless applications) would make things a lot easier,” Jabr said, adding that it would lessen pressure on applicants.

Jabr said he hopes the University wouldn’t consider going paperless without first determining how it would affect applicants without Internet access.

Security also becomes more important with electronic applications, Nassirian said. First, records must be protected from hacking.

Also, if recommendations are submitted electronically rather than mailed, the sender’s identity must be confirmed to prevent applicants writing their own recommendation letters, he said.

Going entirely paperless is not likely to change the applicant pool at a school like Brown, because applying to Brown is not an “impulse” decision, Nassirian said. But for those seeking certificate programs such as vocational training, paperless admissions could make the process easier, and make them more likely to apply, he said.

U. to offer dual doctorate in math with Paris VI

By Sophie Berner-Eyde Contributing Writer

Mathematics departments at Brown and the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris VI, in France have had an informal exchange for three decades, but the relationship is now being formalized through a new dual degree program.

The program, approved in May

by Brown Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 and Paris VI President Jean-Charles Pomerol, will allow doctoral candidates from Brown or Paris VI in either pure or applied mathematics to attend both universities and graduate with a diploma from their home university that mentions their work at the other institution.

Courses at Paris VI are conducted in French, and those at Brown are in English.

“This program is so far the most far-reaching program on campus,” said Jan Hesthaven, a Brown professor of applied mathematics, referring to Brown’s recent internationalization initiative.

“It gives Brown much exposure in Europe,” said David Gottlieb, a Brown professor of applied mathematics and recipient of an honorary doctorate from Paris VI. “We are connected now to one of the big centers in Europe,” he added.

Students from Brown participating in the dual degree program will be required to spend at least three semesters, or 18 months, of their up to six years of study in Paris, and vice versa. The semesters abroad do not need to be consecutive, Hesthaven said, and students can choose to stay longer, so long as they graduate from their home university. Participants will have an adviser from their home

institution as well as a co-adviser from their foreign host institution.

The program is still in its infancy, as organizers look to secure external funding before they start actively recruiting students. The program will take off “hopefully next fall,” Hesthaven said. But, he said, that is dependent on funding. “Brown does not at this time provide any direct funding,” Hesthaven wrote in an e-mail to The Herald, adding that so far, the external funding secured is “only very minor.”

Brown already has a summer study abroad program that sends about five students to Paris VI each year. Gottlieb noted that doctoral students who participate in the program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, could apply that time in Paris toward fulfilling the 18-month requirement.

Hesthaven said he hopes one or two students might be able to participate in the program starting in the spring, with five to 10 students in the exchange eventually. “We should not expect this to be a large program,” he said, noting that many grad students may find it inconvenient to relocate to another country.

Jill Pipher, a professor of mathematics at Brown, said the formalized relationship will benefit both schools. “Both Brown and Paris VI mathematicians and students will benefit from strengthened ties and additional collaborations. Students will have a rare opportunity to study mathematics in two different systems, and make connections abroad with other students in their field,” Pipher wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.

Paris VI “has one of the best math departments in the world,” Gottlieb

said. He added that the Paris VI department has 800 faculty, while Brown has around 20 in mathematics and 20 in applied math, suggesting that the sheer size of Paris VI will benefit Brown immensely.

Students admitted into the program are expected to speak French and English, though Hesthaven said, “we do not shut out any student because he does not speak any French.”

In that case, Hesthaven said, “we strongly encourage a student to learn French as soon as possible,” through intensive French language courses upon gaining admittance to the program, so they will speak French by the time they leave for Paris. “Immersion will also enable the student to pick up (the) language,” he said.

Hesthaven, who is from Denmark and studied in Europe before coming to Brown to teach 12 years ago, said the United States and France have different approaches to math.

“The French culture is ver y much that they are very careful and systematic about math,” Hesthaven said, calling the French system “very rigorous and tight.”

The U.S. approach, on the other hand, is more “pragmatic,” “problemfocused” and content with finding a “solution that is good enough,” he said. “The American will first solve the engineering problem, and if you have some math in it — then great,” Hesthaven said.

Each of these approaches to math has its strengths and weaknesses, he said, and the exchange program will allow graduate students to learn both.

“Math, by its very nature, has no barriers,” Hesthaven said. “We already have a language — math.”

Page 8

M. tennis triumphant in weekend upset at Columbia continued from page 12 “It was such a great team win,” Harris said. “We did a great job of giving St. John’s respect and not underestimating them.”

The Bears certainly did not underestimate Columbia, at No. 2 the highest-seeded Ivy team, in their quarterfinal match the next day.

“It was a big challenge for us,” Harris said. “They’re the defending Ivy League champs. They had everyone back, plus a really good freshman, and we were playing in their hometown.”

On top of that, the Bears had to adjust their lineup for the absence of Gardner and Garland, who had recorded key wins the day before.

“Sam and Noah were so banged up they couldn’t play singles or doubles,” Harris said.

But the Bears still had the upper hand in doubles play, winning two of the three matches for the doubles point. In the first doubles match, Kohli and Lee narrowly defeated their Columbia opponents, 9-8.

“Winning that tiebreaker was huge,” Kohli said.

Meanwhile, Gorham and Ratnam had an 8-5 victory over Kevin Kung and Jonathan Wong at second doubles. Posner and Pearlman dropped an 8-5 match to Jared Drucker and Magdy El Mihdawy at third doubles, but the Bears secured the doubles point for the 1-0 lead.

Much like the day before, though the Bears had the early edge, the pressure was on when the Lions took four of the first sets in singles play. Lee defeated Wong 7-5, 7-5 at fourth singles and Pearlman defeated Kung 7-6, 6-1 at fifth singles to put Brown ahead 3-0, but Gorham and Ratnam dropped the second and third singles matches only moments apart by identical scores of 6-2, 7-6.

“Basically, in a minute we went from being up 3-0 to being in a much closer match at 3-2,” Harris said.

In the remaining matches, Kohli and Posner had both dropped their first sets, to Borta and Dan Urban, respectively. At first singles, Kohli managed to fight back through cramping to take the second set 6-2, but his cramps were worsening as play progressed.

Posner, meanwhile, had been two points away from losing the

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

sixth singles match when he fell behind 5-3 in a second-set tiebreaker, but he recovered to take the tiebreaker and the third set for a final score of 4-6, 7-6, 6-2.

