Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The Brown Daily Herald T uesday, O ctober 23, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 94

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

U. shoulders $450m in debt

By Michael Skocpol Senior Staff Writer

Brown will continue to rely on reserve funds well beyond 2010 to make up budget shortfalls as the University continues its aggressive expansion, Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Elizabeth Huidekoper told The Herald.

In addition, the University has taken on a substantial amount of new debt in recent years, although its debt level remains “manageable” and the University’s overall financial health is strong, according to a recent report by debt rating firm Standard & Poor’s.

The budget deficits reflect a calculated attempt by University officials to move forward quickly with the Plan for Academic Enrichment, President Ruth Simmons’ ambitious and wide-ranging blueprint for en-

hancing Brown’s academic profile.

First approved in 2002, its initiatives include an aggressive expansion of the faculty, introduction of needblind admission and a spate of new building projects on campus.

In support of the plan, the University in 2005 publicly kicked off the Campaign for Academic Enrichment, an aggressive fundraising effort aimed at raising $1.4 billion by 2010. To date, the campaign has raised over $1 billion.

Additionally in 2004, the Corporation, Brown’s highest governing body, approved the use of $60 million in reserves to finance the plan and make up the budget deficits.

Approximately $19 million of those reserves have since been used, with projections indicating the University may spend as much as $28 million continued on page 8

PBS spotlights religion on campus

By Melissa Shube Contributing Writer

Campus religious groups will soon be in the national spotlight — a crew from the Public Broadcasting Service was on campus last week, filming religious groups and conducting interviews for an upcoming segment of the PBS show “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.”

Filming took place on campus from Oct. 11 to Oct. 14, and the show is scheduled to air in early November. “We were doing a piece on young people and religion, and I thought, my gosh, this is very, very broad. I thought the best way to tell the story is to pick a college and speak to a variety of students from various faith backgrounds,” said segment producer Susan Goldstein. “We were just trying

to find out how spirituality played out in the lives of students.”

So why Brown? Goldstein said she chose to do the segment about Brown because of the University’s emphasis on interfaith dialogue.

“We thought it was unique that you have an interfaith dorm. We also knew we were going to find articulate students.”

Goldstein was also familiar with Brown because her niece, Elizabeth Ochs ’07.5, attends the University.

Goldstein arranged the filming with University Chaplain Janet Cooper Nelson. The PBS film crew visited an Iftar dinner run by the Muslim Students Association during Ramadan; Friday night services at Hillel; RELS 0120: “The Foundations of Chinese Religions: continued on page 4

Courtesy of Meredith Barnett ’00.5

Meredith Barnett’s ’00.5 online business Store Adore, which she hopes will become an Internet destination for shoppers nationwide, is slated to launch today.

Barnett ’00.5 shops for a living with StoreAdore

By Anita Tasavanh Contributing Writer

Between preparing for the launch of her new business and Web site, Store Adore, planning her wedding in April and flying to Chicago to film a segment for the Oprah Winfrey Show, Meredith Barnett ’00.5 has been busy. Last week, Barnett found time to talk to The Herald about

By Erika Jung Contributing Writer

A panel of scholars, policymakers and students gathered last night for “Myanmar: Saffron Revolution versus Authoritarian Consolidation,” a discussion organized by the Watson Institute for International Studies and moderated by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, U.N. special rapporteur

INSIDE:

3

METRO

www.browndailyherald.com

FEATURE since June of last year, will soon become an essential online stop for savvy shoppers across the country. Timed to launch today when

continued on page 4

on human rights in Myanmar and a visiting professor of Latin American studies.

The Southeast Asian military dictatorship has been rocked by protests since mid-August as thousands of citizens, including monks, have taken to the streets advocating for democratic change in leadership. Myanmar’s militar y junta responded by firing into crowds

of protesters, prompting an outpouring of international support that peaked Sept. 28, when the junta cut off all communication from within the country.

Yesterday, Myanmar’s government agreed to allow Pinheiro to visit the country as a United Nations representative in November. continued on page 9

At URC open forum, budget bickering abounds

By Sophia Lambertsen Contributing Writer

continued on page 9

Barnett’s appearance on Oprah is expected to air, Store Adore features nearly 1,700 extensive shop reviews, including online-only vendors and a public forum for shoppers to share their seasoned advice and offer tips on bargain hunting.

Potential users can rest assured that Barnett, less than a decade out

Prof. gets approval to enter Myanmar as U.N. envoy

Multiracial Week celebrates cultural mix This year’s Multiracial Heritage Week celebrates the multiracial community as one defined not by individual ethnicity but instead by a cultural mix. The week is sponsored in part by the Brown Organization of Multiracial and Biracial Students, Brown’s part-Asian group Hapa and the Third World Center.

At Brown — the only university in the nation with a multiracial heritage week, according to Third World Center Assistant Director Jennifer Soroko MA’06 — the celebration kicked off with a convocation last night in Salomon 101.

The event included reflections from multiracial students Kimberly Arredondo ’11, Daniel Hyman ’11 and Christine Goding ’08, and featured keynote speaker Kit Fulbeck, a Hapa artist, filmmaker, writer,

Oprah, working with her best friend and the thrills of shopping.

Barnett hopes that Store Adore, her business endeavor in the works

Forum provides a chance to ‘whisper in the ear’ of the keepers of the University’s million-dollar coffers

By Chaz Kelsh Staff Writer

Rahul Keerthi / Herald

Kip Fulbeck, professor of arts at the University of California-Santa Barbara, helped kick off Multiracial Heritage Week Monday evening with a speech and spoken word performance.

Landlord Law A proposed ordinance may help students renting apartments deal with difficult landlords.

5

CAMPUS NEWS

Grad Housing Housing options for grad students provided by the University have increased this academic year.

11

OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

Students, faculty and staff voiced their concerns and questions about the University’s budget priorities at an open forum Monday held by the University Resources Committee.

The URC, which comprises faculty, staff and students, advises the president and the Corporation on the University’s annual budget. It holds closed meetings about once a week, augmented by occasional open forums such as the one held Monday in Wilson 102.

Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98, who chairs the URC, led the open meeting, which was attended by about 30 people.

Welcome to Oz Adam Cambier ’09 likens the changes in the dean of the College’s office to the Wizard of Oz.

Assistant Professor of History Naoko Shibusawa discussed the need to expand the library’s subscription to the online database ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Shibusawa said the library’s subscription currently includes only the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, not the archives of other newspapers from around the country, such as the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune.

“Having these kinds of research tools available would radically change the kind of research you can even do,” said Jessica Johnson MA’06 GS, a graduate student in American civilization.

Shibusawa said she had been

12 SPORTS

continued on page 4 Scoring success A flood of goals helped the women’s soccer team past Cornell and into a .500 Ivy League record

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com

T oday Page 2

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

But Seriously | Charlie Custer and Stephen Barlow

We a t h e r Today

TOMORROW

rain 66 / 54

rain 65 / 43

Menu Sharpe Refectory

Verney-Woolley Dining Hall

Lunch — Quinoa and Veggies, Asparagus Spears, Philly Cheese Steak Calzone, Fried Fish Sandwich with Tartar Sauce, Cherry Tarts with Bavarian Cream

Lunch — Buffalo Wings, Zucchini Parmesean Sandwich, Cauliflower au Gratin, Nacho Bar

Dinner — Vegetable Frittata, Sticky Rice, Ginger Sugar Snap Peas and Carrots, Baked Potatoes, Honey Batter Bread, Waffle Fries, Pesta Seafood Pasta, Fiery Beef, Ice Cream Sundae Bar

Dinner — Baked Parmesean Chicken, Curried Couscous, Noodles Alfredo, Whole Green Beans, Honey Batter Bread, Stir Fry Station, Cherry Tarts with Bavarian Cream

Aibohphobia | Roxanne Palmer

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

Vagina Dentata | Soojean Kim

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, October 23, 2007 © Puzzles by Pappocom

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

C

Edited by RichrNorris Joyce r Nichols o s and s wo d Lewis

ACROSS 1 Madagascar primate 6 Hackneyed 11 “The Barefoot Contessa” costar Gardner 14 Sheeplike 15 Mysterious ancient letters 16 Russian fighter 17 Circular file, so to speak 19 Pub draft 20 __’acte 21 Got the better of 23 Mosque official 25 Vegas cube 26 Gardener’s purchasing reference 32 Pop singer Lauper 33 Like early morning hours 34 Jason’s craft 36 Nonprofit URL ending 37 Triumphant cry after a repair 41 1040-issuing org.

42 Boring 44 Bond creator Fleming 45 Desert refuges 47 Pirate’s parrot’s cry, in “Treasure Island” 51 __-Cat 52 “That’s __ ask” 53 Like a thorough search 58 Branch branch 62 Comm. device 63 Longtime New Year’s Eve bandleader 65 Dernier __: latest fashion 66 Walker on a trail 67 Really enjoyed something, with “up” 68 DDE predecessor 69 Decides not to dele 70 Sonata movement DOWN 1 Rob of “St. Elmo’s Fire” 2 Former Indiana governor Bayh

38 Deadlock 55 One of a deck’s 3 Light fog 39 Used to be four 4 Never tested 40 Flowerpot filler 56 Small child 5 R&B artist 43 Olin of “Alias” 57 “Sorry if __ you Des’__ 46 Excitedly, to a down” 6 Psychological maestro 59 Birdhouse shock 48 Robitussin songbird 7 Sign of auto targets 60 “__ it my way” body aging 49 Party handouts 61 Words that can 8 Signs 50 K-6 precede the first 9 Really pour 53 Make a lasting word of 17-, 26-, 10 Chihuahua or impression 37-, 47- and 63Sonora, por 54 Gen-__: postAcross ejemplo baby boomers 64 Dart game locale 11 Lacking expertise ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: 12 Repulsive 13 Like much cheese 18 Former U.K. carrier 22 Latvian capital 24 Year in which Columbus began his last voyage 26 Flapjacks topper 27 College major with lots of reading 28 Bridge bid 29 __ Lingus 30 Albanian coin 31 White wader 32 Hyannis Port’s cape 35 CIA predecessor xwordeditor@aol.com 10/23/07

Octopus on Hallucinogens | Toni Liu and Stephanie Le

Classic How To Get Down | Nate Saunders

T he B rown D aily H erald Editorial Phone: 401.351.3372 Business Phone: 401.351.3260

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

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By Jack McInturff (c)2007 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

10/23/07

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M etro THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 3

Leaky bathroom? New law may benefit off-campus residents with landlords

Brown to offer aid to children of the Station nightclub fire victims

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

By Zachary Chapman Staf f Writer

Unwelcome rodent visitors, doorbells that no longer ring, unhinged doors and clogged drains are probably not what students have in mind when they sign off-campus leases.

