Wednesday, October 24, 2007

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The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, O ctober 24, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 95

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

U. taps into Facebook to keep tabs on some student parties

th e g r e e k g a m e s

By Kristina Kelleher Senior Staf f Writer

Rahul Keerthi / Herald The Annual Greek Olympics were held Tuesday on Wriston Quadrangle.

The Office of Student Life is now periodically perusing Facebook for information on upcoming parties, Margaret Klawunn, associate vice president for campus life and dean of student life, told The Herald. Klawunn said there has been an unusually high number of complaints this fall from area residents about students’ off-campus parties, and “we just want to remind off-campus students that the same rules and regulations apply to them,” she said. Additionally, students hosting off-campus parties are responsible for obeying city ordinances and can be cited for serving alcohol to minors and noise complaints, Klawunn said. The Office of Student Life is

New U. committee to examine residential life on campus By Scott Lowenstein Senior Staff Writer

A new group that will assess the University’s non-academic programs and suggest new initiatives to improve the quality of life at Brown will meet for the first time Friday. The Committee on the Residential Experience will “evaluate what programs we already have in place ... and make recommendations for ways to improve the quality of student life outside the classroom,”

said Margaret Klawunn, associate vice president for campus life and dean of student life. The committee is co-chaired by Klawunn and Associate Professor of Classics Joseph Pucci. The committee was conceived to complement the Task Force on Undergraduate Education, which is currently examining the College’s academic offerings, Klawunn said. “We thought we should have a companion project assessing experiences outside of the classroom,”

she said. The committee, comprising administrators, professors and three students, will discuss a variety of issues, including student and faculty relationships, advising and residence hall community-building, Klawunn said. The group will also consider the faculty fellows program, which makes professors living in University-owned properties on campus available to students for conversation, advice or a break from studying. The committee will also study

programs at other colleges and universities to develop models that “can be made distinctly Brown,” Klawunn said. One early model discussed by administrators last spring was the Alice Cook House at Cornell University, which integrates advising, living and dining in a shared community space. But when she presented this example to students, “many felt it was too much control for Brown students,” she said. continued on page 6

INSIDE:

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CAMPUS NEWS

www.browndailyherald.com

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CAMPUS NEWS

Rahul Keerthi / Herald

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier delivered the inaugural J. Carter Brown Memorial Lecture to a packed MacMillan 117 Tuesday.

Renaissance city? Providence ranks low in a recent survey of the best college cities in the country.

By Gaurie Tilak Contributing Writer

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Members of the Brown community and students from nearby institutions crowded into MacMillan 117 Tuesday evening to hear architect Richard Meier deliver the first annual J. Carter Brown Memorial Lecture. Attendees filled every seat and even crowded into the aisles of the auditorium. Steven Lubar, director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization and professor of American Civilization, introduced Meier, who he said has received the prestigious Pritzker Prize and “just about every other award an architect can receive.” Lubar recalled the first time he visited Los Angeles’ Getty Center, one of Meier’s most notable works. “I remember ... the buildings, the spaces, feeling that intimate space despite the scale of the institution,” said Lubar. Meier began his lecture by thanking the University for the invitation and said, “I’m going to show you a lot of stuff — if I can figure out how,” as he fumbled with the controls at the podium. Meier’s down-to-earth remarks drew laughter from the enthusiastic audience — a sound that con-

By Sophia Li Staff Writer

Financial enrichment The Boldly Brown campaign has raised $1.1 billion so far, nearly 80 percent of goal.

Study shows private school attendance has little effect on a student’s future

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By Isabel Gottlieb Senior Staf f Writer

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Think your high school will get you in? Think again.

look out.” This principle of “looking out” to a building’s surroundings proved to be central to Meier’s discussion of his work as he progressed through slides of the houses, office buildings, museums and various other public spaces he has designed. Meier demonstrated his constant awareness of a building’s surroundings with the many waterfront houses he has designed. Whether they were on Long Island, near Lake Michigan or in Florida, Meier’s houses were “private from the street side and

Meier gives a window into his creative process

tinued throughout his lecture. Meier displayed a slideshow of examples of his work on a large projection screen, lecturing on the creative process behind each piece. He cited the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Fallingwater” on his own work and discussed Wright’s concept of “organic architecture” and “the extension of space between interior and exterior.” “I realized Wright was wrong,” Meier said. “What is man-made is different from what is natural. Architecture is not organic ... What is organic is everything around it — nature, what you see as you

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Jenny Desrosier ’11, who attended Groton School, a boarding school in Massachusetts, says her high school pedigree made a difference in the college application process. “25 percent of the kids in my grade are going to Ivy League schools,” she said. “(Colleges) know the kids are prepared.” But, according to a new study from the Center on Education Policy, attending a private school instead of a public school has little effect on a person’s future, whether measured by rate of college attendance, academic success in high school itself or job satisfaction. The study focused on poorer students in an effort to influence public policy debates over public school funding. “We focused on urban students of the lowest socioeconomic status because these are the ones generally targeted by voucher programs,” Jack Jennings, president of the center, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. The study contradicts previous studies done on the topic that had identified attending private school as an advantage in education, the center says. The new study, a regression analysis of already published data, says better performance and test scores by private school graduates can be attributed to factors other than where students went to school, such as socioeconomic status and parental involvement in students’

No turnout at DPS forum For 40 minutes Tuesday night, officers from the Department of Public Safety waited in MacMillan 115 for students to voice complaints in an open forum. But none came — the only students in attendance were a Herald reporter and a Herald photographer. Chief of Police Mark Porter said that the open forum had been publicized in Morning Mail on Monday of this week, in table slips and in two mass e-mails to all students, one in September and one this month. The forum was also mentioned Sept. 4 during a public hearing to reaccredit DPS with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Four students spoke at that meeting — though they spoke on a video that CALEA would review — and did not receive any response to their comments. Last night’s forum was arranged to offer a chance for dialogue between students and DPS officials. When the September CALEA hearing was originally scheduled

using Facebook to identify students who may be hosting parties so it can make them aware of those policies. The main goal of using Facebook to collect information about upcoming parties has been to better know what is happening on a given weekend, Klawunn said. She also encourages students to send party — and Facebook — invitations only to the Brown community. Recently, Associate Dean of Student Life Terry Addison used Facebook to find the students responsible for an off-campus party after he had been made aware of it through a neighbor’s complaint. In that situation, he contacted the students to make them aware of their responsibilities as both Brown

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OPINIONS

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

OPINIONS Ben Bernstein ’08 on meter maids and the problem with College Hill parking.

12 SPORTS

Wild Horses The equestrian team beats UConn for its third straight win of the season.

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com


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