After hearing that Posner had won his match, giving Brown the four points necessary for the victory, Kohli decided to retire.

“Charlie clinched the match, so even though I was up 5-3 in the third set, there was no point in me playing. I was cramping all over,” Kohli said.

Harris added that Kohli’s cramps were so severe he “almost had to go to the hospital.” But he said Kohli’s presence on the court gave Posner more confidence during his crucial match.

“Saurabh helped take some pressure off Charlie,” Harris said. “It’s great to see Saurabh stepping up as one of our captains this year.”

Gardner said the Bears’ victory over the Lions is one they will remember for a long time. “That was one of the best feelings I’ve had in my three years here,” he said, adding that it will be important to use this momentum to their advantage.

“To have everybody confident going into the spring season is huge.”

Although the Bears followed up the grueling quarterfinal victory with a 6-1 loss in Sunday’s semifinal match against No. 3-seeded Princeton, they were proud of how they performed over the weekend.

“We haven’t been together for too long, but it shows the toughness we possess,” Kohli said.

The Bears will be back in action Oct. 19-23 at the ITA Northeast Regional Championship. The past two years, Brown has won the doubles title at regionals and advanced to the ITA National Indoors, and the Bears’ chances this year look good.

Ratnam and Eric Thomas ’07 won the title last year.

So far this season, Brown’s doubles play has been impressive. Lee and Ratnam won the doubles title at the Northeast Intercollegiate in September, and the Bears won the doubles point in all three of their ECAC matches over the weekend.

“Doubles is a big part of our success,” Harris said. “We have three really good doubles teams, and we’re looking for some highlevel success from them (at Regionals).”

Private firms in Iraq open fire frequently

By Steve Fainaru Washington Post

Most of the more than 100 private security companies in Iraq open fire far more frequently than has been publicly acknowledged and rarely report such incidents to U.S. or Iraqi authorities, according to U.S. officials and current and former private security company employees.

Violence caused by private security guards in Iraq has come under scrutiny since a Sept. 16 shooting in Baghdad involving employees of Blackwater USA. The company’s chairman, Erik Prince, told a congressional committee Tuesday that Blackwater guards opened fire on 195 occasions during more than 16,000 missions in Iraq since 2005.

However, two former Blackwater security guards said they believed employees fired more often than the company has disclosed. One, a former Blackwater supervisor who spent nearly three years in Iraq, said his 20-man team averaged “four or five” shootings per week, or several times the rate of 1.4 incidents per week reported by the company. The underreporting of shooting incidents was routine in Iraq, according to this former guard.

“The thing is, even the good companies, how many bad incidents occurred where guys involved didn’t say anything, because they didn’t want to be questioned, or have any downtime today to have to go over what happened yesterday?” he said. “I’m sure there were some companies that just didn’t report anything.”

The former Blackwater guards and other private security guards spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns they would be unable to obtain future employment in the security industry. In addition, Blackwater employees reportedly sign an agreement pledging not to divulge confidential information; violations can result in a $250,000 fine imposed by the company.

Tens of thousands of private security guards operate in Iraq under a multitude of contracts, each with its own regulations. Defense and State Department contracts require security companies to report all weapons discharges, but few comply fully, according to U.S. officials and security company employees.

Two company officials familiar with the system estimated that as few as 15 percent of all shooting incidents are reported, although both cautioned that it was impossible to know exactly how many incidents go unreported.

Out of nearly 30 security companies under Defense Department authority, only “a handful” have reported weapons discharges, said Maj. Kent Lightner of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who monitors shooting incidents involving security companies under military contracts. Lightner said the lack of reporting undermines statistics the military compiles on shooting incidents. Through May, the military had reported 207 such incidents over the previous 12 months.

“In my civilian life, if I were doing a process analysis on this thing, I would say, ‘You know what, these numbers are suspect in terms of which companies are having the most incidents and what type of incidents they are,’” Lightner said during a recent interview in Baghdad.

Col. Timothy Clapp, who preceded Lightner as director of the

Reconstruction Operations Center, which tracks the movements of private security firms under Defense Department contracts, said reported incidents were usually limited to a few companies, including two British firms, Aegis Defence Services and ArmorGroup International.

Clapp said military officials became temporarily concerned last year that Aegis, which protects Corps of Engineers officials on reconstruction projects, was “out of control” because the company reported so many incidents. But Clapp said the numbers were skewed because Aegis conducts many more missions than other companies and because other companies rarely or never report shooting incidents.

“In their contracts, it says they are supposed to report, but whether they do or not is up to them,” he said.

U.S. officials and security company representatives said they were especially concerned about firms that operate beyond the radar of U.S. and Iraqi authorities. David Horner, who worked for Crescent Security Group, a company based in Kuwait City, said that after being attacked with a roadside bomb in a town north of Baghdad, Crescent employees fired their automatic weapons preemptively whenever they passed through the town.

“I know that I personally never saw anyone shoot at us, but we blazed through that town all the time,” said Horner, 55, a truck driver from Visalia, Calif. “Personally I did not take aim at one person. But I don’t know what everybody else did. We’d come back at the end of the day, and a lot of times we were out of ammo.”

Horner said he did not believe any of the incidents were reported to the military. He said he quit after one of Crescent’s Iraqi employees fired a belt-fed PK machine gun from the bed of Horner’s truck and hit what appeared to be two members of the Iraqi National Guard.

“I was like, ‘Oh man, we shot some of our own guys,’” Horner said. He said he consulted with the Crescent team leader as the two Iraqis writhed in pain, one shot in the legs, the other with “a bullet or two in his shoulder.” Soldiers from a nearby Iraqi army checkpoint were approaching to investigate.

“Let’s get the (expletive) out of here,” Horner quoted the team leader as saying before the Crescent team drove off.

“That was my last mission,” Horner said. “I wasn’t over there to wreck somebody’s life. There was too much cowboying going on. I really didn’t know if we had made things worse over there.

More than likely we did; that was my feeling.”

Private security guards said the question of whether to shoot often depends on split-second decisions that can mean life or death not only for them but also for those around them. Most incidents, they said, occur when a vehicle comes close to a security convoy, forcing guards to determine whether the vehicle represents a potential car bomb or merely an erratic driver.