But some students living off campus are forced to deal with these minor nuisances and the frustration of trying to convince their landlords to fix them.

Now, an ordinance introduced

by Ward 5 City Councilman Michael Solomon may help to reduce the problem of landlords who are unresponsive to maintenance concerns by making them more accountable for the properties they rent out.

But the law could also impose harsher penalties on students who violate the city’s noise and trash ordinances.

Solomon, who is in his first term in the city council, represents the city’s Elmhurst and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods, which he said include units rented by students from Providence College, Johnson & Wales University and Brown.

The ordinance, which addresses residential rental units, was introduced at a city council meeting on Oct. 4 and will come before the ordinance committee later this month.

“We are seeking to protect the public health, safety and welfare, while also improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods,” Solomon said in an press release announcing the ordinance.

The proposed ordinance would establish a licensing and inspection system for residential rental properties and create a fee structure to penalize landlords and tenants who violate the law.

The draft ordinance would require owners of residential properties to obtain rental licenses for regulated units and would require inspections of non-owner-occupied properties every four years.

It would also permit the city to make repairs to units to correct violations, with the owner footing a portion of the bill.

Solomon told The Herald that the legislation would create specific requirements that fit Providence’s housing needs.

“The (existing) state law is too general,” he said. “It doesn’t deal enough with quality of life-type issues.”

Solomon said the impetus for the ordinance was observing properties in “horrible condition” especially in low-income areas where high demand for housing creates little incentive for landlords to maintain their properties.

Solomon said the ordinance is an attempt to both compel landlords to fulfill their responsibilities and to enact stronger penalties against tenants who repeatedly violate city housing laws.

The ordinance would make repeated violations of a noise ordinance grounds for eviction, Solomon said.

“The biggest complaints from residents in my neighborhoods are about noise and litter,” he said.

A recently revised nuisance ordinance in Narragansett, home to many University of Rhode Island students, allows police to post or-

Alex DePaoli / Herald

Ward 5 City Councilman Michael Solomon has introduced an ordinance that would require a licensing and inspection system for residential rental properties, cracking down on local landlords.

ange stickers on houses that have held loud code-violating parties.

The offending renters face fines and a 60-day period during which further violations can result in tougher penalties. The ordinance was met with heavy opposition from URI students, according to an Oct. 16 article in the Providence Journal.

Solomon said he wasn’t “looking to put stickers on houses” with the proposed Providence ordinance. “We want students to be good neighbors but we also want them to be protected against bad landlords,” he said.

Two students living off campus told The Herald they have faced some minor problems with their landlords, but on the whole their problems have been manageable.

Dane Wetschler ’08, who lives on John Street, said he and his housemates have encountered some problems with the upkeep of their house.

“We have had a lot of things that are broken that I guess (the landlord) doesn’t find necessary to repair because demand is always there for housing and because the apartment is in a good location,” Wetschler said, citing a non-functional doorbell, persistent electrical problems and a door that is not hinged to the wall as problems.

Wetschler said he noticed the unhinged door during an inspection of the house this summer, but that it didn’t stop him from signing the lease.

“I guess that it was my own fault because there is a sense that you’re not going to be able to find

a place,” he said. “Whenever you sign the lease you think that during that summer he will fix stuff up, but I guess there is nothing really holding him accountable. Even so, I have found most of the problems manageable,” he said. “If it was really a big deal — like say we didn’t have heat — we would probably be more concerned.”

Under state law, landlords are responsible for providing smoke detectors, making most major repairs, providing continuous hot and cold running water and maintaining the premises to comply with applicable housing and health codes, among other regulations.

Landlords are also responsible for exterminating rodents, unless it is determined that an occupant’s actions have resulted in the rodent infestation.

Jonathan Coleman ’08.5, who also lives on John Street, said he hasn’t experienced many problems with his landlord, despite the warnings of a friend who lived in the same house and advised him to never live there.

“We have had some problems with delayed responses to really minor problems, but on the whole I wouldn’t say it’s been too bad,” he said. Coleman said his house had some mice and his landlord did not supply him with mouse traps for almost a month. Coleman said his landlord was also somewhat slow in dealing with a wasps’ nest, but did respond quickly to a clogged shower drain.

“If we really had a problem we would make a much more concerted effort to contact him — usually it’s a little thing,” Coleman said.

By George Miller Staf f Writer

Brown joined six other Rhode Island colleges Oct. 10 in pledging aid to the children of the victims of the 2003 Station nightclub fire in West Warwick. The University will offer full scholarships to some of its precollege summer programs for the 76 eligible children who lost parents in the tragedy, which claimed 100 lives.

Associate Dean of Summer and Continuing Studies Robin Rose called the summer program “a great preparatory experience.” She said it drew about 2,600 students of middle and high school age over the course of last summer.

“There’s all kinds of stuff going on,” she said. This summer’s offerings include about 150 courses ranging from one to seven weeks in duration in “just about every academic discipline you can imagine,” Rose said, a program in science for seventh and eighth graders, and a leadership institute, which Rose directs. Students also receive academic advising and tips on college essays and inter views. The program’s cost usually ranges from $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the length, Rose said.

Though the program encourages students’ college aspirations, it isn’t just for students intending to apply to college. Rose, who is the academic advisor to Station school scholarship recipients, said the summer program offers students the opportunity to interact with people from all over the country and world — over 90 percent of participants are from out of state. Many past participants have ended up applying to Brown, Rose said.

Bryant University, Johnson & Wales University, the New England Institute of Technology, Providence College, Roger Williams University and Salve Regina University also pledged aid, some in the form of undergraduate scholarships and others through non-degree academic programs like Brown. JWU has pledged a $15,000 renewable scholarship, and Providence College, a new scholarship that meets 100 percent of need, both of which are available to any of the 76 children. The PC scholarship is named after Rebecca Shaw, a PC student who died in the fire.

The brothers who owned the Station nightclub later pleaded no contest to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the case. Under a plea bargain, Michael Derderian was sentenced to four years in prison, and Jeffrey Derderian received 500 hours of community service and three years probation. The man who lit the pyrotechnics that caused the fire, Daniel Biechele, was also sentenced to four years in prison, but he was recently granted parole and will be released in March.

The Derderian brothers and Jody King ­— the brother of a bouncer who died in the fire — founded the Station Education Fund to provide financial assistance for the education-related expenses of victims’ children, such as tuition and school supplies.

Brown’s commitment to the fund will continue until the last child graduates from high school, Rose said.

The youngest child is currently 4 years old. Rose estimated that about 15 of the children are currently of high school age, but said she doesn’t yet know if any will apply for next summer’s program.

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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

O n e brok e n l e g

PBS films Brown religions continued from page 1

Samantha Cohen / Herald The 3 Chairs 2 Cubes workshop festival, which features student-written plays with a minimal set, concluded on Monday night.

Store Adore debuts on Web, Oprah continued from page 1 of Brown, knows shopping. As an editor for Lucky magazine, Barnett scoured the United States for deals and designs before she enrolled in Harvard Business School in 2005.

“I would get to all these cities, and I know there’s cool shopping here, but I wouldn’t know where to go,” she said. Sensing an opportunity, Barnett thought a community forum might solve this problem — and Store Adore was born.

“I thought this was something really helpful with people — a resource to look for what you need,” she said.

Featured stores are hand-picked

by Barnett, and because shop owners cannot pay to receive an editorial review, users don’t have to worry about getting caught in a marketing gimmick. Even before its public launch, the site already features 1,700 store reviews written by Barnett and her editorial staff. Each store’s dedicated page features an editorial review, a direct link to the store Web site and a hint of the labels to be found in the store. Users can search for boutiques near them, shops with specific products, or a certain vibe or style.

But Barnett said the site, which is free for users, caters to shoppers of all types, not just designer mavens or dedicated shopaholics.

“It’s not about the acquisition of the thing, it’s about the experience, spending the afternoon with your best friend and meeting the shop owner,” she said. “It’s about discovery. It’s about the places, and not about the things to buy.”

Registered site members can create their own shopping profile, gain access to exclusive discounts and join the site’s social network by sending other members messages, posting their own shopping guides and sharing information about hidden treasures or sample sales. Interactive maps allow user to select a region, pick and choose what stores they’d like to visit and print a map of their customized shopping expedition. Then, the maps can be saved and published to the community.

Barnett credits Cathie Black, a publishing legend and president of Hearst Magazines, with advising her current project at the nexus of business and media. Last week, Black filmed a feature segment on the Oprah Winfrey Show to promote her new book, “Basic Black: The Essential Guide for Getting

Ahead at Work (and in Life).”

The segment featured Barnett as a young woman whose career had been influenced by Black.

“I was less than 10 feet away from Oprah. It was so freaking cool,” Meredith gushed. Barnett flew to Chicago for an on-camera inter view with Oprah after the crew filmed Store Adore’s temporary headquarters — Barnett’s apartment.

Two of Barnett’s Brown classmates have been crucial in getting Store Adore off the ground. Programmer Sharif Corinaldi ’00 and Barnett were hall-mates in Everett House as first-year students, and programmer Ryan Mizuno, who attended Brown until his junior year, took classes with Barnett during their freshman year. Studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Barnett got her first taste of business as an informal travel guide writer. In Providence, she edited the guidebook “Around and About Providence” through Brown Student Agencies.

Joining the Brown trio at Store Adore is Barnett’s childhood friend and soon-to-be maid of honor Cristina Miller. Miller recently left her job to work with Barnett full-time. Though mixing business with friendship may be tricky, Barnett said working with her best friend is a “wonderful dream come true.”

“I remember one day we were in the throes of the negotiating part of the business, and it was a hard day for both us. That same day we were supposed to look at wedding dresses,” she said. “I learned then, at the end of the day, no matter what we did we can still be friends and put things aside.”

“To have somebody that you trust, that you know is going to get things done and pull through, that would never happen under other circumstances,” Barnett said. “I don’t have to worr y about that.

If someone else came in with different skills and experiences ... there’s no way I could (ever) trust them as much.”

What advice would Barnett offer to current students possibly interested in following her footsteps in the fashion and business worlds?

“Remember that you aren’t going to be the boss on the first day. We all have to work our way up. We’re having the time of our lives, but it’s not glamorous at all.”