In the Sept. 16 incident, Iraqi witnesses have said Blackwater guards fired on a white sedan carrying a doctor and her adult son after the car failed to slow down as it approached a traffic circle. In May, a Blackwater team shot and killed a civilian driver outside the Interior Ministry; the guards told investigators that the car had driven too close to their convoy and ap-

peared to represent a threat.

CPA Memorandum 17, signed in June 2004 by L. Paul Bremer, the departing chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran the occupation, describes the “binding Rules for the Use of Force that must be adhered to by all PSC (private security companies), their officers and employees.” The memo prescribes a series of graduated steps, including verbal warnings, physical restraint and displaying weapons. In recent years, security guards have resorted to firing pen flares, throwing water bottles and displaying signs warning drivers to maintain a safe distance.

In practice, the rules of force often vary from company to company and even team to team, said current and former guards. One former Blackwater guard said the rules of force for Blackwater employees on State Department contracts — including those involved in the Sept.

16 incident — differed from those for Blackwater guards on non-State contracts.

State Department contracts advise employees to fire “aimed shots,” as outlined in CPA Memorandum 17, according to the former employee. Those shots were often designed to disable the oncoming vehicle. But the rules, which were crafted to minimize civilian casualties, also preclude firing warning shots into the air or into the ground, tactics that also might alert a driver who had strayed too close.

“From the State Department perspective, they’re looking at it as a liability thing: What happens to that round when it goes downrange,” said one of the former Blackwater security guards. “I was like, `Look, give them a chance, not every Iraqi in a car that’s near you is a bad guy.’

The guy whose car you shoot up today is also the guy who could be planting an IED (improvised explosive device) tomorrow. And the only reason he changed sides now is the car that took him 10 years of life savings to buy, now you’ve destroyed it.”

Of the 195 incidents cited by Prince and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, 162 resulted in property damage, according to a memo released Monday by the committee.

Procedures for reporting shooting incidents also often varied, according to current and former guards. “It’s almost like a case of cover your ass,” said the former Blackwater guard. “It’s like, `These guys did this, they filled out this report, we have documentation on it, and unless anybody else says anything, it’s in this file here.’ “ Lightner, the Army major who monitors shooting incidents, said he thought the number of reported incidents was in some ways insignificant. “Other than entertainment value, I don’t see why I need to be all that worried about the number of incidents, as long as they were legitimate,” he said. “If they were incidents of wrongdoing, then that’s a different story.”

Lightner said he usually accepted the company’s version of events. “If they’re reporting firing a weapon, and there’s no wrongdoing, and they operated according to the law, then God bless ‘em, drive on,” he said. “If Aegis sends me a report and says, ‘Bad guys shot at us, we shot back and dropped two of them,’ I’m not going to investigate. I’m not going to worry about it, unless somebody comes back and says, `Yeah, they dropped two children, or they dropped a woman.’”

W orld & n ation Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Wo

r l d

page 9

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

i n

B

r i e f

Myanmar opposition to push for economic sanctions BANGKOK, Thailand (Los Angeles Times) — Myanmar’s opposition says it will push for tough economic sanctions that could include measures against U.S. and other foreign oil companies if the military regime fails to heed the latest calls for reform.

Following talks with senior junta leader Gen. Than Shwe on Tuesday, United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari held a surprise second meeting with detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Gambari did not disclose details of his discussions before leaving Myanmar for U.N. headquarters in New York, where he is expected to brief Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and members of the Security Council.

But opposition leaders have watched the former Nigerian foreign minister fail in several previous missions to persuade Myanmar’s generals to loosen their grip after some 45 years in power and don’t want the current international outrage to pass without action.

At least 10 people, and some say as many as 200, have died since troops and police in Myanmar, also called Burma, last week crushed street protests demanding democracy.

“We hope that lives of these people have not been wasted,” said Soe Aung, spokesman for a coalition of exiled opposition groups.

Dissident leaders have long called for sanctions against foreign investment and business that help the military stay in power, which Aung said includes lucrative oil and natural gas fields.

“Although the military junta is calling it an open-market economy, most of the businesses are controlled by the military,” he said.

Sale of natural gas accounts for the largest source of revenue to the military government, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Walter Reed chief picked as Army Surgeon General WASHINGTON (Washington Post) — The general brought in to command Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the wake of a scandal over conditions at the hospital was nominated by Defense Secretary Robert Gates Tuesday as the new surgeon general of the Army.

Maj. Gen. Eric Schoomaker came to Walter Reed in March to replace Maj. Gen. George Weightman following disclosures of poor living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares experienced by some patients recovering from wounds suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To replace Schoomaker at Walter Reed, the Army Tuesday named Maj. Gen. Carla Hawley-Bowland, commanding general of Tripler Army Medical Center and the Pacific Regional Medical Command in Hawaii.

Hawley-Bowland, who completed residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at Walter Reed, was previously command surgeon for U.S. Army Europe.

Schoomaker’s nomination, and accompanying promotion to lieutenant general, is subject to congressional approval. Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock has been acting surgeon general since Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley stepped down under pressure in the wake of the scandal.

Schoomaker has received generally high marks within the Army and at the Pentagon for the job he has done at Walter Reed. However, outpatients still complain of problems with the hospital’s bureaucracy, and a report last week from the Government Accountability Office warned that the Pentagon’s promised fixes for Armywide problems are threatened by staff shortages and uncertainty.

“It’s a great honor for my family and me to be nominated to continue to serve soldiers and their families,” Schoomaker said Tuesday in a statement.

No announcement has been made regarding a new assignment for Pollock, an Army spokeswoman said.

Bush and Iraqi leader discuss need for reconciliation WASHINGTON (Los Angeles Times) — Iraq’s president met with President Bush on Tuesday, a visit coinciding with new appeals by administration officials and U.S. military leaders for Iraqis to take advantage of an American troop build up to make tough political compromises.

President Jalal Talabani spent about an hour in the Oval Office with Bush, discussing “the importance for Iraq to move forward on national reconciliation,” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said.

The White House remains concerned, she said, that the Iraqi government has not completed work on a variety of measures aimed at decreasing sectarian tension, including an oil revenue- sharing law.

The government also has failed to set a date for provincial elections and made little progress on a measure to allow members of the late President Saddam Hussein’s political party to work in the current government.

Talabani reported to Bush that, “He thought there was a good political environment right now for them to be able to move forward,” Perino said.

Speaking in Washington later in the day, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day military commander in Iraq, expressed frustration over the pace of political reform.

Odierno said the troop build up had improved security in Iraq and attacks have declined. But Odierno said that the Iraqi central government has been unable to make progress.

N. Korea to begin disabling nuclear facilities

By Glenn Kessler Washington Post

WASHINGTON — North Korea will begin disabling key nuclear facilities within weeks and start disclosing details of its nuclear programs under a six-nation agreement to be announced this week, U.S. and Asian diplomats said Tuesday.

Success on the deal appears to have been aided by a “side understanding” between Washington and Pyongyang that could accelerate the removal of North Korea from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The United States also appears willing to accept, initially, more limited action to disable three key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon than it originally sought, with the understanding that additional work to incapacitate the facilities would occur later. In exchange, North Korea is expected to disclose the extent of its weapons-grade plutonium, including how much was used in a nuclear test last year.

North Korea also will allow nuclear experts from Russia, China and the United States to examine aluminum tubes procured from Russia that could have been used in a uranium enrichment program, diplomats said.

But diplomats said it is unclear whether North Korea will admit to acquiring centrifuges for use in such a program, as the United States has charged. The Bush administration in 2002 accused North Korea of having a clandestine uranium enrichment program, and the accusation led to the collapse of a 1994 deal that had frozen the facilities at Yongbyon.

The flurry of diplomatic activity, coming nearly a year after North Korea shocked Asia by conducting its first nuclear test, demonstrates both increasing flexibility by the Bush administration in its waning months and increased willingness

by North Korea to close parts of its nuclear program for potential economic benefits.

The Bush administration had once insisted on “complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement” before North Korea could receive

benefits, but it has significantly moderated its stance since the North Korean nuclear test.

China plans to release the text of the agreement as early as Wednesday, after President Bush formally gives his approval during a breakfast meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the chief negotiator, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Cheney and three other top officials. Hill flew back from Beijing, the site of talks that included South Korea, Japan and Russia, to brief Bush on the details.

Removing North Korea from the terrorism list would be a largely symbolic move, but it is highly prized by the North Korean government. It is problematic for Japan, which wants North Korea to first settle questions concerning the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents. North Korea has pressed for an exact date, but diplomats said no date appears in the final text.

Pyongyang also wants to be relieved from financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act, a 1917 law that allows for a near total economic boycott of countries at war with the United States.

Hill said the terrorism list is a “delicate issue” and that being “too explicit about when it might happen is not helpful in terms of JapaneseNorth Korean relations. We are trying to handle it with sensitivity.”

Still, he acknowledged that Pyongyang and Washington have a series of “side understandings” that amplify and clarify language in the six-party text. He indicated that one of those understandings encourages North Korea to be more forthcoming with the Japanese about the abductions.

“If they want a future in the region, they need to deal with Japan,” Hill said.

North Korean negotiator Kim Kye-gwan told reporters in Beijing that “the timing is specified” for getting off the list, but South Korean envoy Chun Yung-woo said there is no clear-cut schedule. He said there are references in the text to events

taking place by the end of the year.

“It’s laid out so that it looks that way to North Korean eyes,” he told reporters in Seoul.

A senior Japanese diplomat said that Japan has made clear its concern about a quick removal from the terrorism list, even though U.S. officials believe the abduction issue is not directly relevant to the criteria for inclusion on the list. “They would not sacrifice the U.S.-Japan relationship for the U.S.-North Korea relationship,” the Japanese diplomat said.

Hill said North Korea is expected to make an initial declaration about its nuclear programs by the end of this month, though he predicted it would not be complete. He said the various parties would negotiate over the text, with the aim that North Korea would make full disclosure by the end of the year.

He confirmed that North Korea is expected to reveal the extent of its plutonium production, including efforts in 2003 and 2005 that gave it enough fissile material for as many at ten weapons. He declined to discuss the North Korean willingness to allow experts to examine the aluminum tubes.

He said that North Korea would begin disabling three facilities at Yongbyon — the nuclear reactor, a fuel fabrication facility and a plutonium reprocessing unit. He said initial steps could be as simple as removing spent fuel rods from the reactor, but that North Korea would later do more in order to , exceed the requirements of the 1994 agreement.

Hill said that when the 1994 deal collapsed, North Korea was able to restart the reactor in two months.

“We want something more than two months but less than five years,” the length of time needed to build a new reactor, Hill said. Other diplomats said the steps envisioned in the agreement would amount to a delay of about a year before North Korea could restart its nuclear programs.

“Our understanding is that disablement does not have to be 100 percent irreversible,” the Japanese diplomat said.

Cocaine supply down sharply, U.S. officials say

By Richard Marosi Los Angeles Times

SAN DIEGO — Mexico’s crackdown on drug cartels and U.S. authorities’ seizures at sea have helped to sharply reduce the availability of cocaine in 37 American cities, according to a report released Tuesday by federal anti-narcotics officials.

The shortage has driven up prices to their highest levels in nearly two decades, with the cost of cocaine increasing 24 percent, from $95.89 to $118.70 per gram over the six-month period ending in June, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and New York are among those cities reportedly experiencing shortages.

Critics of U.S. drug policy say it’s

too early to determine whether the statistics signal an important milestone in the war on drugs. The report, they point out, comes as the Bush administration prepares to ask Congress for an aid package of nearly $1 billion to help Mexico fight traffickers.

But John Walters, director of the White House drug policy office, said at a news conference in San Diego that the multibillion-dollar anti-drug effort appears to be causing major disruptions in trafficking routes from Colombia to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s extradition of top drug cartel figures and his decision to send thousands of soldiers and federal agents to major drug transit areas over the past year also has helped cut supplies, Walters said.

In August, Mexican authorities arrested several key members of the

Sinaloa Cartel in the border state of Sonora. In Tijuana, thousands of troops and federal agents have failed to quell drug violence, but their presence appears to be putting pressure on traffickers.

“Kudos go to President Calderon and his cops and military,” said Michael A. Braun, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s chief of operations. “They are very aggressively engaged and working closely with us and other U.S. law enforcement along the southwest border and Mexico in attacking the major cartels.”

The U.S. government’s war on cocaine traffickers is a multipronged effort aimed at eradicating coca cultivation in source countries like Colombia and intercepting the drugs along major trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

www.browndailyherald.com

E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Staf f Editorial

The demise of the landline The national shift from landline to cellular telephones is perhaps most recognizable on college campuses, where tech-savvy youths have little use for stationary phones. The change is far from surprising, but the pace of it is remarkably fast.