Mystics, Moralists and Diviners,” taught by Professor of Religious Studies Harold Roth; a Brown Christian Fellowship meeting; Sunday morning Catholic mass; a meditation session run by the Brown Zen Community; Thursday night interfaith supper at Janet Cooper Nelson’s house; an Imani Jubilee service; and a Chinese lion dance perfomance.

“They saw a fairly broad spectrum,” Cooper Nelson said.

The PBS crew interviewed Danyel Currie ’08, a leader with Imani Jubilee, and former Interfaith House roommates Yael Richardson ’08 and Atena Asiaii ’08, as well as Cooper Nelson, Associate University Chaplain Rumee Ahmed and Senior Associate University Chaplain Alan Flam.

The crew also looked for nonbelievers, but atheists proved more difficult to find. “We were on campus in the college green, we were asking, ‘Do you believe in God?’ We found one skeptic, riding a bike,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein said the interfaith relations on campus particularly impressed her. “I think the most interesting thing that we found was that students for various religions all felt the same way that when they were able to be with kids from other religions they were able to critique their own religions.”

The filming of religious ser-

vices proved tricky in some instances. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t offend anyone by having them film on Shabbat because there is a Jewish law that you shouldn’t profit from actions done by non-Jews on Shabbat, and we worried about people being uncomfortable about a secret space,” said Jacob Baskin ’08, executive vice president of Hillel’s student board. “But we also wanted to show PBS a view of Jewish life on campus as best we could.”

To compromise, services began at 5:30 p.m. instead of the usual 6:10 p.m. on Friday, so the first 40 minutes, when the filming took place, wasn’t technically the Sabbath.

The crew was also sensitive while filming Muslim students at prayer. “When shooting at a mosque, (Muslims) prefer if you don’t shoot them from behind. We would shoot from the front or the side — not the back,” Goldstein said. “We try to be as sensitive as possible. A lot of people feel that prayer should be a very private time. If people didn’t want us to shoot of course we wouldn’t.”

Cooper Nelson hoped the filming would be an opportunity to educate the general public about religion. “The general level of ignorance about society is reflected in the way the media asks the wrong questions about religion,” she said. “There’s a lot of bigotry about religion, and I think the press misses opportunities.”

Students, faculty petition URC continued from page 1 told by a library official that the library budget did not cover the $48,000 annual subscription and that Shibusawa should “whisper in the right ear.”

“We thought this might be the right ear,” she said.

Kertzer indicated that the subscription would not be a line item in the budget and that it could be funded by a general increase in the library budget, which library officials would need to request.

Johnson also said the University must increase graduate funding in order to remain competitive with its peer institutions and to improve the scholarship of its students, adding that many doctoral candidates can take as many as 10 years to complete their degrees, while Brown only guarantees five years of funding. “I think it’s also essential for Brown’s reputation in general,” she said.

Elizabeth Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration and a member of the URC, responded that the 10-year figure is a result of other universities’ lessthan-full support for their students, which forces grad students to teach and thus take longer to complete their doctorate. Huidekoper added that Brown has taken great strides to become more competitive in grad student support.

“If you compare where we are to just a few years ago, we’re way better off,” she said.

Kertzer said Dean of the Graduate School Sheila Bonde hopes to approve all requests for sixth-year funding this year, as Grad School officials did last year.

Other faculty members discussed the need to increase departmental operating budgets to keep pace with the increased size of the faculty, one result of the Plan for Academic En-

richment. Kertzer responded that the plan would be reviewed at the Corporation’s February meeting.

For now, “I’m sure the Dean of Faculty (Rajiv Vohra P’07) feels that he’s been given his marching orders,” Kertzer said.

Julia Beamesder fer ’09 and Kirsten Howard ’09 represented the climate neutrality advocacy group emPOWER, asking the URC to adopt the recommendation of the Energy and Environmental Advisory Committee to reduce the University’s carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

“We have shown that climate change is a very important issue for students here,” Beamesderfer said. Undergraduate Council of Students President Michael Glassman ’09 cited a UCS survey showing 58 percent of the student body supported investment in reducing emissions, even at the expense of other programs.

Glassman also raised a number of other student concerns, including financial aid, housing and the availability of a printed version of the course bulletin.

“That recommendation has made its way up, and I think there will be some movement there,” Kertzer said of the printed course bulletin.

Donna Mitchell, administrative manager of the Africana Studies department, said the University’s recent growth has led to a “domino effect” on its support staff, which is now “overburdened, overworked and underpaid.” She also said many University rooms remain inaccessible to the handicapped, including Wilson 102, where the meeting was held.

Kertzer responded that the URC did, in fact, plan to hold a future forum in an accessible venue. The next forum is scheduled for Nov. 9, according to the provost’s Web site.

C ampus n ews Tuesday, October 23, 2007

U. boosts grad student housing offerings on College Hill

By Jacob Tower Contributing Writer

Twenty-two new graduate student apartments opened this year at 71-73 Charlesfield St., the largest step in recent years in the University’s effort to create a centralized community for grad students on College Hill.

While officials say there is no housing crunch for grad and medical students, including that population in campus life still remains a priority.

Currently, only 10 percent of graduate students are housed in University-owned buildings, and 98 percent of grad students live off campus, with only 55 beds of dormitory-style oncampus housing in Miller Hall on Pembroke campus. The University provides one-bedroom and efficiency units and some two-bedroom units for about 120 graduate students.

Chad Galts, communications director for the Graduate School, said the high number of grad students living off campus is “totally average” compared to other schools.

But Rich Maher GS, a secondyear grad student and secretary of

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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

the Graduate Student Council, said he’d like to see Brown make more of an effort to provide centralized housing for the fragmented grad student population. “We come from all over the country and all over the world ... and it can be hard since we don’t all know Providence,” he said.

It can be particularly difficult for incoming first-year grad students to get settled, he said, and the University should make more housing options available. “I think if the University developed something exclusively for graduate students, there would be interest particularly among first-year students,” Maher said.

As a result of the Campaign for Academic Enrichment, the University has been improving upon the existing graduate housing program by increasing its offerings and creating more appealing living environments for graduate students. This year, the University opened a formerly vacant property at 71-73 Charlesfield St., after spending about $2 million on renovations to develop the 22 apartcontinued on page 6

writing african histor y

From the lectern to the stage: Bio dean Thompson plays the blues

By Caroline Sedano Contributing Writer

Singer-songwriter Marjorie Thompson has toured all over the world, playing folk and blues finger guitar for crowds of a thousand. She teaches guitar with Jorma Kaukonen, former lead guitarist for Jefferson Airplane.

But Thompson hasn’t quit her day job — associate dean of biological sciences at Brown. Beyond her teaching, advising and planning duties for the Division of Biology and Medicine, Thompson has just released her fourth album, “Right

By Me,” comprising mostly original blues and folk songs.

“Sometimes I wake up and ask, ‘Who am I today?’ ” Thompson said.

In addition to fulfilling the demands of being a dean, throughout the school year she travels all around to teach guitar workshops and to perform. “The medium is different, but for me my life at the University and with my guitar are very similar — both involve instruction, education, creativity, passion.”

“I don’t know how she juggles it all,” said Fred Jackson, the director of the Plant Environmental Center, who has worked with Thompson in her professional capacity at Brown.

“She’s all over the world all the time, but it never detracts from her job.

She continues to do both things with such great enthusiasm.”

“I try to keep them separate, so people know that I value Brown,” Thompson said. “But my students

Courtesy of Marjorie Thompson

Associate Dean of Biological Sciences Marjorie Thompson performs her guitar act in front of hundreds — when she’s not lecturing.

and other professors have listened to my music and come to shows — it’s nice to share that with them.”

Although both music and biology have always been essential to Thompson’s life, it wasn’t until recently that she began making a career out of her music. After attending a workshop program for musicians in 1999, Thompson began writing in 2001 — and has received critical success with her four albums.

“It was never my goal — just playing guitar was all I wanted. I started writing songs by accident,

and it became a central part of my life,” Thompson said. She released her first album soon after and immediately began touring.

“It was a wild experience — I don’t get stage fright before teaching, but I did with my music. My music is more personal, I felt more exposed,” Thompson said. When she first started performing she played at venues on campus and in Providence. Since then she has played venues of a thousand people continued on page 6

Nanotechnology enters the unexplored

By Joanna Wohlmuth Contributing Writer

Oona Curley / Herald Paul Nugent, professor of comparative history and director of the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh, delivered the first lecture in a series titled “Contemporary Africa: Writing Its History” Monday in MacMillan 117.

One of science’s newest frontiers is tiny — and in this case, size is exactly what matters. As national interest in nanotechnology has increased, a Brown interdisciplinary research team has been looking at so-called “green” nanomaterials to gather more data on their toxicity in consumer products and to find new medical applications. Their research will be part of the work of the University’s Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation, which was formed in May to unite the resources from different disciplines involved in nanomaterial research.

Nanomaterials are particles between 0 and 100 nanometers, putting them on the same scale as DNA molecules. Unique properties often emerge when common substances are studied on the nano scale that differ greatly from those normally obser ved in the substance. Constant development of new nanomaterial formulations means that there are hundreds of new substances available for research.

Last May, the Corporation, the University’s top governing body, approved the creation of the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation. The institute, chaired

by Professor of Engineering Robert Hurt, includes 55 faculty members and has a wing in the Metcalf Research Laboratory.

Its Web site will be ready before the spring semester and will

provide information on research, seminars and courses. Although there will not be a degree program, tracks are being developed for chemistry, engineering, biology and medical students that are interested in the field.

Hurt’s own research on nanomaterials began four years ago with Agnes Kane, professor of medical science. An interdisciplinary team was formed then to study the then-largely unexplored realm of science. Now, Hurt and Kane’s research will go on under the auspices of the institute, which will build on the original team.

Nanomaterial research requires collaboration from a variety of disciplines, including chemistry, physics, engineering, biology and medicine. Faculty, technicians, undergraduates and post-doctoral fellows make up the 15- to 20- person research team looking at nanomaterials’ applications.

Many other universities and laboratories are also working with nanomaterials, but what sets the work at Brown apart is the emphasis placed on developing “green” nanomaterials that can be safely exposed to humans and the environment, Kane said.

The commercial production, use and disposal of products containing nanomaterials could cause exposure to harmful elements that researchers are trying to avoid by developing formulations with similar — but less toxic — qualities.