The number of calls placed using dorm room landlines dropped from about 30,000 to barely 12,000 in just a year’s time. Automatic voicemail activation is now a thing of the past, and only 230 students have elected to activate their landline voicemail accounts so far this fall, compared to 1,500 just two years ago. The blue-light telephones outside residence halls — once used by students to call their friends to let them in — now go unused except in emergencies.

Though there’s little to argue about in this inevitable technological shift, let’s ponder the legacy of the landline.

Access to a landline telephone was once considered such a fundamental right of citizenship in the United States that, as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, the first major program to extend telephone service to rural areas was enacted alongside rural electrification, banking reform and other historic measures.

On Sept. 10, 1999, The Herald considered it big news that two first-years had, for the first time, been assigned the dorm phone number 867-5309 — made popular by the 1982 hit song by Tommy Tutone — and were receiving about five prank calls a day. “It’s as if they are really expecting Jenny to pick up the phone,” one of the luckless freshmen said at the time. (The famed number was later assigned to a local plumbing company). But telephone service is pretty much taken for granted today — just about everyone carries a cell phone and can be reached at any time.

There’s no use in mourning the death of the landline phone. The time has come for it to be replaced by its cellular cousin and more elaborate devices, like iPhones and Blackberries, that can handle e-mail, play music, surf the Internet and, of course, receive phone calls, too. But we do feel a little nostalgic about the old days. And by old days we mean 1995.

Just a few short years ago, students who arrived on College Hill actually exchanged tearful goodbyes with their parents and left their hometowns behind as they set out alone in Providence until Thanksgiving. Now, you can have mom wake you up for class by calling your cell every morning, just like in high school. Then she can check in after lunch at the Ratty to make sure you’re eating okay. And in case you’re busy watching TV in the common lounge at the end of the hall with your unitmates, mom can ring in and remind you to finish that problem set due tomorrow or you can forget dessert, mister.

There’s something valuable and necessary in escaping the network and being unreachable every once in a while — turning your phone off to take a stroll, even if you can’t help spending the entire time mentally planning how you will respond to the pile of e-mails backlogging your account and still have time to call that professor in the 10 minutes before your next class. So for our sake, put the Blackberry down (especially if you are a freshman), pick your head up for a few minutes and say hello to your next door neighbor.

T he B rown D aily H erald Editors-in-Chief Eric Beck Mary-Catherine Lader

Executive Editors Stephen Colelli Allison Kwong Ben Leubsdorf

Senior Editors Jonathan Sidhu Anne Wootton

editorial Lydia Gidwitz Robin Steele Oliver Bowers Stephanie Bernhard Simmi Aujla Sara Molinaro Ross Frazier Karla Bertrand Jacob Schuman Peter Cipparone Erin Frauenhofer Stu Woo Benjy Asher Amy Ehrhart Jason Harris

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

photo Christopher Bennett Rahul Keerthi Ashley Hess

Photo Editor Photo Editor Sports Photo Editor

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

production Steve DeLucia Catherine Cullen Roxanne Palmer

Design Editor Copy Desk Chief Graphics Editor

pete fallon

Letters Brower ’08 advocates Verizon Wireless boycott To the Editor: An article in the New York Times (“Verizon Blocks Messages of Abortion Rights Group,” Sept. 27) tells how Verizon banned Naral Pro-Choice America from instituting a text-messaging campaign. The program, which other wireless carriers have accepted, allows users to send a text-message to a five-digit number (known as a short code) and receive updates from Naral about abortion-related happenings in the government.

Text-messaging programs are prevalent. For instance, one can text queries to Google via the number 4-6645 (GOOGL) and get a text-message back containing search results. There is no law prohibiting censorship of text messages, and Verizon’s policy is to forbid textmessaging programs that contain “controversial or unsavory” content. Yet, Naral’s program only sends text-messages to those users who wish to receive them.

Presumably, these people do not find the content “unsavory.” As it pertains to free speech, I find Verizon’s actions deeply disturbing.

Also disturbing is Verizon’s role in the Federal Com-

munications Commission’s upcoming auction of a new range of radio frequencies. All wireless devices send information via radio waves that operate on a certain frequency. Verizon and all wireless carriers currently own slices of the available frequency spectrum from which they run their business. As the second largest wireless provider in the country, Verizon has enough money to secure a significant chunk of this new airspace — more airspace that it can control. Additionally, Verizon has a recent history of monopolistically destroying competition, something that is awful for, and should be scary to, consumers.

When choosing a cell phone company, I urge people to consider the company’s actions and the agenda that their money will support. I have been a Verizon customer for years, but when my contract is up, I will choose another company. I want the right to choose my own content.

Nathan Brower ‘08 Sept. 27

want to join the herald? last chance to join this semester:

post- magazine Hillary Dixler Melanie Duch Taryn Martinez Rajiv Jayadevan

Managing Editor Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor

Philip Maynard, Steve DeLucia, Designers Ayelet Brinn, Ben Mercer, Sara Slama, Copy Editors Senior Staff Writers Rachel Arndt, Michael Bechek, Irene Chen, Chaz Firestone, Isabel Gottlieb, Nandini Jayakrishna, Franklin Kanin, Kristina Kelleher, Debbie Lehmann, Scott Lowenstein, Michael Skocpol, Nick Werle Staff Writers Amanda Bauer, Brianna Barzola, Evan Boggs, Aubry Bracco, Caitlin Browne, Joy Chua, Patrick Corey, Catherine Goldberg, Olivia Hoffman, Jessica Kerry, Cameron Lee, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, Anna Millman, Marielle Segarra, Matt Varley, Meha Verghese Sports Staff Writers Andrew Braca, Han Cui, Kaitlyn Laabs, Kathleen Loughlin, Alex Mazerov, Megan McCahill Business Staff Diogo Alves, Emilie Aries, Beth Berger, Steven Butschi, Timothy Carey, Jilyn Chao, Ellen DaSilva, Pete Drinan, Dana Feuchtbaum, Patrick Free, Sarah Glick, Alexander Hughes, Claire Kiely, Soobin Kim, Katelyn Koh, Darren Kong, Christie Liu, Philip Maynard, Ingrid Pangandoyon, Mariya Perelyubskaya, Viseth San, Paolo Servado, Kaustubh Shah, Saira Shervani, Yelena Shteynberg, Jon Spector, Robert Stefani, Lily Tran, Hari Tyagi, Lindsay Walls, Benjamin Xiong Design Staff Brianna Barzola, Chaz Kelsh,Ting Lawrence, Philip Maynard, Alex Unger, Aditya Voleti, Wudan Yan Photo Staff Stuart Duncan-Smith, Austin Freeman, Tai Ho Shin Copy Editors Ayelet Brinn, Rafael Chaiken, Erin Cummings, Katie Delaney, Jake Frank, Jennifer Grayson, Ted Lamm, Max Mankin, Alex Mazerov, Ben Mercer, Ezra Miller, Seth Motel, Alexander Rosenberg, Emily Sanford, Sara Slama, Jenna Stark, Laura Straub, Meha Verghese, Elena Weissman