Kane and Hurt first became involved in nanomaterial research while Kane was studying asbestos,

and they realized that Hurt, who had been working with nanomaterials since 2000, could make asbestos-like substances. They began researching the possible health effects of these new substances at the same time that people around the country were gaining interest in nanomaterials.

Xinyuan Liu GS presented research on reducing the toxicity of single carbon nanotubes, which have commercial applications, at the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting and Exposition in 2006 and at the American Carbon Society Conference in July, where she was the only person to address toxicity. Although more people are becoming interested and involved in health and environmental effects of nanomaterials, most research is still in early stages, Liu said.

Interest in nanomaterials has existed for over a decade, but only in the last few years have there been developments in their use in consumer products. Since nanomaterials are just being introduced, scientists hope that testing on their effects can be done prior to their widespread use because in the past, products were put on the market before long-term consequences of their use were known, Kane said.

One of the first uses for nanomaterials was in medical imaging, and additional medical applications, particularly in cancer treatment and prevention, are now being studied. continued on page 6

Page 6

New institute to study ‘green’ nanomaterials continued from page 5 “Nanotechnology has so much potential. You can make better things and make people’s lives better in so many different ways,” said Love Sarin GS, who is working on using nanomaterials in the treatment of mesothelioma.

“Brown is in a very unique position to be able to carry out interdisciplinary research like this,” Kane

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

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said, citing the relatively small size of the faculty and campus which allows easy discourse among departments.

“It is an exciting area for study in the future, and now we will have a visible institute,” Hurt said. “People are very interested in alternative energy but nanotechnology is the other thing that gets people interested in something to catch their imagination.”

University boosts grad housing continued from page 5 ments.

To provide for visiting scholars’ accommodations — which are currently scattered around College Hill — the Office of Auxiliary Housing recently proposed a similar project to the University to develop 28 new apartments in a formerly vacant property, slated to cost about $4 million.

In 2004, the University began offering guaranteed housing for firstyear graduate students coming to Brown from more than 1,000 miles away. Because students must start looking for housing far in advance of their arrival on campus, finding housing is difficult or impossible for most foreign students, said Gail Medbury, director of the Office of Auxiliary Housing. But with 35 percent of the graduate population coming from abroad, many first-year grads can take advantage of the guaranteed housing.

About 70 students typically apply for the guarantee. After these spots are taken, there are usually enough left over so that the University can take applications from other students as well, fulfilling their requests on a first-come, first-serve basis. Medbury and Galts said the guarantee has been

easy to accommodate, putting no additional pressure on the University to meet students’ housing needs.

New dorms constructed by Johnson & Wales University and Providence College have also made additional off-campus rental housing available, creating an abundance of housing in the rental market in recent years.

In the fall of 2005, 500 Rhode Island School of Design students who had been living primarily off campus moved into a new dormitory, creating housing vacancies on the East Side.

For Brown grad students, this meant more ample housing opportunities on College Hill. The new dorms, combined with many potential rental tenants’ decision to buy instead of lease property in Providence, have caused the local rental market to go soft, Medbury said.

“Overall, this is a self-rental market,” Medbury said of graduate and visiting scholar housing. “A lot of the people that would spend $1,200 a month on a monthly rental decided to buy something.”

Though Galts and Medbury said grad housing is not an administrative concern given what they see as ample supply, Galts said the University could always do more.

“Do we wish we could do more?

Yeah,” Galts said. “(The) problem has solved itself in a certain way. Is it the best way? I don’t know.”

For the last several years, developing additional grad housing has been repeatedly proposed as a possible project for the Plan for Academic Enrichment as the University seeks to strengthen a campus sense of community for the currently scattered grad student population. The University has explored potential expansion into the Jewelry District and has already begun acquiring properties in the area for administrative and research purposes. A working group was assembled to explore the options for graduate student housing, and in May 2006 an online survey polled fellows, grad and medical students and post-doctoral fellows about housing in the Jewelry District.

Of the 2,750 contacted, 56 percent responded and 55 percent of those respondents expressed a desire to live in the Jewelry District. The working group concluded that between 400 and 950 students and fellows could potentially be interested in living in the area.

In a February report, the working group noted that while there is no housing shortage putting pressure on the University to build additional grad housing, “the University’s interest in building such housing is a reflection of the desire to provide greater community-building opportunities for this constituency as well as to remain competitive among its peers who do make housing options available and convenient to graduate students.”

Thompson: bio prof by day, musician by night continued from page 5 in Italy and played with some of her own guitar heroes — Dan Hicks, Hot Tuna and New Riders of Purple Sage.

“It’s very gratifying that they are all smart and good people, and not a lot of ego and airs, just people who love the music,” Thompson said.

“But the best thing about writing and performing is the new levels it has taken my guitar playing — since I started writing, I’ve improved as a musician.”

Thompson’s success has also brought her musical and academic lives closer together.

“I have been requested to do college consults with high school-aged kids of booking agents or people I’m performing with,” Thompson said.

She has also been a guest lecturer in a music class at Brown.

The connections between these two parts of her life are more fundamental than they seem, she said.

“When you are teaching, you are communicating and entertaining, and I see those skills as being parallel. When I teach about liver, I’m not thinking about music. But getting across ideas and getting them excited about it is the same,” Thompson said.

“I’m still working on connecting with the audience. It’s really something when you can see people so close to you responding or being moved by your music. Then again, sometimes it’s like telling a joke and no one laughs.”

“She gets the best of both worlds, that makes her even more dynamic,” Jackson said. “I don’t know what she’s going to do when she makes it big.”

W orld & n ation Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Case against Islamic charity ends in mistrial

By Peter Whoriskey Washington Post

The trial against what was once the nation’s largest Islamic charity ended in a mistrial Monday as federal prosecutors failed to gain a conviction on charges that the group’s leaders had funneled millions of dollars to Mideast terrorists.

The jurors in the high-profile case acquitted Mohammad ElMezain, the former chairman of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, on virtually all the charges brought against him and deadlocked on the other charges that had been lodged against four other former leaders of the charity.

Monday’s developments were a setback for the Bush administration, which had frozen the group’s finances three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and indicted its officials three years later on charges that they provided funds in support of Hamas, a militant Palestinian group the United States considers a terrorist organization.

During the trial the government did not argue that Holy Land directly supported terrorists groups.

Instead, prosecutors asserted that the charity provided money to committees in the West Bank and Gaza that were controlled by Hamas and, in doing so, created good will toward the militant organization, helping it recruit members.

But at least some of the jurors apparently did not see strong links between the charity and terrorists.

Juror William Neal told the Associated Press that the panel found little evidence against El-Mezain, Mufid Abdulqader, a top fundraiser for Holy Land and Abdulrahman Odeh, the group’s New Jersey representative, and was evenly split on charges against Shukri Abu Baker, the charity’s former chief executive and former Holy Land chairman Ghassan Elashi, who were seen as Holy Land’s principal leaders.

“I thought they were not guilty across the board,” said Neal, 33, an art director from Dallas. The case “was strung together with macaroni noodles. There was so little evidence.”

News of the mistrial set off a celebration of the defendants supporters outside the Dallas federal courthouse where the trial was held. The crowd held some of the defendants aloft and cheered. The lack of convictions showed that at trial facts had triumphed over fear, they said.

“It’s a huge sense of relief,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who was there. “Twelve regular people in the U.S. couldn’t be convinced to issue a single guilty verdict. That’s a sign of good news that the justice system is working and the campaign of fear is apparently not working.”

Under a judge’s order, neither the prosecutors nor the defense attorneys were allowed to comment on the trial. Prosecutors said in the courtroom that they would probably retry the charity’s leaders.

The FBI had begun to investigate the case as far back as 1993, but it was not until the Sept. 11 attacks that the government decided to move against the group.

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David Zaring, a visiting professor at Vanderbilt Law School who has written about the financial aspects of the war on terror, says that the closure of Holy Land and other similar charities and the subsequent failure to convict their operators of financing terrorism raises questions about fairness.

“The difficulty the government has had in getting convictions in these cases suggests to me that there is something wrong with the process and the targets of the closures,” he said.

During the trial in U.S. District Court , prosecutors charged that the men had essentially operated as part of a Hamas conspiracy. According to prosecutors, the charity work funded by the foundation, which included aiding schools and donating food and medicine , was done in the name of the Hamas and helped the group win a campaign of “hearts and minds” among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

They presented evidence showing that the Holy Land officials sometimes sympathized with the anger, and even the actions, of extremists.

In one wiretapped call played at the trial, for example, one of the men describes a suicide bombing near Tel Aviv as a “beautiful operation.”

The defendants faced counts of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization, providing material support to a terrorist organization, conspiracy to launder money and other charges.

But defense attorneys argued that their clients, while sympathetic with Hamas, were engaged in bona fide efforts to relieve hunger and medical crises in the West Bank and Gaza.

There was no dispute at the trial that the foundation had sent money to aid the ZAKAT, or charity, committees in Gaza and the West Bank.

One of the key questions at trial was whether those zakat committees aided by Holy Land were part of Hamas, the militant organization.

On that point there were two critical opposing witnesses.

For the federal prosecutors, there was an Israeli security officer identified at trial only as “Avi.” He said the groups aided by the Holy Land Foundation were unquestionably part of Hamas.

The defense countered with Edward Abington, formerly the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem and the State Department’s second-highestranking intelligence official. Abington testified that during his years in the region, when he received daily CIA briefings, he was never told that the Palestinian charity committees aided by the Holy Land Foundation were controlled by Hamas.

In closing arguments, defense attorneys appealed to jurors to sympathize with the poor of Gaza and West Bank who had been aided by the Holy Land defendants and to look skeptically at the claims of the Israeli security agent.

Without Holy Land, “I wonder where those families go,” defense attorney Lindo Moreno told jurors.

“I wonder where those children go.

Do they go to the government of Israel? Does the cynicism and cruelty of this prosecution inspire any hope that these people will be helped?”

Bush calls on Iraq to stop Kurdish rebels

By Robin Wright and Michael Abramowitz Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The United States has warned Iraqi leaders to take concrete steps to crack down on Kurdish rebels operating against Turkey from northern Iraq, as Turkey Monday dispatched more troops and heavy weaponry toward the Iraqi border.

President Bush Monday personally reached out to the leaders of both countries in an effort to prevent an outbreak of open hostilities. Over the past two days, top U.S. officials have made clear to Turkish, Iraqi and Kurdish leaders that Washington fully backs Turkey in the growing crisis, administration sources said.

Twelve Turkish soldiers were killed and eight others taken captive in an ambush Sunday by Kurdish rebels who crossed from Iraq into Turkey in a brazen nighttime attack.

Iraq now bears responsibility for containing and then dismantling the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a separatist movement from Turkey that maintains camps in northern Iraq, U.S. officials said.

Bush has been drawn into the crisis with Turkey as relations deteriorated over the attacks from Iraq as well as by a recent House committee resolution that denounced as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by Turkey in 1915. A longtime NATO ally, Turkey has provided critical logistical support for U.S. air operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With Turkey sending a convoy of about 50 Turkish military vehicles toward the Iraqi border, President Bush called Turkish President Abdullah Gul to express “deep con-

cern” about the attacks against Turkish soldiers and civilians. He also pledged to work with Turkey and Iraq to “combat” cross-border PKK operations, National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

But the United States is also urging Turkey not to make unilateral strikes until Iraq has an chance to deal with the Kurdish rebels, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. “From our perspective this is a diplomatic full-court press. We want to see an outcome where you have the Turks and the Iraqis working together and we will do what we can to resolve the issue without a Turkish cross-border incursion,” he said.

In conversations Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for a “few days,” Turkish sources said. But the Turks may not allow much more. “If expected developments do not take place in the next few days, we will have to take care of our own situation,” Erdogan said Monday.

Bush administration officials say the upsurge in PKK attacks in southeastern Turkey over the past few weeks has complicated diplomatic efforts. “It’s not just telling the Turks `restraint, restraint, restraint.’

Urging restraint at this stage will fall on deaf ears,” a senior U.S. official familiar with the diplomacy said. “Our message has been that we share completely your outrage at the attacks, but be smart about what you do.”

Bush also held a videoconference Monday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, after telephone calls from Rice and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to Iraqi

Kurdish leaders on Sunday. The United States is not prescribing a specific formula, U.S. officials said, but wants to see Baghdad and the Kurdish regional provincial government in northern Iraq to take tough measures, such as securing the borders to prevent guerrilla incursions, interdicting rebel operatives, arresting the group’s leaders, or putting Iraqi forces around the PKK camps in the rugged Qandil mountain range.

“Part of the message is that you have to get serious. The Turks are under attack and have shown responsibility. You should, too,” the senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“The other part of the message to Iraq and the Kurdish regional government is: Why risk it all? Look at your own interests. Why put at risk all the prosperity and security achieved in the Kurdish region by alienating a neighbor?” he added.

The administration is pressing for urgent action, seeking a resolution of the crisis before a regional meeting on Iraq that Turkey is scheduled to host in Istanbul on Nov. 2 and 3, State Department officials said Monday. In a joint statement with visiting British Foreign Minister David Milliband, Rice said they are proposing a meeting of a tripartite committee — made of the Iraq, Turkey and the United States — at the November regional meeting to discuss ways to implement an agreement between Iraq and Turkey on combating terrorism.

In a joint statement, Rice and Milliband called on Iraqi and Kurdish regional government authorities to take “immediate steps” to halt PKK operations from Iraq.

Double mastectomies on the rise in U.S.

By Thomas H. Maugh II Los Angeles Times

The number of women having both breasts removed after a tumor is found in one increased by 150 percent over a five-year period despite a lack of evidence showing that double mastectomies increase survival in most women, researchers reported Monday.

Current guidelines for treatment of a localized breast cancer call only for removal of the tumor and not for a mastectomy -- much less a double mastectomy.

But an increasing number of women, particularly young white women, are pushing for the more aggressive procedure for reasons that are not totally clear, the researchers said.

They surmised that some women believe the health-care system did not detect their tumor early enough and that continued screening would not be effective, while others might have been traumatized by chemotherapy. Improvements in reconstructive surgery also have made a double mastectomy a more acceptable alternative.

“If they are making this decision based on fear, and thinking that it will increase their survival, then that would concern me,” said Dr. Julie Gralow of the University of Washington, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

“But if they understand that it won’t necessarily improve their survival, and that emotionally it is the

best thing for them, then we would have to support it,” said Gralow, who was not involved in the study.

Dr. Benjamin Paz of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Southern California, however, finds the trend “alarming, because the goal of medicine is to help people live well with their organs.”

Paz, who was not involved in the study, attributes the trend in large part to the increasing use of MRI imaging, which reveals many small lesions in breasts that weren’t observed before.

“A woman goes through this, and she feels that (the cancer) is spreading all over,” he said. “It is very difficult to explain to such a woman that she can be treated with breast conservation.”

An estimated 178,480 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society, and about 40,460 will die of it.

Dr. Todd M. Tuttle of the University of Minnesota Medical School and his colleagues decided to perform the study because they had noticed an increasing incidence of double mastectomies but could find no data about the frequency of its occurrence.

They used data from the federal government’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results cancer registry, which included information from 16 regions that represent about 26 percent of the country. They identified 152,755 patients with cancer

in a single breast during the period 1998 to 2003.

They reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that, over the fiveyear period, 57.8 percent of women who received surgery underwent breast-conser ving surger y, also known as a lumpectomy, and 38.9 percent had a unilateral mastectomy.

Overall, the rate of double mastectomies rose from 1.8 percent in 1998 to 4.5 percent in 2003, the latest period for which data is available.

Among women having a mastectomy, the proportion having the second breast removed as a prophylactic rose from 4.2 percent in 1998 to 11 percent in 2003.

“Some women are so traumatized by having a breast cancer, especially if it is not found early, that they have a lack of trust in the whole system of finding the next one early,” said Dr. Christy A. Russell of the University of Southern California ‘s Keck School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. “It seems easier to remove everything and not have to deal with mammography screening any more.”

Both Paz and Russell also noted that they spend a great deal of time counseling patients about the potential problems and benefits of double mastectomies.

“The breast is a sexual organ, and they need to understand the implications of having both removed, in terms not only of physical appearance but also of their sex life and sexuality,” Russell said.

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With $450m in debt, U. explores new spending discipline continued from page 1 by the end of the current fiscal year, next June — just under half of the total reserves allotted.

The University expects revenues to grow faster than expenditures in coming years, Huidekoper said, but it is unclear when the gap between the two will close and end the need to spend reserves.

Huidekoper emphasized that the deficit spending could not continue indefinitely. When asked if the University budget would return to breaking even within five years of the campaign’s 2010 conclusion, Huidekoper said, “I think it’s got to be.”

The University Resources Committee, which recommends the University’s annual budget to the president and Corporation, wrote in its February 2007 report that “it is

clear that the University’s aspirations will continue to require the investment of reserves and balances for the next five to seven years.”

“We went forward with a very ambitious project ... on the expectation that the revenues would come forward,” Huidekoper said.

But strong returns from the campaign are just one of the gains the University will need to close its budget deficits in the future. In addition to increased annual giving and “cash flow into the endowment,” the University is relying on improved returns from the endowment, increased government funding and continued growth of tuition and fees to make up the difference, Huidekoper said.

Tight budgets ahead University officials have little margin for error in future budgets,

as unforeseen expenditures — most notably the recent decision to construct a new $35-million aquatics facility to replace the moribund Smith Swim Center, which was shuttered last spring after structural deficiencies were discovered in its roof — have tested the resiliency of officials’ plans in recent years.

According to Huidekoper, such unexpected expenses and cost increases — everything from complying with fire codes to rising energy prices and a burst pipe on the Main Green in February 2006 — have forced University officials to keep a vigilant eye on the budget.

The University has “slowed some things” in light of unforeseen expenses, Huidekoper said.

“We’ve been very tight on salary increases for staff and others,” she added.

In March, before University officials had announced the swim center’s permanent closure, Simmons told the faculty that the University’s financial situation was “pushing the envelope.”

In addition to strong returns from the campaign and improved endowment payouts, the University’s future plans “also depend on our ability to achieve more than $5 million in budget reallocations and revenue increases over the next four years,” according to February’s URC report.

Further unexpected costs would necessitate reallocation of existing funds, Huidekoper said, as little room remains in the plan to absorb contingencies.

Continuing growth from a variety of revenue sources will be important, Huidekoper said. Strong Annual Fund returns in fiscal year 2007, for example, led the University to use several million dollars less in reserves than projected.

Strong returns from other parts of the campaign will also be impor-

tant, she said, and the University is taking steps to better leverage its endowment and manage the funds it has on hand at any given time more effectively and more aggressively to get a “higher return on those funds than we have in the past.”

Another crucial revenue source is government grants, Huidekoper said. The University will start renegotiations this winter on a crucial rate governing reimbursements it receives from the federal government for research.

“That has to go up, because it’s an important revenue source,” Huidekoper said.

Managing risk, making exceptions Officials also took steps to keep the University from “getting out ahead” of itself at the outset of the spate of current initiatives, Huidekoper said.

One such measure was outlined

by Simmons at a faculty meeting earlier this month, when she explained that she had promised the Corporation, when it approved the Plan for Academic Enrichment, that the University would pause to reassess plans “midstream.” Eschewing specifics, she told the faculty that “no budget can bear a limitless succession of good ideas” and mentioned that growth in the University’s administrative structures should be examined closely.

Simmons said she plans to report to the Corporation in February with the results of that reassessment.

The Corporation also bolstered its own guidelines governing construction projects early on in the effort, Huidekoper said, requiring that 50 percent of a project’s total funds be secured before an architect can be hired. The required amount was previously 20 percent.

But, underscoring recent pressures, the Corporation recently made two exceptions to that

guideline, selecting architects to proceed with planning for the new swim center and the long-planned and recently renamed Mind, Brain and Behavior Building without that level of funding in place, Huidekoper said.

The decision to proceed with both projects was made in recognition of “extenuating circumstances,” she said.

The unexpected aquatics center project needed to proceed quickly, she said, and the Corporation determined that the Mind, Brain and Behavior building, which will house offices and labs for the cognitive and linguistic sciences, represented a pressing enough academic priority to move ahead.

Few donations have been secured for that project since funds originally donated for that building by liquor magnate Sidney Frank ’42 were redirected to the recently completed Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences.

The University is taking a “little bit of risk” moving ahead with planning for the cognitive science building, but the decision would not have been made without a “certain amount of confidence” that the funds would come for ward, Huidekoper said.

“We’ve got to do some serious fundraising for these two projects,” she added.

Corporation guidelines also stipulate that 100 percent of construction and operation costs should be in place before construction begins on a project, Huidekoper said.