tuesday, october 9 at 9 p.m.

195 angell street (between brook and thayer)

C O R R E C T I O N S P olicy The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

C ommentary P O L I C Y The staff editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

L etters to the E ditor P olicy Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed. advertising P olicy The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

O pinions Wednesday, October 3, 2007

page 11

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Development in Southern Africa: the perfect farce BORIS RYVKIN Opinions Columnist This December, Portugal will play host to the 2007 Euro-Africa Summit. Although preparations are not yet complete, the conference has already hit a brick wall. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that his country would boycott the gathering if an invitation were extended to Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. Brown’s decision, based on Mugabe’s land seizure and nationalization policies, triggered a firestorm of protest.

The Zimbabwe Herald, the government’s de facto mouthpiece, put out a slew of retaliatory editorials. A Sept. 13 article compared Brown to a weak schoolboy and asserted that, “Instead of facing the prospect of losing the game at the hands of not only a former colony but a little African country, Mr. Brown has decided to hightail it.” The regime was supported by its fellow members in the Southern African Development Community who, as their economies stagnate and populations starve, have amplified the same anti-colonialist rhetoric. Nevertheless, Brown is among the few to understand that, unless a hard-line public stand against the policies of Mugabe and some of his African counterparts is taken now, the summit will only underscore how development in Southern Africa has become the perfect farce.

According to Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube, the country is facing a “life threatening” economic situation. The Economist has placed unemployment at over 80 percent, with life

expectancy at medieval levels and a growth rate of -1.9 percent. Mugabe, a renowned critic of “bookish” economics, has outlawed inflation, which exceeds 8,000 percent. With toilet paper costing about 400 Zimbabwean dollars per square, it is easy to see why the bill has fast become a substitute. The regime instituted land reform in 2002, forcibly confiscating and redistributing hundreds of white-owned commercial farms. When Stalin tried the same policy in the 1930s (when owning an acre and a few cows made one a class enemy), the result was a yearlong famine in Ukraine and seven million dead. Mao’s seizures during the Great

the Southern African Development Community are trying to bail him out.

The situation becomes all the more unfortunate when one considers that Mugabe has virtually reinstituted the same apartheid policies he once so fiercely combated – this time against white citizens and political opponents.

The end of restrictive white minority rule has given way to the dictatorship of the President and his clique of associates. Although out of power and constituting only a small percentage of the population, white farmers employed thousands of black workers and maintained some of the last profitable enterprises in the country. It

A soft heart feels for the rhetoric of post-colonial Western oppression, but we cannot allow these African leaders to continue hiding behind their microphones.

Leap Forward cost about twenty million lives.

According to the UN World Food Programme, the result in Zimbabwe was starvation for half the population. Desperate for cash, the regime moved to nationalize mines and public works, institute draconian food and fuel rations and force business owners to operate worthless factories on pain of imprisonment. As emigration turns into an exodus, Mugabe’s friends at

was largely through their skill that Zimbabwe, up until the year 2000, was dubbed the breadbasket of Africa and was a net food exporter.

Instead of compensating the farmers for their losses or incentivizing them to enlarge their work forces, the regime coercively handed the agricultural sector to cronies with no farming experience and caused severe unemployment.

The result: a proud nation has been brought

to its knees.

Members of the Southern African Development Community, rushing to his defense, have painted Mugabe as a Western scapegoat. Zambia’s Levy Mwanawasa threatened to counter-boycott the December summit if Mugabe was not allowed to attend, accusing Britain of arm-twisting. After winning what most considered a rigged election in 2002, where government funds purchased vehicles and cheap food for political loyalists, Mwanawasa’s “Movement for Multi-Party Democracy” has sought to push through a divisive plan for a national constitution. Support also came from Angola, where President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has postponed elections three times and praised Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro for his commitment to progress and justice. Despite sizeable oil revenues, the average Angolan survives on less than two dollars a day. It appears that Mugabe’s regime is not alone in its admiration for populist rhetoric masking failed policies.

When opportunism, total unaccountability, and nationalist stunts replace sound economic and political reasoning, the result is what Southern Africa is and will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. Worse, our options in this area are fast diminishing, due in no small part to the inability of some in the West to place national vitality and economic efficiency ahead of ideological sympathy. A soft heart feels for the rhetoric of post-colonial Western oppression, but we cannot allow these African leaders to continue hiding behind their microphones.

It is sad that, save for Prime Minister Brown, few have risen to the occasion.

Boris Ryvkin ’09 loves to philosophize.

Commercialized (mis)representations define black culture RENATA SAGO Opinions Columnist

Black culture is indefinite. We all have conceptions of it: basketball and football players, crunkified rappers “walkin’ it out,” shapely women donning scraps of fabric “pop, lock, and droppin’ it,” big afros, the ghetto, affirmative action and slavery. Oh — and let’s not forget about the ex-convict thugs with baggy pants, white tees and corn-rows who chain smoke (blunts, that is). Then there are the few reputable figures we commonly hear about: Martin Luther King, Jr., Condoleeza Rice, Reverend Al Sharpton, Barack Obama — and Flava Flav.

Nonsense.

Mainstream society perpetuates negative — and limited — elements of black culture. This poses a problem. I have pondered the origins of perceptions of “blackness,” affirming that they have, in a sense, stemmed from representations of slave culture. Stereotypes that blacks are unintelligent, have low socioeconomic positions and are only ingenious at displaying emotion reflect the continuing existence of systemic oppression — generalizations made from the establishment of laws denying blacks education and, consequently, the potential for upward mobility the “American” way.