A modest debt burden Despite the planned annual deficits and recent uptick in the University’s outstanding debt — necessitated by the ongoing capital projects — the University’s financial situation remains stable. S&P assessed Brown as a low-risk borrower in a June 2007 analysis that touted the University’s fiscal health, citing Brown’s “stable outlook” and “modest debt burden,” even after the recent rise.

The University currently has about $450 million in outstanding debt, meaning the University’s annual debt service stands to be about 3 percent of its total budget for the foreseeable future, according to the S&P report. Much of that total debt has been assumed in the past several years, and that figure could still grow as Brown expects to take on “a couple hundred million dollars over the next few years” in further debt, Huidekoper said.

That debt would likely be used to help finance the next round of construction projects, such as the $50-million Nelson Fitness Center, a new Creative Arts Center and the new cognitive and linguistic sciences building.

The $60 million in reserve funding approved by the Corporation — $50 million for the general budget and an additional $10 million for the Division of Biology and Medicine — represents roughly half of the University’s overall reserves, though the funds take a variety of forms, some of which are easier to tap than others, Huidekoper said.

Reserve funds can range from previous years’ budget surpluses and other past savings, which are relatively easy to use, to “rainy day” funds and so-called “quasi-endowment” — endowment principle that the University technically is allowed to spend. The University would tap into such reserves only under situations of extreme necessity, Huidekoper said.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

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Multiracial Week kickoff explores identity M. water polo continued from page 1 slam poet and spoken word performer. Fulbeck spoke about the concept of constructed identity and shared stories about feeling too white to fit into his Chinese family as a child while simultaneously encountering stereotypes and ridicule for his Asian heritage at school.

Through poetr y, short films and an unscripted speech, Fulbeck urged listeners to take control of their own identities — much in the way the part-Asian community reassumed control of the word “Hapa,” which was once a racial slur. He went on to explain that when he was born in 1965, his parents’ interracial marriage was still illegal in 17 states, and that it was not until 2000 that the U.S. census allowed citizens to check more than one race-identifying box.

Fulbeck showed images from his newest book, “Part Asian: 100% Hapa,” a series of portraits of people who identify as Hapa.

For the book, Fulbeck instructed his subjects to provide a simple explanation of who they were, including background, upbringing or any fact the subject felt to be relevant. Fulbeck said he only included portraits of people with the most interesting self-explanations, such as a young Hapa boy who

wrote, “boy. Elijah. purple belt.”

Fulbeck, who wore jeans and began his presentation with references to Britney Spears, Nicole Richie and Radiohead, was able to connect with his audience exactly as event planners predicted.

“He’s entertaining and funny and his humor cuts across all races and ethnicities,” said Amy Tan ’09, one of the event’s coordinators.

This year’s theme for Multiracial Heritage Week is “Spectrums of Identity: Illuminating our Connections.” Event coordinators Amy Tan ’09 and Kevin O’Brien ’09 told The Herald they are using the week to present issues that permanently affect the multiracial community, such as “passing,” “exotification” and the push to classify multiracial people into their individual backgrounds.

“I think it really goes back to this sense of confusion about identity, balancing different backgrounds, how that plays out in the household, how your parents raise you, whether or not they try to instill values from their culture, whether one dominates that discussion,” O’Brien said.

Tan said many people don’t realize that identifying as multiracial is an option before coming to Brown. She told a story about a friend’s experience explaining to a freshman that a Hapa is a person

who is part Asian.

“She said, ‘Oh! I think that’s what I am!’ ” Tan said, laughing.

This experience with encountering identity is overreaching in the multiracial community, O’Brien explained, citing the general urge to categorize a multiracial person with what he calls the “uncomfortable question.”

“People always ask, ‘What are you?’ Why can’t I just be me? Why do you have to box me in? Why do you have to see me as one race or another?” O’Brien said.

Tan agreed. “People have asked me what my ethnic background is before they ask my name,” she said.

This need to classify according to one background or another is exactly what O’Brien and Tan hope Multiracial Heritage week will help eradicate. “People find themselves straddling two disparate worlds and have had to make a choice,” Tan said.

The other issues to be addressed by Multiracial Heritage Week, passing and exotification, are also relevant in Brown’s multiracial community. Passing, as the name suggests, is when a multiracial person can pass for a single ethnicity.

“If people think you’re only Asian, let’s say, they’ll say things about white men dating Asian women and how that’s a problem,”

Tan said. “But I’m the product of an interracial relationship.”

Exotification, on the other hand, is a term given for the stereotypes and physical expectations placed on multiracial people.

“I know some people will say, ‘Oh, Hapas are so hot,’ and that’s not true,” Tan said. “There are beautiful and ugly people in every ethnicity. Having this idealized type of a race is a problem, and it’s also incorrect.”

Soroko expressed concern regarding the accessibility of Multicultural Heritage Week to all cultures. “None of the events that we co-sponsor are exclusive to any one group — all people are welcome,” Soroko said. “We’d love for people to come, ask questions that they are intrigued or challenged by, use it as an opportunity for not only education but also to learn about multiracial education.”

Events for Multiracial Heritage Week are scheduled through the beginning of November, including an interracial dating forum Monday that usually draws the largest crowd, event organizers noted. Full schedules of the week’s events were dropped in ever y student mailbox and are also available through a link on the Third World Center’s Web site.

takes three

continued from page 12 “We went into every quarter, every possession of the game, with the mindset that it was a tie game,” Holland said. “We kept pushing and fighting hard for four quarters, and had one of the best games of our season.”

The Bears’ solid defense and counterattack finally came together, and not only did Brown take the lead early on, but it maintained the advantage without wavering. Other than the first quarter, when Brown and George Washington were tied, the Bears held the lead for the remainder of the game.

Grant LeBeau ’09, Hank Weintraub ’09 and Gartner had three goals apiece, while Holland made 15 saves, putting him at 31 for all three Saturday contests.

In their last week of regular season play, the Bears will face Harvard on Thursday at Blodgett Pool and will host the Wheaton College Lakers in their only “home” game of the season at Wheaton in Norton, Mass., on Friday.

Now that the Bears are conscious of their penchant for letting early leads slip away, they look forward to continuing to improve in the second halves of games.

“Ever ything is starting to come together, and we are starting to realize the extreme potential of this year’s team,” Holland said.

Panel discusses Myanmar’s future continued from page 1 He will be the first human rights official to enter the country since 2003.

Though Pinheiro’s visit is weeks away, last night’s panel event drew a diverse but small audience, which filled about half of the seats in MacMillan Hall’s Starr Auditorium.

Each panelist, after a short introduction by Pinheiro, was given seven minutes to present his or her view on the ongoing conflict between the military junta and civilians in Myanmar.

Josef Silverstein, a retired Rutgers University professor, spoke first, presenting the recent violence against Burmese monks as part of a long historical tradition. “The issue is not a brand new one,” he said.

Myanmar’s present condition may be understood through three historical themes: the absence of national unity, the relationship between the government and the monasteries and the problem of a tradition of revolt, he said.

By contrast, Zaw Oo, political economist and PhD candidate at American University, emphasized the issue’s underlying economic factors. The protests, which began Aug. 15, were sparked by the Myanmar government’s removal of fuel subsidies. “The economy of the regime is falling apart,” he said. “I think the way the economy has shifted in the last five years is more and more dependent on the narrow base of gas revenue.” As a result, the population is impoverished while the regime gets richer and richer. The monks have become involved by trying to provide the Burmese people with education and health care where the government has failed to do so, he said.

Khin Zaw Win, a fellow at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation who spent 11 years in Myanmar jails as a political prisoner, spoke of his firsthand view of the monks’ situation.

“When this thing happened, the monks were not cheering or shouting political slogans,” he said. “I saw it with my own eyes.” The monks’ actions were not political at first, but became politicized as more and more people joined in and the media became involved, he said.

Khin’s statements also drew parallels between the recent events in Myanmar and the outbreak of violence there in 1988, which occurred under similar conditions. He said there will be no simple solution for Myanmar, and that a variety of means of addressing the issue need to be employed. “It takes a lot to establish and build a democracy,” he said.

According to Pinheiro’s introduction, Khin was arrested by the Myanmar government in 1994 for trying to disseminate democratic documents. He was a prisoner there until 2005.

Another panelist with strong personal connections to the subject matter was Andrew Lim ’08, co-founder of the Brown chapter of the U.S. Campaign for Myanmar. Lim’s family immigrated from Myanmar 25 years ago, and his father participated in the first wave of political demonstrations against the military government in 1974. Following in his father’s footsteps, Lim helped organize the “Red Day” that saw 300 students rally and march silently on the Main Green in support of the protesters on Sept. 28.

A brief video clip of the rally — for which students and faculty wore red t-shirts — was shown at the beginning of the panel discussion.

“We often have a lot more political power than we think we do,” Lim said, urging students to be active in human rights issues.

The panelists generally seemed to be in agreement with one another, but dissension arose when the floor was opened up to questions from the audience.

One member of the audience

expressed his extreme skepticism at the hopeful attitudes of the panelists. “If past is indeed prologue, I do not hold out any hope for Myanmar,” he said. “All this is a big farce, gentlemen … I’m sorry to say it, but money talks.”

Ingrid Jordt, an assistant professor at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee, offered a rebuttal to this comment. The military is not a huge monolith, she said. “I think that there are people in the military who are horrified at the actions of the hard-line generals.”

Other questions touched on the relationship between Myanmar, India and China. “I think we’re facing a reality here that we have to come to grips with. Nations are selfinterested,” Silverstein said. “For the moment, India and China are competitors for what Myanmar has.”

He also pointed out China’s delicate position as the host of the 2008 Summer Olympics. China’s interest in avoiding boycotts puts them in a somewhat vulnerable political position, he said.

Of Myanmar’s future and how those on College Hill can help, Silverstein advised the audience to “write letters, do anything peaceful, and it just might have an effect.”

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E ditorial & L etters Page 10

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S t a f f E d i to r i a l

After Bush? Think about it.

We don’t need to tell you that there’s a lot riding on the 2008 presidential election. You already know that it will be the longest and most expensive media-saturated election in the history of the republic. But if, unlike all those Obama enthusiasts on College Hill, you haven’t already jumped on a candidate’s bandwagon, we’d like to urge you to get involved. As the New Hampshire primary looks likely to shift to mid-December, it’s about time to find a parka and get up to the Granite State, canvassing for the candidate of your choice.