At the outset, American black culture emerged from an effort to preserve African cultural elements and blend Eurocentric ideas to which the general population of blacks — slaves — had become adapted. African slaves — tribes from various parts of Africa — were driven to create an identity that embraced African cultural values while unwittingly sus-

taining an imposed white-black binary. This creation was not conscious but, rather, socially incited and then psychologically embedded.

“Blackness” represented barbarism, inferiority, irrationality and ignorance. It dehumanized Africans and set the emerging concept of “whiteness” as a standard to be achieved.

Both realms of the white-black binary require simultaneous denial and acknowledgment of blackness in order to thrive within a racialized social hierarchy. While whiteness is premised on renouncing blackness as a culture, it must simultaneously recognize blackness, because it determines that whiteness is the norm. This recognition, however, is manifested in negative forms throughout the media — a clash between obscure identities hoping to assert some sort of distinctiveness.

greater extent, humanness. Since slavery, blacks have remained unacknowledged as fully human and unclearly defined within the confines of neither fully African or American worlds. Black culture must be understood as a Europeanized, Americanized and Africanized identity — the intertwining of cultures dominated by a racialized psyche.

This psychological struggle of blackness begs the question of whether it is possible to exist within the realms of a passive identity — one that has been created for blacks, but not by blacks.

After having internalized a white-black binary, black culture has sought to prove its humanity. This involves having to both embrace the binary and reject it. Blackness as conceived by whites (and internalized, to

Redefinition is a vital quality of black culture.

Redefinition is a vital quality of black culture. It reflects the constant evolution of the black identity, the unending search for authenticity and ownership of a culture that emerged from enslavement. Blacks remain on a journey, a struggle between self-awareness and understanding, to conceive of blackness in its myriad forms and prove its significance — be it through political awareness, economic success, technical innovation or, most notably, artistic expression. It is through this artistic ingenuity that stereotypes created and internalized by white-dominated mainstream culture have been reinvented to shed light to the reality of blackness and, to an even

some extent, by blacks and other groups) is pigeonholed by nonsense on the television and radio. I question if it is even known that black culture has made a plethora of material contributions to American society, especially in the form of technological inventions that facilitate common life.

Black culture has birthed language, religion and performing arts. These cultural elements arose as coping mechanisms — as ways of preserving belief systems while handling systematic and psychological oppression.

However, black culture has sought to take ownership of the white-black binary, reinventing stereotypes and internalized identities

through cinematic representations, theater productions, magazines, cartoons and practically every other aspect of ‘American’ commercialized culture. Black culture is now deemed “urban culture,” as it combines an indefinite melange of elements to assert its presence.

Blacks, as an oppressed group whose identity was initially defined by non-Blacks, have had to view themselves with double consciousness. Formed and stifled by an artificial identity, blacks must internalize and understand whiteness before they understand their true selves.

The issue lies in the fact that “whiteness” — whatever it may be — is as indefinite as “blackness” and that these two imprecise binaries define each other. Moreover, other marginalized groups in America — Asian ethnicities, Latinos, Native Americans, and Africans, for example — find themselves having to negotiate an identity that has been neutralized by an obscure white-black binary. Misrepresentations of all groups simplify the complexity of race relations in the United States. Perhaps this is why we rely on them so much, why we are reluctant to acknowledge that racial oppression remains a prevalent issue, why we are disenchanted with racial discourse, why we believe it cannot exist in realms of politics, economics and science.

It is disturbing when images of certain groups are saturated by the media in a manner that the neglects their reality. Commercialization delineates the disapproving aspects of black culture, which leaves groups unexposed to blacks to believe such aspects as holistically true. It even leaves blacks unexposed to positive elements of their culture deluded. Rather than “walking it out,” we need to be opening our minds — to change.

Renata Sago ’10 is boldly brown.

S ports W ednesday Page 12

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Sp

No. 10 m. soccer breaks win streak with home loss to BU

By Peter Cipparone Sports Editor

All good things typically come to an end — no more so than in collegiate soccer, where going undefeated is nearly unheard of. But the men’s soccer team was still far from pleased with the outcome of Tuesday night’s game against Boston University at Stevenson Field, where the Terriers snapped the Bears’ season-opening seven-game unbeaten streak with a 1-0 victory.

No. 10 Brown tasted its first loss of the year after BU scored with 27 minutes left in the second half and the Bears could not come up with a response.

“We came out slow in the second half,” said midfielder Chris Roland ’10. “We let them back in the game.

When they scored, we got frantic.”

In the first half, each team minimized the other’s scoring chances with stiff defense. Rhett Bernstein ’08 and the other defensemen cleared away a number of long balls sent in by the Terriers, and goalkeeper Jarrett Leech ’09 squelched each opportunity the opponents generated.

A long layoff might have contributed to the Bears’ failure to create chances in the first half. After playing the University of California, San Diego, and the University of California, Irvine, on the West Coast two weeks ago, the team had eight days off — its

longest hiatus of the season.

While Roland said the team should not attribute the loss to the time off, he admitted that coming “off nine days of rest, sometimes the intensity isn’t the same.”

Both teams opened up their offenses in the second session. Dylan Sheehan ’09, Brown’s points leader, received a cross from Laurent Manuel ’08 and hit a low shot towards the corner but BU’s Hrafn Davidsson made a diving save to keep Brown off the board. Manuel, playing in his first game of the year due to personal reasons, continued to challenge the Terrier defense with creative runs up the right flank.

“It was unbelievable to be back ... (playing) with the boys,” Manuel said. “I felt good because I have been training with the boys the whole time.”

Midway through the second half, BU scored all the offense it needed to take home the win. On a pass from a midfielder, Bernstein gambled and tried to intercept the pass but it traveled just beyond his reach and straight to freshman forward Aaron O’Neal. Brown defenders David Walls ’11 and Matt Britner ’08 stepped in, but O’Neal turned and fired from the top of the 18-yard box. After the ball deflcted slightly off Britner, Leech made a diving effort and just got his fingers on the ball but the shot had too much pace

o r t s

B

i n

r i e f

Vaughan ’11 named Rookie of the Week

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

The men’s soccer team suffered their first loss of the season last night against Boston University, despite efforts of points leader Laurent Manuel ’08.

and powered into the top corner of the net. In the latter stages of the game the Bears were beaten to a majority of balls, but no one wanted to attribute that fact to fatigue.

“I thought we were the fitter team,” Roland said. “When you go down a goal it takes a lot out of you.

You press up and have to make a lot of long runs.”

The Bears will look to start a new winning streak when they host Princeton in their Ivy League opener at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

— with additional reporting by Jason Harris

After etching her name in the Brown record books in a loss to Yale on Saturday, volleyball middle blocker Danielle Vaughan ’11 has been named the Ivy League’s Co-Rookie of the Week.

Vaughan tied Brown’s record for fifth-best blocks-per-game average, with seven blocks in the 3-0 loss.

“I found out (about the record) on the bus ride back,” Vaughan said. “My coach said, ‘I need to talk to you,’ and I was actually a little nervous because I had a couple unforced errors in the game, and then she told me I set the record.

I’ve never set a record before!”

Vaughan also had eight kills in the match and finished with a match-high .429 hitting percentage. Vaughan currently leads the Bears with a .274 hitting percentage and 39 blocks.

The award comes a week after Vaughan lead the Bears to a 3-0 sweep of the University of Rhode Island last week. In that Sept. 26 match, she had six kills, three blocks and three service aces.

Vaughan is the second volleyball player to receive the honor this season. Megan Toman ’11 was also Rookie of Week last month.

— Stu Woo

In New York, m. tennis gets revenge vs. Columbia

By Erin Frauenhofer Spor ts Editor

Revenge is sweet — and it was even sweeter than usual for the men’s tennis team at the ECAC Championship last weekend.

In the quarterfinals of the tournament, Brown brought down Columbia, the team that not only took the Ivy League title last season, but also defeated the Bears in both the semifinals of last year’s ECACs and in Ivy play.

“The night before (the match), we said, ‘Nobody beats us three times in a row,’ ” said co-captain Noah Gardner ’09.

The Bears lived up to that vow, defeating the Lions, 4-3, in the quarterfinals of the tournament, which was held in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., at the site of the U.S. Open tournament.

But advancing to the quarterfinals was no easy task. On Friday, seventh-seeded Brown faced off against No. 10-seed St. John’s University in the first round of competition.

“St. John’s was the best nonIvy team at the tournament,” said Head Coach Jay Harris. “We knew it would be a tough match.”

The Bears kicked off the match with a sweep of the doubles matches for the early 1-0 advantage.

Chris Lee ’09 and co-captain Saurabh Kohli ’08 led the way at first doubles with an 8-4 win over Alex Svetlakov and Derek Wallensteen.

At second doubles, Charlie Posner ’11 and Basu Ratnam ’09 overpowered Pavel Cerny and Martin Kosut 8-3, and at third doubles, Gardner and Sam Garland ’09 demolished Jordan Talbot and Artem Vlasenko 8-2.

“It was the first real match

W. golf plays well, but takes ninth at Yale Invitational

BY Han Cui Sports Staff Writer

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

The men’s tennis team captured the doubles point in both its wins this weekend, thanks in part to co-captains Saurabh Kohli ’08 (pictured) and Chris Lee ‘09.

we were playing together,” Kohli said. “We were excited to go out there.”

The match became a much closer contest after the Bears’ early successes. Of the six singles matches, the Red Storm won the first set in five of them. After Kohli, Skate Gorham ’10 and Lee dropped the first three singles matches, it was up to the remaining Bears to pull out the win.

At four th singles, Jonathan Pearlman ’11 overwhelmed Cerny for a 6-2, 6-0 victory, while Gardner and Garland won three-set battles

at fifth and sixth singles. After splitting sets with Wallensteen, 4-6 and 6-4, Gardner fell behind 4-2 in the third set but fought back to win four straight games for a 6-4 victory.

“I played well,” Gardner said. “I was pretty proud of how I worked on the court. I stepped up.”

Meanwhile, Garland defeated Talbot 5-7, 6-4, 7-6 (6) with an ace at match point for good measure.

The fifth and sixth singles wins gave Brown the 4-3 victory. continued on page 8

The women’s golf team shone at first, then stumbled this weekend, playing well on the first day of the Yale Invitation only to finish ninth in the 15-team field after day two.

Captain Blythe Crane ’08 led the 83-player field with a two-over par 73 on day one, which helped put the Bears in fifth place. Though the positive momentum did not carry over to the second day as much as the players had hoped, the team still pulled off the ninth-place finish, just five strokes behind the sixth-place finisher. Crane finished 14th individually.

Head Coach Danielle Griffiths said Crane’s first-day performance represented her true ability.

“On the golf course, everyday is different. Blythe led the field at 73 the first day ­— that is the type of player she is. She is one of the best players in the league and will continue to be a top performer for the year,” Griffiths said.

Sarah Guarascio ’11 led the Bears with an 82 on the second day, finishing with a two-round score of 166.

Guarascio, Julia Robinson ’11 and Susan Restrepo ’11 are the three new additions to the team who have made solid contributions as regular players at each tournament. Robinson also shot a two-round 166 with an 83 each day. Restrepo came in at 168 (82-86).

“They have been playing very consistently throughout the tournaments. They know they will be playing in every tournament and stepped up to the challenge to help the program,” Griffiths said.

All three rookies praised Crane and Holly Snyder ’09, the only other upperclassman, for their positive attitude and leadership.

“I was a little nervous at the first few tournaments, but the coach and the upperclassmen took the intimidation and pressure from me,” Robinson said. “They are always positive and pushing us in a good way.”

When Crane finished the last hole at the end of the first day, her teammates were able to watch it and cheer her on.

Most players said they were somewhat satisfied with the results of the tournament. Restepo said she would have performed better if she had stuck to her game-plan.

“My performance was solid on the first day. The second day, I made a few errors because I didn’t stick to the strategy. In the future, I’ll play more conservatively,” Restrepo said.

For Griffiths and her team, this year is a stepping stone in building the women’s golf program. The team, which struggled last year, is consistently finishing in the middle of the pack as it plays against more competitive teams.

But Griffiths said the team is very competitive and is improving their scores at each tournament.

The Bears will have two weekends off before their next tournament at Lehigh University, Oct. 20-21. They will be playing against Northeast colleges as well as Ivies.

SCOREBOARD Men’s Soccer: Boston University 1, No. 10 Brown 0