Odd as it seems, we’ve all grown up in the Bush administration’s world. Today’s seniors were sophomores in high school when 9/11 changed our country’s course, and the class of 2011 was still stuck in the melancholy that is middle school when American tanks rolled into Baghdad. Though most Brown students were likely precocious kids who started reading the newspaper in, perhaps, pre-school, for the most part we have politically come of age in the era of “Islamofascism,” the Axis of Evil and the Patriot Act. In November 2008, the America we’ve grown up in could change. Or not. Whether you’re itching to see President Bush evacuate the White House or hoping that Mike Huckabee will fill Dubya’s shoes, pay attention, because the next year’s rat race has enormous consequences for our futures. The next president will inherit two wars, a sliding dollar, face a potential war with Iran and a deep public lack of faith in our civic institutions.

When former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke ’62 visited campus last week, he recalled how the heady political times of his college days in the 1960s compelled him to enter public service. Time will tell how two wars and a rising deficit affect our generation. But for now, it seems that growing up in wartime is propelling us to Wall Street or professional degrees with lucrative futures — not the corridors of the State Department.

On a campus where nearly 62 percent of undergraduates identified themselves as Democrats in a Herald poll conducted last year, the Democratic presidential primary has, unsurprisingly, sparked excitement.

Students backing Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., organized last spring and are already making waves as an official chapter of the Obama campaign — complete with the support of Obama’s brother-in-law, men’s basketball Head Coach Craig Robinson. Another group of students has rallied around Democratic frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. And we’re sure there’s at least one person on the East Side who’s backing long-shot Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. Campus Republicans, too, have been active as the Republican field sorts itself out. Here’s to hoping such early excitement doesn’t give way to apathy as the race takes off.

As a student, your political support isn’t just a vote — it’s your time, energy and, as those Obama disciples would say, your hope. College students are energetic true believers, willing to skip classes, sleep on floors and get up early to knock on doors, distribute flyers and get the word out about their candidate. So pick your man or woman for ’08, organize on campus and then get up to New Hampshire.

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

dan lawlor

L e tt e r s ‘Ratty-nomics’ is a false analogy To the Editor: James Shapiro’s ’10 “Ratty-nomics” column (“Ratty-nomics: What the meal plan can teach us about healthcare finance,” Oct. 19) distorts the economics of the candidate’s proposals for universal health care. At Brown, students need to eat every day. The quality of food provided today has no bearing on the food necessary to sustain students in the future. As long as students are given enough food to live, they will need to eat again next week.

Preventative health care, however, greatly reduces long-time health insurance costs. The current structure of health insurance in this country does not encourage preventative care. Many are unable to purchase health insurance that covers much cheaper preventative measures. Instead, the uninsured are forced wait until the condition has fully manifested itself and then head for an emergency room. The cost of these procedures are much higher than the preventative measures ever would have been.

Another fundamental problem with current health insurance is the way providers structure rate increases after the insured fall ill. We buy insurance to defer risk.

After someone is struck by tragedy, insurers try to “dump” them by increasing rates and decreasing benefits. Michael Moore’s “Sicko” revealed the nasty truth about health care in America: Often when you think you’re covered, you really aren’t. Insurers justify their increases by claiming they are now adjusting for previously undisclosed genetic conditions. In truth, they provided the initial insurance below cost, and try to saddle those who are affected with higher premiums so they will be pushed out, and the insurer is no longer liable for their medical care. If insurance exists to defer risk, how do we justify increasing rates for those who are struck by disease? Aren’t insurance companies just reneging on the initial deal?

Jake Heimark ’10 Oct. 20

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

post- magazine Hillary Dixler Melanie Duch Taryn Martinez Rajiv Jayadevan Sonia Kim Matt Hill

Managing Editor Managing Editor Managing Editor Features Editor Features Editor Associate Editor

Steve DeLucia, Alex Unger, Designers Josh Garcia, Ezra Miller, Alexander Rosenberg, 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 Stefanie Angstadt, Amanda Bauer, Brianna Barzola, Evan Boggs, Aubry Bracco, Caitlin Browne, Zachary Chapman, Joy Chua, Patrick Corey, Catherine Goldberg, Olivia Hoffman, Chaz Kelsh, Jessica Kerry, Cameron Lee, Hannah Levintova, Abe Lubetkin, Christian Martell, Taryn Martinez, George Miller, Anna Millman, Sonia Saraiya, Marielle Segarra, Simon van Zuylen-Wood, 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 Oona Curley, Alex DePaoli, Austin Freeman, Meara Sharma, Tai Ho Shin, Min Wu 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

Correction A headline in Monday’s Herald (“Jindal ’91.5 is first non-white La. gov,” Oct. 22) imprecisely described the historical significance of Jindal’s election. Jindal is the first non-white Louisiana governor elected in modern history. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, a black man, was briefly governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction in 1872 and 1873.

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.

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O pinions Tuesday, October 23, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Page 11

We’re not on College Hill anymore: Dean Bergeron and the New Curriculum ADAM CAMBIER Opinions Columnist As a longtime resident of the great state of Kansas, there are typically two questions asked of me whenever I visit another part of the country. The first and more obvious of the two is an inquiry as to whether I live on a farm, grow wheat or own livestock. (For the record, I don’t).

The second question I am asked about Kansas, however, really gets my goat. The phrasing varies, but it inevitably ends up as a question about Dorothy, Auntie Em, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man or the Yellow Brick Road. It’s always abundantly clear to me that I am indeed not in Kansas anymore, as no self-respecting resident of the state would ever ask me such a stupid question.

Imagine my considerable surprise and consternation, then, when I discovered that our beloved university has turned into a poorly translated adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz.” Having flown through the air — although I was transported via airplane rather than tornado — I was deposited this September squarely in the center of campus amidst a sea of new faces attached to short frames. If the Freshman Orientation Lollipop Guild wasn’t enough, there’s also the perilous overabundance of a dangerous, aromatic plant (and I’m not talking about poppies). I have even found the Emerald City to College Hill’s Oz. Any time one of my friends needs something, be it a heart, a brain, courage, party supplies, a stereo receiver or a chicken fried steak, they traipse on over to Seekonk

(logically making I-195 the parallel to the Yellow Brick Road). Granted, Seekonk doesn’t have much in common with the Emerald City. As little more than a glorified strip mall, it doesn’t quite measure up to the promise of making your wildest dreams come true, and the closest I-195 ever comes to matching the hue of the Yellow Brick Road is when some random drunk with lowered inhibitions answers nature’s call onto a concrete collision barrier.

from the oppression of the stricter, more rigid curricula of the other universities in the Ivy League. Although her office will deny it to the ends of the earth, there is little doubt that Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron’s ultimate goal is the reinstatement of the regime ended upon the undue flattening of her pre-1969 curricular counterpart.

Her tenure in the Office of the Dean of the College has demonstrated remarkable similarities to the rule of the Wicked Witch

Bergeron’s tenure as dean of the College has demonstrated remarkable similarities to the rule of the Wicked Witch of the West over Oz. No Oz is complete, however, without a villain. To find our story’s Wicked Witch of the West, one need look no further than a story in The Herald last week (“Bergeron’s reshuffling fuels more departures, and questions arise,” Oct. 19). When Ira Magaziner’s ’69 P’06 P’07 P’10 proverbial house landed on top of the Wicked Witch of Core Requirements way back when in 1969, he and his fellow founders of the New Curriculum freed legions of incoming classes of Munchkins

of the West over Oz. One of Bergeron’s earliest actions here at Brown was to call in her flying monkeys from other universities like Stanford and Princeton to advise her as to how to dismantle what decades’ worth of students and administrators had sought to build and support. On their advice, she began to restructure the administration into a more hierarchical form, ultimately going against the free-form spirit of the New Curriculum.

Worst of all, in what some see as an effort to

quell resistance to her changes, she’s sacked several prominent members of the administration, at least two of whom had served the Brown community longer than current students have been alive. She’ll get you, my pretties, and your little dogs too.

While this has been happening, President Ruth Simmons has done nothing to protect the New Curriculum. While we need a scary, enormous head to speak out in defense of the New Curriculum and on behalf of the student body, on this particular issue Simmons has merely been the quiet and unassuming man behind the curtain. It’s true that she’s got a lot on her plate already with the Boldly Brown campaign, but such an apparent threat to the spirit of the University merits turning on the theatrics.

Ultimately, the Wizard of Oz analogy doesn’t take us very far. Although I haven’t met her personally, people I know who have interacted with Bergeron have nice things to say. She is neither wicked nor a witch, although she did come to Brown from out west. In the end, however, her office shakeups portend a more earth-shattering change to come. Many of us chose to come to Brown because of its unique educational philosophy, and any departures from that philosophy stand to leave the student body feeling betrayed and alienated from the school we have grown to call our own. If there is one thing that Bergeron and Simmons need to remember when implementing such radical changes, it is that for us students there is no place like home.

Adam Cambier ’09 would ask the Wizard to bring back donuts to Sunday brunch at the Ratty.

Did Al Gore tell a Nobel lie?

BY LINDSEY MEYERS Columnist Abroad Though Al Gore is a darling in Hollywood, it seems he just can’t catch a break in court.

First, there was that bitter legal disappointment about hanging chads in Florida. Now a High Court judge in London has ruled that his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” is something less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

This most recent controversy stemmed from a British government plan to show Gore’s documentary in United Kingdom secondary schools. Some in the British government thought Gore’s film was an apt and scientifically unassailable subject for children. However, Stewart Dimmock, an irate parent and school governor, begged to differ. He considered Gore’s film more political than scientific and filed a lawsuit to prevent it from being shown in the British schools. And he did so based upon a British law that sensibly prevents the government from supporting any partisan political viewpoint in the schools.

The case came before London High Court judge Michael Burton, who was considerably more critical of the film than the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. While the latter group awarded the film an Oscar, Burton gave it the judicial equivalent of two thumbs down. According to an Oct. 11 report in the London Times, he ruled that the film was not an objective scientific work but a “political film” with an “apocalyptic vision.”

In fairness, Burton did observe that the film “is based substantially on scientific research and opinion.” However, he still held that Gore’s film is a “political work (that)

promotes only one side of the argument.” As a result, Burton ruled that the British government cannot distribute the film without a warning disclosing its factual inaccuracies to students.

Burton identified nine inaccuracies in the film. He concluded, for example, that the film was politically biased and scientifically overreaching to attribute dramatic natural phenomena such as Hurricane Katrina, coral reef bleaching, the reduction of the snow pack on Mt. Kilimanjaro and the drowning of polar bears to global warming. He also rejected as overreaching the film’s claim that

at a more inconvenient time for Gore, since it was issued just one day before he and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking environmental advocacy. To make this controversy even more inopportune, Martin Perry, the co-chair of the IPCC, fundamentally agrees with Burton’s ruling.

Thus, in an online Washington Post interview, Perry concedes there are “factual errors” in Gore’s film even as he asserts they “do not affect the main argument.”

While Perr y’s point is well-taken, the exaggerations in Gore’s film remain trou-

It may not be fair to categorically brand Gore a liar. Maybe we should call him a serial exaggerator instead. global warming will alter the Gulf Stream and thereby cause an ice age in Europe. And based upon scientific consensus of the testimony he received, he found that rising seas caused by global warming will not make millions of coastal residents homeless in the near term, as the film suggests. Indeed, he found this claim “distinctly alarmist,” since the scientific consensus is that it will take a millennia for sea levels to rise the 20 feet the film asserts.

The High Court ruling couldn’t have come

bling. Some may argue that the public needs to be shaken from its lethargy, even if it means making apparently far-fetched apocalyptic claims about killer hurricanes, new ice ages and rising seas. This argument, of course, is a variant of Plato’s “noble lie” — the contention that political lies sometimes serve just purposes. However, the truth is that no lie is noble, whether it pertains to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or scientifically unsubstantiated examples of global warming.

Scientific fact must be divorced from political spin if we are to have honest discussions and make informed decisions about global warming.

Of course, it may not be fair to categorically brand Gore a liar even though a respected judge has found inaccuracies in his film that the co-chair of his Nobel Prize co-recipient has acknowledged. Maybe we should call him a serial exaggerator instead. Lest you think otherwise, don’t forget Gore’s former claim to have invented the Internet. But while some of us good-naturedly poke fun at Gore’s peccadilloes, others in the court of public opinion will be considerably less kind in their reaction.

Gore’s exaggerations will regrettably become grist for the opinion mills of those who seek to create skepticism about global warming.

Moreover, Gore’s political opponents will seek to capitalize on these mistakes should he enter the presidential race. In fact, one imagines that policy wonks are currently sharpening their political knives at Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters.

However, for now, my thoughts are on the secondary school children in Britain. Gore’s film will be distributed to their schools. But after their teachers issue them the judge’s warnings about the scientific inaccuracies in the film, I fear they that they will remember Gore as an exaggerator, if not a “liar,” long after they forget what should have been the invaluable lessons of his film. Therein lies an inconvenient truth for advocates of all political stripes. If the truth is on your side, let it speak eloquently for itself. Don’t grossly exaggerate it; if you do, people may never completely believe you again.

Lindsey Meyers ’09 fights global warming by avoiding floating polar bears.

S ports T uesday Page 12

Rout of Big Red leaves w. soccer in Ivy hunt

By Stu Woo Sports Editor

After spraining her right ankle in the first game of the season, Sylvia Stone ’11 was understandably uncomfortable on the soccer field for the past few weeks. Wearing an ankle brace that limited her mobility, she played gingerly.

But this week, her ankle finally felt healthy, and the freshman started getting comfortable playing with her teammates. With her confidence back up, the midfielder contributed to the Bears’ season in a big way yesterday, scoring the first two goals of her collegiate career in a 4-0 rout of Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y. For her efforts, Stone was named Ivy League co-Rookie of the Week.

“My ankle was feeling really good in practice this week, and I’ve been closer to my best ability,” said Stone, who said she just “did some regular high-fiving” after the scores.

Jamie Mize ’09 and Susie Keller ’08 also scored, and Lindsay Cunningham ’09 had two assists. Steffi Yellin ’10 had five saves in her fourth shutout of the season. The win improved Brown’s record to 4-8-1 overall and 2-2 in the Ivy League.

“It was a great team win,” said Head Coach Phil Pincince. “I think we did a nice job exploiting changes in the point of attack and exploiting the flanks.”

The win was an important one for the Bears, Pincince said, since it landed them in a three-way tie for third place. Brown will still need help to climb over Princeton (3-1 Ivy) and the University of Pennsylvania (4-0), who they host on Sunday.

Cornell actually outshot Brown, 9-6, in the first half, but it was the Bears who held a 1-0 halftime lead.

In the 31st minute, Cunningham fed a through ball to a streaking Stone, who put the ball in the right corner of the net.

Mize then scored quickly after halftime, off an assist from co-captain Kerrilynn Carney ’08, to double Brown’s lead. Keller scored 13 min-

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

S po r

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Crews make splash at Head of Charles The men’s and women’s rowing teams claimed their places near the head of the pack over the weekend at the 43rd annual Head of the Charles Regatta, held in Boston. The Bears’ strong performances were highlighted by a third-place finish in the championship eights race for the men and a sixth-place finish for the women.

The men’s varsity eight clocked in at 14:31.88, close on the tails of U.S. Rowing, which took first place with a time of 14:03.71, and the University of Wisconsin, which finished second in 14:30.02.

U.S. Rowing took first in the women’s division as well, followed by the London Training Center, the University of Michigan, Yale and the University of Tennessee. The last two teams beat Brown by only two seconds. The women’s time of 16:27.5 was 10 seconds ahead of the next closest opponent, Stanford University.

The men’s varsity eight’s solid finish was matched by the efforts from its other boats in the race. The junior varsity eight finished 24th overall in 14:59.81, and the freshman eight posted a time of 15:31.52, good for 34th place.

The women’s varsity eight “B” boat placed 20th at 17:15.87, and the varsity four took seventh at 19:00.2. The Princeton Chase is next up for the women this Sunday.

Other men’s performances included the varsity four, who finished ninth in 17:04.8, and the club eight, who finished 25th in 16:10.94.

The men’s team competes next at the Tail of the Charles on Saturday, Nov. 17. This competition will also be hosted in Boston.

Field hockey falls to Cornell 2-1

Ashley Hess / Herald File Photo

Helped by a goal from Susie Keller ’08, the Bears knocked off Cornell.

utes later off a Cunningham cross from the left side of the field.

“We moved the ball well,” Cunningham said. “All week in practice, we had been working on passing the ball quickly, because (Cornell) double-teams and triple-teams quickly.”

Stone put the game away for good with less than four minutes

left in regulation. Julie Wu ’09 hit a perfect corner kick to the back post, and Stone said she just ran into the ball, bouncing it off her stomach and into the goal.

Before playing Penn on Sunday, the Bears will compete in their last non-league match of the year, against Sacred Heart University at 7 p.m.

Wednesday at Stevenson Field.

The field hockey team came close to kissing its losing streak goodbye during Sunday’s game in Ithaca, N.Y., but Cornell kept that dream from becoming a reality. After the Bears tied the game at 1-1 in the second half, the Big Red recorded another goal late in the contest to emerge with a 2-1 victory.

Though Cornell threw five shots on-goal in the first half compared to Brown’s two, both teams remained scoreless heading into the second half.

But the Big Red came out strong to begin the second stanza, scoring after only 1:24. Belen Martinez converted a penalty corner that got behind goaltender Lauren Kessler ’11, giving Cornell a 1-0 lead.

The Bears rebounded a little more than 10 minutes later at 48:45 with a goal of their own. Andrea Posa ’08 tied the game at 1-1 when she scored off of a shot from Jackie Connard ’10 that crossed in front of the Big Red goal. The goal was Posa’s third this season and the Bears’ only one in the past five games.

Brown needed just one more goal to come away with its first win of the season, but Cornell outshot the Bears 10-3 in the half and took advantage of its greater number of scoring opportunities. The Big Red took a 2-1 lead when Abbi Horn scored at 69:14. Cornell killed the final few seconds of game time to take the win.

Despite allowing the two scores, Kessler tallied a total of five saves for the day.

The Bears will have another chance to put their losing streak to rest when they host the College of the Holy Cross tomorrow at 4 p.m. on Warner Roof.

— Erin Frauenhofer

M. water polo staying afloat despite tough competition

By Whitney Clark Spor ts Staf f Writer

Whether competing on the East Coast or out West, the men’s water polo team has proven to be one of the best squads in the country. After being tested extensively earlier this month during their trip to California, the Bears made the trek to Annapolis, Md., this weekend and again showed that they can hold their own in anyone’s pool.

On Sunday, Brown faced the No. 11 United States Naval Academy, who defeated the Bears in a heartbreaking loss, 7-6. Though this was Brown’s first defeat after running off seven straight wins, the Bears were tied with the Midshipmen at the end of every quarter and lost on a buzzer-beating shot.

Despite the loss, the Bears took away some positives away from the contests.

“It was particularly inspiring for us and probably equally demoralizing for them to see that a small team of 12 players was swimming with them and beating them for almost the entire game,” said Nico Fort ’09.

Before facing Navy and its B team on Sunday, the Bears played

three other Collegiate Water Polo Association Southern Division and Eastern Region teams. On Saturday, Bruno competed against Johns Hopkins University, Princeton and George Washington University.

The Bears opened up the weekend in impressive fashion, defeating Johns Hopkins, 9-8. With what proved to be a trend throughout the weekend, the Bears came out fast and got on the scoreboard first.

“We usually start the game with a sense of urgency offensively, and it helps us build a nice lead,” Fort said.

Despite holding the lead through the first three quarters, Brown fell into “safety mode,” according to goalkeeper Kent Holland ’10. The Blue Jays scored three times to start the fourth quarter, tying the game 7-7 with five minutes left to play.

“In the past few games, we’ve been able to open up on some teams with great first halves, which is something we haven’t experienced before,” Holland said. He added that the Bears consequently stop pushing their counterattack as hard, and their offense becomes stagnant over the course of the game.

However, the Bears didn’t give up, and with 1:58 remaining, Mike

Gartner ’09 scored the game-winning goal. “We did look sluggish at some points in the second half, but the best thing about having a team make a run at us is stopping them and still winning the game,” said Head Coach Felix Mercado. “It showed great character.”

Co-captain Gerrit Adams ’08 had four goals, and Gartner was close behind with three.

In its second game of the day, Brown faced No. 20 Princeton for the first time this season. Once again, the Bears came out strong and took the lead early. By the beginning of the second half, they were ahead 8-2.

But closely adhering to their tendency to lose the early lead, the Bears allowed the Tigers to close the gap with a 5-1 scoring spree.

But the Bears had the last laugh, retaliating with one more goal for the 10-7 final.

Fort led six other Bears in scoring with three goals.

In the last game of the day, the Bears were finally able to overcome their trend of coming out strong only to become complacent late in the game. continued on page 9

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Gerritt Adams ’08 poured in four goals in a win against Johns Hopkins on Saturday.